Hasan Minhaj on the Indian elections in May

Given the massive size of the country and the voting pool, Indian elections present formidable logistical challenges.

General elections in India will begin on April 11, officials announced on Sunday, with some 900 million voters eligible to cast ballots to fill parliamentary seats and choose the next prime minister in the world’s largest democracy.
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The chief election commissioner, Sunil Arora, said voting would be held in seven stages, staggered across the country, before polls closed on May 19. Ballot counting will begin on May 23 and is expected to be completed in a day.

Got that? Voting results are available the very next day whereas in the US some results take months.
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Why Dan Lipinski must be defeated in the next Democratic primary

I have written before about Democratic congressman Dan Lipinski, easily one of the worst Democrats in Congress, who occupies a seat that he ‘inherited’ from his father when the latter stepped aside to make room for him. In the 2018 election, he was challenged in the primary by a much better candidate Marie Newman but the Republican-lite Democratic party leadership threw its weight behind Lipinski even though Lipinski is pretty much opposed to everything that the Democratic party claims to represent.
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Public shaming

Piling on someone whom the internet has decided is worthy of public shaming is now a commonplace phenomenon. John Oliver has an excellent segment on when public shaming is justified and when it is horribly wrong.

The second half of this segment features an interview with Monica Lewinsky who was viciously and unjustifiably slut-shamed twenty years ago. She has weathered the storm that surrounded her and which could have easily destroyed her. Remarkably, she seems to have come through that ordeal and the interview reveals her to be a delightful person who deserves an apology from all those who attacked and ridiculed her.

Uh-oh, one Brexit option shut down by speaker

Just yesterday the Guardian published a flow chart about the options available to prime minister Theresa May when, as was expected, she resubmitted the Brexit deal that was defeated by a margin of 149 votes for another parliamentary vote, presumably hoping that a sense of desperation due to the looming deadline of March 29 might persuade enough people to switch their votes in favor of it to avoid a no-deal Brexit.
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The electability question

Bob Moser examines the question that always plagues the Democratic party, whether to go with the candidate who most appeals to you because they agree with your values or to go with the person who is considered the most ‘electable’. This is undoubtedly going to be the issue that Joe Biden will push hard if he chooses to run, since his legislative and policy record is pretty troublesome.

On the surface, this makes a sliver of sense. It is imperative that Trump and Trumpism be fumigated from our political system before the cockroaches are all that’s left. Looking for the safest bet to win a general election sounds like solid, pragmatic thinking. Until you take a look at the track record of “electable” presidential nominees — including Hillary Clinton in 2016, of course, whom George Will so aptly called “the only biped in the country who could have lost an election to Donald J. Trump.” In 1984, Democrats chose deficit hawk Walter Mondale over “risky” Gary Hart; in 1988, it was “practical” Michael Dukakis over Jesse Jackson; in 2000, Al Gore was the overwhelming choice for those who prized winning over all else.

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Racism in Australia

The person who carried out the mass murder in New Zealand two days ago is an Australian who had picked Christchurch because it had plenty of soft targets and the country allowed the easy purchase of semi-automatic weapons. Jason Wilson writes that this episode should make people aware of how Islamophobia has become pretty much enshrined as public policy in Australia. In reading his account of the roots of racist thinking in that country, I was struck by the similarities with US history.
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Mass murder as a device for garnering media attention

The person who committed the deadly attacks on two mosques in New Zealand apparently had live-streamed the whole thing of Facebook. Although the video was subsequently taken down, in these days nothing ever disappears and I am sure that with some diligent searching, one could find it. The questions are why one would want to do so and whether one should do so. I did not watch the video and will not do so because I find acts of violence to be repulsive. This applies even to scripted violence in films and TV and I will only watch it if it serves an integral part of the story, which is very rare actually. It seems like much of the violence on screen is gratuitous. If I see a film as containing violence as its primary descriptor, I immediately rule it out.
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