John Oliver Becomes a Debt Buyer to Forgive Debt.

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On Last Week Tonight last night, John Oliver shocked pretty much everyone, including himself, by having the biggest giveaway in television history. Oliver’s segment this week was about debt buyers and how ridiculous the entire industry is. Central Asset Recovery Professionals is a debt acquisition firm that Oliver and some associates began for a mere $50. Oliver was then offered debt to buy for almost $60,000. How much was that debt? Close to $15 million. And then Oliver bought the debt and promptly forgave it. Warm and fuzzy, man. The entire segment is worth watching, but Oliver’s surprise begins around the 17:09 mark.
Monday Open Thread [6.6.16]

Monday Open Thread [6.6.16]

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Josh Marshall on the meltdown of Trump:
But after two rallies and a flurry of interviews there's no question Clinton has gotten to Trump in a big way. As she said, he is very thin skinned. (Emphatically denying that you're thin-skinned is not a credible rebuttal.) Given who he is, being denigrated by a strong woman must cut deeply. Underneath the angry talk, he appears befuddled and uncertain about just how to respond. That is mainly because even before her assault he'd maxed out his invective. She was crooked, a liar, untalented, a lightweight, a sexual predator by proxy. How exactly do you escalate from there? His furious effort to wring more aggression out of the English language has proved a rather unconvincing rebuttal to her central charge that he is temperamentally unfit, too emotionally unstable to serve as President. He now says flatly that she should be in jail, says he'll find an Attorney General who will imprison her. He now also calls her a "thief" which somehow is the reason she set up her own email server. Overshadowed by the "my African-American" stumble in Friday's speech in Redding was a bizarre interlude in which Trump gave a glowing evocation of the supporter who cold-cocked and beat a protester in Tucson on March 20th as an example of his little-heralded but purportedly expansive support among African-Americans. He's trying to escalate but has little room to go. He's maxed out. The transcripts of the two speeches read like compressed literary spittle. His affect is also different. Both rallies struck me as significantly hotter than anything we've seen before from Trump, more sweat, more chopping hands, more yelling - simply more electric, frenzied and angry. As Clinton and her team certainly anticipated, hitting him hard as mentally unstable and unfit for the presidency has placed Trump in a sort of Chinese finger puzzle of his own creation. The only mode of response he knows - an escalating and bellicose round of personal attacks with increasingly hyperbolic accusations - only confirms Clinton's diagnosis. The harder he fights the tighter the charge sticks.

Sunday Open Thread [6.5.16]

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Hillary won the Virgin Island caucus last night by some insane margin, garnering her 6 delegates to Sanders' 1. That means if the AP delegate count is accurate, he is now 65 delegates away from the nomination. If she wins Puerto Rico by some similarly insane margin, like 85-90% of the vote, then it is possible that she can win the 65 delegates she needs out of the 72 delegates available. But that's not likely. First, I'd imagine Bernie will do better on PR than on VI because he has taken a stand against the whole Puerto Rican debt bailout issue. Second, while VI's population was primarily of African descent, PR's population is obviously more Latino, so demographically he will do better. He will still lose, but I sense PR is more like a 70-30 percentage split. That should mean 42 delegates for Hillary and 18 for Bernie, leaving Hillary 23 short. So she will clinch at 8 pm on Tuesday when New Jersey closes.
Saturday Open Thread [6.4.16]

Saturday Open Thread [6.4.16]

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This week has been pivotal. First, the revelations of the Trump University Scam and Trump's defrauding of the veterans broke. Then Trump goes nuts on the press for revealing the truth in a preview of what press conferences under a fascist dictator will look like. Then Hillary's amazing speech on Thursday. Then Trump's insane racist attacks on the Judge in the Trump University case, which he has escalated throughout the week. And then last night he sees a single African American in a crowd at his rally, and in the middle of discussing black protestors who are thugs, says "Look at my African American over there. Look at him. Aren't you the greatest?" Everywhere I go, I see people on Facebook, Twitter, in real life, on cable TV, trying to find words or reasons for all this behavior, in particular the attacks on the Judge and the comments on "my African American." Look, it is all pretty simple, and people just need to accept it rather than rationalize their way out of saying what is really going on here. And that is this: Donald Trump is a narcissistic sociopath. He is a racist. He desires to be a fascist dictator that jails his opponents and cleanses the country of the minorities he hates. Seriously. It's not hyperbole this time. The Republicans have literally nominated the heir of Adolf Hitler. The sooner you all accept it, the better off you will all be, because everything will make sense.