On the Daily Show last night, host Jon Stewart reported with regret that yet another embarrassing moment with President Bush occurred at the G8 Summit. This time President Bush was caught getting a little too physical with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. And Merkel wanted no part of it. Jon Stewart explains:
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JON STEWART: "Anyway, what happened was a little hard to make out. So here it is in a series of still photos. There's Bush walking over to Angela Merkel, he's reaching in, he's about to grab her, he's rubbing her neck, she's grimacing. That is the Chancellor of Germany disengaging herself from the President of the United States."
Maybe someone needs to tell Bush that this is not what diplomacy means.
Come on, you know they'd be much worse than this if it was Clinton! -------------------------------------------------------------------- Other blogs writing about this issue: , , , , , , , , , , , , , .
What if I told you that the legislator who will likely determine the fate of net neutrality laws over the next 20 years actually does not know anything about the internet? Scary enough, it's actually true. Meet Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. last night on the Daily Show, host Jon Stewart exposed the Alaska Senator for his lack of understanding about the vehicle of information that any six-year-old could tell you about:
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TED STEVENS: "The internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand that those tubes can be filled, and if they're filled when you put your message in it, it gets in line, it's gonna to be delayed by anyone who puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
"...Ten movies streaming across that, internet, and what happens to your own personal internet? I, just the other day, got internet was sent by my staff at ten o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why?
Getting Ted Stevens to play the largest role in regulating the internet is like bringing in industry lobbyists to be environmental regulators. Oops, that actually happened.
Please and tell them to oppose Ted Stevens and his depersonalize the internet.
Last night on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart interviewed John Dean, whowas the former legal counsel to Richard Nixon. He is also the authorof the new book . They talked about how Goldwater Republicans today would be left ofcenter, and more importantly about the psychology of whereauthoritarianism comes from:
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DEAN: "Absence of conscience does not necessarilymean evil, it means the ability to set aside what's right and wrong. When a Vice President goes to the Congress to lobby for torture, whenthe President threatens to veto a bill --"
STEWART: "No, Cheney I'll go with as evil. I'll gowith him as evil. Let me ask you this. On the left, couldn't theyargue that if you look at the 20th century, the two largestauthoritarian issues were communism, which was considered theauthoritarianism of the left, and Stalinism and Fascism on the right,isn't it a strain in both ideologies?"
DEAN: "No question. You could have it in, where we've never had it, is here. And that's --"
STEWART: "America?"
DEAN: "Yeah. And that's what's troubling is that conservatives -- not all conservatives, by any stretch of the imagination --"
STEWART: "Just the ones on the cover."
DEAN: "The guys on the cover, and a few inside."
In other words, when you see the cover that reads "ConservativesWithout Conscience," he is not trying to accuse the GOP of being evil;he just means that some within the highest levels of the GOP arechoosing not to distinguish between what is right and what is wrong.
I would not go as far to say that we are turning authoritarian. Itcould be a lot worse than it is today. Even if it were goingauthoritarian, the American people would offset that balance, which Isort of touched on in (balance of power theory). -------------------------------------------------- Other blogs writing about this issue: , , , , , , .
The measured the 2006 race for Congress, and has Democrats comfortably leading Republicans by 14-points. With things getting desperate as we get closer to election time, the Republicans have spent the last two weeks trying to ignite a culture war in an attempt to maximize their political base's voter turnout this November.
Republicans like Orrin Hatch, who authored the flag amendment that , still insist that this was not an election year ploy. As Jon Stewart, host of the Daily Show, explained, no American is buying that line:
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STEWART: "In the end, the amendment fell one short of passing the United States Senate. But as Senator Hatch explained, the motivation was pure."
(begin video segment)
SEN. HATCH: "Bringing it up at this time was certainly not an election year ploy. We have Democrats and Republicans who feel very deeply about this. It is bipartisan. The last time we brought it up was in the year 2000."
(end video segment)
STEWART: "And that wasn't an election -- oh!"
Two weeks ago it was gays. Last week it was flags. Now expect guns and God to be next. This year you have a clear choice to make. Either you vote to continue the culture of fear, or you vote for a culture of reform. Your choice. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Other blogs writing about this issue: , , , , , , , , , , .
As a guest on the Daily Show, former vice president Al Gore was asked by host Jon Stewart about the small number of self-proclaimed "scientists" that are attacking him and his cause:
STEWART: What about the scientists behind it? There's some guys who say it -- are they typically obviously associated with fossil fuels, and that sort of thing?
GORE: Well, the scientific debate really is over on the principle points about this. There are a few people who -- and some of them do get money from coal companies and oil companies. But the essential debate is completely over. That's why I wish President Bush would see the movie (audience laughter). I wish that his Administration would see the movie. He has people advising him.
STEWART: If you'd like, I'll put in a call.
GORE: That might help. But he said yesterday it's a problem, but it's not clear that people have anything to do with causing the problems -- so let's just get past that debate. Well, if you go to the doctor, the doctor doesn't say, "Well, let's don't worry about what's causing all these problems you're having. We don't need to know that. Let's, you know, give you an Aspirin and send you home." It's a very similar proposition.
Al Gore is not running for president. He will not be seeking any other political office. What could possibly be his motivation other than the fact that he is passionate about this issue? He has been giving this slide show for years. He was inspired by those that taught him. Is it a bad thing to want to be an activist? Apparently some of his critics think so. ------------------------------------------------------------ Other blogs writing about this issue: , , , , , , , , .
On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart interviewed famous White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who has been attending White House press conferences ever since 1961 -- that's nine presidents in total! The two discussed Bush's foreign policy doctrine, the lack of reporting after 9/11, and her recent confrontation with Tony Snow:
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STEWART: You're in a press conference I guess just this week. He (Tony Snow) said, "Helen, you're heckling me." He said, "It's rude, I'm the teacher" -- I believe is how he put it.
THOMAS: I said, "You're a Johny-come-lately," basically.
STEWART: Did you really? Very nice.
THOMAS: Now, I asked him if we were going to have permanent bases in Iraq. And at first...he said no, we weren't going to. And I decided to revisit the question in the afternoon briefing because I was sure he was off base. I asked him again. I said, "Would you like to reconfirm, and I want to revisit this question: are we going to have permanent bases in Iraq?" He said, "It depends on what you mean by permanent."
STEWART: How do you not --
THOMAS: I don't.
STEWART: It must be difficult not to throw something.
Conservative pundits such as a lot ever since 9/11 for asking the tough questions. But she has done this for every president -- all nine of them that she has covered. Regardless of what some say about her, she is definitely one of the greatest journalists of our time. --------------------------------------------------- Other blogs writing about this issue: , , , , .
On the Daily Show last night, host Jon Stewart exposed how over-hyped the Miami terror threat really was:
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REPORTER #1: "Did any of the men have any actual contact with any members of Al Qaeda that you know of?"
ALBERTO GONZALES: "The answer to that is no."
REPORTER #2: "Did they have any means to carry out this plot? I mean, did you find any explosives, weapons?"
ALBERTO GONZALES: "And you raise a good point."
(end segment)
JON STEWART: "You do raise a good point -- that point being that these deadly international terrorists had very slyly disguised themselves as a bunch of dip-sh*ts living in a warehouse."
Obviously no one, including Jon Stewart, is concluding that this was not a dangerous group. However, it's interesting how the media completely blew this out of proportion. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Other blogs writing about this issue: , , , , , , , .
In the wake of the Republicans filibustering the Democratic Party's effort to raise the minimum wage, Jon Stewart of the Daily Show gave a commentary of how mixed up our priorities are:
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STEWART: "The Senate voted not to raise the minimum wage, which for the last nine years has been $5.15 per hour. So if you're working 40 hours a week, you're making $200 large. They did vote themselves a pay raise, but they didn't vote to raise the minimum wage...I just want to say good. I'm glad they didn't do it because, you know, the lower strata of American society has had a free ride for too long."
Down-to-earth sarcasm like that shows just how out of touch Republicans were who , yet voted one week ago to .
On the Daily Show, Jon Stewart pointed out all the sports metaphors that the Republicans tried to make during the House on Iraq last week:
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STEWART: "One of the key points of the Republican sponsored resolution -- stop criticizing the President for past mistakes."
(beginning of news clip)
REP. TOM OSBORNE (R): "I spent many years in coaching. Every Monday morning after a Saturday game, I got lots of mail telling me what I should have done. None of those letters helped me very much because the game was over."
(end of news clip)
STEWART: "Yes. So the game in Iraq -- is that over, or in it's 700th day of overtime?"
If any Democrats made a metaphor like Osborne did, GOP pundits would be all over it, and rightfully so.
Last night, Jon Stewart's rhetorical wit backed Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman into a corner, forcing him to admit that "greed" and "cynicism" are responsible for some of the lack of transparency in this Republican Administration:
Click to watch
-------------Partial Transcript----------
STEWART: "What happened to these guys? I mean, they came in and they were going to be the straight-talkers, the adults, and it seems as though, you know, they've become the parsers -- the guys that are saying, 'I never said that Al Qaeda and Saddam were responsible for 9/11, I just said they were in a relationship.' You know what I mean? You guys became parsers. When did that happen?"
MEHLMAN: "I think greed, cynicism -- all those things caused us to do it."
STEWART: "Really?"
MEHLMAN: "Yeah, that's it."
STEWART: "Did we get that on camera? Did we get it on camera? Greed and cynicism. Now I like it."
MEHLMAN: "The audience is warming up to me."
STEWART: "No, they're not."
Just in case you were probably wondering, here is the .
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