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Palin Surprises Everyone

Just about everyone was caught by Sarah Palin’s surprise announcement that she is resigning as governor of Alaska. So far, nobody has any idea why she is stepping down. She was expected to announce that she would not run for reelection — possibly to free her up for a presidential bid in 2012 — but to resign before she has served out her term as governor?

Andrew Sullivan has a good survey of the reactions, which range from “Bizarre” to “Unless she’s a total moron, there’s no way she’s running for president. Then again, maybe she is a total moron.” And of course, her rabid supporters over at Free Republic are very unhappy.

So far, the only reason that anyone has advanced as to why she is resigning is this (probably doctored) photo:

The Proverbial Tundra

If you have any idea of what Palin is thinking, let us know in the comments.

UPDATE: At the suggestion of a commenter, I reviewed the video and I now do not believe that the photo is doctored. And of course I never thought that she was actually pregnant. But I still think it is ironic, given the role that various pregnancies have played in this story. I’m sorry if I’ve offended anyone.

UPDATE 2: A possible reason? A new scandal brewing.

UPDATE 3: Palin responds, threatening a defamation suit.

UPDATE 4: FBI denies that Palin is under investigation for corruption (as was postulated previously — see update 2).

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Happy 4th Fireworks!

Mike Luckovich
© Mike Luckovich

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Now It’s Franken’s Time!

It only drug on for eight (long) months, but the results are finally in and Al Franken is now the junior Senator from Minnesota.

This is the first time in history we have elected a professional comedian to the US Senate. Which begs the question … just what actor will they use to parody him on Saturday Night Live? Would it be acceptable for a politician to appear on SNL and parody himself? (Although some people think that Sarah Palin already did that, albeit unintentionally.)

When Dubya left office, comedians no longer had his “Bushisms” to make fun of. Will they fill this void with making fun of Franken? I think the answer is a resounding yes:

Steve Breen
© Steve Breen

Personally, I think Al Franken is Solid Gold.

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Buying the Media the American Way

The Washington Post was caught flat footed selling access (for as much as $250,000) to “Obama administration officials, members of Congress”, and even the paper’s own reporters and editors. The first event was entitled “Health-Care Reform: Better or Worse for Americans? The reform and funding debate.” Who were they selling this to? Lobbyists and association executives, giving them a chance (in the Post’s words) to “alter the debate”. I kid you not.

Obviously, once exposed, the Post cancelled the private “salon”, which was to be held at the home of WaPo CEO and publisher Katharine Weymouth.

But what I find interesting is that they seem to be embarrassed not by the fact that they were planning to have an event like this, but more because of the way it was crudely advertised. The WaPo business unit countered “This was well-developed with the newsroom. What was not developed was the marketing message to potential sponsors.” In other words, we all know that the news media in the US is bought and paid for by corporations and their lobbyists, but we don’t like it when that fact is made blatantly obvious.

The one-page flyer sent out to prospective attendees included the following:

Underwriting Opportunity: An evening with the right people can alter the debate. Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth. … Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table. Interact with key Obama administration and congressional leaders.

A Post spokesman called the flyer a “public relations disaster” (not the event itself, mind you).

UPDATE: A report by Melinda Henneberger, a reporter whose husband works for the Post, comes to the same conclusion: that what the WaPo business unit is “really in trouble for is truth in advertising” — the Post was trying to sell access, they just weren’t subtle enough in their advertising.

UPDATE 2: Weymouth apologizes for the “planned new venture that went off track”. But she keeps justifying the events themselves as something that is “common at other media companies”. Just because the rest of the media companies are corrupt, doesn’t make it right.

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IV Stat

Adam Zyglis
© Adam Zyglis

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The new thing the GOP wants us to be afraid of: the Metric System

In an unintentionally ironic commentary on CNN, Republican John Feehery warns that now that the Democrats have a 60 seat majority in the Senate (with Senator Al Franken), we can expect such horrors as The Metric System (are you scared yet?)!

What will this lead to? Soft drinks sold in liter bottles? Oh yeah, they already are. In fact, pretty much all industry has gone multinational, meaning that even US companies are metric. But we still stick with our unique and bizarre system of measurement, which means that our science students have a big handicap versus their international peers, everyone in the US with a toolbox needs to have two sets of wrenches, and our remaining manufacturing companies are less competitive in the world market.

As evidence that the Democrats are going to push for metrification, he points out the last time Congress passed a bill trying to move the US to the metric system. It was signed by Republican president Gerald Ford. Oops.

But my favorite part is that at the top of the article, the editor gives a brief bio of Feehery. They list him as president of an “advocacy firm”. Translation? He’s a lobbyist. His clients include the News Corp. (i.e, Fox News), Ford Motor Company (whose cars are all metric anyway) and the US Chamber of Commerce (who under its current president, has become a cheerleading group for Republicans). Before that, he was a lobbyist for the MPAA (motto: not quite as evil as the RIAA).

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USA Today, New York Times, and CNN need to fire their copy editors

The USA Today headline proclaims:

     Madoff ordered to forfeit $170B

And the first line of the article says “Diisgraced financier Bernard Madoff has been ordered to forfeit over $170 billion, prosecutors said Friday.” Yes, they really did spell it “Diisgraced”.

But the “bigger” point is that if Madoff actually had $170 billion to forfeit, that would have made him the richest person in the world (Bill Gates, who currently holds that title, is only worth $40 billion).

USA Today needs to fire their copy editor.

And to give you an idea of how inbred our media actually is, both the New York Times and CNN use the same bad number. Even the investors in Madoff’s Ponzi scheme lost only $13 billion (but still a staggering sum).

How do we explain this glaring mistake? Is billion the new million? Or did the media just use the same accounting techniques as Madoff did?

Actually, we know where they got this number. The Department of Justice (scroll down to Page 6) lists the judgement against Madoff as $170,000,000,000 (what’s a few decimal places between friends?).

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The Hypocrisy of Mark Sanford

The latest installment of the Mark Sanford saga is that in his original confession about his lover in Argentina, he, uh, failed to tell the entire truth (he lied). Now he wants to “lay it all out” (as he inconveniently put it) and has added several additional romantic liaisons with his girlfriend that he failed to mention in his earlier confession, plus admitting that he has “crossed the lines” with other women in the past.

Which begs the question: was he doing any of that crossing of lines back in 2002 when he made this campaign ad?

When is a politician’s cheating on his wife newsworthy? When he makes it newsworthy by shamelessly using his family in sanctimonious campaign ads like this one, about “Christian Values, Character, Honesty”, and “Keeping your Word”.

Dwane Powell
© Dwane Powell

UPDATE: More hypocrisy. Rudy Giuliani went on Morning Joe today to talk about Sanford’s infidelity. Yes, Giuliani the “serial adulterer”, the man who procured city jobs for his mistresses. What did Giuliani want to talk about? You guessed it, Bill Clinton. They managed to avoid talking about Giuliani’s affairs for the entire show. And by the way, the host of Morning Joe recently complained of a “double standard” in the way that politicians who have affairs are judged, insisting that Republicans are treated more harshly than Democrats. Bullshit.

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Conservatives Gone Nuts: Wishing for another attack from bin Laden

This is absolutely nuts:

The quote from Michael Scheuer is “The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.” Glenn Beck agrees.

In today’s Wall Street Journal is an opinion piece about how dysfunction helps the GOP. It brilliantly points out the hypocrisy of the current crop of Republican attack ads against health care reform. One ad (from fraud-tainted Conservatives for Patients’ Rights) says:

Remember the $400 hammer? How ’bout that $600 toilet seat? Seems when Congress gets involved, things just cost more.

Of course, they don’t mention that the famous $400 hammer was sold by a private contractor to Reagan’s Pentagon (motto: throwing money at our defense contractor cronies to spend the Soviets out of existance), and was exposed by a Democrat from Congress!

But an even more stunning display of hypocrisy comes from the official Republican summary of the Patients’ Choice Act:

The federal government would run a health care system — or a public plan option — with the compassion of the IRS, the efficiency of the post office, and the incompetence of Katrina.

Katrina? Seriously? Have these people no shame?

P.J. O’Rourke once said:

Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it.

But the above video of Glenn Beck takes this once step further — they don’t just want dysfunction, they want mayhem, death, and destruction.

Why do conservatives hate America so much?

UPDATE: Statements like Scheuer’s only lend credence to the many conspiracy theories around 9/11.

UPDATE 2: Jon Stewart is outraged.

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The Biggest News

David Horsey
© David Horsey

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Defending the indefensible

When even The Economist says that our health care system needs overhauling — calling it the costliest in the world but with patchy quality — and (shock!) Walmart supports reforming health care — including a mandate that requires large employers to provide health insurance — you know that America wants real health care reform.

The only question is, will Congress manage to give it to us? Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) said on Sunday that the US has “the best health care system the world has ever known” and Obama’s proposed reform is “the first step in destroying” it.

UPDATE: a blogger makes the excellent point that the US already has government-run universal healthcare, which we are already paying for! As is well known, sick person who has no money can go to any emergency room, and the hospital won’t turn them away. The hospitals are reimbursed by Medicaid (a government program!). Of course, people only go to emergency rooms when they have a big problem. How many of those big problems could have been taken care of with some simple (and less expensive) preventative medicine — if they had access to it? So the question is not whether or not we need universal health care — we are already paying for it — the question is whether we need a better system that will cost us less money.

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Late Night Political Humor

“What’s especially sad is that most people of a certain generation only know Michael Jackson as a crazy guy who had a lot of plastic surgery — whereas the truth is, he was not only an unbelievably talented, groundbreaking performer, he also helped break down the racial prejudice in this country. He was an extremely powerful symbol — a black performer who whites could relate to and then later in life, a white performer who blacks could relate to.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to ‘The Late Show.’ My name is Dave, or as the governor of South Carolina would say, gracias!” – David Letterman

“Governor Sanford may have broken the law, that’s the latest. Yeah, they say he may have broken the law because he left the country without transferring power to his lieutenant governor. Yeah, he didn’t transfer power. Yeah, apparently Sanford violated South Carolina’s sacred bros before hoes law.” – Conan O’Brien

“People are calling him a hypocrite, because he’s another family values politician having an affair, but I don’t see it in political terms. I’m just embarrassed for my gender. Ladies, if you want to know what it’s like being a guy, think about the fact that there’s a man, the governor of a good-sized state, who asked himself, ‘Hmm, can I sneak off to Argentina for a week with my lover without anybody finding out?’ And somehow came up with the answer ‘yes.’ I hope that gives you a sense of what we’re up against.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“At a press conference yesterday, in case you don’t know, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford admitted to having a mistress from Argentina. That’s right. Yeah, then there was an awkward moment as he waited for someone to give him a high five.” – Conan O’Brien

“Turned out the governor disappears, for like, the weekend. Finally, his staff said, ‘Don’t worry about the Governor, he is on the Appalachian Trail hiking.’ But it turns out he was in South America. And it turned out he was down there because he was with a woman from Argentina. Seeing a woman from Argentina named Maria. And I was thinking Judge Sotomayor was apparently wrong because Latina woman don’t necessarily have better judgment than white men.” – David Letterman

“The governor of South Carolina, yesterday, his name is Mark Sanford, he had been missing for four days. He admitted he was visiting his mistress in Argentina, which I think is outrageous. How dare this man, a married man, in this economy, outsource to a foreign country when there are plenty of slutty women living right here in the United States. Am I right, fellow Americans?” – Jimmy Kimmel

“What if there is trouble and you can’t find the governor. Well, how does that make you feel? Horrible, doesn’t it? And I’m thinking, South Carolina, what if they get the call that North Carolina is invading.” – David Letterman

“Anybody here from South Carolina? You’re here but you don’t want to admit it.” – David Letterman

“Well, it’s the latest political scandal. Mr. And Mrs. Sanford, you know, the Jon and Kate of politics.” – David Letterman

“There’s another new development in the Mark Sanford story. His wife, Jenny, kicked him out of their home when she heard about the affair. In response, Hillary Clinton said, ‘Wait. You can do that? No one told me that.'” – Jimmy Kimmel

“It’s a disaster for everybody down there in South Carolina. Although I have to say, yesterday, it was nice to see somebody else apologize on TV.” – David Letterman

“But in this sense, Gov. Sanford is a little like President Obama. He has Friday night date night, it’s just not with his wife.” – David Letterman

“Let’s run this down, it was last week, Senator Ensign, Republican, he comes on the television and admits he has an affair. And this week, Governor Sanford of South Carolina, Republican, gets on the television and admits he had an affair. And I was thinking, why do the Republicans have this problem? And it finally came to me. The trouble started with Bob Dole when he was doing those commercials for Viagra.” – David Letterman

“Hey, you know what is going on over in Iran with the election? Have you been following that? Oh, it’s crazy. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared himself a winner. Had a victory party. And he came out at the victory party and he thanked the 148% of the people who voted for him.” – David Letterman

“This Ahmadinejad guy, during all those protests, keeping a very low profile in Iran. His staff said he was hiking.” – David Letterman

“A British furniture company was caught trying to slip advertisements into Twitter by linking them to the Iranian election crisis. Isn’t that the lowest? Yeah, probably the most shameless had to be, ‘Tired of all the unrest? Try our Serta Perfect Sleeper.'” – Conan O’Brien

“President Obama was so upset about the Iranian crackdown that he told the Iranian diplomats that they would not be invited to the Fourth of July party. And I said, well, by God, that will teach them right there.” – David Letterman

“And it’s a darn shame because Ahmadinejad makes wonderful potato salad.” – David Letterman

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Was Michael Jackson a Republican?

Great story from Willie Brown:

I got into a cab Friday, and the driver asked, “Was Michael Jackson a Republican?”

“I don’t think so. Why?”

“He managed to knock both that two-timing South Carolina governor and that two-timing, Bible-thumping senator from Nevada off the front page. Republicans haven’t gotten that much help from a black man since Sammy Davis Jr. hugged Richard Nixon.”

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The Ongoing Crisis

Ed Power & Melissa DeJesus
© Ed Power & Melissa DeJesus

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Bill O’Reilly – best quote EVER!

There are few journalistic standards left these days as we have proven on this broadcast again and again.

From Fox News official transcript. Thanks to News Corpse.

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