Via Jason Linkins:
“Sarah Palin is a great friend to the bowling industry and we’re so proud and honored to welcome her as our keynote speaker at International Bowl Expo 2010,” said Steven Johnson, executive director of the BPAA.
I’m crying.
This post is in: Bring on the Brawndo!
Via Jason Linkins:
“Sarah Palin is a great friend to the bowling industry and we’re so proud and honored to welcome her as our keynote speaker at International Bowl Expo 2010,” said Steven Johnson, executive director of the BPAA.
I’m crying.
by John Cole| 53 Comments
This post is in: Bring on the Brawndo!, Democratic Stupidity
Via Atrios, more wisdom from Ben Nelson:
In lieu of a “war tax” to pay for a troop increase in Afghanistan, Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson (NE) is proposing war bonds.
“We didn’t have a war tax in the second World War,” Nelson said, and instead the government sold Americans bonds.”People invested in their country, in that fashion [and] made a lot of sense back then. I don’t know why it might not make sense today, certainly in lieu of jumping to tax.”
This is the fine mind the Democrats have given the veto power over their health care legislation. This is the man who has the last say on the most significant piece of legislation Democrats will craft in decades. This is the man who holds the electoral future of all Democrats hostage.
And that man is an idiot.
This post is in: Bring on the Brawndo!
Some days I’ve about had it with this country. The absurd over-reaction to the WH dinner crashers was way too much the last few days, but I just saw a ten minute piece on CNN that treated this like it was an enormous deal, and I can’t take much more of this kind of idiocy.
In a sane society, the reaction to this sort of thing would be for people to say to themselves “Wow, the cheeky bastards” and move on with life while the Secret Service quietly performed an internal investigation. But we are not a sane society, and instead have national leaders like this gaping jackhole:
Some lawmakers are calling for a Congressional investigation. Although the couple did go through a magnometer, “They could have had anthrax on them,” said Peter King, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee. “They could have grabbed a knife from the dining room table.”
Or they could have had a suitcase nuke made out to look like a great ass in a red dress. Or they could have been carrying vials of cyanide and poured it into the drink of every ranking government official. Or they could have kidnapped the Obama kids and held the President ransom to release everyone at Gitmo.
But they didn’t now, did they? They sneaked in, got away with some free eats and a few drinks, and went on their merry way. So grow up. Grabbed a knife from the dinner table- that is too stupid for even an Austin Powers movie. Christ.
And it bears repeating- that is ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee leading the pantswetting brigade. The next time you have to take your shoes off at the airport or throw out your 6 ounce container of hand creme, you can thank jackasses like him.
Always Room for Fearmongering in the IdiocracyPost + Comments (129)
This post is in: Media, Bring on the Brawndo!
Before I start this, I want to say that there are some really great folks to follow on twitter. William Beutler is great, Jay Rosen is invaluable, Roger Ebert is amusing, and there are lots of others who are really worth reading.
And then you have Chuck Todd…
Apparently some blogger, somewhere, harshed on Chuck’s Sunday morning buzz and this was the result. Who or what upset Chuck is beyond me, because he never directly addresses anyone. He apparently has decided that the best use of twitter is undirected and untargeted outbursts of random nonsense. Was it something I said (and I seriously doubt Todd even knows I exist)? Who knows? Was it Atrios? Again, who knows- because Chuck never tells us. It could be something anyone said- all we know it is some meanie blogger or some member of the “twitterverse.” In essence, he is defending himself from charges he won’t disclose.
At any rate, on to his whinge. He is mad at something someone wrote somewhere about the media coverage of the Asian trip, brushing off the criticism as just partisan bile from bloggers who aren’t capable of critical thinking. Of course, it wasn’t just bloggers, it was established journalists who were pointing out the failure of the media. James Fallows has had a multiple part series going (part 1, part 2, and part 3) in which he offered up the following assessment:
It’s not just me. Two colleagues with different perspectives — from each other’s, and sometimes from my own — marvel at how badly the mainstream American press distorted the picture of what happened during Barack Obama’s just-ended tour of Asia.
***I wasn’t in touch with Howard French or Tish Durkin (to say nothing of Amb. Jon Huntsman) before we all expressed the same amazed and negative reaction at the way our colleagues had missed the main point of what just happened in America’s relations with a very important part of the world. We’re all familiar with one “crisis of the press,” the business collapse. This is a different kind of crisis, though it makes the business crisis worse: the distortion of reality by compressing every complex issue into the narrative of the DC-based “horse race.” As you can tell, this really bothers me.
That wasn’t a potty-mouthed blogger.
This post is in: Media, Bring on the Brawndo!
It is starting to become clear to me what the GOP strategy is- they are trying to turn the entire country into California- an ungovernable mess where the majority is incapable of governing because of an obstinate and insane minority party and ridiculous procedural hoops.
And when you realize that, it makes complete sense why no one in the Republican party stands up to the lies spewed by Sarah Palin, like, for example, this nonsense about mammograms and death panels. She is flat out lying, as she does most every time she opens her mouth, but no one in the GOP will call her on it because it is to their advantage to make the country ungovernable. They like it when there is so much bullshit and disinformation out there that the public is incapable of being informed. Sarah Palin is cheaper and far more effective than all the bullshit factories the Koch Foundation and others have been funding for decades.
And our media elites, desperate for access and a way to fill a 24 hour news cycle, comfortable with their village status, and cowed by decades of being called liberal, rather than calling obvious lies for what they are, will instead sit by and act like play by play announcers and color commentators at a football game, with a he-said she-said approach: “Sarah Palin claims mammogram guidelines are legally binding, Kathleen Sebelius says this is not true. What do you think? Our roundtable next with Stephen Hayes, Karl Rove, and James Carville, where we will discuss what this means for Obama and the 2010 midterm elections.”
Just depressing. On any given day, if you just quickly read a newspaper or watch cable news for fifteen minutes, there is a very solid chance you will leave the experience knowing less than when you started.
by John Cole| 41 Comments
This post is in: Media, Bring on the Brawndo!
“Even through a veil of censorship and propaganda, the Chinese people managed a clearer view of Obama’s visit than the US media did.”- Tish Durkin
(via James Fallows)
This post is in: Bring on the Brawndo!
I’m sitting here watching Rachel Ray make a quick Thanksgiving dinner that working moms and dads can easily whip up in no time, with gravy, and apple pie, and all sorts of things, and all I can think is “I can’t believe they tried to turn her into a symbol of pro-Jihadi anti-Americanism.”
It really was just crazy, and after reading @tcot on twitter today, and reading my usual wingnut blogs while also stopping on the Bill O’Reilly show while channel surfing and watching him interview Glenn Beck about buying gold, and I realize they have just gotten worse since the United Pastry Jihad.
John +1 (Black Box Shiraz FTW. What’s another torpedo in a sinking ship, I say…)