Huge Crash Course fan. I'm actually a policy advisor for a Member in the House, and these are great. If people actually paid attention to more of these sorts of details - understood how things work - maybe they would get up off their duffs and vote instead of kvetching all the time about how everybody's a liar and nothing ever gets done. Spoiler Alert: nothing gets done because you don't vote. Yes. You. YOU. The person reading this comment. There's a 66.1% chance that you're the person I'm cheesed at. Go vote. Right now. I don't care it's the middle of March. Go vote for something. Do it now.
see I agree with you, but I don't like his other voices their either too raspy or too high pitched, I wish he would just pick a character and they would change his voice digitally to make it more, not that. It should not be hard considering he has the only noise on the tape and it's most likely in his best interest as the strain is going to strain his voice which could result him needing to take time off for recovery.
whichever-god you-prefer That's only true if "con" is taken as short for "contra"; in "congress" however, it's in the sense of "with" (a variant of "cum") and its opposite is "sin" (short for "sine"), although we don't have "singress" in English.
They also wouldn't pass an oxygen bill if they were all slowly suffocating from lack of oxygen. They'd use whatever oxygen remains in their bodies to debate about who used up all of the air.
In a sense Pres. Frank Underwood's America Works Project is a good project, but I can't support the way he appropriated the funds of FEMA for funding it. It would be great to have such a project in real life.
Yeah....I have to apologize that our gov't is a little complicated. Haven't watched it yet but I hear it's really good. So good in fact that it's apparently the most popular American TV show in China right now. Da fuq? But I wish we could've watched some of it in AP U.S Gov't last semester.
Speaking as a native Upstate New Yorker, it is so much different from NYC and Long Island, it might as well be a different state altogether. And yes, there are a lot of us up here.
the speaker of the house is 3rd in the order of precedence, but I have a hard time accepting that the vice president has more power than the speaker. The speaker clearly is the 2nd most powerful person in the country. Speakers can: -basically choose who leads congressional house committees. -heavily influence allocation funds to individual projects (pork barrel spending) -Kill bills they dont like in committee. -control the amount of time proponents or detractors of a bill have to argue their points on the floor of the house -determines which legislation is assigned to each committee -which legislation reaches the House floor for a vote -determines the House legislative agenda (eg. the GOP continuously tries to kill Obamacare) -In addition all speakers have the normal powers of a house member. Historically vice presidents have often been almost powerless. Also the speaker is usually more powerful than the senate majority leader, as senators are typically harder to control. Speakers are also 2nd in the line of succession. Eg. if the president dies the vice president becomes president, and if he dies, the speaker becomes president.
***** Only if they die before they get Athens chance to appoint a new Vice President. Fun fact: President Ford was never elected. Nixon's VP resigned, Nixon appointed Ford in his place, and then Nixon resigned, making Ford President.
Uhh maybe kill other counties that don't have the world bank and give permission to counties to sell the guns and weapons of mass destruction that America gives them *cough cough* ISIS *cough
the actual rules of politics: only talk about things that make you look good, if you must talk about failures, make sure to point out that it was everyone elses fault except yours.
It's not lying when your the mayor/POTUS/V-P/congressman, uxserdvghbjl. It's politics. You do it to protect the people you love from realizing their municipality/county/electoral district/state/statistical region/country is a center for supernatural disaster and remain calm. What are they supposed to do?! Let the people riot?! That didn't work out so well for United PROVINCES of America!
No. One guy said something like this: The first rule of economics is scarcity. There are never enough resources for everyone. The first rule of politics is to ignore the first rule of economics.
I'm super late to this course, but the learning I'm experiencing!!!! So informative. Of course, being Australian, I probably should focus on our government, but the more I watch this course, the more I realise how good Australia's political system is. Great course!
Canada has little gerrymandering and yet 39.5% of the vote controlled over half of the federal parliament's lower house (with the senate doing not much to try to block anything), thanks to the first past the post system. I like score-runoff voting the most.
2 corrections: the speaker is typically the leader of the majority party (although that technically doesn't need to be the case - the House could elect a member of the minority party or even someone who isn't a member of congress to be the speaker), followed by the majority leader, followed by the majority whip. The video makes it seem like the whip follows the speaker and is followed by the majority leader. Second, the democrats controlled congress and the presidency from 2009-2010, not 2008-2009.
Orrin Hatch is actually the Senate President pro tempore. Patrick Leahy was the previous President pro tempore, but is the current president pro tempore EMERITUS. If you've seen Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to congress, you can see that Orrin Hatch is sitting by John Boehner the whole time.
Nah, Vice president of the United States is also president of the Senate, which would be Joe Biden. President PRO TEMPORE, however, is completely different. His role is mostly ceremonial.
Zeke Aeloen You Canadians like to say you beat us in the War of 1812, but the only country I can think we declared war on was the UK. We were angry at them for capturing our trade ships and forcing their crew to join the Royal Navy. Canada was kind of a side effect. I don't get why the Canadian colonies didn't join the US against Britain in 1776. Like, only 40 years earlier they had stolen you from the French, and as I understood it the French population didn't like living under British rule.
William Stockhecker Because Jesus. Or more specifically the Catholic church saying that fighting with the 'Murricans would lose them favour with said Jesus and the french were Catholic
The "first-term congressman from Upstate New York" to whom Wheezy is referring is actually a woman: Elise Stefanik (and by "upstate," I mean that her district is on the Canadian border).
"If you're lucky, you live in a district represented by a member of leadership." I live in a district represented by Darrel Issa. Somehow I do not feel so lucky.
the Whip and the Leader supports the votes in each house. in the Senate it is Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell for the Party Leaders and Durbin and Cornyn are the Whips down in the House we have John Bahnor who is the Speaker and Cruz and Polosi who are the Whips.
Actually, divided government has more history of getting things done, usually by forcing compromise to pass bills with bipartisan support. Thanks to the abuse of the filibuster in the Senate, it effectively takes a 3/5 majority to get anything done. Since neither political party can seem to hold such a majority in Senate for the entire 2 years of a term, this renders the perceived power of unified government completely mute.
Divided government has been useful, but is limited by the recently much stronger holds on political whipping. The two party system and especially the first past the post system makes it near impossible to do anything without trying to sweep aside anything the other party does. A proportional parliament does tend to so more, but even then, political partyism is a real issue.
Thutil but what you don't realize is that hank clone is a genetically modified version of Craig that looks like Hank, and Hank found Craig's clone machine plans, however that cloning machine only worked for Craig, which is why he doesn't use it anymore.
So let me get this strait: The reason why congress has not able to get anything done recently is because the Republicans are split between the traditional Republicans and new Tea Party Republicans while in charge of the house and senate. So does that mean if the were to Republicans work efficiently together again or if the Democrats take over, Congress could potentially be more efficient than it is now?
I'm from upstate New York and not many people are here the only really exciting thing that has happened was the filming of behind the pines or whatever that movie was called
Headrock I don't like it much either, not because I lack an understanding, but because he's going EVERYWHERE and providing little background. The last episode was about Federalists vs. Antifederalists, I believe, and he literally went from there to present day politics. I'm sorry, but he just skipped a TON of political policies and ideas that grew and helped fundamentally create our modern-day politics.
Stop complaining about Congress "not getting much done." A good Congress shouldn't be judged on how may law it passes, but on the outcome of the laws. We have way too many laws already and thery're blowing up the debt. It's time to start repealing laws like the ones that give corporate welfare to the millionaire owners of farm & green energy firms & abolishing depts like the energy, commerce, & ed. We need less govt and more freedom.
ok ok i tried to ignore your comment and move on , but i just couldn't when i read the last line. It is lack of regulation and government interference that make these assholes take advantage of the people. However lately they have been getting in bed with these corporate pigs for campaign money so there goes that safety. As to your whole shouldnt be judged on how many laws it passes, are you serious do you know how many insignificant idiotic laws are passed every day, or better yet bills -.-, the reason people are pissed is due to the forced shutdowns due to lack of compromise leading to thousands of workers being laid of. You sound like a highschooler learning politics and if thats the case educate yourself a little more.
Naveen Yeah, I'm sorry but I have to agree with the previous commenter. For one, your last line is very idiotic. So you'd somehow prefer trying to not find an alternative source other than oil for EVERYTHING we own to run on? I hope that you are aware that multiple environmentalists have estimated that at the rate the human race is growing and just using the amount of vehicles humans purchase every year that are powered by fossil fuels, we are estimated to run out of oil within the next 30 years, and that is taking away the tons of other factors that oil is used for, such as heat in one's house. So yeah, your statement about how the government should not at least attempt to become more involved in environmental research is downright ridiculous and, ultimately, idiotic if you are a human being with some common sense. Not to mention the fact that the U.S. government spends very little on alternative energy research and more on defense and military, both of which are much more inadequate to spend on because fact of the matter is that no matter how many guns you have, when you are fighting enemies that you have funded and helped create, or even created for an original purpose of fighting your enemy (i.e. al-Qaeda), then it is money that is basically being burned. So if you are demanding reduced spending, demand it on something that is helping the general populace less. This is not to say that I hate the military, but fact is that it gets way too much spending, while virtually every point of spending that you referenced (especially alternative resource research) gets hardly anything.
True, but many of the things that plague government also plague the companies that we also depend on in order to get even basic services, and the states and locality governments. Even the bureaucracy can be influenced by systems similar. Packing the boards of companies, proxy votes for shareholders, being able to pledge rewards to loyalists, it makes companies actually function much like the Soviet Union internally, with a rigged election system.
Craig, and all of the staff at crash course: I have a great idea. You guys should make an eagle fund like the pork chop party fund like on mental floss. Every time Craig punches the eagle, he needs to add $0.25 to the fund. And you guys can donate that money to save threatened eagle species.
I'm from Upstate New York; the real Upstate New York, you know, the area above Albany. Originally from a small town along the international border! And no, there is not much there and not a large population, but it is there! :)
One wonders, as more people (like myself) drop their TV subscriptions, how political campaigning will change. I mean, how do you influence what people think when they're the ones largely in control of the content they consume?
Question about the minority whip and leader. If the United States were to have three or more parties. Would both smaller parties have a whip and leader, or would only the larger of the not in power parties.
