Mark Twain is supposed to have said “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” If you like a little acid on the tongue to kick-start your day, here is “The Collective” of Esquire’s Political Blog on fearmongering in politics:
All in all, it was one hell of a good week for fear. National Public Radio decapitated itself because a pasty-faced little charlatan — who, by all rights, should be shucking crawfish in a Louisiana prison farm — faked another tape, and an NPR executive got caught telling the truth about the Tea Party in such a way that would agitate anyone’s chamomile. Since the Republicans in Congress once again have NPR in the crosshairs, the executive got fired and the CEO got tossed out a window.
__
But NPR was not alone in being scared out of its Dockers by legions of misinformed elderly people….
Dave Weigel at Slate reports that The NPR Sting’s “Racist Tea Party” Comment Was Taken Out of Context… based on an analysis by Glenn Beck’s website The Blaze. Yes, Glenn “Rodeo Clown” Beck thinks O’Keefe has gone too far in the pursuit of his agenda. Truly, these are strange days, my friends.
Although, cowardly as they may be, at least the NPR suits are unlikely to be soiling themselves over the rumor that Michelle Obama has murdered Captain Crunch.
Just Some Fuckhead
Thank you God for saving us from that awful soccer thread. WTF?
Ash Can
Holy cripe. When you’ve even lost Glenn Fucking Beck…
Viva BrisVegas
I still don’t get it.
In a private conversation Schiller calls, or maybe refers to, teabaggers as xenophobic racists.
For this he and his boss are sacked.
In what universe are teabaggers not xenophobic racists?
Is this some winger version of political correctness? Where racists can no longer be called racists, but are now to be referred to as the “tolerance challenged”.
JPL
@Just Some Fuckhead: We could talk about the NFL. I always find discussions about billionaires and millionaires fighting it out interesting.
Just Some Fuckhead
@JPL: Fuck sports. Let’s talk about you.
kansi
I simply don’t get it! NPR isn’t the only one to jump the gun on these guys (I’m lookin’ at you, Tom Vilsack.) When the full, unedited tapes come out, it’s always obvious they have slanted everything.
Dude says he knows NPR’s Schiller believes tea partiers are racist, when it turns out he was quoting what other people had said to him while describing the current GOP?
How do these lowlifes keep getting away with such blatantly shoddy and deceptive “newsgathering?”
kansi
Okay, so now I read the second link about Cap’n Crunch and my had has already exploded for the day. Thank you very much!
Just Some Fuckhead
@kansi:
And how does Walker not resign after the Beast prank?
kdaug
@Just Some Fuckhead: Agreed!
JPL is…
Is…
JPL is NOT Cap’n Crunch!
So there!
JPL
@kansi: Because they can. That darn liberal media.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
I just want to thank Balloon Juicers. I turned on the tube to CNN and just watched footage of American relief efforts and discussions about the humanitarian problems. Similar stuff on MSNBC. Had it not been for the Tsunami thread, I wouldn’t have known of the meltdown, and that sent me to the always more reliable BBC, Guardian, Sky News and Sydney Morning Herald sites.
God damn it, journalism in this country sucks ass anymore.
JPL
@kdaug: Now I’m hungry. I will plead not guilty to the Captain Crunch charge. I live in a Captain Crunch free zone.
kdaug
@JPL: Oh, very well.
Charges dismissed.
Elizabelle
Here’s something to really get behind. Combat that negativity.
Bob Herbert column today, “The Master Key.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/12/opinion/12herbert.html
The American people are watching what’s happening in Japan and elsewhere. Good timing for this initiative. Drum up support. Play to our better angels, for a change.
Herbert:
I would guess that 70% of sane Americans are ready to rally around something positive. They see the banksters raking it in. Why can’t our government fund some long-term investments that will improve life for all of us and CREATE SOME JOBS.
We need to make some progress or just give up. And giving up, increment by increment, is what the oligarchs and their puppets like Scott Walker are counting on.
JPL
@Elizabelle: This article has a similar theme andpoints to the Republicans as the naysayers. link
The opinion piece is titled No silver lining in GOP’s clouds and is worth a read.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Fuck you. When an asshole like you refers to the Japanese as “Japs”, you can FOAD for all I care.
Asswipe.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle:
@JPL:
This is something about which have been wondering for a while now. I graduated from high school in 1982, throughout my childhood there seemed to be funds to pay for sports, art, music, school trips, and all sorts of other things. Why have people decided that we can’t afford to pay for a good education? Decline happens because people give up an accept second an third rate results. How do we turn that around?
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus:Despite the typos evident in my plaintive comment, I did actually receive a good education. I suppose that is what I get for rereading a comment after the time for editing has expired.
debbie
Since the category is Assholes, I’ll contribute this:
Yesterday, the brilliant Governor Kasich proudly announced that for a mere $16,000,000 in tax breaks, he’s gotten a business who was never really going to leave Ohio for Texas to instead move from Columbus to a wealthy suburb only 20 miles away. Not only did the governor not require that the company create any new jobs in return for the tax breaks; he didn’t even ask them to promise not to eliminate any of the already existing 315 jobs.
Brilliant fiscal policy!
My math tells me this works out to more than $50,000 per job. The company makes sausage. Those must be some well-paid employees!
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: Do you have a link? As an ex-Columbus resident, I am interested. What company and what suburb?
Ija
@Just Some Fuckhead:
It’s one post per week on soccer and that’s too much for you? How about just not reading it? I’m not a fan of cute pet pictures and cute pet stories, but I don’t go around complaining about them, I just don’t read them. The blog is not an assignment, you don’t have to read every single post.
debbie
There’s an article in The Dispatch, but I like this one better (and it’s got a link to The Dispatch if you insist):
http://www.plunderbund.com/2011/03/10/kasich-defends-moving-bob-evans-out-of-columbus-by-citing-population-loss-in-our-cities/
The company is Bob Evans. My father ran the ad agency that did their campaigns back in the 1960s. I guarantee that that company was never going to leave Ohio. Plus, they’re moving from Columbus to New Albany, about 20 miles away. Columbus (with its Democratic mayor) is losing tax revenue, while New Albany, the domain of a very white-bread, corporate mentality, is gaining the revenue. Ohio gets absolutely nothing in the process, which I guess for Kasich is another win-win!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Ija:
I think it’s his way of saying that he doesn’t have a life.
That’s my take on it and I’m sticking with it.
piratedan
http://cdn.other98.com/wp-cont…..-final.jpg
connection of dots
jinxtigr
I should think nothing worse would happen to either of you for the rest of the day… ;)
Omnes Omnibus
@debbie: So Bob Evans is leaving it’s cute little complex on S. High St for New Albany? That’s fucked up. You are that right, that company was not going to Texas.
Mike in NC
@Elizabelle:
I read yesterday that the small government Republicans in South Carolina want to create jobs by establishing a new state agency modeled on the US Border Patrol, solely dedicated to tracking down and rounding up illegal aliens. This brand new agency will have its own bureaucracy, vehicles, uniforms, etc.
Remember, SC is one of those incredibly backward southern states where half the children live below the poverty level.
keestadoll
This may be the only time I ever type these words: way to go Blaze.
Vishnu Schist
Reprinted in full, my email to NPR on the whole firing bullshit and the robo response. What a pack of assholes at NPR. I’d like to punch them in the neck.
My email:
The brain dead robo response:
TO NPR: FUCK YOU!
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
I wonder how many of the people who vote regularly have children in public schools. My sense is that the people who are outraged about the costs of public education, including but not limited to teachers’ salaries, are outraged at the costs of educating other peoples’ children.
I also think that there is no real consensus on what comprises a ‘good’ education or how ‘good’ an education other peoples’ children deserve.
Liberty60
From a friend of mine on Facebook-
Earthquake followed by radioactive release in Japan today… We are one step closer to our final battle with Godzilla than I previously imagined…
Neil Morse
At least the cost to produce tentacle porn is gonna go waaaaaay down now.
keestadoll
@Liberty60: ROFLMAO. At least this time we don’t have to endure Raymond Burr and really bad dubbing.
Jay in Oregon
@debbie:
Those numbers can’t be right. We’re talking about sausage, not public-school teachers.
J.W. Hamner
DA2 Stuff:
Twin Blades might be overpowered. Bosses basically explode when I use it.
Omnes Omnibus
@James E Powell: My very conservative grandfather, the kind of conservative who believed that the only thing Nixon did wrong was to be too loyal to his subordinates, always voted for school levies and never complained about the cost of educating the children of others. He would say old people had paid for the cost of educating his children, and it was only fair that he pay to education the children of others in return.
trollhattan
More Alaskan Patriots(tm) caught being patrioty, 50-cal style.
http://www.adn.com/2011/03/11/1750269/fairbanks-man-plotted-to-kill.html
JWL
If Captain Crunch could survive his 1978 arrest for possession of child pornography, nothing Michelle Obama can do will ever cost him his job.
James E Powell
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’m not sure that our personal experiences with our families and friends can give us the whole picture, but my parents (Depression/WWII generation) are just like your very conservative grandfather. But my parents are not Rush Limbaugh Republicans.
My Republican brothers and sisters, and their neighbors (Boomers who love Rush), are constantly bitching about the injustice of paying taxes for services that they do not need or use.
At the same time, invading and occupying countries that were never any threat to the U.S. remains very popular with this group. So maybe I’m missing something.
Wile E. Quixote
@trollhattan: @trollhattan:
I wonder when Peter King will hold hearings on this.
Wile E. Quixote
@Vishnu Schist:
NPR is completely and totally useless. As someone else pointed out once it’s initials ought to stand for “Nice and Police to Republicans”. NPR isn’t an alternative to corporate radio, it’s just alternative corporate radio, as witness their opposition, based upon nothing more than fear of competition, to licensing low power FM stations..
NPR management is more concerned with seeking the approval of David Brooks and his ilk than it is in actually being any sort of objective news network.
jl
@Ash Can: late to this thread, but I don’t think Beck is anyone’s to lose. I read that Fox is concerned that Beck has wandered a little too far into crazytown and may not renew his contract. I think you will see Beck’s thought ‘evolving’ back somewhat towards his CNN incarnation, which was a combo of facile ‘center right’ general purpose concern troll, and near crazy (as compared to batshit insane) conservative.
El Cid
@Vishnu Schist: Due to the seriousness of your e-mail criticism, the remainder of NPR’s executive staff have resigned just in case anyone criticize them for not doing so.