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Trevor Noah's hot take on abortion and gun control from 2015​ (sadly) still holds up

Noah was still a new host for "The Daily Show," and knocked it out of the park with his signature wit we would all come to love.

Daily Show/Youtube

Trevor Noah as a host on 'The Daily Show'

A previous episode of "The Daily Show" addressed two hot-button issues at the same time: abortion and gun control.

It was one of the earliest tests for new host Trevor Noah, and he pretty much knocked this one out of the park. The segment began with a discussion about the pro-life movement's laser focus on making completely legal abortions really, really hard to get.

Noah started with the movement's push to defund Planned Parenthood on what turned out to be deceptive, altered, and debunked videos. And even he had to admit, pro-lifers are pretty great at what they do, given that they were able to get Congress to hold hearings based on ... nothing, really.

Of course, not all people in the pro-life movement are against gun control, and not all people who are against gun control are pro-life, but there is a certain significant — and confusing — overlap on those two issues that is worth investigating.

So Noah turned his attention to the mass shooting in Oregon — the 294th of the year — and how we as a country are once again discussing gun control.

If pro-lifers are so concerned about the preservation of all lives, Noah wonders, then why don't they support common-sense gun control measures?

There's no need for doctored videos. Gun violence statistics exist (and they're terrifying). Imagine if the pro-life movement rallied behind that?

Noah then brilliantly compared reactions from two "pro-life" presidential candidates on the Oregon shooting and on abortion.

First up was Jeb Bush on what happened in Oregon. He urged against reactionary gun legislation. "Stuff happens," he said.

But compare that to his recent comments on abortion — which is, again, totally legal:

Now that's a response fitting for a mass shooting.

Noah looked over to candidate Carly Fiorina for her thoughts on the Oregon shooting. Similar to Bush, Fiorina cautioned against taking any action on gun control until we know more about what happened.

Now compare that to her comments on abortion:

It's not clear whether pro-lifers are waiting for an even 300 mass shootings in 2015 — which, at the pace we're going, should be sometime in the next month or so — before taking action. But in the meantime, it's really hard to see the "pro-life" rhetoric as anything more than hypocrisy.

In closing, Noah posed this to pro-lifers: If you actually care about lives, do something about guns.

Redirect the energy, lobbying, and rhetoric spent on fighting a more than 40-year-old Supreme Court decision toward sensible steps to curb gun violence.

"They just need to have a superhero's dedication to life," Noah says. "Because right now, they're more like comic book collectors: Human life only matters until you take it out of the package, and then there's nothing left."

Watch the complete segment in the video below.

This article originally appeared on 10.06.15


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Democracy

Bill Maher made an ominous prediction about Trump supporters and the 2024 election

Real Time with Bill Maher/YouTube

Bill Maher described the "slow-moving coup" happening in the U.S.

We are living in weird times in far more ways than one. Not only are we coping with a global pandemic that some people still refuse to acknowledge, but we are also dealing with an ex-president who still refuses to admit that he lost the last election, whose fan base keeps spiraling deeper and deeper into kooky conspiracy theories and whose adopted party inexplicably failed to cut bait and run from Q-ville when it had the chance.

So now we're watching democracy flail and sputter because millions of Americans simply reject objective reality. It's genuinely, mind-bogglingly weird.

Such is the backdrop of Bill Maher's recent run-down of what he sees happening in the next election. Under normal circumstances, it would be far too early for such punditry from comedic political commentators, but the U.S. sailed right past normal years ago. So now, not even a year past the last election—and with no one even announcing an intention to run—we're already pondering what will happen in 2024. (Seriously, why does everything have to be so dumb?)

Maher laid out the plan that appears to be unfolding before our eyes in a segment titled "A Slow-Moving Coup," starting with the Eastman memo that basically was a blueprint for Trump overturning the results of the election he lost.


New Rule: The Slow-Moving Coup | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO)www.youtube.com



"Here are the easiest three predictions in the world," said Maher. "Trump will run in 2024. He will get the Republican nomination. And whatever happens on election night, the next day he will announce that he won.

"I've been saying ever since he lost, he's like a shark that's not gone, just gone out to sea," continued Maher. "But actually, he's been quietly eating people this whole time. And by eating people, I mean he's been methodically purging the Republican Party of anyone who voted for his impeachment or doesn't agree that he's the rightful leader of the Seven Kingdoms."

Maher explained how the small number of Republicans who outwardly opposed Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election will be gone by 2024, and how state legislatures and election officials are being replaced with loyalists who will hand him the presidency whether he actually wins it or not. He predicted that Republicans would win the House in 2022.

"And yet, 2024 comes and Democrats treat it as a normal election year," he said. "They are living in a dream world where their choice of candidate matters, their policies matter, the number of votes they get matters, none of it does. I won't even predict who the Democratic nominee will be, because it doesn't matter."

Maher explained that even if the Democratic nominee wins the election, "Trump won't accept it." But this time, his conspiracy theories about election fraud "will be fully embraced by stooges he is installing right now."

The only thing that kept the U.S. from a full-blown constitutional crisis was that some Republican elected officials put their foot down and insisted on reality. What happens without people who are willing to go against pressure from their party and do the right thing?

"The ding dongs who sacked the Capitol last year? That was like when Al Qaeda tried to take down the World Trade Center the first time with a van. It was a joke. But the next time they came back with planes," Maher said.

"I hope I scared the shit out of you!" Maher said, in conclusion.

Yeah. A majority of Americans are already there, Bill.

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Wellness

Footage of people from the 80s whining about seatbelt mandates looks pretty silly now

Josh Jordan/Twitter

As we see viral videos of people ranting about mask mandates being tyrannical government overreach, the Daily Show with Trevor Noah reminds us that people said the same thing about seatbelt mandates back in the day.

A video of news footage from 1986 shows several people complaining about how requiring seatbelts was a violation of their freedom and how they weren't going to comply. It's really something to see now. Watch:

There was intense resistance to seatbelt laws in the 1980s, which in hindsight seems quite silly. When used properly, seatbelts reduce motor vehicle fatalities by half, according to the CDC. People who are unbuckled are 30 times more likely to be ejected from a car during a crash. Most of us buckle up without even thinking about it now, which saves both lives and healthcare resources, but it took a mandate to get us here.

Now we see the same kinds of complaints with COVID-related mandates, despite COVID killing more than ten times as many people in one year as an average year of car accidents do. If the government could mandate seatbelt usage to save lives and healthcare resources, surely it can mandate masks in the midst of a global pandemic spread almost entirely by people's mouth emisssions.

The purpose of our system of governance, according to the preamble to the Constitution, is to "establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." Sounds awesome, but sometimes those things can seemingly conflict with one another. What if what needs to be done for the defense or welfare interferes with our blessings of liberty?

It's a sticky question, for sure. But sometimes it's not really as sticky as people make it.

In the midst of a pandemic that has taken the lives of 675,000+ Americans and sickened millions more in a mere 18 months, it's clear that our general welfare is taking a huge hit. We know there are measures we can take to minimize viral spread and save lives, but asking nicely and leaving it up to people to do the right thing doesn't seem to be working. So in order to promote the general welfare, the government is requiring people to do the right thing (i.e., wearing masks in public places).

It's understandable that people don't want the government telling them what to do, but it's also understandable that a government of the people, by the people, for the people would try to protect the people. Right now, that means protecting the public from those who are contributing to the spread of a deadly virus and clogging up our healthcare systems by remaining unvaccinated and refusing to wear masks.

Freedom that leads directly to the death of our fellow Americans is not true freedom. Some people still don't seem to understand that we are in a viral pandemic that's killing thousands of Americans a day. If we don't voluntarily do the right thing, we're asking for the government to step in to protect the general welfare.

I wish we could fast forward forty years to see how silly the anti-maskers look to future generations. Just like seatbelt mandates didn't lead to tyranny, neither will mask requirements during a viral pandemic.

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Wellness

Biden announces that we will have enough vaccines for every adult in the U.S. by end of May

The Hill/Twitter

It was a mere three weeks ago that President Biden announced that the U.S. would have enough vaccine supply to cover every adult American by the end of July. At the time, that was good news.

Today, he's bumped up that date by two full months.

That's great news.

In his announcement to the nation, Biden outlined the updated process for getting the country immunized against COVID-19.


Part of what led to this announcement is a historic partnership between two pharmaceutical companies. News broke today that Merck & Co will be helping to manufacture more doses of its competitor Johnson & Johnson's vaccine. Merck had tried to create its own COVID-19 vaccine early in the pandemic, but was unsuccessful. It's unusual to see a company partner up with a fierce rival, but sometimes the good of the nation comes first.

"This is a type of collaboration between companies we saw in World War II," Biden said of the partnership.

With the help of the Defense Production Act, which Biden has invoked, Merck will be able to dedicate two of its facilities to manufacturing the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. It will take some time to get fully ramped up, but the hope is that the two companies will be able to manufacture double the number of vaccines that Johnson & Johnson could create alone.

Johnson & Johnson has had a slower start than anticipated in getting production ramped up; of the 37 million doses promised by the end of March, the company says it will only be able to provide 20 million. However, Pfizer and Moderna are both dramatically ramping up their mRNA vaccine production—a development that also contributed to today's end of May news.

According to the Associate Press, the president told governors to be prepared for a vaccine supply increase over the coming weeks. Additional doses will also be going to retail pharmacies for a federally backed program that will help get vaccines to more teachers, which will enable schools to open more safely. The White House announced a goal of getting every teacher at least one dose of the vaccine by the end of March.

The key now will be increasing distribution capacity to get more shots in more arms more quickly, a feat that lies largely in the hands of individual states. This news couldn't come at a better time. In states like Texas, where the governor announced today that he will be lifting the state mask mandate and opening up all businesses at 100% next week despite being one of the worst-hit states in the nation at the moment, a two-month difference in getting people vaccinated could save thousands of lives.

Good news all around. Go science go.

Here are Biden's full remarks from today:

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