This is from last week, but man is it good. Jon Stewart goes off on the amendment to the Zadroga bill for 9/11 first responder health benefits that requires 9/11 first-responders to be vetted against terrorist watch lists before applying for benefits. Classy.

Hilarious, sad, brutal, and required viewing.

Part II after the jump.

Anthony Hecht is The Stranger's Chief Technology Officer. He owns no monkeys.

6 replies on “Your Morning Rant: Stewart on the Zadroga Bill”

  2. Wow, part 2 was freaking brilliant. It’s truly shameful that the first responders now deserve yet another apology.

  3. Any law that targets a certain profession or group should automatically target the people who make it too.

  4. This amendment is reprehensible and seems so bizarre as to be incomprehesible, but I wonder if it has something to do with 9/11 Truthers? There are those who believe that bombs were placed inside the buildings to make them collapse upon themselves. In fact, that is one of the main events Truthers point to to support their conspiracy theory: they don’t believe a building can fall as the Twin Towers did without chrges having been placed strategically as in a planned building implosion. some of them believe that charges were planted either before the attack or during the chaos of the attack and evacuation by people posing as firefighters. It is absolute rubbish of course, but Truthers, like Birthers, are able to ignore absolute evidence to the contrary.

  5. I dunno, Waxman had kind of a devilish smile lurking around the corners of his mouth. It’s Stearns’s name that will be forever identified with the amendment, and that’s potentially useful ammo for a future political opponent. Like the Repubs actually being forced into voting for Ryan’s Medicare-killing, debt-ballooning whackadoodle budget proposal in both the House and Senate.

    Yes, it’s an insulting and time-consuming hoop for first responders to have to jump through, but House Repubs probably had the votes and the will to make it stick with or without Waxman’s expediting.

  6. This is not as idiotic as some might think; it is more ideologic. If the GOP can get a list of Zadroga claimants to the FBI for investigation, then state that a claimant cannot receive benefits while incarcerated- as is the case with most other entitlement programs, then there is reason to incarcerate the responders. If we brand them criminals or terrorists and then throw them in jail, we can give more tax brakes to large corporations and billionaires.
    You can bet your bottom dollar that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was behind this latest lobby of Sterns, or as Mr Stewart says “kick in the nuts”!

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