I decided to tune in at least to part of the eighth Republican primary debate and see what fun there was to be had and I was glad that I did so. It was a rollicking affair. Almost completely substance free, of course, but great fun nonetheless.
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So there you are in front of the Taj Mahal or some other tourist site and you want to take a photograph of it. Unfortunately other people also like these sites and wander across the frame of the photo as you are setting up. Some will notice you and be considerate enough to wait for you to finish or walk behind you but most will be oblivious that they are ruining your shot.
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Because it saves time, according to one former Bush administration official. But joking aside, it is quite extraordinary how so many people, including colleagues and acquaintances going all the way back to his college days, describe him as a totally unlikable person. Not only do they feel that way, they are all coming out of the woodwork to say so openly.
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It was interesting to read reports of the recent back-and-forth between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton as to who is a real progressive, with both claiming the label. It was not long ago that Republicans had managed to so damage the label of even the perfectly honorable political tradition of liberalism that leaders of the Democratic party shied away from it, and veered into the so-called ‘third way’ neoliberalism policies that they would describe as centrism or moderate or some such euphemism.
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(This clip aired on February 3, 2016. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Nightly Show outside the US, please see this earlier post. If the videos autoplay, please see here for a diagnosis and possible solutions.)
One of the excuses that the Obama administration and its Department of Justice have given for the lenient way that they have treated the corporate sector and its top executives despite the clear evidence of fraud is that prosecuting them is hard and has a low chance of success.
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I have decided to take a break from watching the debates and town halls held by the Democratic and Republican candidates. I started watching the Democratic town hall on Wednesday but soon got tired of it. I think it is because as a fairly close observer of politics, I am not learning anything new about the candidates’ views from these events. I think I pretty much know where they stand so watching would be largely for style not substance and I am not that interested in style. I figure that if they say something really new or interesting, I will hear or read about it elsewhere.
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Michael Newdow is the atheist who at one time argued before the US Supreme Court that the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance that school children say in school violated the Establishment Clause and was thus unconstitutional. The court ruled against him on a technicality that he was at the time not the legal custodian of his daughter, the one in whose name the suit was brought, and thus lacked standing. His later attempts to rectify that issue by representing other children did not succeed at the Appeals Court level and he gave up on it.
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One of the all-time great comedies is the 1980 film Airplane!. Its creators gave an interview about how they wrote the script and managed to get a major studio to back the film, especially the idea of using actors such as Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Pater Graves, and Leslie Nielsen, known for playing dramatic roles, to play parts that would have normally gone to comedians.
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Words cannot adequately describe the horrors that wars inflict on people. In this video captured by drones flying over the city of Homs in Syria, we get a look at the staggering levels of devastation that has been inflicted on the people of that city. This used to be the third largest city in Syria and a major industrial center. It is heartbreaking to see the impoverishment of yet another country in that region similar to the way that Iraq and Libya, other countries that had a modern infrastructure, were ruined by wars.
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