Stewart - McCain

Last night John McCain was on the Daily Show, and, I have to say, this is likely the best episode of the DS that I have seen in a long time.

Stewart started out with some unusually direct takes on the Iraq War, pitting first-term Bush Jr. against second-term Bush Jr. I usually don't like this kind of "interview the videotape" gag, but the content of this was so good that it was worth it.

Stewart had McCain on as the guest. My biggest complaint about Stewart is that he has a regrettable tendency to be overly deferential to right-wingers when they are actually on his show. His interview with the criminal Henry Kissinger a few years ago made me stop watching for a few months. Why on Earth would someone like Stewart kiss the ass of a megalomaniac like Kissinger, a man directly responsible for the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, and -- something that affects me personally -- the toppling of the democratic government of Chile in 1973?

Last night, though, Stewart was completely on his game. He came across as no-bullshit, ceded no points to McCain out of deference, and really exposed McCain for the pathetic party hack that he has unfortunately become.

For the video, check out Crooks & Liars as usual.

Right-wing talking points in a single sentence

Read this , and you will never have to watch O'Reilly again.

Decades ago, little George Soros decided to take over the world so he got rich through the capitalist system which he wished to destroy by paying John Kerry to fake his wounds and forge his service records in Vietnam so Kerry could run for president one day while leaving lots of people POW-MIA in Vietnam so that we'd all stop being afraid of Marxism so that literary critics from France could infect the minds of the young with Cultural Marxism and pornography via tenured radicals in English Departments and organizations like MoveOn.org and Media Matters and the Em Ess Em so that the Great International Communist Islamofascist Conspiracy to Dominate the World could move ahead by means of feminists evolutionary biologists atheists and liberal Christians who want to ban Christmas so that everyone will be gay and that way they'll all be feminized and passive and won't be able to do anything but stand around when the Islamic Bomb is built which it will be any moment because Saddam really did have WMDs in fact the only supply of WMDs in the entire world that the terrorists could possibly get their hands on and the Islamic Bomb is being built right now by Syria Russia North Korea and China most of which are not Islamic countries but it's all the same thing anyway and everyone in the government from the Bush Administration to the Congress and all the way down the bureaucracy and the Em Ess Em knows this but isn't saying anything because they're too embarrassed and when the Islamic Bomb is developed it will be dropped on American cities and soon all those atheist liberal Christians will see oh yeah they'll see all right when they all have to wear hijabs and then George Soros will have won.

Crystal clear. Now you can retire, Falafel-man.

My Favorite Trane

Amazing how it seems that there is an instant connection between Trane's mind, his fingers and his horn. Pure volition, intentionality, without premeditation.