Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
As the election draws nearer, reporters are fanning out trying to root out that very rare species, the undecided voter. I find it hard to imagine how anyone can be an undecided voter at this point. Elections with an incumbent running are usually a referendum on that person’s performance and Trump has been such an intensely divisive and polarizing figure that this time it will be even more so. I find it hard to imagine that any sentient being could not have formed an opinion of whether to vote for him or not. But yet there are people claiming to be so and the media is drawn to them as flies to honey. [Read more…]
Clearly they could not make jokes about Trump’s health so they went with the safer parody of the debate while throwing in asides about Trump’s covid-19 diagnosis. They also introduced Jim Carrey in the role of Joe Biden but he reminded me more of Clint Eastwood.
Things are moving so fast that it its hard to register that the first Biden-Trump debate took place just three days ago but Samantha Bee’s takes on events are always worth hearing at any time.
There has been much speculation about whether Trump will accept the results of the election if he loses, speculation that has been deliberately fueled by Trump himself. As I have said before, this is just bluster, designed to sow fear and chaos. Joe Biden was right to dismiss that possibility in the debate. If Trump loses, he has to leave office because the only way he can continue is by a military coup and there is no way that the military is going to be part of that scheme. He may hope that the US Supreme Court will declare him the victor but that option is also a highly remote one unless the results are hair-splittingly close.
Tom the Dancing Bug 1506 donald and john – transfer of power
Stephen Colbert had a good monologue on the lowlights.
The revelations about Trump’s taxes show how the system is rigged to to give the wealthy all manner of advantages denied to ordinary people, as Seth Meyers lays out. Trump is just more shameless than most in trying to exploit the system.
Samantha Bee makes the powerful case that these are breeding grounds for appalling abuses and should be abolished. Furthermore, because of the profit motive driving them, people are kept there longer and treated terribly, just so that the corporations that own them can make more money. She goes further and says that ICE should also be shut down because it is part of the problem.
As the election draws ever nearer, Seth Meyers takes a closer look at the question of whether there will be a peaceful transition of power.
Although Trump keeps stoking fears that he may not agree with the election results if they show him losing, and this has caused great alarm, I am not so worried. What he would be advocating is a coup and that requires the support of the military. I simply do not think that the US military is going to go along with his attempt to overturn the result of the election even in the unlikely event that his supporters take to the streets en masse to demand that he be allowed to remain in power.
I have written many times before about my admiration for the way that this radio program tells stories, whether they are dealing with serious political issues or whimsical ones. This show really must be listened to to get the full effect, because these people are terrific storytellers, expertly blending in pauses, inflections, and music to great effect that gets lost with just the written word. Reading the transcript is nowhere near as good. Last week they had a particularly good episode that at times had me laughing out loud. It mostly dealt with watching films and TV.
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