Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
This post is in: Cat Blogging, Dog Blogging, Open Threads
Getting ready for my trip tomorrow, so I dropped Tunch off at Tammy’s and took Lily to my brother’s. As I was driving away from my brother’s, he was walking her in the house, and she struggled so much that she got out of her collar and came chasing after the car. I had to stop in the middle of the road and grab her and he had to carry her, whining, into the house. She’s apparently been crying ever since.
I has a sad.
by DougJ| 79 Comments
This post is in: Assholes
Obviously, there’s lots to make fun of Michael Ledeen’s hoax post and many have made fun of it. But not many have touched on this claim he makes:
I’ve done satirical pieces myself, and I know how they can take off. I once wrote one that said that Bill Casey did not die, and was hiding in a bunker under the St Andrews golf course from which he was running Mikhail Gorbachev. I thought it was obviously satirical, but it went like wildfire all over the world. And that was in the days before the Internet.
Is it possible that this really “went like wildfire all over the world”? Could people possibly have been that dumb 20 years ago?
Update. I can find no evidence that this happened.
This post is in: Media, Clown Shoes
Maybe that is what Obama needs- a tire-swinging event at the White House to ease the wrath of Jake Tapper and Mark Knoller?
I’m sorry, I just have a hard time computing the notion that a WH correspondent has nothing better to do than make multiple posts about the gender make-up of Obama’s athletic activities, to include one post with college pictures of Kathleen Sebelius on her basketball team. Seriously.
The problem I have with the WH approach to Fox News is not that they are openly contemptuous of that wing of the GOP, but that they are not showing enough contempt for the rest of these folks at the other networks and organizations like the politico. If I were Robert Gibbs, I would open EVERY SINGLE press briefing, from here on out, with a five minute daily athletic/gender report, detailing what activities Obama took part in and what the male-female make-up was. And then I would deliver, daily, right there in the press briefing, a stack of signed affidavits from Hillary, Janet Napolitano, Kathleen Sebelius, and every other major female in the White House, stating that they were asked if they wanted to work out with Obama and Reggie Love this morning but they declined.
And I would drop them right on Jake Tapper’s lap. And I would do it every day from here on out until these clowns pull their heads out of their collective asses. And if the briefing was nearing the end of the allotted time and they still wanted to ask more questions, I would stop exactly when you are supposed to stop and point out that there would have been more time to answer questions, but that we had to spend the first five minutes of the briefing answering the important questions for ABC News.
God damned joke.
*** Update ***
An even better solution:
I think a better idea for Gibbs’ response to this: Every time Tapper raises his hand, Gibbs says “In the interests of gender equality, we’re skipping you. Helen, your next question, please.”
Perfect.
by John Cole| 97 Comments
This post is in: Media, Clown Shoes
For those of you who thought yesterday’s NY Times piece about the “boys club” playing basketball at the White House was ridiculous, that just shows why you don’t have the chops to be a WH reporter for a major network:
We asked Terry O’Neill, the new president of the National Organization for Women, what she thought of those Democratic women and others quietly complaining about a “boy’s club” atmosphere at the White House, as exemplified by the president playing basketball earlier this month with 11 members of Congress and four Cabinet Secretaries — all men.
As the New York Times and cable news chatter looked at whether the Obama White House is too fratty yesterday, President Obama brought along a woman golf partner for the first time in his 24 golf outings as president, domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes.
Is this much ado about nothing?
Jake Tapper, on the job. I’m beginning to understand why he thinks Fox news is his “sister news organization.” I wonder what Neil Cavuto thinks about this?
Just shoot me now.
*** Update ***
This is excellent news for John McCain. Also, too.
by DougJ| 216 Comments
This post is in: Black Jimmy Carter, Open Threads
I’ll give you a question to discuss: does Obama’s waffling on the exact nature of the public option (which I agree is puzzling) make him look like Jimmy Carter, Richard, Nixon, Adolf Hitler, or all of the above?
Update. Mao, Stalin, Neville Chamberlain, Don Draper, and Felix the Cat are also acceptable choices here.
by DougJ| 92 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Assholes
I can never decide if it’s a good thing that the Politico spends so much time profiling unelected people with power in Washington DC. But this piece is pure Chamber of Commerce propaganda:
If the combination of Obama policies and attacks on the Chamber turns business against Democrats, it could have a big effect on elections. Many businesses, spooked by the crackdown on soft money, have been reluctant to fund groups outside of the Chamber in recent elections. If they are motivated, Republicans will have a much better chance at reclaiming the money edge that they once enjoyed but have let slip away in recent years.
Several CEOs have told POLITICO in recent weeks they have gone from genuinely uncertain about Obama’s economic views to authentically concerned. And the outcome of climate change, health care and regulation could turn much of business against the president’s goals.
Having spent a lot of time (and possibly too many blog posts) on elite media’s defense of Fox News, I think I get it now: Fox, the Chamber, the think tanks, and all the assholes, elected and unelected, who have been running this country into the ground for however many years, are part of the status quo. And the status quo is good to media elites. They’ll defend it every step of the way.
This post is in: Open Threads, Daydream Believers
In his latest NYT column, Paul Krugman (may he abide in shrillness forever) is so confident we’ll get some kind of health care reform that he’s willing to speculate on how it will be received:
[T]he experience in Massachusetts, which passed major health reform back in 2006, should dampen conservative hopes and soothe progressive fears.Like the bill that will probably emerge from Congress, the Massachusetts reform mainly relies on a combination of regulation and subsidies to chivy a mostly private system into providing near-universal coverage. It is, to be frank, a bit of a Rube Goldberg device — a complicated way of achieving something that could have been done much more simply with a Medicare-type program…
[R]eform remains popular. Earlier this year, many conservatives, citing misleading poll results, claimed that public support for the Massachusetts reform had plunged. Newer, more careful polling paints a very different picture. The key finding: an overwhelming 79 percent of the public think the reform should be continued, while only 11 percent think it should be repealed.Interestingly, another recent poll shows similar support among the state’s physicians: 75 percent want to continue the policies; only 7 percent want to see them reversed.
As a proud Massachusetts resident by choice, I can attest it would be hard to get 79% of my fellow Massholes to come out in favor of sunshine and/or kittens. This is good news for Nancy Pelosi!
Monday Morning Open Thread (Glimmers of Hope Edition)Post + Comments (110)