So Michele Bachmann, one of Congress’s most colorful people, has decided not to run for re-election in 2014. It was a rapid fall from winning the Ames (Iowa) Straw Poll for the Republican presidential nomination in August 2011, to finishing sixth in the same state’s caucuses in January 2012 that resulted in her dropping out of the race, and barely holding on to her congressional seat in November. [Read more…]
As The Daily Show reports, the government goes vigorously after breakers of the law who are small fry while letting the big-moneyed violators go free.
(This clip aired on May 23, 2013. To get suggestions on how to view clips of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post.)
Carmen Reinhart has written yet another defense of the discredited study that she and fellow Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff wrote. This one takes the form of an open letter to Paul Krugman, one of her harshest critics in academia. She says that it was not their fault if policymakers misread their statements about the impact of debt reaching 90% of GDP and arrived at an alarming conclusion that resulted in them pursuing the debt-reduction austerity programs that have caused such hardship around the world. [Read more…]
I stopped listening to the speeches of George W. Bush because I hated listening to their huge helpings of arrogance and braggadocio. I long ago stopped listening to president Obama’s speeches but for different reasons, because his speeches seemed to be an exercise in preening self-aggrandizement masked as humility and thoughtfulness. It seemed like a waste of time to listen to them unless you enjoy listening to good speeches for their own sake, to see how to deliver a well-crafted speech effectively, while ignoring the content. He undoubtedly has good speechwriters and does justice to their efforts so I would recommend listening to him for anyone seeking to become a good public speaker. [Read more…]
Stephen Colbert carefully walks us through the Authorized Use of Military Force (AUMF) legislation that enabled presidents Bush and Obama to take all the actions they have taken in the so-called war on terror and has given us torture, indefinite detention, drone murders, and the like. I had not realized that the operational part of this legislation, passed just one week after the events of 9/11, was so brief, consisting of just 60 words. Here is the relevant part: [Read more…]
Jason Jones of The Daily Show looks at the remarkable lack of self-awareness of those who are complaining so loudly that the IRS is profiling and targeting Tea Party groups. [Read more…]
PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) and NPR (National Public Radio) are not driven by the profit motive but they do need money to function and as such do depend on donors. This makes them vulnerable to pressure by their corporate sponsors and big donors and this has been documented in the past. I long ago stopped watching The NewsHour because of its corporate friendly approach, that I suspected was influenced by the high-profile corporate sponsors it had. [Read more…]
Although I had never watched his show, I knew that Dylan Ratigan was one of those blustering talk show hosts who seemed to be in a state of perpetual outrage. He left his show on MSNBC to pursue a new direction in life working on an organic hydroponic farm. Al Madrigal of The Daily Show looks at his transformation, using the same techniques that these vapid cable news talk shows use: phony outrage, manufactured ‘balance’, and pointless panels. All these are staples of such shows, necessary in order to hide the lack of real news and to fill up the air time. [Read more…]
When the US government began its harsh crackdown on WikiLeaks, mainstream journalists and media organizations in the US did not condemn it as much as they should, partly I believe because they were resentful that WikiLeaks had exposed their own failings by exposing wrongdoing that they should have uncovered if they were doing their job. At that time, some of us warned that what the US government was doing to WikiLeaks, if unchecked, would eventually be turned against the mainstream media as well. [Read more…]
I like to have pride in the university for which I work. What that means is that I want the institution to look good and so do my best to achieve that by advocating and implementing policies that I believe advance the mission of providing a good education to students, being a good institutional citizen of the city in which it is based, and that treats its employees well. Although the university is by no means perfect, it is clear that enough people who work here share that view and so we are constantly striving to improve it. We are not trying to get the biggest salary in return for the least amount of work. [Read more…]