Marc Thiessen: full interview

• Part 2
  
• Part 3

Marc got a good say, speaking a minute more than Jon in the Part 1 that aired on TV. So his complaints near the end about being talked over are baseless. (I suppose it's easy to get disoriented and feel cheated about time in a debate like this.)

Overall I certainly side with Jon, but Marc sheds some light on these issues in a way that the usual right-neocon histrionics obviously don't. It's worth watching in full.

Stewart on O'Reilly

Part 2 here

Jon Stewart explains to conservative pundits why he doesn't like Palin

Jon's epic spoof of Beck

Why The Daily Show isn't funny anymore

Radley explains.

And now back to your regularly scheduled programing

Right-wing douche watch:



Whoops, I do share a couple of those concerns, such as the public option being a trojan horse from people who actually want single-payer health insurance, and the government's finances headed toward insolvency. It's a shame to see it mixed up with the other, kooky stuff.

Daily Show vs. ASU

Let's face it: they're just pissed McCain lost.

Shepard Smith, Fox News' oasis of sanity

I'm sorry, but you can't detain someone for 7 years just because it's difficult to build a case against them. Better to release a terrorist than put an innocent through that for so long.

Or are we to value the potential harm of released possible-terrorists over the freedom of possible-innocents now? Is this what the right would have us become?

Relatedly, see Jon Stewart's extended interview with Cliff May.

More than an effete librul who pals around with terrorists

Barack Hussein Obama is not just a secret Muslim Arab family man, nor just a Black Messianic Jesus Racist White Terrorist Technocrat, nor just an FDR Fascist Socialist Gay Womanizing Naive Cynical Insider with NO EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE who's also been a Boring Radical Unaccomplished Elite Gaffe-Prone Pedophile and Pedophile-Seducing Liberation Theology Atheist for most of his life. He doesn't just have a bunch of scary friends from - wait for it! - the Nineteen Hundred And Sixties. And he's not just going to destroy America, but the whole world!

Did I mention he's a nigger? How could we have been so blind?!?

Evolution, schmevolution

Comedy Central insider gathered the best evolution-related Daily Show clips.

Heather Mac Donald has another well-written post on theology and belatedness: "looks to me like they ran out of ideas".

Explaining the hand of God

Heather Mac Donald wants answers:

Will Bill O’Reilly or anyone else who saw the hand of God in the safe landing of US Airways Flight 1549 this January please explain why God chose not to save Continental Connection Flight 3407, which plunged into a house outside of Buffalo last night, killing all 49 people on board and a resident on the ground?

Among the explanations which will not be accepted: “humans cannot possibly fathom God’s mysterious ways.” Oh yes they can, apparently—when something good happens. Having found proof of God’s love in the safe conclusion of US Airways Flight 1549, believers cannot now turn around and claim that God’s ways are veiled just because something disastrous happens. If it’s legitimate to infer beneficence from a happy outcome, it is equally plausible to infer malice or at least indifference from a negative outcome. You can’t pick and choose the actions in which you find God’s will transparent.

Oh yes you can! Here's how it works: Whenever something really good happens, it's because God loves us. And whenever something bad happens it's not because God willed it to happen -- he didn't! -- rather, it's because of sin. It's really that simple.

You may not have heard, but original sin -- both human and angelic kinds (see: the fall of Lucifer, and tree of knowledge in Eden) -- are to blame for all the evil in this world. God is not responsible, he just "allows it". Nevermind that because all have sinned (as well as -- gasp! -- fallen short of the glory of their Creator) that this means we're incapable of not sinning. That's what saviors are for! Jesus will save you, Heather. You just have to believe!. Tithing is optional but highly encouraged, and his priests have been hard at work bringing back indulgences for even more convenience!

So regarding the bad things, Heather, the correct inference is your need to be saved. You need someone to protect you from bad things, and only Jesus is in a vague enough position to do so while not actually taking responsibility for any bad things that happen to people who trust in him. Sometimes his mother Mary will help pick up some slack, but she's usually too busy listening to prayers. Yet since Jesus is definitionally perfect, he's still quite literally the best imaginary friend you'll ever have.

Now about Bill O'Reilly: it's really hard work finding good things to give God credit for in these tough times. So stop hassling the man! Just look at all the cognitive dissonance he already has to deal with:

Dick Cheney, now officially a dick

It was bound to happen.

Many interviews

My concern that Obama was favoring MSNBC sure looks misplaced.  Here's the Daily Show:

But who needs an interviewer when you've got the bully pulpit pen?

In today's Post President Obama has an op-ed bylined by himself:

"The writer is president of the United States."

You don't say... Wilkinson comments here.

Thursday's geektastic Daily Show interview

Robot book? Check. Jon Stewart trivia? Check. Microsoft software put-downs? Check. Terminator-Skynet references, quasi-sentient robot warriors, coordinating the Obama campaign, Japanese manga references, Czech etymology, Asimov's laws, and a Star Wars planet? Check Check Check Check Check Check Check.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

P.W. Singer

Daily shows

Last night covered a bunch of stuff I'm interested in so I'll just embed the whole thing.



Inauguration night's was also good. So far livin' up to its reputation as the best show on television.

Huckabee argues against equal marriage

Worth revisiting amidst the Warren hatefest:

Daily Show writers panel, now with video

Earlier, I linked to NYT's coverage of a panel discussion of Daily Show writers.

Now you can watch some video of it.

Laughing at the DNC

It's even funnier now:

United by fear

The Daily Show interviews at both Obama and Palin rallies:

Campbell Brown had a good interview afterwards explaining how she tries to do real journalism as a CNN anchor and not impose the artificial balance of letting two sides speak for equal time regardless of who's more right.

Politico has the same approach:

There have been moments in the general election when the one-sidedness of our site — when nearly every story was some variation on how poorly McCain was doing or how well Barack Obama was faring — has made us cringe. As it happens, McCain's campaign is going quite poorly and Obama's is going well. Imposing artificial balance on this reality would be a bias of its own.

More about "real" America

Jon Stewart and Jason Jones eviscerate Nancy Pfotenhauer, Sarah Palin, and Michele Bachmann's neo-McCarthyism.



It's especially good starting at 3:40.

Sarah Palin: "We believe that the best of America is in the small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call real America, being here with all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation.

This is where we find the kindness and the goodness and the courage of everyday Americans, those who are running our factories and teaching our kids and growing our food and are fighting our wars for us, those who are protecting us in uniform, those who are protecting the virtues of freedom."

I guess Kareem Khan and his mother, seen below on her son's headstone --



-- aren't part of real America, because he was born in New Jersey and she lives in Maryland, all part of the same unreal block as Northern Virginia.....

The nerve of these people, it just makes you want to cry.