Hasan Minhaj at the 2017 White House Correspondents' Dinner

That was a tough audience, but Hasan Minhaj was great, wasn't he?

I was wondering how this would go, since the president and his entire administration skipped it (for the first time since Ronald Reagan was recovering from being shot). So did many celebrities.

This was a tough gig. And I'd only seen Minhaj in brief sketches on The Daily Show. So I wasn't sure what to expect. But he killed it, don't you think? I was impressed.

Incidentally, Samantha Bee held a competing event last night, the Not the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Check it out.

The proof that God is evil

This is the summary of this playlist called "The Case for an Evil God."

Of course, to be technical, this is evidence, not proof, and it's only about the Biblical god. But personally, I think we're all lucky he doesn't exist.

The first 100 days of Donald Trump

Jebus, only 100 days? We are so screwed.

Luckily, this is a short video, because I really can't stand to think about it any longer than this.

Hypocrisy and the GOP

The first part of this (the first three and a half minutes) is what gets me. Could Republicans be any bigger hypocrites?

Ivanka & Jared

More than any other late-night comedian - and just think for a minute of the worrisome state of our country when I have to say this about a comedian - John Oliver takes the time for an in-depth look at the issues.

I know we'd all like to think that there's someone in the White House who's not batshit crazy, but hope isn't evidence.

How to get climate change wrong... again and again

This is exceptionally good, I'd say. But it's also a bit depressing, given how it won't accomplish anything at all. Crowder doesn't care if he's wrong, and none of his fellow deniers do, either, as far as I can tell.

Five misconceptions about undocumented immigrants

These are good points to keep in mind, don't you think?

The case against the resurrection

I meant to post this on Sunday - Easter- but I never got around to it. Oh, well. It's still worth your time, but I'll make this post especially short.

This is a playlist of video arguments against the resurrection of Jesus Christ - ten video clips from nine different people. They're all interesting, though I'd especially recommend the video with Bart Ehrman and the two from Richard Carrier.

Again, here is the link at YouTube. Enjoy!

Was the United Airlines victim actually a felon?

Rebecca Watson is one of my favorite people on YouTube. It's not about this particular incident. (Frankly, I never even saw previous videos about it, and I don't normally jump on outrage click-bait, anyway.)

But she always gives me a lot to think about. And her lessons are quite valuable.

"It's not so easy"

We'll be seeing more of this, I suspect:

President Donald Trump recounted an absolutely astounding detail about one of his conversations with Chinese President Xi Jinping in comments published by the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday afternoon.

Apparently, Trump came into his first meeting with the Chinese leader, in early April, convinced that China could simply eliminate the threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear program. Xi then patiently explained Chinese-Korean history to Trump — who then promptly changed his mind.

“After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it’s not so easy,” the president told the Journal. “I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power [over] North Korea. ... But it’s not what you would think.”

Four quick observations about this:

1. Trump thought China could fix North Korea until the Chinese president politely informed him that North Korea is in fact complicated.
   
2. Trump seems to have required the leader of China to explain basic facts to him that he could have Googled, or at least asked one of the many US government North Korea experts about.
3. Trump came to a profound realization about one of the most dangerous conflicts on earth after a 10-minute conversation.
4. Trump is getting his information about East Asian affairs from the leader of America’s largest rival in the region.

This is the problem - one of the problems - with electing a president who makes George W. Bush look smart.

Incidentally, Trump also decided to abandon another of his campaign promises:

"On day one of a Trump administration, the US Treasury Department will designate China a currency manipulator," he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2015. In his Contract With the American Voter describing his plan for his first 100 days in office, he pledged: "I will direct the Secretary of the Treasury to label China a currency manipulator."

Well, it ain’t happening. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published Wednesday, President Trump said that he wasn’t in fact going to deem China a currency manipulator.

Yeah, like healthcare, "nobody knew" this stuff could be so complicated, huh?

Samantha Bee: Russian hacking

Samantha Bee is great, isn't she?

Of course, we've known about this Russian hacking for some time. But people don't like to think that they've been idiots. Often, even the victims of a scam don't like to admit that it happened.

So will this change anything? I doubt it.

Is the New Testament reliable?

Bart Ehrman gets pretty worked up here, but I understand it. Keep in mind that Ehrman does believe in a historical Jesus. That's not universal among scholars, although it's the majority position.

Who or what that Jesus was,... well, there's certainly no agreement about that, even among the people who think he actually existed.

And keep in mind that Ehrman was an evangelical Christian who became an expert in the New Testament for his faith. He lost that faith when he discovered too much about his own holy book, but he certainly didn't want to lose it. Just the reverse, in fact.

Finally, note that he talks about "scribal errors" in the Bible. But many of the most important of these weren't errors at all. They were deliberate changes.

For example: "Let the one who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her." That entire story was added later. It can hardly be an "error."

And the entire ending of the Gospel of Mark - the first gospel to be written - was added later, apparently because the original ending seemed appropriate only for fiction. (The women who supposedly witnessed the resurrection never told anyone about it, because they were afraid. The end.)

Ehrman gives other examples, including the justification for the whole idea of the Trinity. That's certainly not a minor issue, but it's clearly not an accidental "error," either. It was added to the original text deliberately, by some unknown person, for his own reasons.

Trump, O'Reilly, and Fox News

Fox News has long been the propaganda arm of the Republican Party (although we've never really known who was controlling whom). And although I'm glad to see advertisers abandoning O'Reilly, what took them so long?

Besides, you know that they won't be leaving Fox News. And you know that Fox will eventually replace O'Reilly with someone equally bad.

It's certainly no surprise that Trump and O'Reilly are in bed together. As I say, Fox News is the propaganda arm of the GOP, so what else would you expect?

Still, I'll laugh at all of them while I can still find something humorous about what's happening to my country.

April Fools

(Last Kiss)

But it's good to add a little cheer to the world, right? :)