Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Nuclear Waste
August 27, 2017 11:36 PM - Season 4, Episode 22 - Subscribe

It's a little late, but here's LWT from 8/21:
  • Steve Bannon loses his (official) position as Chief Strategist in Trump's White House, but the White Nationalist In Chief remains, and made more horrible remarks about the protests in Charlottesville. Two business councils advising the White House disbanded following the news as CEOs abandoned the President.
  • And Now: Local News Answers The Question: "Should You Stare At The Sun?"
  • Main story: Nuclear waste, and the United States' long-standing problems in properly disposing of it. YouTube (18m)
  • And Now: Some Of The Actual Responses From Potential Jurors Excused From The Martin Shkreli Trial (see inside for a list)
Last Week Tonight is off until September 10.

Steve Bannon: "What would happen of Martin Sheen ate nothing beside sea salt for a thousand years?"

Horrible facts from the Nuclear Waste piece:
Barrels of nuclear waste were dumped off the coast of New Jersey.
Dealing with the Hanford Site, in Washington State, the "most polluted place in the Western Hemisphere," consumes 10% of the yearly budget of the Department of Energy.
Nuclear waste is stored all across the country "on-site," even at reactors that are otherwise shut down, in many cases environmental disasters waiting to happen.

The video "Yucca Mountain: The Making of an Underground Laboratory" is available on YouTube in five parts: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5

The NBC News special "Danger: Radioactive Waste" is also on YouTube. As it turns out, Last Week Tonight didn't even make it to covering everything horrible revealed in that 1977 program. Like: New Jersey was not the only place where barrels of nuclear waste were dumped.

The villain in the Yucca Mountain story is Harry Reid, callously saying that nuclear waste should be kept where it is, making this a time when the worst actor in a LWT piece turns out to have been a Democrat.

Responses from excused Martin Shkreli jurors:
  • I am aware of the defendant and I hate him.
  • No. No. No. No. No.
  • By the time I came in and sat down and he turned around, I felt immediately I was biased.
  • He kind of looks like a dick.
  • When I walked in here today, I looked at him, and in my head, "That's a snake," not knowing who he was. I just walked in and looked right at him, and that's a snake.
  • I think he's a greedy little man.
  • You'd have to convince me he was innocent rather than guilty.
  • The only thing I'd be impartial about is what prison this guy goes to.
  • Is he stupid or greedy? I can't understand.
  • He disrespected the Wu-Tank Clan.
F.37: "Comicus Iconicus," DICK GREGORY
posted by JHarris (2 comments total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wu-Tank Clan: somehow slightly less scary than the Wu-Tang Clan.
posted by Etrigan at 6:23 AM on August 28, 2017


A friend of mine who is out of the loop on some things didn't know who Shkreli was. I sent him a picture of him at the congressional hearings and let's say, those comments started making sense.

Also "he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan" has to be on the top of best reasons to be excused from a jury.
posted by lmfsilva at 7:10 AM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


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