Norm Stamper used to be police chief in Seattle when he unleashed police in full riot gear onto demonstrators at the 1999 World Trade Organization. He greatly regretted that action and now has become a critic of paramilitary gear for police and for using harsh tactics when dealing with the general public.
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So Eric Cantor, after having faithfully protected the interests of Wall Street while pretending to serve the public as Majority Leader in the House of Representatives before losing his primary to a Tea Party candidate, decided to quit his job early and go straight to Wall Street at a high salary even though he has no financial background. It is no surprise that his role will be to provide access to congress to serve his company’s needs.
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It is true that these companies extort money from the needy and get them trapped in a cycle of debt. The problem is that they also serve a need. Many people live paycheck-to-paycheck, just barely getting by, and any sudden emergency (car repair, medical bill, broken furnace) can throw their delicately balanced finances out of whack and they often feel they have nowhere else to turn to at short notice.
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Stephen Colbert describes how a device called Vapshot works. It is aimed at people who feel that the normal way of drinking alcohol takes too long to get them high. So this device vaporizes the alcohol so that it gets into the lungs and bloodstream almost immediately.
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John Oliver describes how some US evangelicals, likely frustrated by steadily losing ground in the battle for equal rights for the LGBT community here, have shifted their hate campaign to other countries and have found fertile ground in Uganda which, although it has anti-gay laws dating back to the British colonial period, had not intensified the bigotry until the recent push by people like Scott Lively.
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In his ongoing series interviewing congressional representatives from each of the districts, Stephen Colbert spoke with Marcia Fudge of Ohio’s 11th district which happens to be the one in which I live so it was particularly fun to for me to watch. Colbert made the obligatory jokes disparaging Cleveland such as the river catching fire but that was to be expected.
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Jon Stewart came back from his vacation and delivered a great rant about Ferguson and the indignities that people of color routinely face in America, comparing it to the kinds of things that the majority constantly whines about. It was excellent.
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Net neutrality is a really important issue that is hard to get people excited about, except for those who are really into internet policy. But John Oliver did an long segment about it that got to the core issue so clearly and understandably that Tim Wu, the Columbia University professor who coined the term ‘net neutrality’, said that it had “rendered every other explanation obsolete.”
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Whenever I go to the dentist, it seems like the Dr. Oz show is on their TV in the waiting room. It is an absolutely nauseating show where the host uses his impressive medical credentials to plug various products with wildly exaggerated claims. And yet apparently people take him seriously, making the dietary supplement industry highly profitable.
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The Pearls Before Swine comic strip is my favorite among the ones currently running. It has a wildly unpredictable absurdist humor that often breaks the fourth wall by inserting the cartoonist Stephan Pastis into the strip to interact with his characters, and uses puns and other plays on words (like this one).
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