Jon Stewart: We’ve finally discovered evidence of Democratic voter fraud Republicans are always complaining about

by on September 7, 2012 29
54sharesFacebook
18tweetsTwitter
1stumbledStumbleUpon
0sharesReddit
2recommendGoogle

Above, Jon Stewart discusses the Democratic Party “vote” on changing the party platform to include language on Jerusalem.  Below, the Republican Jewish Coalition hasn’t wasted any time trying to capitalize off the embarrassment:

RJC090612 PlatformRiftPrintAd

About Adam Horowitz

Adam Horowitz is Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
Posted in American Jewish Community, Israel Lobby, Israel/Palestine, Media, US Politics

{ 29 comments... read them below or add one }

  1. ColinWright says:
    September 7, 2012 at 2:58 pm

    Obviously, it’s a risky game — but I don’t think something this obscure and already so well-trodden is going to cost the Democrats all that many votes.

    On the other hand, it is (thanks to Jon Stewart) going to rub a whole lot of previously unengaged people’s faces into the raw facts of just how pervasive the power of the Israel lobby is.

    So it’s kind of like buying a stock option, it’s risky but potentially very profitable. Just so long as Obama wins anyway…

    • Krauss says:
      September 7, 2012 at 11:20 pm

      On the other hand, it is (thanks to Jon Stewart) going to rub a whole lot of previously unengaged people’s faces into the raw facts of just how pervasive the power of the Israel lobby is.

      Not really. He blamed Fox News. Go figure.

      • Matthew Graber says:
        September 8, 2012 at 4:55 am

        Wha? Wha? He blamed… Fox News?

        That’s right though, he did. Krauss is right, and this is awkward. Fact check on the Daily Show? Though, the whole thing seems so entirely lost, so profoundly obtuse, if we follow Stewart’s logic.

        Can we do a fact check on the Daily Show?

      • ColinWright says:
        September 9, 2012 at 2:43 am

        I don’t think it matters much whether Jon Stewart did or didn’t blame Fox News. I ran this by my wife (who is not as sympathetic to my views on Israel as you might assume) and son.

        What they both took away from it was that Israel supporters had corrupted the democratic process.

    • notatall says:
      September 8, 2012 at 6:05 am

      “Just so long as Obama wins anyway…”

      You’re joking, right? Of what value is antizionism unless it leads you to oppose whichever prozionist is in office?

      • ColinWright says:
        September 9, 2012 at 2:48 am

        notatall says: ““Just so long as Obama wins anyway…”

        You’re joking, right? Of what value is antizionism unless it leads you to oppose whichever prozionist is in office?”

        It matters because if this pro-Zionist doesn’t win, we get a worse pro-Zionist instead. Moreover, we’ll get one who will involve us in a disastrous war with negative consequences for just about everybody.

        Romney says that if he wins, ‘Iran’s going to know there’s a new sheriff in town.’ I believe him.

  2. ColinWright says:
    September 7, 2012 at 3:06 pm

    It occurs to me — given his prominence and his monthly or so jabs — Jon Stewart is probably the deadliest enemy the Israel lobby has.

  3. David Nelson says:
    September 7, 2012 at 3:33 pm

    Jon Stewart: “…the tie goes to the prompter.” love it!

  4. Dexter says:
    September 7, 2012 at 5:41 pm

    In reality, Jon Stewart is super tame on the P-I conflict, but in relation to others in the American media, he looks super progessive. Let’s not be fooled.

    But, hey, at least he’s no scumbag, racist like Bill Maher!

  5. dbroncos says:
    September 7, 2012 at 6:38 pm

    Yesterday afternoon NPR reported on the last minute rail roading of Democratic Party Platform language to include God and Jerusalem. This mornings NPR report cited only the God language as the offending issue. God must be pissed. While he/she is being singled out by NPR as offensive, Jerusalem gets a pass because AIPAC cares more about the “Capital of Israel” than they do about God.

  6. Kathleen says:
    September 7, 2012 at 8:47 pm

    Wondered where the 2/3rd’s came from. Wonder who put that up so quickly? Think it was up when he started? Teleprompter person where are you?

    Stewart “no means no” No steering away from this issue any more for Stewart. The Daily Show has been on it the last couple of years. Before that they would not touch the issue. Welcome changes.

    Think Stewart was that funny as a young person? That man has impeccable timing. No no one can drop a line like that. Well Colbert, Robin Williams, Carlin. Masters of timing.

  7. W.Jones says:
    September 7, 2012 at 10:47 pm

    See, when you add in “God” to anything, it is like the sugar that makes the bad tasty stuff go down. “Oh, you are thinking about conquering North Africa and exploit its riches? Let’s do it for God.” “Oh, you want to debate an undivided Jerusalem? Throw in ‘God’ and how are you going to vote against that?”

    You see, it’s all really about doing what God wants after all because that’s what they put in the byline.

    It’s kind of like the “Stand with Us” posters that claim Pal.s are terrorists and show pictures of Pal. and Isr. kids together. How are you going to argue with that?

    • ColinWright says:
      September 9, 2012 at 4:01 am

      What cracked me up was Fox News (was it Fox News) pointing out that the Republican platform mentioned ‘God’ twelve times while the Democratic platform mentioned Him only once.

      …like God’s keeping score…or that piety is a function of how many times you throw in the word ‘God.’ It was pathetic. It’s impossible to respect any religious sensibility that’s reduced to that.

    • ColinWright says:
      September 9, 2012 at 4:15 am

      W.Jones says: “…See, when you add in “God” to anything, it is like the sugar that makes the bad tasty stuff go down. “Oh, you are thinking about conquering North Africa and exploit its riches? Let’s do it for God.” “Oh, you want to debate an undivided Jerusalem? Throw in ‘God’ and how are you going to vote against that?” ‘

      Well, in general, some praiseworthy and loudly professed aim is always good cover if you’ve got anything especially vile in mind.

      As I recall, King Leopold’s little venture in the Congo was conducted in the guise of a crusade against Arab slaving in the region.

  8. Abdul-Rahman says:
    September 8, 2012 at 6:54 am

    “Israel’s capital since its inception and the center of Jewish life for millennia”

    What a load of garbage and typical humorous Zionist hasbara propaganda. It is especially hilarious that these silly claims even often come out of the mouths of secular Zionists (who are actually similar to the founders of Zionism like Herzl in late 19th century CE Europe who were almost all agnostics or atheists, and had VERY bad relations with most religious Orthodox Jewish groups in Europe at that time, often over the issue of the Jewish Talmud’s “Three Oaths” of Kethuboth 111a and the fact Herzl and company were secular and atheistic which pissed off the religious Jews!) but back on track: by secular Zionists I mean i.e. people who don’t try to justify illegal occupations with claims based on a book with a talking snake, a talking donkey, talking trees, and a “Tower of Babel” supposedly built into the heavens! A book that itself says TEN other nations, specifically the Canaanites and JEBUSITES who founded Jebus, where ALREADY living in Canaan/Palestine before the actual Israelites even showed up. And on “Israelites” some actual facts from real research done into the huge genetic variety of people who self-identified as Jewish (whether religiously or “culturally”, etc)

    pnas.org (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) Bray et al. 2010 “Signatures of founder effects, admixture, and selection in the Ashkenazi Jewish population”

    Geneticist Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin of Tel Aviv University; “The origin of Eastern European Jews revealed by autosomal, sex chromosomal and mtDNA polymorphisms”

    Israeli-American geneticist Eran Elhaik, PhD of John Hopkins University (published August 6, 2012) “The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses”

    And summaries on research into the backgrounds of various Jewish people collected at the website khazaria.com

    As Robert Pollack (quoted by Columbia University noted); “there are no DNA sequences common to all Jews and absent from all non-Jews. There is nothing in the human genome that makes or diagnoses a person as a Jew”

    The links I posted show a huge diversity among people considered Jewish, with many links to Europe (Italy in particular and even more particularly Rome; and geneticist Avshalom Zoossmann-Diskin of Tel Aviv University says this shows among Ashkenazi Jew strong links to being heavily descended from “proselytes” aka converts to Judaism in Rome i.e. making them Italians aka Europeans to start with link to biology-direct.com and link to ncbi.nlm.nih.gov “All these Jews are likely the descendents of proselytes. Conversion to Judaism was common in Rome in the first centuries BC and AD. Judaism gained many followers among all ranks of Roman Society”). And also Caucasus input from the always hotly debated Khazars, and many others groups such as Armenians, Kurds, etc. Not to get into a side issue of certain similarities shown between various Jewish groups (in particular Iraqi and Iranian Jews) and Palestinians and Druze Arabs (scattered around Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon).

    And as for being a “capital”, the only time that Jerusalem is SUPPOSE to have been a “capital” for “Israel” (in this case in the mythological talking snake Bible) is in the times of David and Solomon (putting aside the Canaanites, Jebusites, etc. having been there first even in the Bible tradition!) and you can’t very seriously call this a legitimate “capital” for two main reasons: 1) a capital city is only truly relevant in the context of modern “nationalism” which even wikipedia notes: “In Europe before the development of Nationalism, people were generally loyal to a city or to a particular leader rather than to their nation. Encyclopædia Britannica identifies the movement’s genesis with the late-18th century American Revolution and French Revolution; other historians point specifically to the ultra-nationalist party in France during the French Revolution. The term nationalism was coined by Johann Gottfried Herder (nationalismus) during the late 1770s.” and 2) most legitimate historians either question the very existence of David and Solomon, so much for trying to basis a case upon that to start with!

    And Illene Beatty noted in her work “Arab and Jew in the Land of Canaan”:

    “The extended kingdoms of David and Solomon, on which the Zionists base their territorial demands, endured for only about 73 years…Then it fell apart…[Even] if we allow independence to the entire life of the ancient Jewish kingdoms, from David’s conquest of Canaan in 1000 B.C. to the wiping out of Judah in 586 B.C., we arrive at [only] a 414 year Jewish rule.”
    Source: link to ifamericansknew.org

    The modern day state of Israel illegally occupied East Jerusalem in their illegal, unprovoked Zionist blitzkrieg attack of 1967 (link to arij.org), and this Israeli occupation is ruled illegal under international law and the Israeli regime’s attempts to annex East Jerusalem have always been refuted and condemned as entirely illegal under international law: link to en.wikipedia.org

    • Abdul-Rahman says:
      September 8, 2012 at 7:12 am

      Also to add to this one could seriously argue that the main “center” of the various diverse and different Jewish communities has actually for most of history been VARIOUS DIFFERENT “centerS” (underline the last S) that are as varied as (just some examples): Iraq (i.e. the Babylonian Talmud), Muslim ruled Spain (aka Al-Andalus, where Maimonides lived for most of his life, before he moved and eventually died in Egypt), Ottoman territory such as Istanbul, and many different European centers Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, parts of Russia even during the poverty, injustice, and institutionalized discrimination of the “Pale of Settlement” era, etc and also Caucasus regions like Khazaria link to usatoday.com

      • piotr says:
        September 8, 2012 at 11:46 am

        I do not always believe in God, but when I do He is giving Kana’an to Jews forever. Stay thirsty my friends.

      • ColinWright says:
        September 9, 2012 at 3:06 am

        Abdul-Rahman says: “Also to add to this one could seriously argue that the main “center” of the various diverse and different Jewish communities has actually for most of history been VARIOUS DIFFERENT “centerS” (underline the last S) that are as varied as (just some examples)…”

        I suspect it was this way virtually from the start. Not that it didn’t have antecedents, but something recognizable as Judaism only appears with the Persian conquest of Palestine. Babylon appears virtually simultaneously with Jerusalem as a center of the new religion.

        Moreover, Judaism swiftly appears in Alexandria. While Judaism obviously allots a special place to Palestine in its spiritual geography, I think it would be as reasonable to see Judaism as primarily a faith of dispersed urban centers almost from the start. Indeed, the conflict between Christ and the ‘priests of the temple’ has been interpreted as a clash between rural heresy and the orthodoxy practiced in the urban center.

        Certainly and whatever the claims of the Bible, I see no reason to see Judaism proper as a faith practiced by all Palestinians and only by Palestinians. I KNOW that it was never practiced by all Palestinians, and I’m suspicious of the assumption that it was ever practiced only by Palestinians. I’d put money on it having been an international, primarily urban religion virtually from the time it first emerged as something any Jew of today would recognize as ‘Judaism.’

  9. eGuard says:
    September 8, 2012 at 9:48 am

    The flyer also has the “NWC” logo (National Women’s Committee of the Republican Jewish Coalition). Can someone explain that?

    link to rjchq.org

  10. Accentitude says:
    September 9, 2012 at 1:55 am

    “…the city that’s been Israel’s capital since its inception…” Are we talking since Jerusalem’s inception (I call B.S. on that) or since Israel’s inception (Jerusalem was, is and will always be a part of the WEST BANK)?

    • ColinWright says:
      September 9, 2012 at 4:20 am

      Technically, Jerusalem was supposed be an international city under UN auspices for at least ten years — after which the inhabitants themselves would vote on their future.

      The idea’s been dismissed as fruity, but actually, Danzig was run on a similar basis between the wars, and Tangier was an international city for aeons. It can work.

      Things promptly went south in 1948, of course — but no, there’s never been any legal basis for Jerusalem being part of Israel at all, much less her capital.

  11. DICKERSON3870 says:
    September 9, 2012 at 2:28 am

    RE: “Above, Jon Stewart discusses the Democratic Party “vote” on changing the party platform to include language on Jerusalem. Below, the Republican Jewish Coalition hasn’t wasted any time trying to capitalize off the embarrassment . . .” ~ Adam Horowitz

    FROM Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com, 9/05/12:

    [EXCERPT] “. . . And while the Republicans were chastising Democrats for not having that language in their platform in the first place, it was eventually discovered, because apparently they didn’t check first, that the Republican platform did the same thing, removing a 2008 promise to endorse Jerusalem as the “undivided capital” as well as removing a promise to move the embassy. . . “

    SOURCE – link to news.antiwar.com

    P.S. FROM THE 2012 GOP PLATFORM:

    • Our Unequivocal Support of Israel
    Israel and the United States are part of the great fellowship of democracies who speak the same language of freedom and justice, and the right of every person to live in peace. The security of Israel is in the vital national security interest of the United States; our alliance is based not only on shared interests, but also shared values. We affirm our unequivocal commitment to Israel’s security and will ensure that it maintains a qualitative edge in military technology over any potential adversaries. We support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with secure, defensible borders; and we envision two democratic states – Israel with Jerusalem as its capital and Palestine – living in peace and security. For that to happen, the Palestinian people must support leaders who reject terror, embrace the institutions and ethos of democracy, and respect the rule of law. We call on Arab governments throughout the region to help advance that goal. Israel should not be expected to negotiate with entities pledged to her destruction. We call on the new government in Egypt to fully uphold its peace treaty with Israel.
    The U.S. seeks a comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East, negotiated between the parties themselves with the assistance of the U.S., without the imposition of an artificial timetable. Essential to that process will be a just, fair, and realistic framework for dealing with the issues that can be settled on the basis of mutually agreed changes reflecting today’s realities as well as tomorrow’s hopes.

    SOURCE – link to whitehouse12.com

  12. ColinWright says:
    September 9, 2012 at 4:25 am

    Is it totally coincidental that that eagle in the bottom right hand corner looks singularly mechanistic and cruel?

    I think that you can read things into things like that — and often, you’re surprisingly right. That bird looks more interested in prey than freedom.

  13. lysias says:
    September 11, 2012 at 5:15 pm

    Justin Raimondo’s take on this convention outrage is worth a read: That Villaraigosa Moment: Debunking the myth of American democracy:

    No one believed the vote on the “God and Jerusalem” wording in the Democratic platform was conducted fairly or democratically: a two-thirds vote was required to restore the deleted words and that clearly — and audibly — didn’t happen. Neither the audience nor the news media was convinced by Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s ruling that the amendment passed. But no matter. As he told the Los Angeles Times, the Mayor has the good opinion of those who really count:

    “I can tell you this — the president of the United States said, ‘Wow.’ The president said, ‘You showed why you were speaker of the California Assembly. The president, the vice president, Mrs. Obama, all of them acknowledged the decisive way I handled that.’”

    Democracy shemocracy! Who cares when the Supreme Leader claps you on the back and congratulates you for a job well done? In that Villaraigosa moment, the true contours of power in the world’s greatest democracy were revealed.

    The little people — i.e. the delegates, the voters, and those who have stopped voting for precisely this reason — are irrelevant pawns, to be moved about the chessboard by these giants.

    “It was a lot of ado about nothing,” said Villaraigosa, misquoting and well as misusing Shakespeare:

    “When reporters told him after the vote that they did not clearly hear two-thirds support, he responded, ‘That’s nice to know. I was the chairman and I did, and that was the prerogative of the chair.’”