Penn Jillette

CNN host Piers Morgan argued for tax hikes during interviews with two separate guests on his Tuesday night show.

The former British tabloid editor tried to persuade Rudy Giuliani, a possible GOP presidential candidate, that the Tea Party is in the minority in its stance against higher taxes and should consider spending cuts paired with increased tax revenues to cut the deficit.

[Video below the break.]

There are a lot of people angry at BP for causing huge damage to the Gulf of Mexico. As a way to vent some of this emotion, some are volunteering their help to clean up where the oil has washed ashore. Others are petitioning lawmakers to clamp down on oil companies to ensure this doesn't happen again. However, there's one option that has proved to be pointless according to Penn Jillette, half of the famed Vegas duo Penn & Teller. 

On the June 8 broadcast of the Fox Business Network's "Imus in the Morning," Jillette said the first thing that amazed him about the entire oil spill catastrophe was the notion of a Facebook group geared toward boycotting BP.

"Well, you know, I don't know there's many different takes to take on it," Jillette said. "I mean, it's just a horrible disaster and a catastrophe. What amazes me about it is on Facebook, they just, they put this thing up, you know, ‘Boycott BP.'"

On Tuesday’s Lopez Tonight on TBS, magicians Penn and Teller appeared as guests, and, while discussing their controversial program "Bullshit!" on Showtime, and the show’s history of criticizing religion, Penn Jillette conceded a compliment to American Christians that they are "the most tolerant people worldwide." He also admitted that it was a "shock" to discover the relative tolerance of American Christians after the airing of the show from last August attacking the Catholic Church, as he compared reaction from Christians to that from other groups the show has attacked, such as 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Jillette:

Well, you know, we've done heavy stuff. I mean, we've done the Vatican. We've done Mother Teresa. We've done the Dalai Lama. We've done really, really heavy subjects. And I've got to say it was actually a shock doing the show, the religious communities in the United States of America are the most tolerant people worldwide. I mean, we did really aggressive stuff we believe strongly, and mostly got letters from Christians and Catholics saying we really like how passionately and clearly you put out your ideas. Very few nut cases.

But it could also be argued that Jillette’s account makes American Christians sound almost too accepting of the show’s criticism of Christianity and downplays the fact that there was legitimate criticism of the show and its accuracy.

Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Tuesday, May 25, Lopez Tonight on TBS:

On the April 22 Larry King Live on CNN, which was rebroadcast on Saturday, magician and comedian Penn Jillette – who is a self-described libertarian – challenged assertions by actress Rachael Harris that the Tea Party movement is motivated by "racism" against President Barack Obama. Jillette: "Well, that's the magic word. Once you say ‘racism,’ the other side loses automatically. And I don't think we have very much evidence that that's what it is. Don't they have to be doing racist things besides you just saying that they're racist?"

Harris cited the racial makeup of the Tea Party movement as evidence of its racist motivation: "No, but they're looking at the number of people that are in, like, the majority of the people that are in the Tea Party," leading Jillette to respond: "So the race that they are makes them racist by definition?"

After Harris and Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane joked for a moment that they had gotten together and created the movement, Jillette and Harris continued their debate over whether Tea Party members were motivated by racism:

CNN’s Larry King equated efforts against further regulation of the banking industry to letting the mentally ill run their psych wards on his program on Monday. King pressed conservative columnist S. E. Cupp: “Banks are lobbying against a bill to tighten regulatory controls. Are you going to let the inmates run the asylum? You don’t think we should regulate banks?” [audio clips from the segment available here]

The CNN host moderated a panel discussion on the economy during the first segments of the program. The panel surprisingly leaned to the right on economic issues. Besides Cupp, King had Penn Gilette and Larry Elder, both libertarians, and liberal former Clinton administration official Robert Reich. After the host used the “inmates run the asylum” idiom in his question, the columnist first answered that “we do need regulation, but it’s putting them in a really tough spot.” King interrupted with a blunt one-word question: “So?”

Bill Donahue, president of the Catholic League, has said, "Penn & Teller's Nazi-like assault on Catholicism that took place on August 27 will go down in history as one of the most vile, obscene programs ever aired in any nation." However, will the show also go down in history for airing the most number of lies, falsehoods, and misleading statements in a single half-hour show?

Not counting credits, the guilty episode runs less than 26 minutes. Here's a lie-by-lie list of the falsehoods that Penn Jillette and his guests aired in that time:

1. Before he became Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, in 2001, issued a "confidential order to every bishop" and "ordered the cover-up" of sex abuse.

Following last night's episode (Thu. 8/27/09) of Penn & Teller's show on Showtime, Bill Donahue, founder and president of the Catholic League said, "I have never seen a more defamatory, obscene and vicious show on TV." Folks, that is saying a lot. The man has dedicated his career to exposing anti-Catholicism.

According to Donahue, the foul-mouthed Penn Jillette billed last night's episode as "payback" for 2,000 years of alleged "crimes" by the Catholic Church. Wrote Donahue:

On the Thursday, July 16, Glenn Beck Program on FNC, magician Penn Jillette and ABC’s 20/20 anchor John Stossel – both self-described libertarians – appeared as guests to talk about health care reform. Stossel used the time to preview his upcoming segment on the problems with socialized medicine in Canada, which will air on a future episode of 20/20. Stossel informed viewers of Canada's shortage of doctors: "What stuck most with me was the town that had a lottery. So many people are waiting to get a family doctor, they can't get one. Once a month, the town clerk pulls names out of a box and he calls the lucky winners – congratulations, now you can have a family doctor." FNC later played a clip from the upcoming segment in which the 20/20 anchor talks about a privately run veterinary hospital in Canada which provides medical care for animals much more quickly than humans can receive similar care from the government-run system.

After Jillette, who co-hosts the show, Penn and Teller: B.S., on Showtime, argued that too much health insurance reduces price competition and leads to higher prices, Stossel complained that the plans promoted by politicians, by increasing the amount of insurance, would make matters worse: "As Penn said, is if you had grocery insurance, you wouldn't care, and the grocery store, and the incentives that creates to spend more are just insane. And that's the problem with health care, and yet, the politicians say the solutions are always more insurance."

Jillette soon complained that too much socialized medicine already exists in America – in the form of Medicaid and Medicare – and touted individual choice:

I bet you thought EPA stands for Environmental Protection Agency.

Not according to the comedy team Penn & Teller, who during Thursday's "Being Green" installment of their hit television series on Showtime, tore Nobel Laureate Al Gore apart while referring to him as an "Egregiously Pushy A**hole."

To be frank, that's just one marvelous snippet from Thursday's evisceration of all things related to climate change hysteria. Here are a few more (video available here, h/t NBer PopTech, vulgarity alert):

In 2003, Showtime's Penn & Teller program with a name not appropriate above the fold -- unless, of course, you're a member of the Netroots! -- marvelously exposed what's behind the global warming and environmental hysteria in America today.

The videos have just come available on YouTube.

In part one (embedded right), the comedy team accurately depicted environmentalists as political and social activists who use green rhetoric to "cloak agendas that actually have more to do with anti-corporatism, anti-globalization, anti-business, and very little to do with science and ecology."

Exactly. Parts two and three are embedded below the fold with a warning that these videos contain mild vulgarity. Actually, it's typically one word that most shouldn't find too offensive for it properly characterizes what's behind all this nonsense:

Newsweek's Sharon Begley, who earlier this week had the unscientific gall to blame the Midwest floods on global warming, continues to offend more and more people with her every keystroke.

The object of her current disaffection, comedian/magician Penn Jillette, isn't taking her affront lying down. In fact, he published a response at the Los Angeles Times Thursday to her recent attack on his global warming skepticism.

To set this up, here's what Begley posted at her Lab Notes blog last Friday concerning June's "Amazing Meeting" conference sponsored by the James Randi Educational Foundation (emphasis added throughout, h/t Reason):