Donald Trump knows his audience

The first Republican debate is on August 6, 2015. Normally, I would never have dreamed of wasting two hours of my life watching an early Republican primary debate. Who wants to see a bunch of wealthy oligarch-serving warmongers try and outdo each other in pandering to their xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, science-denying base, especially since it is being shown on Fox News and I do not have cable TV? But thanks to Donald Trump, I am so intrigued about what might happen that I am going to the trouble of going to a friend’s house to see it. And it is clear that I am not the only one who has been suckered into giving what Fox News expects to be a ratings bonanza. Even their decision to limit it to ten candidates has had the effect of heightening suspense with breathless discussions of who is in and who is out.
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The strange status of Washington DC

On the latest episode of his show Last Week Tonight John Oliver looks at the history of how the residents of the District of Columbia ended up without many of the basic electoral rights that the rest of the nation enjoys, the way that Congress interferes with and overrides its decisions, and the feeble excuses given for maintaining the status quo.

You must listen to the song sung by the children at the end, beginning at the 15:30 mark. It is hilarious.
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Problem watching Comedy Central videos

I got the complaint below from a regular reader of my blog about his inability to view the Comedy Central videos that I embed. He has submitted the problem to the tech gurus here by clicking on the ‘Tech Issues’ link at the top left but I thought that tech savvy readers may also be able to help him out. Has anyone had had a similar problem or any advice for what he should do? I should note that he lives in the US, so this is not one of those cases where streaming is being deliberately blocked.
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Suggestion to reduce police abuse: Raise income taxes

As the nationwide unrest over the harassment and killing of people, especially poor and black, by police continues, Jack Hitt at Mother Jones notes that many of these violent confrontations began with what appear to be really trivial offenses and that this can be traced back to local governments using the fines generated by minor offenses as a way of plugging budget shortfalls.
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Good luck with the equal time thing

One of the problems with the coming Republican debate on Thursday is that with 10 candidates in a two-hour format, and allowing for the time taken by the moderators for their questions, that averages out to at most 10 minutes per person. But the stage will contain people who are anxious to make a big impression and want to make sure they are noticed. Furthermore, they are not used to just waiting silently and this can pose a problem for the moderators if people start interrupting each other.
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Bloom County is back!

Older readers may remember the excellent comic strip Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed that featured a bunch of zany adults, children, and animals and touched on all manner of topics and political commentary in the manner of Doonesbury. It ran from 1980 until 1989 when he retired the strip. He continued with a spin-off, a Sunday only strip called Outland that ran until 1995. After that ended, he started a new Sunday only strip Opus in 2003 featuring the beloved penguin of that name. That ended in 2008.

But apparently the opportunity for satire presented by the current Republican presidential race and Donald Trump was too much for Breathed to resist and on July 13, he announced that he was starting a new strip called Bloom County 2015 and bringing back most of the original cast of characters.

You can see a recent strip where Opus, who has been asleep for 25 years, tries to come to terms with the world today.

Bloom County 2015

To follow the new strip, you can go Breathed’s Facebook page where the first of the new strips starts on July 13.