Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/09/09/john-oliver-explains-how-filib.html
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The idea that a politician’s effectiveness should somehow be tied to his or her physical capacity for windbaggery has indeed struck me as most curious and I would like to know more.
But dangit, is there still no good way of circumventing the Youtube geoblock when it comes to watching John Oliver videos, aside from Bittorrent?
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I have less issue with lifetime SC appointments and more of a problem with the senate not having term limits.
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It seemed a lot more principled and heroic when Jimmy Stewart was doing it.
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I too would like an answer about the geoblock.
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Everybody I know uses a VPN set to the appropriate country for that. Seems like even my not that tech savvy European family members use VPNs for that sort of thing.
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The Senate at least has a four-year reckoning, while SC has no such check or balance, right? If the people choose to re-elect someone, I’m not sure you want a law saying the will of the people is irrelevant after X times sort of thing.
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My problem is with the Senate Majority Leader having the complete authority to bring up or block any activity he wants. #MoscowMitch is effectively a one-man filibuster who has corrupted our government to its foundation, and there’s no legal way to remove him.
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Oh don’t translate that as “I have NO issues with lifetime appointments”. I’m not a fan of those, but it’s just lower on my list.
After however many hundreds of years someone like Orrin hatch served, the incumbency at some point gives an unreasonable and unfair advantage. Truth is, it’s impossible they got the absolutely best guy a hundred times in a row and it’s always the same guy.
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I dunno. I just feel like “we can’t trust the electorate to do the right thing every six years so we have to create laws to make decisions for them” sounds awfully like why the electoral college exists in the first place.
Lifetime appointments, on the other hand, have no such “corrective” option.
and frankly neither of which have a lot to do with the article, save Mark’s offhand remark at the end. 
ETA: Six years. Civics lesson received!
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I really enjoyed Nancy Pelosi’s “filibuster” (different from the Senate, only available to certain House member like the minority leader) last year. 78 years old, 8+ hours speaking on her feet. THAT’S a filibuster.
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Filibusters themselves are a tool for making sure the majority can’t just steamroll the minority. However, the Senate version has evolved into a lazy version that gets misused. That needs to be fixed.
That said, be careful taking John Oliver’s word for things. He can make good points, but can be wildly off. I was rather dismayed by his discussion of medical devices. He conflated and misrepresented things so badly either he was shockingly ignorant or intentionally misleading. In short, medical device and medical implant are not the same. But he repeatedly used data from one applied to the other to make problems seem much larger and worse than they are. If I wasn’t well versed in what he was talking about, I wouldn’t know. And now I’m left wondering if he does the same on topics I’m not as educated about.
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I lost it at Ben Affleck. But then again, I’m from Bas’tin.
There is no system you can devise that can’t be corrupted, used, misused, overused, and abused. Everything has its problems. No matter what you try, someone will find some way to game the system to his advantage and hose everyone else. We’re @#$%ed no matter which way we go. We should try elective trial by combat. Every 4 years we have primaries to pick which guy we want to run for office. We winnow it down to 2 candidates, and they and their 100 top money contributors fight to the death. LOTS of money selling the TV rights, you get only candidates who are really serious about running for office, the losers don’t hang around causing problems for the next 4 years, we get rid of some of the scumbags who think they can just buy politicians. And yes, this system can be corrupted too. But in this case, corrupting the system could only result in more dead office seekers, and that can’t be bad.
What are you talking about? Senators are elected to 6 year terms.
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That’s what you get by having a Canadian comment on US politics!
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The VPN built in to Opera is perfect for things like this.
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To be fair, there are probably a fair number of Americans who don’t know how long Senate terms are…
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I can never remember the names of those sites when I need them, but I can tell you that john oliver is reliably available on dailymotion.
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