Transcripts For COM The Colbert Report 20130919 : vimarsana.

The california teachers association. 150 years of making a difference that lasts a lifetime. That is our show. Join us tomorrow night at 11 00. Here it is, your moment of zen. Blaming this on guns is like saying that the big problem with obesity is weve got captioning sponsored by Comedy Central captioned by Media Access Group at wgbh access. Wgbh. Org cheers and applause stephen welcome to the show, everybody good to have you with us folks, thank you, thank you so much. audience chanting Stephen Stephen ladies and gentlemen thank you so much folks, folks, as you know, you watch the Program Night to night i pride myself on my decisiveness. If i ever lost my ability to instantly know my next course of action, i dont know what i would do. laughter but even i have been all over the map on this syria issue. On the one hand, holding Bashar Alassad responsible for war crimes against his own citizens was kind of, you know, been there; bombed that. laughter but on the other hand, not bombing does not involve bombing. laughter and the truth is, nobody knows what to do in syria. Weve heard from our allies, weve heard from our enemies, weve heard from our pundits and our politicians. But theres one important voice that has remained conspicuously silent hallucinating sheep herders. Until now, because the bible has finally weighed in. According to the Vancouver Sun biblical literalists see the looming destruction of damascus as the sign of the return of jesus christ to earth as precursor of the cosmic apocalypse. And folks cheers and applause big end of the world fans here tonight. laughter and the signs of the apocalypse are everywhere. After all i just quoted from a canadian newspaper laughter folks, i am not the only journalist reporting prophecy as news. So is fox news anchor and 11th plague neil cavuto. Biblical scholars say its all there in blackandwhite, like this spooky passage from isaiah 17 about syria itself. Behold, damascus is about to be removed from being a city and will become a fallen ruin. Another passage warns of growing unrest in egypt and the rise of a fierce king. Stephen good lord laughter everything the bible says is coming to pass thankfully, i already have two of every animal in my meat ark. laughter folks, neil cavuto wasnt done there. As a t. V. Journalist, his job to keep digging until he gets to the next commercial. laughter so he brought on armageddon enthusiast joel rosenberg. We have seven million syrians already on the run, two million have left the country, five million are internally displaced thats the jeremiah 49 prophecy that says people will flee but there will still be people in damascus when the prophecy happens. The bottom line is we dont know whether these two prophecies isaiah 17 and jeremiah 49 will happen in our lifetime or soon but they could because they havent happened yet. Stephen true. laughter everything that hasnt happened yet could happen laughter i mean, the seas turning red with blood. Lives applause lions laying down with lambs. The friends movie. All possible laughter and the bible isnt the only source that backs up rosenbergs logic. It is corroborated by a completely different book damascus countdown by joel rosenberg. I mean, what are the odds . laughter and here is his proof that the syrian conflict may bring about the end of the world. In the novel damascus countdown in which i imagine a scenario that those prophecies come true in our lifetime. Stephen yes, he imagines a scenario. laughter which qualifies him to be interviewed by an imaginary newsman. laughter now, folks cheers and applause i believe this means that if we want to see how the world ends all we have to do is flip to the end of his book. Okay, here we go. She wondered what life lay before them, what would come next. But instead of asking questions, she simply laid her head on davids chest. She looked at the Engagement Ring on her finger and said right out loud bless the lord oh my soul. laughter folks, if im interpreting the book of rosenberg correctly laughter the world ends with a wedding cheers and applause magical folks, dont even bother with the gift receipt because crate barrel will not be accepting returns. laughter but, folks, you know what . Im beginning to worry that the apocalypse may not start in syria after all. The u. S. And russia say they have an agreement that will avert american air strikes by removing or destroying all chemical weapons in syria. I say this proves obama is a secret muslim. Hes refusing to bomb someone just to keep jesus from coming back laughter thats kind of petty. So i am praying, praying, this diplomatic solution falls through because, frankly, i do not want to see the day obama finally earns the Nobel Peace Prize he already won. laughter but with the deface already hammered out, how could it possibly fall through . U. S. Secretary of state john kerry said they would seek a United Nations resolution with serious consequences for syria if it fails to hand over its chemical weapons. The u. S. Has said the u. N. Resolution doesnt have to threaten military action. Stephen oh. The u. N. Is handling it. laughter well, that makes it rather u. N. Likely to succeed. laughter i mean, for petes sake cheers and applause for petes sake these people still wear head phones like this. laughter guys, come on its 2013, get some beats for gods sakes. laughter i mean, there is no tway u. N. Can resolve the crisis in syria and here to tell me how the u. N. Can resolve the crisis in syria is blogger and founder of the dish mr. Andrew sullivan. Andrew, good to see you again. cheers and applause andrew, do you believe when it comes to taking military action against Bashar Alassad using chemical weapons are you in favor of doing something or doing nothing . Doing something that does not mean we get involved in someone elses civil war. Thats what im in favor of and thats what weve got. Stephen so doing something that is nothing . No. Stephen like . You want to get the u. N. Involved . No, i want russia which is the critical member of the Security Council involved here and china on the Security Council who have taken responsibility saying were going to make sure assad controls and eventually destroys his chemical weapons. Stephen you trust russia and china more than you trust the United States of america your word thats what you just said laughter let me tell you. Stephen answer the question. Do you trust putin and whoever china putin is laughter do you trust those guys more than barack obama . Our commander . Chief . Yes, because the world has seen america go into these places alone. Stephen and kick ass and take names. And make an all mighty mess in which hundreds of thousands of people die, we lost trillions of dollars. If you actually want to get it done and not provoke outcry and actually get assads cooperation then getting russia and china to do our dirty work for us is a great thing. Our goal is not to have the biggest ego in the world. Stephen whats the stick . The stick is that we threaten military strikes against them. Stephen right and you have to be willing to go through with that and if they dont comply and if assad does use chemical weapons again obama has a much stronger case to make look, we tried peace, we tried this process, now it doesnt work, we have a right to stop these weapons. Stephen so you believe that if the deal doesnt go through, if it falls apart its time to turn damascus into the boomboom . laughter no, and ill tell you why. Because you cant blow up chemical weapons sites without creating a nightmare, without creating the very thing youre trying to avoid. Stephen but its sending a message. You cant send a missile to blow sarin gas halfway across the country. You have to secure them. Stephen you have to send a message. We sent it t message, it was received in damascus, they gave up. I thought you would like that assad surrendered. Stephen but youre trying heres what i dont get. You want to be a United States citizen, true . Yes, please. Stephen you want to be a United States citizen. Okay, all right, you have to understand theres such a thing as american exceptionalism, all right . The rules dont apply to us. laughs stephen we get to do what we want. Everybody should say hey, thats good because america did it. laughter why not use the rules to get what we want done without having to ourselves actually having to do it . Stephen and use the u. N. Resolution . The u. N. Is a useful institution to cover and to execute great power designs. Stephen what great power . What war have they ever preventd . Well, we may have just prevented this one and i ale tell you why. Stephen but we dont know because it didnt happen we dont know yet. Stephen you cant prove a negative. What we have preventd is any major war between great powers. Stephen because if we wanted to go to war with russia or china they would veto it and then wed have to stop. laughter youre not wrong. Thats why we we try cheers and applause stephen how do you become a superpower if it doesnt exercise superpowers . Thats like saying im fantastic dancer i just dont want to get up right now. cheers and applause i tell you what, ill just cut it out. Go ahead. laughter andrewn,van, a iikikpdwn 6[yjmnnn jq0dhdl ul4hd2e stephen welcome back, everybody, thanks so much. cheers and applause nation, ive got to take moment here and we have not talked about this yet on the show but i want to take a moment and speak about mondays tragic shooting in the washington, d. C. Naval yard. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and the families and id like to salute d. C. s First Responders who prevented what could have been an even bigger tragedy. And, folks, after watching walltowall coverage i have to say ive reassessed some of my longheld opinions. While we may never know what motivated the shooter, we know he had a troubled and violent past and evidence of mental illness. So its time to admit all of us that some Dangerous Items shouldnt fall into the hands of the disturbed. How many tragedies should we witness before we finally enact common sense gun violence prevention . Stephen what . No, not guns laughter i mean, we didnt do anything about guns after sandy hook guns . Youre adorable laughter but for the last time, guns have nothing to do with gun violence we all know what the real problem is this is a military i. D. Card. This is how you get on a military base. So how did he get on . Again, in my view, he had an authorized card. Maybe too many people have these cards. laughter stephen think about it hi had access to a military i. D. Card. If he didnt have that, we wouldnt be talking about a tragedy at the navy yard, wed be talking about a tragedy in a lesssecure area like a park or a dennys. laughter but whats the answer. We need to start doing more extensive background checks on contractors. Why did background checks not occur . There are gaps now in security background checks. Were not doing enough background checks. Yes, how many times do conservatives need to say it . We need more background checks laughter or at least a waiting period for an i. D. Like they have at the d. M. V. laughter i believe its three days. At least we all know what drove this madman to go out and get that i. D. Card. He had an obsession with shooting video games. Sometimes played violent video games all night long. Here we go again. Report nation vi yard shooter aaron alexis liked to play violent video games. This, indeed, is a strong link to mass killings then why arent we looking at frequency of purchases per person and also how often theyre playing . Yes, new gretchen is right. laughter the United States government needs to monitor who is playing video games and how much. Maybe a National Game registry. I mean, im really concerned about this guy named aaah cheers and applause hes the high scorer wherever you look and please dont tell me froms been no proven link between video games and violence madden 25 just came out and suddenly theres a rash of football violence on t. V. laughter but, of course, not everyone agrees. Take foxs the five eric bolling. Why all of a sudden video games . Its violent, yeah, its violent. But so are movies, so is television. Whos the jackass to who started pointing finger at video games . Stephen good question. Who is the jackass who blames gun violence on video games. Its a whole host of things. Mental health, guns, video games. cheers and applause stephen hes right. Television is violent. Eric bolling just kicked himself ]z]a stephen welcome back, everybody. Our guest tonight has a book called the traveling sprinkler. Its like on the road but for sprinklers. Please welcome nicholson. Youve written nine novels including and five nonfiction books. Your latest is a novel called traveling with sprinklers. Would you also throw in the garden weasel 40 value absolutely free . cheers and applause the traveling sprinkleers the reason i chose it for title of the book is because i wanted to think about the way we we live we live by swre a kind of garden of thought, maybe. The things that were preoccupied by and we arrange a hose around those things and we put the traveling sprinkler on it and we wet it. Stephen what is the traveling sprinkler. Are we traveling sprinkler or are we the guard sgln we are the traveling sprinkler. Stephen and we travel through the garden of our life. We do. Stephen who sets the hose down . Who pays the water bill . laughter we we do it all. We start, we set it up, we watch it happen and then were done. Stephen we do all of it. Yes. Stephen we should get some help. laughter can we talk about the garden for a second because i like that its a metaphor. Is that a met snore. Stephen you know better than i. Stephen i dont, actually. Ive never written fiction. A metaphor is when something is something else. Like your beard is all christmas. laughter yes, yes. It used to be kind of darker. It was an amber waves of grain kind of thing. Stephen your beard used to be america. And the beard was a metaphor for america and now its a metaphor for christmas it turned white and i thought well, go with it. Stephen can i ask you something . How about downtown . Is it, um laughter also white . The lower locker . Is it laughter you are intimate stephen well, your books are very intimate. You have all kinds of names in your books for the twigs and berries down there. You call it the thunder stick, is that what you call it . I think that there are. Stephen you do. You call it the thunder stick. P you i do. Stephen youve called it the Malcolm Gladwell. Stephen ive called it the Malcolm Gladwell. Stephen what does Malcolm Gladwell think of that . I dont know. But i thought it was a complement. Stephen you named your penis after not my penis. Stephen okay, i apologize. Look look, the we us in is a bad word for what we have. Its not a good word. There are all these words we have for sexual pieces of ourselves and theyre all badly designed. Somebody came up with them a long time ago and we have to come up with new words for them. laughter stephen lets get back to that garden for a second. laughter is a garden lets say call the garden for the mind for a second, can we do that . Yes. Stephen you sometimes drill down. You have such an intricate level of plants in your in your garden. Firm the mezzanine your character is it takes place going up an escalator. Its about a fiveminute trip that takes a 200 page book. Its a travel book. Stephen yes, its a travel book. It is. It is. But its almost a schizophrenic level of detail in the things you write. You see patterns all over the place. Sometimes where maybe patterns dont exist. Have you ever thought of your writing as a cry for help . laughter i look at it differently. I think you really anyone who lives a life and this is about it everyday and kind of ad hoc just ideas about whats happening. And those things are eventually worth putting a book. Stephen why not a broad stage of more action, quality kills . laughter good ideas. But i think that when you when youre going along and thinking about what actually happens to human beings the way we the people in your life, were lucky people. Bad things dont normally happen to us but what novelists or screen writers do is they think we need an explosion of some kind. And its stupid, you know . Thats just laughter but what we actual city will do is we read the news and when we read the news we have all sorts of explosions coming in all the time. We have all these horrible things that come in indirectly through news channels. Stephen im in the News Business myself. Im one of the people bringing you all those terrible stories. And im enormously grateful. Stephen youre welcome. Youre welcome. It makes me it makes me feel it makes us feel bad, you know, to. Stephen the world is a scary place. The world is a scary place. Yeah, yeah. laughter the nicholson, thank you so much. Nicholsrkerokokoktotototo