Category: Media

Things That Make Me Agree with Rand Paul, and Make me Want to Have My Head Examined

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In honor of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Federal Reserve, PBS had a debate between 2 financial historians over the benefits of the central bank, and rather surprisingly, they both agreed that the Federal Reserve now sees one of its primary roles as supporting stock market prices:

Consuelo Mack’s Wealthtrack program on PBS had invited James Grant, Editor and Founder of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, and Richard Sylla, the Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets at NYU’s Stern School of Business. The opening scene for the program shows Sylla in a party hat lighting the candles on the Fed’s birthday cake while Grant snuffs them out – suggesting that Sylla would be making pro-Fed statements while Grant would take the opposing view.

 What happened during the program, however, was that both men made the candid and bold accusation that the Federal Reserve, for the first time in its history, has assigned itself the job of propping up the stock market.

 Grant had this to say: “New thing – it is in the business of talking up the stock market…The Fed is manipulating prices, especially on Wall Street.” To another question from Mack, Grant says: “The Fed has presided over the decay of finance.”

 Professor Sylla adds more fuel to the fire, stating: “The Fed seems to have, I think almost deliberately, is trying to push the stock market up. I’ve watched this stuff for 40, 50 years now and this is the first time in my memory when it seemed to be official U.S. government policy that the stock market goes up. And the Fed likes this because it thinks that when the stock market goes up, people who own stocks feel richer, they’ll go out and spend more money, and the unemployment rate will come down.” You can watch the full program here.

Is it possible that the Federal Reserve, with its economic wizards and differential equations, doesn’t know that the more it props up the stock market and Wall Street, the more it is undermining Main Street and exacerbating wealth inequality in America?

I see sh%$ like this, and I start to agree with Rand (and Ron) Paul about the need to reign in the Fed.

The show goes further, and talks about how the rather customary expense ratio of 2% on a 401(K) means that Wall Street ends up with ⅔ of your money.

It’s why we need to cut back on Wall Street.  It’s like f%$3ing Kudzu.

This Just In: Devil Asks Rush Limbaugh to Tone It Down. He Doesn’t Want Him in Hell, It Would Ruin the Neighborhood.

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Yes, Limbaugh is calling the Pope a Marxist, and I do not mean Groucho, Chico, Harp, Zeppo, or Gummo:

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh last week called Pope Francis’ economic views laid out in his Vatican mission statement “pure marxism.”

“I have been numerous times to the Vatican. It wouldn’t exist without tons of money,” Limbaugh said in a show titled “It’s Sad How Wrong Pope Francis Is (Unless It’s a Deliberate Mistranslation By Leftists).” “But regardless, what this is, somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him. This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope.”

Stay classy, at least when you are not doing sex tourism in the Dominican Republic.

Remember that Platinum Coin Idea During the Debt Shutdown?? The Idea that the Obama Administration Dismissed Out of Hand?

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It appears that while they were publicly treating it as crazy talk, internally, they were seriously looking at the depositing a trillion dollar coin at the Federal Reserve:

The Obama administration was serious enough about manufacturing a high-value platinum coin to avert a congressional fight over the debt ceiling that it had its top lawyers draw up a memo laying out the legal case for such a move, The Huffington Post learned last week.

 The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which functions as a sort of law firm for the president and provides him and executive branch agencies with authoritative legal advice, formally weighed in on the platinum coin option sometime since Obama took office, according to OLC’s recent response to HuffPost’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. While the letter acknowledged the existence of memos on the platinum coin option, OLC officials determined they were “not appropriate for discretionary release.”

 HuffPost submitted the FOIA request when there was increased speculation about the use of the platinum coin option ahead of the debt ceiling crisis this fall. Under the compromise reached between the House and Senate following the government shutdown, the U.S. will hit the debt ceiling once again on Feb. 7, though the Treasury can use extraordinary measures to extend that deadline.

 Supporters of the platinum coin option say that under a 1996 law allowing the Treasury Department to mint a platinum coin in any denomination, the president could order the manufacture of, say, a $1 trillion coin that would be deposited in the Federal Reserve. The Treasury Department would then use the platinum coin funds to meet government obligations without the need for Congress to grant any additional spending powers.

There are a number of reasons for the Obama administration to fight the FOIA request:

  1. Their general fetish about executive branch secrecy.
  2. The OLC ruled that it was not legal, and they wish to retain ambiguity to help with the next round of negotiations.
  3. The OLC ruled that it was legal, and they wish to retain ambiguity to prevent potential legislative action, or a court case, until they use it.

My money* is on a dumb ass secrecy fetish.

The idea that a legal opinion on monetary policy (seigniorage) is somehow, “not appropriate for discretionary release,” is completely ludicrous.

The only potential harm that can come from a release is insider trading from an unauthorized release.

*My money in this case is about 50 Zimbabwean dollars.

Bye Bye Silvio

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Berlusconi has been expelled from the Italian parliament following his conviction for tax fraud:

The Italian Senate has voted to expel ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi from parliament with immediate effect over his conviction for tax fraud.

Berlusconi, who has dominated politics for 20 years, could now face arrest over other criminal cases as he has lost his immunity from prosecution.

He told supporters in Rome it was a “day of mourning” for democracy.

Ahead of the vote, he vowed to remain in politics to lead his Forza Italia in a “fight for the good of Italy”.

A defiant Berlusconi told supporters gathered outside his Rome residence that “no political leader has suffered a persecution such as I have lived through”.

He said: “It is a bitter day, a day of mourning.”

Central to Berlusconi’s success has always been his near monopoly on commercial TV in Italy, particularly when juxtaposed with his control of the state TV networks after he was first elected.

What the need to do now is to pass regulations preventing this ghastly intersection of monopoly media ownership and electoral politics from recurring.

Seriously, Charlie, How Do You Really Feel?

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Let us be plain. Ralph Reed is a con-man who would sell his gray-haired granny to the Somali pirates for fifty cents worth of consulting fees. He has nothing worth contributing to the national dialogue. This should be plain by now to all but the deliberately dim. The people who put this mess together every morning are not as embarrassing as the allegedly important people who appear on it, and nowhere near as embarrassing as the people who take it seriously, some of whom rule us.

—Charles P. Pierce

Always a pleasure to read.

Signs of the Apocalypse, Richard Cohen Edition

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I’ve been rather hard on him.

I’ve called him a sociopath, a racist, an idiot, and a bad writer.

I stand by these assessments, but in the same way that a stopped clock is right twice a day, he can’t get everything wrong every time.

On the matter of Edward Snowden, he has admitted that he was wrong, and that Snowden is a whistle-blower, not a traitor.

What are we to make of Edward Snowden? I know what I once made of him. He was no real whistleblower, I wrote, but “ridiculously cinematic” and “narcissistic” as well. As time has proved, my judgments were just plain wrong. Whatever Snowden is, he is curiously modest and has bent over backward to ensure that the information he has divulged has done as little damage as possible. As a “traitor,” he lacks the requisite intent and menace.

 But traitor is what Snowden has been roundly called. Harry Reid: “I think Snowden is a traitor.” John Boehner: “He’s a traitor.” Rep. Peter King: “This guy is a traitor; he’s a defector.” And Dick Cheney not only denounced Snowden as a “traitor” but also suggested that he might have shared information with the Chinese. This innuendo, as with Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, is more proof of Cheney’s unerring determination to be cosmically wrong.

 The early denunciations of Snowden now seem both over the top and beside the point. If he is a traitor, then which side did he betray and to whom does he now owe allegiance? Benedict Arnold, America’s most famous traitor, sold out to the British during the Revolutionary War and wound up a general in King George III’s army. Snowden seems to have sold out to no one. In fact, a knowledgeable source says that Snowden has not even sold his life story and has rebuffed offers of cash for interviews. Maybe his most un-American act is passing up a chance at easy money. Someone ought to look into this.

 ………

 Snowden is one of those people for whom the conjunction “and” is apt. Normally, I prefer the more emphatic “but” so I could say “Snowden did some good but he did a greater amount of damage.” Trouble is, I’m not sure of that. I am sure, though, that he has instigated a worthwhile debate. I am sure that police powers granted the government will be abused over time and that Snowden is an authentic whistleblower, appalled at what he saw on his computer screen and wishing, like Longfellow’s Paul Revere, to tell “every Middlesex village and farm” what our intelligence agencies were doing. Who do they think they are, Google?

 But (and?) I am at a loss to say what should be done with Snowden. He broke the law, this is true. He has been chary with his information, but he cannot know all its ramifications and, anyway, the government can’t allow anyone to decide for himself what should be revealed. That, too, is true. So Snowden is, to my mind, a bit like John Brown, the zealot who intensely felt the inhumanity of slavery and broke the law in an attempt to end the practice. My analogy is not neat — Brown killed some people — but you get the point. I suppose Snowden needs to be punished but not as a traitor. He may have been technically disloyal to America but not, after some reflection, to American values.

Stopped clock, I guess.

I’ll need to wait for a 2nd non wanktastic article before I claim that we are seeing an actual learning curve here.

Mark Zuckerberg is Making Larry Ellison Look Like a Mindful Human Being

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Because only a few percent of users are availing themselves of the feature, Facebook has dropped a feature that allowed users to exempt themselves from search, because, I guess, they need to sell ads to stalkers:

Facebook is getting rid of a privacy feature that let users limit who can find them on the social network.

 Facebook Inc. said Thursday that it is removing a setting that controls whether users could be found when people type their name into the website’s search bar.

Yes, I do Facebook, because, there is no viable alternative.

Google Plus?  Surely you jest?

Why Yes, they Are Psychopaths, Why Do You Ask?

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Where do they find these sick f%$#s?

Brian Kilmeade of (who else) Fox News calls Navy Seals a bunch of wusses for calling off a mission when they realize that the target is chock full of kids.

I do understand where he is coming from. 

After all it’s not like they were white children that Mr. Kilmeade wanted to throw into the middle of a firefight.

Great googly moogly.  Why do they let him out in public?

I Wish I Could Smith Words Like Charlie Pierce

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This New York Daily News Cover, and related story aren’t as good as the classic “Ford to City: Drop Dead”, but it’s close

Because his characterization of the recent leaks of Boehner communications on healthcare to the press as, “The Democrats Are Bringing Guns To A Gunfight,” is both succinct and evocative.

He is describing the fact that Democrats have finally taken the gloves off, and they are leaking emails from Boehners staff to the press:

Senate Democrats are considering leaking a series of emails between the chiefs of staff of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker John A. Boehner regarding employer contributions to congressional staff health care plans, multiple top-level sources said late Monday.

 Senate Democratic chiefs of staff discussed the emails between Reid chief David Krone and Boehner chief Mike Sommers at a recent meeting, according to a source with direct knowledge of the meeting.

 Leaking the emails would be unusual, given the taboo over disclosing personal communications between top staffers. But the missives also would reveal Boehner’s position on employer subsidies for congressional staff. Democrats believe the Ohio Republican’s decision to attach an amendment to revoke those contributions to the most recent House continuing resolution was a direct shot at vulnerable Senate Democrats up in 2014 and would like to highlight the contradiction between Boehner’s public and private stances on the issue.

Pierce is right when he approves:

This would only be responding in kind. For years, Washington worked on a system of both written and unwritten rules of behavior. One of the marked characteristics of the reign of the morons has been to trash the informal systems of acceptable conduct. Fine. Let’s do away with all of them and have an actual brawl over what’s at stake.

BTW, some of the leaks have already occurred, with communications between Boehner and Reid being leaked to Politico:

With the federal government nearing shutdown, House Speaker John Boehner stood on the House floor Monday and called on his colleagues to vote for a bill banning a “so-called exemption” that lawmakers and staffers receive for their health insurance.

 “Why don’t we make sure that every American is treated just like we are?” Boehner asked, seeking to prohibit members of Congress and Capitol Hill aides from getting thousands of dollars in subsidies for their health insurance as they join Obamacare-mandated insurance exchanges.

 Yet behind-the-scenes, Boehner and his aides worked for months with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and others, to save these very same, long-standing subsidies, according to documents and e-mails provided to POLITICO. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was also aware of these discussions, the documents show.

 During a five-month period stretching from February to July, Boehner and his aides sought along with Reid’s office to solve what had become a big headache for both of them. They drafted and reviewed a possible legislative fix, as well as continued to push for an administrative one from the Office of Personnel Management.

 ………

 “As POLITICO has previously reported, Speaker Boehner was aware that Sen. Reid and the White House were discussing this issue. He was always clear, however, that any ‘fix’ would be a Democratic ‘fix.’ His ‘fix’ is repealing” Obamacare.

 But according to several sources in attendance at a mid-July meeting with Reid, Boehner wondered aloud at one point whether he and the Nevada Democrat could quietly slip some language into a bill to end the problem without it receiving any public attention.

 “When I was in the state legislature, we used to stick things in [bills] and no one would notice,” Boehner said during a private meeting with Reid in July to discuss this issue, the sources said.

 Boehner’s aides then told him this would not be possible, so the idea was dropped.

 The speaker and his chief of staff, Mike Sommers — who was at that July 17 meeting as well — cannot “recall the Speaker making such a comment,” Boehner’s office said.

 In mid-July, as Boehner and Reid were trying to schedule a private meeting with Obama on the super-sensitive topic, the speaker’s top aide said it was okay to use a cover story to conceal the true nature of that prospective White House gathering.

 “We can’t let it get out there that this is for [Boehner] and [Reid] to ask the President to carve us out of the requirement of Obamacare,” Sommers told David Krone, Reid’s top aide in a July 17 e-mail obtained by POLITICO.

 “This is a little bit more difficult because it isn’t a routine meeting, as [Nancy] Pelosi and [Mitch] McConnell won’t be there. I am even ok if it is the President hauling us down to talk about the next steps on immigration.”

 After Krone suggested that the White House press office might float that the Boehner-Reid-Obama meeting was on immigration, Sommers said he wasn’t concerned about what cover story was just as long as the real reason behind the meeting wasn’t disclosed.

 “I really don’t care what is is about[,] it just can’t be about what we know it is about!” Sommers told Krone.

If Harry Reid did not specifically order the leaks, then he knew in advance, and said nothing to dissuade the leakers.

More of this please.

Democrats need to stop wringing their hands about how people observed the social niceties  in the good old days, and recognize that the ‘Phants do not see those niceties as anything but a weapon to be wielded against their opponents.

I’m not suggesting that Democrats go back to caning people on the floor of the Senate, Democrats need to understand that you do not bring a Hello Kitty® doll to a gunfight.

The New York Times Ratf%$#s* Bill de Blasio

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It appears that they are (I’m not joking here) accusing Bill de Blasio of having been a commie during the 1980s:

The scruffy young man who arrived in Nicaragua in 1988 stood out.

 He was tall and sometimes goofy, known for his ability to mimic a goose’s honk. He spoke in long, meandering paragraphs, musing on Franklin D. Roosevelt, Karl Marx and Bob Marley. He took painstaking notes on encounters with farmers, doctors and revolutionary fighters.

 Bill de Blasio, then 26, went to Nicaragua to help distribute food and medicine in the middle of a war between left and right. But he returned with something else entirely: a vision of the possibilities of an unfettered leftist government.

 As he seeks to become the next mayor of New York City, Mr. de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, has spoken only occasionally about his time as a fresh-faced idealist who opposed foreign wars, missile defense systems and apartheid in the late 1980s and early 1990s. References to his early activism have been omitted from his campaign Web site.

 But a review of hundreds of pages of records and more than two dozen interviews suggest his time as a young activist was more influential in shaping his ideology than previously known, and far more political than typical humanitarian work.

………

By the beginning of 1990, Mr. de Blasio had a foot in two worlds — government official by day, activist by night.

He was becoming a part of the institution he had railed against — the establishment — as a low-level aide to Mr. Dinkins in City Hall. On the side, he helped raise funds for the Nicaragua Solidarity Network and forge alliances between New York and Nicaraguan labor unions.

And they f%$#ing put it on the f%$#ing front page.

Gee the US government was funding terrorist operations against the Sandinistas, and they did so in violation of the law.

I think that maybe some of the more overpaid New York Times staffers are upset that de Blasio won’t be genuflecting to the rich like Bloomberg did.

*It’s a term for political dirty tricks, allegedly made popular by Nixon dirty trickster Roger Stone.

What the F%##?!?!? Putin is the F%$#ing Voice of F%$#ing Reason on Syria

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I read this OP/ED that he wrote for the New York Times:

Recent events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.

Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again.

The United Nations’ founders understood that decisions affecting war and peace should happen only by consensus, and with America’s consent the veto by Security Council permanent members was enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The profound wisdom of this has underpinned the stability of international relations for decades.

No one wants the United Nations to suffer the fate of the League of Nations, which collapsed because it lacked real leverage. This is possible if influential countries bypass the United Nations and take military action without Security Council authorization.

He makes a number of trenchant points:

  • Syria is not a battle for democracy, it is a power struggle where much of the opposition are foreign fighters driven by sectarian triumphalism..
  • That much of the violence is fueled by foreign weapons supplies.
  • The evidence presented so far by the White House is thin.
  • Ignoring international law encourages nations to accumulates WMDs.
  • Surgical strikes don’t exist, you will kill innocents.
  • American exceptionalism is a dangerous myth.

The reactions of America’s chattering classes has been abject horror, particularly regarding the last point.

American exceptionalism does not exist, it’s just an excuse of a people who have not seen war on their shores for 150 years to bring war to other people’s shores.

I agree with them all, though I think that Charlie Pierce’s take on this, that Putin is embracing and his Pwn493 (ownage) of America’s needlessly bellicose foreign policy.

Read both Putin and Pierce.  (Pierce is way funnier, but Putin is a bit more substantive)

This is Weird

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It appears that someone hacked the New York Times.

Someone did some sort of a DNS hack, and it turned up a website in Arabic.

Here is a screen cap.  (click for full size)

If Google translate is accurate, it had something to do with Syria.

Google translate below:

AR | EN

Volunteer
Media
Leaks
Recent breakthroughs
Latest News

Home

Latest News
Recent breakthroughs
Media
Leaks
Phalange
Martyrs
About the organization

Latest News

Our page on FB No. 220

Every time we return to teach the world lessons steadfastness, and each will return to us we light Badr and shines a thousand sun, because we Syrian people that deficit world تفتيته and Arkall, We have made our screens weapon is our words bullets, فترقبوا Aasarna to crush all your dreams Nile from Sorretna. Page 220 army soldiers .. More …
New page to Syria Tube on Facebook

Recent breakthroughs

Penetrate newspaper sites Time magazine and the Washington Post and CNN

The leadership of the Syrian army-mail announces its success in penetrating the site of the U.S. newspaper TIME and the American channel CNN and the Washington Post, the U.S. came after the break Outbrain service used by millions of websites around the world recording links hack: http://www.zone-h.org/mirror/ the id/20533795 htt .. More …
Penetrate the pages of the New York Post on Facebook and Twitter

Media

What was published about the penetration site and databases Tango

Under the title of “hundreds of millions of data سيسلمها the Syrian authorities’ e-Syrian army» penetrates Tango “Syrian Al-Watan wrote: announced« Syrian army-mail »success in penetrating the database program correspondence famous’ Tango Tango ‘, acquisitions .. More …
What was published about the penetration databases True Caller

Leaks

Office Supplier banana forcing service “Aorédo” to block Syrian army web site

A team ÇáÇí T in the Office of banana (the mother of the Emir of Qatar current) sending an email to service provider Internet in Qatar “Aorédo,” which was “QTel” former students the prohibition site leaks private army Syrian-mail from a Google search and DNS in Qatar copy of the email Sender: .. More …
Dissemination of emails and passwords for the Turkish Ministry of the Interior

Phalange

Victor battalion

Victor battalion
Battalion shadow
Professional battalion

Martyrs

Shaheed Mohamed Ahmed Qabbani

Shaheed Mohamed Ahmed Qabbani
Lawrence Martyr Fawaz Barakat

About the organization

Spark tee

A Syrian army-mail in the year 2011 when I started the Arab media and Western bias in favor of terrorist groups that have killed civilians and the Syrian Arab Army and the destruction of private and public property, was the Arab media and Western constitute a cover for the continuation of these groups, their actions through the blackout on terrorism in Syria and paste all charges Army Syrian Arab and charged with murder and sabotage, what was a group of Syrian youth is belonging to any government entity to form an arm electronic media take on the initiative of protecting the homeland and supporting the reforms of President Bashar al-Assad, who see the option right one for our aspirations as young people in the prime of life, was the crisis and those options spark Syrian army fire-mail.
The mechanism of action
Funding
Vision

Most read

Special Operations Unit expose Al Jazeera ..
Breakthrough application databases Tango ..
Exclusive interview with Syrian journalist worked for the channel Jizzi ..

Friendly links

Parliament
TV minimum
Syrian TV

Important Links

Contact Us
Leaks
Direct broadcast

Important pages

Page major, Mr. President
Syrian Arab Army
Page battalion Victor

Father’s Day Movie Review: Iron Man 3

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As I’ve noted before, I would pay to listen to Robert Downey, Jr. read the phone book, so we went to see Iron Man 3, in 3-D.

Robert Downey Jr. … Tony Stark
Gwyneth Paltrow … Pepper Potts
Don Cheadle … Colonel James Rhodes
Guy Pearce … Aldrich Killian
Rebecca Hall … Maya Hansen
Jon Favreau … Happy Hogan
Ben Kingsley … The Mandarin
James Badge Dale … Savin
Stephanie Szostak … Brandt
Paul Bettany … Jarvis (voice)
William Sadler … President Ellis
Dale Dickey … Mrs. Davis
Ty Simpkins … Harley Keener
Miguel Ferrer … Vice President Rodriguez
Xueqi Wang … Doctor Wu

This movie will not be a surprise. It’s a part of the franchise, and largely true to the conventions of that franchise.

The downside of the movie is the plot, which is overly complex, and it has problems with coherence and consistency.

This was the same problem with Iron Man 2, which I also enjoyed.

Downey is a joy to watch, but the best performance of the movie is by Sir Ben Kingsley as The Mandarin, which I cannot even begin to describe without spoiling the plot.

The dialogue is punchy, and frequently amusing, much like the two previous sequels, though the best single line comes from neither Downey nor Kingsley, but from an unnamed minion of The Mandarin, who behaves in a way in which minions would in reality.

What I can say is that the film was set around Christmas, which is rather odd for a Summer blockbuster, and a child has a rather prominent role, Ty Simpkins as Harley Keener, and he does not suck.

I also found that Gwynneth Paltrow was a lot less annoying that in the last movie.  She had less hand wringing, and did things, as opposed to being an object to be acted upon.

As to the 3-D, except for explosions and action sequences (admittedly half the movie) it was relatively understated.

I would give it a 7 out of 10.

Well, Duh………

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Better than ST:TNG

The Writers Guild of America has the original Star Trek series higher than they did Star Trek: The Next Generation:

The Writers Guild of America has announced the 101 best written TV shows of all time, and I would like to draw your attention to a small excerpt from the list:

33. Star Trek

 79. Star Trek: The Next Generation

I am not surprised.

In my opinion, the best written SF show around the time of ST:TNG was ALF.

Notwithstanding the fact that Jean Luc Picard might have been a better captain than James T. Kirk, particularly if I were Ensign Liebowitz of Starship Security, the characters never worked as well.

You could see Kirk being adored by the crew, while Picard was distance, intellectual, and sarcastic; the sort of commander who you would call “The Old Man”, when he wasn’t around.

Spock not wanting to move onto command worked, it was completely absurd for Riker.

And let’s not go with the “Ships Counselor”, or Wil Wheaton’s first turn in the series as the boy genius.

Geebus, it sucked.

As an aside, I am heartened that The Prisoner was on the list as well, though I would have put that at number 1.

Signs of the Apocalypse

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It’s a start

Fox News Host Megyn Kelly noted that people on her show were tilting too much toward Republicans:

Fox News host Megyn Kelly admitted on Wednesday that the conservative network’s coverage of that day’s Benghazi hearings had been a “little lopsided” after Democratic lawmakers were repeatedly cut off for commercial breaks.

Following opening statements, Fox News aired all of the questions House Oversight Committee Chair Darrel Issa (R-CA) had for the witnesses he had called, but the network cut to former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton for reaction when Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MA) began presenting his questions.

Will wonders never cease.

Props to Gawker for This Trenchant Analysis

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Neetzan Zimmerman at Gawker wonders why, “CNN Can’t Stop Giving Jon Stewart Stuff to Make Fun Of.” Honestly, so do I:

Standing in the parking lot outside the courthouse, Ashleigh Banfield and Nancy Grace appeared on a split-screen via satellite to discuss the proceedings.

But, as their backdrop soon revealed, the two talking heads were actually in the very same parking lot, six whole parking spots away from each other, according to an Atlantic Wire analysis.

Well, either that, or as Stewart suggested, viewers were witnessing Arizona’s fabled “seven-mile long Bus Ness Monster.”

………
Stewart has every reason to complain about CNN’s lack of professionalism, but if they ever did get their sh%$ together, his show would be half as long.

I think that this is a bit strong.  While CNN makes Jon Stewart job easier, I think that his show would still work without them.