These things go together
.On the by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS, Neophyte said, regarding Palins intellect, or lack thereof, “I’m not sure if it’s dumb or clever. She caters to the far right evangelicals. She gives them what they crave.”
The parallels between Palin and Brawndo, which has, “got what plants crave,” are striking.
A while ago, I, and pretty much everyone else in the blogosphere, along with the inestimable Rachel Maddow, pointed out just how remarkable, in a Plan 9 from Outer Space way, Carly Fiorina’s demon sheep campaign ad against Tom Campbell was.
Well, the California Democratic Party and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee riffed on that bit of political agitprop, and came up with a “sheep” ad of their own.
It’s actually amusing, or it is if you’ve seen the original in all its ghastly glory, though I’m concerned that this is not a good allocation of resources. After all, amusing me, a voter who does not live in California, and would sooner gnaw off my own leg than vote Republican, does not help Barbara Boxer get elected.
April Winchell, the “21st funniest person in Los Angeles,” has uncovered a gem.
In Barack Obama’s memoir, Dreams From My Father, he quotes some of his friend Ray, who, “Cursed like a Motherf^%$er.”
Well, that’s not special, except for the fact that Barack Obama recorded the audiobook, so you can go to Ms. Winchell’s site, and hear Barack Obama saying things like, “There are white folks, and then there are ignorant motherf%$#ers like you.”
Snerk.
I while back, I applied to, and did not make the cut for, the Washington Post‘s America’s Next Great Pundit contest.
Maybe it was the best outcome, though I could use the money, because it appears that the paper is now going to blogs and asking for links to their blogs post, as well as the authority to give said bloggers their assignments, for the princely sum of $0.00 (€0.00):
Five weeks ago, I received an unsolicited offer from the Washington Post. They asked if they could post my picture and biography on their website and link to every new blog post appearing here if I agreed to produce regular original content for them at their request. I turned them down. Why?
Because they wanted me to work for them for nothing.
The Post is organizing a “local blogging network” linking to selected blogs from their website and asking bloggers to submit original content, which would be edited by them. The Post’s rights to that content would be enforceable under a written agreement. That agreement was written as follows:
…………
The Post is also demanding the, “non-exclusive right to republish the Work (in whole or in part) on the Site in real time simultaneous with Your own publication of the Work, as well as the right to adapt, edit, display, store, and promote the Work in connection with such republication on the Site.”
This deal sucks worse than a coupon for a week of sessions at John Boehner’s favorite tanning salon, though it might not suck worse than a coupon for two weeks at John Boehner’s favorite tanning salon.
Even the right-wing Belo Corporation journalism cancer known as the Dallas Morning News
And the Mooney Times
Media Matters has a large selection of newspaper front pages, and it looks like Mitch McConnell’s ploy to kill financial reform is not playing in Peoria.
The lede is all about the filibuster, and how the ‘Phants are doing their best to kill and slow-walk the process, even in reliably right wing newspapers.
Here’s hoping that the Dems notice, and double down on making the Republicans do this again, and again, and again, and again.
Keep up the good work.
Do not compromise on financial reform, you already have, make them crawl to you, and scatter some broken glass in their path.
While it is true that senior enforcement personnel at the SEC spent a lot of time downloading pr0n on their PC’s, this story has been around for years, as ProPublica notes, and the reason that it’s hitting the media spin cycle now is because the Republicans, Darrell Issa specifically, are pushing the story because they want to stop reform.
Basically, they want to say that the failures were because of a few bad apples at the SEC, and pr0n is a good way for them to illustrate this, because pr0n attracts the media, and it is a simple narrative, which attracts the incompetent.
So it’s a win-win for the Republicans who want to side-track reform: It’s a pretty bauble to distract the press with, and they can claim that it shows that government shouldn’t regulate.
Well Bernard Goldberg, former CBS news man, and the slightly smarter side of the comedy team Goldberg and Goldberg (Bernie and Jonah, no relation and in particular order), had decided to challenge Jon Stewart once again.
Bad move, dude.
Jon Stewart responds, and this time he has backup of gospel singers:
It is a righteous take-down, but damn, Jews can’t dance to gospel for sh%$.*
*So says this yid.
On Morning Joe, Mark Halperin, a long time hack best known for the phrase, “Matt Drudge rules our world,” feels compelled to call it for what it is when he says, “They are willfully misreading the bill or they are engaged in a cynical attempt to keep the president from achieving something.” (emphasis mine)
Except for the fact that he should have said and not or, he is telling the truth, and when Mark Halperin feels compelled to call bullsh%$, you know that Republican spin has crossed some sort of “Shoe Event Horizon” where the normal punditocracy simply ceases to function.
The first part of the video is Austan Goolsbee ably defending the program (full disclosure, I made a post that he objected to in the comments, see here, and I posted his response here),* but Joe turns to Halperin for a “fair and balanced appraisal, and Halperin calls them full of it too.
H/t Steve Benen.
*I don’t have a problem with his objecting, my family calls me full of it all the time, it sticks in my head because I was stunned that he read my little old blog in his capacity as an economic advisor to the Obama campaign.
Admittedly, the full 7:47 isn’t about Jim Cramer, just the first 2:28, but anything that finishes with:
You get the sense that if Jim Cramer was around in 1912 he would have said ‘you’re not going to hear this from anyone else, but my sources tell me the Titanic has the best buffet on the high seas. And by the way if you want to get there faster, try the Hindenburg.
Stewart then goes on to the talking heads on the financial networks are describing the case in terms indicative of a, “Traumatic brain injury,” and then he proceeds to describe everything in terms that we can all understand.
And then he gets to Goldman Sachs, and the fact that the fraud division will be getting billions in bonuses, because, I guess, their job is to create fraud, not stop it.
At the end, as a bonus, he describes the Republican mindset on governance.
Yes, it’s in my anxiety closet too.
Archivists have discovered that George Washington borrowed books from the New York Library when he was President, and now owes the equivalent of $300,000.00 in overdue fines:
Founder of a nation, trouncer of the English, God-fearing family man: all in all, George Washington has enjoyed a pretty decent reputation. Until now, that is.
The hero who crossed the Delaware river may not have been quite so squeaky clean when it came to borrowing library books.
The New York Society Library, the city’s only lender of books at the time of Washington’s presidency, has revealed that the first American president took out two volumes and pointedly failed to return them.
At today’s prices, adjusted for inflation, he would face a late fine of $300,000.
So, Mrs. McGreevey is coming after him.
Apologies to Berkeley Breathed for rearranging the frames friom his horizontal format to a vertical one.
So, Allee Bautsch, a fundraiser for Bobby Jindal, the Governor, and Village Idiot, of Louisiana gets mugged in New Orleans, and “source close to Bautsch tells Yahoo! News that they were politically motivated.”
Note that official sources have made no such claims, but a conservative blogger seems to have put words in the mouth of a NOPD spokesman.
In any case, the Times Picayune has some decent coverage which appears to make it clear that no political epithets were involved, it was a bunch of drunken assholes.
As an FYI to those living under rocks in the past year, the pic is not of Ms. Bautsch,* but of Ashley Todd.
*Whose name, for some reason, I keep spelling Bat-sh%$.
It’s clearly the worst play ever written.
You see, the Reykavik City Theatre has announced that it will be performing the full 2,000 page parliamentary report on the island nation’s banking collapse.
It is expected to take 72-120 hours.
The New Republic, which has over the past 36 years descended from a well respected liberal voice to a a bastion of white ivy-league entitlement, plagiarism, fabulism (making sh%$ up), Republican talking points, and a cut in its publishing frequency, and its circulation, by nearly ½.
Well, in yet another step towards total irrelevancy, the magazine has decided to start charging for “premium” online content, whatever that means.
It’s a magazine that you could not pay me to read, and now they want us to pay them.
Yesterday, it was Patty Murry, today it’s Nancy Pelosi.
Anyone see a pattern?
Wherein the raving nut job from the Sooner State says thatNancy Pelosi is a nice woman and that you should not believe everything htat you hear on Fox news:
“The intention is not to put anybody in jail,” Coburn said. “That makes for good TV news on Fox, but that isn’t the intention.”
Later, when his audience started to boo at the mention of Pelosi, Coburn stopped them.
“Come on now… how many of you all have met her? She’s a nice person,” Coburn said. “Just because somebody disagrees with you, doesn’t mean they’re not a good person.”
“Don’t catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody’s no good,” Coburn added.
Coburn urged audience members to widen their points of view by reading and watching different media outlets, not just the ones they agree with.
(emphasis mine)
This from a man who says that abortion doctors should face the death penalty, and that he, in the course of his duties as an OB/GYN, has performed abortions, so maybe he can hold these rather disparate thoughts in his head because if he is batsh%$ insane.
It appears that the right wing media is having a hissy fit over the size of Nancy Pelosi’s gavel:
Gee, the Republicans see something big, and it makes them feel insecure.
Imagine that.
Writer J.D. Shapiro, apologizing for being the 1st script writer for Battlefield Earth.
Seriously, I cannot do justice to this, not can I provide excerpts that do justice, but here is a sample:
During my Scientology research, I met an employee who I instantly had a crush on. She was kind of a priestess, and had dedicated her life to working for the church by becoming a Sea Org member. She said that she signed a billion-year contract. I said, “What! Really?” She said she got paid a small stipend of $50 a week, to which I said, “Can you get an advance on the billion years, like say, a mere $500,000?” And then she said as a Sea Org member, you can’t have sex unless you’re married. I asked her if she was married. She said yes. So I said, “Great! That means we can have sex!”
It is simply exquisite!
Go read.
He has been fired as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
It probably has something to do with his recent comments about the Republican party’s missteps.
Fellow pariah right winger Bruce Bartlett actually invoked Stalin in his comments on the affair, though he wimped out and only used the “S” word in his URL. “groupthink-right-would-make-stalin-proud.”
Bartlett notes that the AEI “experts” on healthcare had been muzzled:
Since, he [Frum] is no longer affiliated with AEI, I feel free to say publicly something he told me in private a few months ago. He asked if I had noticed any comments by AEI “scholars” on the subject of health care reform. I said no and he said that was because they had been ordered not to speak to the media because they agreed with too much of what Obama was trying to do.
It is noteworthy that Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal calls it a resignation, which even the Washington Post did not try to foist off on their readers.
Here is Mr. Frum’s letter of resignation:
Dear Arthur [Brooks, AEI President],
This will memorialize our conversation at lunch today. Effective immediately, my position as a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute is terminated. I appreciate the consideration that delays my emptying of my office until after my return from travel next week. Premises will be vacated no later than April 9.
I have had many fruitful years at the American Enterprise Institute, and I do regret this abrupt and unexpected conclusion of our relationship.
Very truly yours,
David Frum
And the WSJ says that he “quit”.
Heh.
Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox.
I’m not sure if this is true, but it certainly has a ring of “truthiness” to it.
It should be noted that feeling angry and powerless is good for talk media, and talk media, like forms of communication, so folks like Limbaugh and Beck are crying all the way to the bank.
The scandal now has the department issuing subpoenas to, “have been issued to at least six Sas Vegas businesses,” as well as to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSCC).
As to the businesses, we are looking at what may be an actual bribery case:
One of those companies was eCommLink, formerly run by Jack Williams, a man who claimed to have invented the gift card.
Senator Ensign’s then-Chief of Staff John Lopez welcomed the opportunity to help a Nevada company. But sources say Ensign’s office quickly seized on the opportunity to get something in return.
Sources close to the situation say Ensign’s office warned eCommLink and others about pending prepaid card regulation and that donations and support could make those troublesome rules go away.
So, basically the story is as follows: John Ensign sleeps with the wife of a longtime friend and aide, he then gets his parents to pay his friend off, and throws illegal (there is supposed to be a waiting period) lobbying work to his ex-friend in order to keep things quiet, only it appears that there was some more run of the mill corruption, that Ensign, as head of the NRSCC, may have used his position to extort campaign donations.
The mainstream media has studiously avoided covering it, the Washington Post has yet to publish a stand alone story on the scandal yet, for example, but thankfully Rachael Maddow has been all over this, as the two videos (7:33 & 6:35) show.