2 Political Junkies: Jon Stewart

Showing posts with label Jon Stewart. Show all posts

October 1, 2013

Shutdown

Posted by Maria

Yes, the federal government has been shut down. Here's Jon Stewart's great take on it. The only thing missing from it is the fact that there are enough votes in the House to pass a clean Senate bill. The blame lies with 30 to 60 representatives--call them, oh I don't know, TEA PARTY members--and House Speaker John Boehner who fears them.

(If you're in Pittsburgh, you can learn more about the Affordable Care Act at this event today.)

May 9, 2013

Could Not Have Put It Better Myself

Posted by David

Jon Stewart:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

Highlights:

At 2:00 in, Jon Stewart says:

You may be wondering why for Benghazi, Congress has held nine full hearings - including one closed hearing. Why Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullen issued a full accountability report chastising the State Department for their systemic failures and why Benghazi has generally emerged as a rallying cry for the President's opponents when during the Bush Administration there were fifty-four attacks on diplomatic targets that killed thirteen Americans, yet garnered only three hearings on embassy security total and zero outrage on Fox.

At 3:26 in Representative Peter King describes how big a scandal Benghazi is says:

If you add Watergate and IranContra together and multiply it times maybe 10 or so, you're gonna get in the zone of what Benghazi is.

To which Jon Stewart replied:

Holy sh*t! [taking notes] Watergate plus IranContra times...[note taking ends] So you're saying that the incident, whereby the order of the President of the United States, people broke into the Democratic headquarters to bug it to gain strategic advantage in a presidential election then cover that up by trying to use the power of the presidency to squash the Justice Department and then added that to the Reagan Administrations secret deal to illegally sell arms to Iran in exchange for hostages and money that could then be funneled to Central American right wing death squads, end parentheses, times ten.

Yeppers, that's what they're saying.

However, by the time we get to 1:10 in to the second section of this video:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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The wingnut media is balancing this on "If that indeed was the case..."

Following a long line of "If..." statements from Fox pundits, at 2:00 in, Stewart reacts with:

YES! If dingleberries were diamonds, I could open a Kay Jewelers in my pants!"

Thus illustrating the emptiness of their whole argument.

He ends the segment with this at 3:50:

If what you're saying is true (and it's an important question). If what you're saying is true: if the President let Amercians die for political reasons then by god, bring us the evidence and we will grab the pitchforks and torches along with you. But remember, that game goes both ways. Let me try: In 2011, the State Department requested funding for worldwide security protection and upgrade. Money that could have perhaps gone to protect Benghazi. The Republicans, like Darrell Issa who's heading up this committee, voted to cut that funding. Maybe because of political reasons in an election year to make the President look weak. Thus sacrificing Americans for political gains. Did that happen?

One last quote taken out of context to prove this point:

If that's the case, John, then that's outrageous.

And it is.

October 7, 2011

Occupy Pittsburgh Update

Posted by David

For your viewing pleasure:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Best part when Stewart in comparing the right wing media's reaction to the teaparty (which it overwhelmingly favors) to it's reaction to the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators (which it overwhelmingly doesn't) says :

So, rage against duly elected government is patriotic -- quintessentially American -- whereas rage against multi-national shareholder-accountable corporations is anti-American. OK, gotcha.

Or when he applauds Sean Hannity for saying:

The average American taxpayer knows at the end of the day they're going to be on the hook for the trillions and trillions of dollars that we're using to bail out these companies, some of whom have been irresponsible, and they are expessing their frustration, which I think is quintessentially American.

Only to be corrected by the voice in his ear bud with the information that that was Hannity in 2009 praising the Tea Party protesters. On October 3, Hannity said the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators hated freedom.

That's what the near future is going to look like.

Some local (and not so local) coverage.

Pittsburgh Business Times:

Occupy Pittsburgh, the grassroots effort inspired by but separate from the massive Wall Street demonstrations, are planning their first big event Downtown on Saturday, Oct. 15.

The Occupy Pittsburgh event is timed to a worldwide event called for that day and could include a large-scale march and rally, said Occupy Pittsburgh organizer Nathaniel Glosser. An estimated 300 people attended Wednesday night's first organizing event at a Pittsburgh Unitarian Universalist church.

Glosser said that what's happening in Pittsburgh isn't formally connected with Occupy Wall Street and the other events around the United States and the world.

Wall Street Journal:

As anti-Wall Street protests spread from New York to other U.S. cities, the activists beginning their third week inside a Lower Manhattan park urged participants to dress up as "corporate zombies" on Monday.

Organizers told the Associated Press that they would hold an anti-police brutality protest on the steps of City Hall, as well as a rally in support of union workers outside Sotheby's auction house on the Upper East Side. New York police arrested hundreds of demonstrators Saturday after a group blocked traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Over the weekend, budding copycat movements spread across the country, with smaller-scale protests planned via online social-networking sites. Protesters held sizable gatherings in Chicago, Boston and Los Angeles. In other cities, like San Francisco and Pittsburgh, protests were smaller or existed only in a planning stage.

The P-G:

They don't know precisely how they'll protest or what their exact mission is, but nearly 300 people who gathered in a stuffy Shadyside church Wednesday night agreed to protest Downtown on Oct. 15 against what they view as corporate greed.

The group, a collection of 20-somethings and gray-haired adults, hopes to become the latest branch of a Wall Street protest that began in New York City and has since spread across the nation to Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities.

When you get mentioned by the Wall Street frickin Journal, you know you've arrived.

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June 21, 2011

The Truth About Fox "News"

Posted by David

From Jon Stewart.

For a long time, I've wondered about where Fox "News" comes down on the ideological spectrum - or at least how they see themselves. Do they see themselves as unbiased or do they see themselves as a counterweight to what they perceive as a liberal bias in the media.

Are they in the middle of the seesaw or are they on the other side?

Well now we have our answer:

A partial transcript from Huffingtonpost. After Fox host Chris Wallace says that Fox "tells the other side of the story, Stewart's analysis is in full mock mode:

We don't tell both sides of the story, we tell one side...the other side, the one we perceive is never told. Because as you know, news only comes in two sides. And if the conservative side isn't being told what's being told must be liberal. Fox News isn't fair and balanced. It's balancing the system, man. Don't you get it? The system's unfair and unbalanced. To balance the system, Fox has to be the purest form of right wing resin. Because of how heavy left wing America is. Hollywood, comedians, every single news organization, the Internet, facts, history, science, it's all just left wing bullshit, man....

He summarizes the mock:

Is Fox unbalanced? Yeah. Seriously, their ears are nearly touching the floor. But it's only because the system is unbalanced.

They're not at the center of the seesaw, they're miles to the right.

January 26, 2011

The Big Lie: Fox DOESN'T Make Nazi Comparisons

Posted by David

Take a look:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

24 Hour Nazi Party People

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog</a>

The Daily Show on Facebook

Fact is, it's the folks at Fox "News" are quite adept at Reductio ad Hitlerum.

October 8, 2010

Get On Board Lynn's Sanity Express

Posted by Maria

....

Really want to go to Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity in DC, but don't want to deal with the hassle of getting there?

The Pittsburgh City Paper and Lynn Cullen have answered your prayers with Lynn's Sanity Express -- buses and metro passes to the rally leaving from multiple locations in the Pittsburgh area.

You can find out all the details here (as well as order your tickets).

Hmm, buses with Lynn Cullen, Chris Potter and like-minded folks headed to rally with Jon Stewart -- it's enough to make a tea-bagger weep.

(And, don't forget to listen to Lynn Cullen Live at CPTV, Mon-Fri, 10:00-11:00AM.)

[If this sounds like a paid advertisement -- it isn't -- I think of it more as a PSA for our readers. ;-) ]

October 2, 2010

Scaife v. O'Reilly

Posted by David

The Right feeds on its own - and even then the braintrust gets the facts wrong.

After reading this astounding editorial from Richard Mellon Scaife's Tribune-Review, one has to wonder what's going on over there? The Trib's calling Bill O'Reilly a blowhard?

The fun comes, as always when deconstructing the braintrust, from tracking down the facts (or rather "facts") they use.

First the editorial:

Once upon a time, Fox News talk-show host Bill O'Reilly truly served well his role as the overseer of the "no-spin zone." With the greatest of precision, he dissected the prevailing shibboleths of the day and restored fact-based common sense to so many debates.

That was then, this is now. And you know something has changed, dramatically, when those on the left start referring to Mr. O'Reilly as "the moderate voice of conservatism."

Ok, ok. That last part - that quotation. Where did it come from? Of you google the quotation AND the word O'Reilly, you get one site - this one. From February of this year. No one has used the phrase the Trib quoted until now. No one.

Granted, Jon Stewart called O'Reilly "the voice of sanity":

Comic Jon Stewart told Bill O'Reilly that the "no spin zone" ringleader had become the voice of sanity on Fox News Channel, although "that's like being the thinnest kid at fat camp."

And "left wing":

Stewart continued that when it comes to Fox News, O'Reilly has "been overtaken by a more extreme version of you." On Fox News, Stewart chided O'Reilly, "you're left-wing."

Why? The right has moved so much farther right that O'Reilly seems sane in comparison.

Back to Ryan Witt at the Examiner.com:

The debate between Limbaugh and O' Reilly reflects upon a changing conservative movement. As Fox News and the conservative world have gone further to the right Bill O' Reilly has strangely emerged as the "moderate" voice of conservatism. Formerly O' Reilly was known as one of the most extreme conservatives but his rhetoric now sounds moderate compared to people like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. While O' Reilly accuses the President of being wrong for adopting some arguably "socialist" measures Limbaugh and Beck argue that Obama is a socialist who is trying to take over all private property. [italics in original]

So while the braintrust is writes that O'Reilly has softened his conservatism, the site they quote rather mockingly points out that it's the rest of the conservative world that has moved "further to the right" and thus turned O'Reilly "moderate". And notice Witt's use of the quotation marks - it was intended to be ironic.

Don't they get things like that at the Trib? Or are they hoping no one will check their work?

Back to the Trib:

O'Reilly has become a classic blowhard (not to mention a Butcherer Royale of the King's English). Indeed, Rush Limbaugh was not far off the mark (in Zev Chafets' recently published biography of Mr. Limbaugh) in describing O'Reilly as "Ted Baxter," the buffoonish news anchor from the old Mary Tyler Moore series.

Um, not that recent. Chafets wrote published Limbaugh's characterization of O'Reilly way back in the summer of 2008:

Limbaugh told me he is no longer concerned about the opinions of his colleagues and rivals, and he makes no effort to disguise his contempt for most of them. Michael Savage, ranked No. 3 among talk-radio hosts by Talkers magazine? “He’s not even in my rearview mirror.” Garrison Keillor? “I don’t even know where to find NPR on the dial.”

At dinner the night before, Bill O’Reilly’s name came up, and Limbaugh expressed his opinion of the Fox cable king. He hadn’t been sure at the time that he wanted it on the record. But on second thought, “somebody’s got to say it,” he told me. “The man is Ted Baxter.”

It was in the New York Times and everything. They coulda looked it up.

Then there's this:

Absolutely horrid has been O'Reilly's rationalizing of President Obama's predilection for advancing socialist policies. And does O'Reilly truly believe that America has secured its borders against illegal aliens, as he claimed in a July interview with Sarah Palin? Or that man-made global warming is real, as he appeared to stipulate in the summer of 2009?

O'Reilly said America had secured its borders?

Um, no. Take a look at the video:

And that last part? "Man made global warming" is real. How many academies of science have to say it for the know-nothings to finally believe it? It's undeniable.

Another Saturday, another typically badly researched, badly conceived, badly thought out editorial from Richard Mellon Scaife's braintrust.

September 30, 2010

Altmire Ad Makes The Daily Show

Posted by Maria

A clip from a Jason Altmire (PA-4) campaign ad made it into The Daily Show last night illustrating the point that some Democrats are running as fast as they can from the party (especially from President Obama and Speaker Nancy Pelosi). The bit starts about six minutes in:

The clip is from the following ad where middle-age, rural, white guy says, "I like that Jason Altmire is not afraid to stand up to the President" and white soccer mom adds, "and Nancy Pelosi."

Stewart comments with, "Holy [bleeped "shit"]! Those are the ads that Democrats are running?"

He then asks, "What ads are the Republicans running?" and shows a mock spot of a Republican saying he'll punch Obama in the balls if elected.

Funny, but would anyone be too terribly surprised if, say, a Tea Party candidate actually went with that exact ad? After all, we've already seen Pelosi as a crazed monster being tasered this year.

And, if anyone has a video of the anti Kathy Dahlkemper (PA-3) commercial I saw this morning where the heads of Obama, Pelosi and Dahlkemper are superimposed on a line of chorines, by all means, post a link in the comments -- it's over-the-top crazy.
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