Slashdot Mirror
Stewart and Colbert Plan Competing D.C. Rallies
Lev13than writes "In a direct retort to Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor rally, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have announced competing rallies on October 30th. Stewart plans to host a 'Rally To Restore Sanity' on Oct. 30 on the National Mall in D.C. for the Americans he says are too busy living normal, rational lives to attend other political demonstrations. Colbert, meantime, will shepherd his fans in a 'March To Keep Fear Alive.' 'Damn your reasonableness!' Colbert said. 'Now is not the time to take it down a notch. Now is the time for all good men to freak out for freedom!' Stewart, meanwhile, has promised to provide attendees with signs featuring slogans such as 'I Disagree With You But I'm Pretty Sure You're Not Hitler' and 'I'm Afraid of Spiders.'"
It's not mandated. You're free to bring your own signs, but they'll have some if you're not funny. And thank God for that, because most people are not funny. Sadly, people that aren't funny and people that think they're not funny have a very small overlap on the Venn diagram, so we'll still be forced to read some very unfunny things.
Uh. Good for him?
Seriously, how is that remotely relevant to the current thread of conversation, exactly? The GP strongly implied that Stewart and Colbert only attack the right on their shows, suggesting they are partisan. I illustrated that this is clearly not the case (at least not to the extent he/she is suggesting... obviously they are left-wingers, but they certainly don't pull punches if the democrats give 'em good material to work with).
You then bring up Glenn Beck for reasons I can't really fathom... so, can you explain yourself, or are you just retreating to trolling because you lost the argument?
"Glen Beck is serious."
I wouldn't take Beck so seriously. He's a carnival huckster who's tapped into a segment of the population who don't exactly care to tow the liberal line. So what? Beck was an alcoholic morning dj for a very lone time. He then discovered "God" and success and went the Limbaugh route. If you watch him for any length of time on his show he makes incredible, "sky is falling" assertions about crazy things he reads in the news, interviews conspiracy theory cranks, and says "Now watch this..." (referring to conspiracies and strange events around the world), and the very next night is on to some other conspiracy. And it all ends up being a big nothing. Watch him, sooner or later he'll retire, and that will be it. Then you've have some new guy (or gal) come in that you'll feel you have to be careful about. Its all a big media circus nothing designed to keep you worked up. Your best defense against these types is to simply ignore them.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
What do Beck, Stewart and Colbert have in common?
They're entertainers, not political scientists.
I don't want actors writing mission critical code for our spacecraft, and by the same token, we the voters shouldn't get our opinions from people who are paid to make us laugh, not make us see truth.
If you want to know what's wrong with democracy in America, it's that a huge mass of useful idiots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot) are voting wherever their emotional impulses lead them, at the behest of a few privileged media elites.
That's not politics, it's mob rule.
Futurist Traditionalism
Funny that you believe that President Obama is moderate right.
I would put him as left but not a left wing nut.
That is the problem the left and right wingnuts seem to be screaming the loudest.
And now that our news services have become more entertainment then news they feed them.
Conflict sells. Cooperation solves.
We have too much selling and not enough solving.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
b) despite a lot of promises, no conservative President has **ever** brought America smaller government anyway
This is probably the primary fact motivating the tea party. Note that the first 'victims' of tea party activism were all actually Republicans who didn't live up to the 'small government' name.
Personally I'm interested to see how the tea-party responds when they realize cutting government size means cutting programs you like. It's easy to say 'smaller government' but how serious are they about it really?
Qxe4
Personally I'm interested to see how the tea-party responds when they realize cutting government size means cutting programs you like. It's easy to say 'smaller government' but how serious are they about it really?
It'll be beautiful.
Here's some quick math so you will be able to appreciate it:
The US brings in about $2,500 billion through taxes, tariffs, et cetera.
The US Federal Budget is around $3,500 billion.
Four department budgets, Defense, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, constitute around $2,500 billion of the budget. (It's a bit less, so feel free to tack on interest paid on the debt to that, I just don't have the number handy.)
This means they can cut everything, including their favorite target, the Dept of Education (at $50 bil...now see why I kept writing those zeros?), except those items, and STILL have a deficit.
Oh, and then they want to cut taxes even more.
I'd love to see ANY politician go on national television and watch them say "We're cutting Defense, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security." They'd be pilloried so fast, you'd hear sonic booms.
It's pretty sad when a show that is supposed to be dedicated comedy is considered a more trustworthy news source than CNN.
What makes it more sad, is that they are actually right to consider it more trustworthy. It's not just people believing it and wanting it to be true. They actually are more trustworthy. What does that say about the rest of our sources of "news"?
To bolster your point, Ron Paul spoke about cutting Military spending, specifically by closing foreign bases. He was immediately labeled a loon and openly mocked in the debates that he was able to force his way into. In the first Republican debate, Huckabee was talking about sending Iranian sailors to meet their 70 virgins, and Paul retorted that we shouldn't be warmongering. The moderator actually interrupted him, claimed nobody was warmongering, and cut his response time short. Then they had that putz, Frank Luntz, doing one of those focal group nonsense things, where they all unequivocally decided that Ron Paul lost the debate.
Anytime a tea-party candidate mentions cutting ANY Federal program, they are labeled bat-shit insane, no matter how pointless or useless that program has proven itself. Test scores have been consistently dropping since the creation of the Dept of Education, with ample evidence of every increasing bureaucracy, yet any mention that it might need to go the way of a certain flightless bird is met with the same reaction you'd expect from someone suggesting the public flogging of Mother Theresa.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
I'm all in favor of restoring sanity-- but equating the outrage on "the Left" with what's going on on the Right is bullshit. I don't think that Bush is Hitler-- but he did lie us into the wrong war, he did refuse to include the costs of his wars in the budget, he did sign executive statements claiming the laws Congress passed didn't apply to him. He did everything in his power to make sure the Rich didn't have to pay any taxes and made sure not to put any oversight on Wall Street that would have, say, prevented the collapse of the economy. He brought back torture and wanted to overturn Habeus Corpus. He wiretapped Americans illegally when all he had to do was ask for permission from the FISA court to do it legally. Obama has been a disappointment to, but to equate the nut-jobs on the Right who think Obama is a Muslim and was born in Kenya and is a Socialist is shit. Obama may not be perfect, but when you treat the hapless Democrats with the ignorant, deceitful, moronic Republicans you are helping deliver this country back into the hands of those who got us into the mess we're in today. You can't possibly want Boener running the show, can you?
because your strategic thinking sucks
the government is supposed to represent the people. it doesn't: its warped by corporate influence to stack the deck in their favor. we both agree on that
then we radically part ways
you say: lets trash the government. ok, then what happens? now the corporations gleefully completely abuse you in every way you listed above, plus 50 more unseemly and degenerate ways you haven't even imagined yet that you can be abused, because YOU DESTROYED THE ONLY THING WHICH CAN STANDS BETWEEN YOU AND COMPLETE DOMINANCE BY CORPORATIONS: the government
i say: you should want to FIX the government, and have it work for you, which it what it is supposed to do and was made to do! not trash it and remove the only thing that can protect you from unhindered corporate abuse
i really don't understand people like you: you openly admit to the corporations and their financial influence being the ultimate source of the problem, but you still don't understand that the government, which is supposed to be of the people, is being corrupted to work against your interests rather than for your interests. so you should remove the corruption, right? no, you go "ok, let's finish the job and destroy the government completely so i can be completely butt raped by corporations in a world where they don't even have to pretend and work secretly by destroying my government"
wtf?!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The US has a radical left, and from what I can make out, it's similar in scale to the radical left in European countries and elsewhere. However, there's not a significant social democratic left party in the US -- so the radical left has an even harder time getting a hearing in the US than elsewhere. Most people who would support a social democratic party grudgingly support the Democratic Party, a party of the center which routinely squelches its left-of-center wing. It's routinely said (I think Obama said this, for instance) that the Democrats need not pay any attention to the left, since the left will either vote Democratic or not vote at all.
The most likely candidate for a social democratic party in the US is the Green Party, which does have one thing going for it: whereas in most countries, there is a split in the left between the social democratic and green parties, there's the potential to unite both in one party in the US. However, the Green Party was rather viciously attacked in the 2004 presidential election, and while on paper the Green Party has become more coherent, in practice the Greens have been almost passive.