Cuppacafe

Yes, we love Jon Stewart (often to unintentionally ignore Stephen Colbert), but we couldn't agree more with Stephen than when we saw this.

I keep remembering what a teacher of mine once told me, that the peace movement didn't end the Vietnam war, it was the news media's 24/7 reporting of the event. It was Pentagon-supported body counts, watching the war on TV served up on the 6:00 news with dinner, and watching them unload dead US soldiers off airplanes at Dover air force base.

I honestly think that the media should go back to doing that, and bring our soldiers home. We've been in Iraq & Afghanistan too long, and we need to bring them home. We can't win these wars, and all we are doing now is killing soldiers.

The Perfessor

OK, normally we don't post stuff like this here at Cuppa, but it is faux news story we got off The Volokh Conspiracy that they got off The Onion, that we, well giggled like a schoolgirl all the way through. So we felt that we should share it with you all.

Long have we contended that, when growing up, all the news of the world could be told in 30 minutes a day. These days with four or five 24/7 news channels, there is still only 30 minutes of news every single day, but now these stations still have to fill up 23.5 hours every day, just to sell commercials to keep their stations on the air, so that they can get paid.

Needless to say, what we so often wind up is is something like, well, this:

There is some (mild) cursing in this vid, so be aware.

The only thin that is worse than this type of story (told seriously) is when they break into regular programming to tell us that there is no new update on the critical story that they are going to lead off the news with in 20 minutes.

The Perfessor

This just in! The East Coast is buried in snow for the first (or second) time since winter last year! Al Gore is obviously wrong about Global Warming.

(Oh yeah, it is also starting to get dark, so that means someone extinguished the sun also, right?)

Don't ya just love the media's need to scare the crap out of us on a 214-hour news cycle, just to get us to watch their show?

The Perfessor

Yep, Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart went on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor as the pundit and comedian squared off as they talked about how each person’s show handles the news and the Obama Presidency. They are (apparently) slated to have another go-round today, (which I’m sure we’ll cover), but in the mean time, Here’s what went down yesterday.

First up was the way each of them treat the President.

Part two has O’Reilly comparing the slant of both of their shows.

What I always feel is not just funny, but friggin’ hilarious is that — for some reason — newscasters (especially from the right) seem to want to compare themselves with Stewart (note O’Reilly‘s insistence that Fox is considered trustworthy but astounded that Stewart has any sort of influence over his own audience), all the while seeming to forget that Stewart is a not a newscaster, but a comedian. (Something that Stewart always likes to remind people that he is a fake newscaster.)

Sure he is going to have influence, just as George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, and hundreds of other politically-skewed comedians have over their audience. Hey, ever see an actor or a rock star endorse their pet cause du jour or want you to get all worked up over whatever it is that has captured their ADD-fueled attention span.

Yeah, I watch Stewart (and Colbert) over “real” news, but I not only know the difference, but I prefer the slightly askew view of current events of these twin shows over the doom-and-gloom of “actual” news.

So there.

The Perfessor

So President Obama spoke the other night and we all sat and watched his first State of the Union Address (except Walt), and for some of us, we remembered why we liked him (Obama, not Walt) in the first place. Still the most fun you get out of political events like this is not so much watching the event itself,but the political pundits yack it up after that is a sort of a post-modern, politically-charged version of Can you top that?

My personal favorite is Jon Stewart’s take on Chris Matthews particular brand of buffoonery, when Stewart refers to Matthews as being “...one Scotch Away From Being Ron Burgundy”, when Matthews makes one of the more patently retarded comments in the history of TV punditry when Matthews stated that Barack Obama’s speech made Matthews forget the President was Black.

Seriously, what an ass!

The Perfessor

So, last week on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart slapped around Keith Olbermann for comments Olbermann made regarding Scott Brown’s run at the Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy. Olbermann took exception to getting slapped around by Stewart, and had this to say.

Yep, it’s all in the rebuttal.

The Perfessor

Truthfully, I was going to come up with some snappy, snarky headline, for this post, but, really, I was so happy with the return of Jon Stewart and his crew, that I just want to get to the fun stuff...

Welcome back, Jon, we’ve missed you.

The Perfessor

OK, I saw this in the paper today (courtesy of Walt), and it got me to thinking, do people really fall for this gag? Apparently (according to Snopes) yea.

Apparently even Wikipedia is in on the joke.

Happy New Year all!

The Perfessor

Late-breaking news from the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Thousands arrive to protest global warming...

The Perfessor

I know that Walt wants to talk about this (and he probably will at some point), but both he and I came across this bombshell and well, I wanted to get it out there. Apparently, (and if I’m understanding this correctly) everything we’ve learned about climate change and global warming (and what Al Gore has been telling us), is wrong. The way we learned about it, is due to someone apparently hacked a scientific server and discovered all these incriminating emails.

In the last few hours, thousands of emails have been leaked to internet forums detailing a massive conspiracy to fudge climate change results to make the results look more influenced by carbon emissions and cover-up any inconsistencies that may lead to alternative theories regarding climate control. Given the high controversy of this subject, it’s important to understand the potential for deception, and any evidence from either side must be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, the controversy is causing quite a storm.

The documents, from the Climate Research Institute at East Anglia University are being scrutinized now, and seem on first inspection to be authentic. The 62 MB file was first uploaded to internet forum site, “The Air Vent” early yesterday. Many of the emails detail the disdain researchers have for those uncooperative scientists who are attempting to discredit thousands of hours worth of expensive research done by those involved in the controversy. Some names mentioned are Phil Jones, and Michael Mann who coined the “hockey stick” diagram.

“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s,” so one email goes, “to hide the decline.” Clearly we see here that if these emails are indeed authentic, then this is quite possibly one of the greatest conspiracies to surface from the scientific community since the Alternating Current Wars. And according to “Investigate” magazine, operating from Australia, Dr. Phil Jones has verified their authenticity. Dr. Jones’ analysis holds with it much weight, and many are now giving a second look to what would otherwise have merely been a “well crafted hoax.” Now as the controversy continues, many climatic science sites are taking the emails very seriously.

This is a very long (9:58) video in regards to this scientific hack and what the potential fallout.

It seems that these days Sarah Palin’s Claims are being fact-checked by Fox News. Yep, you read that right, it seems that the bell of the Republican party is being called out on her erroneous claims about the new dollar coin:

As Fox News anchor Bret Baier noted this evening, picking up on a Politico report, Palin said this past Friday that there had been a lot of "change" of late, and talked about the dollar coin -- how the phrase "In God We Trust" had been moved to the rim of the coin, rather than on the face. "Who makes a decision like that?" said Palin, seemingly pointing to the Obama administration, adding: "It's a disturbing trend."

Needless to say, it seems that the coins in question were actually commissioned not by President Obama’s White House and the Democratic Majority, but way back in 2005 by the then Republican-led government. Plus, as Baier points out, a later Congress acted specifically to change this coin in 2007. Fox then displayed a newer James K. Polk Presidential coin with the phrase “In God we trust” on the coin’s face.

Can’t you just see the tide turning?

The Perfessor

Yep, our favorite faux newsman got to Gibb-Smack Fox’s faux newsman for just making s#it up.

Don’t you just love the part where the newswoman that Hanity hands off to fumbles the pass as she gets caught up in his lie as she endorses Sean Hannity as he falsely uses footage of Glenn Beck’s much bigger 9/12 protest to make it appear that the GOP’s health care rally appear more heavily attended than it actually was.

In the words of Jon Stewart, is Fox just allowed to make s#it up now?

The Perfessor