Stephen Colbert has been out of the news while he plans his return to TV as the replacement for David Letterman on CBS’s The Late Show that begins on September 8. But he has been busy growing a beard and has put out a short video promotion for his show that suggests that even without the conservative mask he has been wearing for so long, he is still funny.
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Last night I watched the Frontline program Secrets, Politics and Torture: The secret history of the fight over the CIA’s controversial interrogation methods, widely criticized as torture that I alerted readers to. The show, broadcast last night on PBS, looked at how the US government has indulged in the most brutal acts of torture and lied about it. For those who missed it, these programs are usually later available online for at least a brief time and may be shown again on PBS. [Update: Thanks to reader lanir, the link to see the 54-minutes documentary is here.]
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I tend to give the letters to the editor column of the Plain Dealer only the most cursory of glances. One rarely learns anything from them but they do provide a window into some very strange minds. Within the space of two days, I saw two letters on climate change that boggled my mind. Here they are in full.
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Texas senator Ted Cruz, one of the many contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, is one of the most obnoxious people around. Even his colleagues in his own party seem disgusted with his arrogant, preening, headline-hogging antics. So that raises the question as to whether it would be ever possible for him to come off as a sympathetic figure in an exchange with anyone.
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Now that David Cameron and the Conservative Party achieved a convincing victory in the UK elections, they have set about clamping down on any speech that the government thinks is ‘extremist’, despite their recent loud claims to champion free speech.
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What is the matter with some people that they would think this is funny? Apparently this started out as a fake TV video that went viral and now female TV reporters as well as some male ones are routinely subjected to this as they try to broadcast live reports.
The reporter Shauna Hunt has to be credited for not backing off and directly confronting these awful people and showing them up for the creeps they are.
When I think of great American journalists, I do not think of people like Edward R. Murrow that the media establishment reveres. I think of I. F. Stone. His basic working principle was that you had to assume that governments lie and work from there. He later extended that principle to corporations too.
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When Bernie Sanders appeared on ABC News yesterday, it became clear that the interviewer wanted to goad him into attacking Hillary Clinton directly and then get her to respond in kind because that will enable them to create the kind of narrative they are most familiar with, that of a mud-slinging race and the effect of those attacks on poll numbers. But Sanders is smart enough not to fall for that. Instead, by focusing his attacks on the billionaire class that dominates US politics, Clinton is affected only to the extent that she is part of that class. It will be interesting to see how she reacts.
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An articulate young man tells Geraldo Rivera and the Fox News crew to get the hell out of Baltimore because they are never there to report on the awful conditions in that area or when there are peaceful protests and demonstrations to try and get things improved. They only come when there is upheaval and then just to deplore the violence and paint the residents when they are in a bad light.
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I have long used the word oligarchy to describe America because I think it accurately captures the reality of the current state of politics where a small coterie of wealthy individuals and families control the country and make all the major decisions on economic and military issues. The so-called people’s elected representatives are merely the people in front of the curtain, there to entertain us and distract us from the fact that we really have no say except on a limited set of social issues that the oligarchy does not really care that much about as long as the stability they need to maintain their own lifestyles is maintained.
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