It is so predictable. Whenever a major election draws near, the right wing media suddenly focuses heavily on crime as a major problem in the US. Jon Stewart and his guests talk about how the media coverage bends the political narrative and one of his guests Kasaun Wilson translates for us what ‘crime’ really means.
Last night was their first chance to comment after the races that gave control of the US Senate to the Democrats were decided over the weekend.
Stephen Colbert:
Seth Meyers:
Jimmy Kimmel:
As we await the results of today’s election, here is one of the strips from Get Fuzzy, a daily comic strip by Darby Conley that has three main characters who live together in an apartment: a human Rob, a dog Satchel, and a cat Bucky. Rob is a nerdy single guy with apparently no social life who spends his spare time playing video games and is a fan of rugby. Satchel is naive, gullible, lovable but dim, while Bucky is devious, ignorant but thinks of himself as very smart, and is constantly scheming to find ways to make money and also torment Satchel.
I read the strip daily and decided to share this one to introduce it to people who might not have known about it. Sadly, Conley stopped producing new daily strips in 2013 and Sunday ones in 2019 but reruns appear every day and they have mostly a timeless quality and whatever current events that are alluded to that have become dated can be easily understood.
Every comedian seems to do impressions of Donald Trump but James Austin Johnson is by far the best, far superior to Alec Baldwin who preceded him on this show.
Last night, all of them devoted considerable time to today’s elections.
Seth Meyers:
Stephen Colbert:
Trevor Noah:
He travels to three states (Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) that are having key mid-term elections on Tuesday, November 8 to talk to mostly Republican voters. As usual, he does not seem to find any difficulty in interviewing total nutters who seem to be unable to understand simple logic.
On the most recent episode of his always excellent show Last Week Tonight, he focuses on the abuses of the cash bail system where people can be held in jail for a long time before trial simply because they do not have the money to post bail. This hurts poor people the most. One of the worst abuses is to use the system to coerce people who have been held in jail for a long time before trial to confess to crimes they did not commit with the promise that the time they have already spent in prison will be sufficient punishment.
I think that people should be released on their personal recognizance unless they are a risk to society or have the means to flee. Most poor people who commit petty offenses can easily be caught if they do not show up for their trial. Bail in such cases is punitive.
Today October 31 is Halloween. Desi Lydic explains how this strange holiday came about.
There was a guy in Sri Lanka who thought the song began “Hello Douglas, my old friend”. You can hardly blame him.
