I forgot that Nerd Prom was last night. Did anything interesting happen?
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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The media realized they will miss Obama just as much as the rest of us. Watch for his approval numbers to notch up even more.
The President was funnier than Larry Wilmore, chiefly because a) the President has great comic timing and very good writers and b) Wilmore chose to use his one shot in front of the Correspondents to rip them very hard. He often wasn’t even telling jokes, just ripping them. One of my favorite moments was when Larry told Wolf Blitzer to “ask some follow-up questions!”
His direct calling out of the feckless, dying print media giants was great as well. It hasn’t gone over well, in the room last night or in the reporting this morning, but the behavior of these people makes them prime for roasting, and Wilmore delivered.
It was more of a roast than a comedy routine, I thought. I also thought the WH correspondents deserved everything Larry threw their way.
Obama was great and funny, as he always is at these things. Not his best one, I thought. Pretty hard to beat mocking Trump with Trump in the audience, Obama doing his comedy routine while they were making the raid on Osama Bin Laden, not to mention bringing out Luther last year.
I would love to see a compilation of all 8 of Obama’s great performances at these dinners. I would even pay to see that, I think.
They’re all on YouTube, at a great price.
Thanks! They are all nicely posted together on C-SPAN, too.
http://www.c-span.org/2016-White-House-Correspondents-Association-Dinner/
I would just like one simple video of all 8 of them hanging out on my Tivo box or available for streaming through Apple TV. I guess I’m just lazy. 🙂
Also, am I the only one who gets video ads on YouTube? I just don’t have any tolerance for the video advertisements and I find myself going to youtube less and less.
Me too. If I get an ad I stop the video. If their system learns about its users over time maybe it will learn not to do that.
That’s exactly what I do, too. Any page, anywhere, that starts an autoplay video gets closed immediately.
adblock plus
Best joke by Obama:
Mt Trump may be the president who finally succeeds in closing Guantanamo. He knows a thing or two about running waterfront properties into the ground,
Double edged Bloomberg joke was funny and sharp:
Thanks Bloomie — always nice to hear our betters explain how the world works for the 99%. A shame Bloomie was too chickenshit to run himself because it would have been fun to watch Trump and Sanders eat him up.
Funny that the major European countries have the free college pony, isn’t it. True, their income taxes are higher, but the income that gets taxed is higher too. Can’t let the American peasants have what the German peasants have, can we?
European countries have free university education for those who qualify for the uni track and that track is determined when students are in high school. They don’t have it for everyone and there are few second chances i.e. if you aren’t on a uni track then there is little opportunity to get on it and have your education paid for. Also the dirty little secret is that in most of the European countries nationalism heavily influences just who gets on the track.
The other key to European tertiary education is that most Western European countries have much stronger vocational and apprenticeship programs than what we have in the US. While both Senator Sanders and Secretary Clinton mention vocational education in their plans, neither have stressed it and yet having a strong vocational education sector is an essential part of paying for a uni education for those who qualify. Without that voc-ed sector those who don’t qualify will have little opportunity.
To be clear I don’t really have an issue with a track system as long as there are opportunities for second chances i.e. if someone doesn’t qualify for a uni track they can attend community college and if they excel in the two years there then they will have their remaining uni education paid for. And as long as their opportunities for those who will never be on a uni education track.
The problem with tracks is that the pay tends to be allocated to the university track and away from the vocational track regardless of how supply and demand actually are.
The financial pressures that have prevented that preferential reallocation is what has Bernie plumping for free higher education under the illusion that college careers should pay more.
The other problem is the attitude that those on the vocational track do not and should not care about “high-class” art, music, or scholarship. The idea that vocational courses are for the “dumb” kids is one of the most pernicious in the US.
And increasingly, universities have become just another vocational track as liberal arts and general science and math requirements get left behind.
If “higher education” ultimately becomes simply teaching kids how to press the correct buttons in the correct order, it really isn’t higher education.
It’s an extremely expensive private sector self-funded jobs program.
We only have it for the rich.
Who do you think gets on the uni track? It is the students who have the resources to score well on the exams that put them on the uni track. Of course some kids are smart enough they will be on it regardless but it is the well off and frankly white in Europe who dominate the uni track.
Regarding white, while we have problems with race relations in this country it doesn’t even compare to the problems in most European countries.
That is why claiming why can’t we be like Europe without acknowledging all of the problems with the European system won’t solve a dang thing.
You don’t have to be rich to score well.
European countries has very different high schools. I really only know about Sweden, where I live.
In Sweden, you now get basic qualification to university on both uni track and vocational track. This was changed 20 years ago, before that vocational high school was shorter and did not qualify you for university. But then again back then there were better (and free) possibilities to catch up what you needed for basic qualification. I think 40-50% study at university today.
I am not sure which was better. On one hand, if you really wanted to get out of school and start working the old system allowed you to do that in a shorter amount of time. On the other hand, going back to pick up courses is a high step. On the third hand, I think todays system produces more drop outs then the old one, and less chance to get back if you drop out of high school.
Really high paying jobs – finance for example – tends to demand a university degree. On the other hand there are jobs that demand vocational training – for example electrician – that pays much better then low paying jobs that demand university degree such as librarian.
OT:
STATE WORKERS ADMIT DENYING FOOD ASSISTANCE TO ELIGIBLE FAMILIES
State workers admit to denying food assistance to eligible families
Officials say they were shocked by the workers’ confessions (KTRK)
Sunday, May 01, 2016 10:52AM
ALBUQUERQUE, NM — Several state employees admitted to falsifying information on food stamp applications in an attempt to deny assistance to eligible families.
Officials in New Mexico say they were shocked to hear employees of the state’s Human Services department would work against those who needed help the most.
“This is something we’ve never heard before, but according to workers, has been going on for quite some time,” says Sovereign Hager with the New Mexico Center on Law and Poverty.
In federal court, five workers said they were pressured to falsify applications for assistance by stating families had more than $100 in assets when they had less than that or none at all.
Lawyers say those people were then wrongfully denied food assistance.
Gosh, more evidence that the States which do these most outrageous things are suffering under Executives and/or Legislatures who are controlled by members of the Republican Party.
Congratulations, Boonam!!! Forgetting about this kind of bullshit is a good sign for you.
Did anything interesting happen?
No.
You want political comedy?
Go to Sarah Bee. Or read this:
LOST IN TRUMPLANDIA
It’s his country now–we just vote in it.
BY PATRICIA LOCKWOOD
You want tragedy?
Go to a bunch of PermaGov-owned and operated media people and a slick, neoliberal Harvard lawyer jerking each other off while millions suffer from their perfidy.
Amen and good night.
AG
OT:
Citizens back to ATM status for rapacious law enforcement:
“Attorney General Loretta Lynch quietly reinstituted the Department of Justice’s Equitable Sharing Program recently, which incentivizes local authorities to more harshly prosecute cases in order to take advantage of asset forfeiture laws, allowing these local departments to confiscate personal property they believe is related to criminal activity – including cars, boats and cash – without trial or any due process beyond even suspicion, and share those seizures with federal authorities.” (It appears that the budget cuts forced the fed to cut the program, but they found some money in this year’s. Good ROI?)
“What makes this all the worse is the great reforms being undertaken on the state level. From Pennsylvania to Tennessee to Wisconsin to Wyoming and elsewhere, state activists and legislatures have taken great effort to curb these abusive practices in the last couple of years. Just last week, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed one of the best reforms along these lines – a law that will require actually charging suspects with a crime in any asset-forfeiture case.”
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-04-11/obamas-doj-sets-back-justice-with-asset-forfeiture
-program