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I want Jeff to be a thing in 2015. Things are off to a good start.
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Mar 9, 2015 07:58
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The Fanta ad was pretty rough, but bringing back whacky stick!!! pulled me back in.
ultramiraculous fucked around with this message at 12:09 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 09:27
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They're verging on overusing the fake ad gag, even though I laughed heartily at the fanta bit. The whole run on daylight savings was a thing of beauty though. And the small section on Israel gives me hope that they're still planning on doing a big Our Friend Israel episode, probably after the election.
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Mar 9, 2015 11:56
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ultramiraculous posted:The Fanta ad was pretty rough, but bringing back whacky stick!!! pulled me back in. Always appreciate a bit of Whacky Stick.
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Mar 9, 2015 13:06
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I know opinion on the idea of statehood is still divided in Puerto Rico, but is it just as unpopular in Guam, AS, NMI, and USVI? Statehood seems like the easiest way to do it, but there's still a lot of political challenges. Just look at DC.
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Mar 9, 2015 14:07
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Echo Chamber posted:I know opinion on the idea of statehood is still divided in Puerto Rico, but is it just as unpopular in Guam, AS, NMI, and USVI? Puerto Rico definitely deserves statehood for population alone - they have over twice of Hawaii's population. DC, though...the simpler solution would be to simply give them a representative that can vote. Not sure how you'd handle the senator situation, but the District has more people living it in than Wyoming, which gets two senators... It's all academic, because as the report stated, these people are ~minorities~, though with the rate DC's being 'whitewashed' by hipsters and nouveau yuppies, who knows. Also, it'd mean all the talking heads on election night would have to stay up to ungodly hours to wait for the Guamanian polls to close. BIG HEADLINE fucked around with this message at 14:31 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 14:29
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If DC can't get a voting representative in the Federal Government we could at least let them actually run their own budget and stuff instead of letting our idiot Congress do so. But then I'm sure the distinguished gentleman from Wyoming a whole lot about running a city with a greater population than his entire state.
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Mar 9, 2015 15:43
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"Turn out...for what?" slayed me.
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Mar 9, 2015 17:42
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The Puerto Rico question is tricky because so far, the majority has rejected statehood, at least tacitly. A referendum was held in 2012. While 52% expressed disatisfaction with the current status and 61% of the votes cast selected statehood, the majority of the votes cast were blank. That meant that while statehood captured 61% of the 3 choices presented (statehood, fully independent state, or independent state with association with US), it was actually only 45% of the actual vote cast with the majority of people basically stating they didn't like all 3 choices.
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Mar 9, 2015 17:58
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This episode was mostly a miss for me. First of all, the Fanta-nazi thing was a little unfair, since the German branch of the Coca Cola company did everything you could reasonably expect to not be involved with the Nazis. The man in charge never became a member of the party (when everyone including the future pope was), and he kept all the profits to give back to the company at the end of the war. It'd be easier to go after IBM, they helped enable the holocaust. And then after that, it was a little weird to focus on the ability to vote for president? I don't think that would really solve the problems he's talking about. What you'd really want is meaningful representation in congress. Even if the president were born in one of those areas, it would be hard to push congress to reform for those small regional areas. Congressional representatives are the ones who are supposed to look out for their people, and it's written into the constitution that they don't get that unless they're states, and Puerto Rico voted against that last time it came up. Also, John Oliver skipped a certain other mostly minority area (50.7% black according to wikipedia, highest proprtion in the union) of the the United States that doesn't get meaningful representation in congress: The District of Columbia, murder capital of the country. They do get the right to vote for president though, except for when their elector decided not to vote. SlothfulCobra fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 19:43
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bull3964 posted:The Puerto Rico question is tricky because so far, the majority has rejected statehood, at least tacitly. If you choose not to vote, you give up the right to have your opinion matter. It's like saying that Obama shouldn't be President because only 30% of eligible Americans voted for him. Baronash fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Mar 9, 2015 |
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Mar 9, 2015 23:00
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JohnSherman posted:If you choose not to vote, you give the the right to have your opinion matter. It's like saying that Obama shouldn't be President because only 30% of eligible Americans voted for him. Except you're oversimplifying the issue. Presidential elections are still based on a majority vote. It just happens to be a representative electoral majority rather than a popular majority. Presidents who fail to win a majority are chosen by congress. SlothfulCobra posted:This episode was mostly a miss for me. Sounds like the show's facade is beginning to crack.
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Mar 9, 2015 23:08
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JohnSherman posted:If you choose not to vote, you give up the right to have your opinion matter. It's like saying that Obama shouldn't be President because only 30% of eligible Americans voted for him. They didn't choose not to vote. They voted with a blank ballot. That's a significant difference.
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Mar 9, 2015 23:27
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bull3964 posted:They didn't choose not to vote. They voted with a blank ballot. That's a significant difference. What does it mean? They'd rather stick with the current system?
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Mar 9, 2015 23:39
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bull3964 posted:They didn't choose not to vote. They voted with a blank ballot. That's a significant difference. Much like with the Presidential election, if you don't vote for someone on the ticket, you basically didn't vote. A majority of voters who answered the question as well as a plurality of all voters picked statehood. That's clear enough to begin the process of admitting them.
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Mar 10, 2015 00:02
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As a non-american who wasn't aware of the citizenship/voting status in the american territories I actually found the latest episode to be highly informative and interesting. As an Israeli though I found the segment about the Israeli elections to be laughably shallow and focusing on completely dumb aspects of the various campaigns, some of the burns felt particularly forced such as interpreting Netanyahu's "Left wing = ISIS" statement with the throwaway "oh they wouldn't wait for the results of the elections would they?" comment when it's obvious that that wasn't the actually message that the ad tried to convey (where the actual message itself is actually horrific and worthy of mockery), and if you already show that ad you have to at least mention how the song that was used in it is performed by a palestinian rap group that is now suing Likud over copyright infringement, it felt like the writers were too scared to write anything too critical lest they alienate anyone, I was disappointed.
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Mar 10, 2015 00:23
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Phenotype posted:What does it mean? They'd rather stick with the current system? No, they voted that they were dissatisfied with the current situation They just didn't like the 3 alternatives that the change would be and left that question blank. If I were to wager a guess, they want a change that does not involve independence or statehood but gives them greater political voice in the federal government. JohnSherman posted:Much like with the Presidential election, if you don't vote for someone on the ticket, you basically didn't vote. A majority of voters who answered the question as well as a plurality of all voters picked statehood. That's clear enough to begin the process of admitting them. No, you're missing the forest for the trees. It sin't the same thing since this outcome tells us unequivocally that if there was a general referendum where the only question is "Do you want Puerto Rico to become a state?" it would fail. Only 54% of people want change in the first place and only 45% of those who want change want to become a state. That means a general referendum on statehood would likely have an outcome of only about 25% for statehood. It's possible that some of the people who voted for other options like independence would vote for statehood if there were no other options, but it seems pretty unlikely at this point that statehood would pass a general referendum right now based on the 2012 results.
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Mar 10, 2015 00:29
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I caught a few episodes of this in its first season and thought it was pretty good. I was excited when it said the show was coming back for its second season. But I've watched every episode of this season so far and so far it's just not doing it for me like the ones in the first season I saw did. The guy just doesn't seem as funny either. Weird. I wonder why?
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Mar 10, 2015 01:02
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Whilst funny, the "daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants" joke seemed a bit oversimplified and kind of wrong. Granted, I'm going off Wikipedia here, but there are several things in the Puerto Rican Citizenship article that state that Puerto Rican citizenship is a seperate and different thing to US Citizenship. Therefore, her parents would have had to "immigrate" would they not?
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Mar 10, 2015 01:03
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xcore posted:Whilst funny, the "daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants" joke seemed a bit oversimplified and kind of wrong. Puerto Rican citizenship is its own thing, but Puerto Ricans also automatically get US citizenship.
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Mar 10, 2015 01:13
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xcore posted:Whilst funny, the "daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants" joke seemed a bit oversimplified and kind of wrong. Nope, as citizens they can freely travel too and fro unhindered. My understanding of the PR issue is that there's a large amount of post-colonial angst, a massive culture divide, and some manner of wizardry that leaves them better off financially if they aren't a state, although they are still desperately poor. But it's all moot, no more states will ever been admitted to the union because PR is full of browns and DC is extremely liberal when it comes to most relevant issues. The republicans would never allow the balance of power in the senate to shift like that. DC statehood is basically a lock on two left caucusing seats.
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Mar 10, 2015 01:16
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IRQ posted:But it's all moot, no more states will ever been admitted to the union because PR is full of browns and DC is extremely liberal when it comes to most relevant issues. The republicans would never allow the balance of power in the senate to shift like that. DC statehood is basically a lock on two left caucusing seats. Well, that's an ignorant and overly simplistic way to view the issue. Puerto Ricans have to desire statehood before it can be turned down, and making uneducated guesses as to how Washington would react to such a request is merely an exercise in knocking down strawmen.
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Mar 10, 2015 01:40
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bull3964 posted:No, they voted that they were dissatisfied with the current situation They just didn't like the 3 alternatives that the change would be and left that question blank. If I were to wager a guess, they want a change that does not involve independence or statehood but gives them greater political voice in the federal government. This is incorrect. The percentage of people who voted for change and the percentage of people who voted for statehood were not associated like this. quote:970,910 (54.00%) voted "No" on the first question, expressing themselves against maintaining the current political status, and 828,077 (46.00%) voted "Yes", to maintain the current political status. Of those who answered on the second question 834,191 (61.11%) chose statehood, 454,768 (33.34%) chose free association, and 74,895 (5.55%) chose independence.
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Mar 10, 2015 01:53
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JohnSherman posted:This is incorrect. The percentage of people who voted for change and the percentage of people who voted for statehood were not associated like this. First off, you are right, 25% was in error as I assumed those who did not reject the first question did not vote on the 2nd which was wrong. However, when taking all ballots into account including ones that were blank on the 2nd question, statehood only got 45%. You cannot ignore this data. quote:However, a fair reading of the referendum results shows clearly that the headlines proclaiming that a majority of Puerto Ricans support statehood are misleading and erroneous, and certainly promote considerable cynicism regarding Puerto Rico's political process. Indeed, the votes of nearly half a million voters who did not support statehood were not counted. These voters deliberately left blank the second part of the ballot, in effect stating that they preferred a fourth option to the three options listed on the ballot. These voters likely would have supported a fourth option, choosing some form of commonwealth status similar to the current arrangement, but since this option did not appear on the ballot, would have checked a box marked "other" if such a ballot option was available, which it was not. The absence of this fourth option, and the reason for its omission, explain why the official results of this referendum are spurious, and certainly do not support the dramatic headlines proclaiming Puerto Rico's approval of statehood. Say what you will about them throwing away their vote or not participating in the process. Had this been a real referendum with a binary decision on whether or not Puerto Rico should be a state, those half million voters wouldn't leave it blank or say yes. They would have said no. As of 2012, the majority of Puerto Rico did not want to become a state. The majority wants change of some sort, but they are very divided about what that change should be. This is further supported by the 1998 referendum that had 5 options including "None of the above". Satehood got 46% and "None of the above" got 50%. This time they simply eliminated "None of the above" nudge the results in a particular direction. The governor-elect actually called for people to leave the 2nd question blank because the party wanted to retain current status and that wasn't one of the options given. The federal government allocated funds to have another referendum vote as of last year. It will be interesting to see the results of this one will be and how the questions are framed. This is the first referendum to be funded by the federal government rather than Puerto Rico. bull3964 fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Mar 10, 2015 |
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Mar 10, 2015 02:39
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bull3964 posted:First off, you are right, 25% was in error as I assumed those who did not reject the first question did not vote on the 2nd which was wrong. However, when taking all ballots into account including ones that were blank on the 2nd question, statehood only got 45%. You cannot ignore this data. "Retain current status" was one of the options given. It was asked in the first question, and still managed to receive fewer votes than statehood. More people in Puerto Rico want statehood than want any other type of government. You make a big assumption in that every vote for something other than statehood would necessarily be a vote against it. The majority may not consider statehood their first choice, but independence and free association are both hilariously bad options given Puerto Rico's economic reliance on the US. Those two options made up almost 39% of the vote, and I think you'd see that voting bloc fracture if it really came down to it. I'm also very interested to see the results of the next referendum, mostly because I expect statehood to clean house.
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Mar 10, 2015 05:04
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JohnSherman posted:"Retain current status" was one of the options given. It was asked in the first question, and still managed to receive fewer votes than statehood. More people in Puerto Rico want statehood than want any other type of government. "Retain current form of Territorial Status" was the framing of the first question. Many people would like to retain Territorial status but alter the form that would give them more say in the current government. quote:You make a big assumption in that every vote for something other than statehood would necessarily be a vote against it. The majority may not consider statehood their first choice, but independence and free association are both hilariously bad options given Puerto Rico's economic reliance on the US. Those two options made up almost 39% of the vote, and I think you'd see that voting bloc fracture if it really came down to it. All I have to say is that it's telling that the 1998 referendum had virtually no one vote for independence, free association, OR continuance of the current form of territorial status and instead chose "None of the Above" as the majority over satehood. We'll have to agree to disagree because there's not much point in in derailing this thread further. I just do not expect Puerto Rico to become a state anytime soon.
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Mar 10, 2015 05:29
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SlothfulCobra posted:This episode was mostly a miss for me. The bit wasn't attacking fanta for being invented by Nazis; it was attacking coke for overlooking the Nazi context to make a whimsical ad in 2015. Two dstinct things imo. emanresu tnuocca posted:As a non-american who wasn't aware of the citizenship/voting status in the american territories I actually found the latest episode to be highly informative and interesting. Yeah, and surely Bibisitter would have been better to demonstrate that nutso paternalistic thing that Likud has going on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ1BltDU4iM
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Mar 11, 2015 12:01
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bull3964 posted:"Retain current form of Territorial Status" was the framing of the first question. Many people would like to retain Territorial status but alter the form that would give them more say in the current government. Well that wasn't presented as an option mainly because that's stupid and it's never going to happen. It'd be way simpler to incorporate them as a state than it would be to get congress to mess with the constitution to create a new status just so that Puerto Rico could get the rights of a state without technically being a state. Of course, the American Samoa thing was straight bullshit.
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Mar 11, 2015 15:38
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I feel for the service men and women in those US territories. Surely someone who is willing to give their life to the US deserve to be treated better.
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Mar 15, 2015 09:42
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agatona posted:I feel for the service men and women in those US territories. Surely someone who is willing to give their life to the US deserve to be treated better. hahahahahaha We stopped giving a loving poo poo about troops since around Korea. By Vietnam their fates were sealed. Support our troops!!!!!!!! Unless they get hurt. Or get hosed in the head from ptsd. Or are homeless. You'd think some of the insanity that is our military budget would go into a reserve for vets to get pretty rad health insurance. But you know, socialism. We should put our vets on the same health plan congress is on. Haha... Oh man, my sides.
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Mar 15, 2015 16:38
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Shadow posted:Support our troops!!!!!!!! Unless they get hurt. Or get hosed in the head from ptsd. Or are homeless. Vets get tons of benefits in addition to the benefit we all share of living in a safe, free and (mostly) civilized country. I feel for our vets, and support caring for injuries and conditions resulting from their service, but spending four years playing Foosball on the USS Dick Wave doesn't entitle you to cradle-to-grave care. At some point, every man has to take responsibility for his own goddamn life.
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Mar 15, 2015 16:46
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Irish Joe posted:Vets get tons of benefits in addition to the benefit we all share of living in a safe, free and (mostly) civilized country. I feel for our vets, and support caring for injuries and conditions resulting from their service, but spending four years playing Foosball on the USS Dick Wave doesn't entitle you to cradle-to-grave care. At some point, every man has to take responsibility for his own goddamn life. lol holy poo poo  E Spending 6 years doing nothing but obstructing bills from being voted on however requires a 6 figure salary and full health benefits!!!! Shadow fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Mar 15, 2015 |
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Mar 15, 2015 16:47
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Yeah, the stuff people in the territories have to deal with is no cakewalk, but in general the way we handle veterans is mostly awful. The VA is a mess that never gets anything done. I feel like when some people thank the soldiers "who give their lives for their country" are also tacitly thanking them for having the good sense to die so that the government doesn't have to take care of them. It's not exactly a new thing for vets to get shafted either. At least things aren't bad enough now to make veterans form a shanty town at the capital in protest.
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Mar 15, 2015 16:58
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SlothfulCobra posted:It's not exactly a new thing for vets to get shafted either. At least things aren't bad enough now to make veterans form a shanty town at the capital in protest. Which is a good thing. We don't have a MacArthur and Patton around to charge it with bayonets, tear gas the hell out of it, and burn it to the ground. Real, American, Heroes they.
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Mar 15, 2015 17:18
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Irish Joe posted:spending four years playing Foosball on the USS Dick Wave doesn't entitle you to cradle-to-grave care. At some point, every man has to take responsibility for his own goddamn life. No, being an American citizen would entitle you to healthcare if this were a first world nation. Putting yourself in harm's way for the military is not nearly as lucrative as idiots like you seem to think, as well.
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Mar 15, 2015 18:27
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:Putting yourself in harm's way for the military is not nearly as lucrative as idiots like you seem to think, as well. No one said it was lucrative, but the benefits are very generous considering both historic precedent and equivalent private sector jobs.
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Mar 15, 2015 18:38
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Irish Joe posted:No one said it was lucrative, but the benefits are very generous considering both historic precedent and equivalent private sector jobs. Are you actually this dense and spiteful, or are you doing a thing where you're bad at trolling? I don't even support the military and I know our veterans get a raw deal.
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Mar 15, 2015 18:48
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:Are you actually this dense and spiteful, or are you doing a thing where you're bad at trolling? He's gotta be a troll. That or he's a dumb piece of poo poo and thinks Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan care about this country.
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Mar 15, 2015 18:51
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They get lodging, food, and healthcare for nearly free. That's a lot. They also only get it while they're in. When they leave they have no home, no job, few truly marketable skills, and frequently a number of physical and mental disabilities sustained during their service. Vets get hosed by the system hard.
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Mar 15, 2015 19:00
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:I don't even support the military and I know our veterans get a raw deal. I think before you call something "a raw deal" you should at least define what an adequate deal would be, because right now its just "they don't have this" or "this isn't as efficient as it could be" which isn't the same. As for what I said, at no point in history were soldiers (et, al) given a better deal than they are today, mainly because it is an all volunteer army and benefits need to be high in order to attract and retain talent. Veteran benefit and aid organizations are a multi-billion dollar industry in this country. Veteran status is recognized and afforded special treatment by government and employers in every state. Is it perfect? Of course not. But there's no other job in the world where you can put in five to ten years and reap the benefit of that experience for the rest of your life.
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Mar 15, 2015 19:01
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