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You've got to admire South Carolina's sheer dedication to assholery. They knew that their flag was dumb and offensive, so they doubled down by requiring any changes to it to have two thirds of the state legislature behind it, and then affixing it to the pole so you'd need a ladder to even try doing anything to it.
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Jun 24, 2015 22:35
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You lost the war, chumps.
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Jun 25, 2015 05:57
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The government spends a ludicrous amount of money on sports, and so do colleges. I don't think I've ever seen any evidence that investment into sports will pay off in any real way. The only real reason to invest in sports is to show off how irresponsibly you want to spend money. These are enormous industries that make obscene amounts of money already. They're big boys, they don't need government subsidies to get by. What they're doing is just extorting the government. Of course, people tend to care a lot about sports for reasons I don't fully understand, and to some people, they are well worth the price of having to flush oodles of money down the toilet or inflicting long term brain damage on individuals, and it would be political suicide to take a stand against sports. Reminds me a little of how Julius Caesar practically bankrupted himself spending money on games for the public to get elected.
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Jul 14, 2015 03:53
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This week's topic was particularly dull. I guess it's an issue that needs to be addressed, but it's not controversial or anything. Should food be donated instead of throwing it away? Yeah, probably, but that's a lot of effort for companies to figure out, so they take the path of least resistance. Are expiration dates bullshit? Yeah, of course, food doesn't self-destruct when it reaches the end of its countdown, it's just food companies covering their asses because sometimes food goes nasty after a while. It's actually a more interesting issue in Greece, where they deemed that the expiration date on milk should be only a week out, in order to protect the Greek milk industry from foreign competition. It's actually one of the big issues that the EU is arguing with Greece over. There's got to be more issues for them to go into.
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Jul 20, 2015 17:48
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I swear to god, everything Reagan ever did was terrible.computer parts posted:The Texas legislature acts exactly how the Greeks did it and they're sill a worthless sack of poo poo because it's a bunch of rich people who are usually tied into the industries they're legislating. Please. Texas only wishes that they could exile one person a year like Athens did.
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Jul 27, 2015 17:50
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Most of this episode's issue was a repeat of the problems that America's various non-state entities face, but kind of weaker. At least the citizens of the District of Columbia get to vote for president and automatic US citizenship.. Weird that he didn't mention DC's crime rate or that one time DC's presidential elector refused to cast a vote in protest.
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Aug 4, 2015 00:47
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Whole Foods is a business founded on the principal of charging more for essentially the same product. The customers get what they deserve. And wow, words cannot describe how much I don't want to think about teenagers' boners.
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Aug 10, 2015 15:16
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tarlibone posted:There are so many P-words that could be used here. Pork
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Aug 16, 2015 21:40
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The thing is, most churches run off donations anyways, so it's not that weird of an idea to send money to the dude who's preaching at you, but these televangelists have just slipped in some crazy junk of their own in some kind of bizarre spiritual pyramid scheme.
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Aug 18, 2015 17:16
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It'll at least inform people so they know that when their grandma is really into a televangelist it means they're probably getting strung along for a massive scam and need to be talked out of it. It's like how gambling and the lottery are still big even though everyone with any sense knows that the odds are against you. At least some people understand that it can turn into an addiction and they should get help.
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Aug 22, 2015 01:56
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John Oliver's lack of perspective disturbs me.
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Aug 29, 2015 15:48
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Andy Zaltzman does the well-researched lies bit way better than John does.
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Sep 1, 2015 01:06
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When did Florida become the new New Jersey?
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Sep 16, 2015 19:38
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Nominally they're not being imprisoned for being poor, they're being imprisoned for whatever offense that they can't pay the fine for. It's because the penal system is about inflicting suffering upon offenders, and if the offender lacks the capacity to suffer in the court-ordered way, they choose the next best option. The actual finances of waiving the fine versus imprisonment have no bearing on the matter.
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Sep 21, 2015 01:14
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It's really weird that population growth is declining in all these developed nations. Legally, the easiest solution to immigration is to just bounce immigrants around forever in weird official statuses so that they never officially immigrate, they're just staying in the country temporarily. It gives you all the benefits of cheap foreign workers without having to deal with changing voter demographics. All you have to do is dump a ludicrous amount of paperwork all over everything.
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Sep 29, 2015 23:28
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That bit he did on Russia was weird. It's pretty obvious why Russia would step into Syria to fight ISIS. The entire western world has been desperately scrabbling for an angle for confronting ISIS, and Russia has been staunchly allied with Syria for a long while now. Assad was Russia's boy in the middle east, just like how Saudi Arabia is for the US and how Iran was for the UK before the Shah was ousted. Russia's been sending weapons to Assad for years before this point, they might as well get militarily involved against the one target who everyone else in the international committee would be fine with killing. And the thing is, John Oliver should know that, because I'm pretty sure it's been covered by the Bugle before, as well as the Daily Show. He's just willfully choosing to believe one idiot newsman's take on things for the purpose of a stupid bit. Besides, bombing barely even counts as a military commitment. The US bombs pretty much everyone, and there's not a lot of fuss about that.
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Oct 5, 2015 20:12
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It's probably been shorter, but you forgot because who caaaaaares.
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Oct 17, 2015 15:27
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Conservative points tend to be less interesting on the whole, so they don't generally tend to get that much media attention. Nobody's really going to be flocking to news stories that are super-unenthused about the latest liberal issue of the day and how generally okay the status quo is. It's the same deal with christian rock. And of course, the way most media is marketed these days, you're more likely to come into contact with things that already agree with you, so all of your views will be repeatedly reinforced and you'll come to expect most people to agree with you, aside from those horrible other people who are outside your bubble. And then there's weird points where the various ideologies loop back around to the other, like how libertarianism can get conservatives into some liberal issues, and how Bill Maher is super liberal but also really hates Islam.
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Nov 7, 2015 19:23
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Facts that John neglected to mention: -We also lose money on nickels. It makes sense if you look at them, they're the thickest coin for some reason. -There are people who stockpile pennies in anticipation for the discontinuation of the penny, because their melt-down value of their base metals would be more valuable than the cost of the coins, giving a good return on investment. Theoretically, it's illegal to melt them down while they are still considered valid US currency, so they have to wait, but I've also heard stories of people collecting old coins that still have silver in them for the same reason, and they seem to get by. Personally, I'm for keeping the penny, if only because gently caress speculators.
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Nov 24, 2015 00:33
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The 99 cents on the end of the price was originally to make sure that cashiers had to open the register to get a penny of change instead of just pocketing it. Tricking people into thinking that they're paying less is a stupid idea that might have a slight affect, but it's one of those stupid sales techniques that just makes the world a worse place.
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Nov 25, 2015 00:15
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Coins are more reliable for machines than dollar bills, and it's a bit much to demand everything go digital (one power outage and everybody will freak out). I wouldn't want to see coinage eliminated entirely. Although I would like to see bitcoin dead and in a ditch, but that's another matter entirely.
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Nov 25, 2015 17:05
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It is primarily a comedy show, but in its first season it did a pretty good job at being an informational show in its first season, and not so much in the second. There's also a sort of symbiosis between the news and comedy, in that the severity of the issue and how much John Oliver was informing you of something you had no idea about added to the comedy., and that aspect didn't feel so strong last season.
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Feb 14, 2016 17:33
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I'm surprised that this sort of thing hasn't led to any fights.
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Feb 15, 2016 16:18
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Whenever I hear all this hubub about voter fraud, my mind drifts back to 2000 and 2004, when there was also a lot of talk about dead people voting, as well as stuff about hanging chad. Really it's always the party who isn't in the whitehouse that makes all the noise about voter fraud. I also remember hearing a lot of stuff about electronic voting machines being calibrated to register votes for some candidates twice as much, or not register half of the votes for other candidates, and how easy it is to hack the electronic voting machines, and I doubt whether that problem's been solved at all.
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Feb 17, 2016 18:14
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emanresu tnuocca posted:Yeah this episode was poor overall, you can't go at Trump by just going "TRUMP! Can you believe it!? isn't he the worst?!" cause it's just banal, it also comes off as pandering to his own liberal leaning audience. It feels more like Trump trolled the Weekly Show into taking a timid swipe at him than anything else, if they couldn't do something which was both entertaining as well as clever they shoulda just let the whole thing rest or give it much less screen time. John Oliver was actually being pretty fair about the whole thing by focusing on just how utterly incompetent and useless Trump has been in his own dealings rather than how bad his policies are. There's just not that much you can do to directly confront Trump when he's so totally insistent on not existing in the same reality as everyone else. What do you do when he just directly contradicts everything you say? It's like trying to debate against a brick wall. And then the audience just decides to take one person's word over the other, because god knows nobody ever checks facts. It's like that one Monty Python sketch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y
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Feb 29, 2016 20:55
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Most of a politician's powers come from their ability to do pedantic rules-lawyering and making enough of a fuss that the other side will give up/concede more when a compromise is made. That's how a legalistic society works. The incredibly loose premise that the republicans are threatening to block any potential appointments over is weak, but it would be remiss of them to not try. They call the out-of-power party "the opposition" for a reason, after all. If Obama really wanted to gently caress with the republicans, he'd pull out an old tactic and try appointing 3 new justices instead of 1. That's not likely to happen though, since Obama hasn't really been one for heavily exerting executive power, which is bad if you want his policies pushed through, but good in the context of being the guy who followed after the patriot act.
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Mar 4, 2016 22:57
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The idea is that if anything goes wrong with the supreme court justices, congress has the power to impeach justices. Congress can also counter judicial review by just straight editing the constitution. People always have a low opinion about congress, but they're the body that was intended to have the most power. People are always looking to the supreme court for things, but it's congress that is supposed to be doing basically everything. But then for all the poo poo that people give congress as a whole, individual congressmen constantly get reelected and have high approval rates among their own constituency. It's always all the OTHER people's congressmen who are the problem. 
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Mar 5, 2016 06:11
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Also, they're done at the state level, so of course it's gonna be a bit of a poo poo show. Less funding, less resources, less scrutiny, less responsibility.
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Mar 8, 2016 06:06
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The problem with making fun of Trump is that he's a joke. He's a joke of a man. He's been a joke for decades. Making fun of him often implicitly gives him undue respect. Comedians are latching onto weird things to make fun of because they've already used up all their jokes about his hair. There's no way to demean the man because there's no meaning in there.
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Mar 22, 2016 16:18
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I'm surprised they didn't give a mention to the free credit report scams in that rundown. Those commercials have catchy tunes. I never thought about the credit reporting companies advertising to employers before though. I was disappointed that TramsOnion didn't sell onions that had been squashed by trams.
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Apr 11, 2016 16:06
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Shoulda seen that coming at her like an atom bomb.
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Apr 13, 2016 16:28
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Dr Christmas posted:It's scary how after all, Parlaiment is still less dysfunctional and spiteful than Congress. They can't even throw tantrums in a fun or interesting way. Congress is a lot more formal. That one time that someone yelled at Obama during his speech to congress was a big deal, but Parliament has that whole thing where everyone feels free to heckle.
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Apr 19, 2016 17:27
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You'd think John Oliver would've thought to tie in this whole Puerto Rico thing to the piece he did a while back on the rest of the overseas US territories/possessions/etc. This is the kind of thing that can happen if you don't have people to fight for you in congress.
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Apr 26, 2016 02:07
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I've seen a few of the clips of Hamilton, but I'm not really grabbed or anything. I guess it helps a bunch of people get an interest in history if they don't have one already? I guess Hamilton is also a great guy to follow to show how much the founding fathers hated eachother's guts. He's the reason for the part of the constitution that stipulates how Ted Cruz isn't eligible for president.
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Apr 29, 2016 18:24
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I wasn't really aware of any of the things that John Oliver recapped for the cicadas. I guess I'm not as pop culture-oriented as a bug.
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May 3, 2016 15:51
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I can see asking your constituency to look out for your cat for you as a bit of a goofy move to humanize yourself to voters. The whole sucking up to Putin is perfectly understandable for an autonomous federal subject of Russia close to the border and smaller than New Jersey. I'm sure if Obama had a reputation for brutally crushing his enemies and potentially assassinating his critics, more Republican governors would be snuggling up to him. As for the primaries, honestly, they are a messy, broken system, but introducing more oversight to try to be fair would mean making them bigger and more drawn out and more campaigning and more news coverage and having the names of people who will literally never matter to you ever again repeated ad infinitum, and I couldn't take that. If the primaries are unfairly rigged, then Hillary is in the better position to benefit from them being rigged, but if anything, this whole cycle is an argument in favor of more restrictive primaries so no idiot not-a-politician reality TV show judge can waltz right in and take everything.
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May 23, 2016 22:17
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There's a lot of horrible things about debt. Theoretically, bankruptcy laws are supposed to alleviate the troubles of people who are caught in an endless debt spiral, but figuring out legal things like that is hard, so the people who benefit most from bankruptcy laws like that are jerkoffs who started out with such a huge amount of money in the first place that they'll have lawyers on retainer even if they're millions in the hole. Then they become the presumptive Republican candidate for president. The idea that all debts should be paid no matter what ignores what loans are supposed to be. It's a risk taken on the part of the lender. If they lend money to somebody who can't pay it back, it's their fault for lending it, and if they want the money back that bad, they should have to collect on their own dime, not just license it out as a vaguely legal excuse for extortionists to demand money from people.
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Jun 7, 2016 00:27
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The entire insurance system is broken. Hospital bills are inflated because they have an understanding with insurance companies to reduce their prices when insurance pays for it, and it's basically standard practice for insurance to just sometimes not cover people's expenses completely. I can only imagine what it's like to run a hospital and be sending out these bills to maximize profits. It's nuts. Obamacare was a nice step, but there's still plenty more work that needs to be done.Demiurge4 posted:That was my reaction Oh, nice to hear it's the 19th century. Next you'll be telling me that rival firefighter teams are trying to monopolize fire hydrants and are letting houses burn down while they fight in the streets.
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Jun 7, 2016 13:23
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I don't have student debts myself, but every time I hear them it sounds horrible. Debt that can never be removed from loans that are made to people who specifically can't pay back anything yet and probably haven't developed any financial sense. Especially considering how after a sense, a college education has been devalued on the job market by everyone getting one, so a plain degree is less valuable. Paying more for less. Don't get me wrong, I still think that learning is good, and there's a lot you can learn in college, but many of the jobs for fresh college graduates don't use any of the higher skills you'd learn from college. It kinda starts feeling like people should just use degree mills since there's very little governmental crackdown on those anyways.
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Jun 8, 2016 14:31
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Nah, Trump University is both more expensive and less useful than anything you'd get from a degree mill. Trump's not even a good con man, it's disgraceful.
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Jun 8, 2016 17:52
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