Daily Stewart 2010

Daily Stewart lopo

01/12'10 Intro: Instead of a little fight, interviewing John Yoo was like interviewing sand.
01/12'10 "Let me get this straight: The only people that have fully recovered from the financial meltdown, are the ones that caused the financial meltdown.
And by recovered, I mean, apparently, redipping their balls in gold." [...]
Spitzer) "Goldman Sachs will have a profit that we'd estimated about 12 a billion dollars last year. That is precisely what tax payers gave them to help them get bailed out from their AIG exposure. It is all tax dollars."
Stewart) "That's Eliot Spitzer saying we just paid a lot of money for someone to fuck us. How did we get here?! How?! Why?! How did we get to the point where companies that we had to bail out with billions of dollars get to use that money to reward their employees with billions of dollars?
Well, that journey is documented in our new segment 'We Had To!'" [...]
Henry Paulson) "The markets are fragile – we have a serious situation: We're not doing this to protect our financial institutions in and of themselves, we are doing it to protect the financial institutions because that's what is needed to protect the American taxpayer."
Stewart) "Oh right, we had to: We had to give them billions of dollars to save ourselves ... we're so selfish."
01/12'10 "Sodomy promotion is from Satan's Jews."
01/12'10 "I'm getting a crimp. I'm so not understanding this."

01/13'10 The year in preview, Ann Mack's false smile and trends in trendwatching
"Luckily, television news programs have access to experts who can remove the uncertainty for an anxious world."
Brit Hume) "Well, I think terrorism returns as a major political issue this political season."
01/14'10 The Man of God: It's a true story.
Pat Robertson) "And, you know, Kristi, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, 'We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.' True story. And so, the devil said, 'OK, it's a deal.' Ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other."
01/18'10 "If this lady loses, the health-care reform bill that the beloved late senator considered his legacy will die. And the reason it will die ... Let's get deep ... the reason it will die is because if Coakley loses, Democrats will only then have an 18-vote majority in the Senate, which is more than George W. Bush ever had in the Senate when he did whatever the fuck he wanted to do. In fact, the Democrats have a greater majority than the Republicans have had since 1923. But for Democrats apparently a majority of 100 ... is 60. I need my inhaler."

01/25'10 Supreme Corp. "That means our future looks bright."
01/26'10 Michael Scheuer (SJ) & Elizabeth Warren
01/27'10 Ethan Watters – Crazy like us. The Globalization of the American Psyche
"Japan is actually a very sad culture. It embraces sadness [...] almost like a religious state. [...] But when it comes to science behind anti-depressants, it's really quite problematic: Drug companies are creating this science to a huge degree. They are not valuing these drugs but they're creating and marketing the science. Then we get it over to another country, it looks like science, but the truth is that it's much more problematic than that."
01/28'10 "What about the people who watched the speech but found it too straight forward and understandable? Well, there's always CNN. [...]
I've never seen a Situation Room where more information helped me understand less. I'm sorry, you were saying Twitter was fascinating. I've been on Twitter: it's not. But you know what, I'll let you prove it's not ..."

02/01'10 Q & O) Last night, Jon Stewart sat in awe of President Obama's smack down of the GOP during a Q&A session, saying "it's like he's seeing their talking points in bullet time."
Stewart also slammed Fox News for cutting off coverage of the event early: "We're gonna cut away because this is against the narrative that we present."
Faulty Powers – Neo-Catholic Bliar and Goolsbee again – typical Bonesman like the Bushs

02/03'10 Sam Bee) Something puss-related

03/04'10 "OK, I can't wait to hear what that was." "It was a cock." ("five cock-filled chambers")
Olberman) "Bearing witness to the new era of communication, Jon. It is Orwellian, sir. It is Big Brother and Big Brother is none other than each of us. The Bush Administration Warrant-less Wire-tap Search Society at T1 speeds. The Surveillance State, gone viral. At long last, sir, have we no shame?
I think one of us is supposed to take our pants off, now." [...] "I hate Chat Roulette!"
03/04'10 Scott Patterson – The Quants: "Who are 'the quants'? Who are these cats?
Patterson) These are mathematicians, physicists, super geniuses who have figured out, using their math skills and computer skills, ways to price securities in the stock market, make big bets, and unfortunatley frequently cause big blow-ups.
Stewart) So the idea that generally a stock's price would be reflective of a value created by what the company makes, they look at that and thought, 'that's a sucker bet.'
Patterson) Right.
Stewart) Let me create an equation that has no real bearing in that [...]
They're making products out of stocks. Like for instance, if there's a stock from a company, they would take that stock and say, 'let me make that a stock daiquiri of some sort. Just blend it together with other ingredients and then make people drink it.' Do they share these profits with regular people or is it only amongst quants?
Patterson) Well, all of Wall Street is controlled by quants, in my opinion. So everything that people are investing, hedge funds ... hedge funds have pension funds money in them, so the money is being spread around. But I think what people don't understand is that this started decades ago and all these guys, they completely revolutionize the way Wall Street works, using their skills. You would not believe how many physicists are at these banks in hedge funds.
Stewart) Now, doesn't it seem like they are running an express lane?
That there's a Wall Street that is for general traffic, and then there is this express lane where these guys are making billions and billions and billions of dollars and kind of capitalizing gains and then when shit hits the fans, for lack of a better word, socializing their losses amongst the slower lanes.
Patterson) That's what happened on Wall Street, yeah.
Stewart) That doesn't seem fair.
Patterson) The banks, they're run by these guys and they realized that, because Wall Street was implicitly supported by Washington D.C., they could make bigger bets in using this quantitative strategies [...]
They thought they could make bigger bets and they proved to be wrong.
Stewart) Right. True. Here is my favorite thing that they did is, the quants came up with a Hippocratic oath after they started losing a lot of money in 2007 and in 2008 when apparently the stock market began not to defy the laws of gravity. So here's the Hippocratic oath of the quants: 'I will remember that I didn't make the world and it doesn't satisfy my equations.' [...]
Patterson) That goes to the hybris of these guys. They are running so much money when you think about it. You're controlling billions of dollars, you're becoming extremely rich.
These guys are very arrogant because of their intelligence and their wealth.

Stewart) Have they been humbled in any way by what appears to be a world-wide collapse of their strategy?
Patterson) I thought they would be, to be honest, after this happened and I was writing this book but ...
Stewart) They spoke with you for the book while they were winning.
Patterson) Right.
Stewart) And then when it went bad ...
Patterson) They suddenly didn't want to talk much anymore. From what I hear, 'cause these guys don't really talk to me very much anymore, they blame other people and this is endemic in all of Wall Street. Nobody really wants to takes the blame because this thing was so vast and global, really, that everybody can point the finger on somebody else and nobody wants to take responsibility.
Stewart) It seems like a lot of what these guys did was use these mathematical analyses and equations to circumvent the intent of securities law while still obeying the letter of those laws or acting in areas that were unregulated completely.
Patterson) Right. That is definitely one component of what they do in the derivatives world. These swaps, they're basically designed to get around regulations and save the company money and move it over to Greece ...
Stewart) And collapse their economy.
Patterson) Right.
Stewart) They have not been purged. They are back running Wall Street and they now do business in what they themselves call ...
Patterson) High-frequency trading in dark pools – the combination is kind of scary.
Stewart) What's a 'dark pool'?
Patterson) A dark pool is this off-exchange market where stocks trade in the dark. Regulators don't really know what's going on in these dark pools [...]
Stewart) The book is unbelievable and it talks about the real personalities.
And it shows that our money and pension funds is literally being handled be the same people who are like trafficking in stolen amputated gorilla paws like ... It's insanity! And I really hope that the book exposes a great deal of it and that they, I'm sure, figure out an equation to make you disappear, somehow.
Patterson) I think, they're working on that.
Stewart) It's phenomenal and I look forward to see the movie out of it."

03/08'10 Harry Markopolos – No one would listen, A true financial thriller.
Headline 2000: "The world's largest hedge fund is a fraud." ("He received an undergraduate degree in Business Administration from Loyola College in Maryland in 1981 and an M.S. in finance from Boston College in 1997.")
Stewart) "Are you like the MacGuyver of finance? [...]
What now, if the SEC is in bed with Wall Street and no one has been fired, although clearly this was an enormous mistake, who can effect change? What would be the organization? Would it have to be Congress?"
Markopolos) "No, I think it's got to be the American people. You can't trust either party. I think we have to vote them both out of office somehow. [...] Yes, Madoff would have had me killed if he would have figured out that I had a team tracking him across two continents – that was clear. He destroyed thousands of families already. One more wouldn't have made a difference to that man. He's a sociopath."
Mail Mary – "There was a darker side to Mother Teresa. (Beatrice: "I never expected to hear the phrase 'There was a darker side to Mother Teresa' in a non-comedic context.") She didn't really care about peace and she didn't even care about true human suffering. [...] What she primarily was – and she was good at this, with a lot of help – was a PR machine for the Catholic Church. She does not deserve the U.S. post office honoring her on a stamp."

03/09'10 Agent (intelligence officer) Marc Thiessen (journalist, torturer, blatant liar)

05/03'10 Beyond awful – Mary Landrieu) No one has ever claimed, including myself as an unabashed proponent of the industry, that drilling is risk-free. Stewart) No, you never claimed it, you emphatically stated it.
05/06'10 Jason Jones tries to spot illegal immigrants by looking for suspicious behavior on Cinco de Mayo.
05/11'10 God smacked – Christian warriors: "Jesus was the ultimate fighter. When you look at what he had to endure for our sake, he is the ultimate fighter. [...] There is no place for violence in christianity."

06/09'10 Sam Bee) "Men broke the country and now they need the ladies to come in and make it all better. Apparently, last night America, scared and with a poopy in its diaper, cried for its mommy."
06/09'10 Press you're stuck. Are you journalists or are you rushing a sorority?
06/09'10 out of the loop) What happened to Helen Thomas was disgraceful. Even more disgraceful is the current crop of 'journalists' who function as spokespersons for corporate interests.
America no longer is the land of the free and brave, but of the bought and cowed. Like lobbyists, journalists move back and forth between politics and journalism.

06/08'10 Christopher Hitchens – Hitch 22, A Memoir – "I tell you, to be honest, the most idealistic, and brave and committed and intelligent young people I know have joined the armed forces of America and then they're guarding us while we sleep in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere."
Reaganomicon: "Actually, he had already found out he had cancer a few days before this interview, which makes the obituary comments that much more interesting/poignant."

06/16'10 "That's the push we needed." Eight presidents couldn't rid the U.S. of oil addiction

06/17'10 Dr. Peter Lutz on Day 59, Judgment Day – The Strife Aquatic
"So, the marine biologist, the doctor that they say to call in an emergency, is dead, and that's his phone number."
06/17'10 Sam Bee) Holier than Dow – Goldman Sachs, The Constantinian Church and transparency
Uri Man: "In limo on way to Fox studio I'll be on Fox and Friends at 7:45 this morning thanks for tuning in!"

06/22'10 Stanley A. McChrystal – The Runaway General, MMS changes its name – "Are we really that stupid?"
"Blame for the Gulf disaster has been spreading like ... I can't think of an appropriate metaphor right now how it is spreading but one group has inexplicably escaped its fair share of impotent rage."

07/05'10 Michael Steele, the puppet – I nailed it!
"That's the one thing you don't do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan.
This was a war of Obama's choosing.
This is not something that the Unites States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in."
Stewart) "Just focus on this: This is the head of the Republican Party going against one of his party's core principles: blowing shit up in other countries. It's like Jews for Jesus."

07/08'10 Marilynne Robinson – Absence of Mind – believes the quality of science and religion determines the nature of the conversation.
Stewart) I've always been fascinated that the more you delve into science, the more it appears to rely on faith. You know, when they start to speak about the universe as if ... Most of the universe is anti matter. Oh really, where's that? Well, you can't see it. Well, where is it? It's there. Can you measure it? We're working on it. It's a very similar argument to someone who would say God created everything. Well where is he? Well, he's there.
And I'm always struck by the similarity of the arguments at their core.
Robinson) I think you're absolutely right. [...]
Stewart) Is it that the human mind has created these two disciplines, each one sort of equally at the mercy of our limitations?
Robinson) I think that's true. I think it's also true that until quite recently many great scientists like Isaac Newton and so on were profoundly religious people.
The division is something that has come later and I don't think it was even necessary.
Stewart) Do you think it's a political division? One that's used mainly in political purposes?
Because it always feels like it has become now a very volatile conversation because it has political undertones.
Robinson) I think that's true. I think that there are political groups of attached themselves to these two poles.
But I think, it's also true that at this point in time we need the best insights from science and the best insights from religion and that, in fact, the gladiators from both sides are, I think, inferior representatives of both sides, and that's where a lot of the conflicts comes from.

07/20'10 Best leak ever
07/26'10 William Rosen – The Most Powerful Idea in the World

07/28'10 Robert O'Connell – The Ghosts of Cannae
"The one thing about Roman politics is, everybody was military."
07/28'10 Scott Lively – The Pink Swastika
Pastor Lively told Jason Jones, "open homosexuals are distinct from everybody else, men and women, in being exceptionally brutal and savage. [...] Adolf Hitler used homosexual soldiers because they were more savage than natural men. They didn't have the restraint a normal man has. It was easier for them to do some of the terrible things that the Nazis did."
Researching Pastor Lively, I discovered more interesting nuggets about Hitler and his cronies. The initial meeting of what would become the Nazi Party took place in a gay bar. Each young Brownshirt was matched up with a homosexual male adult to initiate him into the league of gay Aryan supermen. So how to explain the extermination of gays by the Third Reich? Pastor Lively has a simple answer. "The Nazis did persecute homosexuals to distract public attention away from their homosexuality."
To be honest, I was shocked at the number of sites recommending The Pink Swastika as well-supported historical fact being suppressed by gay activists and even by the National Holocaust Museum. The book is now in its fourth edition due to nice Christian groups all over the internet plugging it almost as hard as they peddle the Almighty.
Then it started to make me ill. WWJB, people? What would Jesus blog? I'm pretty sure he wouldn't take to the Web in support of a book that advocates murdering homosexuals. I'm not talking about the Nazis this time: I'm referring to Pastor Lively's book, sermons and life's work. So I'd like to let Jason Jones take over and make light of this bizarre yet influential man. [...]
Pastor, you seem to me every bit as brutal and savage as the fantasy you promote as truth. Far be it from me to suggest that you tell this story to the next guy you see with a swastika tattoo. I'm sure he'd enjoy acquainting you with your feminine side. But that wouldn't be very Christian of me, would it? Not that I'm Christian, I'm not. I just have a conscience. Since you most likely believe in an afterlife, though, allow me to paint you a picture. Fire. Brimstone. You, sucking Satan's balls for all eternity. Bon appetit!

09/13'10 Team Jesus, Team Mohammed
09/23'10 Postcards from the pledge, King Abdullah II of Jordan pt 1 and pt 2