Noel Sheppard and Jeff Poor's blog

Just moments after the conclusion of the Aug. 28 "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, D.C., an olive branch, albeit a potentially double-edged one, was tossed between an unlikely couple very much on opposite sides of the political aisle.  

To the surprise of those in attendance, the Rev. Al Sharpton has challenged Glenn Beck to come on Geraldo Rivera's Fox News program and support the building of the Ground Zero Mosque.

Appearing on "Geraldo At Large" after his own civil rights event in our nation's capital, Sharpton told the host, "Why don't you, you're here on Fox, invite Mr. Beck on the show to finish the speech?"

"He said we should all come together equal...how do we do that?"

Later in the program, Sharpton raised the bet even further saying, "He made a great statement - he said after 9/11 we all came together. All Americans, all races, all religions - therefore Mr. Beck, will you say we should stop fighting the mosque? That's where the rhetoric will hit the road" (partial transcript follows with commentary): 

Comedian Jon Stewart on Wednesday joined the growing liberal chorus attacking Republicans for their concerns about rising taxes and exploding budget deficits.

The only thing different about the "Daily Show" host's approach was that he needed vulgarity to make his point.

Potentially even worse, Stewart in his opening segment Wednesday actually used CNN's Fareed Zakaria to support his view that letting the Bush tax cuts expire would be a good thing for the nation.

Ironically, that was the only thing remotely funny about this sketch (video follows with partial transcript and commentary, extreme vulgarity warning, see BMI's coverage as well):

"We'll always have Paris. We didn't have, we'd lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night."

So famously said Humphrey Bogart to Ingrid Bergman in the marvelous conclusion of one of the greatest films of all time, "Casablanca."

On Wednesday, MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell shamelessly used a version of this line on White House advisor David Axelrod.

During her interview about yesterday's election results, including Bill Owens' victory in New York's 23rd Congressional district, Mitchell asked Axelrod about the Obama campaign documentary aired on HBO Tuesday.

This led to the following exchange that is guaranteed to make Bogie and Bergman roll over in their graves (video embedded below the fold):

Former Clinton Labor Secretary and current Obama economic advisor Robert Reich was laughed at Friday for claiming "the stimulus package is the thing that is actually keeping the economy up, keeping people employed."

In a discussion on CNBC about the larger than expected September job losses reported Friday by the Labor Department, Reich was explaining to hosts Melissa Francis and Lawrence Kudlow how things would be much worse if not for the stimulus package.

He also implied that things won't get better until healthcare is reformed.

In the middle of this absolutely absurd statement, Francis and Kudlow appeared to look at each other with the former breaking out into laughter and the latter doing his best to hold it back (video embedded below the fold):