The writers at The Daily Show and former host Jon Stewart were giving themselves high fives when Donald Trump announced that he was definitely in the race for the Republican presidential nomination because he promised to be a sure-fire source of comedy material. The must be thinking that their cup overfloweth because like Abou Ben Adhem, lo, Ben Carson turns out to lead all the rest on the roster of nuttiness.
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Is there something in the water in the US that makes it necessary for people to be in a state of perpetual hysterical fear?
There is something truly ugly about the latest manifestation, the anti-refugee hysteria in the US following the ISIS attacks in Paris and Beirut. (Incidentally, why is the media focusing almost entirely on Paris? Or is the answer too obvious to even bother to mention?) Politicians in various states are falling over themselves to grandstand on this issue, stating that they will not accept refugees because they need to keep their residents safe even though they lack the power to stop migration into the country and the movement of anyone across state borders once they are in.
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This month celebrates the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s publication of the paper laying out what we now refer to as the General Theory of Relativity. Steven Strogatz describes two pivotal moments that Einstein says influenced his way of thinking.
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In a speech at Georgetown University later today, Bernie Sanders will explain what he means by the term ‘democratic socialist’, the label that he chooses to apply to himself.
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According to NASA, October was the hottest month of record. But what is more, it surpassed the baseline temperature NASA uses that is based on the 30-year average period from 1951-1980 by more than a whopping one degree Celsius. Such a huge jump has never happened before.
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So Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal becomes the third Republican candidate to formally drop out of the race for the Republican nomination, joining fellow governors Scott Walker and Rick Perry.
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People may recall the famous interview that Katie Couric had with Sarah Palin when the latter had just burst on the national stage as John McCain’s pick as his running mate in 2008, a choice that will doom him forever as one of the worst judges of running mates in modern politics. In response to an innocuous question as to what seemed like a softball question about what publications she reads to keep up with world affairs, Palin flailed around defensively. But when pressed for specific newspapers, she memorably said “All of them”. That answer sealed the impression that she just does not read much at all.
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At the risk of this blog becoming all Carson all the time, here is another comedic take on Carson’s curious blend of inflated/fictional biography, sense of victimhood, and his weird beliefs.
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Bernie Sanders had a huge rally in Cleveland that attracted tens of thousand of enthusiastic supporters which I unfortunately could not attend and he again hit out at the Bush-Cheney regime for their appalling decision to invade Iraq that is the cause for the present instability and chaos in the region. Watch a short bit of his speech where he dealt with the attacks.
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Carly Fiorina’s lies during a debate about a video she had seen that she claimed showed officials of Planned Parenthood callously discussing harvesting aborted infants for fetal tissue research has given that topic a lot of adverse publicity. But this article by Carina Storrs explains what fetal tissue research actually involves and the enormous benefits that it has provided in finding treatment for polio, Parkinson’s, and other neurodegenerative diseases.
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