How will you deal with Jon Stewart’s hiatus?
English: Jon Stewart at Barnes & Noble Union Square for the launch of Earth (The Book), the 2010 book from the writers of The Daily Show (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Satire piece about liberals’ response to Jon Stewart’s decision to take time off from The Daily Show to direct a serious movie, Rosewater, about a journalist held captive in Iran.
I like this picture of Jon Stewart because he is wearing a Mets hat and I love those stupid Mets.
In the middle of a campaign for the most important position in the country, we should be talking about the global economy, tensions around the world such as problems in Iran, Syria and elsewhere. We should be talking about how to best prepare ourselves for the new economic circumstances our world now inhabits or how to overhaul our tax and entitlements systems.
But we are not.
The GOP presidential nominees aren’t talking about these things. They are focused on contraception and questions of “good and evil.” The Republican Party, seems intent on not returning our country to a more prosperous state but to a different era. It has become normal for politicians on both sides to wax nostalgic about “the good old days.” Those days seems always have been in the 1950s, when — by the way, the tax rates for the highest earners was at its highest level ever. But the current crop of candidates don’t think going back to even the 50s is enough.
I get why the Republicans feel the need to return to social and religious issues, their base loves it. Think about what they want to talk about: contraception, religious wars, gay marriage. Really?
Newsflash: It’s 2012, Women can vote and most use contraception. Gay marriage will be legal everywhere in the United States during my lifetime. Nothing you do will change either of those facts. Just to be as clear on this as possible — you are on the wrong side of history on these issues but that isn’t the real problem. History doesn’t care. The problem is by wasting everyone’s time on issues that won’t be changed at this level, we fail to talk about the policies that will. You cheapen the process.
All of this is great for the Democrats. And I want President Obama to win. But as good as this is for his reelection prospects, it is bad for the country. Presidential campaigns provide an opportunity to really examine and evaluate the state of the country and the best ways to deal with the challenges we face. These should be lofty conversations and debates not petty bickering about social issues that were settled years ago (not to harp, but nothing Rick Santorum can do will turn that clock back).
When President Obama took office, I characterized the situation he faced as his “Himalayan problem.” All problems were so large individually but it was hard to gage their enormity when clumped together. I misspoke, this was not his Himalayan problem, it was ours. By choosing to focus on issues that excite one base or another at the expense of those that impact all of us, the GOP is making molehills out of our Everest sized problems and that’s unfortunate.
Well, if this week has shown us anything it is that we live on a very dangerous planet.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced that not only was the election totally legitimate but that the protesters are responsible for any unrest or violence. He also vowed to prosecute them. The idea that Iran is a democracy ended the minute they stopped letting the situation be covered by the press. It comes as no surprise that the pro-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rally crowd changed “Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to Britain!” Ahmadinejad has said these things before and Khamenei already blamed the west for stirring up trouble there. So while protests will continue and the Guardian Council will still look into the more than 600 complaints about the election, it looks like Ahmadinejad will keep the presidency and given how much he wants to get nuclear weapons, that’s a bad thing for everyone. I know, his rival, Mir Hossein Mousavi , also favors continuing their nuclear program but he is not bat shit crazy. He’s not perfect but he would be a step in the right direction. This situation remains dicey for the US, given our past with Iran but I applaud Congress for voting on a resolution supporting free elections there. The White House needs to be more careful. I suspect some people here will hammer me for this but it is in times like this that I am glad Barack Obama won the White House and even more that George W. Bush is gone. That’s not a partisan thing, if George H.W. Bush was there I would feel the same way. He knew his way around the Middle East.
As all of our attention has been on Iran, another crazy dictator has been feeling a little ignored. Kim Jung Il behaves
like a spoiled child. When another country’s bad deeds capture the world, he has a temper tantrum. Unfortunately for his neighbors and us, his version of a hissy fit is a threat to nuke somebody. This week he announced his plan to shoot a missile at Hawaii. If you missed it, South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak , met with President Obama this week. He said that South Korea would ‘not tolerate nuclear weapons in North Korea’ but I think the genie has left that bottle, too.
The rationale these countries use for obtaining nuclear weapons is simple: Other countries have them so they should, too. It’s a matter of ‘national pride’ they say. I have an idea for both countries – and this could go for any nation – how about you work on feeding, clothing and housing your people? Take that money you want to use on missiles and buy some food. The national disgrace for you is not your weak militaries, it’s your piss poor records on human rights and horrible economies.
Allegedly, reports from Iran indicate the situation today is similar to what happened just before the 1979 revolution. I say allegedly because all foreign journalists have been kicked out and the government has been cracking down on its citizens’ access to the internet. Who’d have thought Twitter could be such a political force?
So the election was held last Friday. The government announced the results about an hour after the polls closed and declared current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner. One of the funny things about this was before the government released that, Reuters and other news organizations published reports that challenger, Mir Hossein Mousavi , had won. I even Tweeted about it Friday night. So much for trusting Reuters. To make things stranger, it appeared Mousavi lost his home province and town. That’s gotta hurt.
Ahmadinejad left for Russia the next day and that’s good for him. Monday saw the real protests begin and his government killed eight people and wounded many others. I have been really impressed by how the Iranians have responded. I applaud them for working so hard to keep getting images and stories out to the world. They have a very young and engaged population, which is good seeing as all foreign media has been kicked out and has to rely on Tweets. It’s also good that we have this technology. The more the government tries to crack down the more the people seem determined to defy them. Good for them.
How does all this compare to 1979? The leader then was the Shah. His secret police did a lot of things the Ahmadinejad government is doing now, though the economy is tanking now and it wasn’t then. It seems to me that a bad economy + a young populace + political unrest = bad news for the current administration. I don’t know if there will be a revolution or coup but the real power in Iran, the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ‘s Guardian Council is reviewing the election while Mousavi has called for the peaceful protests to continue.
The problem for President Obama is complicated. US-Iranian relations have been non-existent since the 1980 hostage crisis but the problems don’t end there. The Ahmadinejad government has already taken to blaming western governments and Israel for civil unrest. Given the US history of working its will in Iranian politics, we did support the Shah, any statements made against Ahmadinejad may just give credence to their paranoia and make matters worse. Moreover, if they keep Ahmadinejad in power, it’s going to be hard to deal with his government after condemning him. Plus there is the fact that the US cannot condone it when another country kills its own citizens for political reasons.
This situation doesn’t do the supreme leader any favors either. As the spiritual leader, he is supposed to be ‘all knowing’ so if he should have known on Friday if there were problems with the election. His options were go with the will of the people and risk looking like he isn’t as perfect or anger them by insisting he is. The path he took, to have the council review contested ballots was as close to a balancing act and I guess we’ll see how well it plays out.
Then there is the will of the people and their rights, which have been trampled upon. They have showed a spectacular amount of determination and resilience. My fingers are crossed and all we can do here is sit, wait and try to watch.
Much like Chicken Little I feel I have spent a lot of time of late talking about all the ways we are killing ourselves. There’s global warming, infectious diseases, global warming’s impact on infectious diseases, the ‘war against terror,’ and now it looks very much like we are about to go to war with Iran. If you think Iraq is a mess, just wait for Act II (Afghanistan was just a prologue).
Ever since we invaded Iraq there has been talk about going after Iran next. The general scuttlebutt around DC has been that the war plans for such a move have been written and the only thing stopping Dubya et al from doing it have been the mess that had been Iraq. Now that the situation there seems to be better – I do think the very belated surge has achieved at least a partial military success there that makes our withdrawal from there even more important – the administration can focus more on Iran. They clearly feel we are threatening them as their recent threats to “strike back if attacked” (http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/09/asia/10iran.php) that were closely followed by nuclear weapons testing. If Dubya’s plan is to poke the bear, he is doing a bang-up job.
Lest anyone think we should invade another sovereign country:
A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, “We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was “Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself.” The New Yorker, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/07/080707fa_fact_hersh
It is even more worrisome that Senator McCain supports the White House on this issue because with Dubya & Cheney wanting to invade Iran and the McCain candidacy looking shaky, it would not surprise me one bit if a preemptive war with Iran would be to avoid a loss in November. If McCain picks Joe Lieberman I think we can count the days until our troops go in. This, by the way, is because Lieberman is a defense hawk and not because he is Jewish. I do not want hate mail about that. This would be one October surprise we cannot afford.
I am a Democrat, a New Yorker and a Met fan. If that is not the ultimate trifecta of cynicism, I don't know what is.
AlysonChadwick.com 