Rich people fight!

The recent protests and demonstration have largely featured young people of diverse backgrounds facing off against the police or Trump-supporting counter protestors. But Saturday saw something different at The Villages, a retirement community in Florida that has very wealthy, almost exclusively white, residents. It is seen as a reliably very right-wing Republican stronghold and has hosted many fundraisers for such candidates including Trump.
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John Oliver on the prison scandal

At the best of times, the state of US prisons are a scandal but what is happening during the pandemic is unconscionable, with inmates kept in conditions that guarantee that almost all of them will be exposed to the virus. John Oliver examines the problem and provides some common-sense steps that could be taken to ameliorate the situation but of course they are not being done because being seen as soft on criminals is seen by many politicians as a electoral death sentence, even though there is no way to confine the virus to just the prison population.

Seth Meyers excoriates Bolton and the failed capitalist system in the US

In a blistering attack, Meyers points out how despicable John Bolton is and always has been, and then goes on to say that capitalism in the US has created the highly unjust and unequal system that we now have, where the wealthy make out like bandits while the rest of us are squeezed dry. It is encouraging that the evils of capitalism are increasingly and explicitly being highlighted by mainstream media.

The Onion on the 15% of Americans who are just plain bonkers

Somme of you may be familiar with the ‘crazifiction factor‘, a term invented by John Rogers to explain the 27% of Americans who seem to be willing to vote for the most bizarre candidates. The Onion reports that the Pew Research organization that conducts polls on various aspects of American life has come up with a different figure.

WASHINGTON—Classifying millions of citizens around the country as “total goddamn mysteries,” a resigned Pew Research study released Friday found it was impossible to determine what the fuck was going on with 15% of Americans. “After an exhaustive, year-long venture, we are still just as confused, if not more confused, about what the deal is with all these indecipherable weirdos,” said lead researcher Jenna Kirkman, before throwing her arms into the air, and calling a large portion of Americans “lost causes.” “According to our very frustrating research, a large portion of Americans are just freaks who will never be understood, no matter how hard we try. Are they happy? Sad? Old? Young? Unfortunately, because so much of the nation are just total fucking randos, we may never actually know.” At press time, Kirkman added that the remaining 85% of Americans were basic as shit, allowing researchers to easily parse every detail about their boring, miserable lives.

(This is of course satire.)

How to make a comedy show during the quarantine

I have been impressed at how these shows have been able to put out such good stuff while everyone is at home. Samantha Bee takes us behind the scenes to show how she and her team did it. It is interesting to see all the people involved who are normally behind the scenes explain what they do. They all look so young! No wonder the show has such energy and topicality.
Part 1:

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