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I Smell a Pulitzer!

You are here: Home / Archives for I Smell a Pulitzer!

It’s Always Sunny at Kaplan Daily

by John Cole|  November 19, 20108:16 am| 94 Comments

This post is in: War, Assholes, Fucked-up-edness, I Smell a Pulitzer!, Our Failed Media Experiment

B52 baby way up in the sky
Come drop your lovin’ on me child
B52 baby way up in the sky
Drop your love on me
– The Cult, Peace Dog

***

Via email, Fred Hiatt’s fishwrap provides probably the most disgusting piece of agitprop you’ll read for a while:

But many residents near Kandahar do not share the view. They have lodged repeated complaints about the scope of the destruction with U.S. and Afghan officials. In one October operation near the city, U.S. aircraft dropped about two dozen 2,000-pound bombs.

In another recent operation in the Zhari district, U.S. soldiers fired more than a dozen mine-clearing line charges in a day. Each one creates a clear path that is 100 yards long and wide enough for a truck. Anything that is in the way – trees, crops, huts – is demolished.

“Why do you have to blow up so many of our fields and homes?” a farmer from the Arghandab district asked a top NATO general at a recent community meeting.

Although military officials are apologetic in public, they maintain privately that the tactic has a benefit beyond the elimination of insurgent bombs. By making people travel to the district governor’s office to submit a claim for damaged property, “in effect, you’re connecting the government to the people,” the senior officer said.

While you dirty hippies and evil leftists are focusing on the lives destroyed, what you are overlooking is that if you put on your neocon warface, you’ll realize that when we bomb civilians, kill their family members and friends, destroy their homes, their crops, and their livestock, sure there may be some hard feelings. But let’s not overlook the value of the government meet and greet!

We’re not just killing civilians and destroying their homes, but rather, this is a cleverly disguised government outreach program!

It’s Always Sunny at Kaplan DailyPost + Comments (94)

It’s Hard to be Humble When You’re a FOX News Personality

by Kay|  November 12, 20109:18 am| 43 Comments

This post is in: David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute, Election 2010, Free Markets Solve Everything, Assholes, Good News For Conservatives, I Smell a Pulitzer!

49% of the vote in a low-turnout election and….conservatives are RAMMING THE AGENDA down our throats in Ohio.

UNTIL the suffix is removed from Gov.-elect John Kasich’s title, Ted Strickland remains Ohio’s chief executive. The public pressure Mr. Kasich is exerting on Mr. Strickland to halt spending on studies of a modern passenger rail system in the state is neither helpful nor justified.

I’m waiting for the calls for humility from principled conservatives. Isn’t it time for David Brooks to deliver yet another droning lecture on how Americans in The Heartland value self-effacing, humble leaders who Share Our Values?

President Obama, after his election two years ago but before his inauguration, steered clear of involving himself in foreign-policy issues or the auto industry bailout. He said the country has only “one president at a time.” Similarly, Ohio has one governor as a time. As eager as Mr. Kasich appears to take over, he owes it to Mr. Strickland – on the 3C issue and others – to let the governor complete the last two months of this term before he imposes his own agenda.

Ohio media gave Kasich a complete pass on anything substantive. They were simply bored with the competent and decent Ted Strickland, and, predictably, slobbered all over Kasich, the Lehman director and FOX News personality, like a bunch of star-struck rubes. It was embarrassing to watch.

Now that Kasich has moved the crony-filled wrecking crew in before actually taking office, they’re whining ineffectually about silly procedural issues, and getting around to thinking about, you know, how he might govern.

Too late for that.

It’s Hard to be Humble When You’re a FOX News PersonalityPost + Comments (43)

“You Don’t Need to Know That, Comrade!”

by Anne Laurie|  September 18, 201010:43 am| 37 Comments

This post is in: Military, I Smell a Pulitzer!, Security Theatre

More of our precious deficit-swelling tax dollars well spent on literary critiques. From the NYTimes, “Secrets in Plain Sight in Censored Book’s Reprint“:

… The Defense Department is buying and destroying the entire uncensored first printing of “Operation Dark Heart,” by Anthony Shaffer, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve and former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, in the name of protecting national security.
__
A supposed secret removed from the second printing: the location of the Central Intelligence Agency’s training facility — Camp Peary, Va., a fact discoverable from Wikipedia. And the name and abbreviation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, routinely mentioned in news articles. And the fact that Sigint means “signals intelligence.” Not only did the Pentagon black out Colonel Shaffer’s cover name in Afghanistan, Chris Stryker, it deleted the source of his pseudonym: the name of John Wayne’s character in the 1949 movie “The Sands of Iwo Jima.”
[…] __
[I]n the case of Colonel Shaffer’s book, uncensored advance copies — possibly as many as 100 — were distributed by St. Martin’s Press before military officials found what they thought were security lapses. The New York Times bought an uncensored copy online this month, and on Friday got the redacted version from the publisher…
__
The Pentagon’s intervention has greatly increased interest in the book: one uncensored copy sold for more than $2,000 this week on eBay, and when the story broke last week, preorders for the new edition pushed the book as high as No. 4 among best sellers on Amazon.
[…] __
A Pentagon spokesman, Colonel David Lapan, said he could not discuss specific redactions “because the information in question is considered classified.” Colonel Shaffer said Friday that his Army bosses asked him not to discuss his book for now. In a statement released by St. Martin’s Press, he suggested that the changes inadvertently offered some insight.
__
“While I do not agree with the edits in many ways,” Colonel Shaffer wrote, “the Defense Department redactions enhance the reader’s understanding by drawing attention to the flawed results created by a disorganized and heavy handed military intelligence bureaucracy.”

That’s Wikipedia for you — just one unpatriotic spoiler after another!

“You Don’t Need to Know That, Comrade!”Post + Comments (37)

Assange Sexy Time

by $8 blue check mistermix|  August 22, 201010:51 am| 46 Comments

This post is in: I Smell a Pulitzer!, Security Theatre

The picture accompanying this article (in Swedish) made me laugh. Is Julian Assange the new Swedish sex symbol?

Assange Sexy TimePost + Comments (46)

Rough Boys

by $8 blue check mistermix|  July 1, 201011:06 pm| 54 Comments

This post is in: I Smell a Pulitzer!, Our Failed Media Experiment, WTF?

Kathleen Parker shows us why she deserved that Pulitzer:

No, I’m not calling Obama a girlie president. But . . . he may be suffering a rhetorical-testosterone deficit when it comes to dealing with crises, with which he has been richly endowed.

[…] Obama is a chatterbox who makes Alan Alda look like Genghis Khan.

[…] Obama may prove to be our first male president who pays a political price for acting too much like a woman.

I’m not a DC columnist, so I’m not qualified to judge testosterone levels from speeches and policy statements. Even so, I don’t see a hell of a lot of robust masculinity in politicians of either party. If Parker (and MoDo) are looking for wimps, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell and Joe Lieberman, just to name three of many, seem like better targets than Obama.

(via)

Rough BoysPost + Comments (54)

I smell a Pulitzer

by DougJ|  June 11, 20108:36 am| 50 Comments

This post is in: I Smell a Pulitzer!

The very serious John Harris, who co-runs the Politico with his lover, Pulitzer committe member Jim VandeHei is now writing 1200 word pieces about what Obama staffers wear (Instaputz):

When two White House aides last weekend stripped off their shirts for an afternoon of drinking with friends at a Georgetown bar, there was widespread agreement that it exposed something — beyond the pectorals of speechwriter Jon Favreau and press aide Tommy Vietor — about Washington in the age of Barack Obama.

There was no agreement about what that something was.

Conservative critics said it showed the young Obama crowd needs to get a clue. By these lights, the bare-chested drinking showed the aides acting like — and, thanks to a photo posted on the Web, looking like — frat boys in the midst of two wars and the Gulf oil spill.

[snip]

Erick Erickson on conservative RedState.com complained of a double standard, claiming that a similar picture of Bush White House aides would have sparked a huge uproar.

How many MoDo columns is this story good for?

I smell a PulitzerPost + Comments (50)

When You’ve Lost Mark Halperin

by John Cole|  April 20, 201011:12 am| 103 Comments

This post is in: Republican Stupidity, I Smell a Pulitzer!

I’m as shocked as anyone about this:

It isn’t every day that a consumate inside-game reporter/pundit type like Mark Halperin aggressively calls out one party for lying, but that’s exactly what Halperin did early this morning on MSNBC, talking about the GOP claim that the Dem financial reg reform bill will lead to a permanent bailout. Per the transcript:

    JOE SCARBOROUGH: Just this once, defend the Republican position.

    MARK HALPERIN: I cannot defend what they’re doing.

    MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Oh, please.

    SCARBOROUGH: Look at you! Look at you!

    [CROSSTALK]

    HALPERIN: They are willfully misreading the bill or they are engaged in a cynical attempt to keep the president from achieving something.

Note how appalled Scarborough is.

Greg says he will have video soon, and that is a good thing, because I need to see this with my own lying eyes.

When You’ve Lost Mark HalperinPost + Comments (103)

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