How to interview a Trump surrogate

Mehdi Hasan shows how in this interview with Steve Rogers, a Trump advisor for his 2020 campaign.

But alas, this will not catch on. Why won’t we see mainstream US journalists follow Hasan’s lead? Because they want the same old hacks to appear over and over again on their shows and if they are too hard on them, they won’t pay a return visit. That is the dirty little secret of the US politics-media axis. Each side knows what the other side expects in order to put on a show for the viewers. It’s show biz.

Good riddance to Tom MacArthur

Tom MacArthur is a Republican congressman from New Jersey who tried the familiar two-step of pretending to be a moderate while being a Trumpista. I am very glad to report that it was announced today that he has lost his seat to Democratic challenger Andy Kim, leaving the New Jersey Republican congressional delegation, like the California one, in tatters with just one congressperson from the former five, with some of the lost seats having been held by Republicans for decades. The House is now 229-198 in favor of the Democrats, a swing of 34 seats so far, with eight seats still undecided.
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One of the tragedies of poverty

One of the many adversities that befall those who are poor is that they get tempted to take risks with their own lives and the lives of their families just in order to survive, such as selling their organs and committing crimes. I was shocked to read this report about Anucha Thasako, a 13-year old Thai boy, who died of a brain hemorrhage after a boxing bout. It was bad enough that children are boxing at all but it appears that it is a way for poor people to earn money. Thasako had fought in 170 bouts since the age of eight.
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Get ready for lame duck shenanigans

In this Hanukkah election season for the Democrats, another day brought another gift in that Democrat Kyrsten Sinema was declared the winner for the Arizona senate seat vacated by retiring Republican Jeff Flake.

Meanwhile, the US senate race in Mississippi will be heading to a runoff vote on November 27 since no candidate won more than 50% of the vote. The Republican incumbent candidate Cindy Hyde-Smith has got herself into trouble by saying that “”If [Tupelo cattle rancher, Colin Hutchinson] invited me to a public hanging, I’d be on the front row.” Her opponent Democrat Mike Espy is black and given the racist history of public hangings especially in the deep south, the comment was seen as reprehensible.
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Goodbye HAL, you were wonderful

Anyone who has watched the film 2001: A Space Odyssey will never forget the voice of HAL 9000, the computer that was the real star of that film. Douglas Rain, the Shakespearean actor who provided the voice, died on November 11 at the age of 90. That somber, flat, atonal, imperturbable voice, concerned and yet somehow menacing, is etched in the memory and I can recall it easily and immediately. For those who cannot, here is one key scene. (Keir Dullea’s performance is often overlooked. He deserves a lot of credit for his reaction shots to a disembodied voice.)

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Watching plants move

There is something fascinating about watching time-lapse films of plants that show them moving. Plants move so imperceptibly slowly that they seem inert so it is disconcerting to see them growing and moving towards water and sunlight as if they have a sense of awareness. Here is a case where an almost dead plant comes back to life after being given water.

(Via Rusty Blazenhoff)

White nationalist Jewish Republican loses in New Jersey

I wrote earlier about the strange phenomenon of extreme right wing parties in Germany that have been associated with xenophobia and anti-Semitism actively wooing the Jewish community and having some success, to the consternation of the major Jewish organizations in that country, surprised by the willingness to support a party that is overtly against their own community.
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