I’m not a big fan of Bill Maher, but this is pretty darn funny:
How did we go from the land of immigrants (well, except for the natives, whom we killed and put on reservations) to a land that hates immigrants and wants them to build a wall to keep themselves out.
Ted Koppel schools Bill O’Reilly on the role of the media in politics.
He doesn’t quite say it, but he strongly implies that the media is not doing their job. The news has completely succumbed to “shiny object syndrome” and are far more concerned with ratings and entertainment.
OMG, this is hilarious.
That’s the news from America. What does Britain think of all this?
“We have Bill Gates on the show tonight. We wanted to have a soft-spoken, thoughtful billionaire who is trying to make the world a better place, but since Donald Trump wasn’t available — we went with Bill.” – Jimmy Fallon
“At a rally in Las Vegas last night Donald Trump told supporters he’d like to punch protesters in the face. Though he looks more like the kind of guy who would stroke a white cat while somebody else punched you in the face.” – Seth Meyers
“Today is the Republican caucus in Nevada, and Donald Trump is projected to win. When asked why they’re voting for him, Americans said, ‘We’re used to doing things in Nevada that we’ll regret tomorrow.'” – Conan O’Brien
“Donald Trump was heavily favored to win. Not just by Donald Trump, by other people too.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Trump is actually doing very well in Nevada. That’s right, Trump appeals to Nevada’s key demographic — people who’ve declared bankruptcy.” – Conan O’Brien
“It was a big day for Donald Trump yesterday, the Nevada caucuses took place. Voting in the state of Nevada is a little different. In Nevada you pull the lever first and then you find out who you voted for. It is more exciting.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are in a fierce battle for second place. Ted Cruz is very ‘Trumpy’ lately. He just released an ad promising to sell off or give away all of Nevada’s public lands, national parks, forests and monuments, which is a great idea if you’re a cult leader or the founder of a polygamist sect. If you’re a citizen, maybe not.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Ted Cruz’s dad said that God sent a message to Ted Cruz’s wife giving his permission to run for president. Though I’m not sure that’s what God meant when he told Cruz’s wife, ‘Run!!'” – Jimmy Fallon
“Ted Cruz said on ‘The O’Reilly Factor’ that if he is elected, he would not allow aliens to return. Cruz says he is so strict on immigration, if he is elected president, he will even deport himself back to Canada.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Meanwhile, Ben Carson held a town hall event at a casino in Reno, and despite polling in last place, he said it’s too early to give up. Even the old ladies sitting at the slot machines said, ‘This is just depressing’.” – Jimmy Fallon
“We’re now a week away from the Super Tuesday primaries and Ben Carson’s so excited he barely got 14 hours of sleep last night.” – Seth Meyers
“In a recent interview, Ben Carson said President Obama couldn’t identify with black Americans because he was ‘raised white.’ So if you’re keeping score, according to Republicans, President Obama was raised white as a Muslim in Kenya.” – Conan O’Brien
“President Obama today announced plans to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. It’s a pretty simple plan, really. He’s going to put a RadioShack sign on it.” – Seth Meyers
“President Obama has unveiled his plan to finally shut down Guantanamo Bay. And to make sure no one ever goes in there again, Obama is handing it over to the people who run RadioShack.” – Conan O’Brien
“Meanwhile, the Democrats have a primary in South Carolina this weekend and Bernie Sanders, who has had trouble attracting African-American voters, just got a high-profile endorsement from Spike Lee. Spike Lee taped a radio ad and just threw a garbage can through Hillary Clinton’s pizzeria window.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Yesterday, a group of more than 20 unions released a statement supporting Hillary Clinton for president, including the Bricklayers Union. Then Donald Trump was like, ‘Et tu, wall builders?'” – Jimmy Fallon
“Donald Trump said as president he would prosecute Hillary Clinton for using a private email server. He also said he would arrest Hillary Clinton for being a woman over 40.” – Conan O’Brien
“Hillary Clinton recently visited the set of the hit ABC show ‘Scandal.’ Is that really the show you should be visiting right now? Why not drop by the set of ‘I Did Nothing Wrong,’ or maybe ‘There Was Nothing Illegal in Those Emails!'” – Seth Meyers
“The Cuban government recently returned a missing U.S. missile that was sent to Europe for training, but was accidentally shipped to Cuba. So the good news is that the missile was returned to America. But the bad news is THAT CAN HAPPEN!” – Jimmy Fallon
It is nice to find a Republican who, at least on one issue, acknowledges reality.
The GOP governor of the state of Georgia, Nathan Deal, has strongly denounced a proposed “religious freedom” bill that would exempt religious bigots from prosecution if they discriminate against people with different sexual orientation.
What really impressed me, however, is that Deal didn’t oppose the bill just because it could trigger a boycott of the state (as similar bills have done in other states) and hurt their economy. He opposed it on religious grounds. Deal argued that Jesus preached love and acceptance of society’s outcasts, particularly those scorned by religious institutions:
What the New Testament teaches us is that Jesus reached out to those who were considered the outcasts, the ones that did not conform to the religious societies’ view of the world … We do not have a belief in my way of looking at religion that says we have to discriminate against anybody. If you were to apply those standards to the teaching of Jesus, I don’t think they fit.
What that says is we have a belief in forgiveness and that we do not have to discriminate unduly against anyone on the basis of our own religious beliefs. We are not jeopardized, in my opinion, by those who believe differently from us. We are not, in my opinion, put in jeopardy by virtue of those who might hold different beliefs or who may not even agree with what our Supreme Court said the law of the land is on the issue of same-sex marriage. I do not feel threatened by the fact that people who might choose same-sex marriages pursue that route.
The religious right should realize that they should not feel threatened by same-sex marriage. Or to put it more bluntly, if they are threatened by it, then they don’t have much of a religion. They make a huge mistake when they try to legislate their religious beliefs against gays.
Deal has some good advice for social conservatives with a persecution complex:
I hope that we can all just take a deep breath, recognize that the world is changing around us, and recognize that it is important that we protect fundamental religious beliefs. But we don’t have to discriminate against other people in order to do that. And that’s the compromise that I’m looking for.
How can Trump make America great again if he is a direct symptom of the problem with America?
It is easy to get caught up in the politics of the Supreme Court, especially with the unexpected death of Antonin Scalia and the fight over his replacement. But meanwhile, the court is still hearing important cases.
This week saw oral arguments about a Texas law that requires stringent new standards on abortion clinics that will force many of them to close. The issue is whether these standards impose an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to abortion. Texas claims that these standards are required to “protect women’s health”.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg shot a huge hole in the arguments for the law. The law would shutter a clinic in El Paso, Texas, but Texas argued successfully at the appeals level that this did not pose an undue burden because residents of El Paso could merely go to a clinic in a town across the border in New Mexico.
Ginsburg pointed out the hypocrisy of this argument. If Texas is arguing that this law is required to protect women’s health, then sending women to a clinic across state lines, where the same standards don’t exist, has them claiming that these standards are not important. Or as Ginsburg put it “If that’s all right for the women in the El Paso area, why isn’t it right for the rest of the women in Texas?”
Also hypocritical is that abortion clinics are being singled out as requiring tougher standards, while clinics that perform significantly more dangerous procedures (like colonoscopies) are allowed far more lax standards.
While not part of the Supreme Court arguments, I also have to point out the hypocrisy of conservatives who fight against the smallest restrictions against the right to own guns, completely ignoring the obvious safety issues. But the same people argue, without evidence, that safety is a valid reason to severely restrict a woman’s constitutional right to privacy.
When the machines take over, will they speak via Twitter?
First, Gawker created a Mussolini bot named @ilduce2016 that tweeted quotes from Benito Mussolini at Trump. The goal was to get Trump to retweet Mussolini, and they succeeded.
But now, an AI researcher at MIT has created an AI bot named @DeepDrumpf that tweets just like the real Donald. The AI was trained on several hours of Trump’s debate lines and victory speeches. The researcher says that training an AI to speak like Trump was easy because Trump talks at the level of a third grader. Besides, when in doubt, you just have to add the words “very”, “great”, “we” and (Trump’s favorite word) “I”.
Staff pick from one of the best bookstores ever – Powell’s Books in Portland:
To be serious, I don’t think Trump is a actually a fascist, he is just playing one on TV in order to get attention (and it seems to be working). Yes, he is extremely authoritarian, but he doesn’t have any particular ideology behind it other than narcissism.
The Republicans and Fox News have been so successful at painting Hillary Clinton as a scandal-plagued hack politician that even liberals often repeat the GOP talking points. Unfortunately, propaganda works, even when you think it won’t.
Which is why this article by Jon Favreau is so interesting. Favreau was Obama’s speechwriter during the 2008 election. After Obama won and picked Clinton as his secretary of state, Favreau got to know Clinton. And he admits that he was surprised to find out that Clinton was “far different than the caricature I had helped perpetuate.”
Favreau’s article resonated with me, because I was a fervent Obama supporter in 2008. In fact, helping him get elected was one of the main reasons I started this blog. And yes, that biased me against Hillary Clinton. In addition I was never overly enamored of Bill Clinton during his presidency.
But watching the Republicans throw trumped up scandal after scandal at her started me thinking and made me examine how I felt about her as a politician. After all, why are the Republicans so scared of her? I have to say that I now think she will make an excellent president. Favreau does a far better job than I could in articulating why.
UPDATE: An article in Politico (of all places!) also highlights how Clinton has matured and mellowed as a politician, even since 2008. Watching her, I get the feeling that it isn’t just about winning anymore. Maybe, just maybe, she is taking a tip from John Kennedy and asking what she can do for her country. And ironically, not making it about winning may be the only way for her to actually win.
“After doing poorly in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, Jeb Bush announced that he’s dropping out of the race. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are both hoping to pick up Jeb’s supporters. Then Jeb said, ‘Joke’s on you — I didn’t have any supporters!'” – Jimmy Fallon
“George W. Bush was a little confused why Jeb quit because he was losing. Because as far as George W. Bush is concerned, you still become president even when you don’t get the most votes.” ” – James Corden
“Jeb Bush has dropped out of the presidential race. When reached for comment he said, ‘Oh NOW you wanna talk to me?!'” – Seth Meyers
“Jeb Bush spent $130 million and didn’t win a single state. Jeb spent yesterday commiserating with his campaign manager Nicolas Cage.” – Conan O’Brien
Jeb Bush announced that he will suspend his presidential campaign after it failed to meet expectations. And you just know that Jeb’s in therapy right now, saying, ‘My brother was a two-term president. And I lost to the guy who fired Bret Michaels on ‘The Apprentice’.” – James Corden
“John Kasich over the weekend said lots of women have left their kitchens to work on his campaign. Yeah, that will certainly help the upcoming election of 1956.” – James Corden
“A photo has emerged from the 1960s of Bernie Sanders getting arrested during a civil rights protest. Meanwhile, another photo emerged from the ’60s that shows Donald Trump’s wife, Melania, not being born yet.” – Conan O’Brien
“Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump won this weekend in Nevada and South Carolina, respectively. Because Americans are ready for compassionate, principled, experienced leadership OR the opposite.” – Seth Meyers
“The other big news is that Donald Trump won all 50 delegates in Saturday’s South Carolina primary. So if you’re paying attention, this is the official point when people go from saying, ‘Oh, this is kinda fun!’ to saying, ‘Oh my God, this is really happening!'” – Jimmy Fallon
“Donald Trump was declared the big winner in the South Carolina primary by himself weeks ago, and the voters said, ‘Yeah! OK! That sounds good!’ So now the obvious question is, will he ever not win? Yes, Trump is unstoppable. He’s like Godzilla with less foreign policy experience.” – Stephen Colbert
“After winning in South Carolina, Donald Trump boasted that he got the votes of ‘tall people, short people, fat people and skinny people.’ Then Trump said he ‘got some votes in a box’ and ‘some votes from a fox’.” – Conan O’Brien
“Analysts say that Donald Trump’s GOP rivals are running out of time to defeat him. This is not according to the electoral schedule — it’s according to the Book of Revelations.” – Conan O’Brien
“I thought he was just doing this to promote his reality show or sell more steaks. When he announced his intention to be president, it never occurred to me that his end game was to BE president.” – Stephen Colbert
“While Donald Trump was speaking at a rally in Atlanta, the lights suddenly went out and Trump said he actually liked it more in the dark. Then Melania Trump said, ‘Join the club’.” – Jimmy Fallon
“When asked about the possibility that Mexico might not agree to pay for his border wall, Donald Trump said, ‘The wall just got 10 feet higher’. People in Mexico were like, ‘OK, well, our tunnels are exactly the same.'” – Jimmy Fallon
“Reverend Al Sharpton called Donald Trump the ‘white Don King’. Today, Sharpton apologized and said, ‘I’m sorry, I meant the orange Don King’.” – Conan O’Brien
With apologies to P.T. Barnum, there’s a racist sucker born every minute. Trump only came close to cementing the Republican nomination on Tuesday, but he certainly cemented Republicans as the party who would vote for a serial con artist for president.
In the John Oliver video posted a few days ago, the thing that really got to me was the short clip of Trump selling steaks in pretty much exactly the same way he is selling himself as president. And the same way he sold his “Trump University”. It is just one more attempt to take your money.
It is almost enough to make you feel sorry for the Republican party, except that they are even more to blame than Trump, as they created a 1984-like political climate where lying is routine, hatred is a family value, greed is a virtue, anger is admired, and winning is everything.
Even if Trump doesn’t become president, I fear we are losing our way.
UPDATE: Seth Meyers on Trump’s win:
According to Google Trends, people searching on the phrase “move to Canada” reached its highest point ever in Google history on Super Tuesday. Searches on “how can I move to Canada” jumped 1,150 percent.
Before this, the largest spike in similar searches was back in 2004, when George W. Bush won re-election.
In a newly updated version of “The Producers”, Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane star as two political consultants who hatch a crazy scheme to make a lot of money. But it somehow backfires.
Where did they go right? Far right?
“President Obama was spotted at a steak restaurant in D.C. this week with Morgan Freeman and Tom Hanks. They didn’t even order anything. They just closed their eyes and listened to Morgan Freeman read the appetizers.” – Jimmy Fallon
“Tomorrow is the South Carolina primary, and this week Donald Trump has been telling supporters that if he wins South Carolina he thinks he could, quote, ‘Run the table’. Yeah. And if he doesn’t win, he’ll flip over the table like an angry New Jersey housewife.” – Jimmy Fallon
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