Jon Stewart: A Very Funny Episode!

45 Comments Post your own

1. FLERP! says:

   April 18, 2024 at 11:42 am

   And Robert E. Lee said, “Wow.”

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   • Bob Shepherd says:

     April 18, 2024 at 11:46 am

     The actual quotation was, “Wow. These In-and-Out Burgers are fire! Haven’t had one of these in a minute.”

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     • FLERP! says:

       April 18, 2024 at 11:50 am

       Wow.

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       April 18, 2024 at 11:59 am

       So, it’s a wonder that with this command of language–“Wow” and all–that Robert E. Lee didn’t become a lawyer.

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2. Bob Shepherd says:

   April 18, 2024 at 11:42 am

   Never sled up hill, me boys!

   –The Boston Irishman Ragnar Lothbrok

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3. retired teacher says:

   April 18, 2024 at 11:52 am

   Gettysburg Wow! Don’t fight uphill, me boys! It is so funny it’s sad. It makes me wonder what he was doing in those fancy private schools.

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   • Bob Shepherd says:

     April 18, 2024 at 12:03 pm

     Genesis 38:9-10

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4. Bob Shepherd says:

   April 18, 2024 at 11:57 am

   Never piss uphill, me boys

   –Pirate Bluebeard Murphy

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5. Roy Turrentine says:

   April 18, 2024 at 12:06 pm

   It is often suggested that Picketts Charge across the field up toward the place where Lincoln gave his brief address would never have happened if Lee’s Virginia compatriot, Stonewall Jackson, had not been the unfortunate victim of friendly fire. It’s a really good story, but Lee chose a lot of other uphill battles. Malvern Hill, Little Round Top, there is quite a list. The most uphill of all battles was his attempt to sever a huge part of the Country from its little experiment with constitutional government.

   Had he and the ready of the confederacy succeeded, North America would have descended into the chaos of European style animosity, roiled as it was two decades later by competition over the domination of Africa. Southern states, bound by a weak constitution, would have fought among themselves until they were so weak that a unified North would have successfully restored most of it by conquest.

   Do Gettysburg is a great story, but, like most battles, is overrated by historians who like good stories.

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   • Bob Shepherd says:

     April 18, 2024 at 12:07 pm

     The most uphill of all battles was his attempt to sever a huge part of the Country from its little experiment with constitutional government.

     Haaaa!!!!

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   • retired teacher says:

     April 18, 2024 at 1:01 pm

     I’m from Pennsylvania and have visited Gettysburg several times. It was a brutal battle with over 50,000 casualties over three days.  Gettysburg was a turning point of the war where the North stopped Lee’s incursion into the North and drove the rebels back to the South.

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     • rcharvet says:

       April 18, 2024 at 4:50 pm

       Yet beautiful at the same time. I mean all the blood, the mud, and the beer, right? Well, according to #45. Wow, the Irish were tough fighters too.

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     • dianeravitch says:

       April 18, 2024 at 9:33 pm

       I think the Irish were fighting for the Union.

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       April 18, 2024 at 9:53 pm

       I think that the Continental Army did a great job destroying those British airports.

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       April 18, 2024 at 9:55 pm

       Are you implying, Diane, that Trump got it wrong when he quoted Lee as saying, “Never fight uphill, me boys”?

       Trump is never wrong. When Trump says something, the universe rearranges itself so that it is in keeping with whatever he said. It’s time you understood this, Diane.

       It’s a magical power.

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     • dianeravitch says:

       April 18, 2024 at 10:21 pm

       U.S. history will be rewritten by Hillsdale College to conform to Trump’s ignorance.

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       April 18, 2024 at 10:28 pm

       They need the Dream Team of Candace Owens and Tommy Massie and Tommy Tuberville and Tucker Carlson and Boris Badenov on this job!!!

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       April 18, 2024 at 10:29 pm

       This is Trump’s great contribution to American politics. He brought back, for an entire political party, the Memory Hole, without ever even having read 1984.

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       April 18, 2024 at 10:31 pm

       By sheer dint of his breathtaking ignorance. What an achievement!!!!

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       April 18, 2024 at 10:31 pm

       By sheer dint of his breathtaking ignorance. What an achievement!!!!

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     • dianeravitch says:

       April 19, 2024 at 8:50 am

       I read Heather Cox Richardson this morning and her piece included this interesting commentary on the House Republicans’ effort to block aid to Ukraine:

       “Greene was especially active in opposition to aid to Ukraine. She tried to amend the bill to direct the president to withdraw the U.S. from NATO and demanded that any members of Congress voting for aid to Ukraine be conscripted into the Ukraine army as well as have their salaries taken to offset funding. She wanted to stop funding until Ukraine “turns over all information related to Hunter Biden and Burisma,” and to require Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to resign. More curiously, she suggested amending the Ukraine bill so that funding would require “restrictions on ethnic minorities’, including Hungarians in Transcarpathia, right to use their native languages in schools are lifted.” This language echoes a very specific piece of Russian propaganda.

       “Finally, [Democrat Jared] Moskowitz proposed “that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene…should be appointed as Vladimir Putin’s Special Envoy to the United States Congress.”

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       April 19, 2024 at 9:35 am

       Well, well, well. Isn’t that interesting. Time for an FBI investigation into MTG’s ties to Russia.

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       April 18, 2024 at 10:00 pm

       Or maybe you are right, Diane, and Trump was simply pointing out that Lee came from a line of generic pirates, as in, “Arrrgh. She’s three points abast the beam, Maties! Don’t lose her. But never gibe in a squall, me boys!”

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     • rcharvet says:

       April 19, 2024 at 12:04 am

       @Diane, sorry tended to go a weee bit uphill on that one!

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       April 19, 2024 at 3:45 am

       RC, your comment was freaking hilarious.

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     • rcharvet says:

       April 18, 2024 at 4:50 pm

       Yet beautiful at the same time. I mean all the blood, the mud, and the beer, right? Well, according to #45. Wow, the Irish were tough fighters too.

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       April 18, 2024 at 6:29 pm

       Best reply yet

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   • Roy Turrentine says:

     April 18, 2024 at 1:20 pm

     RT:while I accept the idea that Lee was turned back at Gettysburg, I am not so sure there was ever a real path forward for a house divided. War would have followed war in the wake of a divided geography, whether Lee had been successful or not. The peace is always more important than the war, something we learned in the wake of the Second World War, but have apparently forgotten.

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     • retired teacher says:

       April 18, 2024 at 7:52 pm

       Well said, Roy!

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   • FLERP! says:

     April 18, 2024 at 1:51 pm

     I read what you wrote there and I said wow.

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       April 18, 2024 at 1:58 pm

       You clearly could have been a general, FLERP, with insights like that, I mean, what a general, nothing like this general, can you believe it, I look at you, and I say, Wow. A great and beautiful and terrible– some people they read your comments and they call me and they say, Mr. Shepherd, just wow.

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6. leftcoastteacher418 says:

   April 18, 2024 at 9:44 pm

   So glad Jon Stewart is back as the Anchor of honesty. (Yes, capital A.)

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   • Bob Shepherd says:

     April 18, 2024 at 9:51 pm

     A pleasure to read your comments here, leftcoast. Yeah, Stewart is pretty great. He’s up there with a lot of the commenters on this blog.

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7. LG says:

   April 19, 2024 at 7:21 am

   Stewart touches on the involvement of the Western World in drawing up the lines of nations in the Middle East with his usual satire. However, I do find his flip comment about Gaza troubling. Foreign policy is not so cut-and-dry as to take sides as if you agree with all aspects of each side. What’s happening to the people in Gaza is beyond hopeless. There is no good part of this beyond pushing out Hamas with so many desperate actions that cause civilian despair.

   Does anyone have any insight on how the Palestinians justified promoting Hamas as their country’s security force knowing full well they are terrorists who want nothing more than for the eradication of Jews? It’s almost as if they set it up by their own government. Where is the outrage from that?

   Now so many in Gaza are dead or near death, and Netanyahu is determined to drive them from this land.

   This issue is far more complicated than Stewart lets on in that statement, but he seems to be walking the path that many on the far left have chosen—blaming our current administration for the deaths and suffering of Palestinians. It’s far more complicated than simply placing blame and causing a political rift in this country with this over-simplification. Stewart has a big mouthpiece—I fear he is treading the line between keeping Trump out of the White House and encouraging Biden to take a tougher stance on Israel, the effect of which might be siphoning off votes for Biden elsewhere thus handing the victory to Trump. The Palestinian people are running out of time, and so are democracies in the rest of our world. We need to carefully strategize our dissent by considering the context and layers. I KNOW Stewart is much smarter than to give into the rhetoric, but lately, he has disappointed me.

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   • dianeravitch says:

     April 19, 2024 at 1:58 pm

     LG,

     I’ll give you my take though I’m no expert. Since October 7, I read the Israeli publication Haaretz, so I know a little more than what I read in our papers and see on TV. Haaretz is hyper-critical of Netanyahu and the war, as am I. It has excoriated the security services for their lack of readiness on Oct 7.

     I’ll start by saying that October 7 was horrific. Its barbarity was calculated to stimulate an Israeli reaction that would be overwhelming and would lead to massive numbers of deaths of innocents, as it has.

     I pray for peace for both Israelis and Palestinians. I believe there should be two states. I believe there should be cooperation and good relations between them. I believe that the Israeli settlements should be withdrawn from the West Bank.

     What I have learned from my daily reading of Haaretz is that there are multiple Palestinian factions that compete for dominance.

     Fatah and Hamas have strived for years to be the leadership of Palestinians. Fatah was previously led by Yassir Arafat; it’s now led by Mohammad Abbas and is called the Palestinian National Authority. In 2006, Hamas won the legislative elections in the Gaza Strip, and there was a battle between Hamas and Fatah. Hamas drove Fatah out of Gaza and there have been no more elections in Gaza since then.

     Hamas was formed in 1987 with the goal of eliminating the state of Israel. The leading western nations—-the U.S., the EU, Canada, also Australia, NZ, Japan— consider it a terrorist organization.

     Hamas rejected peace plans over the years, because it opposes a two-state solution and is dedicated to the elimination of Israel.

     Netanyahu worked with Hamas because he never wanted a two-state solution. He funneled money to Hamas and approved tacitly of Qatar’s large subsidy of Hamas. He imagined that Hamas would become moderate and commit itself to governing Gaza. Netanyahu liked the status quo, which was and is deeply unjust to the Palestinians.

     Bibi was so complacent that he withdrew troops from the Gaza border.
     Bibi is despised by many Israelis. His government formed a coalition with the most hardline right wingers, the ultra-orthodox whose children are exempt from military service.

     The current situation is intolerable. As sooon as there is an election, Bibi will be ousted. Some think he’s prolonging the war to stay in power.

     So this is the dilemma.

     Israel’s leader is ruthless and mean. His disregard for human life is despicable. Hamas doesn’t want a ceasefire because it knows it’s winning the propaganda war. Hamas is using the people of Gaza for its own purposes. It has never given up its goal of eliminating Israel.

     Bibi must go. Israel needs leadership that seeks peace, not an unjust status quo.

     The world should deal with the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas. Hamas is still a terrorist organization and it’s willing to let hundreds of thousands of Palestinians die rather than accept Israel’s right to exist.

     Hamas has scored a huge propaganda victory in the west by persuading young people that it seeks peace and justice. It does not and never has. When Hamas says “from the river to the sea,” it reiterates its goal: the elimination of Israel.

     It’s time for negotiation, concessions, peace. By both sides. Both sides should come together to assure a stable and just peace.

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     • Catherine King says:

       April 19, 2024 at 3:05 pm

       Diane: thank you for your incisive exploration of the Gaza/Israel conflict. In it, I think I can find my own position on the matter, though less knowledgeable than yours: 

       That is, no two-state solution can EVER exist as long as (1) the doctrine holds that says: “kill all Jews,” regardless; and as long as those who hold that doctrine dear have power, and also regardless of what they call themselves.

       The most despicable thing about it, in my view, is Hamas’ own disregard for the people of Gaza whom they are perfectly willing to sacrifice for any reason, it seems, and especially for the propaganda that the death of children engenders in the world and for people who don’t understand the whole situation well or not at all. (What an utterly twisted way to think.)

       The other concern is that, even with a “two-state solution,” it will not work well or for very long . . . as long as the power structure remains fundamentally theocratic rather than democratic, of some form of it.

       Theocracies are structured “from the top down,” and so at their core the mandate is to speak from and for a different God; and there is no such thing as a ‘two-God solution’ especially when understood in its tribal, rather than civil form<–which at least commonly holds some ecumenical elements of “everyone get along” in it. CBK 

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       April 19, 2024 at 3:26 pm

       Well said, Diane! xoxoxoxo

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     • LG says:

       April 19, 2024 at 9:06 pm

       Thank you for the insight, Diane. I truly wish the mainstream media would cover the entire story instead of making the conflict one side against the other without consideration of the historical victims and oppressors on both sides.

       I still have so many questions.

       I knew about the right-wing orthodox influences in the Israeli government, and that Netanyahu is hellbent on keeping the war going so he can stay in power. I had also heard talk about Netanyahu funding Hamas which I found very hard to believe, however in the light of the notion he shared a similar viewpoint that there should never be a two-state solution, I could be persuaded to believe that he indeed could lend support to that cause. My question is what would Netanyahu think Hamas would agree to, letting Israel take over Gaza completely?

       My biggest concern is this statement: “In 2006, Hamas won the legislative elections in the Gaza Strip, and there was a battle between Hamas and Fatah.” Did not the Palestinian people who voted for Hamas not know who they were? Or were the elections rigged?

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     • dianeravitch says:

       April 19, 2024 at 10:28 pm

       From what I have read, Fatah was corrupt, and the people of Gaza were voting for better government.

       I forgot to mention that Israel withdrew all its forces and dismantled settlements and left Gaza after the 2006 elections. It was very controversial at the time in Israel but Ariel Sharon did it.

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     • LG says:

       April 19, 2024 at 11:04 pm

       So Hamas was the “better” choice? Those folks were indeed doomed.

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     • LG says:

       April 20, 2024 at 4:35 pm

       Ben Cohen from The Banter has a take—he is torn and can see both sides.

       https://open.substack.com/pub/thebanter/p/israel-gaza-and-the-terrible-jewish?r=ottd6&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

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8. Catherine King says:

   April 19, 2024 at 11:38 am

   My heart is gladdened to read such things as this:

   “Finally, [Democrat Jared] Moskowitz proposed “that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene…should be appointed as Vladimir Putin’s Special Envoy to the United States Congress.”

   She’ll have to compete with Trump. But it’s so much better than reading “Rahm” in the same sentence as “ambassador to Japan.” CBK

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   • dianeravitch says:

     April 19, 2024 at 2:01 pm

     Marjorie Taylor Greene must be getting her talking points from the Russian Embassy. I wonder if she could find Ukraine in a map?

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     • Catherine King says:

       April 19, 2024 at 3:08 pm

       Diane: MT Green finding Ukraine on a map. Now that’s funny precisely because it’s probably true. CBK

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     • Bob Shepherd says:

       April 19, 2024 at 3:18 pm

       I have two adopted children, one from Peru and one from Guatemala. Once, when my daughter was about 9, some kid on the bus behind her yelled out, “Hey, go back to Mexico.”

       My daughter leaned over the seat and said, “I am not from Mexico. I am from Peru, but I doubt that you could find that on a map.”

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