Your video, The Check In: Puerto Rico's Hurricane Maria Recovery, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Puerto Rico is still a disaster and the Virgin Islands too

Tiny company with ties to the Trump administration receives $300 million contract to restore power to Peurto Rico.

Yeahhh sure the swamp is draining...

Keep on showing your hypocrisy and lack of morals by supporting the biggest liar and scumbag to ever hold office.

Your video, Pence, NFL, Trump vs. Bob Corker, Puerto Rico: A Closer Look, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Your video, Trump's Puerto Rico Visit and The Gun Debate: A Closer Look, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I don't need to properly debunk that to know it's some neocon bullshit.

I've read reports (and google/wiki confirms) that we had twice the boots on the ground in Haiti in <2 days after their earthquake than we do today in Puerto Rico after 12 days, and Haitians aren't Americans. Please explain how it's so much harder to get aid to Puerto Rico with warning the disaster was coming days ahead of time.
I'm not at all sure about your claims about the mayor of San Juan, but even if what you say were true, blaming the mayor, as if FEMA is unaware of the urgent need without her properly filed and formatted request made in person at their headquarters, for the complete failure of FEMA to distribute supplies to citizens on the whole island is ridiculous , imo. For days that headquarters was unreachable....everywhere was, many places still are today. She's certainly made multiple requests both private and public since the storm, as have other mayors that could...many still can't. I guess they're SOL for disaster relief until they get it together, right? *facepalm

Birthday salutations aegisarts. Hopefully all is well with you. My heart and thoughts are with all of Puerto Rico and its citizens.

Sadly they've all been dubbed. It's a shame, I was in love with the Puerto Rico spokeslady. But how can I love two women at once?

I'm confused.... who are the white people you're talking about?

Are you saying that white americans shouldn't feel bad that their country is fucking over one of it's own territories?

Or are you classing the latino people of Puerto Rico as whingy white people who should STFU about being fucked over?

Either way, it doesn't make much sense.

@MilkmanDan, as it happens, there was a referendum a few weeks ago and "become a state" won by 97%. This followed on from a 2012 referendum.

I googled and looked at a few sites like
http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/delegate-count-tracker

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-delegate-tracker/
both of which said 913 left to win.
You're missing DC, Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. Also, I guess my numbers included super delegates in those remaining states. I couldn't find anywhere that listed what's left to win without the super delegates included, where did you find them?

A friend of mine is a PhD student in Astronomy and he sometimes observes at Arecibo in Puerto Rico (a single radio telescope). And his collaboration will generate so much data that it's faster and cheaper to send by mail on external hard drives than through any sort of network!

Other than Yugoslavia and Czechslovakia there is the split of Sudan, name changes for Benin/Dahomey, Myanmar/Burma. Many are included as countries that are in fact possessions of other countries. (Puerto Rico, Guam, Bermuda, French Guiana). The Caribean is pointed to as a country but the actual countries of the region are left out mostly (Dominica, St. Kitts & Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Antigua & Barbuda etc). Like I said in my comment I'm sure this wasn't intended to be an absolutely accurate listing even for 1995 and things were included to make the song work. Gaum is rhymed with San Juan and neither one is a country. What can I say, I'm a trivia player whose strong suit is Geography. And don't get me started on places like South Ossetia, Nagorno Karabakh, Nakhchivan, Transnistria. People can't even agree on how to spell them let alone whether they qualify as independent countries. And I shouldn't forget Somalia, Somaliland and Puntland.

People would say "Portugal.. isn't that right next to Cuba? "

"Puerto Rico. Brazil. Mexico.. it's all the same really, tho. Eh?"

*wink nudge

My arguments were only about what the argument of legal rights, nothing else. I actually have three friends in Guam and I feel I'm more educated about the situation there than most Americans on the mainland. So thank you for acknowledging the soundness of my arguments, and keep in mind that I wasn't touching the socio-economic aspects of the situation, just John Oliver's misguided presentation of the facts.

Personally I'd love to see PR and Guam join. As for "why"... there are two main camps that I think might be right.

1)They honestly don't care. This mixes somewhat with the "they prefer the benefits of living in a Territory over what they'd gain by becoming a state." For example, if you live in PR and all of your income is made within the bounds of PR, then you don't have to pay US Federal Income Taxes. To me that doesn't really seem like a big deal. I think the people in this group would lean towards statehood if they weren't given the option to remain a territory (i.e. statehood or independence only).

2)They seem the fact that the US is still there as a remnant of military imperialism and they don't want to reward the US. In 1899 Samoa was carved up between Germany and the US during the stupid Kaiser's chest-pounding Imperialism phase that led up to WW1. Puerto Rico and Guam were both taken from the Spanish in the Spanish-American war. Cuba and the Philippines were as well, and those two chose independence and are now independent nations (Cuba was a special situation). The Virgin Islands were bought from Denmark during WW1 and the Marianas were taken from Japan during WW2. So... maybe these places feel like they aren't fully American. But honestly, I think that (with a possible exception of a large portion of Puerto Rico) this isn't the case. Or maybe they simply don't think they'd be an economically viable nation if they left. Look to Nauru as a great example of how fragile a small island's economy can be.

Puerto Rico had a really weird vote in 2012 that seemed to indicate statehood... but the ballot was horribly illegal (you can't have multiple, dependent questions of differing types on the same ballot)... so we'll have to wait til they redo it again with competence to see if they really mean it.

Add to all of this the comfort of the status quo. There's a certain philosophy of finding the sucky stuff that you're used to more palatable than the unknown.

But honestly... I don't know.

While I find it entertaining and hilarious, this is simply horrible strawmanning. The US has one of the simplest systems of inclusion of any major nation. He either is not understanding, or he's simply being a demagogue about it.

It's really, really simple.

Want full rights? Then join permanently. Become a state. It's literally the exact same thing that Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan, Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Oregon, Kansas, Nevada, Nebraska, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii did.

Guam, the Marianas, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands have the EXACT SAME OPTIONS as those states listed above had when those states were territories.

Samoa is different because they don't meet the minimum population requirement (60K) to be bumped up to qualify for statehood.

They're pretty close tho.

But yeah... it has nothing to do with race or bigotry or anything like that. If John Oliver can't understand that simple system, then how does he explain the different rights of citizens in the British Overseas Territories vs the British Crown Dependencies, or how Wales and Scotland are sort of countries and sort of not countries.

I'm assuming he can understand the wonky UK system, and if that's so, he should easily understand the simple US system (want full rights, vote to join permanently).

Just last year, there was a movement in Guam to call for a vote of statehood. Basically a glorified (but meaningful) petition. They didn't get the required % of people wanting to vote, so, in essence, Guam doesn't even care enough to vote for statehood.

They have every right that every other territory has had in terms of what category they fall under.

Basically, just look at states as permanent (and thusly more rights as well as more responsibilities) and territories as temporary until they decide what they want to be. Or territories can stay in limbo forever.

Guam, PR, and the rest can go the route of Hawaii (okay, that was naked imperialism but whatever) or the route of Cuba and the Philippines... or just stay how they are.