Hypocrisy among our elected officials is nothing new. Disingenuously claiming a noble reason for an act that is done for crass political purposes is also nothing new. When it comes to restricting voting by poor and minority groups, both those things come into play and it is infuriating.
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Caren Morrison walks us through the four steps involved in appointing a US Supreme Court justice. I suspect that despite all the posturing of the Republicans, they will be hard pressed to stall a new appointment for nearly a year.
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I was traveling all days yesterday and so missed the Democratic debate and haven’t caught up on the news. But here are some segments of The Daily Show that deal with politics. In the first one, Republicans compete for the torture vote. As Alex Emmons writes, Ted Cruz’s definition of what he said is “generally recognized” as the definition of torture is anything but. It is an extreme definition that comes from a self-serving memo of the Bush-Cheney regime that has since been withdrawn. His claims that his own father was tortured in Cuba would be false under that definition.
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Bernie Sanders made an extended appearance on Colbert’s show last night. The crowd gave Sanders a rousing reception. It is really strange how Sanders has become the ‘cool’ candidate. I think that it is because of the authenticity that he emanates and that he speaks truths that others don’t. The ‘why’ questions he asks and his conviction that things could and should be much better than they are now is inspiring.
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Carly Fiorina in dropping out of the race and is expected to be joined soon by Chris Christie. Even she felt obliged to say that the country is ruled by a “political class that only serves the big, the powerful, the wealthy, and the well connected”.
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Former Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee debuted her new weekly late night talk show Full Frontal and her opening monologue on the state of the current political race was a smash, utterly hilarious.
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Marco Rubio got heaped with ridicule for his robotic repetition during the last Republican debate of the same line, that president Obama knows exactly what he is doing when he sets about destroying America. When asked about it later, he doubled down, saying that he said it because he truly believed it and that he would continue saying it. What he did not address was that the criticism was about the almost verbatim robotic repetition, not that he was simply making the same point again.
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Following the unintentional Republican comedy show that was the eighth debate, a real comedy show Saturday Night Live had on Bernie Sanders and his doppelganger comedian Larry David to take part in a Titanic-inspired sketch.
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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 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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