The word populism has been in much use recently with many articles describing the rise of populist political parties and leaders around the globe. Cartoonist Jen Sorensen makes the point that the word ‘populism’ has become used to describe wildly different political stances.
The Trump administration has decided to print the 2020 census forms without including the question that asked people to state their citizenship status. The Trump administration and Republicans had wanted this question despite fears being raised that this would result in non-citizens being afraid to take part in the census and not filling the forms, thus affecting the many ways in which resources are allocated to states and localities, including the number of congressional seats in each state, that depend only on the number of people that are there, not on the number of citizens. Of course, this likely was exactly what the Trump administration wanted to achieve, though they created some kind of cockamamie rationale for its inclusion.
[Read more…]
Competitive eating contests, where people try to force as much food as they can into their bodies in a short period of time, has always struck me as a revolting form of entertainment. Current champion Joey Chestnut holds the world record of eating 68 hot dogs in 10 minutes. Take a look at what what else Chestnut has done.
Since 2005, the 27-year-old construction engineer from San Jose, Calif., has won one eating contest after another, downing “meals” that included 241 wings in 30 minutes, 103 Krystal burgers in eight minutes, 42 bratwursts in 12 minutes and 37 slices of pizza in 10 minutes.
The scandal of how immigrant families are being treated by the Customs and Border Protection agency (and its related agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement and their parent organization the Department of Homeland Security) is finally getting the attention it deserves. Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus led by its chair Joaquin Castro are keeping the heat on by paying a visit to two of the detention sites in Texas and defying the CBP officials who tried to give them a guided Potemkin tour of just selected areas. They demanded access to other areas and the right to talk to the people being detained, and when they were denied, they did so anyway. They described what they saw as “horrifying”.
[Read more…]
From Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in 1971.
One of the ways that the political establishment (that includes the mainstream media) keeps progressive policies in check is to take as self-evidently true that the Democratic party must appeal to Trump voters if they are to win. Another way to say essentially the same thing is to assert that they must avoid alienating the party ‘moderates’ by adopting policies that are seen as too far to the left. It is only in the progressive media that one finds the argument being made that appealing to Trump voters is a futile strategy and that one would be far better off trying to reach disenchanted voters by pushing a more progressive message.
[Read more…]
In the west, Hinduism and Buddhism are seen as peaceful, contemplative religions that preach peace, tolerance, and harmony, and advocate for practices like mediation and yoga. But in those countries where those religions are the majority, we have seen the rise of militant religious chauvinists that have sought to discriminate against minority groups, sometimes using violence and even murder.
[Read more…]
You know the feeling when some people at a party are having a serious conversation and another person who knows nothing about the subject tries to force themselves into the group by making an inane comment and then smiling in a self-satisfied manner and the conversers, not wanting to tell the person to get lost because that person may be the self-important child of someone else at the party, instead freezes that person out using their body language?
That happened at the G20 summit when FrancoisEmmanuel Macron, Theresa May, Justin Trudeau, and Christine Lagarde were talking and such a child butted in.
Ivanka Trump appears to be trying to get involved in a talk among Macron, May, Trudeau and Lagarde (IMF head).
The video is released by French Presidential palace. pic.twitter.com/TJ0LULCzyQ— Parham Ghobadi (@ParhamGhobadi) June 29, 2019
This cringe-worthy video was released by the French government which suggests that they were sending a message.
We have two answers to the question: Why are there ten commandments when just one would have sufficed?
Bizarro offers one explanation
While Non Sequitur offers another.
The recent revelations of the conditions under which migrant families and children are being detained brought the issue once again into the spotlight and has created a furor. One thing that puzzled me was why the Department of Homeland Security and the Customs and Border Protection agency, normally so secretive that they try to prevent reporters and even congresspeople from entering their facilities, allowed the team of lawyers and doctors into the facility, knowing that the conditions were so appalling that even given three weeks notice, what minor improvements they were able to make were never going to bring the conditions up to normal standards of decency.
[Read more…]