Woah, she is one scary….I’m at a loss for a politically correct metaphor.
Category: Wanker
Maureen Dowd Is Just Nuts
Or more accurately, she is so full of herself that she thinks that she can publish the substance of her OP/ED in Latin, and that people will want to translate so that they can read her deathless prose.
She did not even translate it herself.
Maureen Dowd, you are a very sad, very lame person.
Worst Political Commentary Ever
You can almost visualize Rich Lowry masturbating to the debates:
A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It’s one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O’Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat. Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I’m sure I’m not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, “Hey, I think she just winked at me.” And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can’t be learned; it’s either something you have or you don’t, and man, she’s got it.
And them, I guess, he cleaned off his keyboard.
I’m thoroughly squicked by this.
What a Whiner
It appears that Sarah Palin says that she had a bad interview with Katie Couric because the anchorwoman annoyed her.
Katie Couric annoyed her? And she couldn’t cope?
More Whining from the Rich Pig Crowd
It appears that the Wall Street bankers, writing the SEC as the American Bankers Association, are objecting to an accounting rule that requires that assets be priced on their balance sheets at a realistic market value.
They find it inconvenient that assets that they won’t even try to sell, because they might get 15¢ on the dollar, which would make them technically insolvent.
Dudes, you are broke. You are not broke because of an accounting rule, you are broke because your so called assets on your so called balance sheets are about as popular as the idea of giving Dick Cheney a rim job.
The American Bankers Association, today’s wankers of the day.
James Carville, Take Your Daily Dose of STFU
So, it now appears that the man who sleeps with Mary Matalin is saying that John McCain can’t know about his dishonest and deceitful campaign ads, because he is too “honorable”.
Paul R. La Monica is an Idiot
As I have said before, and will undoubtely say again, , the writer of CNNFN’s “The Buzz” column, Paul R. La Monica, is a complete Pratt.
Well, a few days back, La Monica claimed that the next bubble will be — get this — short selling.
This is the statement of someone who does not get the concept of a bubble beyond the fact that it’s an “in word” in the media.
A bubble is an artifact of an unreasonable optimism, and short selling is a manifestation of pessimism, but the clue train has not arrived to La Monicaville.
What the Pundits Really Think About the Palinator
Well, it turns out that right wing pundits Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan got caught in an unguarded moment with an open microphone, and suddenly, when they though that no one was listening, they stopped pretending that John Seymour McCain III was a man of honor.
Chuck Todd is part of the conversation, but he is not guilty of journalistic malpractice here. Journalists have opinions, and their job is to keep them off the air.
Murphy and Noonan, however, are lauding McCain and his alleged “honor” when the red light is on, and calling him an incompetent doddering hack when the light is off.
That is journalistic malpractice.
Transcript:
Chuck Todd: Mike Murphy, lots of free advice, we’ll see if Steve Schmidt and the boys were watching. We’ll find out on your blackberry. Tonight voters will get their chance to hear from Sarah Palin and she will get the chance to show voters she’s the right woman for the job Up next, one man who’s already convinced and he’ll us why Gov. Jon Huntsman.
(cut away)
Peggy Noonan: Yeah.
Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys — this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it’s not gonna work. And —
PN: It’s over.
MM: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.
CT: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.
PN: Saw Kay this morning.
CT: Yeah, she’s never looked comfortable about this —
MM: They’re all bummed out.
CT: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?
PN: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this — excuse me– political bullshit about narratives —
CT: Yeah they went to a narrative.
MM: I totally agree.
PN: Every time the Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.
MM: You know what’s really the worst thing about it? The greatness of McCain is no cynicism, and this is cynical.
CT: This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.
MM: Yeah.
The Politico’s Roger Simon Gets One Right…..For Once
He apologizes for the behavior of the media on the matter of Sarah Palin.
Actually he doesn’t, he explains just what Republicans find unacceptable about media coverage, and his use of the famous Lily Tomlin quote, “No matter how cynical I get, it’s just never enough to keep up,” is a nice use of quote.
Go read.
I’m not sure if it means much, except that perhaps the “elite media” that McCain is now complaining about, the media that literally heckled Mitt Romney, and did everything it could to get McCain the nomination, is beginning to realize that McCain isn’t another pundit.
It’s only taken them about 26 years that McCain is all hat and no cattle.
Well, Now We See the Ron Fournier Influence Over the AP
Another day, another AP hitjob.
Kos noted that Charles Babington had to have written the piece bashing Obamas speech was finished. 603 words, edited, proofed, and posted online 23 minutes after Obama finished…and he got the length of the speech wrong.
Olbermann condemned the Babington piece, and told him to “find new work”.
The always reliable Editor and Publisher has a good rundown, and includes the factoid that, “Even as Babington was hitting Obama for a lack of specifics, AP was transmitting a second piece by another reporter, Jim Drinkard, that offered a detailed look at seven specific policy proposals in the speech (and expressed doubts about all of them).”
Note that Ron Fournier just wrote a piece Analysis: Palin’s age, inexperience rival Obama’s (no links to the AP…I’m still boycotting them for going after bloggers, see here.
MoveOn.org Targets Ron Fournier for Bias
He’s head of the AP’s Washington bureau.
He previously interviewed for a job with McCain, and he’s thoroughly in the tank for him, and he’s been in the tank for the ‘Phants for years.
He wrote a mash note to Karl Rove over the Pat Tillman phoney story, when he had done no stories on either Tillman nor Rove.
More details here.
Here’s hoping that he finds a new line of work, because he ain’t a journalist, he’s a PR flack.
Friends Don’t Let Friends Read Amity Shlaes
Seriously, this analysis of the housing crisis is hacktacularly incoherent.
I’m just saying.
Amity Schlaes: Missing the forest for the tapioca pudding since 1982.
Wanker of the Day: Cokie Roberts
For saying that Barack Obama is somehow elitist for going to Hawaii, where his grandmother lives.
I spent 10 of my first 18 years on the west coast. Hawaii is not an exotic vacation location….It’s firmly middlebrow…Unless, of course, you think that going outside the DC beltway is a long trip.
Hawaii’s Congressional delegation weighed in too:
The comments, received a lot of backlash from Hawaii’s representatives in Washington.
“She’s a bit of a fool that’s the only thing you can say,” said Rep. Neil Abercrombie. ” Don’t forget Cokie Roberts and the whole Washington crowd live in a kind of an incestuous relationship to one another, they talk to one another, they see one another, they know nothing about ordinary people.”
In a statement, Senator Daniel Akaka said calling Hawaii “foreign” does a disservice to the hardworking patriotic Americans who call Hawaii home.
(emphasis mine)
I rather imagine that Senator Daniel Inouye, who lost his arm serving this country, did not have a quote suitable for publication.
Thomas “The Mustache of Pablum” Friedman is Proved Wrong Again
Back in 1996, Thomas “The Mustache of Pablum” Friedman had a theory:
So I’ve had this thesis for a long time and came here to Hamburger University at McDonald’s headquarters to finally test it out. The thesis is this: No two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.
The McDonald’s folks confirmed it for me. I feared the exception would be the Falklands war, but Argentina didn’t get its first McDonald’s until 1986, four years after that war with Britain. Civil wars don’t count: McDonald’s in Moscow delivered burgers to both sides in the fight between pro-and anti-Yeltsin forces in 1993.
You know, you would do more for the betterment of humanity, if you flipped burgers, as opposed to writing OP/EDs for the Times.
H/T Matthew Yglesias, who gives us this picture of the Tbilisi McDonalds:
Wanker of the Day: Bob Kerrey
And not just because he spoke for Attribution on a Politico dot com concern troll piece:
“The idea that Obama was going to win in a blowout was always preposterous,” says former Nebraska senator and onetime presidential hopeful Bob Kerrey, an Obama backer. “A big piece of this, of course, is whether white people are going to support a black guy. … If [Obama] is a tall, skinny white guy named Paul Jones, it’s a different story.
…
“John McCain is a known quantity,” says Bob Kerrey, who thinks Obama will ultimately prevail. “You don’t look at John and say, ‘Who the heck is he?’. He’s a veteran, he’s a guy who got pretty banged up in Vietnam. He can deal with crisis. There’s some uncertainty about Senator Obama.”
…
“Fairly or not, folks think he’s pretty liberal and nobody wants a pair of Pelosis running things,” says a New York-based Democratic consultant.
Adds Bob Kerrey: “The country’s still pretty divided … people may want a divided government. They want change, but I’m not sure that the Democratic agenda has the support of a majority of Americans.”
Can we trade this “mother SHUT YOUR MOUTH!“* to the Repubicans?
Seriously, he’s almost as bad as Lieberman.
*In memoriam of Isaac Hayes.
This is Unbelievably Wankeriffic
Andrea Mitchell, Roger Simon and Mike Barnicle are all sitting around saying that John Sidney McCain III is an honorable man, and that the only way that he would sign off on the current attack ads is if he were completely out of the loop.
Because he’s just so honorable…..and, it appears, so bloody senile.
Wankers and tools.
Gaaahhhhh!!!!!!!!
We have a winner in the wanker press competition, coming, not surprisingly, from the Wall Street Journal.
Writer Amy Chozick is suggesting that with much of the American public overweight, that Barack Obama might be too fit to be president!!!!
But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama’s skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.
So, this is the new meme of the Kule Kidz inside the Beltway, huh? as opposed to this adulatory coverage of Bush and Rice about their “intense” exercise regimes.
So, is Obama too skinny, or too black?
What Digby Said
She is spot on
Richard Cohen and others like him who play the role of ‘liberal’ in the mainstream media are the reason why so many people hate liberals. They’re idiots.
I really have nothing to add to this.
Disabled American Veterans Tells Dick Cheney to go Pound Sand
They yanked his invite because he was demanding that the audience show up two hours early and not have access to bathrooms as a result.
Seriously, even George W. Bush isn’t this cowardly about meeting crowds….what is with this guy.
Why Amy Sullivan is a Complete Idiot
Amy Sullivan has always been a one note pundit: The Democratic party must reach out to religious voters, and protect them from those evil radical secularists who would make fun of them.
The problem there is very basic: there are no radical secularists in the leadership of the Democratic party.
For that matter, I believe that there has been one atheist who has ever served as a member of Congress, so she is talking about people who do not exist.
Now, she is prattling on about how Obama is making overt evangelical religiosity work for him.
First, she claims that Obama has “pivoted to announce that an Obama administration would fix, expand and elevate the faith-based initiative”.
Except, of course, if these organizations take federal money, Obama won’t allow them to discriminate on the basis of religion, and they will be subject to federal accounting and auditing standards, which has always been the case until Bush set up his own “faith based initiative.”
The purpose of Bush’s program was to ensure that there was neither fiscal accountability nor discrimination protection, so it is a complete refutation of Bush’s program.
In fact, what is implied is that he will sweep up massive numbers of white evangelicals in so doing, even though the religious right demand that they be subject to no fiscal accountability and be given the right to discriminate.
The core message of the politicized right wing evangelical is hostility to integration and to minorities.
Similarly, when she lauds Bush’s “Compassionate Conservativism”, she does not understand, or more likely refuses to understand that this is a dog whistle to the religious right, referring to Marvin Olasky’s The Tragedy of American Compassion, which says that “true compassion” is not giving charity, because, “Compassion means tough love in which those who give must demand self-help from those who receive,” which means let “black babies starve”.
The religious Evangelical does not begin with Roe v. Wade and abortion, bur rather with Green v. Connally, which revoked the tax exempt status of discriminatory private religious schools.
So we can run a poll on religious affiliation vs. candidate support, and you can see that Obama is polling lower than either Kerry in 2004 or Gore in 2000. (h/t Talkleft on the poll)
Barack Obama has no chance of picking up white right wing Evangelical voters, and the votes he picks up from black Evangelicals and Hispanic Catholics are because the Republican party is implacably hostile to them.
Amy Sullivan is a one trick pony, but her pony is a dog, and I’ll call her my “Wanker of the Day”.