July 24, 2014

Let’s Watch Stephen Colbert Make Fun Of Tim Draper’s Stupid Plan To Split California Into 6 States

In 2016, Californians will vote on stupid Tim Draper’s stupid initiative to turn America’s greatest state into six stupid (and deeply unequal) little states. The initiative will fail, and even if it somehow passes, the state legislature will never approve it, and even if it somehow did, Congress will never agree to it. So, this whole thing is stupid. Fitting then that famed ridiculer of stupid things Stephen Colbert had Draper on his show last night.

Colbert began by introducing Draper (a “Silicon Valley billionaire and evil stepdad in a Lifetime movie”) and his stupid plan to the uninitiated:

Then “the riskmaster” himself came on. Watching Draper come off like a weirdo is entertaining enough, but the real money shot is when Colbert responds to Draper’s promise that he has no future in politics: “so, you’re just going to set the charges, blow it apart, and then say ‘not my fucking problem’?”

Watch:

(h/t Valleywag)

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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