As seen on the I-94 greeting motorists arriving from the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, home to the Republican National Convention. (h/t B&C.com)

We’ve got a DNC Open Thread going, too…

   Jon Stewart mocks President Bush’s lack of short-term memory about when it’s OK to invade other countries, as well as McCain’s presumptuousness for dispatching “Droopy-Dog and Howdy Doody” (Lieberman and Graham) to Georgia, despite his status as candidate for President.

 Download | Play   Download | Play  (h/t Heather)

Do you guys have any short term memory? Do you have anything? You just said, yeah let’s be clear about it, you can’t just overthrow a government, occupy a capital, knock over their statues, stack their prisoners, refer to the, refer to the horrific level of civilian casualties as birth pangs of democracy. Of course obviously this situation isn’t just the dangerous escalation of once mordent cold war hostilities. It’s a chance for our Presidential nominees to get inside the Commander in Chief simulator, and play a little make believe.

Jon Stewart recaps the current situation in Georgia (and the media’s ridiculous coverage of it), and calls out President Bush for having the chutzpah to condemn Russia for invading and disrespecting Georgia’s sovereignty — because only reckless bully countries with no disregard for international standards do that kind of stuff.

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Stewart: “It’ll be very interesting to see what the United States does here. Our invasion of Iraq somewhat hamstrings our options in Georgia, not just militarily, but also dimplomaticly, and I guess you would say, morally? Let’s watch our UN Ambsassador Zalmay Khalilzad dance the delicate dance…

Khalilzad: We want to make sure our Russian colleagues understand that the days of overthrowing leaders by miulityary means…

Stewart: Careful, Khalilza. Steady…steady…

Khalilzad: The days of overthrowing leaders by military means in Europe, those days are gone…

Stewart: Yes! He did it! Those days are gone…in Europe. In the Middle East, it’s morning in America.

…albeit in a gentle, politically-correct way.

Investigative journalist Ron Suskind dropped by “The Daily Show” Monday night to talk about the blockbuster revelation in his new book, The Way of the World, in which he was able to confirm through high-ranking CIA sources that the Bush administration ordered US intelligence agencies to fabricate a letter justifying the invasion of Iraq after the original case was revealed to be a fraud.

“The White House is intensely interested because there may be a legality that has Constitutional consequences.”

The Daily Show exposed the McCain hypocrisy in full detail. Their recent attack ads against Obama that included Paris Hilton might make the Hiltons a little unhappy since they donated the max to McCain’s camp. Attacking their daughter wasn’t so nice. Then Stewart takes a look at all the uppity remarks that McCain has made about the McCain Presidency.

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It’s another brilliant segment on the election. The GOP knows that anything they float out there will be debated by the media like “Is Obama arrogant?”and they will fail to look at McCain’s own arrogant behavior when Obama hasn’t actually been arrogant.

After John Ashcroft’s testimony last week in which he bobbed and weaved his way around answering every question about what he did during his time in the White House, Jon Stewart and John Oliver compare Bush and his merry band of obfuscators to other American Presidential liars in order to make a historical comparison. Needless to say, the Bush team is in a league of its own.

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Oliver: “I just hope everyone at home appreciates the magnitude of what they’re witnessing here. For 7 straight years, this administration has been untouchable in hearings. These guys are the ‘27 Yankees of dodging questions. The ‘55 Dodgers of yanking Congress’ chain. They’re the right stuff of wrong stuff. John, this is once in a generation bullsh*t.”

Steart: You really think this admininstration is that good at this?

John: Sure, look, we can quibble at the level of competetition. You can criticize the strength of their opponents — lets face it, the Democrats have been pathetic. But you still can’t help but be impressed at the level of skills on display. I won’t be surprised if in years to come they describe these hearings as the ‘Immaculate Deception.’”

I truly can’t wait to see those jerseys hanging from the rafters.

Digg It!

Considering Lou Dobbs hates everything “foreign,” you know Obama and McCain’s respective speeches to The National Council of LaRaza would make his head explode. Obama’s appeal for multilingualism reached especially dangerous levels on the “Dobbs-O-Meter.”

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“Last week both candidates spent a lot of time wooing Latino Americans by speaking to various Hispanic interest groups. How did they fare? Well, the best way to measure success in wooing the Latino community is by using the ‘Dobbs-O-Meter.’ The angrier Lou Dobbs gets, the better you’re doing”

  ..or Fantasy vs. Reality on the “Strength” of the Economy

For my money, this is when “The Daily Show” is at it’s best. Last night, Jon juxtaposed President Bush’s rosy (and wholly unrealistic) appraisal of the economy with Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s much more sobering (and frightening) Congressional testimony, and noted that President Bush “accidentally” scheduled his press conference for the same time as Bernanke’s testimony, certainly not knowing it would overshadow it.

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“One is like a glass-half-full kind of guy and the other is an expert on the economy.”

  After a long two-week hiatus — during which I didn’t know what to do with myself from 11pm to midnight — Jon Stewart and his crack “Daily Show” staff had a lot to catch up on Monday night. Luckily for them, there was no shortage of absurdities to mock, ranging from Phil Gramm’s demeaning remarks about American “whiners” to the Viagra/birth control conundrum Carly Fiorina got McCain embroiled in. It’s nice to have you back, Jon.

 Download | Play  Download | Play (h/t Heather)

By the way did you know that while we were gone for two weeks the Presidential race was not suspended? Not only that, they ratcheted the f*#%-ups by releasing the surrogates. As you know only two men can run for President at any one time and obviously they can’t be everywhere. They’re not Mario Lopez for God’s sake. So they have friends, surrogates, meat-puppets if you will, people who can amplify their message across a broad range of media.

Transcript below the fold:

(Read the rest of this story…)

  In light of Charlie Black’s ridiculous and revealing comments to Fortune magazine Monday, Jon Stewart shows how Republicans are calculating their winning November strategy.

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“Why is it that a terror attack helps Republicans? Well, it’s quite simple. A terror attack, when added to an election, equals Republican. Why is that? Let’s show our work. First we have to solve for ‘R.’ Now, if you add 7 1/2 years of Republican administration, times the five years we’ve been at war, which has divided the nation, add in the government’s incompetent response to the domestic disaster of Katrina, minus the equity in your home thats disappeared, plus the price of oil squared, over the boon that the Iraq war has been to terrorist recruiting, times tortue, minus the resoucres we could have been using in Afghanistan, plus the resources we could have been using to catch bin Laden, carry the Cheney and….” 

Digg It!

Jon Stewart reports on the recent SCOTUS decision granting Gitmo detainees the right to contest their imprisonment in federal court, and in the process mocks all the outraged right-wing nut jobs. Bill Kristol gets it especially rough, considering he appears to have recently changed his opinion on due process.

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Doocy: “So with the recent Supreme Court decision saying that detainees down at Gitmo can wind up with habeas corpus and get legal rights and stuff like that”

Stewart: Legal rights and stuff. It’s actually all been explained in Thomas Paine’s ‘A Treatise on the Rights of Man…and Sh*t’”

It’s crazy to stop and think about how far we’ve come in just eight short years. It is now within “mainstream” right-wing discourse to condemn the Supreme Court for ruling that the President can’t lock people up for life without a chance for them to prove their innocence. Is this even America anymore? Is there literally anything more un-American?

Digg It!

Lara Logan is a big C&L favorite because she’s been in a war zone and not backed down from right wing narratives. She joins Jon Stewart and rocks the house down with this astute observation of the American media.

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Stewart: Do you watch the news that we’re watching?

Logan: No

Stewart: …in the United States? Do you see what we’re hearing about the war? So, we might actually know everything?

Logan: If I were to watch the news that you hear in the United States—I’d just blow my brains out because it would drive me nuts.

Really?

Are the Villagers watching? Do you hear?

Jon Stewart takes an in-depth look at the phenomenon known as Baracknophobia, defined as the “irrational fear of hope.”

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“The Irrational fear that behind the mild-mannered persona, Barack Obama is intent on enslaving the white race. It’s true. Wake up, white people.”

Which attempt at smearing Obama is your favorite? Mine is a close tie between Sean Hannity calling Obama a “radical liberal,” and Steve Doocy claiming Obama plagiarized a speech from Mario Cuomo, despite only three words being the same.

 Download | Play    Download | Play  (h/t SilentPatriot)

We have the presumptive nominees for the two parties.  It’s the general election season and that means it’s time to start looking at the issue of character and how the various factions try to smear the other side.  To the corporate media, John McCain is a lovably curmudgeonly Maverick.  But we know from our buddy Cliff Schecter’s book, The Real McCain (see above), that McCain has a bit of a temper on him, and not above dropping c-bombs on his sugar momma wife. 

Okay, seems a little harsh.  But in his defense, McCain’s a Navy man. It’s just salty Navy talk. He’s not trying to hide it, you’ve seen his campaign slogan: John McCain—Experience You C**ts Can Count On.

You know you can’t spell “count on” without c…Is this story true?  Who knows, but the important thing is, it’s out there, signaling that we have officially moved into the character assassination portion of our presidential campaigns.

That’s right, it’s not just limited to McSame.  Stewart shows us Hillary feminists for McCain (“Wow! So McCain has the blind, spite vote locked up.  Because of sexism, we’re going to go with the [beep] patriarch.”) and David Brooks’ inane attempt to paint Barack Obama as an elitist because he doesn’t seem the type to go to the Applebee’s salad bar.   

The Daily Show reports on the media’s failure to report on the Senate report that proves the Bush administration knowingly lied to us about the reasons for war. Surely the “Big Three” have more important things to cover.

 Download | Play  Download | Play (h/t Heather)

Stewart: “Let’s go back to the Big Three, that’s where real Americans get their news. Charlie Gibson, cover it!”

Gibson: “Something that doesnt happen every day, and certainly doesn’t happen twice..a well-know French daredevil named ‘Spiderman’…”

Stewart: “Yes, he was climbing the New York Times building. Perhaps looking to read the story about the administration leading us into a war that you didnt cover at all! At all!

For a “fake news” anchor, Jon Stewart sure does a better job reporting actual news than the entire mainstream media combined. I’m sure Stewart wouldn’t take offense when I say that that’s pretty sad.