Looks like a long version of this
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Star-Wars-animated

(not a dupe, longer and his different music)

Why is it that while TIE Fighter pilots are relatively sympathetic, Imperial officers are, without exception, douchebags?

Needs Imperial March. *related=http://videosift.com/video/Spaceballs-Intro-sequence-Spaceball-One

These will sell well once the new film rolls out. I mean, they'd sell well right now but I bet there'll be an official, branded release of drones with this Imperial Speeder get-up on them. They'll sell real well.

Your video, Star Wars Imperial Speeder Bike Flying Toy, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Are those standard imperial inches, or drunk frat inches?

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.

Not sure about the military but we don't use km in normal life in the UK. In theory we're decimalised, and we use decimal currency and weights and volumes, for the most part. We do still measure our body weight in lbs, our height in feet and inches and the speed of our cars in mph. Distance on the road is in miles too, and gas mileage is mpg. Milk is sold in pints, as is beer. Timber is in inch dimensions (2x4 and so on) and usually in 8ft lengths. If it's sold in decimal measures it's a decimalised imperial measure, so instead of buying an 4 board you'll get a 2440mm x 1220mm.

We do use centigrade rather than fahrenheit. And fizzy drinks are sold by the litre. Come to think about it I really don't know why people think we're decimalised!

So basically, in a completely new and not at all replicated in every other part of the world way......

it's the fault of British imperialism.

Who could've seen that coming?

Why are the space ships flying around in the atmosphere like there isn't any atmosphere? I know they can fly etc., through the air, but they're designed to be super maneuverable in space. Don't get me wrong, it looks cool and all, but that's why they didn't fly X-Wings at the Imperial Walkers in Episode V...

No, no, I understand perfectly
For some reason the bad guys do often seem to rate higher in the style department, I've had friends who loved the outfits the Nazis had, without liking what was wearing them.
Super Star Destroyer or a Viscount class Star Defender? (Mon Cal cruisers were the equivalent of a regular Imperial Star Destroyer) The SSD looks cooler, but the Mon Cal ships gave the Imperials fits because their modular designs meant you were never totally sure what you were up against until the shit hit the fan. Shield generators were on top of the SSD's bridge, where were the shield generators on the Mon Cal ship? Could be any one of those fuckin bumps. So it's kind of a toss up. Otherwise, dragon, yes, and a fireaxe or Shelly Duvall? Well, since the fireaxe probably went up with the house I guess I'd have to go with Shelly on that one.

Ah japan... you are weird.
It's a story about an Imperial Japanese battleship that's the hero?

and a perverted robot??

So many holes in your argument.

You're cherry picking the parts of Nazism to fit your anti-religious views. You even made the argument that Russia was dogmatically atheist, which isn't a true characterization of Russia then, either.

The simple fact of the matter is racial supremacy had what was seen as extremely scientific underpinnings with a foundation of Darwin, which then was applied to Social Darwinism, etc.

You had Nazi scientists who were going around the world literally measuring people's skulls, with the assumption that Germans had bigger brain pans, and that must explain why they're the master race.

Those ideas sure as hell weren't religious.

The simple fact of the matter is that there were secular and religious arguments against Nazism, as there also were secular and religious arguments in favor of it at the time.

It's very difficult to argue that the evil of Nazi Germany rose due to the level of dogmatic behavior within Germany. Prior to Hitler's rise, Germany was considered a Western European modernized, industrialized country, and for the time well educated, as was France and Britain. It was far more like Britain and France than it was to Russia.

An even better counterargument - who was the most modernized, secular, educated people in Southeast Asia, and therefore should have been the least likely to instigate war according to your logic? Japan, yet they became an imperial, aggressive power.

The rise of Nazi Germany is something I studied quite a bit of, and boiling it down to how dogmatic the people were is not only overly simplistic, it's not remotely historically accurate. It completely factors out the god awful mistake the Treaty of Versailles from WWI was, the common particular disdain for Jews at the time (some due to religious conflict, for Nazis it was more about race), the dependency of Germany on US loans, which dried up when the Great Depression began, the scientific trends in thought at the time, etc.

Those all converged.

And the reality is that "Muslim" countries are more likely to subject women to numerous horrors simply because more Muslim countries have not modernized their economies yet. Hey, just like every other religion. The reason we treat women well is we've had an industrialized economy far longer, and even then, the speed of it was often circumstantial. Women's rights in the US took a quantum leap forward because of women being needed for labor in WWII (same reason the Civil Rights Movement started so relatively soon after WWII as well).

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Imperial walkers, surely the most impractical military vehicles ever made.