9 posts tagged with congress and johnoliver.
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Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Homelessness  Season 8, Ep 28

This week.... Facebook announces their company is now called "Meta." (MeFi). Congress is hammering out Biden's final spending plan. And Now: Once Again, Our Annual Look At What Happens When Local News And Halloween Collide. Main story: Homelessness (25 minutes), and how our institutions make a bad situation for a lot of people worse.
posted by JHarris on Nov 2, 2021 - 6 comments

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Impeachment  Season 6, Ep 15

Episode 6-15 was about the U.S. process of presidential impeachment, the means provided by its Constitution to remove a sitting President from office. But impeachment itself doesn't imply the process will be successful--Clinton was infamously impeached. To this day the process has never been successfully used to unseat a president. What would it entail, and what are the pros and cons of impeaching Donald Trump? On YouTube (20m)
posted by JHarris on Jun 23, 2019 - 0 comments

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Stupid Watergate  Season 4, Ep 13

It's a very special episode of Last Week Tonight that, for once, actually focuses on the previous week's events, as the Trump Administration continues to be mired in scandal. John Oliver takes a stab at answering these questions:
  • What The Fuck Is Going On?
  • How Big A Deal Is This?
  • Where Do We Go From Here? and
  • Is This Real Life?
YouTube (24m) In addition to answering those questions, there is And Now: Yet Another Look At Whatever The Fuck Is Happening On WCBS 2 News At 11, and a severely abbreviated Main Story concerning the TSA. (More on that last part....) [more inside]
posted by JHarris on May 24, 2017 - 9 comments

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Dialysis Clinics  Season 4, Ep 12

New events worthy of mention:
  • Trump again. The fallout from his firing of FBI Director James Comey, and the many problematic things about it.
  • Congressfolk's continued denial over the situation mentioned above as every functioning adult in the nation gets steadily angrier about their refusal to do anything about it. "When you've got the Presidential equivalent of a five-year-old shitting on the salad bar at Ruby Tuesdays, at some point you stop blaming the five-year-old and you start blaming the people who are not stopping him."
  • Back to New Zealand's ruling National Party's appropriation of Eminem music. New Zealand PM Bill English heard about Last Week's Last Week Tonight mention of the court case and said, "some of the stuff I've seen he does isn't very funny." LWT, in retaliation, found an actual Facebook post Bill English made, with pictures: "Cooked dinner for the family last night - like if you agree with tinned spaghetti on pizza!"
  • And Now: A Series of Terrible Pizzas That New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English Would Probably Enjoy
  • Main Story: Kidney dialysis clinics, particularly those operated by DaVita, and the dangerous extents many go through to save costs, like rushing patients through dialysis, and the deeply terrible methods some employ to keep customers using their services and not seek out life-saving transplants. DaVita has had to settle nearly a billion dollars to settle lawsuits over the past five years, while their CEO compares his business (willingly!) to Taco Bell. LWT offers a commercial for Taco Bell stating how it's not a proper business model for dialysis clinics. YouTube (24m)
[more inside]
posted by JHarris on May 17, 2017 - 15 comments

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Net Neutrality II  Season 4, Ep 11

Recently in the news....
  • More on the court case where Eminem is suing New Zealand's National Party for using, in an ad, a song that sounds just a little too close to "Lose Yourself."
  • The U.S. House of Representatives rapidly moves to pass an updated (but still no better) version of the AHCA, before most people really knew what exactly was in it and before the Congressional Budget Office could score it, sending it to the Senate.
  • And Now: To Celebrate Their Engagement This Week, A Look Back At The Romance Between Joe Scarborough And Mika Brzezinski. "Congratulations?"
  • Main story: Net Neutrality is up in the air again due to Trump's newly-appointed head of the FCC Ajit Pai, a pseudo-hip former Verizon lawyer planning on changing the rules. LWT notes that his complaints about the restrictiveness of the current rules are a bit disinginuous, since it was a court case brought by Verizon that resulted in them. The FCC is once again soliciting public opinion, and like they did in the show's fifth episode, LWT encourages you to write in with your opinion, this time purchasing a domain name, www.gofccyourself.com, to take people to a search that makes the comment request easy to find, important since the FCC's comment form is less friendly to navigate than it was the first time. YouTube (20m)
[more inside]
posted by JHarris on May 10, 2017 - 5 comments

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: US CONGRESSIONAL FUNDRAISING  Season 3, Ep 7

This week.... Vladimir Putin snubs the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit, and Donald Trump demonstrates that nuclear weapons is another thing he doesn't have much knowledge about. Baseball season prepares to begin, and the New York Yankees annoy and frustrate fans by making it difficult to resell premium tickets online, claiming that the tickets may end up in the hands of people who the Yankees owner figures may not know how to treat the privilege of sitting in the first five rows at a Yankees game. LWT is running a short impromptu context: tweet a picture of yourself wearing something that would would look ridiculous sitting in premium seats at a Yankees game with the hashtag #IHAVENEVERSATINAPREMIUMLOCATION, and you can win one of those seats to a game. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Apr 4, 2016 - 11 comments

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Syrian Refugees, The Penny, End Of Year Recap  Season 2, Ep 35

This week... more on the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris. US politicians use the opportunity to pile on Syrian refugees. And Now: The Dismal Prop Comedy Of The United States Congress. Main story: The US Penny, its dwindling value, and the issues around supporting it. YouTube (10m) And Now: What In God's Name Are They Covering On WCBS News At 11? And, finally, this is the final episode of this year of Last Week Tonight, so the show provided a retrospective, featuring the return of Wanda Jo Oliver. This concludes LWT's second season; it resumes in February. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Nov 27, 2015 - 12 comments

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Mandatory minmum sentencing in the US  Season 2, Ep 22

This week.... The Obama administration reaches a historic deal with Iran, but has difficulty selling it to Congress. FIFA president Sepp Blatter is in Russia to kick off preparations for the 2018 World Cup. Ashley Madison, a website that encourages and helps set up affairs between married people, was hacked and the responsible parties threaten to release records on their userbase. LWT produced a short message exhorting married citizens of Ottawa not to have affairs. Main story: The absurdity of mandatory minimum sentencing laws in the US. YouTube (15m) And Now: Unnecessary Full Disclosure. Ukraine threatens to blacklist GĂ©rard Depardieu as a threat to their national security (Guardian) for a statement made last year at a film festival. Over the closing credits, LWT provides a brief slideshow of photos of Depardieu set to "cartoonishly French music." [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Jul 27, 2015 - 6 comments

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Translators in Afghanistan, Livening Up Supreme Court Reporting  Season 1, Ep 21

Ebola Freakout. Vladimir Putin has a full day. McDonalds hires a former Mythbuster to promote their food. Main story: the plight of military translators (16m), with guest "Fnu" Mohammad. And Now: People in Congress Reminding you Exactly How Long They've Been In Congress. How to liven up Supreme Court proceedings (6m): take a cue from Keyboard Cat and replace courtroom drawings with dogs. Presented with raw footage of dogs (and a duck and a chicken) (11m) that news agencies (and you, the viewer at home) can use to make your own backing footage of Supreme Court audio.
posted by JHarris on Oct 20, 2014 - 5 comments

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