@bobknight33 --

I continue to agree with you on a lot of what you're saying (but not all).

Trump and Sanders are both riding a wave of frustration in the people, as you say. Their current popularity, even if both only go downhill from here, has already partially sent that message to both parties. I don't think Trump would make a good president, but if he wins the election I think that really hammering home that message of frustration could be a significant positive outcome. Same goes for some hypothetical scenario resulting in Sanders getting elected, although I personally feel quite positive about the other stuff that I think Sanders would bring to the table, unlike how I feel about Trump.

If there's one area where I think the government could stand to get *bigger*, it's in oversight, evaluation, and accountability. Being under the microscope and heavily scrutinized perhaps isn't a recipe for optimal efficiency, but I think we desperately need more of it in government AND the private sector.

Early in my lifetime, a large corporation that had a relatively benign monopoly by today's standards was considered a big enough deal for the government to step in and break it up. AT&T / Bell got split into the "Baby Bells". Corporations now are vast juggernauts compared to that, but since they make gigantic profits I guess we collectively see them as bastions of Capitalism. But I think that in reality they are doing much more harm to Capitalism with their monopolies, collusion, and corruption.

I think Sanders is the candidate most likely to even *try* to do something to roll back that shift, and bring back oversight and accountability to government. Hillary sure as hell wouldn't do it. And I don't think Trump would either -- he is the literal face of a gigantic Corporation himself, after all.

I had high hopes for Obama. He didn't live up to them, but to be fair I think the lion's share of that is on the Legislative branch. That taught me to be careful about putting much of any stock into Presidential campaign promises, particularly about things outside the scope of what the Executive branch can actually do.

I think Trump and Clinton both put *themselves* first, ahead of all else. I don't think Clinton gives a flying fuck about any of us plebs, beyond attempting to pander to large demographic blocks of us just enough to secure our votes. Maybe Trump cares more for Joe Average than Clinton, but only incidentally -- as a Capitalist he needs Joe Averages to buy his products, and buy into his image.

I don't get the same read from Sanders. I think he actually does give a shit. A lot of his agenda would require a cooperative Legislature, which he wouldn't get -- just like Obama. So in terms of changing the status quo, perhaps his biggest impact would simply be in sending the establishment a loud and clear message that we are no longer content with business as usual in Washington. A message very similar to what electing Trump would send.

It would/ will take me some soul searching, but assuming that Hillary gets the Democrat nomination over Sanders, a desire to send that message might be enough to get me to vote for Trump. But voting for a reasonably tolerable option from a minor party might serve that end just as well. Say Jesse Ventura running as a Libertarian, or Jill Stein from the Green Party. Stein has the very distinct advantage (from my perspective) of being the only current candidate who has said that she would grant a Presidential pardon to Ed Snowden (although Ventura would too, IF he runs). Pardons are one of the few things that a President can actually *do* unilaterally -- and that makes that a pretty damn good "single issue" prompt for my vote, in my opinion.

I'd eat you and your baby in a heart beat if it meant survival for me. But the fact is almost nobody on this planet is currently in that situation, probably never will, and the more people that become vegan, the less likely that is to happen as well.

So yes, people that have made a conscious decision to not do cruel things while they are unnecessary are superior. Just like in the way you don't go around murdering people for shoes right now, even though in the apocalypse you would, makes you a superior person compared with some thug that does that now. You would probably steal food from people that need it, but you aren't doing that now, so you're definitely superior to people that do steal unnecessarily now too. But you don't see anyone telling people who don't steal to get off their high horses.....

There is no humor because the situation is so serious, not because it's puncturing a balloon of superiority. Or do you think that people who opposed concentration camps where simply doing so to feel superior too?
The other thing that makes it totally not funny is because I've heard this ignorant and false stereotype stuff so many times it makes my eyes roll. Vegans are as a diverse group of people as can possibly be, with the only thing in common is their compassion for animals, and care of the environment.

I'm also not a lion or a chimp, I don't copy their other behaviors like throwing poo or licking my own ass, so I don't see why I'd copy their carnivorous behavior either. It's a good thing I have a frontal lobe and can use reason to make decisions based on my understanding of the consequences.

Also while I would eat meat for survival, I would not be eating it for the taste. It sounds to me like you're under the impression that vegans are like ex-heroin addicts, always being tempted by that next hit. It's not like that all, taste buds adjust dramatically over time, in fact they adjust second to second - eat an apple after a swig of soft drink. It'll taste sour. Yet do it before, and the apple is sweet. I honestly find the thought of meat revolting now, just like you would if you had to eat something like a dog or rat. I feel the same way about milk the way you do about drinking human breast milk. I'm not just saying this to be dramatic or superior, I'm saying it to give you an example how easily your taste buds are influenced.

@ahimsa, @transmorpher

You might as well cry out against nature, because if you think humans are barbarous and cruel, nature owns us. Watch a video of a pack of lions eating a wildebeest alive sometime. I don't think they anesthetize it, pretty sure the animal thinks being eaten alive is torture, and I think it qualifies as murderous. This goes on daily, right this minute in fact, and the reason it happens is because there is a portion of the lion's instinct that is designed to like meat.

Chimpanzees will eat meat, sometimes going out of their way to find it and pull it apart alive. They don't need to biologically, but they are coded to.

Vegans avoid meat because humans have managed to reach a point of civilized society which allows us to have lofty moral opinions. I guarantee you however, that if society broke down and you couldn't get your hands on processed food with that special hint of paprika, you would have your hands out for a venison steak or pork hindquarters.

Therein lies the hypocrisy that annoys most of the non-vegans, you guys DO have this faint whiff of "I am superior to you because I don't participate in murder" when the fact is that you would eat meat if you had to. You don't see humor in being lightly made fun of, because it punctures your balloon of superiority.

In any case, the point of this entire thing is that if you choose to be vegan, awesome! Laugh a little if people poke fun at you and don't always try to sound like a stuck up ass if they don't agree with your choices. I think you'll find that more people will quit harboring dislike of you. Quit treating your personal dietary choice as a religion and don't try to convert people to it. If they see you living your life as a vegan and ask about it, then you explain it to them. Don't huff and puff while people eat meat around you and act like it is your job to convert them to the 'true way'. Life will be a lot simpler for you!

I agree with the general idea -- we should continue to spend, and spend MORE, on getting lead out of the environment (especially in homes and public utilities like water, etc.).

But I do have a semi-minor nit to pick. Oliver mocked the lead industry shill guy from the '70s for suggesting that better general health across the population at the time was because "we must (have been) doing something right", and therefore lead paint must not be dangerous. Yet one of his own major argument points comes from referencing a "study" that shows that every dollar invested in lead abatement ends up returning 17+ times that much in societal gain due to lower crime rates, lower medical bills, etc.

That's a problem because BOTH of those arguments are making a correlation equals causation error. The lead industry shill was wrong -- general population health was higher in the '70s than ever before because of advances in medicine. Lead was holding it back -- but to be fair, only to a tiny degree compared to the gains made in general health care.

I'd argue Oliver's cited study is equally wrong (or at least misleading) -- OK, crime may be lower, but I seriously doubt that spending more on removing lead contributes to that much at all. And total costs of health care spent on caring for people with lead poisoning are almost certainly lower now than they have been previously, but the lion's share of that (legitimate) financial gain undoubtedly came from banning lead paint and then leaded gasoline -- as seen in Oliver's graph of "average blood lead levels of children aged 1 to 5" which dropped incredibly fast between 1980 and 1990, and then much more slowly since then.

So any financial return on further investment in getting rid of lead is very very unlikely to live up to the same rate that it did in the 80s. I doubt that the study accounted for that, if it is also including tenuous things like crime rate to trump up its numbers...

Oliver is right to later suggest that "not poisoning children" is a better argument for getting rid of lead than "17 times financial return on money invested into lead removal". Just stick with the poisoning argument instead of the dubious correlation vs causation study.

The concept of veganism is to reduce unnecessary suffering and exploitation, no more no less. A lot of vegans don't even understand that concept. Letting nature take it's course, is not the vegan concept. If a lion jumped out and started mauling you I'd still try to save you (assuming I wasn't running way LOL), but of course I'd try to do it in a way that did as little harm to the lion as possible with weighing in the speed at which I'd have to act in order to have the least harm done to you by the lion as well.

It's not a black and white rule book, rather it's a philosophical and ethical balancing act that takes in a lot of considerations. I hope no vegans would be against the guinea worm going extinct. As far as I know (I don't know much about it) is that won't affect any other eco system if it goes extinct. It's not exactly a sentient being either. So removing it from existence as far as we are able to tell will do more good than bad. It will in that case cause less suffering.

Of course some nut job from PETA might disagree with me.

Even if the lamb has the best treatment in the world, to eat it, it has to be killed as an infant, it's only months old.

I'm not blaming anyone, I was just as oblivious as anyone else to all of this for most of my life, and that's why I like to point it out these days, and perhaps help someone just like the younger me to identify the inconsistencies in the thought (or lack of thought) process. It takes a lot of cognitive dissonance to see the beauty of a young deer and feel obligated to save her life one minute, and next minute eat something just as young and precious without even a single neuron firing about what had to happen to the lamb in order for it to end up on a plate.

People will stop for ducks crossing a round, and then go through a fried chicken drive through. People will spend 1/2 their lunch break admiring pictures of kittens, but eat a lamb or veal (and when you compare a lamb to a kitten they look very similar and just as cute).

If that younger me was reading this, I know I'd be getting angry and frustrated at this comment, ready to throw a barrage of counter arguments such as "lions eat animals". But that is only a good thing, that frustration, anger and annoyance is the logical side your brain fighting tradition and habit side. It's a good thing if it's causing you frustration, because it means you do have a logical side at least and even perhaps on a subconscious level the brain is trying to work out the inconsistencies


And of course sheep are very much victims of factory farming these day : http://www.animalsaustralia.org/media/press_releases.php?release=150

You're right, they often get either just the flavor or just the texture, but not often both at the same when it comes to mock foods. Although it seems like every other week a new company is coming up with products that get closer and closer to real thing. Gardein "chicken" tenders for example. I actually find they taste better than the real ones(yeah I didn't think it was possible for chicken to taste any better either!) And hey no cholesterol

I don't see it as a sacrifice, not when I'm the one reaping all of the benefits. The knowledge that I haven't doomed a sweet piggy like the one in the video to stand in a 2x3 foot cage until it collapses is more satisfying than the flavor of the best bacon . Not to mention health benefits, environmental (and some asshat farmer gets less money too is pretty satisfying too haha)

Lions in a cage most certainly wouldn't eat you. They would attack you and kill you out of fear and protection of their territory, perhaps even out of the fun of it, being feline. Assuming they were well fed of course which most animals in captivity are. But they would not bother wasting the energy to eat you when they are fed much tastier and healthier food.
There are also plenty of documented cases were a lions maternal instincts take over and they protect an infant animal. such as this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRUXU172vGg (there is a similar few where leopards save monkeys by returning them to trees etc)
It goes to show that even carnivores with strong killer instincts are able to see compassion, and that they only kill out of necessity to survive. When survival isn't factor anymore the rules are completely different.

Please allow me to disagree on all points.....

1) Humans are absolutely animals. Some may have the mentality of vegetables or minerals, but they are still animals.

2)Instinct can be difficult to ignore, and dangerous to ignore as well. Instincts developed because they helped our ancestors survive better than those who did not possess them. Those that had less developed instincts, didn't have them at all, or ignored them died off.

3)Not all people have a conscience (or lack an ability to experience empathy...essentially the same thing), sociopaths and psychopaths for instance usually lack one at all, and many of those that DO have one consistently and intentionally ignore it.

4)I don't believe there have been psychological experiments on lions to see if they really experience empathy or have a 'conscience' or not...and I'm not at all sure what one would look like. Simply stating that other animals don't have empathy does not make it so.
For example, people have said for eons that dogs don't have emotions, but that's simply wrong, and nothing more than a self serving excuse to abuse them and ignore their needs. Actual study and brain scans have proven they DO have the same type of reactions in their brains that humans do to emotional stimuli, conclusively proving the claims that they don't have emotions false...lions could be the same, simply unstudied rather than emotionless/lacking empathy.

But humans are not animals. You can act out of your own free will and not merely on instict. That is why you have a conscience (even if you ignore or avoid acknowledging it) and the lions don't.

(In the back of my head the Dude says "Well, that's, like, your opinion, man!")

Sorry, I've tasted vegetarian bacon and it simply doesn't measure up. Even the seitan fake bacon, which is close, lacks the proper crispness and flavor.

I fully support anyone's choice to make the sacrifice to their lifestyle by skipping animal products, but even the best fake meat alternatives do not completely measure up to the real ones in taste and texture.

Everything dies and, outside of the 'civilized' food chain, most every creature dies from old age or by being eaten (sometimes while still alive). If I were to go into a cage full of lions, I don't think they would have a crisis of conscience over my level of sentience in deciding whether or not to eat me.

Man read the title on the YT video too fast and saw, "Horny Island Sea Lions"

Your video, Playful Sea Lions, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

You answered your own question.
For one thing, he IS responsible for GBJr by deciding that, somehow, counting the votes in Florida endangered the election and appointing Bush...to over simplify the situation. True enough, he did have 4 others agree with him, but he was well recognized as the ring leader of the right wing of the court, so he rightly gets the lion's share of blame for their rulings.

That said, I for one don't HATE him as a person, but I'm not a tiny bit sad he's no longer serving on the court. His positions and rulings have been disastrous for our country in many ways, IMO.

"Ethiopians imagine their gods as black and snub-nosed; Thracians blue-eyed and red-haired. But if horses or lions had hands, or could draw and fashion works as men do, horses would draw gods shaped like horses and lions like lions, making the gods resemble themselves."

Awesome. It's amazing how close you can get to such a powerful wild animal.

In India and Africa the large game animals have learned to regard the vehicles in much the same way as they regard trees. they know they're there, they just don't bother with them in any way.

When we were in India on a tiger safari we had a very similar experience. The amazing thing was that people live and work in these forests. 100yds down the road from the situation in the video may be a party of women collecting firewood. Or one time we found a mahout looking for his elephant that had wandered off in the night!

Tigers are incredibly beautiful animals. they have a quality that sets them apart from lions and other big cats. They are so different in the wild to the animals you might see in zoos. If you've ever wanted to see what real natural beauty looks like then go and see the wild tigers, they're breathtaking.