Jon Stewart endorses Kerry
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| Thu, 10-14-2004 - 11:30pm |
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Comedian Jon Stewart, whose nightly cable television show is popular with the young voters considered key in the upcoming presidential election, said on Thursday he prefers Democrat John Kerry over Republican President Bush.
"It looks like Kerry," said Stewart, host of "The Daily Show," a satirical late-night review of politics on Viacom Inc.-owned cable channel Comedy Central. "I would be stunned if something happened to change my mind."
He called the U.S.-led war in Iraq a "mistake" and said he failed to understand the "Bush doctrine" of preemptive strikes against perceived security threats.
"If one guy drove me into a ditch and said, 'Don't worry, I know how to get us out of this,' I'd give the keys to a 7-year-old," Stewart said during a media event sponsored by Syracuse University's Newhouse School.
Stewart's no-holds-barred lambasting of the U.S. political scene has won him a strong following, particularly among young male voters coveted by both parties in the tight presidential race.
The Emmy-award winning "Daily Show" is a regular stop for politicians on the campaign trail, including Kerry, and its "Indecision 2004" coverage of the presidential race has become a must-see for twenty- and thirty-something voters.
Stewart roasted both candidates for their repetitive stumping during their final public debate.
"I thought both men took rhetoric to another level," he said, adding that Bush appeared "well coached."
"He wasn't the angry Bush of the second debate or the retarded Bush from the first," Stewart said.
Stewart also took aim at the mainstream U.S. media -- which he mocks regularly -- and said it fails to take politicians or big business to task.
"The press has bravely and nobly eroded the public trust," he said. "What I'm advocating is the media come back and work for us again. ... The bias of the media is not liberal. It's lazy and sensationalist."
Reuters/VNU
Reuters
Oct 14 2004 7:40PM

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Remember our conversation about using only biased sources for your information?
Also, please note what type of program you are using for your political information:
""It looks like Kerry," said Stewart, host of "The Daily Show," a satirical late-night review of politics on Viacom Inc.-owned cable channel Comedy Central."
Not even a good try. Nowhere did I say Stewart's show had anything to do with Hollyweird. I used a reference to another segment of the entertainment industry to say big deal.
Big deal. Save your weak attempt at rebuttal for more important issues.
I see.
"Remember our conversation about using only biased sources for your information?
Also, please note what type of program you are using for your political information"
Please explain to me why so many of us insist on riding the"bias train".
Bev
I started a topic a few days ago about all the prominent people who are either endorsing Kerry or speaking out in unprecented numbers against Bush, Nobel prize winners, scientists, etc. I didn't get much response. I'll summarize it here, are these people unbiased enough?
Let's see, the list includes;
Pope John Paul II, urged Bush not to attack Iraq, & after he did, urged Bush to give "new impetus" to cooperation with Europe. Saying "A fuller and deeper understanding between the United States of America and Europe will surely play a decisive role in resolving the great problems which I have mentioned, as well as so many others confronted by humanity today,".
Walter Cronkite,
John Eisenhower, son of President Dwight D. Eisenhower,
John A. Galbraith, served 20 years in the Ohio General Assembly as a Republican.
60 scientists & 20 Nodel laureates from the Union of Concerned Scientists,
Dr. Kurt Gottfried, an emeritus professor of physics at Cornell University,
Russell Train, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford,
62 preeminent scientists including Nobel laureates, National Medal of Science recipients, former senior advisers to administrations of both parties, numerous members of the National Academy of Sciences, and other well-known researchers released a statement titled Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policy Making, opposing Bush's policies,
10 Nobel Prize-winning economists, The endorsement, in the form of an open letter American voters, was signed by George Akerlof and Daniel McFadden of the University of California at Berkeley, Kenneth Arrow and William Sharpe of Stanford University, Daniel Kahneman of Princeton University, Lawrence Klein of the University of Pennsylvania, Douglass North of Washington University, Paul Samuelson and Robert Solow of MIT and Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University.
George A. Akerlof, 2001 Nobel prize laureate who teaches economics at the University of California in Berkeley.
Three Nobel Laureates, including atomic pioneer Hans Bethe, today released a statement condemning the Bush Administration's Nuclear Posture Review.
Hans A. Bethe, one of the original Manhattan Project scientists and a 1967 Nobel Laureate in Physics;
Dudley Herschbach, 1986 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry; and
John C. Polanyi, also a 1986 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.
48 Nobel Laureates have signed a letter endorsing Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry for president. Peter Agre spent 2003 lecturing at colleges and universities about his Nobel Prize-winning work. This year, the professor at Johns Hopkins University is spending his time travelling the country talking about politics. He says he hopes such lectures will help the public understand that many of the nation's leading scientists are not happy with the current administration.
Eighty Nobel laureates were among those who signed a letter to President Bush urging funding for research on human embryo cells.
Kenneth J. Arrow*, Stanford University
Julius Axelrod*, National Institute of Mental Health, Education & Welfare
Baruj Benacerraf*, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
Paul Berg*, Stanford University
J. Michael Bishop*, University of California, San Francisco
Nicolaas Bloembergen*, Harvard University
Herbert C. Brown*, Purdue University
Jose Cibelli, Advanced Cell Technology
Stanley Cohen*, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine
Leon N. Cooper*, Brown University
E. J. Corey*, Harvard University
James W. Cronin*, University of Chicago
Robert Curl, Jr.*, Rice University
Peter Doherty*, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Johann Deisenhofer*, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Reneto Dulbecco*, Salk Institute
Edmond H. Fischer*, University of Washington
Val L. Fitch*, Princeton University
Robert Fogel*, University of Chicago
Jerome I. Friedman*, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Milton Friedman*, Hoover Institute
Robert F. Furchgott*, State University of New York Health Sciences Center
Murray Gell-Mann*, Santa Fe, NM
Walter Gilbert*, Harvard University
Alfred Gilman*, University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center
Donald Glaser*, University of California, Berkeley
Sheldon Lee Glashow*, Boston University
Ronald M. Green, Dartmouth College
Paul Greengard*, The Rockefeller University
Roger Guillemin*, The Salk Institute
Leonard Hayflick, University of California, San Francisco
Herbert A. Hauptman*, Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research
James J. Heckman*, University of Chicago
Alan Heeger*, University of California, Santa Barbara
Dudley Herschbach*, Harvard Medical School
David H. Hubel*, Harvard Medical School
Russell Hulse*, Plasma Physics Laboratory
Eric Kandel*, Columbia University
Jerome Karle*, Washington, D.C.
Lawrence R. Klein*, University of Pennsylvania
Walter Kohn*, University of California, Santa Barbara
Arthur Kornberg*, Stanford University School of Medicine
Edwin G. Krebs*, University of Washington
Robert P. Lanza+, Advanced Cell Technology
Robert Laughlin*, Stanford University
Leon Lederman*, Illinois Institute of Technology
David M. Lee*, Cornell University
Edward Lewis*, California Institute of Technology
William Lipscomb, Jr.*, Harvard University
Rudolph A. Marcus*, California Institute of Technology
Daniel McFadden*, University of California, Berkeley
R. Bruce Merrifield*, The Rockefeller University
Robert Merton*, Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration
Franco Modigliani*, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Mario J. Molina*, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ferid Murad*, University of Texas Medical School
Marshall W. Nirenberg*, NIH National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute
Douglass C. North*, Washington University
George A. Olah*, University of Southern California
Douglas Osheroff*, Stanford University
George E. Palade*, University of California, San Diego
Martin Perl*, Stanford University
Norman F. Ramsey*, Harvard University
Burton Richter*, Stanford University
Richard J. Roberts*, New England Biolabs
Paul A. Samuelson*, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Melvin Schwartz*, Columbia University
Phillip A. Sharp*, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Richard E. Smalley*, Rice University
Hamilton O. Smith*, Celera Genomics
Robert M. Solow*, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Horst Stormer*, Columbia University
Henry Taube*, Stanford University
Richard Taylor*, Stanford University
E. Donnall Thomas*, University of Washington
James Tobin*, Yale University
Susumu Tonegawa*, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Charles Townes*, University of California, Berkeley
James D. Watson*, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Steven Weinberg*, University of Texas
Thomas H. Weller*, Harvard School of Public Health
Michael D. West+, Advanced Cell Technology
Eric F. Wieschaus*, Princeton University
Torsten N. Wiesel*, The Rockefeller University
Robert W. Wilson*, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
A letter of resignation was submitted on Feb. 27, 2002, by Eric Schaeffer, head of the U.S. EPA's Office of Regulatory Enforcement, to protest White House and Energy Department attempts to weaken federal clean air policy.
Bush's Cultural Advisers Resign over Looting of Iraq Museum. Three members of a US presidential panel on cultural property stepped down this week in protest over the failure of US forces to prevent the massive looting of Baghdad's antiquities museum.
Martin Sullivan said he was resigning as chairman of the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property, a position hehad held since 1995. Two other panel members, Richard S. Lanier and Gary Vikan, also resigned because of the looting of the museum. They criticized the Bush administration of lacking sensitivity and forethought regarding the loss of cultural treasures.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has faced a steady exodus of counterterrorism officials, many disappointed by a preoccupation with Iraq they said undermined the U.S. fight against terrorism. Former counterterrorism officials said at least half a dozen have left the White House Office for Combating Terrorism or related agencies in frustration in the 2 1/2 years since the attacks. Rand Beers, a former No. 2 in the office who quit last year over the administration's handling of the war on terrorism. Roger Cressey left the office in November 2001.
Edited 10/18/2004 12:49 pm ET ET by allianor
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