"Parrot" not "rat."

Get it right.

Come on orcs, you know setting up measures to protect people from cutthroat industries like this isn't communism.

He was calling Oliver a communist. Rightly so.

"Disgusting sophist" and "emotional predator" would also be acceptable tags for Mr. Oliver.

You harbingers of hyperbolic harassment!
You salacious bastions of blow hard!
You overarching veritus of viscous viridian bile!
You exaggerating jacobite wherewithnones!

DANGER WILL ROBINSON, DANGER!

In case people are wondering what these guys are whining about, recently 4chan decided that John Oliver is the devil, because he makes well-researched leftist arguments with the style and delivery of some of the better Youtubers. But unlike a youtuber, they can't just harass and death-threat him into hiding, because he's a mainstream celebrity. So instead they just kind of sit there being bitter and furious about his ongoing success, and sometimes they look up grown-up insult words in the thesaurus.

Someone please stop this monster before he gets more poor people out of debt.

The underbelly of the internet is not surprisingly right wing. 4Chan, gamer gaters, MRAs, SQWs. They make up the young, white, paranoids, who think they're too damned cool to join their school's chapter of the College Republicans, so they voice their frustration with society through the internet.

Kinda being joined by Bernie bros too, pissed off that their white asses didn't get to win something they -really- wanted

But Bernie Bros are for everyone. Trump voters vote the way they do, because they want to keep white males elevated above all others, Bernie voters vote for equality all around.

You cetacean soldier of subterfuge solidarity!

You know, you guys COULD come vote Pirate Party with me. Just throwin' that out there.

'zat what they calls them Libertarian Parties these days? Well sign me up! Great grandaddy killed a man in prison with a folding chair for disrespecting him: I got fires in my blood, Homie! Loose the rape dogs and we'll ask Pillager to do some uhm pillaging? I figure he must be good at it, what with the handle and all...

You Appalachian Argonaut of ancillary animosity!

You perspicacious pashtun of perspiring perplexity.

No Mr Wildcat, it's the Pirate Party. It's a loosely-affiliated international party based on the hacker ethic and the digital piracy community; sort of anarcho-libertarian, with an emphasis on civil rights, copyright reform, privacy for individuals, transparency for government, open content etc. They've got fifteen parliamentary seats in Germany, they're more popular than the Greens in Sweden, and they're actually close to being the single most popular political party in Iceland. So that's something!

Granted, I think voting is a waste of time, and you're BEST served by boycotting the system entirely, instead using voting day to participate in direct-action agorism or performing voluntary acts of charity and community improvement - but if you MUST vote, there's always the Pirate Party!

Or there would be, if anyone bothered to run this year.

I would accept Bernie, too, if for no other reason than CA is a Bernie supporter, and he reminds me of my childhood days as a junior Naderite.

Also Trump, because I'm still hoping for a presidential library in my hometown. Just be sure to tell people you're voting ironically.

Sorry, I think I missed something--Who is he shilling for?

He's shilling for people, a demographic that the *chan world bitterly resents.

Well, John Oliver works for HBO, so pulling up the chart...

http://adage.com/images/random/mediafamilytree07.pdf

... we see that he's shilling for the interests of Ted Turner, and Ted's pro-eugenics, Rockefeller-loving pals.

My main problem foreigners doing commentary on American politics is that it gives right wingers another reason to just brush them off. The right always dismissed the Daily Show as just a biased liberal comedy, but now they dismiss it further cause it's hosted by a South African.

I love you, meme.

You could also do something more complex and wealth-redistribution-y

You do a kick starter for x amount of money, and you forgive the debt you bought of anyone that contributed y amount or more and forgive debt to anyone that can prove economic hardship. You then collect on the remaining debt only from people who have high paying jobs. You then use that money to buy more debt and repeat the cycle until you get tired of it.

That's an interesting idea, though I'm not sure it could work. Maybe it can, but I worry it's not possible to specify whose debt you're buying. My understanding--albeit not well informed--is that debt is bundled together and sold and it's not clear to me you can breakup bundles or buy debt a la carte. If you could, then I think your idea would work.

Another worry is that by trying to raise money only from those in debt, one significantly limits the donor pool. It seems a virtue to allow donors to be debt free or relatively debt free so their dollars can contribute to reducing or ending the debt of others. Those not in debt may be capable of donating more than those in debt.

That plan is based on you not knowing whose debt you're buying, and I assumed there will be people in each cycle who have paid in but whose debt you didn't buy during the first cycle, and so the cycle is repeated until all contributors' debts are bought and forgiven.

And not like you have to (or even can?) restrict who gives to the kick starter. My commie idea just takes into consideration that the debt you've bought may contain both desperately poor people that cant repay their debt and also rich brats who financed a 6 year party at Arizona State before moving on to their parents hedge fund firm.

I don't carry a debt, but I'd give to that kickstarter. It's a neat idea.

I could have sworn there was an organization doing something kind of similar to that a few years back, around the time that it became clear that the latest bailout wasn't going to do anything for the people who were actually hurt by the 2008 crash.

Also I like the idea but I think the whole "proof of hardship" and only forgiving debt of people who donated isn't necessary, beyond creating a PR friendly veneer of "fairness."

Just forgive it all, it's better to forgive the debt of a small minority who don't need it than to further burden the majority who do. Same reason (among many) I strongly support unconditional, universal basic income.