IMHO, much funnier than Colbert. His schtick gets old. Stewart just has to be himself.

In the dead of night in a small hideaway office in the deserted Capitol, a clandestine meeting takes place between two senators with one goal.

They grin at each other as they lift their celebratory shots of brutally cold Stolichnaya.

“Our toast to The One,” they say in unison, “is that he’s toast.”

“Obama should have picked you, Hillary,” John McCain tells her. “It isn’t fair, my friend. But it just makes it easier for me to whup him.”

“Don’t worry, John, I’ve put it behind me,” Hillary replies. “I’m looking toward the future now, a future that looks very bright, once we send Twig Legs back to the back bench.”

They chortle with delight.

“He’s a bright young man, but he got ahead of himself,” McCain says. “He needs to be taught a lesson, and we’re the ones to do it. Have you seen the new Bloomberg poll? Obama’s dropped and we’re even again. The Bullet’s getting all the credit, but you and I know, Hillary, that it’s these top-secret counseling sessions we’re having. And thanks again for BlackBerrying me the Rick Warren questions while I was in the so-called cone of silence.”

“Oh, John, you know I love you and I’m happy to help,” Hillary says. “The themes you took from me are working great — painting Obama as an elitist and out-of-touch celebrity, when we’re rich celebrities, too. Turning his big rallies and pretty words into character flaws, charging him with playing the race card — that one always cracks me up. And accusing the media, especially NBC, of playing favorites. It’s easy to get the stupid press to navel-gaze; they’re so insecure.”

“They’re all pinko Commies,” McCain laughs. “Especially since they deserted me for The Messiah. Seriously, Hill, that Paris-Britney ad you came up with was brilliant. I owe you.”

Looking pleased, Hillary expertly downs another shot. “His secret fear is being seen as a dumb blonde,” she says. “He wants to take a short cut to the top and pose on glossy magazine covers, but he doesn’t want to be seen as a glib pretty boy.”

McCain lifts his glass to her admiringly. “If I do say so myself, while the rookie was surfing in Hawaii, I ate his pupus for lunch. Pictures of him pushing around a golf ball while I’m pushing around Putin. Priceless.”

“I have a little secret to tell you about that, John. Bill made it happen. He loves you so much. He called Putin and told him that if he invaded Georgia, he could count on being invited to the Clinton Global Initiative every year for the rest of his life.”

“Wow. Should I call him? I saw your husband’s kind words about me in Las Vegas on Monday, saying I’d be just as good as Obama on climate change.”

“I think he’d like that,” Hillary smiles. “He’s still boiling at Obama. And you don’t have to worry about my army of angry women. We’ve spread the word in the feminist underground — as opposed to that wacky Obama Weather Underground — that ‘catharsis’ is code for ‘No surrender.’ My gals know when I say ‘We may have started on two separate paths but we’re on one journey now’ that Skinny’s journey is to the nearest exit.”

“But Obama’s says he’s finally ready to hit back,” McCain says, frowning. “He’s starting a blistering TV campaign and attacking me for attacking his patriotism.”

“Now, John, you know that every time he tries to get tough, he quickly runs out of gas. Sometimes in debates, he’d be exhausted by the third question. He must use up all his energy in the gym. He doesn’t have any stamina, and he certainly doesn’t have our bloodlust. Besides, you can throw that Mark Penn stuff at him that I couldn’t use in a Democratic primary about how he’s not fundamentally American in his thinking and values. While he’s up on his high-minded pedestal, you’ll scoot past him in your Ferragamos.”

“How can I ever thank you, my friend?”

“You can announce that you won’t be running for re-election because you’d be 76, and you can pick somebody really lame to run with, like your pal Lieberman. That means one term for you, and two for me.”

“It’s a deal,” McCain says, sticking out his hand to shake on it. “That was inspired to snatch his convention away — makes him look so weak. Listen, why don’t you stop in Sedona on the way to Denver? Wear a black wig and I’ll spirit you up to the cabin for the night. I’ll catch a catfish in the mill pond and grill it for you. It will be an adventure.” There’s a knock on the door. Jesse Jackson sticks his head into the meeting.

“Is it over?” he asks his co-conspirators.

“Yes, he’s over,” they respond in unison.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/opinion/20dowd.html?em

While the show scrambled in its early years to book high-profile politicians, it has since become what Newsweek calls “the coolest pit stop on television,” with presidential candidates, former presidents, world leaders and administration officials signing on as guests. One of the program’s signature techniques — using video montages to show politicians contradicting themselves — has been widely imitated by “real” news shows, while Mr. Stewart’s interviews with serious authors like Thomas Ricks, George Packer, Seymour Hersh, Michael Beschloss and Reza Aslan have helped them and their books win a far wider audience than they otherwise might have had.

Most important, at a time when Fox, MSNBC and CNN routinely mix news and entertainment, larding their 24-hour schedules with bloviation fests and marathon coverage of sexual predators and dead celebrities, it’s been “The Daily Show” that has tenaciously tracked big, “super depressing” issues like the cherry-picking of prewar intelligence, the politicization of the Department of Justice and the efforts of the Bush White House to augment its executive power.

For that matter, the Comedy Central program — which is not above using silly sight gags and sophomoric sex jokes to get a laugh — has earned a devoted following that regards the broadcast as both the smartest, funniest show on television and a provocative and substantive source of news. “The Daily Show” resonates not only because it is wickedly funny but also because its keen sense of the absurd is perfectly attuned to an era in which cognitive dissonance has become a national epidemic. Indeed, Mr. Stewart’s frequent exclamation “Are you insane?!” seems a fitting refrain for a post-M*A*S*H, post-“Catch-22” reality, where the surreal and outrageous have become commonplace — an era kicked off by the wacko 2000 election standoff in Florida, rocked by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and haunted by the fallout of a costly war waged on the premise of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/arts/television/17kaku.html?em

Blessings ALL!!!

So mote it be!!

It’s summertime, and the Democrats are holding their national convention in Denver. A lame-duck Republican president is nearing the end of his term. He’s an outdoorsman, a man’s man, who feels a strong bond with Texas. He wears cowboy hats.

The Democrats want to regain control of the White House. Eight years earlier there had been a heated contest, a tight presidential race in which both sides felt as if the future of the country hung in the balance.

The year was 1908. And the parallels with 2008 don’t end there.

Just like 100 years ago, the Democratic National Convention is being held in Denver. Last time around, President Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican, was finishing his first full term and had announced he wouldn’t run again. His handpicked successor was his secretary of war, William Howard Taft.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93752013

A common form of skin cancer could be diagnosed by the distinctive chemical “scent” it gives off, say US experts.

Philadelphia’s Monell Center sampled the air directly above basal cell carcinomas and found it was different to similar samples from healthy skin.

They told a conference it offered the chance of cheap and painless testing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7573060.stm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX6-UbHFBdI&feature=related

Anyone care to try to excuse this?

McCain and Obama – a tale of five (well, four) polls

Hot off the wires, it’s the new George Washington Battleground poll . If you don’t like the results in that one, you can look at the new Zogby poll just released today. Want a different answer? How about today’s Gallup poll? If you want more there’s the LA Times/Bloomberg poll released yesterday. Or if you want to know who the greatest “boy band” is, that poll is out too.

In four of the five polls, Barack Obama and John McCain are very close (neither fared well in the greatest boy band poll).

http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2008/08/20/mccain-and-obama-a-tale-of-five-well-four-polls/

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_oil_con_percap-energy-oil-consumption-per-capita

India and China can easily double its oil consumption. That would mean an additional 2 billion plus barrels of oil per day.

When I say laws with teeth- I mean that they really look at these corporations and see who they’re hiring and why. I’m not asking for a quadriplegic be given a lineman job. Just reasonble accomodation.

I’m not at all surprised that you’re against it.

Worse yet, he seemed to go out of his way to avoid scoring political points. “Back in the 1990s,” he declared, “your incomes grew by $6,000, and over the last several years, they’ve actually fallen by nearly $1,000.” Um, not quite: real median household income didn’t rise $6,000 during “the 1990s,” it did so during the Clinton years, after falling under the first Bush administration. Income hasn’t fallen $1,000 in “recent years,” it’s fallen under George Bush, with all of the decline taking place before 2005.

. . .

All this makes a stark contrast with the campaign of the last Democrat to make it to the White House, who had no trouble conveying passion over matters economic.

In his speech accepting the Democratic nomination in 1992, a year in which economic conditions somewhat resembled those today, Bill Clinton denounced his opponent as someone “caught in the grip of a failed economic theory.” Where Mr. Obama spoke cryptically in St. Petersburg about a “reckless few” who “game the system, as we’ve seen in this housing crisis” — I know what he meant, I think, but how many voters got it? — Mr. Clinton declared that “those who play by the rules and keep the faith have gotten the shaft, and those who cut corners and cut deals have been rewarded.” That’s the kind of hard-hitting populism that’s been absent from the Obama campaign so far.

One of those apples and oranges comparisons don’t ya think

Chicago population 3 million+
US Soldiers in Iraq 160k ——

Hell even if you used just the black minority population of Chicago 1.5 million+ it’s still a bad relationship you try to draw —- and please please exdplain agioan how it’s Obama’s fault ???

not the same size sample —- typical twist the facts and hope the ignorant will believe it — sad thing is most Kansans will take you at your word and not make the stretch of imagination it takes to say to you — bull shit …… sigh Kansas ya get what ya ask for

kind of like the old Washington Senators baseball team of the 50’s

washington — first in war first in piece — last in the American league — welcome to Kansas

chortle not from there — see the sand see the bucket —- more comfortable place to put your head than your ass ….

“We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”

Just what is wrong is that statement?

Please be specific.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×3827053

Big eye roll…

http://www.hdnews.net/Story/citypre082008

The plan, endorsed by both sebelius and joe harkins, was to drain Cedar Bluff, then let Hays expand it’s wellfield, in spite of the IGUCA designation.

And let it be known, Hays has not experienced a water shortage for a very long time. Russell’s ethanol plant is thirsty, and Hays is just going to dip in a straw for the hell of it.

Maybe they should stop watering their golf course with treated water before they condemn land.

Regional economic development.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!

Rest in peace, Stephanie.