Jon Stewart Comes out Against Nationalized Health Care! (Or something like that...)

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=228019&title=newt-gingrich-pt.-2

During his chat with Newt Gingrich on Tuesday, Jon Stewart simultaneously shilled for the Obama Administration and managed to become just as befuddled by rhetoric and circular argumentation as his guest, entangling the both of them in an actual clusterf@#$ of fallacies.

Jon begins round two of the bout by being offended that the Obama administration would be called "socialist," even though he is perfectly willing to sling back at Newt that the bailouts began with AIG under Bush II's watch.  When Newt points out that both Geithner and Paulson were in fact architects of that bailout as well as the new administration's bailouts, Jon nervously backtracks and attempts to prove that ObamaCo's socialism is not their fault because it is merely the end result of previous socialist administrations.  Yeah--and I shouldn't be stopped for running a red light because the guy before me ran it as well.  I was merely following in his path!

At 3:33 in the attached video, Jon's shilling hits a fever-pitch of insane logic:  "Wouldn't that be great?" he asks, as Newt describes the potential atrocity of nationalized health care.  When Newt very deftly brings up the fact that small businesses would be taxed into bankruptcy to pay for their "free" health care, Jon retorts that the entire process would be a wash, with no chance of skyrocketing "300% taxes..." "... like California?" Newt responds.  "No, no," Jon says, "let's not get crazy." Yes, Jon... let's.  Because, as Newt points out, "if Albany, NY can't run their state government and Sacramento, CA can't run their state government, why would you believe a Washington-based national health care program would work?"  "Why would you believe," Jon parries, "that a national military program could work and a health care program couldn't?"

Needless to say, neither talking head has an answer for this question, because it relies on a false premise--namely, that the "war" in Iraq (invasion, occupation, perpetual empire, what have you) is "working."  If Ron or Rand Paul, or Mark Sanford, or any of half a dozen thinking individuals in politics were in that chair, the very first response would have been "The war isn't working!!" and Jon would literally have been crushed by his own logic.  Because it is an indisputable fact (very well-documented by the Daily Show itself in its own segment, entitled "Mess O'Potamia") that our actions in the Middle East have made "success" in that arena (defined as catching and prosecuting the 9/11 masterminds and global terrorist leaders) almost impossible.  

Once it is established that NO, the government can't replace the efficacy of the private sector, and YES, national health care will be susceptible to the same failures, waste, and corruption as the Iraq occupation, the Afghani/Paki imperium, and the War on Drugs pandemic, then there is no defending nationalized health care.  It is a fundamentally flawed idea, founded upon false premises and supported by comfortable lies about the power of our government to stop the world from turning.  Jon is perfectly willing elsewhere to grant that the government is wholly incapable of running an efficient military occupation; thus, he is caught in his own logic of having to explain how a health care program would be run any better.

Will Jon still be shilling for the administration when we have been adding yearly trillion-plus dollar deficits to our hyperinflated currency in order to prop up AIG, Chrysler, and the hosts of other unmanageable businesses and unthinking individuals who ask for government handouts over the next 8 years?  Obama's already passed out more money for bailouts in 100 days than Bush spent in 8 years of global cowboy empire-building.  How far are we willing to go to support this redoubled surge of decadent largesse?