nyihockey: The stuff from Iran also left me really dissapointed. It is one thing to put the joke on someone who knows what is going on (or ought to know), but these guys had no idea. Most of them barely spoke English.

Actually, many of them knew about the Daily Show and were fans. That was one of the gags, in fact, with a young Iranian man doing Jon Stewart's impression of Bush the Decider. Also, they did a "Jay Walking" type segment showing how Iranians know more about America and we know about Iran. And their English sounded pretty good to me, far better than my Farsi.

And anyway, TDS has been exploiting people's ignorance of the show for ten years. It's not exactly a new shtick.

moralpanic:
Ok i'll bite. What's common sense and what has been tried and failed?

Didn't you hear him? Karl Marx and Jimmy Carter, together, have done exactly every single thing and it has all failed. Especially the ping pong tournament they tried to set up.

Outtaphase: CalvinMorallis: my youtube-fu is weak today, for some reason (I blame last night's gin). Does anyone have a link to the last daily show-iran segment, reference in the article? The sober "round up" thing?

Thanks in advance.

Here ya go. (pops)

This one is my favorite.(new window) Heh heh heh... I'm the decider!

Obvious tag is obvious *shrugs*

moralpanic: Animatronik:
-Too many "progressives", a.k.a. liberals, seem to think that anything new coming from the left is some kind of farking manna from heaven. It isn't new, you can find it all either coming out of Jimmy Carter's mouth or in Karl Marx's books. It isn't good or progressive, because it's all been tried before and failed.

Ok i'll bite. What's common sense and what has been tried and failed?

Common sense is understanding the world you live in.

If you tax the corporate sector more, they move their operations overseas. So there's a practical limit to how much you can tax corporations, unless you want to erect a wall at our border and stifle the global economy.

If health care is too expensive already, it should be possible to come up with a plan that phases in some type of national insurance without blowing up our national debt even more. Obama's plan is to leave most stuff unchanged while he borrows hundreds of billions to cover people who supposedly don't have good health care or aren't using it properly. Common sense should tell you that the country is not in a position to do it that way anymore. Some people need to make sacrifices up front so that others can have better care. What we need is a combination of single-payer care and catastrophic insurance that minimizes the extent to which people game the system. There's no reason that this should cost a trillion.

Common sense should tell you that any large piece of legislation full of random shiat added at the last minute is a BAD PIECE OF LEGISLATION. That earmarks are never a good thing because they give legislators inducements to stop thinking about what they are voting on. We need them to think and vote according to their minds and hearts.

What's been tried and failed is piling on massive amounts of government debt in order to stave off recesssion. What's been tried and failed is having government directly control large parts of various industries. What's been tried and failed is disguising taxes as something else, calling them "investments" while the govt prints IOUs (social security), and calling a carbon tax something else while people like Markey, who dine with union bosses but have no clue what a market is, call cap and trade a market that will somehow save consumers money because capitalism is at work.

It's a progressive taxation system. What they should do is scrap the idea and simply tax energy use, or tax energy based upon the source (so solar pays much less than coal).

These things don't work because they don't consider the behavior of individuals and groups as significant. They are all schemes to convince the public they are getting something for nothing, when what we really need is an honest conversation with real solutions.

PersianTechie: @oxfordgirl You think that's bad, have you seen report US trying to stop G8 Sanctions? #iranelection #iran $gr88

What the hell is Obama doing now? Looks like he sold the people of Iran down the river!!

Bloody William: "...how the fark do you know about Utica?"

That piece was amazing. Then again, before the Iranian election thing, I probably wouldn't have been able to name Tehran on the spot. And on national television, I'm certain I would have pronounced Ahmadinejad's name wrong.

/holy crap, I spelled it correctly on the first try

Animatronik: Common sense is understanding the world you live in.

Common sense lead to people thinking burlap sacks and grain lead to the spontaneous generation of mice or that frogs grew from mud.

I don't put much stock in common sense.

Murkanen: I don't put much stock in common sense.

It's not that common to begin with.

/Oh, and if you want real journalism try looking up Robert Fisk.

I am both amused and saddened by this

Animatronik: Common sense should tell you that any large piece of legislation full of random shiat added at the last minute is a BAD PIECE OF LEGISLATION. That earmarks are never a good thing because they give legislators inducements to stop thinking about what they are voting on. We need them to think and vote according to their minds and hearts.

The funny part is that you think earmarks are somehow an exclusively "progressive" thing.

Blue states, in general, pay more federal taxes than they receive. Red states, in general, receive more federal taxes than they pay. What conclusions can you draw from this?

HeartBurnKid: Blue states, in general, pay more federal taxes than they receive. Red states, in general, receive more federal taxes than they pay. What conclusions can you draw from this?

That you label things in black and whith terms or in your case blue and red in order to make your decision making process thought free?

SomeoneDumb The Icelander: Anytime I see someone talking about bombing Iran, I want to show them that footage of Iranian kids on a playground.

QFT

And, yes, I sadly realize that hardened hearts would refuse to budge and would twist into knots inventing rationalizations and justifications.

Nonsense. Think more along the lines of Operation Opera in 1981. The reason Bush looked like such a fool not finding WMDs was because the strike by Israel was so effective back then...and no kids died. Now think about the fascist theocratic tyrants that run Iran. Do you really want them having nuclear weapons?