Newt Gingrich goes on the “Daily Show” and makes up a story about why Richard Reid was Mirandized:
After Gingrich assailed the administration for reading Miranda Rights to Detroit undie bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Stewart drew a comparison to something that happened under George W. Bush.
“Didn’t they do the same with Richard Reid, who was the shoe bomber?” he asked the Republican icon.
“Richard Reid was an American citizen,” insisted Gingrich.
Steve Benen calls this “clueless”, but the truth is, why shouldn’t Gingrich go ahead and do this even if he knows it’s a lie? It got right by Jon Stewart (a bit surprising, since I and, I suspect, most of you knew Reid was a British citizen) and you can bet it won’t hurt his chances of being on “Meet The Press” or being enjoyed intellectually by Joe Klein. People who read left-leaning blogs know that Newt lied, but we already knew Newt was a liar.
While we the lucky few are congratulating ourselves for busting him, he’ll be telling the same story on some other show where the host is too dim to correct him.
There is absolutely no reason for Republicans not to make things up when they’re on tv. There’s no downside and there’s always the chance the story will catch on. Remember how Al Gore claimed he invented the internet? And how the Clintons stole all the W keys from the typewriters? And can you think of a single instance where a Republican paid a political price for lying?
Update. Stewart did fact check Newt at the end of the show. But you can bet Dancin’ Dave wouldn’t have. Moreover, getting fact-checked at the end of the show doesn’t have the same effect. (Still good for TDS for fact-checking at some point, even if it was too late in effect.)
patroclus
Perhaps an early comment mentioning that the 14th amendment, by its terms, applies to all “persons within the U.S.” would be appropriate. It should not matter whether a defendant is a U.S. citizen – constitutional rights apply to persons within the U.S.
Yes, Gingrich lied (that’s what he does), but in comments, let’s not pretend that citizenship is the key criterion. It isn’t.
Pangloss
Nixon. 36 years ago. When we still had a working press, the Fairness Doctrine, and Democrats with a spine.
stevie314159
It’s NOT lying.
It’s called “strategic misrepresentation.”
DougJ
@patroclus:
I know nothing about what the law says here, but that’s not the point: there’s no downside to making things up.
DougJ
@Pangloss:
I’m waiting for the first person to mention someone other than Nixon here. And, as you said, that was a different time.
cat48
I have had it with them. They act like friggin independents. They don’t bother to try and stick to the Prez’s talking points and they each have their own personal INEFFECTIVE message. Yea, “Obama really screwed up everything; he’s really inexperienced; I need to know what the Prez’s health care plan is because he won’t tell us; the deficit’s really, really huge; I don’t know why Obama won’t work across the aisle like us; and on and on the circus goes every freaken day. I can’t stand any of them right now.
Basically, THEY ARE JIMMY CARTER. An entire group of Jimmy Carters!! Need liquor…….
slag
I thought the same thing when Jenny Sanford went on TDS and talked about how her husband stayed true to his fiscal conservative principles. Stewart didn’t bother to mention that Sanford recently reversed himself on accepting federal education funds: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/02/05/329265scsanfordstimulus_ap.html. They lie, lie, lie and get away with it. Even their ex-spouses lie and get away with it.
I’ve played whack-a-lie with too many Republicans in the past. It’s a never-ending game. I used to think Republicans had severely limited imaginations. Now, I understand that they just use their imaginations in severely limited ways.
Keith
When did this meme that the Constitution only applies to US citizens come about? It seems like some convenient offshoot to the “The Geneva Conventions only apply to soldiers of a sovereign nation in uniform” thing that was going around a couple of years ago.
Gregory
@DougJ:
Mark Sanford, for hiking the Appalachian trail.
ETA: Then again, he didn’t get impeached. His political career is probably over, but I guess the jury’s still out on citing him as an example.
beltane
If only the lying were allowed to be equal-opportunity. But alas, this is not the case. If Al Gore was to go on TV spouting this kind of bullshit, the media would develop an instant passion for the truth.
I’m still wondering how you can have a working democracy while suffering under a biased and corrupt media establishment.
Kryptik
So…great. Even the last bastion of actual accountability we have, The Daily Show (and how depressing is it that TDS really is that last bastion, for all intents and purposes) is giving in to the Republican spin?
Fuck it. Maybe I should go out and have a naked snow bath at this rate. Spare myself this goddamned clown show with the ultimate brain freeze.
shortstop
All of that…plus Republicans with ethics, or at least lines that could not be crossed. When you read the accounts of what was going on in Congress at the time (especially Elizabeth Drew’s very interesting book on that subject), you’re struck by how personally outraged most Congressional Republicans were by Nixon’s behavior. A few holdouts like Lott notwithstanding, once the GOP got the extent of Nixon’s lying and obstructing, they immediately agreed, and loudly said, that he had to go.
Look at them now.
kay
@patroclus:
I think it’s really important, and kudos to you for bringing it up. It’s bigger than this single issue, too.
They want to replace “person” with “citizen”. It’s an odd, orchestrated campaign, and it last came up in immigration, and here it is again.
It will probably work, too, as a practical and political matter.
I think what I hate most about conservatism is what they do to language. I swear to God, you have to watch them every minute. They’re always screwing with the meaning of words.
beltane
@Gregory: What price did Sanford pay exactly? A little bit of gentle mockery, perhaps, but that is all.
Martin
@Gregory: He’s still Governor. He doesn’t get to nail his wife any more, but that seems like a feature rather than consequence given the nature of his infraction.
DougJ
@Gregory:
I don’t think the lying hurt him per se. And I don’t think he even made that story up himself.
It was all the “soul mate” stuff that killed him.
kay
@Kryptik:
I don’t know. I watched the Jenny Sanford interview, part of it, and Stewart let her get away with paragraphs extolling her husband’s adherence to conservative values of fiscal prudence.
Which is a load of crap. On nearly every measure.
Watching, I wasn’t sure if she was still campaigning for him.
Gregory
@Martin: I’ve edited my comment to note that fact. His political career is probably, but not certainly, over, but that’s about it, indeed.
Edit: It’s true: IOKIYAR.
Why oh why
Although Stewart did fact-check Gringrich at the end of the show and mentioned Reid was actually British.
If only Meet the Press et al. had the ethical guidelines of Comedy Central.
Zifnab
Dude, that was in 2001. I honestly had no clue what Richard Reid’s nationality was. Not that it even matters. We Mirandize foreign nationals all the time. Ask a Brit to hold up a liquor store or drive past a cop’s radar gun going 120 mph.
The cops aren’t going to check for a Visa before they read you your rights.
The extra absurdity of what Newt suggests is that we’d be better served running a guy through a three hour background check than spend ten seconds reciting Miranda.
shortstop
Since she was his chief policy architect, I suspect she was campaigning for herself.
demo woman
@kay: OT The GA Congress is considering a law to reward counties that round up illegals. Since I’m white, I can still probably drive down the street without being stopped but will probably have to take my Obama sticker off. (kidding) At least I’m safe from having a micro-chip implanted in me without my knowledge. That law just recently passed.
Zam
Just to be clear Stewart did at the end of his show correct the mistake, though it probably doesn’t help since most people stop watching after the interviews.
Zifnab
@beltane:
He had Presidential aspirations. Those have been dampened significantly. Pawlenty is currently the governor picking up the biggest head of steam for GOP nomination.
Steve
The fact that Stewart came on after the interview and said Gingrich was wrong is more than the “news” networks typically do when an interviewee lies to their face. Stewart handled it pretty well, he made a sarcastic comment like “I’m sure now there will be some other reason why the two situations are ‘completely different.'”
Mr. Poppinfresh
Uuh, I just saw this episode this morning on my PVR, and at the end of the episode Stewart made a point of bringing up this very fact. Sure it was after the interview itself, but he definitely made a big deal about it.
Kryptik
@Keith:
I don’t get that either, but then again, I have a different perspective on things than most of those jackoffs, being a son of immigrants.
I’d hate to think that, pre-naturalization, my parents would have had no constitutional rights at all, and that the only reason they survived was by the good graces of people who pretended they did.
Same thing with that birther nonsense. I mean, I’ll never run for president, but somehow, because my parents weren’t citizens before my birth, I’m ineligible? Even if I was born in Logan General Hospital in West Virginia, I’m excluded because my parents were from Cebu?
It’s xenophobia, plain and simple. Like the poor Honduran woman who died in the DC Metro crash last summer. Legal immigrant, with 6 natural born citizen children, but because her last name was Fernandez, obviously she was a damn illegal Mexican and deserved to die.
I have suspicions about anyone who tried to pull that shit, because I know, with my vaguely non-Anglo looks, a last name of Fernandez, and liberal outlook, I can, have been, and will be eventually mistaken for a communist, a soshulizt, a terrorist, an illegal, and likely a traitor.
Zach
@Why oh why:
If Stewart had any balls, he would’ve edited that entire video a la VH1’s Pop Up Video (does that still exist? I don’t have cable) with fact checking information… sort of a not-so-tongue-in-cheek version of the sidebar during Colbert’s “The Word” or a much-more-tongue-in-cheek version of O’Reilly’s TPM focused on the interview.
It’d be a good way to get around the fact that Stewart doesn’t much know what he’s talking about 90% of the time and comes armed with one or two paradoxes to put forth to conservative guests… which leads to the relatively intelligent ones such as Gingrich & Kristol spouting nonsense that sounds right and Stewart accepts.
Note that Stewart did not bookend his interview with Bill Kristol to point out that healthcare in the VA is, in fact, the best and most efficient in our country and a model for integrated health systems around the world. Kristol had bashed the VA as an example of the failure of socialized health care.
John PM
The ultimate problem, over and above the argument that Miranda only applies to citizens, is that an American citizen can be read his Miranda rights, but then be declared an enemy combatant and lose his Miranda rights (see Jose Padilla). I think the Republicans ultimate game plan is to overturn Miranda
Waynski
If Bush could get re-elected after lying about the Iraq war, there obviously is no downside. That’s the grandaddy of ’em all.
Joe Buck
My question is why Jon Stewart has so many Republicans on. Certainly it’s appropriate to have some of them on once in a while, but he rarely invites anyone from the left. He draws from the same pool that populates the Sunday morning talk shows: people like McCain, Gingrich, and Kristol have all made repeat Daily Show appearances. And whenever Stewart invites anyone from the military he just fawns over them.
Colbert is more likely to invite progressives, so his character can debate them. He doesn’t make it easy for them, which forces them into producing a better argument. But lately I find myself skipping most of Stewart’s interview segments.
skeptical
Well, we have not seen Mr. Reid’s birth certificate proving him to be a natural born UK citizen, have we. If he is one, let’s see the proof. It’s a simple question with a simple answer.
demo woman
Sanford’s career is over. He’s free to live with his love and walk the Appalachian trail. Wide Stance also paid a price as did Mark Foley. Gingrich won’t though. This will not be brought up when he attempts to run for President unless he mocks Sarah’s intelligence.
kay
@demo woman:
I get a little frantic, because citizen doesn’t matter. “Person” and “within” matter.
But they’ve managed to make it about “citizen”. Palin knew just what she was doing when she was whipping them into a frenzy with “they’re giving terrorists your rights“.
And I have the sinking feeling I know where they’re going with this.
Brian J
Since we’re on the subject of flimsy/made up conservative arguments concerning the legal end of dealing with terrorism, has anyone read Jane Mayer’s latest article in The New Yorker? If not, you should read it right now.
There’s lots of good information about what went through the minds of the people involved. I’m sure most of you won’t be surprised to know that those who are against the notion of criminal trials don’t have many legs to stand on, particularly since they have either (a) forgotten what happened during the Bush administration and/or (b) just don’t care and are using this as a hammer with which to damage the administration.
Also, is the Andrew McCarthy Mayer refers to the same one that writes for the National Review and is, if memory serves me correctly, a Birther? If so, Jesus H. Christ, I have to give her credit. She’s a lot more generous than I’d be with him.
DougJ
@Zach:
I agree TDS should do more fact checks. I don’t find Stewart to be an especially sharp interviewer.
It makes me sad that the only shows that might possibly have any journalistic ethics are comedy shows. But that’s how it is. And TDS should step it up.
Why oh why
Sanford, Kristol, Yoo, Gingrich… The Daily Show guestlist is starting to look like FOX News’.
DougJ
@demo woman:
The examples you bring up are all people getting busted for sexual things. I agree that happens to members of both parties.
J
Want to echo & endorse what Patroclus #1 said. One of the Republicans’ and right wingers’ most insidious and effective techniques is to make a false claim of fact and then go on to assert something on the basis of it. People react by pointing out that the factual claim is in point of fact false, but meanwhile the assumption that were it true there would be something to what the Republicans say has got a grip, and it can even seem that the people calling attention to the falsehood are endorsing the assumption.
Gingrich: Reid was an Am. citizen, that’s why he was read his rights, as being Mirandized is a right reserved for Americans.
Reaction: But Reid wasn’t an American citizen; i
Assumption that begins to get a hold on people, but needs to be rejected at least as vigorously as the false claim of fact:
being Mirandized is a right reserved for Americans.
Republicans: The Democrats are going to spend public funds on a HSR link from LA to Los Vegas and this would be a corrupt waste of the taxpayers’ money
Reaction: There is no such plan.
Assumption left standing: Were there plans to build such a rail link, it would be a corrupt waste of taxpayers’ money. But for all we know it would be an excellent way to spend public money.
A million wing nuts: Media Matters is supported by George Soros
Reaction: MM receives no funds from George Soros.
Implication left standing and even apparently endorsed by reaction: There would be something suspect about being supported by George Soros, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth, as GS is one of the world’s most admirable philanthropists.
One could add to these examples.
Kryptik
@demo woman:
The difference is that all three of those had something about them that is abhorrent to Republicans bar none.
They were all about sex. Sex scandals are never forgivable….if you’re caught. Of course, after the fact, that’s fine, hey, don’t bother me none.
Lie us into a war, take some graft, block up 70 nominees for kickbacks not even related to the nominees in question? Hey, that’s fine, long as we win. Sex….now that’s a problem. If you’re caught.
slag
@Steve:
This is good. This is why Stewart is better than most.
El Cid
@demo woman: Georgia politicians didn’t give much of a damn about all the damn illegl imgrint labor when the Northeast and Southwest Atlanta metro areas were exploding with brand new and insta-mansion residential housing construction where every jackass with an ability to apply for a company name could call himself a ‘builder’ and throw down homes in subdivisions with the full expectation that they’d be worth a million dollars in two years.
No, no, back then it was all about how we just ain’t got enough skilled tradesmen and these guys really, really work hard, a lot of times better than, um, you know, the white guys, and the builders and their cozy buddies in the local governments who gleefully helped approve all the right developments in the right places were more than happy to be able to suddenly afford a work force they couldn’t have otherwise.
Zam
@Why oh why: Might be they are trying to reach younger people. I’m certain Jon will take on a lot of those people because it will generally be good for his ratings, if Obama, Biden, or Clinton decided to stop by I’m certain he would bump Gingrich.
Gregory
@demo woman:
The obvious pattern here is that the only time Republicans ever (maybe, kinda, sorta) pay a price for lying is when it’s about a sex scandal (and even then, Vitter didn’t).
Michael
I’m thinking that what we’ve got is the country we would’ve had if Father Coughlin would’ve had a less gutsy bishop.
Twenty years of listening to Dropout Limbaugh has had a deeply corrosive effect – his white male listeners don’t want to be better, or smarter, or contribute to a better community. They want to exclude, and whine, and get angry over diminishing privilege.
Basically, this doesn’t end until Limbaugh’s heart explodes in churning detonation of fat, nicotine, salt, liquor and narcotics. If the explosion happens in a crowded room, it’ll take other people with it.
Face it, there’s no scandal that could actually take him out. There could be videotape of him snorting cocaine from the asscrack of a dead underage male prostitute (along with police reports and film of his naked arrest on the site), and he’d still have conservatives diving through flaming hoops to defend and excuse him.
Violet
The Republicans only pay a price when they lie about something related to sex – cheating on their wives, homosexual adventures, etc. And not always then. But it’s the only thing for which there seems to be any kind of price required.
Note that the lies about sex only affect the Republican, his family, and possibly the parties with which the Republican cheated. But when they lie about things that actually affect real people? Business as usual. No one cares.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
It bugs me when people hold TDSWJS to the same or higher standard than CNN, ABC or PBS, but that idea about editing interviews with pop-up “He’s lying” bubbles is fantastic.
jacy
@Keith:
Because the majority of people in this country couldn’t pass a 7th grade civics test.
And people on the Republican side tend to exist in this bubble where they believe anything they hear, as long as it come out of the mouth of someone just like them.
I love my S/O — who is a college graduate of a fine private school. But he was raised by rabid republicans. Every once in a while the most misinformed crap will come out of his mouth. At which point the first thing I say is “WTF?” and the second thing I say is, “You’ve been talking to your dad again, haven’t you?”
Zam
Well we do have some good news, I am no longer having trouble accessing the site.
Gregory
@Violet:
You said a mouthful there. One way the Democrats could — and should — push back on the phony “liberal media” myth is to point out at every opportunity that it isn’t even news any more when Republicans lie.
(Yeah, and a pony…)
Zach
@Zifnab:
The absurdity to me is that no one is acknowledging that the alternative to arresting and Mirandizing the guy was a game of constitutional chicken with the supreme court. There’s a reason Bush repeatedly kicked the can down the road until Obama got into office instead of coming up with actual solutions to the problems arising with indefinite detention and torture. The Court won’t agree that either is legal.
Obviously Gingrich would find something else to justify calling Obama a traitor even if Obama were doing exactly what Gingrich is now demanding, but doing so would literally be impossible without seeing the Supreme Court immediately stay any attempt to transfer the underwear bomber into military custody. Directly the government to ignore a court order is grounds for impeachment, although no President has ever tested that (Jackson & Nixon came close, FDR probably considered it).
TuiMel
Forgive me if I am re-stating what others may have already said. I think Newt’s lying is a feature / strategy not a bug / gaffe. Calling someone out on their lying / mis-statements requires preparation (knowing one’s sh!t) and a lack of fear of losing access. It simply does not happen that often. And Newt’s goal is to feed public fear and propagate the notion that Obama cares nothing about protecting our “way of life.” If Obama does not want to destroy the Constitution in order to save it, what good is he? That is the dark vein of fear that Newt and his lying talking points seek to tap.
demo woman
Bush Sr. said read my lips no new taxes and was ousted. Granted it is not the type of lie you were looking for since it was on the campaign trail but he did pay a price. Besides that and sex, nah.
Lies against the Democrats are always accepted and repeated as fact.
Kryptik
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
At least for people who actually like and watch the show regularly?
It’s held to that high of a standard because there’s virtually nothing else. Daily Show and Colbert report do many things that “real news” doesn’t do which makes it more insightful many times. Watching Stewart let GOP liars get away with lying without so much of a cursory correction (except after the fact in this case) reminds us too much of the media that Daily Show acts as a criticism of. Which would be fine if the “real news” did it’s fucking job.
slag
@kay:
I couldn’t agree more on this.
Honestly, Obama’s ability with words is one of the things I like best about him as president. He is careful to define his words when there is some debate about them. And if people want to disagree with his definitions, they are free to do so. Because he’s not being manipulative or secretive with his use of language. He’s using language for its intended purpose–to communicate. It’s a rare form of truth in advertising.
I wish more people better understood rhetoric and other tools of manipulation. If they did, I don’t think Faux News would exist.
Dino
Gingrich is not a liar, he is a bullshitter:
from a wikipedia description of Frankfurt’s work “On Bullshit:”
Frankfurt defines a theory of bullshit, defining the concept and analyzing its applications. In particular, Frankfurt distinguishes bullshitting from lying: while the liar deliberately makes false claims, the bullshitter is simply uninterested in the truth. Bullshitters aim primarily to impress and persuade their audiences. While liars need to know the truth to better conceal it, bullshitters, interested solely in advancing their own agendas, have no use for the truth. Thus, Frankfurt claims, “bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”
Gingrich did not know or care about Reid’s citizenship. He came up with whatever answer that would get him through the immediate challenge. It is a unfortunate feature of our society and the Republican party has raised it to an art form.
Clinton knew he had sex with that woman. But Bush did not have a clue (nor did he care) whether Iraq had WMD.
slag
@J: Nicely stated. And all a result of the rightwing lie firehose (the liarhose, if you will). Too many lies; too little time.
Zach
@Brian J:
Yes. He also agrees that Jack Cashill made a compelling case that Bill Ayers wrote Dreams from My Father.
On the plus side, he didn’t join the few idiots at the Corner who imagined that Iran was sending barely coded public messages that they were going to blow up the United States on February 11.
TuiMel
@kay:
My reaction to Stewart’s “interview” with Jenny Sanford was simply a prolonged cringe. Her wistful pining for inmate labor to wash her dogs was one for the ages in my book. She clearly was not prepared for a mundane question about life in the SC executive mansion and came off as a modern day Marie Antoinette IMO. If revenge is a dish best served cold, Jenny Sanford appears to be eating hers right out of the oven. She failed utterly to come across as a sympathetic figure or a figure just fighting for her dignity. Perhaps the upside is that the four sons will learn an early lesson in “nothing ‘too humiliating’ can ever happen to me after my parents’ public train wreck.”
slag
@Dino:
I don’t think this is true. He’s said this same thing before. Other Republicans have said it too. It may not have started out as a plan, but it works for them, so they’re going to go with it and undermine the constitutionally guaranteed protections of non-citizens. Why not?
demo woman
Newt is still on the air and taken seriously so he did not pay much of a price for his affairs. He’s considered an elder statesman for republicans. Sanford could recover and become a host on Fox news. He’ll of course talk about his successes in SC. No one will challenge him.
The only person who paid a price was Papa Bush for lying about tax increases.
slag
@TuiMel: I had a similar reaction. It was all very odd. I was worried that it actually made her husband a more sympathetic figure.
justawriter
I would argue that Republicans did pay a price for “Heck of a job, Brownie.” That was the moment the scales fell from the eyes of a few in the media who then saw the administration was largely a bunch of screwups and nincompoops. That moment, I believe, contributed mightily to the democratic gains in 2006 and 2008.
Zifnab
@Why oh why:
I remember at one point Nancy Pelosi specifically notified all Congressional Reps not to go on the Colbert Report’s “Better Know a District”.
He still gets the occasional Republican.
Democrats simply don’t know how to run a media operation.
GranFalloon
You are forgetting the right-wing “us vs. them” mentality. I’m sure that this distinction got somehow muddled in Newt’s mind and that, for all Newt’s intents and purposes, British citizens were essentially Americans, to-wit, “not brown.”
Hell, I’ll take it one step farther. Does anyone seriously think that the far right Palin-style “American” believes that anyone but Americans and Europeans (possibly minus the french, depending upon the situation) are deserving of ANY human rights, much less constitutional protections.
Bill H
It doesn’t matter that Gingrich was wrong about the citizenship issue. He was wrong about what the the fifth amendment to constitution is. It is not about persons, it is about the government. That amendment places restrictions on what the government may and may not do. Gingrich doesn’t understand that, because if he did, he would not even consider citizenship.
But the “bullshitter” point is well made. He merely said what would “dodge the bullet” of the moment. All of Rove’s and Gingrich’s massive untruths spring from walking themsemves into traps and then saying whatever pops into their heads that will keep the trap from slamming shut at that moment. The fact that it doesn’t actually get them out of the trap escapes them, they merely see that it keeps the trap from slamming shut.
Zam
@GranFalloon: The Israelis?
Brian J
@Zach:
[bangs ahead against desk in disgust]
You know, while it’s unbelievable that people like him are treated as if anything besides someone who should be draped in white with no belts or ropes around them, at least we have people like Mayer trying to push back against her nonsense. And while this isn’t always the best indicator, the fact that she writes in a calm, measured, un-Andrew Sullivan like way shows that she’s confident in her facts and lets them speak for themselves.
Rick Massimo
@Zach: Freaking ESPN has a show called “Pardon the Interruption” where the hosts turn to a guy in the background who has been busy on the Internet and the record books the entire show, and he tells them what their factual errors were. On that very show. That they just finished.
Of course, that’s different. It’s sports: Important stuff people care about.
Redshift
@Dino: Exactly. And while fact-checking helps, Frankfurt explains why it doesn’t effectively counter BS — it takes work to fact-check, but it takes no effort for the bullshitter to move on to another BS argument.
J
Thanks Slag! and I left out the best example.
Wingnuts: Obama is a socialist.
Not true, as anyone with a brain can see.
False assumption that is strengthened by minimal response:
Everything that goes under the head of ‘socialism’, including the policies of the Social Democratic parties who make up the progresssive/left side of Democratic politics in the countries that are politically, economically and culturally most like ours, is utterly off limits.
freelancer
OT- Can’t remember who brought this up here, but recently, when talking about Colorado Springs, someone mentioned that the Air Force Acadamy had recently set up a worship space for those of the Wiccan faith. Another postulated how long before the area would be defaced.
Well, your wait is over.
Violet
@Redshift:
True, but if someone like TDS came up with a funny way to fact check that became a daily-must-see type thing, I can see people not wanting to be caught in the “You Lied!” segment from TDS or whatever they might call it.
Simple fact checking such as, “Congressman X was incorrect when he said…” wouldn’t work. A funny video segment with catchy music and a memorable name might work because people would start sending the clip around and talking about it. It’s all in how it’s done. Especially if it’s not done every day so as to avoid becoming stale.
Brian J
@Zifnab:
Whoever yesterday thought that they hire some theater and musical types to help them put on a performance made a good suggestion, even if they do in fact break into song every now and then. Jesus Christ, can you imagine what the Republicans would have done with caring for the insured and those screwed over by insurance companies if they supported changing the status quo? It’d be like a Lifetime movie on 1,000 bottles of 5-Hour Energy and steroids.
Cheryl from Maryland
I agree with TuiMel and Slag re: the Jenny Sanford interview. All Jon Stewart had to do was to watch the train wreck as Jenny dug a bigger and bigger hole for herself.
As for her non-soul mate Mark, how could Jon top her comment that his cheap gifts proved he was a true fiscal conservative?
Redshift
I’m just imagining the reaction of all these “of course foreigners have no rights in our country” so-called conservatives if an American were treated that way in any other country. But of course, like their “everyone accused is guilty” attitudes, it’s built on the assumption that none of these things will ever happen to them.
It’s amazing that people can simultaneously believe that government can do nothing right and that we don’t need any protections from government mistakes.
jacy
@freelancer:
I grew up in the Springs, which has a relatively large and vocal pagan community, but a way larger jump-for-jesus brigade, what with Dobson, Perkins and that lot.
I had lots of close friends who were pagan, and there were many instances I saw first-hand of cars keyed, homes and businesses vandalized, children terrorized, and even pets killed. So this doesn’t surprise me in the least.
Although there was a lot of tolerance there too, more than you would think. When my kids were in grade school there, one year a lesbian couple were co-presidents of the Parent Teacher Organization and the next year it was a Wiccan single mother.
But it was always a battle.
Redshift
@Violet: Good point — simple fact-checking may not be effective, but mockery can be, and TDS, unlike most of the political media, has the ability to do that well.
(Of course, the “Al Gore invented the Internet” political media are perfectly capable of mocking BS to death, but the won’t if it’s Republican BS.)
GranFalloon
Dude. I can’t believe how right-on that is.
Zach
Best lead ever to a Friedman column today by the way:
Marshall
Why is it that if I go to http://www.balloon-juice.com there is no page but if I got a specific story it pops up? I thought balloon juice was down for a couple of days.
Brian J
@jacy:
I remember a teacher in high school telling me she would get a couple of anonymous letters each year asking in a slightly hysterical way how she could dare teach evolution. I don’t live in a particularly liberal area–it’s Long Island, where moderate Democrats seem to have replaced moderate Republicans in a lot of ways–so I was surprised to hear that. I guess it’s always good to think that even the most middle of the road areas have a couple of extremists on both ends.
Zam
The problem being with this is after anyone spends a significant time calling out the sheer number of lies republicans have been spewing they just get hit with the liberal media line. In order to still be considered relevant these days “honest” fact checkers have to devote a considerable time to whatever the hell the new republican line is about “Dems do it worse.” The constant line from republicans before Obama was elected was “Oh Jon after Bush is gone you won’t have a show because you are such a partisan hack” he seems to have taken this seriously and begun running with the daily republican outrage (e.g the ACORN stings, and the Global Warming emails). Unfortunately though if he doesn’t do this any fact checking he does becomes immediately disregarded as liberal partisanship that dominates the media.
reid
@Zifnab:
Seems to me that Newt thinks any “terrorist” (actual or alleged) should just be thrown in a military brig, tortured as necessary/desired, and forgotten. Come on, he’s a terrorist! It shows a pretty blatant disregard for one of the foundations of our system of justice. Ties in with the whole “Obama treats this as a criminal justice problem instead of a war” meme that the scared/tough wingnuts push, and whining about Miranda is just one component of it.
Nim, ham hock of liberty
Interesting notion, that the right to remain silent doesn’t apply to non-citizens.
That right, of course, is set out in the fifth amendment, which also prohibits the deprivation of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.
SO….if the fifth amendment doesn’t apply to foreigners, that presumably also means that they can be deprived of life or liberty without due process of law. I’m sure a lot of tourists would be interested to know that they could, therefore, be summarily executed by our police, for any reason at all.
Think this one through much, did you, Newt?
freelancer
@Zach:
How many taxi drivers were in the room?
OT (again)
NiewertNeiwert hits Moran Gold! ETA – (I should probably get his name spelled right if I’m going to throw that out there.)Svensker
@Keith:
Guess the Declaration’s “endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights” only applies to certain folks, too. Lotta *s in some people’s heads.
oldfatherwilliam
Is some clever minion gonna fix the site already?
Wait, it just worked for me. Was breathing hard for three days.
artem1s
they lost the House and Senate and the majority of governorships in 2006 and the WH in 2008. they reacted to this by pushing forward another compulsive liar into national prominence with the VP bid and rewarded McCain’s spineless capitulation to the religious white (another group of compulsive liars) with their Prez nomination.
Lying liars lie. Al told us so. Just because there is a downside doesn’t mean they will elect NOT to lie. This is the pattern of compulsive liars and all the more reason that the opposition and press should smack them everytime they try. But expecting them to change is the kind of co-dependency craziness that the Dems have been suffering from since the election.
let.them.lie. and then laugh at them.
Notorious P.A.T.
Yeah, I’m shocked he didn’t drop the hammer on Gingrich like he did with John Yoo or John McCain or Betsy McCaughey.
WereBear
It’s all a part of their plan to warp the fabric of reality itself, as that Bush White House aide was once quoted as saying, “we make our own reality”.
Because, to them, it doesn’t matter. If they get all of their voters to believe that eliminating taxes entirely will improve their lives, that is what they will vote for. And if it doesn’t work, it’s a liberal’s fault.
It’s not that they are so amazing at it; it’s that their core constituency has so much practice doing it. Most of the evangelicals are told from birth that god loves them so much he sent his son to die for them… and if they don’t do everything he says he will throw them in a lake of fire forever.
Contradiction? You’re soaking in it!
tootiredoftheright
@Zach:
Miranda applies to anybody that is going to be interogated. It doesn’t apply only to American citizens but those who are brought in by American law enforcement for crimes commited on American terrority or alleged to have been commited on American terrority.
cursorial
@Marshall: That seems to be affecting some fraction of us – something strange about the redirect? wasabi gasp (thanks!) was good enough to point me to https://balloon-juice.com/?p=index which has worked consistently for me.
kay
@TuiMel:
I had to turn if off after Stewart let her ramble incoherently about how her husband never wavered from his conservative fiscal standards.
She should pick up a freaking newspaper in her own state:
after calling the stimulus ‘fiscal child abuse,’ sanford flies to dc seeking stimulus money
Feb. 8, 2010
“Gov. Mark Sanford flew to Washington last Thursday to tell the Obama administration that South Carolina wants $300 million in federal stimulus money.
Sanford, who spent much of last year fighting the Obama administration’s stimulus plan, now wants S.C. to have a piece of $4 billion in “Race to the Top” education money.
The money is awarded to states based on their plans to improve education and innovate. Forty states have applied so far.
The Republican governor’s trip, which did not appear on his official calendar, drew praise from U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C.. Clyburn sparred with Sanford over his refusal last year to accept more than $700 million in stimulus money to help public schools, colleges and law enforcement agencies weather the nation’s worst-ever recession.”
It’s relevant to her book, because the only reason Sanford came to national attention was he wouldn’t shut up about the stimulus.
He was Liar Number One on the stimulus. The GOP point man.
That he neglected to put the trip to DC on his calendar is consistent with his whole life-long scam.
She’s still lying, and Stewart didn’t call her on it.
Zach
@Keith:
If you read the text of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights only applying to citizens is a fair reading. It protects the rights of “the people,” and the only other times “the people” are referenced in the constitution are in the preamble (“the people … establish this Constitution”) and in the section regarding House elections decided by “the People of the several States.” Both of these references are obviously to citizens.
That said, the Court has interpreted the constitution to apply to citizens and non-citizens alike. Which rights are afforded to different classes of citizens and non-citizens is a complicated issue, but it’s not complicated to say that the underpants bomber had the right to remain silent vis a vis future prosecution. And he probably had the right to not be transferred to military custody as well, but Bush moved Padilla at the last minute to the civilian system to avoid a ruling on this.
licensed to kill time
Pretty soon Republicans are going to be saying constitutional rights only apply to Real ‘Murkans(R), and guess who’ll get to administer the test?
Zach
@tootiredoftheright:
Anybody who’s going to be interrogated and whose interrogation or subsequent remarks will be used against them. But yeah, I agree… my point was that the Court would never allow us to use anything that came of non-Mirandized interrogation in a civilian court. And they wouldn’t let us transfer him to the military justice system. Doing otherwise (ie doing what Hoekstra demands) would likely require directly ignoring a Supreme Court order.
Notorious P.A.T.
Absolutely. After all, this is a thread about Newt Gingrich. He makes Mark Sanford look like a choirboy.
Martin
@Zach: How have we even gotten into a discussion that any foreign national could be immediately, and without due process, be put into military custody and denied due process rights? That’s North Korea. That’s literally what the right is arguing in favor of.
They should be arguing that against a wall of silence, for that’s all they deserve on this issue. There’s no ‘fair reading’ bullshit involved.
scudbucket
What I find amazing is that DougJ finds any of this amazing. It’s common knowledge that the media thinks its central role is to present ‘both sides’ of an issue, irregardless of factual accuracy. Doesn’t this simple, widely understood fact about our dysfunctional media entail an obvious answer to the question you think is so compelling?
‘TDS should step it up’? My snarkometer may not be working, but I can’t tell if you’re serious here, since it’s exactly what Tucker Carlson told Stewart when he (Stewart) was criticizing cable news shows.
MikeJ
@licensed to kill time: Pretty soon? It’s been done. Hell, the 3/5ths of a person clause was in the original. That’s what they mean when they say the practice originalism.
Notorious P.A.T.
I don’t think it’s quite so clear. The 1st Amendment doesn’t mention “the people” until it gets to the part about petitioning the government for a redress of grievances, and it seems pretty obvious that there isn’t a whole lot our government can do about a foreign national’s grievances anyway. The 2nd says “the people” have a right to belong to a “well-regulated militia” to defend the country, but is there much need to affirm the rights of other people to defend this country?
In the 5th it says “No person”, the 6th uses “the accused”, and the 8th says simply “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” That’s it, that’s the whole 8th Amendment.
Comrade Darkness
@kay: I think the interview was supposed to be about her, not about her husband. Stewart cast his question in light of her state of mind about still supporting her husband, politically. I thought he did all right. It was a fluff book rushed to market. Stewart certainly didn’t want to look like he was beating up on her. He really seemed to be taking care on that front.
He gave her room to prove how deserving she was of the lout by showing she still stuck up for him. Proof, I guess that for republicans, denial and never admitting you are wrong trump everything, including personal betrayal. Pretty telling, really.
Also, I don’t get the sense that Jon Stewart is a brilliant guy with a large capacity for raw facts about anything at any moment. I think he’s an average guy who tries really hard to be prepared. So sometimes, 20/20 you wish he did better. But he does pretty well, on average, and sometimes he’s stunning.
Comrade Darkness
@Notorious P.A.T.: God, Gingrich is one scary mofo. His contract on america, on top of reagan’s deregulation, is 99% of the cause of the great recession. That he has any perceived worthwhile opinion at any level is just f*cked.
Notorious P.A.T.
I would pay to see that.
Egypt Steve
Karen Hughes lied about this on ABC’s “This Week” a few weeks ago — her line was, it was ok to put Richard Reid into the civilian justice system because he was not sent by Al-Qaida. Needless to say, George Acidophiles did not bother to bring up the indictment that placed Reid in training camps in Afghanistan, nor his declaration of allegiance to Osama bin-Laden at his sentencing.
Notorious P.A.T.
@Comrade Darkness:
I totally agree. He is one of those people who doesn’t care about too much of anything except power. Principles? Religion? Wives? He has cast all of those aside when convenient.
kay
@Martin:
I don’t know how we got here, but that’s a great way to present it.
That should do wonders for international commerce, eh?
We’re “open for business” as Hillary Clinton used to say.
But. Just forget about any due process rights, Mr. or Mrs. Foreign National, should you have the misfortune to be picked up on suspicion of…anything.
Notorious P.A.T.
@Dino:
Haha, good call )
Jody
This is the wrong place to put this, but is anyone else having trouble accessing the main page? I’ve been having that issue for days, and not just on one computer.
GranFalloon
There is, indeed, quite a gap in the right-wing thinking on this. They are quick to claim that we need to get back to the concepts of the founding fathers (setting aside for the moment that they really only bring this up vis a vis Christmas Displays at Wal-Mart).
The founding fathers viewed the foundation of the Constitution as rooted in basic rights that all humans have (at least philosophically, that is). They viewed the United States as a chance to adopt that philosophy into a system of government. There is no evidence to believe that they intended to USA to be a private club and that its rights should only be available to members. To their thinking, EVERYONE deserved those rights. To think that the founding fathers would approve of shackling someone to a radiator with his mouth taped up during his trial and torturing him to get a confession on the grounds that he didn’t wait in line at the federal building for naturalization would be anathema, and is an insult to the founders’ philosophy.
The fact of the matter is, the mean-spirited, warmongering, fundamentalist-christian-only mentality that claims to embrace the founding fathers’ beliefs is actually the farthest thing from it.
Steeplejack
Off topic, but I’m not seeing an open thread. I put up some pictures of my little corner of the snowpocalypse in NoVA this morning. Conditions have been
upgradeddowngraded to a full-scale “blizzard warning.”And, yes, I get to call it a “snowpocalypse” because I had to walk home from work in it last night.
kay
@Comrade Darkness:
I like him. I always like self-deprecating humor better than attacks. I think it’s generally more effective, too.
I’m asking too much of him. The last two interviews I watched were with Yoo (where Stewart was unprepared and got creamed) and Mrs. Sanford.
I want him to cross-examine these people, and he isn’t going to do that.
If I ran the world, Stewart would do all commentary and Rachel Maddow would do all interviews.
She’s got a real gift; good questions and she somehow elicits honest answers. She’s great at interviews, but I can’t stand her rants. I love his rants, and hate his interviews.
I want them to specialize.
Comrade Darkness
@GranFalloon: Shorter to say: The Bill of Rights sets out the limitations of the government’s powers. Period. Full Stop.
gopher2b
Two points – one of which I’m sure has already been made in the comments. First, it doesn’t matter if he’s from Fiji, if you are arrested in the U.S., you have Miranda rights. Second, the framing of this debate is all wrong. Too many people (including U.S. Senators) think if you don’t read someone their Miranda rights, they get out of jail. Not true. It only means you cannot use information obtained FROM THEM SPEAKING in a trial to prove guilt. There is nothing that prevents the CIA from interrogating him, handing him off to the FBI, reading him his Miranda rights, and then starting the criminal proceeding. Moreover, I honestly doubt you need most of these guys’ confession to prove their guilt anyway. This is a fake debate that the GOP will win because they’ve framed it that way.
colleeniem
This is a test–please let this help me access balloon juice during Snowpocalypse II:The Snowening.
Comrade Darkness
@kay: Yes, that was probably where I was going with that. People expect too much of him. And I think he knows that, honestly. And I don’t think it helps his performance to carry that much weight. He should not have to carry so much. I think he’s much sharper when he’s free to be a natural jackass without the burdens of so many unfulfilled expectations.
Martin
@kay:
Yeah, he has to walk a fine line here. His guests already know they’re going to get mocked and made fun of when they volunteer to go on. If he drills into them, they’ll just stop showing up. That’s what happened to Colberts ‘Get to know a district’ segment. First the GOP caught on and then the Dems were even unwilling to get lightly tossed around, which is a shame because it was actually a pretty nice segment.
Comrade Darkness
@Notorious P.A.T.: His screed against women on welfare and how it led to their husbands beating them to death was the real capper. The man will step on anyone, no matter how low, to push himself just a little higher up.
Being a hypocritical dirtbag only increases his republican cred, unfortunately. Otherwise you’d think he’d be done for. But honor means zero.
Jill
John, your home page URL https://balloon-juice.com is not coming up at all for the last 2 days…not in Firefox, not in IE8.
Comrade Darkness
@colleeniem: Have you tried simply subscribing to the RSS feed?
feed://www.balloon-juice.com/?feed=rss2
That will get you straight into each article’s comment area when needed. May work temporarily for you.
Comrade Darkness
@Martin: I think in the case of the Sanford Wife (heh) that he simply did not want to be mean. Based on his expression, I think he felt sorry for her. But this is where Colbert has a huge advantage, he’s play acting when he’s doing his show. Shit he does, isn’t really him doing it. Stewart is himself, so if he’s hard on someone, he risks directly being a jerk.
slag
@kay: I like a lot of Jon Stewart’s interviews. Mostly the ones where he’s sitting across from an honest broker. He’s pretty good at following a logical path to its ultimate conclusion. That style works when you’re trying to get someone to understand the limits of a particular argument; it doesn’t work when someone sits there and lies to you. To deal with that, you need in-depth information, which Stewart is sometimes lacking.
Zach
@Notorious P.A.T.:
I’m not saying it’s the only fair reading, and it’s not the one I agree with. Just that it’s not completely unreasonable to think that the constitution shouldn’t protect the rights of non-citizens based on the text alone. Anyone claiming that now is crazy because subsequent interpretation of the document more than anything in the text… so I guess it’s OK to say that the Constitution shouldn’t protect non-citizens but it is crazy to say that Obama should act based on that feeling.
Unrelated: blizzard just started going off the hook here in Baltimore.
Comrade Darkness
I’m posting this here because I think my emails to john vanish.
Server DEBUG:
blah$ telnet http://www.balloon-juice.com 80
Trying 63.247.142.103…
Connected to balloon-juice.com.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
GET / HTTP/1.1
host: http://www.balloon-juice.com
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:06:44 GMT
Server: Apache
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.12
Vary: Accept-Encoding,Cookie
Cache-Control: max-age=300, must-revalidate
WP-Cache: Served supercache file from PHP
Content-Length: 0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Connection closed by foreign host.
———————>8——————————————-
I’m not seeing this problem from my browser, but i got it to fail in telnet. Can those of you with trouble try something seemingly innocuous?
try https://balloon-juice.com/ (WITH the trailing slash)
Without the trailing slash is actually not valid and the server is supposed to cough up the alternative, but sometimes servers have a sad and don’t. Otherwise, I’d suspect the problem lies in the caching, which is what is supposed to be delivering the page, according to the header.
Bullsmith
The worst thing about this is Newt knew he was lying. The shoe bomber comparison has been floating around for weeks and Newt came armed with an answer for it. An outright lie. Where’d he get the idea Reid was American otherwise? (Doesn’t Newt normally need to see proof before believing claims of US citizenship?)
Say one thing for Republicans, they’re not destroying America because they’re shy.
colleeniem
@Comrade Darkness: Thanks, the comment action worked, but I will do that as well.
Martin
@Comrade Darkness:
Ah! Good catch!
This is why Safari doesn’t barf on the front page. It has a URL autocomplete feature such that if you type in ‘balloon-juice’ it prepends the ‘http://www.’ and appends the ‘.com/’. Turns out if you type in the full deal and leave off the trailing slash, Safari fixes it before it sends the page request. Other browsers don’t do that, so they blow up.
jeffreyw
@Comrade Darkness: No clue as to the coding, but I can confirm that I have had no trouble reaching BJ from my bookmark–said bookmark includes the slash at the end of the url.
Steeplejack
@Comrade Darkness:
I have not had any problems accessing Balloon Juice, either with the trailing slash or without. (Opera 10.10, Win XP.) I do have my browser set to accept cookies from Balloon Juice only, not from any of the barnacle sites clinging to the hull via ads, etc.
jeffreyw
And where is the open thread? I have some cool hawk pics from a morning spent clutching my camera at the ready.
different church-lady
I’m thinking: the elections of 2006 and 2008?
Steeplejack
@jeffreyw:
I chucked my snowpocalypse pictures in this thread. I think maybe some of the front-pagers are having trouble accessing their own blog. Hee-hee-hee.
kay
I just want to remind everyone that this whole lie can be traced to Politico.
And Dick Cheney.
“He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of Sept. 11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.’
The rest of the nitwits are just parroting Dear Leader. As usual.
jeffreyw
@Steeplejack:
Well, in that case I’ll go with my favorite so far.
Comrade Darkness
Hm, so if the trailing slash is the problem, then there is an interaction between apache and the WP cgi that is probably going to require the re-write engine.
Under heading Trailing Slash Problem
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Elie
I think that for Republicans/conservatives, truth is mapped to emotion and emotionally held beliefs that to observable, provable reality. They are all emotion all the time and their favorites are fear and anger — through which not only their world view, but other dogmas are propagated. Emotion is the medium, not fact. Exploding it requires a dose of reality so huge as to be difficult to muster on an everyday basis — it just would not impact enough of them to matter.
At the tail end of 2008, the financial melt down and the real reality of those consequences almost shifted things, at least it got Obama elected, but it didnt last cause, paradoxically, once he did his job and prevented us from completely going off the cliff, the impact of the dose waned and they recoiled back to the same ol paradigm.
It will take a lot to change this requiring both one at a time corrections and mass reality experiences — usually unpleasant. The last time I can think of that demonstrates this sort of example is the emotional state of the pre WWII Germans and their abdication of reality in order to create their emotional home, the faux “Fatherland” of Nazi Germany. You see what it took to change that.
Comrade Darkness
@kay: Cheney is definitely paranoid enough to be shitting his pants now that he’s out of power. Couldn’t happen to a nicer, more demonic fellow.
policomic
@Rick Massimo: I’m not much of a sports fan, but lately I find myself listening more to ESPN radio than to NPR. The analysis is better-informed (and usually has a sounder basis in fact), people are upfront about it when they editorialize, there’s genuine debate–and yes, fact-checking (and apologies when that fact-checking shows somebody got something wrong). And the guy who calls in to say Favre is washed up, or the ref blew that call last night usually displays better critical-thinking skills than the people who call in to “Talk of the Nation” (and the hosts are more willing to call listeners and guests on their B.S. than Neal Conan or Steve “Fakelaugh” Inskeep).
Jeff
@slag
I think that Stewart knows the rules of the game, and he is good with pinning down inconsistencies, but not at exposing out-and-out lies ala Gingrich.
With Jenny Sanford, both he and Sanford knew that it would largely be a softball interview, because to come down hard on her would have appeared unseemly and harsh. Even so, he managed some gentle illumination of her character, vis-a-vis the inmate gardeners and dog groomers which exposed her privleged mind-set and the Sanford’s rather shallow understanding of life.
However, Stewart can’t always know everything, and he shouldn’t be expected to fill the role that David Gregory is failing to fill.
Zach
@Bullsmith:
My guess is that he didn’t lie on purpose and confused Reid with Padilla or John Walker Lindh. Padilla was transferred to military custody after a month and ultimately back to civilian custody for trial. Lindh was detained as a prisoner of war and charged in civilian court. Both were allegedly tortured at one point or another to varying degrees.
Zach
@kay:
Tom Ridge actually got there a couple days earlier, but I’d guess that Liz Cheney’s Rah-Rah-Freedom outfit drafted and focus grouped the playbook before anyone said anything:
kay
@Comrade Darkness:
Neoconservatives aren’t going away.
I had a brief period where I thought “this is completely discredited, thank God” but they’re really back with a vengeance.
It’s amazing how fast they regrouped, and with essentially the same approach, even down to grooming a none-too-bright governor to carry water.
I still think, at the end of the day, that the vast majority of Americans have no interest in ratcheting up our foreign “engagements”. I hope Palin goes full-bore neocon, on foreign policy. I think she will, and I think they’re misreading the electorate on that.
Napoleon
@Zach:
Actually, no it isn’t.
kay
@Zach:
Thanks. They give me the creeps with this stuff. It’s like the Bush Years, where you’d work backward and find Liar Number One after the lie had entered “accepted truth” realm.
Oh, and so much for Tom Ridge ( “The Reasonable Republican”) and his regret at hyping those ridiculous terror alerts for political purposes.
He was remorseful for about twenty minutes.
He’s a recidivist. A repeat offender.
I’m so tired of listening to these people. Christ. We’re going on 10 years of this endless bullshit.
slag
@Jeff: I agree with most of that. Which I think is a good summary of why Stewart needs to choose his interviews more wisely. He doesn’t need to accept just anyone who has a book to sell.
I thought he did a good job with Austan Goolsbee the other day. He was funny. Poked fun at Goolsbee’s communication problems. And interviewed Goolsbee from the left rather than from the right.
It’s that last point that gets Stewart a lot of credit from me. There are so few people who conduct interviews from even a mildly leftist point of view. Especially on economic issues. I’m glad we have at least a couple (Stewart and Maddow). We need more.
General Winfield Stuck
@kay:
The neocons are like crocodiles waiting patiently for the fearful Wildebeast herd to once again cross the Grumeti River.
They lolly about floating anxiously for one of the frightened critters to bolt in fear and panic into their graceful jaws. All it takes is the sight of the first croc dragging under and spinning the flesh off one of their friends to start the frenzy.
And so it is with our neocon predators. They wait patiently and build their case of fear with words, studies from wingnut think tanks, lobbying for funding of military projects. They go on Sunday talk shows and warn of death and destruction to fat and happy murrikans busy with the days shopping, but catching sound bytes now and then of impending doom, that glom onto their spoiled brain matter like clockwork. And they harry liberal pols in congress with never ending barbs of cowardice and weak kneedness that will get ma pa and baby junior blown to smithereens at the Mall while shopping for Christmas presents. Just to fatten the weakest willed libtards for the big day when something happens and they can dine on their spineless carcass. The best is when something happens on American soil because it strikes the deepest chord of terror amongst the well scrubbed natives. It can be a large 9-11 type attack, or multiple smaller ones that when the number of dead Americans reaches a threshold point, then they are in business of dealing death.
And all the prep kicks into action and the bombers begin to fly and missiles to cruise to ratchett up the deathcon for more missiles and bombs to be delivered. To kill phantom enemies and thousands of civilians and call it collateral damage to kill one or two bad guys they aren’t completely sure are bad and rarely sure if they are where they think they are, but either way always close enough for government work.
They have been lately in the publics shithouse for the Iraq pooch screwing, but Americans forget quickly and fear is idiot piercing ammunition.
Bullsmith
@Zack
Well he’s openly criticizing the President during wartime about his conduct of the war and he doesn’t even know who he’s talking about? That’s highly irresponsible, downright dangerous. Surely he would want to check that mirandizing terrorists was indeed something new before going out and undermining his own government’s actions?
But of course it would be perfectly plausible for Newt to have just been ignorant, from lots of other people I’d accept that but Newt’s crazy, he’s not stupid.
Newt Gingrich knows full fucking well who Jose Padilla is and which terrorists were American versus which were You’re-a-peein’ and which were pure-blood Muslim Gold. He’s a fearmonger and these guys are his wares. If there were terrorist trading cards he’d have a whole set. Hell he’d own the trading card company, he just can’t gin up enough towel-headed Supervillains to justify a whole series.
And if I’m wrong and he really didn’t know then he’s gone senile and should STF up. But of course that’s true either way. And I gotta say, him just not knowing the single most relevant fact about the single issue he was going on TV about is not plausible. He’d be clued in at least to a soundbyte level. His soundbite was a lie. Coincidence? Lying fits the facts much better, to me.
Tonal Crow
“A lie is halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on” — (generally attributed to Mark Twain)
We like to think that all we’ve got to do is tell the truth, and most of our readers will be convinced. It just ain’t so. The truth is singular, inflexible, and often runs counter to entrenched interests. Lies, on the other hand, are infinite in quantity, unsurpassed in flexibility, and can be crafted to make almost anyone feel comfortable.
Without concerted salesmanship — that is, good rhetoric — the truth will, thus (at least in the public sphere) consistently lose to the falsehood.
Hence, the GOP’s power.
It’s up to us — and especially to our high-profile leadership (e.g., Obama) , who have big, fat bully pulpits — to craft and use good rhetoric. We have to frame the discussion in ways helpful to us, not just respond when the GOP frames it in ways helpful to them. We have to take advantage of openings, not let them slide by because using them is “too confrontational” or “hurts bipartisanship”.
Remember, the GOP are the cheaters in life’s game of iterated prisoner’s dilemma. You can’t win the game by always cooperating; you’ve got to punish the cheaters.
Good rhetoric is key to doing that, and thus key to accomplishing the goals that most of us want to accomplish.
Zach
@Bullsmith:
If he took the time to think about it, I suspect he also knows that it’s a dumb idea to call a surefire Supreme Court confirmee a racist, and that that quote did more to dash his hopes for a 2012 run than anything else he could do. Good luck figuring out electoral math that ignores Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Nevada, and Florida since GOP wins there are impossible without substantial Latino support. Lose the Hispanic vote McCain got in 2008 and you’re looking at losses of 7% (TX), 7% (AZ), 12% (NM), 5% (CO), 3.3% (NV), and 6% (FL).
The point is, sometimes intelligent people speak out of their ass, too. I mean, the moment I heard him say that, I knew it was wrong and knew that he’d get shit for saying it, and he did. Whatever gain he got from dropping that was immediately erased by people ridiculing his ignorance. I think he’s smart enough to know that it’s a better idea to dissemble about how we didn’t have the same military commissions when Reid was captured (like the folks at National Review) than tell an obvious lie.
He said any number of other things that were knowingly deceitful, but I suspect that this particular thing was an honest-but-telling mistake.
Elie
@General Winfield Stuck:
I like your analogy, but the reason that the crocodiles are there is because there is an environment that supports their attack strategy. The river allows them to float unseen to when they can spring their trap. Imagine them without it, slow, lolling in mud, visible to all
The river, using that analogy, I believe, is the culture of fear and faux “fatherland” that has been established by the corporate culture (which now includes the MSM). The purpose of the crocs is to keep the wildebeest afraid of their own shadows and on the move, doing stupid mindless things.
It is difficult to expose the protective and enabling medium for the fear and anger merchants since they are now so part of our cultural self perception. We gave into it a long time ago. Who lets their kids out to play anymore after school with the myth of sexual predators around every corner? We have instead accepted fat, isolated, couch potato children who cringe at every story about the “other” bogeyman.
We need no less than a cultural revolution to change this. I don’t think fact based truth has a chance, though of course we must always promote it and put it out there.
AhabTRuler
Almost, but not quite. It is a culture of consumerism that has been established. The vaterland is just a place where you are “free” to buy stuff and the fear is that “they” will blow up our stuff.
We should all go back and reread Brave New World.
Then we should drop some LSD.
CalD
Newt Gingrich is a lying sack of shit. What else is new?
A point I keep trying to make is that Republicans don’t just tell lies, they sell lies. A lot of their marketing and PR methods should work just as well for someone who happened to be telling the truth.
Mim Song
@61: Papa Bush didn’t pay a price for lying about taxes. (It probably wasn’t even a lie.) He paid a price for betraying the permanent GOP plank on taxes. If he had changed his mind in the other direction, not one Republican would have complained.
Tonal Crow
@CalD:
Yes. If we (and especially the Democratic leadership) would only use them. It’s up to us to pressure them to do that.
JoeK
Please, sir, I just wanna see recent posts aggregated together in reverse chronological order, with no comments. Pleasepleaseplease if I post a comment I can haz that?
Jerry 101
Did Jose Padilla get mirandized?
He sure as shit didn’t get a fair or speedy trial.
He sure as shit was tortured until his psyche was entirely shattered, on the soil of the continental United States to boot.
goblue72
Newt Gingrich pressed his first wife to sign divorce papers while she was in the HOSPITAL recovering from CANCER surgery. 6 months are he divorced her, he remarried.
Then, while married to wife #2, he cheated on her with a younger woman at the same time he was leading the charge to impeach Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky BJ.
This is all you need to know about Gingrich. And if I was Supreme Ruler, I’d pass a law that every time Newt showed up as a talking head on TV, the host would first have to recite the above litany before Newt got to speak.
Tonal Crow
@goblue72: Yes, but you see, “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven”. That “justifies” anything and everything, including the most blatant of hypocrisy.
SiubhanDuinne
@Why oh why:
I have found over the past couple of months or so that as often as not I either don’t watch TDS at all, or watch the first few minutes and then turn it off. Only sometimes will I stay tuned for the full program (usually if there is a really great moment, Balloon Juice will tell me about it and then I can go to YouTube and catch it there). Agree about the guest list looking Foxier than Fox these days. Even though I greatly admire him, it just feels like Jon Stewart has lost his edge recently. Or maybe it’s me . . . .
trollhattan
@125 Comrade Darkness,
Slash tricky no work on this browser-OS combo (IE8-Win XP). Regular addy also no work but I can get in via a bookmarked post and navigate to “recent posts” from there.
From a different location I have no problems with either an IE8-Vista combo or a Firefox-Win7 combo.
I haz no clue as to why.
Ha
It could be that Stewart was so taken aback at the bold-faced lie he didn’t know what to say.
(Someone may have already made this comment, I just need a cookie.)
Bender
So Obama’s a Republican now? From last week:
“You had to cast more votes to break filibusters last year than in the entire 1950s and 60s combined,” Obama told his party. “That’s 20 years of obstruction packed into one.”
Let’s check Captain Science’s cherrypicked numbers. In the real world, uninfested with Skittles-shitting unicorns, the number of filibusters (the successful use of 41 or more votes to prevent the closing of debate) in 2009 equaled… Zero. So, you’d have to figure that votes to break zero filibusters would be roughly that same number.
So what Obama could’ve said, but chose not to say because it’s less sensational, was that the Democrats had to vote on cloture last year more often than in the ’50s and ’60s, when the filibuster was hardly ever used (the tactic took off when Nixon was in office and Democrats wanted to obstruct him).
Of course, every President could’ve whined this same whine at every Congress since Nixon, but the media might’ve fact-checked it and saw how ridiculous it was.
FUN FACT: Did you know in Obama’s last year in Congress, the Republicans had to vote on cloture more times (112) than in the time between 1947 through 1982? Obama’s Congress packed 35 years of obstruction into one year!
So you know what Big Media did? Did they bust Obama for it, and tell the American people that they were being duped by overwrought rhetoric and stupid statistics? Of course not. After all, they are journalists.
So they edited the President’s speech for their reports to take out the lie!
Funny how they all jump out of direct quotes to correct his mistake (never saying Teh Perfesser made a mistake), and then they all jump back into direct quotes after they correct him. In perfect synch, with no comment on their doctoring. Orchestrated, much?
Additionally, not one reporter could be bothered to look at the historically-low cloture rate in the ’50s and ’60s to see that it was a totally meaningless comparison. I mean, not that I’ve ever met a reporter whose IQ was higher than room temp, but they could at least try.
And John whines about “no downside?” Hell, these Big Media guys will collude to cover up any factually incorrect Obama statement that is too blatantly wrong to slide through! Now that’s “no downside!”
So, in this week of Palin’s Palmgate, spare me the whining about how Big Media loves Republicans and hates Democrats so much. It makes you look delusional.
General Winfield Stuck
@Bender: trolling dead threads again I see Bender. I bet you dip dumpsters behind Macdonalds for half et burgers?. Come on , admit it/
brantl
Nixon didn’t pay a price for lying, he lied througout his term. He paid a political price for aiding and abetting a felony, though he was never charged….
Stewart should lead with the Newt correction today. The graphic should be, “Newt’s not right, and the sun will rise in the east, tomorrow”.
Bender
@General Winfield Stuck:
How about this: If I feel like commenting, I’ll comment. If you ignorant mingers can think of anything substantive to post in response — hey, hope beats eternal! — then you can post after me.
If not, you can do what Ball Juicers always do — resort to ad hominem and accusation of spoof and troll and pie. Because those are gold!
So now everybody’s happy. Shinebox.