What We Saw at The Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear

Reason.tv was on hand for the Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert at the National Mall in Washington on Saturday, October 30.

The crowd was huge, the weather fine, the signs memorable, and the people…well, let's just say they were there too. Some were apolitical and just out for a fun day, some were big fans of Comedy Central's best-known personalities, some were inadvertent dadaists, and more than a few defined sanity strictly in terms of heartily agreeing with themselves.

Approximately 6 minutes long. Shot and edited by Jim Epstein and Meredith Bragg, with assistance from Josh Swain. Interviews by Michael C. Moynihan and Nick Gillespie. With help from June Arunga.

For Reason.tv coverage of other recent DC rallies (inlcuding Glenn Beck's Restoring Honor Rally, the 9/12 Freedom Works Rally, and the One Nation Working Together Rally), go here.

Subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel and receive automatic notification when new material goes live.

Comments

[Tulpa]

Another kid-gloves treatment of a leftist gathering from the leading cosmotarian monthly.

[no ped]

A kid-gloves treatment is effective. Let the brilliance shine forth.

[Beezard]

+1

[Gabe E]

I agreed. I thought it was great.

[Anonymous]

What exactly are "kid-gloves" anyways?

[db]

The skin of goat kids is very soft, hence the comfort and delicate touch of "kid" gloves.

[Anonymous]

I see. Thanks for clearing that up.

[cleantalk]

I too always wondered about this in the back of my mind.

[Michelle]

Is that another goat reference to my husband?

[no ped]

Of course not.

[Tulpa]

No, actually it refers to the special boxing gloves you use when teaching little kids how to box.

[pmains]

No, actually it refers to the special boxing gloves you use when teaching little kids how to box.

Wrong.

[MNG]

You can tell its kid gloves because the attendees were ridiculed only three times in the first three sentences.

But what the hey, conservatives will never miss an opportunity to work the ref!

[Jim Treacher]

You poor dear.

[prolefeed]

I disagree. The gloves were totally off, in that the interviewers let the leftists talk. The kid gloves treatment would have been to cut the mic the instant anyone started to say something ignorant -- but who's gonna watch a 12 second clip?

[Tommy Wiseau]

Who's a good Koch-sucker?
Who is?
You are!
Yes, you are!

[Mr. FIFY]

Fuck off, Tommy.

[Bruce Majors]

Could you wipe Soros' fistula juices off your lips before you say that?

[Rearden]

You do realize you would pronounce that "coke-sucker" right? I, for one, really like Coke

[Bruce Majors]

And bringing it full circle in the 1950s some teens though a apres coke douche was effective birth control.

[Dan]

Some awesome footage of the rally:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U79TBDoRzEY

[generic Brand]

I think that about sums up the goals of the people that were at the rally.

[Bruce Majors]

Hey Tulpa! There are plenty of Beltway cosmotarians to smack. Go find some wet who thinks attacking O'Donnell or Angle is libertarian priority number 1. Nick and Moynihan et al just let the phenomena shine forth in their own existential truthiness.

[bub]

wow, can you be any more obtuse?

[Tulpa]

My mom used to say I could do anything I put my mind to. Especially when she came home at night too drunk to cook dinner.

[Sy]

I hated "Fish stick Fridays" but for some reason the mail man loved them.

[Bruce Majors]

Fetal alcohol syndrom does explain a lot.

[?]

If Stewart did this on a Monday there wouldn't be 378,000 comments.

[Damn]

I promised I wouldn't read or post anything on this blog -- shit!

[Tulpa]

They just would have been split up by 15 posts on various facets of the topic by every Reason staff member.

[Pat Lynch]

Maybe we can find a pot smoker at the next Joe Miller rally, then we can tarnish his entire operation? Yeah like Rand Paul, I like that!

[TomSa]

It wouldn't matter if you did find a pot smoker at a Miller rally in Alaska. Being a pothead in Alaska is not a criminal offense. You might get the folks from the Anchorage Baptist Temple up in arms, but Alaskans don't give a damn about people using pot.

[no ped]

Me like the woman wearing Hulk hands calling for civility, punctuating her points with punches.

[Bruce Banner]

It wasn't very civil when she chopped my hands off!!

[wylie]

Hulk not understand irony. Hulk blame tiny Canadian woman. Hulk try to smash her but Canadian Customs no let hulk cross border, Hulk genetically modified organism. Hulk ok though, Hulk have lucrative foam-hand business.

[no ped]

Hulk hands warm in Canadian winter. Hulk hands warm on Canadian woman.

[STEVE SMITH]

STEVE SMITH LIKE WAY HULK TALK! STEVE SMITH MAKE SWEET RAPE TO HULK AND FOAM HAND WOMAN!

[STEVE SMITH]

HOW YOU THINK HULK PANTS GET RIPPED TO SHREDS?!?!?!?!

[STEVE HOLT]

STEVE HOLT!

[Libertarian Jerk]

I wonder what the Liberal Elitist lady thinks of GMOs and nuclear power?

[The Thinking Man's NASCAR]

Ha ha. Science!

[Brett Knoss]

I don't think nuclear energy is prctical, but I do think food companies should nuke our food so we can have strawberries year yournd or so we don't ahve to worry about ecoli or salmonella.

[Piss Drinkers of Dune]

Seriously?!? Nuclear power isn't practical? You are a little one step forward and two giant steps back for mankind in your fidelity to empiricism there, fella.

[Jed]

Nice & smug. The interviewer seems real proud of himself to find dumb people amidst 1/4million.

[Libertarian Jerk]

They did the same thing for the 9/12 Tea Party rally, the Glenn Beck rally, and the One Nation rally.

I doubt I'll find you whining in those comment sections.

[Bruce Majors]

I dunno. Jed may whine all the time.

[LibertyLover]

Actually, the hard part is finding any intelligent people at a Glenn Beck rally. Reason did a pretty good job of sugarcoating that moron fest.

[LibertyOwner]

The hard part is finding any such thing as an intelligent leftist at all. This LeftardationLover here is more typical of the brain-dead left.

[Bruce Majors]

Everyone who went saw nothing but but assholes, like these:

http://directorblue.blogspot.c.....m-jon.html

[Starchild]

I don't care very much whether someone is more left-wing or more conservative.

I care whether they are more libertarian or more statist.

If we want freedom, we've got to keep our eyes on the ball and not be distracted by all the left/right drama.

[WTF]

Yeah, the media, which Jon Stewart actually skewered for doing so.

[Hooha]

All he had to do was throw a rock, and unless he hit the libertarian kids...

[Xenocles]

...we'd be better off for it?

[Tara]

All that I ask is that he throws it hard.

[Truth Teller]

"The interviewer seems real proud of himself to find dumb people amidst 1/4million." You can't miss when you're in the midst of liberals.

[Tex Lovera]

fish, barrel...

[Rudan]

90% of the folk at any gathering/protest/rallies break down if you ask them about specific policies they want to change. People join these only based on attitudes.

[prolefeed]

I doubt the interviewers filmed several hundred thousand people, and these were the only ignorant ones they could find.

[JohnD]

And you are obviously in full denial....... FOOL

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Ok. Let's play. We can say of the Tea Party. Thanks for playing. *Takes ball*

[Jim Treacher]

Did the ball contain the missing word(s) in that comment?

[Spoonman.]

Pricipal. Caught sayof?

[generic Brand]

What are you talking about, quarter-million people? There were easily HUNDREDS of people gathered there.

[Franklin Harris]

And the lesson learned from this rally: Just because your sign isn't misspelled doesn't mean you're not still an ill-informed tool.

[MB]

good one.

[emerson]

true.

[Bruce Majors]

Oh there were many misspelled signs. Something called "masterbation" was on a number of them.

[J sub D]

Being adept at masterbation is what kept Sally Hemmings from being sold down the river,

[Sean W. Malone]

Racist! (And win)

[Jen]

I saw a sign that couldn't tell the difference between "then" and "than" - a sign that a liberal website posted as one of the rally's "Top 100 signs."

[Lisa]

Just because your sign is misspelled doesn't mean you're an ill-informed tool either. I think the tea partiers had more cogent principles behind their typos and rough wording. But the rally to sanity was doomed to addlepated vagueness from the start because it employs the same insert-your-own-definition buzzwords that united Obama supporters before the election. If something already sounds nice, why ruin it by developing an argument or making it relevant to boring reality?

[generic Brand]

^^This.
That was always my problem with the Rally to Restore Sanity. It just had this feel like it was a reactionary event to Glenn Beck's thing, despite Beck's rally little-to-nothing to do with politics. This one tried to avoid the politi-speak, but in doing so attracted followers who cared only FOR politi-speak.

They would have been better off making this an actual rally with a clear goal and some people on stage who could debate the merits of certain programs/ideas, rather than this comedic event that had the deep undertones of a left-leaning rally anyways.

[Bruce Majors]

Illustration of your point

http://directorblue.blogspot.c.....m-jon.html

[Tex Lovera]

@Lisa-

Nailed it.

[JoshINHB]

The kid at the end is a perfect representative of left wing thinking.

[Jeffersonian]

No kidding..."If I found myself in this much debt, I'd keep spending to get myself out of it."

Pure, distilled stoopid there.

[Truth Teller]

Just liberal logic.

[Bingo]

Hell, Krugman's made a career out writing almost exactly that

[Jeffersonian]

Only during Democratic administrations, though. During Republican administrations, he's as tight as a drum.

[Bruce Majors]

Is that Paul Krugman the ENRON economic advisor?

One wonders if he favors bailouts and stimulus so he can get another ENRON gig?

[Credibility Enhancer]

Look it up, I didn't realize that he was a paid Enron stooge...

[mojavewolf]

That's not fair. He's a former ENRON adviser.

[Bruce Majors]

And he didn't inhale after he stuck the cigar in?

[MNG]

Is it that stupid? Lots of businesses respond to bad times by spending a lot to "re-make" some aspect of themselves, lots of people do things like take out a school loan to improve their job prospects. Everyone uses more debt in hard times.

Of course every sane person cuts back in hard times too, and I will concede that the left seems incapable of cutting back during any time...

[prolefeed]

Everyone uses more debt in hard times.

Project much?

I haven't taken on any consumer debt at all since I got out of college, other than to buy one car and two houses.

[MNG]

Yeah, other than two houses and a car, no debt at all!

[sage]

Some debt has utility to it, such as a house (since you have to live somewhere) and a car (which you can use to make money to pay for it and the house). Some debt has no utility, like putting the latest smart phone on your credit card.

[Truth Teller]

+5

[Truth Teller]

The +5 was for Sage...not the dick liker.

[MNG]

I'm glad we agree on that. There are those who argue that certain kind of spending that you would think falls under category two falls under category one.

[Yonemoto]

MNG, you need to look up the difference between "secured debt" and "unsecured debt". Pray tell, what is the national debt secured against?

[Bruce Majors]

National debt is secured against the value of the stream of future income to be extracted from the tax slaves.

When the Chinese state lends the American state money, the loan is secured by the US ruling class pledging the title to its slaves and their offspring to the Chinese.

[Tex Lovera]

As of right now, our ass...

[DLM]

Pray tell, what is the national debt secured against?

Future taxpayers? Who said slavery was dead?

[JohnD]

MNG's major debt is the 2 trailer truck loads of liberal Kool-Aid

[prolefeed]

@MNG -- I'm completely debt-free now, own two houses and three cars free and clear, but like most people when I first started out didn't have the savings to buy a car paying cash. And you have to be super rich to pay all cash upfront for a house if you live in the places I've lived in.

[Truth Teller]

Everyone uses more debt in hard times.

Times are hard. I am not using more debt. Ergo, you are fail.

[Yonemoto]

Me neither! Although my assets are about to run out a few days before my job pays its first paycheck... Haha I feel like this happened last year, too.

[Congress]

What's the problem? Just raise taxes and your "revenue inadequacy" is solved!

[M. Joe]

Anecdotal evidence at best. Ergo, your argument is invalid.

[Apogee]

It's not anecdotal that he is inclusive of the set of "everyone".

[Tulpa]

That does happen, but generally to a much smaller degree than what the govt is doing measured as a percentage of assets. Also, taking out a student loan or paying for efficiency-improving technology is not the correct analogy for what the feds are spending money on. It would be more appropriate to say they're taking out a loan to buy a Mercedes and take a trip to Cancun. ie, the same shit they always wanted to spend money on in the past.

[PapayaSF]

What did the stimulus spending "remake"? It seemed like the main thing it did was prop up unions and government workers, so that they could avoid remaking anything.

[MNG]

Well, of course folks here are going to see the stimulus as wasteful spending not as all analogous to the examples I gave because for most folks here government spending is wasteful via axiom...

[PapayaSF]

No, it's that your example is about remaking and investing, which is about changing, but the stimulus was about avoiding changing anything.

[MNG]

Well, that is of course where you and the supporters of the stimulus differ. It was at the least sold by its supporters as being about remaking and investment.

[Tulpa]

It was at the least sold by its supporters as being about remaking and investment.

And as we all know, the person trying to sell you a product is the best source of information about its value.

[MW]

I was going to say that

[Bruce Majors]

Stimulus funded "saving" government jobs. That is, fossilizing things as they are, causing economic sclerosis, preventing adaptation in institutions in the face of changing economic conditions.

One suspects real change is going to require guillotines. Too many airheaded whores paid by stimulus to babble like some here about how gubmint be berry berry good to dem.

[Rrabbit]

The stimulus is wasteful spending because it is. Politicians put huge amounts of money onto the table, and then everybody who gets to sit at the table grabs as much as they can.

Altogether, about three trillion down the drain in less than two years. For *what*? Looks like almost completely wasted money to me.

[Ass of Catalonia]

Does anyone know if the trend of the slowing collapse of shadow banking liabilities continued from Q1($5.6T annualized(not positive)) to Q2($2.8T annualized) into Q3(?). Anyone who understands how important current account deficient funding is would be very anxious to find out.

Of course, all that this would accomplish is maintaining the status quo(corporatist welfare state) which I am vehemently opposed to. I just find it perversely amusing how little benefit is to be gained(even in their eyes) from massive fiscal stimulus and the central bank's monetary policy of inflation through POMO.

[b]

it remade a whole bunch of roads in southern Illinois that didn't really need to be remade.

[Ewing]

..Is it that stupid? Lots of businesses respond to bad times by spending a lot to "re-make" some aspect of themselves..

Right. It's called an investment. With the goal being to make a profit. Something that won't happen with government.

[Rrabbit]

Everyone uses more debt in hard times.

Only idiots do that. Yes, there are lots of idiots on this planet. But not everybody is an idiot.

[Truth Teller]

Yeah, but most are!

[Homer Simpson]

Just keep calling Vegas and putting 200 on red.

[David Emami]

There's a difference between spending money towards a means to get yourself out of a bad situation, and the Keynesian notion that spending per se will get you out of it. If overspend on a big screen TV and wind up broke, you don't try to put yourself back in the black by purchasing another one.

[MNG]

Supporters of the stimulus did plenty of arguing that their spending was of the first type (i.e., the infrastructure stuff) as well as the second. Of course there is that difference you note, but there is also the difference that one problem the nation seemed to face was under-spending in general; in that case spending per se can rationally be seen as a counter. No analogy is 100%, or it would just be the situation one is analogizing too...

[Tulpa]

Supporters of the Iraq War said it was about removing a WMD threat and spreading liberal democracy in the Middle East. How can you possibly be against it then?

[MNG]

You keep missing my point which is that incurring debt as a response to bad times is not stupid per se. Whether something actually does what it is sold as doing is a separate question.

[Tulpa]

Then you're focusing on an irrelevancy. It's like a war hawk going to an anti-war rally (not that there are any anymore now that the D's have their finger on the drone button) and stomping his feet screaming that, there are circumstances under which invading a country is a good idea.

[Bruce Majors]

Government does not incur debt. The phrase "incur debt" does not mean the same thing when I take out a home equity line of credit and when the government sells debt instruments. So your statement MSG is a conceptual fallacy, an equivocation and a lie.

My home equity line of credit is repaid or my home is seized as it is collateral. Government debt amounts to kidnapping the children of taxpayers and demanding ransom, since the children are being saddled with debt or sold into debt slavery.

Your mind is a morass of bromides and government press releases. Please flush.

[gusted butt]

one problem the nation seemed to face was under-spending in general

Yes, yes, I see that now. Before I was blind to the problem.

[prolefeed]

+100 for the sarcasm.

[Eddy]

"but there is also the difference that one problem the nation seemed to face was under-spending in general"

You say under-spending, I say negative ROI. It isn't quite the same thing but after enough tequila it's possible similarities might pop up.

Can we just agree that politicians should stop saying "investing in the future"? We all know it means billing it forward and should be called "doing it to the children" instead of doing it for the children.

[Sy]

BizzaroSy 2012
"-Let's do it to the children, for a better today!"

[Cunctator]

---"one problem the nation seemed to face was under-spending in general"---

WHAT???

[Fatty Bolger]

"Then there's the argument, well, this is full of pet projects. When was the last time that we saw a bill of this magnitude move out with no earmarks in it? Not one. (Applause.) And when you start asking, well, what is it exactly that is such a problem that you're seeing, where's all this waste and spending? Well, you know, you want to replace the federal fleet with hybrid cars. Well, why wouldn't we want to do that? (Laughter.) That creates jobs for people who make those cars. It saves the federal government energy. It saves the taxpayers energy. (Applause.)

"So then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? (Laughter and applause.) That's the whole point. No, seriously. (Laughter.) That's the point. (Applause.)"

- Barack Obama

[Jeffersonian]

If a person is investing that money in something that will provide a good return, then it's money well "spent." That's not what the guy said, and it sure as fuck isn't what the lion's share of Obama's spending spree is all about.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I think you're confusing "spending to make money" with using debt to survive. "Everyone used more debt in hard times" is a faulty logic that will only sink you. And then guess what happens? Liberals who do this cry to the government to bail them out for being stupid like that guy at the end.

[Sy]

Like all those 30 thousand dollar millionaires sitting in front of a bank tellers signing off on a 400k home the past 4 years.
What the fuck could possibly go wrong.

[Dan Tana]

Of course businesses spend the money by investing it in actual people and things that will potentially contribute to greater productivity and the like. They don't flush it down the toilet on political payoffs.

[Mr. FIFY]

I can't say what the direct analogy would be, MNG, but IMO it's like the average family going into debt to the tune of, say, $1.43 trillion. Which would be highly irresponsible.

OTOH, that same average family can't just print its own money. Which is also highly irresponsible.

[Bill Dalasio]

MNG,

There is a quite simple difference here. Look at your own cited justifications: "...by spending to", "take out a school loan to". In each of these cases, the borrowing and spending is not the end goal. Rather it is the capital investment that the borrowing and spending is intended to pay for that is the goal in question. The borrowing and spending is an unfortunate necessity to get those things in a world of scarcity. Moreover, you don't see companies plowing huge amounts of capital investments into precisely the projects that brought them on hard times and you don't see the unemployed taking up courses in comparative literature to improve their job prospects. In contrast, the policy of the administration has largely to treat spending either as an end in itself ("Food stamps are the surest way to stimulate economic growth.") or trying to reinflate the very housing bubble and overconsumption that caused the economic downturn in the first place.

[Michael Ejercito]

No kidding..."If I found myself in this much debt, I'd keep spending to get myself out of it."

Pure, distilled stoopid there.

From whom did this kid learn finance?

[Public School System]

Well yes, technically we received a record amount of money last year, and we don't have any improvements in student productivity to show for it, but if you just give us MORE money... then we can finally make the changes needed for these kids!

[Math Department]

Yeah you say that, but I'm still chained to the boiler getting fed cat food.

[Lisa]

Yeah, except that's not even what Obama's doing. God, I can't believe how much credit people dole out to him. He's not spending to get out of debt. He's just spending. He doesn't even say "hey, guys. Don't worry. I'm just spending to get us out of debt. Trust me on this one." He says, "There are things that have to get done"

[Brian]

Otto: Um, how are we going to get out of here?
Homer: We'll dig our way out!
Wiggum: No, dig _up_, stupid.
-- "Homer the Vigilante"

[Starchild]

I certainly disagree with applying the kid's approach, spending more if he was that deep in debt, as public policy, but I think you're misunderstanding his thinking, and it's always good to understand where statist views are coming from.

I see his comment as basically meaning something like this:

"If I was that deep in debt, I'm sure I didn't get there all at once -- it took time. And if I've been able to keep spending myself deeper and deeper into debt for a while now, I obviously must be getting something out of it. And if it's worked this far, why make any drastic changes? Yeah, I'm concerned about the debt, and I realize that I have to do something about it, but until I figure something out, spending a little more won't hurt, will it?"

It's still madness, but there is a kind of perverse logic to it. Of course what he's ignoring is the first rule of holes -- when you're in one, stop digging.

[Co'mon man]

......thinking?

[what]

that stupid ass kid epitomizes retard leftists.

also, nice to see some LP people there that aren't ancient.

[Sarcasmo 2000?]

It was everything I expected from a Stewart/Colbert audience.

[Mensan]

I wish I could say I was surprised, but I guess you can't expect much from people who get all their "news" from Comedy Central.

[Sarcasmo 2000?]

There's only one comedian I trust as a news source, and that, of course, is Carrot Top.

[Libertarian Jerk]

I prefer the comedian Keith Olbermann. He is a comedian, right?

[Truth Teller]

Comedienne...Rachel cut his dick off!

[Libertarian Jerk]

I guess she was jealous his was bigger than hers.

[Truth Teller]

Are you sure?

[Sy]

Can't it be the other way around?
I could buy news from a Eunich.

[Jeffersonian]

He's Howard Beale, albeit a bit crazier than Howie was.

[Bruce Banner]

"You don't see reasonable people putting Hitler moustaches on peoples' faces."

"So there were no people with 'Bush is Hitler' signs like there are as 'Obama is Hitler'?"

"I see what you're saying,uhhm, no, but really if, if there should have been a Hitler sign on somebody it probably would've been him. I hate to say it."

She admits that she recognizes that she is being hypocritical, but then immediately rationalizes her hypocrisy, because, in her incorrectly functioning little brain, Bush was Hitleresque whereas Obama is not.

[The Thinking Man's NASCAR]

Causing people to undergo cognitive dissonance is a fun hobby. It's easier for libertarians to pull off, because our positions are actually logically consistent.

[Yonemoto]

what? No they're not, the difference is that libertarians generally KNOW when they're not being consistent. So we can be like, "I know what you're trying to do here, jerkface"

Also it helps that we're *more* consistent.

[Ass of Catalonia]

^^This^^

Cognitive dissonance is simply a part of being human(unfortunately). The best that one can do is embrace it as the wonder of duality and try and understand it through logic, imo.

Woe is honesty.

[Anomalous]

My favorite sign there:

You know how we know you're NOT Hitler? Because you would never have betrayed Stalin.

[Jeffersonian]

+ 10^50

[john]

Awesome! My wife needs that on a t-shirt.

[Old Man With Candy]

Obama is not Hitler. He's Mussolini. Don't you recognize the pose?

[Ass of Catalonia]

Excuse the racism because that not my point at all but...

You're giving Obama too much credit. He's more like an ignorant African chief receiving shiny trinkets(cheap Chinese crap) in exchange for slaves(our grandchildren). The elites who have created this corporatist welfare state are the true figureheads.

P.S. I intend to write an essay on how slavery came back to bite America on the ass. It was ironic in the sense that legal tender laws, the national banking act, and a whole lot of other crap was passed to wage the civil war and deal with the aftermath in the pursuit of ending slavery. These policies set the stage for the economic destruction of which American enthusiasm in exploiting chinese and countries worker slavery played an integral role.

Basically the measures that the US gov passed the fight slavery are causing the destruction of America 150 years later because of our exploitation of foreign slaves. Anyone interested? I would love to discuss this with someone.

FYI: I'm a minarchist libertarian who supports a 4 branched republican form of government. IMO, gov imposed regulatory environments have led to the concentration of wealth and the slide of our gov toward corporatism.

[Ass of Catalonia]

Also, something that I find amusing is that, imo, technically, our debt to china is void due to section 4 of the 14th amendment to the constitution as china has employed slave labor and an artificially undervalued RMB to subvert our economy.

IMO, our government cannot allow Americans to profit off of slave labor wherever it occurs. I wonder what would happen if congress decided that our debt to china is void until they liberalize(ideally not more towards the corporatist crapfest we have).

Very bad things would happen obviously, however, I accept that bad things must occur regardless. Bretton woods has fucked us all.

Hooray for having the strongest military in the world.

[Ass of Catalonia]

Also, I have to say that china's policy of undervaluing the RMB is not all that difference in effect to the american colonial governments policy of "upcrying" coin's worth in response to the british crown's efforts to prevent specie from flowing to the colonies. Basically by over valuing coins, colonial government encouraged whatever foreigns coins found their way in the america's to stay there.

International economics is so fascinating to me and it pains me that so few people care about even though it determines everything,(the economy) basically.

A lot of it causes issues to boil down to competing nationalistic entities. The HAWK(i'm was born a military, unfortunately[i'm sorry]) in me says that other nations must be competed with to our full abilities but I'm just not sure.

Could we eventually win out by simply pursuing a justice/defense based minarchist government? The dove in me hopes so.

Also, off topic: what do other floridians think about the gubernatorial race? WTF??? They all suck so much, who do i vote for?

[sailshonan]

As another Flordidian, I wonder for whom to vote. My BF is a gubmint employee and keeps urging me to vote for Sink so he won't get furloughed. I keep telling him that if he keeps bothering me about it, I'll write in his damn name for governor. I don't know--Peter Allen seems to be the least worst candidate, but he's a right wing tool. Sigh.

[Truth Teller]

Yeah, it's fucking awesome alright.

[underzog]

The crowd didn't look be to me in that Reason tv snippet.

Figures you doped up hippies couldn't estimate crowd size.

"There's no need to fear. Underzog is here."

[dhex]

probably messed up by all the anti-israel rohmite sodomists, bro.

[News Media]

Figures you doped up hippies couldn't estimate crowd size.

What do you mean? It was obvious that the crowds numbered in the hundreds.

[Fist of Etiquette]

I'm pretty sure the kid at the end was quoting Krugman verbatim.

[Truth Teller]

Thanks for reminding us how god damn stupid the left is, just before the election.

[waffles]

this video is great, well done, Reason. I enjoyed watching the rally over the interwebs while getting some chores done. I can't imagine how these people really think they are any more open-minded or dare I say 'reasonable' than the tea party crowd. Ugh, look in a freakin' mirror people.

[West Texas]

I can't imagine how these people really think they are any more open-minded or dare I say 'reasonable' than the tea party crowd.

Smug vanity was all this thing was about, that's how.

[K.T.]

Bruce B... The best part is this photo taken at the rally.

signs without Hitler moustaches

[Mensan]

< sarcasm > That can't be from a lefty rally! They never go around calling people Hitler! < /sarcasm >

[generic Brand]

Oh how I wish "sarcasm" was an actual HTML tag.

[Juice]

Since I live very close the where the rally was taking place I was thinking about going with a big sign with John Stewart sporting a Hitler mustache, maybe with the slogan Sanity = Genocide. Or something like that. Then I realized how much making a big multicolor sign costs, and said fuck it.

[waffles]

how reasonable

[Ass of Catalonia]

^^heart this^^

*drinks*

[Slut Bunwalla]

Also that might have gotten people to try to beat you up.

[Neu Mejican]

It was a rally to restore sanity and/or FEAR.

Literal much?

[Amakudari]

Yeah, those are obviously mocking the whole Hitler mustache deal, hence the "afraid yet?" part. I'd bet we won't see tongue-out-of-cheek Hitler signs from the left until at least 2014 (first midterm after first possible change in president). These things are cyclical.

[Cheech]

Nick, did you score any dope?

[Jeffersonian]

Two-thirds of his interviewees definitely qualify.

[no ped]

Two-thirds of his interviewees had already consumed all they had.

[Barack Obama]

I agree with that kid on the end. In fact, I'm going to make him an economic advisor. He just makes sense to my economic worldview.

[Truth Teller]

And he is someone most people can relate.

[Truth Teller]

....to.

[Grammar Police, aka your aunt]

"to whom most people can relate"

FIFY

[Ass of Catalonia]

If God were just, your bits wouldn't require a judicious application of spermicidal lube for safe violation.

😀

[To serve and correct]

(Throws down aunt and shoots dog) The real grammar police are here to arrest you for impersonating a police officer.

[Police Academy Instructor]

No, no, no! You're doing it all wrong. You shoot the dog FIRST, then rough up the old ladies.

[Obama/Biden 2012]

Let me be perfectly clear:
When you're that far in debt,
the only way to get out of debt,
is to make more debt.

MORE DEBT FOR LESS DEBT
OBAMA/BIDEN 2012

[Austan]

I approve of this message.

[Jerry]

You're such a tool.

[Cytotoxic]

Reason gives the kidgloves to this rally and everybody still comes out looking stupid. Behold the left.

[Martin Owens]

Brought to mind Bowie's old lyrics:

They'll split your pretty cranium
And fill it full of air
And tell you that you're 80
But Brother, you won't care
They'll be shooting up on anything,
tomorrow's never there...

[Sy]

Just you shut your mouth..

[Ass of Catalonia]

Man, just don't make me shut my veins(MSNBC).

[Fatty Bolger]

Did you catch the one sign?

Considering The Circumstances,
OBAMA'S Done A Pretty Good Job
So Far.

[sevo]

"OBAMA'S Done A Pretty Good Job"
Parsed:
He's not really horrible. He hasn't yet demolished the country. Or, maybe he has, but he can save it later if that Hag Pelosi is still around. Maybe. I think.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

Man, talk about how the mighty have fallen--they're actually applying the soft bigotry of low expectations to the guy now.

[Michael J. Pollard]

Yeah, like The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys!

[Mensan]

Considering The Circumstances, [with so many people paying attention, and getting pissed off;]
OBAMA'S Done A Pretty Good Job [of fundementally transforming the country like he promised to]
So Far

That's the full sign. It had to be edited to fit the alotted space.

[MB]

Or the guy in the middle.

The republicans are crazy and are apparently preventing Obama from doing all those wonderful things for us.

Gee, since the democrats have a majority, what's the problem??

[mad libertarian guy]

I've always found the "Republicans are being obstructionists" argument quite amusing being that he has made MANY bills passed without a single republican vote (with the Obamacare being the signature one).

He can pass the single most controversial law in my lifetime without a single republican vote, but republicans are somehow holding him back in everything else. Riiiiight.

[Obama]

What? The Democrats have a majority and I'm stll getting my ass kicked?

[prolefeed]

Wait til January, and that won't be a problem any more.

[Bagoh20]

There are certainly fools on both sides, but if you know that, do you want them with more power or less? This is the basic mistake of the left - thinking that having powerful fools is better than powerless ones.

It's only the very beginning of a turn in the right direction, but libertarians should have no problem picking sides here. Then again libertarians always choose "non of the above" which is pretty useless. Religion has never been, nor will it ever be as dangerous as leftism, especially to those who want to be free.

Please dudes and dudetts. This is not a game and perfection is not on the ballot. Please help save your country. This is the opportunity of your lifetime. Miss it and your dream may be out of reach forever.

[Joan d'Arc]

"Religion has never been, nor will it ever be as dangerous as leftism, especially to those who want to be free."

I beg to differ...

[mad libertarian guy]

6 of one, 1/2 dozen of the other.

[no ped]

Not hardly, if body count is the measure.

[generic Brand]

More like 6 of one, baker's dozen of the other. Religionists can be pretty bad and obtuse, but the left doesn't realize that they have all the embodiments of a full-fledged religion, but with terrible political policy as well.

[prolefeed]

Well, there's always religious leftists, if you want to go for the win for sheer "people who have no business being anywhere near power".

[generic Brand]

haha damnit. Should've scrolled first.

[Raven Nation]

Ah, but you have to think like a religious leftist i.e. (paraphrasing) 'it's wrong to use the power of the state to enforce anti-gay laws because that's not a biblical principle but it's right to use the power of the state to take money away from people who earn to much because that is in the bible.'

Swear to God: actual religious leaders (some of them who are academics) who scream we should never use the bible to create laws (agreed) but we should use the bible to create laws. And, of course, admired by other academics for their brilliant thinking.

[Rrabbit]

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

["Truth To Power" Speaker]

Uh, leftism is a religion. It has Government as God, Bush as Satan, leftists as angels, and non-leftists as demons.

[generic Brand]

aaaannnd, I should've scrolled further. I will retire myself from posting for the rest of the day as punishment.

[9/11 victim]

"Religion has never been, nor will it ever be as dangerous as leftism, especially to those who want to be free."

Say what?

[90 million starved peasants]

Say what?

[The Union of Burned Witches]

Say what?

[Enron Anonymous]

Say what?

[Leo Trotsky]

What don't you understand?

[Spanish Jew circa 1478]

Say what?

[Weatherford T. Halbriton III]

Spanish Jew = Spew

I don't know why I find that so amusing, but I laugh whenever I think of it. "Spew" is my second favorite ethic slur, right after "gook".

[Piss Drinkers of Dune]

That is the second dumbest slur I have ever heard. The dumbest, you wonder.

What do you call Juan O'Malley?

McSpic.

[Union of Executed Capitalist]

Yeah, the secular Left killed many more people in the 20th century than any religious war did.

[Truth Teller]

...Uummm...I'm going to have to go with religion sucks!

[PIRS]

I was once hostile to all religion. I still am to many religions, but not all. The way I look at it now is that a religion is simply an arbitrary collection of ideas. Whether a religion is good or bad or neutral depends upon whether the ideas accepted by that religion are good or bad or neutral. Avoiding pork? That is fairly neutral - before humans understood what tricinosis was [and how to kill it] it was probably a positive on ballance. The idea you should threaten to kill someone for drawing the picture of some guy who has been dead for hundreds of years? That is a bad idea.

[Truth Teller]

Let us all bow down to Tinker Bell!

[PIRS]

Hey, as long as the Tinker Bell worshipers do not try to push thier beliefs on me, they can go ahead and do whatever they want.

[OMG]

Tinker Bell and god are one!

[PIRS]

Would that belief be called "bitarianism" in the same way people who believe that God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost are all "one" called "trinitarians"?

[Tex Lovera]

Disney is the Great Satan!!!

[Michael Ejercito]

I was once hostile to all religion. I still am to many religions, but not all. The way I look at it now is that a religion is simply an arbitrary collection of ideas. Whether a religion is good or bad or neutral depends upon whether the ideas accepted by that religion are good or bad or neutral. Avoiding pork? That is fairly neutral - before humans understood what tricinosis was [and how to kill it] it was probably a positive on ballance. The idea you should threaten to kill someone for drawing the picture of some guy who has been dead for hundreds of years? That is a bad idea.

Not all religions have a god.

Socialist fundamentalists are just as anti-freedom as Muslim fundamentalists or Christian fundamentalists.

[PIRS]

"Socialist fundamentalists are just as anti-freedom as Muslim fundamentalists or Christian fundamentalists."

True. Stalin, Hitler and Mao were socialist fundamentalists. I would not want to go down that road either.

[Zeb]

A lot of socialists are Christians.

[MB]

Great.

Now we need a "religion doesn't suck rally" to go along with the "government doesn't suck rally"...

[PIRS]

Such rallies can be found in churches every sunday.

[Enyap]

I'll agree that the christian right is a highly overrated threat in this day and age, but that still leaves foreign adventurism, law and orderism, and corporatism under the name of capitalism as problem with the GOP.

[sevo]

Care to define "corporatism" as relates to the GOP?

[Henry M. Paulson]

Weren't you paying attention when I demanded $1 trillion within 48 hours?

[sevo]

Hey, I called up the monsters from the vasty deep!

[Anonymous]

Sounds like a problem with both parties to me.

[Tulpa]

What's wrong with law and order again?

[chrispy]

Nothing, but "law and order" means locking up people for smoking pot, or engaging in consensual sex if money happens to change hands, etc.

[Xtian Right]

But all those behaviors are immoral! I have a book that says so!

[Atheist Left]

Mass-murdering babies and jailing children is moral! We just passed a law that says so, you counter-revolutionary pigs!

[J sub D]

What's wrong with law and order again?

This, you fucking cop sycophant.

[Enyap]

Anything written by Balko could answer that question, perhaps I could have used a better term than law and order but that's no excuse for willful ignorance.

[?]

Tulpa, nobody likes you.

[Tulpa]

Every great visionary is disliked at first.

[Bagoh20]

See the above comments to see why libertarians can never matter. They wait for that which will never come and refuse to take the first step down any path unless they can get a guarantee that it leads to Nirvana. Lead, follow, or stay in the basement. Mom will still call you for dinner, so it's all good..

[heller]

People say this every time power switches from left to right. Both righties and lefties have made this appeal to libertarians many times. Yet whenever power changes hands, nothing good ever comes of it. Voting the Republicans into power is not going to change the game any more or less than allowing the Democrats to keep it. The best we can hope for is gridlock.

[Ayn_Randian]

Partisans come out of the wordwork and try to give us this snow job every election, Bagoh. Per the partisan usual, if we don't buy your bullshit, we are considered "irrelevant" - of course, that is if irrelevant = what bagoh20 wants, which it does not.

[Tulpa]

A_R, if you think libertarians are politically relevant taken as a group, you're fooling yourself. There are individual suburban megachurches that are more important to swinging elections than all the libertarians in the US combined.

In addition to being small in number, libertarians are less likely to vote at all, and if they do they're likely to vote for third parties and thus have no influence on the election. You don't really think the two parties worry about whether the third parties get 1% vs 2% of the vote, do you? They're also less likely to convince friends and neighbors to vote a certain way, which is where individuals can make a difference in an election, much more so than with their one vote.

[MNG]

There are quite a few elections where the big two parties worry about the 1-2% of the vote third parties may get. As evidence witness the recent attempts by the Dems to highlight said third party efforts in close races or the GOP's fostering of Nader's run.

Libertarians greatest influence however is in the realm of ideas. They've had some influence there.

[Tulpa]

They're only concerned when those 1-2% are possible D or R voters who, with a small amount of wooing, can be made to vote for their side rather than the third party. That's not the kind of third party voter that I see around here.

They're not concerned about people who have sworn never to vote D or R.

[prolefeed]

They are, however, concerned about those libertarians who, when no LP candidate is on the ballot, go blank ballot because neither candidate's views are acceptable -- you know, like me.

In a close election -- and this time around, there's dozens of congressional seats hanging by a 1% or 2% margin -- pissing off those potential voters matters. Whether they find it expedient to piss off such voters in order to chase the rest of the populace can be the problem.

[prolefeed]

To clarify: in this general election I voted for the two libertarians on the ballot, a handful of major party candidates who were conspicuously less evil or clueless than their opponents, and blank balloted the rest.

[Ass of Catalonia]

Prolefeed,

Look at the florida gubernatorial race. THERE ARE NO GOOD 3RD PARTY CANDIDATES. Alex sink(D) and Rick Scott(R) are both criminals. Rick scott's former company stole $1,000,000,000 from taxpayer and Alex Sink lost over 60 times that amount from the florida pension system when she ran it(60 BILLION+). Not only have they not been executed for their crimes but they are successfully seeking higher office.

WHO THE FUCK DO I VOTE FOR?

[Ayn_Randian]

For such a politically irrelevant group, we sure do get a lot of (usually Republican) partisans begging us to vote their way. And we get talking heads simultaneously demonizing us while downplaying our influence.

Little more relevant than you think.

[Sy]

agreed. I lost count of how many conservatives/repubs blame losing elections on libertarian voters. They claim we 'split the ticket' when we vote non-TeamRed, yet bash us for our heretical social tolerance. It's tiresome and amusing at the same time.

[Tulpa]

No, they are demonizing Republicans whom they mis-identify as libertarians due to their rhetoric. They're not demonizing the 0.5% of the population that are hardcore libertarian.

[Apogee]

Perhaps libertarians should emulate Mao. Now there's a guy who really got things done! Talk about leadership!

And I do mean talk about leadership in a positive fashion, or your trip to the basement will be a one way ticket!

[Rothbardian]

Our job is to educate.

[Emporer wears no clothes]

"Lead, follow, or stay in the basement."

"Abstain" is also a legitimate choice, even if you and your authoritarian pals don't recognize it as such.

[Ben P.]

I think, as a registered (Lib), the most frequent complaint I have against this argument is that a lot of people don't get the difference between 'abstain' and 'ignore'. I can't speak for you, as I don't know you from pixels on a screen, but I should think that active abstention involves getting out of that basement, going to the polls, claiming your ballot, and then casting it for nobody at all. This way, the numbers start to pile up as to all the people who abstained.

I have found that most folks who talk to me about abstention from this horse-race are simply just ignoring it, hoping it will go away.

[infojunkie]

My "active abstention" was to not vote for any unopposed incumbent. I left two columns blank. I voted Libertarian everywhere I could, and that left one race...

The Dem incumbent got points for not voting for Cap and Trade, but then I found out that he was a former DA and completely against legalizing marijuana. The Republican challenger (who was distancing himself from the Tea Party to not get hurt by their image, I think) stated that HE thought it should be a states' rights issue. He got my vote for Congress.

[J sub D]

Vote third party. Any third party. The entrenched two party system is the enemy.

[The Bearded Hobbit]

Plus it's a way for third parties to get ballot access in future elections.

The LP used to advertise that it was the third-largest party in America, largely because they had (have?) a lot of people in lower-level positions, like city council or county clerk. Taking the time to vote for any Libertarian candidate makes it easier for future candidates.

... Hobbit

[Tex Lovera]

1) You can register as a Libertarian? Is that true everywhere? (seriously - I'd like to know.)

2) I've lived in Texas, Maryland & Ohio. I cannot recall a single Libertarian being elected in any of those states while I lived in them.

[Jim Capaldi]

Light up or leave me alone.

[Sailshonan]

If libertarians are so irrelevant, why are you on this site begging for our votes? We seem mighty relevant to you.

[ziggy]

I am not religious at all. But one thing I cant stand about leftist is when presented with evidence that Islam seems to be a far more violent religion that any other religion at the moment. THey bring in timothy mcveigh(sp?) and that one abortion clinic bomber as examples or how not only Islam is a danger.... please not even comparable to what has been and is being done in the name of islam...

[Hazel Meade]

That's not exclusively a mistakem of the left.

The whole deal with the Republican alliance with social cons falls in that category.

[Eddy]

"Religion has never been, nor will it ever be as dangerous as leftism..."

Religion and politics? There's a distinction without a difference if ever I've heard one.

[Publis Cato]

FUCK YOU! I am not going to vote a bunch of nationalist, needle dicked, pig heads back into power. Ten years ago I voted in favor of a Republican Congress and President and I got medicare part D. A multi-billion dollar Jacobin military adventure. A bank bailout. And, a rejection of everything I though was conservative. So no, I welcome a Republican Congress only to the extent that Team Red will under Team Blue's president. Otherwise, I pray God smite them down for their wicked deceptions.

[OMG]

Amen!

[ziggy]

That and I have had enough with the moralist agenda (no abortion, gays in the military, gay marriage, porn, gambling etc.). I love how the right now completely ignores the exploding balance sheets created under Bush... Having said that the democrats are not much better...

[Tex Lovera]

The bank bailout occurred when we had a Republican President and a Democratic Congress.

[jtuf]

and more than a few defined sanity strictly in terms of heartily agreeing with themselves.

In related news, grassroots activism narrowly defeats a proposed federal program to force psychiatric survivors to take drugs. (http://www.mindfreedom.org)

[Sy]

wow..

[Adonisus]

It was a great rally. Loads of fun.

The old guy in the middle reminds me alot of my own family, only he's a Democrat instead of a Republican. It's that kind of blue-collar commentary that is about as intellectual as a Dan Brown story.

Otherwise, great rally. Stewart's speech at the end was right on the money.

[Sarcasmo 2000?]

Right. He implored America in general and cable TV in particular to stop doing what he has made a fabulous living doing on cable TV.

[Brett Knoss]

+5

[Tex Lovera]

Sarcasmo 2000 is my new god...

[RockLibertyWarrior]

What a bunch of fucking morons. More moronic than the tea baggers, more moronic than the crybaby libs at One Nation. Boy am I glad I don't watch Stewart or Colbert, if this rally is any indication, either stupid people watch them or their shows turn people stupid. Loved that dude trying to work his way out of that debt comment.

[Sean]

I went into debt to pay for college, which will lead to a better paying job than one I would've gotten without a degree. That's one way to spend your way out of debt. Not too difficult to understand.

[no ped]

Sounds like a plan. We can end our economic woes by sending the entire country to college. Wheeee! This is fun!

[George V]

That would assume you started in debt in the first place.l

[Thumper]

We are all born into sin!

[Tulpa]

Unfortunately, the federal government is majoring in Gender Studies.

[emerson]

But it's gonna take the LSAT because law school opens up so many options.

[Truth Teller]

"went into debt to pay for college, which will lead to a better paying job than one I would've gotten without a degree."

Getting training won't help you a bit if the economy doesn't support whatever job you have trained for. There are lots of taxi-drivers in the US who earned degrees in other countries and immigrated to the US because their countries of origin didn't sustain enough economic activity to keep them employed. Many of them were trained at tax payer expense and are examples of how centralized planning doesn't work. Their governments have pissed away precious capital on training a few individuals for jobs which do not exist. The same type of thing goes on in the US as well. For instance, universities are cranking out scientific Ph.D.s for research jobs which either don't exist or have been exported overseas.

[Mensan]

"...universities are cranking out scientific Ph.D.s for research jobs which either don't exist or have been exported overseas."

Which is why, despite my degrees, I am working at a low paying job that doesn't even require a high school diploma. Now I have to go back to school to get a another degree that is actually useful in the market.

[Morgan the Pirate]

"For instance, universities are cranking out scientific Ph.D.s for research jobs which either don't exist or have been exported overseas."
Then those nasty little bastards invent shit "science" like AGW rather than mow lawns as their mental capacity would dictate.

[mishu]

+1

[Red Rocks Rockin]

It's funny that you think you'll get a better paying job once you get that piece of paper.

You could have taken a class or two per semester, gotten the degree in a slightly longer period, and not had any debt burden at all.

At the very least, you could have gone binge-drinking every weekend, caught 5 different STDs, and went clubbing (aka, "The College Experience") without taking out a ton of debt for the privilege.

[roystgnr]

Your comment is spot-on, assuming that by "funny that you think" you mean "statistically extremely likely", and by "a slightly longer period", you mean "six to sixteen years longer". I think I have a theory about why your college experience might have been suboptimal...

[Red Rocks Rockin]

"Your comment is spot-on, assuming that by "funny that you think" you mean "statistically extremely likely","

Yeah, ask the current crop of graduates over the last four years how well taking out $40k worth of debt has worked out for them. Considering that college tuition has risen at four times the rate of inflation--greater than health care costs, incidentally--what exactly is the advantage of putting yourself in that kind of a hole in your early 20s, before you've even gotten a job that would allow you to pay it off in a timeframe that won't result in egregious interest payments? Don't forget that student loan debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy, so there's no incentive for colleges to lower tuition rates now or in the foreseeable future.

And what exactly is wrong with working another 6 years or more to get a degree? By the time you're done, you have 6 years or more years of wealth creation, 6 years or more years of work experience (if you're smart, in a blue-collar type position that provides you with actual skills, or ambitious, in a managerial position that provides you with administrative experience); you have little to no debt to pay back (which allows you to increase your savings during your most productive wealth-creating years); and you actually have an advantage for better-paying positions over some newly minted graduate who spent his 5-6 years at Dumbtruck University(the four-year grad is becoming increasingly rare, after all) who dragged himself out of a pool of his own vomit long enough to stumble to the classroom.

You're not exactly making your case, here.

[Juice]

There are a couple of problems with taking longer than 4 years to get a Bachelor's degree.

1. Employers think that you are a fuck off that slacked his way through college, even if you try to explain it to them.

2. In most universities credits older than six years cannot be put toward a degree. So your freshman credits are worthless after your sixth year.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

"1. Employers think that you are a fuck off that slacked his way through college, even if you try to explain it to them."

This is sheer nonsense. Employers generally don't give a fuck if you're taking an extra 2-4 years to get a BA (and in the sciences, even going full time often takes a longer than four years to get the BS because of all the prereqs), and explaining that you are trying to be responsible about your personal debt (and your GPA should confirm this) would be mark of favor for any employer that wanted dependable employees.

"2. In most universities credits older than six years cannot be put toward a degree. So your freshman credits are worthless after your sixth year."

In "most" universities? Do you have a source for this claim?

[Eddy]

"2. In most universities credits older than six years cannot be put toward a degree. So your freshman credits are worthless after your sixth year."

Check again, you're thinking of credits toward a graduate degree. Most schools accept credits for an undergrad indefinitely. Let's face it nobody really cares about the courses they force you to take. Nobody in the Chemistry department is going to reject Lit 101 credits regardless of when they were received. They care about getting another student matriculated so their slice of the university pie gets bigger even if it is only for two years.

[Sean W. Malone]

"2. In most universities credits older than six years cannot be put toward a degree. So your freshman credits are worthless after your sixth year."

I'm pretty sure I knew an 8th year senior as an undergrad who wouldn't agree.

[Joe M]

I graduated in eight years with no issues on credits.

[West Texas]

Fair enough, but uhhh, we're looking for someone who's borrowing to pay the bills and continue the status quo. That's a better analogy. If you know any of those guys, send them over here to proselytize.

[JohnD]

Wrong! Too many assumptions.
1. You will take a course of study that is useful
2. You will graduate
3. You will graduate with good grades
4. You will be able to actually find a job
5. You wil be able to keep the job and not get fired for incompetance or stupidity
6. You will exercise fiscal responsibility once you start working.

[hmm]

You went in debt to purchase an item that generated a revenue stream that was greater than the servicing of the debt.

What is the US purchasing and is the future stream of revenue going to out stripe the servicing of the debt used to purchase whatever it is we purchased?

In short, your analogy sucks and makes baby kittens die from sadness.

[J sub D]

I went into debt to pay for college, which will lead to a better paying job than one I would've gotten without a degree. That's one way to spend your way out of debt. Not too difficult to understand.

Washington is working on their fourth degree, all in the humanities, all financed by student loans and hasn't gotten a job yet.

[hmm]

There are four huge manatee degrees?

[Publis Cato]

Except if you went to law school, then all you did was become a debt slave for shit wage in a shit profession.

[prolefeed]

I lol'd at the guy carrying the sign saying, "I'm a voter, and I masturbate (not at the same time)".

The guy with the commie hammer and sickle hat saying we all need to get behind one idea, presumably HIS one idea, would have been funny except for the fact that this idea has been tried with body counts in the tens of millions.

[George V]

Looks like Christine O'Donnell had a point!

[Johnitalia]

I assume by tens you mean hundreds.

[Amakudari]

Don't exaggerate. You make it sound like those people were monsters, but communism's death toll was clearly less than 200 million. You have to respect that kind of restraint.

[Johnitalia]

You are right. I apologize.

[Carl]

he loved the word "plan" we need a "plan" a "plan" that will "plan" for our grandchildrens grandchildren.

fuck collective planning.

[Joe M]

He missed a great opportunity for an awesome follow-up question: "So, we need a five-year plan?"

[Carl]

i was listening to NPR the other day and the hosts were creaming their pants because of China's new five year plan and how great it is. VOMIT

[Sean W. Malone]

*Hundreds of millions* FIFY

[Troll]

You all suck. I usually enjoy HnR, and libertarians are usually fun people to party with.

But this lot can't seem to tell the difference between entertainment and a political statement.

The only shots Stewart took were at the television news networks. I just wish he would take on more substantial enemies, like print media.

And I also think Stewart does a pretty good job playing it down the middle. His fan base may be left wing, but they are also mostly young adults. You all know the demographics on that...

[Tulpa]

Stewart has done the ImASeriousPundit / ImJustAComedian switcheroo a few too many times. The public at large is hip to his con.

[no ped]

Al Franken has given all professional comics hope for a better life.

[George V]

all professionals or just the bad ones???

[x,y]

The public at large is functionally retarded and mostly illiterate. There is 0% chance they understand anything but the basest human insticts.

[The Thinking Man's NASCAR]

Geez, you must be a ton of fun at parties.

[Charlie Sheen]

base human instincts make for the best parties.

[Colombian Hooker]

Say what?

[Ayn_Randian]

Misantrhopy is a pretty base instinct.

[Babs]

People who hate people are the luckiest people in the world

[Troll]

Who knew that advocating for civilized discourse would prove so unnerving to libertarians? The guy must have used the word "reason" a hundred times today.

As far as my "down the middle" comment, I concede that he does offer up the left mostly softballs. Why doesn't Nick go on the damn show and make the intellectual case? He's the talking head, isn't he? The left sees problems and thinks "government should fix that". They are all too young to unrstand the track record on that. Go on the show and teach them, Nick.

But you've never seen Stewart take a position like "raise minimum wage" or "organize labor".

[Apogee]

Why doesn't Nick go on the damn show and make the intellectual case? He's the talking head, isn't he?

I think Stewart and his production team might actually pick the people to appear on TDS, and I'm also unaware of any evidence of Nick refusing to go on the show, the invitational absence of which might actually reflect more on Stewart attempting to avoid another John Yoo fiasco.

Perhaps Nick could sneak past security and get in 5 minutes before the end of the show.

[Some Guy]

I'm pretty sure if they called up whoever it is you call, he could get booked. And he should. And if he doesn't get on, he should go on Fox News and call Comedy Central out, forcing their hand and setting up a big hyped up interview.

And I have said for a while that someone who isn't an idiot needs to go on the show who can make a case for libertarianism. Most prominently, explaining exactly why the root causes of the housing bubble were as far as anyone could get from the free market. As long as Republicans keep telling people that what we had under Bush was the free market, it's going to make the free market look pretty shitty.

[Tulpa]

I'm pretty sure if they called up whoever it is you call, he could get booked.

That doesn't seem likely at all. Tons of people want to be on that show. Stewart only had Ron Paul on the show during the 2008 primaries because he was sick of getting emails from Paulbots...and you can bet the Paul campaign was trying to get on every show they could.

And if he doesn't get on, he should go on Fox News and call Comedy Central out, forcing their hand and setting up a big hyped up interview.

Oh, that would definitely get him on Stewart's show. Stewart would play the clip of Nick (who to the general public is a complete unknown) whining about not being invited on The Daily Show, and use it to bash libertarians as whiny losers.

[Some Guy]

That doesn't seem likely at all. Tons of people want to be on that show.

I don't know exactly how many people subscribe to Reason, but he has to be at least on par with some of the obscure authors he has on. If only Nick had a book.

Stewart only had Ron Paul on the show during the 2008 primaries because he was sick of getting emails from Paulbots...and you can bet the Paul campaign was trying to get on every show they could.

I'm pretty sure that if you're running for President and at least relevant enough to be invited to a primary debate, you can get on.

Oh, that would definitely get him on Stewart's show. Stewart would play the clip of Nick (who to the general public is a complete unknown) whining about not being invited on The Daily Show, and use it to bash libertarians as whiny losers.

The trick is to not be a whiny loser. He has enough appearances to find the right time to casually mention the fact that he got rejected and that he's disappointed that they aren't willing to discuss the issue.

[Tulpa]

You're pretty sure about a lot of things that contradict the available evidence.

[Some Guy]

Such as?

[joshua corning]

If only Nick had a book.

Matt and Nick are co-writing a book called "Freedom: Bitches!!"

[Sy]

"The Jacket and the Joint"

[MB]

"Who knew that advocating for civilized discourse would prove so unnerving to libertarians?"

libertarians don't have an issue with advocating that.

But its clear from the video that this rally was little more then a leftie/obaminist love fest. how tiresome.

"Why doesn't Nick go on the damn show and make the intellectual case?"

Its up to the show's producers as to who goes on. I'd love to see people like Ron Paul, Nick, Judge Napolitano, Peter Schiff, Lew Rockwell, Bob Murphy, Tom Woods, et al go on this show and straighten out Stewart & his audience. I doubt they haven't because they aren't willing or have the time...

[Logfile]

Ron Paul has been on the show more than once.

[Tulpa]

Yeah, and Stewart spent the whole time asking him about the Civil War and ragging on him because Paul said he doesn't think the North should have fought it.

[Ewing]

Bill Maher pulled that shit on him, as well.

[generic Brand]

You can't question historical winners anymore (North in the Civil War, minorities in the CRA) because to do so means you are automatically for the losers. The problem with the 2-party system is that people don't even admit that there could be a 3rd way, not just that the two major parties won't let 3rd parties be heard.

[CrackertyAssCracker]

Stewart has no problem with Bill Kristol. Probably would get alon fine with Frum or Brooks too. He'd disagree with them, but he'd be civil, and he generally lets the 800 pound gorillas in the room remain unmentioned. Get a libertarian on there though and he turns total dick.

[hmm]

Best thing Tulpa has said since I've been on H&R.

The sad thing is I don't think a larger percentage of the younger liberal portion of the public has caught onto his game. The number of people that tell me they get their news from him is frightening.

[Tulpa]

You must not have been here very long.

[hmm]

Long enough to have that be one of the better things you've said.

[J]

"Stewart has done the ImASeriousPundit / ImJustAComedian switcheroo a few too many times. The public at large is hip to his con."

Absolutely. And he switches quite rapidly from serious pundit to comedian when someone makes a point he can't refute. It fits any definition of cowardice I've ever encountered.

[generic Brand]

I noticed that abundantly when he interviewed the President the other night. Just when he began a hard line of questioning, like "Where's the change you promised?" Obama would say something tongue-in-cheek and Stewart would accept that and laugh it off.

I've only seen him go hardcore once or twice, and since the Jim Cramer debacle I can't accept him as anything more than a liberal pundit that makes jokes occasionally.

[PapayaSF]

I also think Stewart does a pretty good job playing it down the middle.

Really? I gave up on the show in 2004, when they turned into the Humor Division of the Democratic National Committee. His idea of bipartisan is to 1) joke about Republicans and conservatives for all the usual reasons, then 2) joke about how Democrats are too mild or klutzy to succeed, how they don't fight hard enough, etc.

[Beezard]

bingo. I loved him when he first came on, before he hijacked the direction.

I can't even watch the last few years of the Simpsons for much the same reason.

[Tom]

I gave up on the Daily Show when Kilborn left.

[Sarcasmo 2000?]

The live audience of trained seals ruined it for me.

[prolefeed]

And I also think Stewart does a pretty good job playing it down the middle.

If by "middle", you mean "middle of the Democratic wing of the Democratic party", then yes.

If you think Stewart's show caters to the political center, you are WAAAY off base.

[Typical TDS Rally Attendee]

Bu- bu- but. We ARE the center! That's why our rally was about sanity. Because... WE'RE the sane ones! All those other gun and jesus nuts are the crazy ones? See, if we're sane, then they must be INSANE! How can the sane people not be the center? We're the smart people here, and we like Jon Stewart, so he must cater to the center! SANITY!

[Clean Sanchez]

Troll... Stewarts audience is most definitely not young adults... it's heavily weighted towards the 30-50 demographic. Check out his studio audience, the 'young adults' are few and far between.

[Jim Treacher]

"The politics were stupid and incoherent."

"But it's a comedy show!"

"It wasn't funny."

"You just don't understand humor!"

Repeat for years and years and years.

[JB]

I hope they have another of these sometime when I can attend.

Abort the Left would be a great sign.

A crowd full of retarded fetuses.

[JOhnny MAckson]

shit sandwich

Jess
http://www.anon-yes-please.com

[Emporer wears no clothes]

Giant Douche

[billy-jay]

The US is so fucked.

[Long Dong from Hong Kong]

Yes, indeed!

[Weatherford T. Halbriton III]

There are no long dongs in Hong Kong. I know; I've looked.

[Publis Cato]

Sausage-fest 2010!

[Miss Dong from Hong Kong]

Me too!

[emerson]

The stereotype about Democrats it that they're weak, which implies that their ideas are good but they don't have the balls to enact them. Which is why left-wing comedians use this as a 'go-to' whenever they need to balance the Dems v. Reps joke scale.

[Cortillaen]

What, you expect them to admit that leftists are 99% idiot lemmings and 1% truly evil statists? Pshaw...

[Kuwanki]

This has GOT to be all in the editing. It is mathematically impossible that these people are as stupid as they appeared.

[prolefeed]

Oh, and "mathematically impossible" doesn't mean what you think it means. When you get a group of people who are not a representative cross-sample of the general population, self-selecting to show up at an event, it is indeed possible for truly clueless people to make up a large percentage of a crowd.

[Cyto]

Just remember... half of all people are below average...

[Xenocles]

...half of all people are below average median...

FIFY.

[InternetPedant]

If you use ordinals rather than empirical values, then they are the same. Without further qualifiers, ordinals are implicit in a calculation of "all people". After all, one could equally infer height, weight, IQ, singing ability, moral character, honesty, etc. as the criteria for measuring "averageness" among "all people", some of which have no numeric value.

[Xenocles]

How do you calculate the average using an ordinal scale? According to my (admittedly incomplete) knowledge, it's not possible (or results in an entirely meaningless datum).

[Albert]

I would say 75%....but it's all relative.

[CrackertyAssCracker]

A median is a kind of average. So it didn't need fixin.

[Jay]

No, half of all people are below the median.

[Jay]

I need to refresh before posting.

[Mr. FIFY]

And 5/4 of Americans have trouble understanding fractions... or is it 6/5? I can never remember for sure.

[Brian]

Homer: Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent.
Forty percent of all people know that.

[Bruce Majors]

See my facebook album below for additional evidence of idiocy.

This rally was enormously stupidly managed. No one could hear the speakers or see the stage or even the one jumbotron screen. A field of people were in a dangerous crush situation with people jammed into each other immobile. I got out lest there was some event that sparked a stampede. Beck's event and every tea party were better arranged.

On the outskirts it was obvious the majority of people were just dressed to start Halloween early. Pot smoke wafted over a large section of the group. Most signs were dadaist and not political.

[Bruce Majors]

See my facebook album below for additional evidence of idiocy.

This rally was enormously stupidly managed. No one could hear the speakers or see the stage or even the one jumbotron screen. A field of people were in a dangerous crush situation with people jammed into each other immobile. I got out lest there was some event that sparked a stampede. Beck's event and every tea party were better arranged.

On the outskirts it was obvious the majority of people were just dressed to start Halloween early. Pot smoke wafted over a large section of the group. Most signs were dadaist and not political.

[Bruce Majors]

See my facebook album below for additional evidence of idiocy.

This rally was enormously stupidly managed. No one could hear the speakers or see the stage or even the one jumbotron screen. A field of people were in a dangerous crush situation with people jammed into each other immobile. I got out lest there was some event that sparked a stampede. Beck's event and every tea party were better arranged.

On the outskirts it was obvious the majority of people were just dressed to start Halloween early. Pot smoke wafted over a large section of the group. Most signs were dadaist and not political.

[MNG]

"See my facebook album below for additional evidence of idiocy."

Does it have triple posting?

[John-David]

That post wasn't really 3x insightful... moron.

[generic Brand]

For a second I thought COMMANDER had revealed his identity. The checklist read: multiple postings, yes; incoherent babble, yes; random capitalization, no.

Darn, I will discover you yet, COMMANDER.

[Spoonman.]

Bruce Majors used to post things to the Cornell Libertarians listserv once a week until somebody responded "Who the hell are you, Bruce Majors"?

[Jim Treacher]

Yeah, those people suddenly started saying stuff that wasn't retarded, but it got cut out.

[prolefeed]

@Kuwanki -- of course they didn't just spend 10 minutes interviewing people at random and posting something from everyone interviewed. But it's telling that they found so many extreme idiots in, what, 3 hours?

[rac]

Did any of the networks or news stories point out how white everyone was? Do blacks, latinos and asians (includes indians too, like Eric Burdon) have better things to do on a beautiful, fall Saturday than white people? Isn't anything better than gathering for a faux rally?

[Bruce Majors]

It might actually have been slightly more racially diverse than the many tea parties I have gone to. But probably not. And like them, the Asians outnumbered the African Americans. This event had no Hispanics, unlike tea parties. It had more queers, though I am not usually the only fag at a DC tea party or even an Annapolis one when I go. This also had a whole lot more of those guys and gals who are straight but everyone thinks is gay.

But as to your question: NOW, the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, Emily's List, and above all the Sierra Club and the entire environmental movement are 98% white. No "media" whores, even long before the boys at Tedium Tatters and the girls at NPR started licking million dollar bills off Soros's wrinkly old gray haired pucker, have ever mentioned the KKK level whiteness of the gay and feminist and environmental movements, or indeed of NPR and MSNBC themselves.

[Michael Ejercito]

But as to your question: NOW, the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, Emily's List, and above all the Sierra Club and the entire environmental movement are 98% white. No "media" whores, even long before the boys at Tedium Tatters and the girls at NPR started licking million dollar bills off Soros's wrinkly old gray haired pucker, have ever mentioned the KKK level whiteness of the gay and feminist and environmental movements, or indeed of NPR and MSNBC themselves.

What is Emily's List?

[Mr. FIFY]

https://emilyslist.org/splash/countdown/contribute/index.pl

Basically, it's an organization aimed only at getting Democratics womens into political office. Which is sexist, but hey, it's their money.

[Michael Ejercito]

They want to elect women who will ensure that pregnant teenage girls can have abortions so that the girls can fit into a prom dress or a swimsuit.

[MNG]

Better to have 'em barefoot and pregnant I guess...

[Publis Cato]

I was thinking lobotomized and sterile

[Lisa]

I think democratic women are too busy being sexually empowered and suing businesses for discrimination.

[Mr. FIFY]

And busy saying "it's okay when WE engage in hating the opposite sex"...

[JBebop]

Howard University's homecoming was this weekend. Barbecue, good looking women, football, and dancing vs. a crowded, poorly planned rally. Can't speak for the latinos or asian folks though.

[BrokeBroker]

"Fear SELLS, Reason SERVES"

Good thing I'm already drunk.

[Rod Serling]

It's a cookbook!

[Damon Knight]

Tasty indeed.

[Dan]

Some awesome footage of the rally:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U79TBDoRzEY

[Dan]

Some awesome footage of the rally:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U79TBDoRzEY

[Ayn_Randian]

I love Salon. It is like the mainstream version of Jezebel or Feministing:

But if you didn't feel a lump in your throat watching thousands of Americans on the Mall soulfully command us to join hands, then I feel sorry, sorry for you. That sweet, funny moment was what the day was about. My fellow Americans, if we don't have love, we've got zip.

Holy Christ, I did not know we were back in the days of communist counterculture commentariat. Mary Elizabeth Williams is a sad character.

[Apogee]

Jon Stewart: "Not being able to distinguish between real racists, and Tea Partiers..."

Mary Elizabeth Williams: "It wasn't the 1963 March on Washington. Or Woodstock. Or even, thank God, a gathering of Glenn Beck fans."

Someone seems to have missed the "unity" message.

[MJ]

Was not Glenn Beck supposed to be the one who was weirdly earnest?

[Dippy Hippy]

Back in the 60's those kind of rallies cause a lump in my pants.

[Barney the Frank]

I love to feel a lump in my throat!

[Ayn_Randian]

What I saw was a guy singing "Peace Train", at a rally ostensibly to mock public rancor, who once called for the death of Salman Rushdie.

[heller]

Meh, Stevens was a pretty mellow guy. I don't think he was so extremely religious as to seriously call for Rushdie's murder. All the "incriminating" quotes are merely him stating what the Quran says, not necessarily his own opinion.

[ryback's cook]

I assume you are joking.

[Ayn_Randian]

Whatever helps you sleep at night. His statements are clear.

[Apogee]

"Whatever Gets You Thru the Night" is Lennon, not Stevens.

And Stevens is Cat, not Connie.

However, Rushdie seems to think the backtrack is "rubbish"

[Emporer wears no clothes]

I'll try to keep that defence tactic in mind if I'm ever arrested for calling for the murder of my business partner.
"You didn't actually think I was serious when I said I wanted him dead, did you?"

[Jeffersonian]

Think again.

[Juice]

Robertson: You don't think that this man deserves to die?
Y. Islam: Who, Salman Rushdie?
Robertson: Yes.
Y. Islam: Yes, yes.
Robertson: And do you have a duty to be his executioner?
Y. Islam: Uh, no, not necessarily, unless we were in an Islamic state and I was ordered by a judge or by the authority to carry out such an act - perhaps, yes.
[Some minutes later, Robertson on the subject of a protest where an effigy of the author is to be burned]
Robertson: Would you be part of that protest, Yusuf Islam, would you go to a demonstration where you knew that an effigy was going to be burned?
Y. Islam: I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing

[Well, heller]

Kitty Muslim converted because of what the Koran says -- he likes it and agrees with it. That makes him a not-mellow guy.

[Bruce Majors]

exactly

[Rev Dr E Buzz Miller]

Stewart is probably old enough to know Cat's history.

But if he wasn't, then this signals an obliviousness that is pretty large for such a hugely learned newsman. Cat appeared to be wearing some non-Western clothing, this coulda been a signal.

But if he was aware of Cat's history, then this is a typical lefty thumb in the nose of people, those stupid people, who care about what's going on, namely violence, in modern Islam. But we all know, the sane amongst us, that we have nothing to fear from the religious psychos using their religion as a weapon...nothing. that woman in Buffalo who had her head chopped off tin the TV studio she owned with her Muslim husband had nothing to fear, actually, it was her fault.

Astounding either way. the Rally of douchebags.

[Tulpa]

They should have invited Juan Williams and had him run screaming off the stage when Cat showed up in his "Muslim outfit".

[Her fault]

Cat Muslim: Her fault, her fault, her fault. Salmon Rushdie should die. Now, can I sing "Peace Train"?

[Mr. FIFY]

The Religion of Peace strikes again!

[Publis Cato]

Hell, Im not even a Muslim and I think Rushdie is asking for it.

[ryback's cook]

He also said that if Mr. Rushdie turned up at his doorstep looking for help, ''I might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like.''

''I'd try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is,'' said Mr. Islam, who watched a preview of the program today and said in an interview that he stood by his comments.

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05.....shdie.html

[tarran]

What you don't understand is that he was quoting a Sutra in the Quran when he said that.

The Quran predicts everything up to and including the tidal wave that washes the White House onto Cheyenne mounting in 2012.

[Mayans]

You're trying to steal our shtick.

[jtuf]

What a coincidence. One of the professors in my Rutgers grad program predicted that the World would be completely out of oil by 2012.

[Higher Education]

Wow, a petro-phobic, Mayan-mystic, Quran-believing professor in a respected American university. Our schools have come a long way.

[Higher Edidjamacation]

Golly, a petro-phobic, Mayan-mystic, Quranic-apocalyptic professor at a respected American Univ. We wonder what political party he votes for. How reassuring. We wouldn't want any of those anti-science types teaching our kids.

[the power of one]

Government - of the statists, by the statists, for the statists

[Peter Jensen]

We've got a winner!
Sadly he wasn't at the rally and couldn't be immortalized on Reason.TV.

[Randroid23]

I loved the hard-hitting question to the rabbit about whether he felt comfortable being the only one at the rally. Genius 🙂

This whole piece was hilarious.

[Grace]

At least he was a White Rabbit!

[COMMANDER]

TO THE WEAK-KNEED REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRAT?..TO ALL THE COMMUNIST IN THE IG,FBI,CIA,AND U.S. Senators and the left wing media outlets?..Wake up america!!!! This goverment is the most corrupt we have had in years. The good old boy network is very much in charge.Mr. obama and pelosi are the puppet masters.How many of their good friends benefited by the agreement " what a farce. All of the u.sSenators voted for this. I am ashamed to say I voted for the these corupted self serving politicians.With good reason they picked an out of towner to be president.All u.s departments need an overhaul. We need to rid ourselves of the puppet masters and the dept heads that bow down to obama and pelosi.I am sick of the lip service I have been getting from these dummies over violations, their friends are getting away with.in the goverment . Barack Hussein Obama , threatens friends and bows to Mmslim.
INPEACH OBAMA ,GOD OPEN YOUR EYES.///For us there are only two possiblities: either we remain american or we come under the thumb of the communist Mmslim Barack Hussein OBAMA. This latter must not occur. I love communist obama.will you ,thank you,the commander.ps aka red ink obama. Repost this if you agree,stop communist obama.

THE COMMANDER.

[Fist of Etiquette]

I pledge my life to you, Commander.

[Fan Boy]

By Grabthar's hammer!

[Helplessly Hopeless]

Please post your email so I can contact you about your Mmslim revelations. Do you really think we have a chance with good-old-boy pelosi?

[Alanonymouse Wowcurd]

Pelosi is a boy!? It's all starting to make sense now.

[Silentz]

Do you have a blog we could follow?

[Muslim Terrorist]

By Allah! The Commander!

We must flee!!!

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Wow. 186 comments and no one mentioned how the interviewer nailed the dude who liked Rush...about them liking Ayn Rand. Classic.

*Cues Fly by Night*

[Some Guy]

I love the Blues Brothers guys.

[blatantblue]

These people are frightening. Their ignorance is astounding and their arrogance far reaching.

[Captain Video]

Welcome to plant earth.

[Captain Video]

I am getting old...meant planet.

[Publis Cato]

Are you THE Captain Video?

[Captain Video]

You remember me?!?!?

[I TOBOR]

What happened to your side kick, "Ranger"? He was a faithful servant, butt boy he could hold his own against the forces of evil.

[manuel]

I think "plant" is appropriate here

[Sarcasmo 2000?]

You shouldn't be astonished or surprised.
These people swooned over Obama, remember?

[Jen Wilson]

Its kinda scary when you think about it dude. I mean seriously.

http://www.anonymize.it.tc

[OH no not this again]

I would have informed the guy with the multiple choice nazi sign that he was in fact being questioned by one.

Go team I hate MSNBC

I hope you guys didn't brainstorm to make these questions. Rush was an Ayn Rand fan, in what fucking universe?

[billy-jay]

Really? REALLY?!

[Rev Dr E Buzz Miller]

It's "I will choose freewill" not "I will choose the nanny state because I am crazy."

[Some Guy]

I always thought that song was about religion.

[Rev Dr E Buzz Miller]

Mysticism comes in many forms. Freewill is about choice, the nanny state, its not.

[Some Guy]

Yes, but that doesn't mean they were actually thinking that when writing the song. Considering the fact that much of what we now consider the nanny state wasn't even around at the time, and what was around was generally based on religion.

[Greg]

I'm pretty sure that Neil Peart's admiration for Ayn Rand is documented in many places. A quick Google search will probably confirm this.

[Rock Action]

I totally gotta get me some Freewills. They keep spinning, even when I'm stopped.

[Sarah]

Limbaugh wrote a song?

[Mr. FIFY]

"Rush" as in the Canadian rock band, ONNTA.

Jesus tapdancing Christ, are you fucking stupid.

[jtuf]

Um, Mr. Fify, I don't think Jesus Christ is in the room. Why are you hurling insults at him?

[Mr. FIFY]

I can see now my mistake in syntaxization. Thanks for the reminder.

[alan]

Would sweet Lucifer jigtoes MorningStar be better?

[Alanonymouse Wowcurd]

yes

[Bruce Majors]

Great video as usual.

My supplement:

Overwhelmingly white, designer-label dressed, and metrosexual. Asians far outnumbered African Americans, and Latinos and working class people were totally absent. Yale and Princeton sweatshirts outnumbered University of Maryland garb. Afterwards by 1:30 pm it was standing room only and long waiting lines in the expensive restaurants of Penn Quarter. Then Stewart's fans got back on Amtrak and the Chinatown bus (which was almost all white for the first time ever) to return to the West Village and Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights.

The liberal ralliers were admonished from the stage not to leave trash like the people at the One Nation rally and the Obama inaugural. I didn't stay to see how well they did with that but as you can see, they had no problem sitting on the art in the Sculpture Garden.

http://www.facebook.com/album......=731661712

There is also a great facebook album by a James Padilioni on only the pot related signs.

[Heroic Mulatto]

Overwhelmingly white, designer-label dressed, and metrosexual. Asians far outnumbered African Americans, and Latinos and working class people were totally absent. Yale and Princeton sweatshirts outnumbered University of Maryland garb. Afterwards by 1:30 pm it was standing room only and long waiting lines in the expensive restaurants of Penn Quarter. Then Stewart's fans got back on Amtrak and the Chinatown bus (which was almost all white for the first time ever) to return to the West Village and Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights.

Class envy, much?

[Bruce Majors]

Rofl. You are making assumptions about my class and education?

My god is every pro-regressive on earth a complete sewage sucking retard.

I would hunt you trogs for sport if it were legal just to protect your spawn from the squalid home life you abuse them with.

[Bruce Majors]

James Padilioni's great album

http://www.facebook.com/album......6740639701

[hmm]

Oh god the cognitive dissonance was palpable.

Is it sad when two comedians draw more liberals than the liberal leadership. Seriously, how fucking retarded do you have to be? (that assumes Reason didn't just cherry pick the idiots for that video)

The last guy should die in a fire. What a complete fucking moron.

[WOW]

You define everything that is bad about Americans. People can voice their opinions but if they don't agree with yours they should "die in a fire?" I hope you're just young and naive.

[Sarcasmo 2000?]

"Die in a fire" and "fuck you, douche" and especially "sheep fucker" qualify as high wit in some quarters.

[hmm]

Lets break down, shall we?

Everyday we have to spend money as a country.
Douche Nozzle says,

"He's trying to halt some of the stuff that made it this bad."

Like the war, the war on drugs, failed school programs, failed entitlement programs, see the never ending list here and elsewhere.

Douche Nozzle went on pontificating with,

"If I was that bad in debt the only way I would get myself out of debt is to make more debt first then try to figure my stuff out.

That is pure genius, if by genius you mean helmet wearing, window licking, Whapner at five kind of genius.

In short, hipster douche nozzle needs to die in a fire for the better good of the human gene pool. Given his obvious collectivist ideology he should be all for this.

[Long Dong from Hong Kong]

And he was different from other Americans....HOW?

[Liberal Youth]

Spending money when in debt: he is young and being interviewed by exactly what someone pointed out, a smug reporter. We're in debt. Let's buy a new suit, clean the place up, and get to work on fixing things. You DO have to spend to get out of debt. You cannot make drastic changes. Be realistic, conservatives. Embarrassed about the guys not being able to think of reasonable conservative ideals, but other things they said were dead on. ACTUALLY LISTEN PEOPLE.

[Adam]

I'm dying to meet the debt counselor whose advice would be to spend EVEN MORE as you try to remove yourself from a debt hole.

[Rev Dr E Buzz Miller]

3 trillion in two years, just for starters, of debt financed by someone (who?), and then a takeover of a few industries, a healthcare takeover bill , sane people know that this is what it is, is forced across the line by all Democrats, no conservative support at all...this is quite insane and has nothing at all to do with fiscal stimulus.

I see Obama has decided to build and refurb lots of roads...hmm, wonder why. MI pays a gas tax for this purpose, but hey, we evidently had that money going somewhere else.

Insanity.

[Tulpa]

We're in debt. Let's buy a new suit, clean the place up, and get to work on fixing things.

Those are seemingly reasonable analogies, but the devil's in the details, when you actually start talking about specific govt spending that is analogous to buying a new suit and "fixing things". Government is, by its nature, more adept at breaking things that need to be broken.

[Neu Mejican]

but the devil's in the details, when you actually start talking about specific govt spending

Here's your chance...or is it just easier to lob lame generalities?

(c.f., "Government is, by its nature, more adept at breaking things that [sic *don't* should be inserted to align with the program] need to be broken."

[Tulpa]

Well, I would cut pretty much every govt program in existence today. A few things that have to be paid for either now or later would be appropriate to pay for now, such as sewer system upgrades, electrical grid upgrades, bridge reinforcements, air traffic control upgrades...you know, real infrastructure. But try to do it on the cheap since you are using debt to finance it.

And my second comment about government breaking things is intended as written. There are things that need to be broken.

[Neu Mejican]

A few things that have to be paid for either now or later would be appropriate to pay for now, such as sewer system upgrades, electrical grid upgrades, bridge reinforcements, air traffic control upgrades...you know, real infrastructure.

In other words, there are large chunks of the stimulus bill that you support: bridge renovations, electrical grid upgrades, air traffic control upgrades, etc.

Devil is in the details indeed.

As for "things needing breaking," can you be specific? I wondered if, perhaps, you were speaking of the military.

[Tulpa]

They didn't do it on the cheap, though, they made sure it would be done with overpaid union workers and such. And they've been very opaque about how the money has been spent, so it's almost certain that the lion's share of the money has been spent on unnecessary shit.

[Tulpa]

In $700B there are going to be "large chunks" of a lot of stuff. I'd bet only a very small percentage went to necessary infrastructure that I mentioned, but there's no way of verifying that because the administration has been so opaque about where the money went.

[Mr. FIFY]

Neu, wasn't Obama just recently holding his pockets inside-out and passing the hat for MORE infrastructure money? Why wasn't the "shovel-ready" money spent when it was first doled out from the public piggy bank?

[Neu Mejican]

there's no way of verifying that because the administration has been so opaque about where the money went.

http://www.recovery.gov

[Tulpa]

http://www.recovery.gov

GIGO

[D'Orsi]

I want a Kiton K50s suit for my job interview. Spend my way out of debt.

[Lisa]

You do not have to spend to get out of debt..... *notices poster's name*

......never mind.

[Alex]

First of all, who are you calling conservatives? Jesus tittyfucking christ, check the site you're on before mouthing off insanities.

Second of all, "buying a new suit" is idiotic if you're in debt and already own a suit. Simply "buying a new suit" for buying sake is exactly the problem.

Thirdly, you're a fucking idiot.

[Bruce Majors]

+1

[Publis Cato]

Unfortunately, the money did not, for the most part, go toward investments. It was doled out to the Democrats patrons, the UAW, the UTF, SEIU, the public sector unions and all their banker friends on wall street. What about the shovel ready infrastructure? My roads still look like shit and my railway just jacked up the fairs again.

[Bruce Majors]

Fares.

See public school funding is just throwing money down a rat hole.

[generic Brand]

No, he was talking about the Train Fair, where different versions of locomotive progression are showcased. The kid who raised the best tank engine gets a blue ribbon now.

[Rev Dr E Buzz Miller]

Having the lunatic Islamomutant Cat Stevens not threaten to kill Salman Rushdie was also a nice touch.

[Yusef]

I believe there's a statute of limitations on calling out a radical islamist cocksucker for something he said a decade ago.

[Planet Moron]

I mentioned to a casual acquaintance yesterday that I had attended the Rally for Ironically Detached Hipsters and he got really excited, starting to talk about how tea partiers are all stupid and noting that Republicans drove the car in the ditch.

I decided to change the subject to beer.

[OH no not this again]

Was he lying?

[Planet Moron]

He was being depressingly sincere.

[John]

Sort of like Oh No Not This Again.

[MB]

yeah, cause democrats are never stupid and wouldn't drive the car in the ditch...

[Sam Grove]

..or off a bridge...

[zemacon]

I thought reason TV handled them with kid gloves too. They asked very simple questions and let the people speak their mind. They never pushed them with follow ups over verbally confronted them. Some of the questions they asked were humorous but never sarcastic or acusatory.

[John]

Nothing wrong with that. Why go out and confront them. They seemed to make fools of themselves all by themselves.

[Long Dong from Hong Kong]

Just what do you mean by "mind"?

[George V]

I believe "mind" means the vacuum between their ears.

[Pam]

Wow, I will never believe the crazy interviews I see from a rightist rally again. They must have looked long and hard to find this many inarticulate people in a crowd of over 200,000. I was there, and these weren't the conversations I had. Funny, for sure, but but not news reporting by any stretch of the imagination.

[Schempf]

I was there and most people were that stupid.

[ticticboom]

Damn furries.

[waffles]

furries were well-represented

[John]

I don't get why you have Cat Stevens and Yoseph there. What do they have do do with anything? These people really can't help themselves can they?

[Big Tent]

To be inclusive they have to let Murder-by-Islamic-Fatwa apologists appear along with everyone else.

[TomD]

I don't get why you have Cat Stevens and Yoseph there. What do they have do do with anything?

It was the only way to make that one Daily Show writer's "train song" joke work. To make it sing, if you will.

This was surely worth overlooking the whole "Salman Rushdie must die" thing, don't you think?

[Tex Lovera]

Yes, because it's more important to be funny than to fix anything...

[P Brooks]

We're in debt. Let's buy a new suit, clean the place up, and get to work on fixing things. You DO have to spend to get out of debt.

When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.

[Sears Sucker]

"Let's buy a new suit..." Are you one of the Brooks brothers?

[waffles]

isn't that a line from Legally Blonde

[The Bearded Hobbit]

When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.

I prefer

Dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope.

-- F. Franklin

... Hobbit

[John]

Interesting article on the Democrats' problem with suburban voters.

http://www.newgeography.com/co.....l-strategy

This was a rally of all ubanites. It doesn't do the Dems any good.

[Planet Moron]

I characterized them more as semi-urban hipster wannabes. From what I could see, these were people who were largely coming in from the surrounding suburbs of DC.

In the same way rap and hip-hop would have difficulty surviving as a viable business model but for its popularity among middle-American suburban kids, hipster urban irony couldn't survive without the exact same demographic. Real urban hipsters wouldn't be caught dead at a corporate-sponsored commercial rally.

[JT]

Isn't hipster wannabe a bit redundant?

[TomD]

No, the first guy is always real. The first guy who decides to don a trucker hat, or wear tapered jeans, or drink Pabst, or whatever -- he's OK. It's the gazillion other losers who then latch on, competing for cool points, who are the wannabes.

[Ashton K]

That trucker hat thing....that was all me.

[zemacon]

I like the woman with the "liberal elite" tee-shirt with a list of what the liberal elite is: correct-spelling, science believing, rational, logical...
She forgot fat, stupid-looking and homely. I wonder if this liberal elitist could match wits with Dr. Charles "the hammer" Krauthammer and Dr. Thomas Sowell. Two of our many conservative true-people of intellect

[UU]

"Self-centered"

[Isaac Bartram]

"[S]cience believing", yeah, right.

Maybe, believes, but knowledge is usually another thing.

As I've noted elsewhere, they might believe in evolution but precious few understand it any better than the creationists do.

[Isaac Bartram]

Also, add to her list, 'arrogant, presumptious, self-righteous..."

[9/11 truth]

[Anti-VAX]

[Mao, Che, Stalin are my models]

[Huffington Post devotee]

[Thinks GM crops are evil]

[Petroleum Hating]

[Politically Correct to the Max]

[Amakudari]

Is the theory of evolution really that hard to comprehend? Genetic variations and mutations occur, and the ones that are beneficial have a greater chance of being passed on to the next generation. Over large numbers of generations, geographical separation, and so on it gives rise to a diversity. No, I don't know jack about genetics, but it's a fairly simple, logical insight, isn't it? And we have the fossil record and things like vestigial limbs to back it up.

I'm more amused by the "science-believing" shtick because of liberal opposition to GMOs and nuclear power.

[Lisa]

That shirt actually did a good job of defining a liberal elitist: someone whose entire political philosophy is actually a mode of self-exultation.

[SIV]

Krauthammer is a nanny-statist,gun-grabbing neocon dipshit.

[Juice]

War mongering Krauthammer? Really?

[NPR liberal wit]

Give whirled peas a chance.

[waffles]

why is spelling a librall valu? who cares if yuo spell rite? we shuldent politisise spelling.

[P Brooks]

Are you one of the Brooks brothers?

Government mandated suits for you, government subsidized profits for me!

Any color you want, as long as it's grey.

[P Brooks]

viz

[UU]

OUR SIDE IS GREAT, THE OTHER SIDE SUCKS!

[Bondurant]

Good video. It's always fun watching liberals back themselves into a corner. I love to razzle a friend of mine about Iraq, Afghanistan, taxes and The Patriot Act. He just stammers and blames Dubya for everthing because he has no other retort. He would have fit in well at this rally.

[Paul Krugman]

democrats are never stupid and wouldn't drive the car in the ditch...

I'm an excellent driver.

[Neu Mejican]

[sigh]

Tribal chest thumping about a lame comedy show from the first comment forward?

Really?

[heller]

[sigh] So you have nothing of interest to say Neu Mejican? Really?

[Tulpa]

AP had a report about this "lame comedy show" third spot down on their news feed. It's not just opponents who take it seriously.

[P Brooks]

In other driving-related news, apparently it's official: the 2010 Pontiac GTFO is here!

[P Brooks]

Neu Mejican: "I'm shocked. SHOCKED, I tell you..."

[Neu Mejican]

HORRIFIED!!!!

[heller]

I'm shocked, SHOCKED that Neu Mejican has nothing to say.

[Neu Mejican]

I am shocked, SHOCKED that the H&R crowd did not go after the lame comedy and create a funny thread.

[Jim Treacher]

ELITIST:

Every
Liberal
Is
Totally
Intelligent.
Smart,
Too!

[jtuf]

Hmmm. In the religion v science round up, lets consider following examples from the USA:

1) The War on Drug Users kills 2,000 Americans each year and is perpetuated in the name of modern medicine.

2) Psychiatric survivors can be locked up indefinitely, forcibly medicated, and given mild electrocution without due process in the name of modern medicine.

3)The government school curricula mandate that children take science classes for most of their youth and provide answers on science tests that match the state curriculum. Failure to do so means no diploma and a lifetime of low income.

3) Population control experts cite science to justify social engineering.

4) Rutgers University developed a computer program to determine which land must be preserved as open space. It's now theoretically possible for the police to know on your door and say, "Sorry, but the computer says we have to take your land."

5) Science is used to justify smoking bans and sin taxes on alcohol, tobacco, and tanning. Mayor Bloomberg recently said that New York State should go after Native American tribes for not paying sin taxes on tobacco (which is a traditional Native American herb).

6) Science is used to justify a ban on transfats.

7) Science is used to justify a ban on actively gay and bisexual men from donating blood.

8) Science once declared homosexuality a psychiatric disorder. The current ban on openly homosexual military personal is a vestigial effect of this.

9) Science is used to justify the ethanol mandate for gasoline.

....

Yes, religion can be used to prop up dictatorship, but so can science. This is because most people believe in scientific claims for the same reason that many people believe in religious dogma. They believe it is true, because someone they trust tells them it's true. Consider how long it has been since the last time you looked at raw data or even a peer reviewed science article. Science is great, but in the past century, it has been the favorite justification for authoritarians.

[jtuf]

By the way, I got a BA in Biology and a MA in Ecology and Evolution. Just out of curiosity, who else majored in science here? I've got a feeling that none of the religion bashers did.

[Rrabbit]

I have a PhD in math. And I am one of the "religion bashers".

[Episiarch]

I have a BS in Biology and a BA in Anthropology, and I am a huge religion basher. So suck it, religious douchebags.

[jtuf]

Anthropology is not a science.

[Tulpa]

Whoa, what? Observation can substitute for experiment; otherwise astronomy wouldn't be science since we haven't, for instance, experimentally created supernovae in a lab.

[generic Brand]

Anthropology is a broad science, but a science nonetheless. It encompasses archaeology, osteology, and bio-behavioral studies of humans. The cultural side of anthropology (i.e. living with the natives) is a bit more subjective in my opinion, but there is far more hard science in anthropology than in the other "social sciences" like sociology and psychology.

I have a BA (although my school changed the degree to Bachelor of Sciences after I started) in anthropology, for the record.

[Xenocles]

I majored in History but was awarded a BS. Does that count?

[jtuf]

No, History does not count as a science, unless you've been experimenting with alternate universes to test your theories on.

[Xenocles]

Didn't say it was, but I had far more credits in math, science, and engineering than I did in the humanities.

[Tulpa]

Astronomy is considered science despite the fact that 99% of it is not from experiment.

[The Bearded Hobbit]

Just out of curiosity, who else majored in science here? I've got a feeling that none of the religion bashers did.

BS EECS UNM 1979.

One man's theology is another man's bellylaugh

--R. A. Heinlein

... Hobbit

[heller]

Bio and Neuroscience, currently working in a molecular biology lab, atheist. Sucl my balls.

[waffles]

I have a B.S. in Civil Engineering.

[Tulpa]

BS in Math & Physics, MS in Math, PhD in Applied Math. While I'm an atheist, I don't single out religion for criticism because everyone who's not a hedonist or suicidal is living a delusion.

[joshua corning]

I studied Molecular and Cellular biology at the University of Washington.

I am an atheist. And as an atheist i realize that being a missionary for atheism is idiotic. What the fuck does it matter if God does not exist. People will not go to heaven if they believe or don't believe....so what are you saving them for?

You militant atheists can suck my balls

[Spoonman.]

BS in Environmental Engineering from Cornell, currently a PhD student in Earth Science at Rice.

I am an athiest.

[Tulpa]

"Psychiatric survivors"?

It's silly euphemisms all the way down, I guess.

[Tony]

Most of the problems you cite are a result of policy not following current science.

[jtuf]

It's a result of policy not following correct science. The problem is, there's no source for absolute scientific truth. The scientific method is a great way of getting at the truth, but policy makers don't follow the scientific method. They pick a scientist with a track record of saying things they like, and then cite him to justify their policies. That's not scientific, but authoritarians hold it up as an example of following science. My point is, we shouldn't be blinded into following things just because they are done in the name of science.

[Rrabbit]

Religious leaders select passages from their holy book that says what they like, and ignore all those passages from the same holy book that says or explicitly requires things they don't like.

BTW, in case you are a christian, do you follows Numbers 15:38?

[Publis Cato]

Arguably, Acts 15:19-21 absolves Christians from literal obedience of the Mosaic Laws.

[Rrabbit]

Sure, one can make claims like that. But people actually cherry-pick among the Mosaic Laws.

[Slut Bunwalla]

You realize you've just done the same old Team Red/Team Blue stuff here, right? "But the other side does it too!" is not an refutation.

[Rrabbit]

I abhor both Team Red and Team Blue. Thus, I will happily bash both.

[Dr. Floyd Ferris]

They pick a scientist with a track record of saying things they like, and then cite him to justify their policies.

You say that like it's a bad thing. Are you trying to put me out of a job?

[Libertarian Democrat]

I too am sick of people arguing that science is on their side.

On the other hand, with hyperbole about ECT like yours, I find it hard to take anything you write seriously.

[J sub D]

1) The War on Drug Users kills 2,000 Americans each year and is perpetuated in the name of modern medicine.

No it isn't. Modern medicine describes addiction as a disease that should be treated, not punished.

3)The government school curricula mandate that children take science classes for most of their youth and provide answers on science tests that match the state curriculum. Failure to do so means no diploma and a lifetime of low income.

Same as English and math. So? A knowledge of science, how it works and what it has discovered is part of a basic education.

3) Population control experts cite science to justify social engineering.

In China. In the US we pay poor people to breed.

4) Rutgers University developed a computer program to determine which land must be preserved as open space. It's now theoretically possible for the police to know on your door and say, "Sorry, but the computer says we have to take your land."

It is theoretically possible for the government to take your land based on a Ouija board. Both scenarios are equally likely.

5) Science is used to justify smoking bans and sin taxes on alcohol, tobacco, and tanning. Mayor Bloomberg recently said that New York State should go after Native American tribes for not paying sin taxes on tobacco (which is a traditional Native American herb).

The science is almost certainly correct in all cases. Don't blame the messenger.

6) Science is used to justify a ban on transfats.

See #5.

7) Science is used to justify a ban on actively gay and bisexual men from donating blood.

Nothing about sexual orientation here.

8) Science once declared homosexuality a psychiatric disorder. The current ban on openly homosexual military personal is a vestigial effect of this.

You've got it wrong. Religion once declared homosexuality an offense against God. Psychiatry backed it based on religious thinking. Research has since refuted homosexuality as a mental illness.

9) Science is used to justify the ethanol mandate for gasoline.

Not by credible scientists.

You can have #2.

[Mensan]

Research has since refuted homosexuality as a mental illness.

Actually, lobbying by gay rights groups got homosexuality removed from the DSM III much moreso than research. There's still research that indicates that it may corretly be classified as a paraphilia, but it's now politically incorrect to suggest such findings.

[Michael Ejercito]

Psychiatric survivors can be locked up indefinitely, forcibly medicated, and given mild electrocution without due process in the name of modern medicine.

They are a threat to society.

This, of course, does not negate or diminish the tragedy, for psychiatric survivors are victims too. They did not choose to be mentally ill, unable to function in society. And yet, we have to put them down for public safety.

[jtuf]

Preemptive imprisonment violates some basic principles of democracy. If you read the scientific papers about Blacks from the 19th Century, you'll find the very same arguments made to justify denying Blacks their rights.

[Adolf Sanger]

And yet, we have to put them down for public safety.

+6,000,000

[Michael Ejercito]

Thanks

[MW Brooklyn NY]

Oh brother these are Comedy Central, Stewart/Colbert viewers? . . . these are the smart Americans, they have the answers, Saints preserve us.

[Bruce Majors]

See this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_23Nt5XumaU

[mattrue]

I love the knee-jerk (and totally scientific) Glenn Beck comparisons: Rally For Sanity Attendance Trounces Glenn Beck's -- 215,000 To 87,000 http://www.businessinsider.com.....00-2010-10

As if a government-friendly (anti-Fox News) rally in D.C. wouldn't attract huge numbers!

[SIV]

This is the internet. You have to check sources. CBS News is not a credible source for anything.

[Rock Action]

Yeah, they really can't help themselves, can they? It's almost comical at this point. Unintended irony: That Stewart pointed out that cable TV news was responsible for the tone and tenor of our debates. If only they would act as non-partisan and with as much respect for journalism as the big broadcast networks!

Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha ha. I guess the rally was comedic.

[humuggery]

This video is a bit like getting pregame football commentary from fans with the most body paint: enthusiasm doesn't always translate into coherence, nor does it offer much insight into the game.

So nice of Reason to always swipe at the low-hanging fruit: way to aptly illustrate the point Stewart was making.

[stoneymonster]

Was his point that all of these groups look pretty loony no matter what the rallying cry?

[Steven Stewart]

MEDIA BAD! ME RAPE MEDIA TO PROTECT PEOPLE FROM EVIL MEDIA! PEOPLE TO STUPID TO TELL WHAT MEDIA BAD!

[stoneymonster]

These rallies, of all stripes, always remind me of that scene in Life of Brian.

"You are all individuals!
"We're all individuals!"
"I'm not!"

Get any group that large together, and I think things revert to the mean, which frankly ain't too pretty.

[stoneymonster]

These rallies, of all stripes, always remind me of that scene in Life of Brian.

"You are all individuals!
"We're all individuals!"
"I'm not!"

Get any group that large together, and I think things revert to the mean, which frankly ain't too pretty.

[stoneymonster]

I'm so individual I speak in stereo.

[juris imprudent]

Monophobe!

[Goatrope]

70,000 white, statist assholes kicking around a hackeysack, puffing nuggets and spewing self-righteous indignation at anyone who doesn't see things their way all in the name of tolerance and hopey change. Yeah, I'm sorry me and my battalion are deployed right now or else we could have joined in on the "non-political" sanctimony-fest.

[waffles]

sounds like good times to me, but the haterade tastes good, huh?

[National Douchebag Coalition]

NDC has received your application and has decided to grant you a lifetime membership.

This is an autoreply. Do not respond to this message.

[Brian from Texas]

Why are you people taking this so-called rally so seriously? THEY'RE COMEDIANS DOING A PUBLIC APPEARANCE FOR RATINGS PEOPLE! Jon Stewart himself said anyone who takes him for a serious source of news is an idiot and I agree agree with that. I watch Stewart/Colbert all the time simply because I think their shows are funny. Not because I agree with their politics or take them as serious newsmen.

[Tulpa]

AP currently has this #3 on their news feed. It's not just opponents who take them seriously.

[mattrue]

I think their shows are funny

Really? Stewart went from making fun of republicans in power to making fun of republicans out of power. Colbert was contracted by Dems to pull a media stunt in Congress, which wasn't funny, and makes fun of conservatives nonstop. I'd find it much more entertaining if they ridiculed people who support farm subsidies for corporations, bailouts, increasing education spending, green jobs, etc.

[G Mc]

False, that Congress gig was funny.

[Brian from Texas]

I find the Democrats and Republicans equally loathsome. I'll watch Stewart/Cobert for my Republican bashing, then I'll go to AM talk radio for my Democrat bashing.

[Red Rocks Rockin]

"Why are you people taking this so-called rally so seriously? THEY'RE COMEDIANS DOING A PUBLIC APPEARANCE FOR RATINGS PEOPLE!"

That would appear to be a surprise to the people who attended the rally. If this was just a publicity stunt, Stewart and Colbert just punked around 200k people into dropping some serious coin on what they thought was a political rally.

Of course, a good portion of that audience was dumbass college undergrads, so I can see why they were so easily fooled.

[WTF]

Yeah, people on here are taking things so seriously, it hurts my head sometimes

[heller]

So Jon Stewart doesn't want to be taken seriously when he claims that the media is "hurting america"?

[Tulpa]

See, I don't understand this indignation from our native and visiting liberals. The silly things that the interviewees said are perfectly consistent with the tripe the Dem leadership says all the time -- it's just that the leadership and their handlers are careful never to answer questions from anyone who's not already on their side, lest they be forced to verbalize the conclusions their ideology leads to.

[G Mc]

You know, I used to think ultra-liberals and ultra-conservatives were unbearably conceited. But after a year or two of checking in here at Reason, I I think libertarians might take the cake in terms of self-righteousness and pomposity.

[Max]

Yeah, but on the upside, libertarians are so irrelevant and marginal that they'll never hurt anybody. They can keep their silly magazine going only with donations, for Christ's sake. Cut 'em some slack.

[Hate Potion Number Nine]

It's because they're so irrelevant that the conceit level gets so high. Really that's the fun part. Watch them, say, turn smoking pot into a Holy Crusade or arguing for property rights and then arguing for free media downloads. The astonishment that no one takes them seriously turns into the idea that they're special people.

[G Mc]

I think its due to a lack of any real 'moderate' libertarians - probably because of the (relatively) small number of folks who adhere to the ideology and the actual nature of libertarianism, which does not leave room for too much variation (at least in terms of public policy).

[Amakudari]

It's pretty rough. Some days I just feel like everyone in the world except me is conceited. 🙁

[joshua corning]

I am not conceited. I realize i am perfect in every way because i am perfect in every way.

[Bruce Majors]

Yea Maxie those libertarian influenced tea parties that just wiped your boy out.

Pretty marginal.

You need some more public skrewl. You ain't done being edjumacated.

[G Mc]

I don't think the Tea Party is really a libertarian movement overall - its too varied. I think its more of a populist movement at heart.

[Bruce Majors]

As a libertarian IN the tea party movement I can tell you you are uninformed.

CATO and Reason Foundation articles get passed around and discussed in it all the time, including to people for whom it is all new.

[Bruce Majors]

As a libertarian IN the tea party movement I can tell you you are uninformed.

CATO and Reason Foundation articles get passed around and discussed in it all the time, including to people for whom it is all new.

[CommentArrrr]

Love the added comedy, well played guys.

[WTF]

Bravo for actually proving Jon Stewart right, by nitpicking and magnifying certain aspect of the rally. I am quite disappointed

[Bruce Majors]

Anyone who went there found friendly but stupid people. Like these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_23Nt5XumaU

[Federal Farmer]

HA HA! Holy hilarious... what an excellent video... I really couldn't stop laughing.

Please, keep these kind of videos coming!

[Drunk Punk]

Jon Steward should stop hiding behind comedy and run for office.

[Bruce Majors]

Mayor of New York?

Could do worse.

[Marshall]

I like the video but you didn't talk to the people I talked to. You made one point I think was great, there were a TON of white people. I haven't been to a rally with that many white people who weren't ready to break out the guns. I was amazed.
But like I said, you didn't talk to the people I did. It lacked so much hate, the only people I saw fighting were couples!

[Mark]

The Rally to Promote Comedy Central. These people really have no clue.

[Sonny Boy Press]

"Oh I's never go to a Glenn Beck Rally"

Why do black people think the Tea Party is racist?

[Bruce Majors]

Nick and Mike were outdone by this clever team, who do however provide more evidence that the demwits there were dimwits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_23Nt5XumaU

[tom hagood]

Reason, my ass!

[Dave Selinger]

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert appeal to an American demographic that does not receive much attention: the frustrated majority (or the cynical majority, if you want to get technical). These people have watched for ten years as both political parties have dashed every single hope, dream, and promise that Americans had for their future. The Tea Party comes out preaching a return to greatness, but they've heard that before and are fed up with it. Obama talks about change and a new direction, but they've seen what happened after he became the President and are fed up with it. But Stewart? He bashes everything political and puts up a simple treatise: be sane. Colbert puts on the mask of sarcasm and pretends to assume that which he detests, poking fun at the policies of both the right and the left.
Fellow members of the Frustrated Majority, let us take up the Twin Banners of Sanity and Fear and rise up against the Insane Minority that casts such a thrall over the country. They make silly speeches full of sound and fury saying nothing and anyone preaching a message of sanity is scrutinized by an equally insane media since they can't conceive that someone is actually working for a cause greater than themselves because all they've ever been is selfish bastards looking out for number one and that hit scoop. Sure, they may ruin any possibility of sane political discourse, but who cares? They'll get their own TV show!

Wow, I kind of just went on a diatribe. I apologize if I sound like an idiot.

[nike shoes UK]

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