According to Wikipedia: "In 1969, the cost of a Saturn V including launch was US $ 185 million (inflation adjusted US$ 1.11 billion in 2011)." According to SpaceX (projections, since obviously FH hasn't flown yet): "With Falcon Heavy priced at $80-125M per launch SpaceX has the potential to provide the US government significant value" So 1/2 the performance at 1/10th the cost.

Falcon 1 Flight 3 definitely did not make orbit. As you noted though, that still puts SpaceX on even footing in terms of 'vehicles lost' vs 'vehicles that made orbit'. And since they're 3 for 3 on the last 3 launches, and 1 for 1 on the newest design, I'd say that throwing around "50% success rate" is a little bit misleading.

But casting him as an intellectual and a history buff? Have they ever even watched his program?

I wouldn't jump to conclusions about Beck as a person just based on how he acts on his program. It's fairly plausible that he hams it up a bit to play the 'everyman who loves his country' role that he's carved out. I haven't watched his program, but from what I hear it's a bit more over the top in comparison to his show back on CNN. He could very well be an intellectual and history buff, who happens to become an emotional demagogue once he's in front of the camera. Stewart and Colbert (as you noted) aren't the only ones playing up the entertainment angle.

The ISS would be absolutely worthless as a tether for a space elevator, not enough mass to be useful. Not to mention the fact that the anchor for a theoretical space elevator would have to be well past Geosynchronous orbit. The CG of the elevator needs to be at GEO, not the end of it.

Sending someone suborbital isn't quite the same as a multi-day orbital trip to the ISS.

ISO 9000 and ISO 9001 are not limited to the government. There are many industry standards regarding record keeping and paper trails of critical hardware.

SpaceX has developed their own engines. 4 at last count: Merlin, Merlin Vac, Kestrel, and Draco. They are using common dome tanks, which NASA (as far as I know) is not using in their current programs. SpaceX started as little more than an assembler of outsourced and off the shelf parts, but these days they pretty much design and build as much in house as they can. They may be relying on a lot of NASA's theoretical research of years past, but they are definitely designing their own rocket rather than just slapping NASA parts together.