OK, two totally unrelated things:

First, go here and read.

http://www.bend.com/news/ar_view^3Far_id^3D18712.htm

How can they possibly justify this?

How can they be seen as the stronger of the two major party tickets when they can be so threatened by three women in tee shirts with words on them?

How can they seriously expect to convince people that they are arbiters of freedom when they behave this way?

They’re not even trying to pretend anymore, and that scares the crap out of me...

Butsecond,  on to a better topic:

Jon Stewart on Crossfire:

Rocky went out on Bittorrent and got the episode of Crossfire where Jon Stewart appeared.

I don’t watch Crossfire anymore.  I used to, but I just got tired of finding that I thought everyone on there was a huge dick…

So imagine my delight at Jon’s performance that day.  Jon Stewart, you’re my hero.  You said everything I’ve ever yelled at the screen while watching Crossfire.  You told it to them straight and you took them to school, and they proved themselves to be too wrapped up in their own spin to know when they’ve been outclassed.

There was just no comparison between Jon’s earnest, straightforward, honest plea for something resembling civil discourse and their cynical, self-serving, onanistic, word parsing, hair-splitting, partisan spin doctoring gamesmanship.

In polite civil discourse, there is an earnestness, and a…oh I don’t know, openness maybe…?...that I think allows people to come together, give of themselves, and walk away with more than they had before.

In debate, which is a battle of ideas, the ideas are central, and the personalities, egos and agendas of the participants take a back seat.  There is a recognition that the speakers have certain views and reasoning and biases and interests, but that if they can be said to win the debate, they must engage with the audience and sell them the ideas and persuade them on the outcomes that the speakers are representing.  There is at least a veneer of respect for the audience as consumers of the ideas presented, and an understanding that the speaker is responsible to represent the ideas honestly and accurately.

Jon Stewart began by positing that perhaps politicians would be more forthcoming, and revealing:  depart from the safety of their scripts more, if every word choice, vocal inflection and facial expression wasn’t rammed up their asses on shows like Crossfire or Hardball.  I think that’s a valid hypothesis that I would like to see tested further.

     Later in the show, he proposed that maybe instead of being tools of the corporate interests and party spin machines, the staff of Crossfire could “hold their feet to the fire” and make them actually answer hard questions rather than trying to trip them up and screw them over.

     So the response of the Crossfire guys was to say “First you say we’re too hard on them, now you say we’re too easy on them…which is it?”

     Which was a brilliant illustration of exactly what Jon was objecting to.

     More telling was that the Crossfire guys seemed to think that they had won a brilliant victory when they actually came off looking like the dicks they are…

Which just goes to show how deep they are into their own game.  They can’t tell when someone isn’t even playing.