Go Steelers!
Archives for 2009
Someone Change Steve Marmel’s Didy
This is beyond laughable:
It’s Christmas day, and the only thing that stopped 12/25 from feeling a lot like 9/11 was a failed detonator and a guy named Jasper Schuringa. Weather now seems like a quaint travel threat – like a cold does compared to the Bubonic Plague.
It’s December 26, and the last of my guests arrive keenly aware of what happened over the skies of Detroit. Across America, everybody’s gut tightens and old fears and old wounds re-open.
Meanwhile, the president continues his vacation.
America lucked out this holiday season. It’s as simple as that. Something terrible could have happened and It was the bravery of passengers, and the ineptitude of a would-be terrorist, that prevented it.
***Yes, the president deserves a vacation. Especially this president, who I believe has worked so hard on issues he cares about to the best of his ability; who is attacked and stalled by enemies for every attempt to fix every ill he inherited over the last eight years.
This is a man who needs a break.
But that vacation should have been over moments after the plane landed at noon on Christmas day, and everybody was starting to do the math that once again, al Qaeda tried to strike at this country.
Yes. Obama should immediately have rushed to a microphone and said everything is going to be ok, and spoken reassuringly so pantswetting morans like Steve Marmel would be comfortable. He probably should have worn a flight suit and ordered an invasion of the Netherlands to make everyone really feel safe.
Someone burp this whiner and hand him a wetnap.
(via)
Has any of you read this book?
This sounds pretty funny (via Josh Green at the Washington Monthly):
Not long afterward, a McCain staffer named Martin Eisenstadt came forward to take responsibility for leaking the Africa stuff. At first blush, Eisenstadt seemed exactly the sort you’d expect to cruelly betray his candidate: a vaguely familiar, middle-tier neocon hack affiliated with an outfit called the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy—a guy whose natural place in the universe is on the third block of Hardball, his command of the latest GOP talking points and lapel-pin flag both obnoxiously on display. That was enough for MSNBC, the Los Angeles Times, and a host of other media outlets to run with the story that the culprit had been found.
The only trouble was that Martin Eisenstadt was not a McCain adviser or even a real person. He was a hoax perpetrated by two filmmakers, Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin (who played Eisenstadt on television). The Harding Institute didn’t exist, nor did the Eisenstadt Group political consulting firm, though phony evidence of both can be found online. It was all an elaborate ruse that worked to perfection. The media made the obligatory hiccup of remorse and hurried on. But the hoax was worth savoring because it was funny on so many levels. Not only did it embarrass a facile media—which is not, let’s be honest, like putting a man on the moon—but it slyly mocked American political culture in a way that barely registered. The joke was not that an imposter could infiltrate cable news for as long as Martin Eisenstadt did. It was that our entire system of politics has become so mindlessly rote, and campaigns such stage-managed shams, that it didn’t really matter whether the guy spouting talking points on Hardball was the real deal or a fraud. Both said exactly the same thing.
[….]I Am Martin Eisenstadt is an odd mixture of high and low comedy that, on balance, is pitched at about the level of a Judd Apatow movie. If you don’t find the idea of Dennis Hastert oil-wrestling the Turkish foreign minister to be inherently funny, this probably isn’t your book. On the other hand, the authors know Washington so well that if you’re a creature of the Beltway you can’t help but admire their curator’s appreciation for the tiniest details. Anyone can milk humor from the idea that Republicans are greedy and corrupt. Only connoisseurs of conservative excess would think to parody the warped machismo of the Reagan years that led members of the preppy youth group Young Americans for Freedom (including Grover Norquist) to visit Angola on behalf of the UNITA rebels and style themselves “freedom fighters,” which mainly seems to have entailed being photographed with an AK-47. Martin Eisenstadt’s machine-gun-brandishing picture appears on page 15.
They also did a multi-part YouTube documentary about the guy.
CBS Sunday Morning
Have at it.
Yinz Don’t Understand
We talked about the best RB of the modern era the other day (I chose Barry Sanders, but I could easily put Sweetness there and Barry #2), but here is my favorite running back of all time:
I loved that twinkle-toed fat man. Oh yes. I love that fat man and I am unashamed.
Shameless nutpicking
In the Detroit Free Press piece about Hoekstra’s reaction to yesterday’s airplane incident, Hoekstra was identified as a “Holland Republican” since he is from the town of Holland, Michigan.
The first comment from the Colonel Mustard post John wrote about:
What is a “Holland” Republican? Did they mean to say “Dutch”? Are they implying that he is a tool for Holland? Fearing that readers might miss the Dutch-Holland connection if they used “Dutch”, did they also fear that they would miss the subliminal implication?
Speaking Gibberish
Can someone please explain what Col. Mustard is talking about:
The fear that conservatives would point out the obvious about this terrorist attack seemed to be a common first reaction:
“[The attack] means Greater Wingnuttia is going to get the very special happy Christmas they most desire, because what they like best of all is to wet their pants in an ecstasy of hysterical screeching …. “
John Cole of Balloon-Juice immediately lined up his preemptive attack:
I’m not going to speculate about what happened because the reports are all over the place, and I do not want to minimize the seriousness of it, but I will state that I think we all know the kind of media freak-out we are about to have over this event.
How was it an attempt to “politicize” terrorism for Hoeksta to point out the obvious? Al-Qaeda activities in Yemen are a problem, and this incident may prove that those activities have the ability to reach our shores as in the Fort Hood shooting.
I’m honestly baffled. Does anyone not think there is going to be a media freak-out over this? Has he not turned on the tv? Is he saying that it would be irresponsible for me to not speculate? Is he claiming I’m trying to downplay the event despite including the statement “I do not want to minimize the seriousness of it?” What is he “obviously” trying to point out- that people still want to attack the United States? I never even mentioned Hoekstra. What is he talking about?
And in order for me to launch a pre-emptive attack, wouldn’t I have to have written the post before someone tried to blow up a plane?
Conservatives are just weird. I swear to God half the trackbacks I get from wingnuts look like they just went through memorandum and linked to people randomly, no matter what they have said, and try to make it fit their post. All of the conservative blogosphere reads like a Palin tweet these days.