News Satire Roundup: March 17th

Sunday, March 17

·        Recap of the Week – The House passes bill that could ban TikTok, friction in the GOP

o   I loved John’s throwaway reference to the Kate Middleton rumors, simply saying, “A certain someone’s Adobe free trial expired in a pretty public manner.”

o   John has a fabulous response to Nancy Pelosi’s bizarre “tic-tac-toe” speech in Congress before the TikTok vote – “I’m curious, is it a rule that to be in Congress, you have to be one of the weirdest motherfuckers to ever live?”

o   Rep. Ken Buck has announced his resignation, talking about how other colleagues agree that this past session has been the worst in Congress for the last 40 to 50 years – “That is not great. For one thing, the last 40 to 50 years included 9/11 and January 6^th, two moments in American history so bad they ruined their dates entirely.”

o   Last year, Congress only passed 27 bills – Seriously, what?!?

o   Planned attendance is low for an upcoming GOP congressional retreat, with one member telling a reporter, “I’d rather sit down with Hannibal Lector and eat my own liver.”

·        And Now This – Coming Up on Inside Edition

o   These are always entertaining – Gems included, “What happened to Nicole Kidman’s knee?”, “Dude, where’s your pants?”, and, “Put a ring on it…if you dare!”

·        Main Story – Student loans

o   Americans current student loan debt amounts to $1.73 trillion – “That’s higher than the GDP of Australia, one of the countries you know.”

o   We checked in with Fox News and GOP politicians sneering at the very notion of student loan forgiveness – “Also, for the record, Jesse Watters went to a private liberal arts college in Connecticut, which shouldn’t really be surprising. That is the most Connecticut Bitch face I have ever seen. Season 5 Rory Gilmore would’ve wrecked her whole life for him.”

o   We looked into different factors contributing to how the whole problem got so out of control. One reason was states consistently cutting funding to education since the 2008 recession – After listening to one politician describe the trade-off his state has accepted, John said, “Yeah, we’re robbing our children to pay for our budget. On one hand, I guess he’s being honest there, but that’s still one of the worst things I’ve seen come out of Louisiana.”

o   Excellent point – “The thing is, even as tuition climbed, students didn’t stop applying. They just kept borrowing as much as they could. So the mere existence of the student loan industry has ended up contributing to ‘a vicious cycle of rising tuition and higher debt loads.’”

o   We watched some clips of people talking about how predatory it was to push so much debt on them when they were only 18 – “One borrower said she barely recognized her own ‘childlike handwriting’ on the forms that committed her to decades of debt.”

o   Another factor in the crisis was funneling more students into college through more jobs requiring degrees, whether they were actually necessary or not – “Requiring a degree for a job that can be done without one makes no sense at all.”

o   One of the major existing loan forgiveness programs in the U.S. forgives debt after a set number of years of “national service,” such as military service or working in public education – However, thanks to loopholes and mismanagement, this program a 99% denial rate!

o   Meanwhile, only 32 people have had their loans forgiven under a different income-based program – “Not 32%, 32 people! This program has only worked for a single season of bachelor contestants.”

o   In short, “We’ve set up a system where we’ve created a barrier to entry for many jobs that can only be passed by taking on some of the most debilitating loans with the least protections administered by some of the shittiest companies on Earth.”

o   John had this excellent response to a GOP congressman’s “you borrow something, you pay it back—simple as that!” attitude, especially since that congressman had over $1 million forgiven from a PPP loan early in the pandemic – “That is the thing here. For all the populist speechifying that essentially boils down to, ‘How dare you spend money on something that benefits somebody who is not me?’, the government spends money all the time on all sorts of things to benefit select individuals because we think there is a net societal benefit.”

·        And Now This – “Coming Up on Inside Edition: Just Taylor Swift Stories”

o   My favorites here were, “Trump’s disciples declare a holy war on Taylor Swift,” “The little girl swept off her feet to meet Taylor Swift, by her boyfriend’s shirtless brother,” “Partying in the club, with Mom and Dad???”