Daily Show: GSA’s lame trinkets ‘a disgrace to corruption’
April 6th, 2012 | General Services Administration | Posted by Stephen Losey
Last night, the Daily Show’s Jon Stewart weighed in on the General Services Administration’s conference spending scandal and zeroed in on what may be its most appalling angle: The sheer lameness of the crap GSA bought with $822,000 in taxpayer dollars. Said an outraged Stewart:
Canteens, clowns and bicycles? You’re in Vegas! Unless those canteens were filled with cocaine [...], you are a disgrace to corruption everywhere. I think I’m less upset about the waste of money than I am with the waste of opportunity.
[...] Yearbooks! They got yearbooks! The people in government known for efficiency and cost-cutting made sure they had physical evidence of the boondoggle they had in Vegas.
Stewart then shows a mock yearbook photo of former GSA Administrator Martha Johnson and dubbed her “Most likely to resign over an event that betrays an almost comical misunderstanding of the agency’s mission.”
The language, though bleeped, gets pretty salty at times, so be warned.
Tags: conference, Daily Show, Friday Fun, Jon Stewart, Las Vegas, scandal
Deficit reduction, Daily Show-style
February 17th, 2011 | 2012 Budget | Posted by Stephen Losey
Not even the Jeopardy-winning supercomputer can save us now.
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart last night turned his satirical guns on the 2012 budget and the vast amounts of political posturing now going on. He drew blood several times, particularly with this line:
Now, the trick is to get [the budget] to vastly increase the deficit while still giving Americans the shoddy and indifferent government bureaucracy we’ve come to expect — or at least be numb to.
Stewart then put on his green eyeshade and took a stab at sorting out the nation’s debt crisis. It didn’t take long for him to get to the heart of why we’re in such a mess and start screaming hysterically for the IBM supercomputer that just mopped the floor on Jeopardy.
Oh, so we can only cut from 12 percent of the budget? All right, well, 12 percent of $3.7 trillion is $440 billion. So here’s what we need to do: We need to get $1.1 trillion of spending cuts out of $440 billion. So I’m just going to very quickly…um…WATSON!!! WATSON!!!
“Resident expert” John Hodgman then followed up with some innovative deficit reduction plans like turning the five-sided Pentagon building into a more-menacing rhombus, taxing political cliches, and legalizing “it.” No, you hippies, not marijuana. Murder. Under the Hodgman plan, the last person alive gets all the Social Security benefits.
Tags: Daily Show, deficit reduction, fun
Shirley Sherrod responsible for global warming too?
July 27th, 2010 | Agriculture | Posted by Stephen Losey
The Daily Show returned from vacation last night and weighed in on the Shirley Sherrod foofaraw. Jon Stewart, as always, gave the whole absurd episode the gravitas it required by editing the video of her speech to make it look like she was admitting to ruining the environment (the gold-plated Air Force One and alpaca fighting ring were also particularly nice touches).
Stephen Colbert then took it one step further by splicing Mel Gibson’s latest racist and very NSFW rant into a quote from White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. But why should Stewart, Colbert and Andrew Breitbart have all the fun of twisting government officials’ words? With some simple editing software, you too can make it seem like Sherrod is admitting to almost anything.
FedLine readers, what do you say we create our first Internet meme? The full video of Sherrod’s speech can be found at this link. Make your own Shirley Sherrod mashup, and post the link to your video in the comment section below! (The more ridiculous, the better. But please, try to keep some semblance of taste. This is a family blog, after all.)
(Sherrod, by the way, told CBS today she is still considering Secretary Tom Vilsack’s olive branch-slash-job offer. But given how quickly and drastically her fortunes turned last week, if she holds out, she could probably have Vilsack’s job by mid-August.)
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Lost in Race | ||||
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Tags: Andrew Breitbart, Daily Show, fun, meme, Shirley Sherrod, Stephen Colbert
The L’Enfant Plaza Code
March 10th, 2010 | Postal Service | Posted by Stephen Losey
In another outstanding piece of investigative journalism, the Daily Show’s Jason Jones uncovers the vast conspiracy linking the U.S. Postal Service, the Catholic Church, and Reservoir Dogs star Harvey Keitel. Read between the lines, people.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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Tags: conspiracy, Daily Show, fun, Postal Service
Orszag had Jon Stewart at ‘Good morning’
January 8th, 2010 | OMB | Posted by Stephen Losey
In case you haven’t heard, White House budget director Peter Orszag’s home life just got a lot more complicated. For the appropriate — and always tasteful — analysis on Orszag’s “magnetic machismo,” we turn it over to Jon Stewart and his crack staff at the Daily Show.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Peter Orszag Sex Scandal | ||||
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Tags: Daily Show, Jon Stewart, OMB, OMG, Peter Orszag
In case you missed it: Federal Times on the Daily Show
January 15th, 2009 | Postal Service | Posted by Steve Watkins
Back in November, Gregg wrote about the potential for a bailout of the Postal Service, which had a $2.8 billion shortfall last year. Well someone has finally taken notice. And that someone is Lewis Black of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Federal Times does not endorse the views of Lewis Black, but we are a little excited about the screen time on the Daily Show.
The Daily Show With Jon StewartM – Th 11p / 10c
Tags: bailout, Daily Show, fun, Lewis Black