You know it’s late in the election season when Jon Stewart doesn’t take advantage of Donald Trump’s October Non-Surprise to do a five-minute set on that "bombshell."
Instead, Stewart devoted himself to veterans’ issues on Wednesday’s “Daily Show.” There was some comedy, naturally, as Stewart railed against the Republican lawmakers who blocked a bill to ease veterans’ reintegration into the civilian workforce because they were concerned about how to pay for that initiative.
“Forty GOP senators thought it would be wrong to reintegrate veterans into the workforce … part of which was because of the money that they already spent on war to make them veterans in the first place,” Stewart said.
He addressed the serious issue of those with skills learned in combat rather than in the classroom, which results in qualified applicants falling short of job requirements or requiring redundant training to acquire the necessary certification. Stewart brought on field medics Meg Mitcham and Daniel Hutchison to illustrate how their record of saving battlefield casualties would leave them short of the posted skills needed to be a school nurse, for example.
Then again, as Stewart said, it may be their own fault. “What gave the veterans the idea that their military skills would be transferable in the real world in the first place?”
Anyone who has ever seen an Army recruitment commercial knows that answer.
Who knows whether Mitcham and Hutchison will get new jobs out of this, but Stewart didn’t let Hutchison walk away empty-handed once he heard about his hometown.
“Oh, I didn’t realize you were from Ohio -- the only state that matters. Here’s a voter registration form,” Stewart said.
In contrast, Stephen Colbert stuck to the usual comic script on his “Colbert Report," focusing attention on Libya and the continuing questions about who knew what when, how did they know it, and why didn’t they do whatever the folks in opposition wanted them to do.
“Questions that Fox News has not been afraid to ask … 24 hours a day for the past six weeks,” Colbert noted.
Colbert is sympathetic towards the desire for more transparency, harking back to a more open time. “Frankly, don’t you miss the Bush Administration? When we knew how to be afraid thanks to a color-coded scale that changed based on threats they often wouldn’t explain.”
Question after question after question. It’s impossible to answer them all. But that’s not really the point.
“Ultimately the question is how many questions do we have to ask before voters forget President Obama killed Osama bin Laden,” he said.
Another who shouldn’t expect a lot of sympathy is Indiana senatorial candidate Richard Mourdock, the latest GOP hopeful to trip up while inexplicably trying to make a point about rape and abortion. If he winds up losing because of that, consider it divine will.
“Don’t shed a tear, folks, because I’ve come to realize that this is just something that God intended to happen,” Colbert said.
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