by INFORUM
Thousands drawn to Stewart-Colbert ‘sanity’ rally
October 30, 2010 at 4:41 am in INFORUM
WASHINGTON (AP) A ‘sanity’ rally blending laughs and political activism drew thousands to the National Mall on Saturday, with comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert as the unlikely maestros of moderation and civility in polarized times.
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Restoring Honor was a sane event?
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Maybe a protester can get her head stomped on to make it look more like a Tea Party rally for you. That’s much more sane. LOL
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The point of this rally is that the current political atmosphere had degraded into namecalling, fear-mongering, and pointless rhetoric. It’s promoting the idea that Americans can disagree without being disagreeable; that we can debate using reason and civil discourse. The current political climate is not good for the country and we Americans need to do better.
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I can’t give you more than one thumbs up, but add a hundred or so.
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Kerry, incredibly well said— you need to get into politics.
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Well spoken, coherent, logical people have no place in politics
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Nice post Kerry but the political climate is nothing compared to the insults, mud slinging and character assassination that our country’s past elections have seen. Jefferson was accused of having several mistresses, Lincoln was accused of being retarded and James Buchanan was accused of being a homosexual. I don’t think accusing someone of voting for an unpopular health care plan even comes close to what we have seen in the past. It you want them all to get along I have to ask why. Don’t you want your representatives to fight for their beliefs instead of compromising away their principals? If you really think it is that bad I suggest you watch C-SPAN when they televise the British Parliament and you will get a quick education into what real civil discourse is. This rally was a nice show with lots of humor but in the end that’s all it was, a show in which the two got a lot of nice publicity, but it will never change the political strife out of which the foundation of our democracy is formed.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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in all fairness, jefferson did have several slave mistresses
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So did 1/2 of all the other slave owners in the country. Sexual victimization was very common to those in bondage.
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What’s wrong with being unsatisfied with the current political election climate? Do we really want to hold ourselves to standards applied to other countries, like the UK? I think we can still strive to improve how the election process works.
A great number of people have expressed dissatisfaction with how campaigns are ran. I don’t see why we should stop expressing those opinions just because “it’s worse in other times and places”
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For those interested, the rally can be viewed online at http://www.cnn.com/live and on Comedy Central beginning at 11 a.m. Central. Both Stewart and Colbert do such a great job in all they do, it should be a fun and entertaining event.
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Yea Kerry, kind of funny that the 1st post in this thread is already an example of the namecalling you speak of. Didn’t need to look far for an example.
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I wish we could move past namecalling. I’ve even gotten after people I agree with just for using the term “teabagger”. Yes, it was funny for about 5 minutes, but it’s gotten worn out and is just as bad, IMO, as the names we left-leaners get called.
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In all fairness the Tea Party coined the nickname themselves. I’m not going to feel sorry for their idiocy after the fact that they realize they nicknamed themselves something they now see as derogatory.
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Stewart/Colbert 2012 !
Just imagine if they ran as a ticket. They’d mock any ads ran against them. They don’t have political liabilities, as they can make the claim that they were satiring anything/everything!
Priceless.
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Imagine if they WON! Stranger things have happened in politics.
They might put the professional politicians to shame!
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“They don’t have political liabilities, as they can make the claim that they were satiring anything/everything!”
Yeah, but then they’d just get accused of stealing Glenn Beck’s schtick.
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Glenn Beck’s Rally had a lot more comedians, although they probably thought they were being serious.
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Good one, Sioux Fan 68. See, we can pick on another party without being mean.
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I liked the atmosphere of that rally. All the (simulated) head to head arguing was on the stage and the crowd was just having a good time. Some of the signs were pretty funny, too.
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I particularily liked the one that said, “God loves gays and Mexicans”. Closely followed by, “I’m frightened, and I don’t know of what!”
And the Cat Stevens/Ozzie sketch was a hoot!
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Never, ever try to use sarcasm here. It never works. People come here ready for a fight and it skews their vision. IMHO.
Although, I gotta admit…that one was so outrageous that I thought for sure they’d get it.
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Homo-geneous? Don’t you mean homo-GENIUS?!?!? This is fun! Kevin, you’re an idiot. That was fun, too.!
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I’d suppose because they represent a real cross section of America. Not a TP bunch, not a town hall bunch, just ‘regular’ Americans.
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A real cross section of America? I do hope you are joking. A poll of the attendees to the rally revealed that 93% planned to vote Democrat in the upcoming election, and 1% planned to vote republican. If the result turns out somewhere close to that on Election day, I’ll concede the point.
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I certainly hope that doesn’t indicate that it’s only Democrats that value sanity over fear and anger.
Personally, I would have expected there to be about an equal mix cuz, I believe the average Republican isn’t really happy with extremes either.
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I’m watching the rally right now (DVR’d it so I could go for a bike ride). Very well done. The most reasonable-seeming man in America – Sam Waterston reading Colbert’s “Best poem ever written” about fear. I can’t wait for the Ozzie/Yusif song I’ve heard about. .. oh … here it is…
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Funny … Stewart has Yusuf sing Peace Train and Colbert counters with Crazy Train … OZZIE! The Prince of Darkness baby! Sweet.
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Two of my favorite musicians, no less. And to see them walk off in disgust, arm in arm, because of the simulated arguement between the cons and the libs was a treat!
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Jon Stewart is smart, witty, funny, and is an excellent interviewer and political satirist. A good singer he is not.
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Colbert actually wasn’t too bad though =)
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Definitely would be a great time. Too bad so close to Halloween and didn’t have the heart to tell the kids i would miss trick or treat for it.
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I’m jealous because two of my friends got to go. They’ve been updating on Facebook and it looks like a great time.
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I wish I could have gone! Looks like they are having a great time. I hope it makes people stop and realize that we should laugh at ourselves and “chill” a little bit.
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You’re right.
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Looks like Stewart/Colbert beat Beck/Palin 215,000 to 87,000.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20021284-503544.html
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I wonder what the television/internet viewership came to?
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I’m going to follow the leadership of our great and wise President, the great unifier…if we disagee politically then we are enemies. ‘We’re going to punish our enemies and we’re going to reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,” Barrack Obama 26 Oct 2010. “A Republican majority in Congress would mean hand-to-hand combat,” Obama 6 Oct 2010.
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Well we know who drinks the Rush koolaid now. You forgot to listen (or more likely conveniently leaving out) the whole 2 weeks beforehand when he raged about the Republicans making sure they do nothing to work together with the Democrats on ANY policy.
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Loved the sign “I don’t agree with you but I’m pretty sure you’re not Hitler” and “You’re on the right, you’re on the left and I’m stuck in the middle.”
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Raven66-can you imagine if a conservative said this? This President has a great opportunity to unite the country in the race area. He has shown he is a community organizer and his power is based on division. Just like other shakedown artists like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, President Obama cannot resist a “crisis or conflict” to further divide the country.
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irony? You do realize Obama made that statement to hispanics concerning immigration reform right? If the republicans would be willing to work on something other than “zomg deport them all” or “put up a bigger fence than the last $250 billion failure of a fence that can be climbed over and only covers a fraction of the border” he may think they are willing to come to some sort of compromise. I suppose the Obama and the Hispanics should look to the right and take those suggestions to heart as avenues to “unite the country in the race area” as you stated. I’m sure the Hispanics are jumping to the Republican side by the boatload now.
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Hate to break up your liberal lovefest…but isn’t Cat Stevens AKA..something else…on the FBI terrorist watch list?? Also heard…on CNN I think…that he was not welcome to travel to the USA. So now is it he is now in this big comedy routine?
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While not always a totally reliable source for info, I believe this link will clear that up for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens — About halfway down the page you will find the info regarding Yusek Islam’s (Cat Stevens’) name on a watch list. What you’re remembering is allegations, that were eventually cleared up.
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That all sounds good…as long as wikipedia is correct, which they are not 100%. Possibly the lesson here is…don’t change your name to something that may cause you to be mistaken as a terrorist. Common sense to most of us, but not to Mr. Stevens obviously.
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I doubt, at the time he changed his name, and found Islam to be his preferred religion, he thought he would be mistaken as a terrorist…. it was 1977, after all, and quite a different time in this country… but, times do change, don’t they?
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Wonder what could have ever possessed Cassius Clay to change his name to Mohammed Ali? He’d be a far more likely candidate for terrorist than a musician.
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actually…times really haven’t changed all that much. We still have about the same problems we had in the 70′s….only they have been complicated some by the computer age.
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Could be that I am not old enough (no insult intended) to be aware of the same kind of issues and fears about Muslims that we have today… In the 70′s I was busy being young, and naive… thinking how big and grand the world was… just in my own neighborhood.
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Yeah, Yusef, Kareem Abdul Jabar, Muhammad Ali, you assimilate to hot dog eating and celebrating Christmas and make sure your names are American like Joe, John, Frank to not strike fear into bigoted people.
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If Joe, John, Hamilton, Joe, Frank and Reynolds were threatening to kill us by blowing us up in a suicide type attack, we would be frightened of all of them also smartaxx. Who cares what their name is…if it becomes a threat, we protect ourselves from it….except you obviously because you MAY be called some meaningless name. Wouldn’t want that of course. If you don’t want to look like a terrorist…then don’t act, dress and name yourself as a terrorist. Seems simple to me…but I suppose that is too much logic for you to handle.
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“If you don’t want to look like a terrorist…then don’t act, dress and name yourself as a terrorist.”
So, Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens aka Steven Demetre Georgiou
should change the name that he’s used for over 30 years because someone, somewhere might now decide it sounds like it could maybe be a terrorists name?
Now that there’s some good ol’ common sense thinking, you betcha.
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a common stereotype is to just whip out the old “b” word and sling it around…like anyone who doesn’t understand your distorted thinking must be a bxxxx. also….terrorism by Islamic radicals WAS actually a big problem even back in the 70′s…but that detail must have slipped your mind.
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OR…don’t judge people just by their names?
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If you play Peace Train backwards you can hear Cat Stevens chanting terrorist-Charlie absolutely assures us that this is true and his method to retreive messages from rock music is the gold standard.
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Oh I see Jamie, so it is okay to call fellow american’s your enemy if you are talking to hispanics about immigration reform…..(WTF) Must be leftist logic so I didn’t understand. If you are a liberal your enemy is Al Qadea, Taliban, and Conservatives. Got it..good to know.
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I’m sorry that you built that straw man a day late for halloween.
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Jaimie, The Hispanics I know love this country and do not view fellow Americans as the enemy. Was President Obama talking to the illegals?? You know the fence and the border were not and are not being handled correctly. I guess Arizona is another enemy of Obama.
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The two biggest lefty bashers on this site are talking about not calling the opposite party an “enemy”. LOLOL. Yes, the ones advocating deportation instead of reform are enemies of the Hispanics wants & hopes for reform. Also, I’d say the Arizona advocates are enemies of the Constitution, not Obama.
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My son & I attended the rally. It wasn’t a “liberal” event. I vote either dem & republican, depending on who I think is best suited for the job. Son proudly wore his NRA shirt and got a few positive comments. One of the best summary’s of it was on CNN http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/10/31/avlon.rally.sanity/index.html
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Thanks for the link, Aleia.
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Just saw a video of a guy at the rally walking around with a sign that said Obama = Keynesian and asking people if they thought Obama was a Keynesian. Very funny, one lady was all in a huff saying “what more do you people want, he was born in Hawaii.” Another guy says, “what does it matter we are all Irish, Italian, German, etc.” Classic, love it when they can’t even identify the tennents of their beliefs.
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LOL! I love it when someone misses the point like this.
People from Kenya are called Kenyans, simple as that!
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“Results so far? Economic growth in the United States has been weaker, and the loss of jobs steeper, than in the 16-country euro zone. Especially striking is the contrast with Germany, which resisted heavy US pressure to undertake substantial new deficit spending. While the US economy has been growing at an anemic annual rate of barely 2 percent in recent months, Germany’s economy is currently soaring at a 9 percent annual rate. Unemployment in Germany has fallen to 7.5 percent, the lowest it has been in 18 years. Here, it has scarcely fallen at all. What does Berlin understand that Washington doesn’t?” — Boston.com, by Jeff Jacoby
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/11/03/debt_solution_lies_in_success_of_europe/
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siousforever, you are comparing apples to oranges. Germany is on the Euro along with many other countries. Their policies have been devastating to others. If you want to compare, compare the US to the Euro countries as a whole and see how it ends up.
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You must have breezed right past this part Christy.
“Economic growth in the United States has been weaker, and the loss of jobs steeper, than in the 16-country euro zone.”
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And to further the joke (in case you don’t get it):
Keynsian is a macroeconomic theory.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics
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Obviously b.a.c., not Keynesians, as those in the not so intelligent crowd failed to notice.
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I could not agree with the spirit of this rally more. If you garner votes by painting the opposition as the end of the world, you completely rule out any reasonable compromise. A prime example was the health care debate. The bill was roughly the Republican bill from ’93. It WAS a compromise, but the debate was focused on the irrational junk like “death-panels”.
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Actually Omega-X, it was almost the exact same bill that Republican Mitt Romney passed in Massachussets. They were all for it then.
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Speaking of which, how is that Massachusetts health care now?
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Apparently one of the biggest problems with Massachusetts health care is that the fine for not having coverage is way too low. It isn’t a deterrent to just waiting till you get sick and paying the fine vs having healthcare all along.
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Fantastic, we will saddle people who can’t afford health insurance with huge fines. Isn’t freedom grand?!
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Yea I think sioux just posted that hoping everyone would think he was insinuating that it went crazily wrong. Feel free to post a citation or source of the issues sioux otherwise I’ll disregard that as common trolling. I’ll do the same thing. How’s Mitt’s popularity with the Republicans? You guys don’t seem to be hanging him up to die like Obama, heck he may run for president in 2012. It’s funny, I don’t see all those same socialist, nazi, etc. signs/comments from the Tea Partiers about him. Just Obama.
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Romney will never win, he is an establishment type. Have you seen the straw polls from places like CPAC? It ain’t Romney winning those things.
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Oh and here’s a few citations for you, only a person who is completely unaware of current events would be ignorant of the problems with Mass. healthcare, so I assumed that I didn’t need to cite them for anyone here.
Mass. Health Care Reform Reveals Doctor Shortage
by Karen Brown
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97620520
Massachusetts health program, model for Obama’s reform, strains state budget
By Peter Suderman
http://dailycaller.com/2010/01/10/massachusetts-health-program-a-model-for-obamas-national-reform-strains-state-budget/
Mass. healthcare reform is failing us
By Susanne L. King
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/03/02/mass_healthcare_reform_is_failing_us/
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Typical. You cite 3 opinion pieces that don’t cite their own sources. Way to linktard. It seems the gripes most of those opinions have are due to lack of having cost controls in place. There were cost controls in the national bill but who took raised holy hell to get them out of the national bill by the way? Oh yea, the Republicans.
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The Huff posted a bunch of signs from the rally. I was LMAO! There were some really good ones. I wish I could of been at the rally. It looked like a lot of fun.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_23Nt5XumaU&feature=player_embedded
About those signs…and the responses to a simple question.
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Well, thanks to all the Tea Party rallies, we already had ample proof that there are stupid people everywhere.
This one shouldn’t come as any surprise.
I’d venture to guess there’s a whole lotta people in America that don’t have a clue what Keynesian refers to though.
I’m suprised they left in the one guy that did know. Or, maybe there were more but, they got edited out?
I think it’s a pretty fair guess that people that do these vids also heavily edit them to make their point.
And, I believe both sides do that.
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Why is that katydid? Did they fail HS social studies?
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I wouldn’t know.
But, when you watch the ‘man on the street’ interviews most people don’t seem to know much about the US, or anywhere else.
If people don’t know that Africa is a continent, not a country….my guess is they aren’t really up on Keynesian economics either.
I certainly could be wrong though. I have no proof either way.
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Shows like Are you Smarter than a 5th grader sure do drive a point home, don’t they?
I’ve been out of school for over 2 decades…but I’ve never quit brushing up on my history, current events, vocabulary, and math.
If people don’t really know what something means, WHY do they INSIST they know, and proceed to make themselves look like fools in the process.
Don’t they know how to look it up in a dictionary or encyclopedia? Don’t they WANT to know what something really is, instead of just being satisfied with “guessing”?
Knowledge is a lifelong pursuit, not something that a person can ignore once they get their diploma or degree.
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That ONE sign. And the responses to a comedian asking questions?
Should have watched it.
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FAITH & RELIGION
Comics’ ‘sanity’ rally sends thanks to God (no joke)
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2010/10/stewart-sanity-colbert-sarducci/1
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I love Father Guido Sarducci. Funny and religious….they way it should be.
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Exactly, merc!
Just where did it ever say that God or Jesus NOT have a sense of humor?
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Oh come on. We know God had a sense of humor.
God gave man a penis and a brain. And only enough blood to run one at a time.
(credit to Robin Williams)
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Katydid–you know, we almost NEVER agree on anything–but I have to say this is so funny I had to stop everything I was doing, log on and tell you thanks for the giant laugh ….
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Proverbs 17:22 (King James Version)
22A merry heart doeth good like a medicine: but a broken spirit drieth the bones.
…so laugh it up
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