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.'"

Comments

Re:Kudos

[Abcd1234]

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?

Re:Kudos

[Volante3192]

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.

Re:Kudos

[Shotgun]

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.