Lincoln Madison

Jon Stewart’s guest on tonight’s Daily Show was the Fox Business Channel’s own Lou Dobbs. They talked about capitalism, democracy, Occupy Wall Street, and Republican primaries. Embedded video and a complete transcript of the extended interview follow, after the fold.
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Labels: transcript

The bulk of the media attention to last week's local election in San Francisco has been directed at the mayoral race — the first competitive contest under both public financing and ranked-choice voting (RCV). However, digging a bit beneath the surface of the election of the District Attorney sheds some light on how RCV played out. I was able to download the entirety of the ballots from a public website. To be clear, I cannot tell how a specific person voted; however, I can tell you exactly how many people voted for Bill Fazio in 1st place, George Gascón in 2nd place, and David Onek in 3rd place: 1,055. I can also tell you that the progressives who supported the ticket of Onek–Bock–Fazio (recommended by the San Francisco Bay Guardian/sfbg.com and others) had the unintended effect of helping George Gascón to an easy win. Although she was the second choice of the "anybody but Gascón" crowd, Sharmin Bock's core supporters clearly were not fully on board with the concept.

An important caveat is that the data I downloaded were preliminary results, and do not include the last 2,603 ballots (1.39%) to be processed.

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Labels: Analysis, Election 2011, Number Crunching, San Francisco

Bill Clinton was the featured guest on tonight's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. The extended interview is in 3 segments, embedded video below, with the transcript of part 1 after the jump. Parts 2 and 3 of the transcript will be added tomorrow. Update: transcript of all 3 segments completed.

Copyright ©2011 Comedy Central, all rights reserved. Transcript presented under "fair use" in the furtherance of political discourse.
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Labels: transcript

Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly was the guest on tonight's Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The embedded video and transcript appear after the fold. (Update: complete transcript of Part 1 [as aired on Comedy Central] and Part 2 [web extra from TheDailyShow.com])

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Labels: transcript

I only just saw last Wednesday's Daily Show, with Jon Stewart's slam of the Fox News coverage of the invitation for the rapper Common to perform at the White House. Since I didn't find this gem transcribed, here's the conclusion:
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Labels: transcript

Jon Stewart on Wednesday (2011-05-04) had one of his most controversial guests ever, David Barton, a fundamentalist Christian who is trying to reclaim some of the "forgotten" history of the United States, and pass along that message to children through their textbooks and curricula. Barton is the darling of the Fox News crowd, and highly praised by the likes of Mike Huckabee and Michele Bachmann, but much less highly regarded by history scholars — people with actual advanced degrees in history — and many educators. The interview as aired on Wednesday's program is about 8 minutes, but the entire interview is available through TheDailyShow.com; the embedded video clips and the full transcript, followed by some commentary and links to sites debunking Barton's historical narrative, appear below the fold. The full interview is broken into five segments, and totals about 40 minutes.

Comedy Central/Comedy Partners owns the copyright to this material, which is presented here under "Fair Use" in the interest of furthering political discourse.
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Labels: transcript

2011-04-06: Former governor Mike Huckabee (R–AR) did an extended interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The full transcript with embedded video links follows after the fold.


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Labels: transcript

This is a quick transcript of the full extended interview of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 2011-02-23. The embedded video is in three segments, totaling just over half an hour.

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Tonight's blog entry is entirely personal. I'm not writing about politics or transcribing somebody else's interview that I thought was important. You might say that I'm bragging on myself in this piece, but I'd say I earned it, because tonight I Did The Right Thing (IDTRT).

I was walking back to Muni at the end of my evening when I saw three people on the sidewalk ahead of me, arguing. I heard what sounded like the man shoving one of the women against the metal cover over a shopfront. I walked around on the other side of the row of parked cars, assessing the situation, and then heard the woman scream, "Give me my purse! Give me my purse!" I found an inconspicuous place from which to observe the altercation and call 911, but did not intervene directly because there did not appear to be any immediate danger of bodily harm. At some point, though, the man noticed me standing there, talking on my cellphone, and he walked off, dropping the woman's bag on the sidewalk. I followed from a safe distance, about 20 or 30 meters back — close enough not to lose him, but not close enough to be in his space. The last time I ran that hard, I was trying to catch the driver that did a hit-and-run on my car. I kept the 911 dispatcher informed of our movements, but before the SFPD found us, I happened upon two UCSF patrol cars. I shouted, "Help! Police! Help!" and the police officers detained the suspect. I am told they also found the woman and got her account of the whole scenario.

It's been over an hour and a half, and my heart is only now slowing back to normal. I was so out of it that I spaced right through my Muni station, and just barely caught the last train back. Wow.

Labels: personal

President Barack Obama was the special guest for the entirety of tonight's Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. The full transcript follows below the fold, along with embedded video clips. The interview is in three segments.
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Well, yes, that would be Lawrence "No Relation" O'Donnell on MSNBC, on his new show The Last Word (10pm E/7pm P), remarking on Sarah Palin's interview on NewsMax.com, in which the ex-gov showed off her knowledge of foreign policy and social issues. I've got a link to the original Palin interview and video link and transcript of the MSNBC clip, below the fold. The "share" link from MSNBC.com came with this introduction:

Lawrence [O'Donnell] and Sarah Palin agree?

It's shocking, we know. The former governor of Alaska makes a strong statement on the separation of church and state, earns herself the Last Word re-write.

My own comments follow at the very end.
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King Abdullah II of Jordan was on Comedy Central's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, discussing the current Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the future of the region in an extended interview. Embedded video clips and a full transcript follow below the fold.
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Labels: transcript

Jon Stewart's guest on last night's Daily Show was Dick Armey, a Republican Congressman from Texas who served as House Majority Leader and who was one of the authors of the 1994 "Contract with America." Armey is now heading up FreedomWorks, a conservative political group. He has also been promoting himself as a leader of the Tea Party movement.

The interview as broadcast was about 7 minutes long, but the full, unedited interview is available from The Daily Show website. The embedded video clips (in 3 parts) and the full transcript appear below the fold.

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Labels: transcript

I was just watching tonight's The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, specifically her excellent coverage of the latest in the scandal of the ACORN "pimp" videos fabricated by right-wing media darling James O'Keefe. Remember those videos Fox News (and others) kept running that showed a guy dressed as a fur-lined caricature of a pimp, going into an ACORN office and asking how to smuggle 13-year-olds into the country to use as child prostitutes? Yeah, totally fake, as it turns out. ACORN did absolutely nothing wrong, if you watch the unedited footage, and was repeatedly cleared of any wrongdoing by multiple federal, state, and local official investigations. The joke may yet be on O'Keefe, although ACORN is unable to laugh from beyond the grave. O'Keefe's own videos, both the edited and unedited versions, are prima facie evidence that O'Keefe appears to have violated California Penal Code, Section 632. O'Keefe is now being sued by Juan Carlos Vera, the San Diego Acorn employee shown in one especially fake-damning section of O'Keefe's fake video.
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