Jon Stewart

Jon Stewart: A Pawn Of The Insurance Lobby?

Posted by on March 19, 2010 at 5:38 pm. 4 Comments :

Last night on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart let down his guard and revealed that he is not the independent voice of reason that he would like everyone to believe. He is not the beacon of truth who slays the hypocrites and deceivers of the international media conspiracy. No, he is just another lackey of powerful corporate interests that want to take over your life. The shocking evidence of this followed a segment wherein he mocked Fox News’ CPO (Chief Paranoia Officer), Glenn Beck:

At the end of this innocuous (and hilarious) comedic skit, Stewart’s true colors were shown. As he announced that the program would be back after a commercial break, a graphic appeared on screen, accompanied by a voice-over, divulging that the Daily Show was brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

PROGRESSIVE Insurance? If you were not previously convinced of Stewart’s complicity in the clandestine plot to destroy America, well, you can no longer feign ignorance. This is an overt admission of his membership in a cabal that hates the principles that made this country great. It is a cabal that includes one-world government advocates and global industrialists like Warren Buffet and Rupert Murdoch. This covert coalition is so thoroughly ingrained in our culture that it brazenly plays both sides of the fence as it seduces and perverts our country, our neighbors, and even our children. If you think you are safe from this threat, think again. Even Glenn Beck has fallen into its web. Pay close attention to his own words:

Beck, 02/20/10: “Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution. And it was designed to eat the Constitution.”

Do you hear that Jon Stewart? Progressivism was built from the ground up to be hungry for parchment made of – can you believe this? – HEMP! Progressivism just wants to get stoned by consuming the document that enumerates our great nation’s values as if it was a batch of Alice B. Stalin brownies. And after you’re shit-faced (that’s a medical term – look it up), the forces of evil are free to feed you any ludicrous notion that suits their whim, i.e. social justice:

Beck, 11/03/09: “Progressives think they know better than you and they want to control every aspect of your life. […] They like to call it “social justice” or fairness; I like to call it Marxism.”

And with that, Beck prevailed upon his disciples to abandon their corrupt churches for ministering to the poor. With regard to the progressive obsession for control, Stewart ridiculed this threat last night with obscene references to self-gratification. But this threat is all too real. Witness the remarks Beck made on the subject earlier this month:

Beck, 03/12/10: “So here is the deal, if you don’t have insurance and you need to take the government insurance, then the government has the right to regulate every aspect of your life.”

There you have it. When even Glenn Beck can declare publicly that the government has the right to rule over you like a slave master, then you know the risks are deadly serious. And notice how Beck wavers between a complaint that progressives want to regulate “every aspect of your life,” to an assertion that the government already has that right which he regards as entirely appropriate. This is all carefully designed to freak you out!

It is no accident that Jon Stewart is sponsored by Progressive Insurance. And it ought not to surprise you that Beck was once sponsored by GEICO (but they recently left him along with 100 other advertisers).

Note that GEICO, which is owned by billionaire and Illuminati lord Warren Buffet, was originally known as the “Government Employees Insurance Company.” That’s right! It was a state takeover of insurance by government union thugs. Today GEICO is supposedly engaged in fierce competition with Progressive. This may explain why Beck is so adamantly opposed to the Progressives who are sponsoring Stewart. Or maybe not. In the end they are all a part of the same congregation of villainy and much of the contentiousness may be staged to throw us off.

But whatever you do, don’t be mislead. They are coming after us. They are determined and relentless and, in addition to that, they just keep going and going (which reminds me, watch out for that cap and trade Energizer bill, and take your Avodart). And don’t let the veneer of comedy seduce you into submission. This is not about rodeo clowns and satirists. It is not about laughter and wackiness and goofballs who act like they’re crazy. Never forget these words from someone who knows what it means to be presumed to be nuts:

“I have been laughed to scorn as a prophet; for many a year my warnings and my prophecies were regarded as the illusions of a mind diseased […] I appear in the eyes of many bourgeois democrats as only a wild man.”
~ Glenn Beck Adolph Hitler, September 1936

Fox Uses False Video (Again) To Inflate Sarah Palin’s Crowd

Posted by on November 18, 2009 at 5:58 pm. NO Comments :

Just one week ago, Jon Stewart exposed Sean Hannity for inserting video of a rally last summer to make a less successful rally this month look like it was well-attended. It was a blatant distortion that could not plausibly have happened by accident. Nevertheless, that is exactly the excuse Hannity coughed up, as he sought to trivialize the affair and sweep it under the rug. I wonder how Fox News will explain it this time.

ThinkProgress has caught them red-handed again. The video below was introduced by Fox anchor Gregg Jarrett saying…

“Sarah Palin continuing to draw huge crowds while she’s promoting her brand new book. Take a look at…these are some of the pictures just coming into us. You can see the lines earlier had formed this morning. There’s a crowd of folks.”

The problem is that this video clearly shows Palin at a campaign event last year, not a current stop on her book tour. McCain/Palin signs are plainly visible in the audience. But Jarrett’s commentary identifies these images as “just coming in.” It should also be noted that Jarrett is considered by Fox to be an actual “news” anchor, not a part of their editorial programming, like Hannity.

Following the takedown by Stewart, Fox and their apologists insisted it was an innocent mistake and that they had no intention of being deceptive. But how many times does this need to happen before their alibis are dismissed for the lies that they are? Real news enterprises do not misrepresent events to advance their agenda. You will notice that they have never made a mistake like this that increased the size of a Democratic rally. The dishonesty of Fox News seems to have no lower boundary. Before too long we should expect it to look something like this:

Update: Fox News has responded to this latest Faux pas by typically blaming a lowly editor:

“This was a production error in which the copy editor changed a script and didn’t alert the control room to update the video,” Michael Clemente, senior vice president of news at FOX, sad [sic] this evening. “There will be an on-air explanation during Happening Now on Thursday.”

That’s twice in two weeks. And on different programs. This is either intentional or a pattern of incompetence. Perhaps they should schedule a daily program to make their on-air explanations so they don’t have to interrupt their mistake-filled propaganda.

Sean Hannity’s Lies Exposed By Jon Stewart

Posted by on November 11, 2009 at 2:27 am. 7 Comments :

Jon Stewart is on fire. About two weeks ago, Stewart put together one of the best presentations illustrating perfectly why Fox News is NOT news. Just last week Stewart gave us an hysterical portrayal of Glenn Beck’s diseased psyche. And last night Stewart proved, once again, that he is a far better journalist than most of those who actually call themselves journalists.

Why does Sean Hannity even still have a job? Anyone else, on any other network, would be fired for this sort of deliberate fabrication. Apparently on Fox it is acceptable to show video footage from a rally two months ago and pretend it is from a rally a few days ago, in order to falsely inflate the size of the attending crowd.

The propagandists at Fox are well aware that the nation overwhelmingly supports heath care reform, so they resort to dishonesty in pursuit of their unpopular agenda. If they can’t get enough Tea Baggers to show up, Fox will just falsify the video record to make whatever point serves their venal interests. It is the same disrespect for the truth that compels Hannity to assert, without any evidence, that 20,000+ people turned out to the protest, although neutral sources say it was no more than 10,000. Hannity’s guest, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), put the crowd estimate as high as 45,000. She also said that the event was the result of spontaneous word of mouth. What she left out was that Fox News promoted the affair repeatedly and anti-health care lobbyists like Americans for Prosperity funded the organizing efforts, including some forty buses to deliver the AstroTurfers to the Capital.

What’s truly depressing about all of this (besides Hannity keeping his job) is that the rest of the media has failed to report any of it. When Dan Rather aired a true story that was marred by a few poorly vetted documents, it became a media frenzy that eventually cost Rather his job. But when Hannity blatantly manufactures a false story, the media shrugs its shoulders and turns away.

This is why Jon Stewart is such a treasure and a model of journalistic integrity, despite his objections to being cast in that role. We definitely need more like him. It would be great if they were just as funny, but I’d settle for just being responsible reporters.

Update: Hannity has responded to Stewart’s exposé in a typically smug manner, saying that he had “screwed up” but that it was “an inadvertent mistake.” Then he thanked Stewart and his writers for watching. That’s a little like a heroin trafficker thanking a DEA agent for listening in on his phone calls.

More to the point, Hannity’s apology doesn’t pass muster. It stretches credulity to assert that he had merely used “some incorrect video” along with some that was correct. The event he was discussing was current news, footage for which would be at hand in the newsroom. In order to buy his excuse you would have to believe that someone accidentally stumbled into the video archives facility, mistakenly retrieved footage from an event that took place two months prior, and unknowingly spliced it onto the correct footage. Then everyone on the staff – editors, directors, producers, and Hannity himself – failed to notice the mishap even after the multiple viewings that these prepackaged segments are subjected to prior to going on the air. Yeah, right.

Jon Stewart Channels Glenn Beck – And News Corpse

Posted by on November 6, 2009 at 2:54 pm. 11 Comments :

In another brilliantly conceived and executed parody, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart has perfectly captured the dementia that is Glenn Beck. The wonder, the shock, the outrage, the tears, the megalomania, the obsession with impending doom. It’s all there in a hilarious send up of Beck’s traitorous appendix.

Everyday it gets harder and harder to satirize Beck. The patented Beck hysteria is so hysterical all on its own, that it takes a real comedy genius to expand on it. Stewart fits the bill. The only thing missing was a phone on his desk so Beck could call him to deny everything.

It was nice to see Stewart get out the blackboard. It makes everything so clear. It would have been nice if he had given me some credit. He must have seen my Glenn Beck Blackboard Challenge:

Glenn Beck Blackboard Challenge

And it was also nice to see him raise the specter of Beck’s favorite political philosopher:

In other news, Beck’s appendix may not be the only thing that is threatening his life. It appears that the nurses attending Beck were probably members of the Service Employees International Union or (cue scary music) SEIU. As Beck watchers know, the SEIU is an organization that Beck regards as thugs and communists bent on destroying American civilization. They are one and the same as ACORN. They are traitors and defilers of virtue. And they are the union that represents the nurses of every major hospital in the vicinity of where Beck was when his appendix declared independence. I’m not sure I would want to be cared for by people whom I had frequently slandered as Mao loving deviants. Luckily for Beck, these nurses are professional and ethical and wouldn’t think of carrying out a vendetta on a patient who hates them.

Jon Stewart Breaks It Down: Fox News Is NOT News

Posted by on October 30, 2009 at 1:51 am. 22 Comments :

Once again it takes a fake news program to reveal where the real fake news is. Jon Stewart, of the Daily Show, continues to prove that he is a far better informed and a more insightful media analyst than just about any of the so-called professionals with degrees and awards and jobs on “reputable” news networks.

It is apparent to any objective observer that Fox is a journalistic wasteland. Their entire schedule is populated by partisan hacks whose intent is to disinform their audience with reporting that is so slanted as to be little more than press releases and promos for Republican operatives and issues. They even feature a Psycho-Chicken Little (Glenn Beck) who accuses Obama and his staff of worshiping Mao, even as he himself admits that he idolizes Adolf Hitler. But it took Stewart to artfully, and hilariously, point out that Fox has defined themselves into a corner. Stewart, noting that Fox regards their news day as the hours between 9:00am to 4:00pm, and 6:00pm to 8:00pm, rips to shreds the false Fox fiction that there is a distinction between their news content and their editorials.

When you add it all up, the Fox “news” programming, by their own calculation, is just nine hours. But the Fox morning block, plus the afternoon Cavuto/Beck double bill, plus the primetime fare (which is repeated and then leads into Red Eye), is 13 hours. So the majority of their schedule is what they themselves regard as editorial content. Then consider the fact that what they call “news” is heavily infested with opinions straight out of Beckville and Hannityland, and it’s clear why Fox has zero credibility when it comes to authentic journalism.

All of this is just further confirmation that it is pointless, and even harmful, for any Democrat or progressive to appear on Fox. All it does is provide them the opportunity to edit your appearance in a misleading and disparaging way; to leech off of your credibility; to persist in making the false claim that they are fair and balanced; and to pretend that what they do is associated with real news. Add to that the fact that Fox’s audience is not receptive, and is in fact hostile, to our message and messengers, and it leaves the inescapable conclusion that Fox bookings are a total waste of time.

Please join with MoveOn and sign the petition to Stay off of Fox.

Glenn Beck: Arguing With An Idiot (Himself)

Posted by on August 25, 2009 at 6:59 pm. 5 Comments :

I know, the question of Glenn Beck’s sanity was settled long ago. But what is happening now is more than just a question of sanity. Beck seems to be losing what remains of his cognitive ability. On his radio program today, Beck staged a little play as a retort to a Jon Stewart segment that demonstrated Beck’s hypocrisy with regard to health care.

In this video Stewart plays clips of Beck repeatedly asserting that health care in the U.S. is the best in the world. Then he plays a clip wherein Beck trashes American health care as a nightmare. It’s pretty routine Stewart brilliance, but Beck takes exception on his radio show.

At the outset, Beck has his second banana, Pat, question Beck as to how he could both praise and disparage America’s health care system. Beck responds by saying…

“So to a 45 year old man with a wife, four kids, who have dealt with the medical system hundreds of times in their lives, your main argument to debunk the quality of our entire healthcare system is to bring up my one bad experience?”

Clearly Beck’s rebuttal is that the health care system is nearly perfect. He asserts that he’s had a lifetime of exposure to a system that has only failed him or his family on a single occasion. Then Pat, surprisingly, nails Beck with the “nightmare” quote that confirms that Beck was talking about the whole system, not a single, exceptional incident. Beck’s response to this was…

“The idea of being drugged and cut open to avoid dying of, you know, something else, then waking only to deal with paperwork and recovery is a nightmare, but like our legal system, or our political system, it’s the worst system in the world… except for all of the others.”

So in the course of a minute or two, Beck has asserted that our health care system is nearly perfect and rarely has any problems, and that it is riddled with problems but they aren’t as bad as every other country’s problems. He even explicitly says that our system is “far from perfect.” Which one is it, Glenn? Do we have a system that in 45 years made a single mistake? Or one that is far from perfect?

After this cognitive disconnect, Beck has the gall to say that Stewart “doesn’t bother trying to make sense of his arguments.” Well, that’s something Beck should know about. But it gets even curiouser. The subject changes to Beck’s upcoming book, “Arguing with Idiots” (something else Beck should know about). Beck declares that it is “the best book we’ve ever done.” Mighty high praise from a guy who seconds later can’t remember the name of the book and has to ask his radio sidekick. Shortly thereafter, Beck forgets the name of the 2nd Amendment expert that he quoted in the book. And then he can’t recall when the book is being released.

But what’s really funny is that Beck claims that he wrote this book for the youth, high school and college students who he says are riddled with ADD. Plus, he has an even larger purpose for the book:

“We’re trying to have we’re trying to make this interactive so when you’ve read the book and then you’re standing there and you’re at a town hall meeting and they’re like, yeah, well, healthcare… you just dial some digits and the arguments will come right to you because you’ll read it if you don’t take it with you all the time, you’ll read it and you’ll be like, oh, my gosh, I’ve got to remember that. So we’re trying to give you a way where you can just dial digits and they will be e mailed to you instantly to give you some of the arguments.”

You see? It is his way of funneling talking points to his town hall proxies. He even admits that his goal is to give his disciples a litany of arguments that they can deny came from him:

“Everything is footnoted in this thing so you can go to the original source and find out exactly, that way your kid doesn’t have to say, ‘I learned that from Glenn Beck” and immediately be discredited.’

At least he is self-aware enough to recognize that any data attributed to him lacks credibility. But there is still cause for concern when this guy can’t remember pertinent things about his brand new book or form a coherent argument detailing his own health care experience. And he apparently believes that his audience has the same cognitive deficiencies, which resulted in his writing this book for them. It’s pretty sad when you think about it.

Bill O’Reilly’s 99 Loofah Loons

Posted by on August 23, 2009 at 5:59 pm. 8 Comments :

Last week Bill O’Reilly spent several minutes gushing about himself and his ratings. This is a regular feature on “The Narcissist Factor” wherein he boasts about the huge pool of lemmings that are transfixed by his megalomaniacal visage. On this occasion he offered up an explanation for his popularity amongst the brain-dead demographic:

“Well, a major reason is the health care debate. While the other network news broadcasts downplay the dissent and promote the government takeover of the health care industry, FOX News highlights the intense debate. When we cover the town hall meetings, we don’t describe the protesters as loons.”

Oh Really? O’Reilly’s self-righteous homage to his fairness and/or balance rings somewhat hollow when his actual record of name-calling is examined. The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart touched on it briefly, airing a video of O’Reilly calling some protesters loons. Then a smug O’Reilly struck back asserting that Stewart had unfairly taken him out of context. O’Reilly’s rebuttal was actually wide of the mark, but even if we give him the benefit of a doubt, if O’Reilly wants to represent himself as someone who has never unfairly characterized political opponents as loons, he is going to have to deal with more than just Stewart’s single example, he is going to have to face up to this (partial) collection of his childish loon-acy:

The Far-Left Loons / She’s a loon / I know a loon when I see one / these far-left loons / and he is a loon / there are enough loony judges / if you’re a far-left loon / some kind of loon / these loons get completely out of control / about 4000 loons are roaming / obviously a loon / A left-wing loon / a loon catcher / the loon who wrote that / Some loons / he’s a certified loon / protesters as loons / because loons control / because those loons / and their loony parents / you’re a loon / left-wing loons / attacks by far-left loons / radical left wing loon / Hey, you loons / some loons want / get the loons / anti-American loons / Enter far-left loon / number two, you’re a loon / you’d think the far-left loons / Far-left loons continue / some left-wing loons / The loony Web sites / Far-left loon Katrina van den Heuvel / radical loons are still / I believe Wright is a loon / many far-left loons hate / opposing the loons / allowed loons to post / Far-left loons may / with the loons / far left loon Nickie Think [sic] / far-left loons who believe / dishonest loon like that / far-left loons are furious / bother the loony left / John Edwards is a loon / hear some loon say / put loons on / some progressive loons / One loon opined / another far-left loon / is he a loon or what / encouraged the loons / these loons step up / the Kos loons / dangerous loons / some loons are even supporting / far-left loons gleefully / the far left loons who put / politicians who are far-left loons / the loons from Barack Obama’s past / You sound like a raving loon / far-left loons and America haters / far-left loons are – vile people / San Francisco loons / That’s the far left loons / the far left loons demean / some loons decided / their loony commentators / far-left loons have denigrated / postings by loons / duke it out with this loon / Left-wing loons desperately want / If far-left loons gain power / the same loons back again / funneling money to left-wing loons / their parents are loons / derailed by some loony guy / a complete loon / pieces on those loons / far-left loons are targeting broadcasters / the loons who spit / Moore and his loony philosophy / Enough loons running around / far left loons are running wild / they’re just left-wing loons / biggest left-wing loon conference / Say the loons in Sacramento / hundreds of loons are on the streets / certifiable left-wing loon / We don’t need loony ideologues / all of these far-left loons / far-left loons like Franken / outnumbered by far-left loons / the lefty loony agenda / the goal of those loons / some of it is just loony

Yes, there are 99 of them. I had to stop somewhere. I’d love to see O’Reilly try to justify his habit of demeaning those with whom he disagrees by calling them names. The documentation above proves that it is not the rare moment of excitement that draws O’Reilly to sink to these tactics. It is a core element of his behavior, one which he repeats incessantly. What’s more, his disparagement is ALWAYS directed at liberals. There was not a single instance of him referring to a “right-wing loon” or a “far-right loon” when searched in Google. Despite his disingenuous claims of neutrality, his words belie a record of bias that is indisputable.

One has to wonder how O’Reilly jumped to the conclusion that his ratings benefited from him not calling town hall protesters, with whom he agreed, loons. He certainly called everybody else loons. And he has called protesters much worse when he disagreed with them. In December of 2005, he had this to say about anti-war protesters, including peace activists from World Can’t Wait:

“…early in Hitler’s rise to power, Nazi brown shirts did the same thing that World Can’t Way [sic] and other radical extremists are doing now, disrupting speeches, denying opposing points of view […] ‘Talking Points’ respects honestly held views, including those held by Communists, socialists, and other radicals. This is America. They have a right to believe what they want to believe. They don’t have the right to infringe on the rights of others by trying to stop them from speaking. And they don’t have the right to spread malicious propaganda unchallenged.”

From O’Reilly’s perspective, anti-war protesters were monstrous traitors for engaging in activities that disrupted speeches and denied opposing points of view. But when town hall tea baggers do it they are patriotic icons of free expression. But the most ironic of O’Reilly’s assertions is his professed opposition to spreading malicious propaganda. Of course, if he truly believed that he wouldn’t work for Fox News.

One More Thing: A study by Indiana University found that…

“O’Reilly called a person or a group a derogatory name once every 6.8 seconds, on average, or nearly nine times every minute during the editorials that open his program each night.”

The study proved that O’Reilly is a textbook propagandist who “consistently paints certain people and groups as villains.”

Emmy News: Nominations – PBS 41 / Fox News 0

Posted by on July 14, 2009 at 5:57 pm. 1 Comments :

The Emmy nominations for News and Documentaries were released today by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. PBS scored the lion’s share with 41 nominations, including two more for Bill Moyers, who has won more than 30 Emmys already. CBS was a distant second with 23. One notable name missing from the list of honorees is the #1 cable news network in the country, Fox News. There are two principle reasons for the absence of Fox News.

First, Fox claims to have declined to participate because they believe that the Emmys are biased against them. That’s a rather piddling complaint that, more than anything, exposes their self-centered pettiness with an attitude that recalls a school child taking the ball and going home.

The more likely reason for their Emmy snub is that Fox is not actually a news network and, knowing this, they are acknowledging that nominations will not be forthcoming. I suspect that they are preparing to submit their programming for Emmys in the drama and, perhaps, comedy categories, where they have a better chance of being recognized. Of course then their other fictional fare, like “24” and “The Simpsons” will have to compete against the far more flagrant fiction produced by Fox News. Whatever will they do?

Well, we can expect Bill O’Reilly to issue a blistering condemnation of the Academy shortly. He did the same thing when the Peabodys snubbed him (again), despite honoring Moyers and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on multiple occasions. What does it say when a comedy network’s fake news programs receive more plaudits from their journalism “peers” than a network that pretends to be a bona fide news enterprise? And furthermore, what does it say about the viewers of a so-called news network that is held in such ill repute by other news professionals?

Amongst the Emmy hopefuls is David Barstow, the New York Times reporter who wrote Message Machine. This article, which has already won a Pulitzer Prize and the New York Press Club’s Golden Keyboard, described how the Pentagon in the Bush administration conspired to train and deploy former military personnel to spread propaganda in support of the war in Iraq. And if that weren’t bad enough, the program also permitted them to use their high profile media platform to enrich themselves and the defense contractors to whom they were attached.

Despite the acclaim the article has received, Barstow has still yet to be invited to tell this important story in any conventional media venue. The only in-depth broadcast interview was conducted by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. This may be the most egregious example of a heralded, Pulitzer caliber investigation being so brazenly suppressed. The obvious explanation is that the media organizations that have actively blackballed the story are also the subjects of it. They are the news enterprises employing the compromised Pentagon Pundits, and they have a vested interest in preventing the truth from getting out.

Now that the report has been awarded another honor, will Barstow’s phone start to ring? Will the media pay attention to what may be the worst instance of propaganda executed by the U.S. government against its own people? At the very least, MSNBC has a special obligation to pursue this story. They have a contractual relationship with the New York Times, and their own John Harwood is a frequent guest on both MSNBC and CNBC. Why on earth wouldn’t the Times be lobbying to promote a story by their own Pulitzer award winning reporter who has now been nominated for an Emmy?

Contact MSNBC and tell them to book David Barstow:
MSNBC General
Keith Olbermann
Rachel Maddow
Ed Schultz
David Shuster
Chris Matthews

3-2-1 Beck: Another Bin Laden Attack Is America’s Only Hope

Posted by on July 1, 2009 at 9:01 am. 15 Comments :

It’s come to this…Glenn Beck and his guest Michael Scheuer have finally admitted their deepest yearnings. The ticking clock at the beginning of Beck’s show takes on a whole new meaning. It is a suggestion for a remedy for our diseased nation that is so far gone now that there is only one solution: Another 9/11.

BECK: Yes, sir. OK. So you have seen this. Do you really, honestly believe that we have come to a place to where those very senior people in the highest offices of the land, Congress and the White House, really will not do the right thing in the end, that they won’t see the error of their ways?

SCHEUER: No, sir, they will not. Not — the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. Because it’s going to take a grassroots, bottom-up pressure, because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. Only — it’s an absurd situation. Again, only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary.

BECK: Which is why I was thinking this weekend if I were him, that would be the last thing I would do right now.

I’m sure Bin Laden appreciates Beck’s advice. But isn’t it a bit shocking that Beck’s counsel to Bin Laden is to refrain from attacking the U.S. because it would benefit the country by motivating Americans to demand protection against such an attack? So he is saying that, while it is contrary to Bin Laden’s interests to attack us, it is in accord with America’s (and Beck’s) interests. He actually believes that the slaughter of untold thousands of innocent Americans is not only beneficial, but is “the only chance we have.”

Beck is now adding his voice to those of The Republican Advance Team For Terrorism. This is a group led by Dick Cheney who has been busily promoting the notion that America is “less safe” under the Obama administration so it would be a good time to attack. With Beck’s participation, it is now not only a good time to attack, it is also good policy.

And this guy is still on the air because…..???

[Update] The professional journalists of television news, whose contributions to the public store of knowledge are so indispensable, failed to cover this story. A former CIA terrorism specialist and a prominent cable news host agree that the U.S. needs to be attacked, and not one TV newsroom finds this newsworthy. The only place a television viewer would have seen this story is on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I don’t ever want to hear anyone complain again about The Daily Show being regarded as superior to the conventional media.

The Daily Show Defense

Posted by on June 21, 2009 at 6:51 pm. NO Comments :

A new legal precedent has been introduced by the Obama Justice Department. If permitted by the court, defendants nationwide may have a powerful new tool to assert in pursuit of legal vindication.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a Freedom of Information Act request for documents containing statements by former Vice-President Dick Cheney to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. The documents were part of Fitzgerald’s investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA operative. Scooter Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury for his role in the matter, but his sentence was later commuted by George W. Bush as he slinked from office.

The Bush administration originally denied a congressional request for these documents citing executive privilege. Now Obama’s Justice Department is also seeking to prevent this disclosure for many of the same reasons that Bush’s lawyers argued. But going further, civil division lawyer Jeffrey M. Smith, claimed that the documents should remain confidential because their release might inhibit future vice-presidents, or other officials, from speaking candidly to investigators researching criminal activity.

That is a rather surprising argument in that most Americans probably expect their representatives to be cooperative in criminal investigations. The notion that they would deliberately impede an investigation because their testimony might be made public is disturbing, to say the least. But the specific reference made by Smith as to what might scare off official witnesses is even more disturbing. He said that the prospect that “it’s going to get on ‘The Daily Show’, “ was enough for the judge to grant a denial of the FOIA request.

Seriously? Is the Daily Show now considered to be so influential that the mere mention of its name can squelch a court case? Does that mean that anyone previously convicted of a crime, who happened to have been the subject of satire by Jon Stewart can now seek to have the conviction overturned on appeal? Does Comedy Central need to seek legal counsel prior to Photoshopping public figures with funny hats or broadcasting video of them saying stupid things (which happens with way too much frequency). Is the “Daily Show Defense” this generation’s “Twinkie Defense”?

At this point the judge seemed to be unconvinced and asked the attorney to come back with more evidence to support denying the FOIA request. But just the fact that a professional, respected, government lawyer would advance this argument is pretty sad. I can’t wait to see what Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert say about it.