Several readers have asked me to look at what Jon Stewart had to say about Rick Perry’s brain freeze fart (this is the nicest word that I could think of). Jon Stewart does a masterful job on this. Instead of taking on Perry directly, he takes on the whole Republican field. He presents reasons why Romney will get the Republican nomination. They all have major flaws. As usual, every one of Stewart’s observations has some truth in it. Then he gets to Rick. Damn, this is funny. Enjoy.
Whether you think stocks are overvalued or not, the last several weeks have been downright ugly on Wall Street. Yesterday, Wall Street lost over 400 points. This morning, stocks opened sharply lower in Europe. Personally, I think we need to expect more volatility and a general downward trend on Wall Street until Washington and Europe decide that austerity is not going to get it done. We need to spend money to get out of this disaster. We need to put people to work.
Inflation indicatorsare ticking up. But, with gasoline prices falling, inflation should stand check with the rest of the year.
RE/MAX announced a 12.7% drop in home sales for July.
It appears that the Justice Department is investigating some of the shenanigans that Standard & Poor’s “may have been involved in” in writing those mobile mortgage securities. It appears that there will was some sort of internal debate at Standard & Poor’s. Some analysts wanted to downgrade the ratings. This could get interesting.
Allen Westcontinues to prove that he may be the most delusional Congressman in Washington.
Of course, while we’re thinking about delusional, we would be remiss if we did not add Michelle Bachmann to the list. She believes that Americans fear the rise of the Soviet Union.
Rick Perrycontinues to position himself further and further to the right. Yesterday, he mentioned that evolution was a “theory that’s out there.” He went on to say, “In Texas, we teach both creationism and evolution in our schools. Because I figure you’re smart enough to figure out which one is right.” The stupidity of the statement cannot be underestimated. If you believe that time in the classroom is precious, why would you teach something that you know is wrong? Implicit in Rick Perry’s statement is that it is obvious that one of these “theories” is wrong. Why would you waste time teaching students something that you “know” is wrong?
Comparing and contrasting Rick Perry and Mitt Romney with regard to their “jobs plan” seems to be a little like sewing eyelashes together. There doesn’t seem to be much substance there but the Washington Post tries anyway.
The president is slowly, very slowly putting together a new jobs plan. Personally, I think we made a major stimulus to the economy. I think the president needs to put together not one or two but five different jobs plans. Each plan should total somewhere around $300 billion. The total package should be around $1.5 trillion. This total package equals approximately 12% of our GDP. The whole economy needs to be overhauled. The government needs to support the economy while it’s being overhauled. We need to get rid of the huge backlog of houses. This would stabilize home prices. We need to switch from a credit economy, where everybody spends more than they have based on credit, to a more cash-based economy where we actually have money left over and can save.
What stories are you following today?
Class Warfare. Raising on taxes on the rich is clearly class warfare.
Great segment from Jon Stewart. Is this right? Did we tell 9/11 rescuers that we would pay for all of their illnesses except for cancer? Really? That’s so wrong, I can’t even begin to tell you.
Jon Stewart spent some time on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. I’m not sure why he decided to go on Fox. He has done it before and come out on top. He and O’Reilly have locked horns on a couple of occasions but Fox News Sunday was different. I watched the whole interview and came away with nothing. Steve Benen, the Political Animal, watched the interview and came away with this -
He (Jon Stewart) was explaining that he, as a comedian, doesn’t deserve credibility in political media, and it’s ultimately the result of “the disappointment the public has in what the news media does.”
Chris Wallace rejected the premise, arguing that Fox News viewers “aren’t the least bit disappointed” with what their preferred network does. Stewart’s response was an important one.
“In polls,” Stewart said, in a surprisingly angry tone, “who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers? The most consistently misinformed? Fox. Fox viewers. Consistently. Every poll.”
Wallace then changed the subject.
I suppose I can’t blame the host for that, because what Stewart said happens to be true. Fox News’ minions “aren’t the least bit disappointed” with what the Republican news network provides, but they’re not actually learning anything about current events or the world around them.
The quantifiable evidence is overwhelming. Eight years ago, just six months into the war in Iraq, the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland found that those who relied on the Republican network were “three times more likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions — about WMD in Iraq, Saddam Hussein was involved with 9/11, and foreign support for the U.S. position on the war in Iraq.”
As Ben Armbruster noted a while back, “An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll out [in 2009] found that Fox News viewers were overwhelmingly misinformed about health care reform proposals. A 2008 Pew study ranked Fox News last in the number of ‘high knowledge’ viewers and a 2007 Pew poll ranked Fox viewers as the least knowledgeable about national and international affairs.” [Read more →]
Here is Jon Stewart’s closing speech at his Rally to Restore Sanity. (As I mentioned in my comments earlier today, on this blog, I will insist on a reasonable discussion. I’m happy to discuss the issues with anybody. I will not put up with name calling. It just isn’t necessary. As a matter fact, it is unnecessarily inflammatory. Therefore, certain comments may mysteriously disappear if I don’t think they’re civil. I’m happy to have people disagree with me and others on this blog. It has been said before that it is possible to disagree without being disagreeable. I appreciate everyone who reads my blog. I’ve now been doing this for over five years. In the early days, the blog was awful. I’m hoping that I’ve gotten much better. I enjoy the comments and the banter and I look forward to another five years. Again, I appreciate everyone who follows Where’s the Outrage?)
The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything, we actually get sicker–and, perhaps, eczema. And yet… I feel good. Strangely, calmly, good. Because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us, through a funhouse mirror–and not the good kind that makes you look slim in the waist, and maybe taller, but the kind where you have a giant forehead, and an ass shaped like a month-old pumpkin, and one eyeball.
So why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle, to a pumpkin-assed forehead eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, of course our inability to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable–why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution, and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own?
We hear every damned day about how fragile our country is, on the brink of catastrophe, torn by polarizing hate, and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done. The truth is, we do! We work together to get things done every damned day! The only place we don’t is here (in Washington) or on cable TV!
But Americans don’t live here, or on cable TV. Where we live, our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done–not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done.
Most Americans don’t live their lives solely as Democrats, Republicans, liberals or conservatives. Americans live their lives more as people that are just a little bit late for something they have to do. Often something they do not want to do! But they do it. Impossible things, every day, that are only made possible through the little, reasonable compromises we all make. (more…)
Jon Stewart does a very good job interviewing the president. He asks progressive questions. The President never backed down. He didn’t run and hide. He did explain that the Healthcare Bill and several other pieces of legislation were not “timid”. As I mentioned on this blog, these pieces of legislation were the best that we could squeeze out of this Congress. The president mentions that we needed to get 60 votes to get anything passed. This is a great interview. If you have the time I recommend watching all of it.
Are we the people that we have been waiting for?
President Obama acknowledges that people in the US are still hurting. He correctly points out that an economy that was collapsing has been stabilized and is now growing. We have had 9 straight months of private sector job growth.
Jon Stewart asks about Larry Summers and changing the culture in Washington. President Obama mentions that we can’t change everything overnight. We have made progress and we have more to do.
I don’t understand what happens to some people when they get behind the Mic. It is like they lose their minds. How do you say something like this on the air? When you say something like this, you are asking to be fired.
“Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well,’ a CNN statement said.
UPDATE: Rick Sanchez did not appear on Friday’s “Rick List,” the afternoon after his controversial comments about Jon Stewart and Jews surfaced. Sanchez’s regular substitute Brooke Baldwin filled in for him.
Discussing Stewart with radio host Pete Dominick, Sanchez said that the “Daily Show” host has a limited worldview, and called him a “bigot.”
The conversation began with Sanchez decrying “elite, Northeast establishment liberals” who “deep down, when they look at a guy like me, they see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier, and not the top tier.
“I think to some extent Jon Stewart and [Stephen] Colbert are the same way. I think Jon Stewart’s a bigot,” he said. “I think he looks at the world through, his mom, who was a school teacher, and his dad, who was a physicist or something like that. Great, I’m so happy that he grew up in a suburban middle class New Jersey home with everything you could ever imagine.”
It is customary to try to be polite to a guest even if you are asking tough questions. Bill O’Reilly didn’t even try. Then again, I would have been surprised if he had.
There are several interesting moments in this interview. First, O’Reilly suggests that only “dope heads” watch The Daily Show, which is true. I’m doing lines of blow on my computer right now before I go back and listen to another lecture at this trauma conference I’m attending in Boston. Secondly, Stewart mentions something that is really true, that on Fox, O’Reilly is the liberal. He is the closest thing to sanity on Fox. Is Hannity any better or worse? Beck is so much more right wing, more crazy, simply more out there than Bill. Bill O’Reilly has been left behind.
Since the early 1970s, we’ve been talking about getting off of oil. We’ve gone through the oil crisis of the mid-1970s in which it was not uncommon to wait 30, 60 or 90 minutes just to fill up your car with gas. Remember, for those of you who are old enough, there were predictions that the world was running out of oil within that five or 10 years. President Jimmy Carter, in the late 1970s, placed solar panels on the White House. Think about this — 30 years ago, the White House was making some of its electricity with solar panels. What happened? Ronald Reagan happened. He brought with him an attitude that we were Americans and did not need to conserve or use alternative energy. We’ve been living in that alternate universe ever since.
For those of you who are in the drill, baby drill crowd, don’t worry. No matter how much rhetoric we have about using alternative energy, I am convinced that we will only be giving it lip service until we change Washington. We need to fundamentally change the way our officials are elected. Currently, too many of our politicians are dependent upon large campaign contributions from large corporations. Until we fix our election system, we’re going to continue to consume oil like a cocaine addict consumes crack.
Really? The Hooters girls on Fox and Friends? Why? Money, that’s why. I’m not saying that CBS, NBC or any other networks wouldn’t have done the same. I’m saying that none of the news networks should do anything like this. Provide news then have commercials. Do not invite the commercial into the studio. No Starbucks on Morning Joe. Stop it. (Oh, you must wait for the last line of this clip. It is priceless.)
Every now and then, America goes into this trance. I don’t know if it is a response to our feeling threatened or what but we do have these periods in our history which are difficult to explain. The McCarthy era, in which your reputation could be destroyed by one senator mentioning your name, is a fine example. During this time period being a communist was awful, but knowing a communist was almost as bad. Simply being associated with a communist could get you called out in public. You could lose your job. You could be ostracized by your friends. You had to be more patriotic than Captain America in order to withstand the scrutiny.
This leads me to today. I believe that we are on the tail end of one of these periods that is going to be difficult to explain to our children. From September 11 until now, there was almost a race to see who could be the most patriotic. We saw that race play out on our TV screens with Fox News being the winner. No one was more apple pie than Fox. ABC, CNN, NBC and CBS tried to pull out the American flag and to move more to the right in their television coverage, but they never got the audience. Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly were kings of the hill. They had millions of viewers every night. Then, almost out of nowhere, came someone who is even more patriotic than they were — Glenn Beck. With sagging ratings, CNN threw a Hail Mary and pulled Glenn Beck out from radio. He really didn’t have a television background (to the best of my knowledge). He instantly made news. After a couple years, he moved from CNN to his natural home at Fox News.
I’ve never really understood Glenn Beck’s appeal. I don’t understand the crying. I don’t understand the hyperbole. I don’t understand how everything is related to Hitler. I don’t understand how when you’re doing a news show, you can get the facts wrong and Americans don’t seem to care. I just don’t get that. I don’t know how you can come out and say that the president of the United States hates white people and that there are no significant repercussions. This is much like what happened in the McCarthy era. McCarthy just said stuff. He had no data to back it up. Glenn Beck is almost exactly the same. He just spouts things and people believe it. I have no idea why. I guarantee you if I said those things on the air my family would have me committed and rightly so.
So an Israeli raid on a flotilla draws international condemnation. The official position of the United States is somewhat muted. Glenn Beck and Fox News would never let an opportunity like this go to waste. They know that conservatives have this knee-jerk reaction to support Israel no matter what they’ve done. So, Glenn Beck shows news footage that everybody else has. This is not exclusive to Fox News. Why does he imply that this is an exclusive? Because his audience never questioned him. I am hopeful that we will return to a time when Americans want facts more than they want the Glenn Becks of the world.
Watch the video as Jon Stewart points out that Glenn Beck is simply a lying sack…
Their are lots of reasons to object to Bill O’Reilly and Bernie Goldberg. They are hypocritical. They are nonsensical. They are overly militaristic. They have persecution complexes and they’re never happy. Jon Stewart seems to have a few reasons of his own. This is hysterical.
Recently a urologist in Florida received a lot of press and ink for a sign he had up in his office which read, “if you voted for Obama: seek your urologic care elsewhere.” Now, you would figure that somebody a physician would have read a little something about healthcare. He would not put up a sign like this just be a partisan hack. I don’t know this man personally. I don’t know what his particular beef is with Obama’s healthcare plan. Unfortunately, neither does he. He was interviewed by Alan Colmes. It was clear in the first two minutes of that interview that this physician did not have any clue about what he was talking about. There were no tricky questions. How do you do that?
Jon Stewart has a little something to say on this subject:
Okay, here’s what I want to know. How do you know a person’s race just by listening to him/her? Seriously. Yes, we make some generalizations based on a person’s speech patterns and word choice, but how do you call into a national show and talk about the number of Blacks who call in when we don’t actually see their faces? How do you do that? The brazen stupidity of this particular “gentleman” is mind-boggling.
The sad thing isn’t that Jon Stewart can select from hundreds of hours of tape to find amoral Republicans talking about all of the stuff that they don’t want. He can also find hundreds of Democrats being spineless jerks.
I have been travelling and my blog has been giving me the finger over the last couple of days. I think that we have the issues solved.
Gave a talk at DRI yesterday. I think it was well received. I didn’t hear any snoring.
Luger dies in Vancouver. Very sad. You shouldn’t die playing a sport.
Huge offensive has been launched in Afghanistan. I think that the media has done a very poor job informing us about what’s at stake in Afghanistan and why Obama has decided to stay in Afghanistan. This is just the opposite of what happened in the run up to the war in Iraq.
It appears that a school secretary was fired for speaking Spanish to some parents. I sure hope that this story is wrong.
There was a university school shooting. This time no students were injured. The shooting occurred at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Three people are dead.
Washington Post chief political guru David Broder wrote one of the worst columns that I have read in the last four or five years. The whole column is one big delusion about how politically great Sarah Palin is. C&L and Glenn have a few words to say about Broder and Sarah the Great. I can only add Jon Stewart’s thoughts below:
Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, full-time sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
Recently a urologist in Florida received a lot of press and ink for a sign he had up in his office which read, “if you voted for Obama: seek your urologic care elsewhere.” Now, you would figure that somebody a physician would have read a little something about healthcare. He would not put up a sign like this just be a partisan hack. I don’t know this man personally. I don’t know what his particular beef is with Obama’s healthcare plan. Unfortunately, neither does he. He was interviewed by Alan Colmes. It was clear in the first two minutes of that interview that this physician did not have any clue about what he was talking about. There were no tricky questions. How do you do that?
