FanFare

Last week.... Biden signs the Inflation Reduction Act which contains substantial efforts to combat climate change, and the FBI searched Trump's Mar-A-Lago residence and found over 300 sensitive documents that he had taken when he had left office. But the main story is on Afghanistan and the problems created when the U.S. withdrew from it a year ago, a situation that was arguably necessary and long overdue, but that also caused issues for the people living there, who it is difficult to help due to the many (reasonable!) prohibitions on cooperating with the Taliban. On YouTube (21 minutes). And Now: Shepard Smith Has The Best Story Intros In The Business. And finally, they visit the phenomenon of AI-generated art, and the curious images prompted by a user named "postpoopzoomies," that resulted, at last, in Steve Buscemi marrying John Oliver to a large prop cabbage.
posted by JHarris on Aug 26, 2022 - 1 comment

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

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

Week of 10/30:

• Regrettably, more on the 2016 Election, putting aside a story on Pirate Party making progress in Iceland, among others, to make room for it. OH WELL:
• The FBI finds a few Clinton emails in an investigation into oh god I can't believe I'm typing this Anthony Weiner, yes HIM again, Carlos Danger himself. Worth watching just for the footage of Biden reacting to the words "Anthony Weiner."
• And Now: The Stream-Of-Consciousness Musings of WCBS-2 Meteorologist John Elliott
• Main story: School segregation, and its surprising continued prevalence, not in the South, but in New York state. YouTube (18m)
• How Is This Still A Thing: Voting On Tuesday (It turns out to have started because, in the 1800s, people were expected to be spending Monday travelling to the polling place to vote.) YouTube (4m)

[more inside]
posted by JHarris on Nov 6, 2016 - 2 comments

This week....Hillary Clinton apologizes for remarks made about Nancy Reagan on the occaision of her death. Trump rallies erupt in violence, but he claims (despite multiple recorded examples) not to have encouraged it. International Women's Day is observed, sometimes oddly, throughout the world. Swiss president Johann Schneider-Ammann commemorates the Day of the Sick with a weird speech. And Now: Everybody Listen, Bernie Sanders Has Something to Say. Main story: Software encryption (18m), especially relevant concerning Apple's current court case. LWT made a commercial on behalf of Apple about the nature of software security. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Mar 14, 2016 - 10 comments