Professional Liar Called Out On Her Crap

Jon Stewart went easy on Betsy McCaughey. He eventually got around to the meat of the issue after letting her hang for a while, but you can see how she gets away with this. She walks in with a big binder to try and connote authority, but it's a prop... by the end she's just flipping through it when asked for evidence, as if she's never read it before. Stewart says "you should put Yellow Post-Its in there to mark your place," which would never occur to McCaughey because people are just supposed to expect her to have possession of the facts. She cashes checks off nobody ever challenging her. And when Stewart finally does, it's delicious to watch.

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The tsunami of lies is too big, and a substantial part of the country on McCaughey's side of the tribe would believe her over Stewart even after this embarrassing performance. But the antidote to most of this comes in two words - "Prove it." And they never can.

Goss Harmin' Harman?

Since I've been offering one side of the Jane Harman story as the bits of intrigue trickle out in the media, I thought I'd explore the second option - that Bush-era officials at the CIA are using the Harman story as a warning shot against further investigation of their practices with torture and wiretapping, as well as pushing back against a thorn in the CIA's side:

But the former intelligence official familiar with the matter noted that (ex-CIA Director Porter) Goss has given only one on-the-record interview on these CIA controversies since leaving the CIA director job. In the December 2007 interview, he said that Congressional leaders, including Representatives Pelosi and Goss himself, Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), and later Rep. Harman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), had been briefed on CIA waterboarding back in 2002 and 2003. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," Goss told the Washington Post. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

Who was the lone lawmaker the article identified as objecting to the program?

Jane Harman.

"Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the [House intelligence] committee's top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program," the Post reported. "Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy. ‘When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of secrecy,' she said. ‘I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything.'"

There is compelling evidence that Goss approved continuing the wiretap on the Israeli agent after seeing Harman's involvement, and in fact tried to get a wiretap up on Harman herself. The internecine battles between Goss and Harman go back a ways, so it's not impossible. We learned yesterday that the wiretap in question did not come from the NSA, and so CIA may have had some direct control over it, although the proper chain of command would have been the FBI. Why was Goss so involved in this?

Of course, none of this changes the fact that Harman did, as has been confirmed by multiple sources, approach the Washington editor of the New York Times in 2004, before the Bush-Kerry election, to try and get them to spike the warrantless wiretapping story. Nor does it change the fact that Harman, a full-throated supporter of wiretapping, now has become a civil liberties champion when denouncing the surveillance of her. This must be why she's hired Lanny Davis to do spin control (and surely he can do a better job than her disastrous efforts so far).

Finally, Jon Stewart skewers this story as only he could.

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The Danger Of Jon Stewart

David Shuster took double entendre to a whole other level the other night:



I just happened to see a Daily Show segment where Jon Stewart is snickering about the "Taepodong missile" that North Korea launched, only to be browbeaten by Wyatt Cenac about his constant third-grade giggling in a nice inversion of the "it isn't a fucking game" CNBC/Jim Cramer smackdown. But see, the media watches Jon Stewart. They clearly want to be Jon Stewart. And that leads to segments like the one above. Which I admit is entertaining as well as somewhat informative about the right-wing corporate underwriting of the teabaggery. But do we really want our media to devolve into snorts and junior high dick jokes?

I'll make an exception in the tea party case because the lack of awareness on the part of the teabaggers is astonishing.

Actually, I'm fairly juvenile, so I'll just make a perpetual exception.

Do We Have To Send You Back To The Daily Show Again?

Here's Jim Cramer building and knocking down a straw man on one of NBC's multi-platform products this morning:

I think it was a naive and misleading thing to attack the media. We weren’t behind this. CNBC, in particular, has been out front on this. … I think there are people who bear so much more responsibility [than the media] that it’s just wrong-headed: the politicians, the regulators, the SEC, the lenders, the investment banks. … It’s just a naive focus, it really is Meredith.

I like the part where Cramer says he was taking "the high road" on the interview, to Jon Stewart's face, while calling him naive when he won't be faced with a rebuttal. Quite a man.

What is misleading and fallacious is the notion that Stewart believes the media are solely responsible for the meltdown. He's a media critic, making the media his focus. But of course, everyone understands the failure of regulators and the greed of executives. That would be, um, not the point of the critique, which is that CNBC has abdicated their responsibility to the viewer to make any sense of the meltdown. And Cramer brushes aside his admission of guilt from when, um, HE was one of those traders on the other side engaging in illegal activity.

On the Monday show, The Daily Show ran a segment about short selling. That was meant to run right before Cramer's appearance (he alludes to it, but they cut it when the interview went over). The segment focused on the actual traders involved in this. It actually featured Deep Capture creator Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com. So to say that Stewart is monomaniacally focused on the media's culpability is just wrong, and Cramer knows it.

Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson is concern trolling. Congrats, Tuckie, you got your name mentioned on the show!

Must-See TV

Don't miss Jim Cramer on The Daily Show tonight, the culmination of a week-long feud. Initially, I didn't think Jon Stewart will actually make Cramer REALLY uncomfortable, like by bringing up Deep Capture or his admission that he manipulated the markets as a hedge fund trader, but apparently that video is played, and the interview is good. For his part, Cramer tried to talk everything down this morning.

The CNBC star, apparently trying to soften his image, went on “The Martha Stewart Show” this morning and admitted that Stewart has gotten the better of him so far. “My kids only know I have a show ‘cause Jon Stewart’s been skewering me,” the "Mad Money" host said.

Cramer's never hesitated to show emotion before, but on Thursday, he showed a new, vulnerable side. "I’m a little nervous. How bad is it gonna be? Is he gonna kill me?” Cramer said. “You should be nervous,” (Martha) Stewart said. "He’s fast as lightning!”

“I’m not, I’m slow as molasses,” Cramer replied. Considering that the entire conceit of “Mad Money” is that Cramer is manic -- “mad,” if you will -- this new, self-deprecating incarnation of the man seems pretty implausible.

So I'm guessing Cramer will sit there and say he's sorry a lot, and Stewart will tear CNBC a new one, and they'll agree to disagree.

Is that an exciting preview or what?

Not A Fair Fight

I don't know what Jim Cramer thinks he's accomplishing by taking potshots at Jon Stewart. It's not that he's "punching down," which is just something you never do, it's that you're serving up hours of material for a well-trained group of comic writers just begging to make you look like a schmuck. And impugning Stewart's character, saying that he doesn't have the "guts" to pick stocks or make transcripts of his show (like The Daily Show airs in secret) misses the point entirely. This isn't a winnable fight.

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Then again, this could be an elaborate setup for Cramer's appearance on The Daily Show Thursday night. Hopefully he'll ask about Deep Capture.

Your Daily Matthews

So funboy Chris reacted to Rachel Maddow's assertion that Alan Keyes was the most important figure in today's Republican debate by saying "I want to waterboard you." Har!!

Then he reacted to Chuck Todd's statement that the debate offered no revelations because everyone got to answer the issues and there were no fireworks by saying "Everything we hate." Hoo-hah!!

Then he lamented that everyone who watches The Daily Show and The Colbert Report gets the impression that politics is ridiculous and worthy of satire, and that those people who get their information from those shows probably don't vote.

Yeah, nobody would want to watch a show where politics is treated like nothing but a GAME, right?

Oblivion looks at Chris Matthews and thinks, "This guy is clueless."

Daily Show Writers On The Writer's Strike

Very funny. If nothing else, the WGA strike has increased the quality of YouTube by about 1000%.

Incidentally, Ari Emanuel is as much of an a-hole as the character on Entourage based on him.

As Funny As A Punch In The Face

Given that I know the guy who's career is going to be ruined by being the public face of this show, I probably shouldn't say anything bad about the Joel Surnow-produced "1/2 Hour News Hour," Fox News' answer to The Daily Show. I guess I'll just let you look at this clip.



And so I don't look biased, here's the reviews from the right:

Malkin-in-Training Allahpundit

Ace of Spades

Now I know why the actors have changed their names for the show ("Kurt McNally" is actually Kurt Long). THEY WANT TO WORK IN THIS TOWN AGAIN.

Considering that Allahpundit's idea of a joke is this, maybe he's not your first source for comedy (Where's Bill Donohue yelling about anti-Catholic statements on that one, by the way?). But I'd say he's fairly on point here.

Once this ends it's run, it's going to be harder to find than a.k.a. Pablo.