Hello, buglers! John Oliver has a weekly show, "Last Week Tonight"

lol

id forgotten this guy i hate exists

is samantha bee's prog any good? keep meaning to check it out

Yes, it is. I like JO but she really makes his shtick seem extra tired/weak-kneed.

yeah Sam is killing it

Sam is amazing.

I do like this show but yeah last two weeks have been pretty boring

The Detour (Samantha Bee / Jason Jones' TBS sitcom) is also great btw!

Oh man, totally forgot about the Detour, must check it out.

Looks like Oliver is leaving the Bugle and Andy continuing with a rotating set of co-hosts (including Wyatt Cenac)

John Oliver Buys https://consumerist.com/2016/06/06/john-oliver-buys-15m-in-medical-debt-then-forgives-it/5M In Medical Debt, Then Forgives It

Oops, I mean: John Oliver Buys https://consumerist.com/2016/06/06/john-oliver-buys-15m-in-medical-debt-then-forgives-it/5M In Medical Debt, Then Forgives It

le sigh

My dvr cut off the episode before it got to the big finale, so I had no idea that's what happened!

$15M in debt for a cost of $60K. Every tv show on every network with the budget should be doing this today and weekly from now on. You wanna make people watch tv again? Buy up their debt and forgive it!

i wish this show was funny. or at least not so exhausting to get through. they seem good for the culture!

the occupy wallstreet people would do this - buy up foreclosed peoples' debt for pennies and write it off, just hand them the deeds.

also, the prog, the main segment anyway, is on facebook video if you want to see the end - https://www.facebook.com/LastWeekTonight/videos

(which is handy because the official youtube version is always region blocked but facebook isn't)

$15M in debt for a cost of $60K. Every tv show on every network with the budget should be doing this today and weekly from now on. You wanna make people watch tv again? Buy up their debt and forgive it!

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever)

this would be hilarious to watch because bad debt would immediately skyrocket in value, as the only reason it's so cheap right now is that nobody wants it. you'd have bidding wars between fallon's people and colbert's people for bad debt.

wish i could just buy my own old debt and forgive myself!

pretty good segment imo
i think they've been getting better, a little less reliance on their old joke formulas, and good to see them continue to focus on weird undiscuused bugaboos like this

the occupy wallstreet people would do this - buy up foreclosed peoples' debt for pennies and write it off, just hand them the deeds.

At the last minute Wilson told us LWT did not want to associate themselves with the work of the Rolling Jubilee due to its roots in Occupy Wall Street. Instead John Oliver framed the debt buy as his idea: a giveaway to compete with Oprah. The lead researcher who worked on this segment invoked the cover of journalism to justify distancing themselves from our project.

uff. that is disappointing.

on the plus side, anyone here CAN buy up old debt through Rolling Jubilee right now!
http://rollingjubilee.org/

Or not! But you _can_ support the Debt Collective which is lobbying for systemic overhaul of the system.
https://debtcollective.org/

What I don't get is that the debt he bought was beyond statute which would mean it's not recoverable, doesn't it? (And explains why it was so cheap) Or was the point that some dodgy debt collectors would still bully people into paying it? Possible through uncontested court cases?

Correct. And they could use state support to garnish wages, be legally entitled to harass people even though they were not legally bound to pay the dept, and so on...

That was the point the sneering guy at the conference was making: the debt collection company is legally required to say in their letter that the debt is beyond statute, but he reckons that their targets don't or can't read those letters properly, so they'd still be scared enough to pay up in enough cases to make it worthwhile.

ah, ok, i was watching at work and obviously missed some details.

americans, eh?

This joke has to have been made re the Al Smith dinner: 'Henry Kissinger thought Trump bombed horrifically, and Henry Kissinger is pretty much the world's leading authority on horrific bombings'

If not, then good job, LWT writers.

The Bugle is back, with American comedian/podcaster Hari Kondabolu being the recipient of Andy's puns from the other side of the pond:

https://soundcloud.com/the-bugle/bugle-4001-tony-the-tiger-rip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlHo-F1z_aw

kinda sums up the general media's complicity in this shitshow

hah yeah that clip was on his show last week. I know this whole thing is great for the comedy shows but I do believe John when he says he'd so much rather be talking about anything else.

I don't think you can blame Oliver or the media - we (almost) all thought it was a hahaomgtheynominatedhimWIN situation right up until 6pm CST Tuesday.

and for all the Monday morning quarterbacking about not seeing the possibility and understanding how a populist ideologue playing on fears could work or how people could ignore bad behavior it is still almost impossible to understand how it didn't bother 48 million people that he was a reality TV star and braggart. If you ran into a guy at the bar who couldn't go two sentences without talking about how amazing he is, you'd hate him. That's universal! No one likes or respects that guy.

You'd think so, but there are people who dig that kind of personality

we (almost) all thought it was a hahaomgtheynominatedhimWIN situation right up until 6pm CST Tuesday

well many people who lived in that bubble are still in it. it was a very well-constructed bubble.

Yeah that's the part that gets me too. Trump has always been about as well-liked as a Kardashian. He's a massive dick and proud of it. He was famous but I don't think you would ever want to meet him. When Schwarzenegger won governor I understood it, people love him for reasons they know has nothing to do with his ability to be a politician, but they wanted to give him a chance because of it. Who the hell loves Donald Trump? His merchandise sucks. He's a walking punchline.

I mean, I feel guilty in all this too. I shared the hell out of those Vic Berger videos where he rips Jeb apart and commented stuff like "Trump is such a savage, haha". I mean, I had no idea either. We all assumed he was going to drop out as soon as he got bored.

I never assumed that, but I figured he wouldn't be taken seriously.

Anyone know why the latest episode is being geoblocked?

they built a firewall, and cisco is gonna pay for it!

Shame that the series has come to an end. Hope the next series will happen and nothing is done to prevent satirical shows from happening under the new presidency.
Just discovered a lot less people seem to be torrenting Full Frontal this week. Would hope there would be even more of an appettite for this kind of show after the electi8on results.

Anyone know why the latest episode is being geoblocked?

― Manitobiloba (Kim)

he got sick of all the british people mercilessly making fun of him?

It's been geoblocked for about ten months from here. I assume for the most likely and obvious reason.

Not on Facebook. It's been fine there, until Sunday.

It's on YouTube. Although the one I watched claimed to be hd but was obviously done using a phone pointed at a TV.

(Here = UK)

It's usually worth searching out on YouTube for the bits that they don't put on Facebook, which is usually everything but the one main 'article'

Ah, first comment on Facebook says that last week's was posted using YouTube instead of Facebook because of some special promotion. And looking at it the Facebook post is just a link to YouTube, whereas previous week's are hosted on Facebook.

Did those fake commercials air during Morning Joe this morning?

that handshake montage was one of the laziest, least funny things i have ever seen