And over at Forbes Magazine, Bruce Bartlett points out the irony of the fact that there were no tea parties during the Bush years.
UPDATE: This photo spawned a discussion in the comments about Libertarianism, Somalia, and Anarchy, which led to this classic Andy Singer comic:
At last, the media is finally poking fun at our president in a way I can really appreciate! Over at McSweeney’s, read “My Pitches for Political-Satire Skits Playing on President Obama’s Foibles” Someone finally had the guts to take off the kid gloves and end this insipid love affair the media has with Obama.
First there was the irony of Bristol Palin going on national TV as an advocate for sexual abstinence. I didn’t mention it in here, because I have a lingering case of Palin burnout. But when the story moves into hypocrisy, I just can’t resist.
It turns out that the campaign that Bristol Palin was participating in is sponsored by Candie’s, a clothing line for girls. And the model used by Candie’s to promote their clothing is none other than Britney Spears. So, while they are using Bristol Palin to try to convince girls to not have sex, at the same time they are using Britney Spears to sell ultra-sexy clothing to these same girls. Kinda reminds you of those insidiously evil advertising campaign from the tobacco companies that told teens that they shouldn’t smoke, because “smoking is for adults”.
“As you know, Vice President Biden got in a little bit of trouble yesterday when he suggested that people should avoid commercial flights and subways if they want to stay healthy. Yeah. Today, President Obama recommended that Biden avoid microphones and TV cameras for the very same reason.” – Jay Leno
“Well, there are now cases of swine flu in the United States, Canada and Mexico. So, see that? NAFTA does work.” – Jay Leno
“I’m Jimmy, I’m the host of the program. Unfortunately, because of the swine flu, I cannot physically hug you all. But I want you to know that I’m hugging each of you in my heart right now.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Are you getting tired of swine flu hysteria? I think the media has done a hell of a job scaring the hell out of everybody in this country. I mean, planes have been diverted, people don’t touch elevator buttons, proms have been canceled. At middle schools all across the country, students and teachers have been warned not to kiss during sex. And all for what? As of this morning, 331 confirmed cases worldwide. I’ve had more people than that in my Jacuzzi.” – Bill Maher
“I think a lot of people are really overreacting to this whole swine flu thing. Don’t you? Come on. Like today at Disney World, they quarantined Sneezy. There was no cause for that.” – Jay Leno
“Cheney, he overreacted, too. Today, he waterboarded a pig. There’s no reason for that. No reason.” – Jay Leno
“Researchers at Northwestern University said the worst-case scenario is that Swine Flu will infect 1,700 Americans over the next month. Best-case scenario? Turns you into a wolverine.” – Bill Maher
“Right now, I’m an hour away from a long, luxurious weekend of washing my hands every five minutes and loading my shotguns to fight off any swine flu zombies that might wander into the yard.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Finally, some good economic news. They’re hiring at the Supreme Court. There’s going to be an opening. David Souter is retiring, apparently, after a brief, terrifying conversation with Joe Biden.” – Bill Maher
“A vacancy on the Supreme Court. This is something we haven’t seen in awhile. Let’s just hope the president is better at picking a justice than the justices were at picking a president.” – Jay Leno
“President Obama says they’re already looking hard to try and find a replacement for Justice Souter who hasn’t, you know, paid any taxes.” – Jay Leno
“The Republicans say that Obama’s pick for a replacement is completely unacceptable, and they will let us know why as soon as they find out who it is.” – Bill Maher
“They say President Obama will most likely pick a woman. And I think that’s probably true, because today, Clarence Thomas was seen renting porn.” – Bill Maher
“Conservatives, of course, are very nervous about this, for two reasons. One, David Souter was appointed by a Republican, and when he was on the court, became more and more liberal. And they say they will never again allow the appointment of someone who can learn. – Bill Maher
“And the other reason, of course, is because this week Arlen Specter has crossed the aisle. Now, maybe it’s because he’s 79, he just wants to be closer to the bathroom.” – Bill Maher
“Hey! Some happy news. As you may have heard, the White House has a brand-new puppy. I believe his name is Arlen Specter.” – Jay Leno
“I’m sure you’ve heard, Senator Arlen Specter has switched to the Democratic party. Yeah, today, Obama told Republicans look, we’ll give you Biden and call it even.” – Jay Leno
“So, I guess the other big news you heard: Chrysler, bankrupt, finally. Yes, this is very bad news for Chrysler drivers. I mean, besides the fact they drive a Chrysler. … Chrysler is partnering now with Fiat! They have a new slogan: ‘Chrysler: It’s supposed to make that noise'” – Bill Maher
“President Obama said this week he is worried that the country is losing its love of learning. You may have heard him say this. He said we need to show as much attention to science award winners as we do basketball players. Now, didn’t he just install a basketball court in the White House? I guess the West Wing science lab is next on the list.” – Jay Leno
And remember that Sean Hannity hasn’t said a word since he agreed to be waterboarded.
The GOP rolls out their grand effort to rebrand themselves — a “listening tour”. Sometimes I think that if Rush Limbaugh came out and declared that the earth is flat, the Republican “leadership” would fall over each other to agree with him. Great video of rank hypocrisy in action:
Thanks to the Huffington Post.
UPDATE: Now El Rushbo attacks Colin Powell and says he should leave the Republican party and “become a Democrat”. Who could doubt that Limbaugh would happily destroy the Republican party if it would increase his ratings.
The term “blowback” was originally used by intelligence services to describe violent, unintended consequences of covert operations. A big example of this was the CIA financing and training insurgents in Afghanistan to fight a guerrilla war against the USSR, who then turned around and joined al-Qaeda. Indeed, Osama bin Laden himself was one of those insurgents trained by the CIA.
But the term blowback is increasingly being used to describe any unintended consequences of political or social action, especially one that has the opposite of the intended effect. And right now, we have a number of interesting and downright counter-intuitive examples of this:
I’m sure you can come up with other examples of this.
The GOP is taking their role as the opposition party very seriously. In fact, they have already come out against Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, despite the fact that nobody (probably not even Obama) has any idea who that nominee will be. In fact, Souter only confirmed that he will be retiring a few days ago, but already the Republicans are gearing up for an epic fight.
Salon has an interesting article called “The Republicans are against it! Whatever it is” that features some of the negative chatter coming out about Obama’s nominee. According to one Senate Republican, the person Obama wants to put on the Supreme Court is “far to the left”. A conservative group says they are a “hard-left judicial activist”. And another Republican Senator warns that the nominee better remember that judges have to “subordinate themselves to the law”.
As the article says, imagine what they’ll say when they actually know who the nominee is.
Of course, this preemptive posturing is the standard tactic of framing the conversation. For example, the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network is trying to define the current Supreme Court as liberal, even though a majority of the members were appointed by conservative Republican presidents. According to a memo distributed by the group:
While President Obama has said he intends to nominate a moderate or a pragmatist, not a liberal activist, it is advisable to take that statement with a grain of salt. Remember, he thinks that the current Supreme Court — the majority of which is a liberal judicial activist Court — is ‘right-wing’ or ‘conservative.’ If that is his frame of reference (‘liberal judicial activist’ equals ‘right-wing’), then his definition of ‘moderate’ may be equally skewed.
In addition, hit pieces are already being written about some of the potential nominees, using anonymous gossip and innuendo to discredit them, even before Obama even mentions them as potential nominees.
All in all, a classic example of how the media is often manipulated, in order to manipulate public opinion. Given that recent GOP attacks on Obama and his policies have largely backfired, making Obama’s approval ratings soar while painting Republicans as the party of no, it will be interesting to see if it will work this time. The conservatives are definitely pulling out all the stops in a last ditch effort, but that might just make it backfire even worse.
In early March, the House Financial Services Subcommittee asked AIG CEO Edward Liddy how much AIG had paid in bonuses in 2008. His answer was “I think it might have been in the range of $9 million.”
In late March, Politico asked AIG pretty much the same question, wanting a hard number. At that time, AIG spokesman Nick Ashooh responded that the firm had paid about $120 million in 2008 bonuses to a pool of more than 6,000 employees. This is more than 13 times their first answer.
Now, in response to detailed questions from Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the company now claims that they paid out more than $454 million in bonuses. That’s almost four times their last number, and a stunning 50 times their first guess.
Not only that, but none of these numbers include the controversial $165 million that was offered to to the employees of the very same unit that had crippled AIG in the first place, to keep employees from leaving.
In their own defense, AIG says that the differing numbers are mainly due to slightly different wordings of the questions. In other words, the answer depends on what you mean by the word “bonus”. But here are the exact questions they were asked. Politico asked them: “What was AIG’s total bonus pool (outside the retention agreements) for 2008?” and Rep Cummings asked them “Please specify the exact amount in bonuses — not retention payments or any other form of compensation — paid by AIG to employees of any division of AIG in 2008 or paid in 2009 for work performed in 2008.”
“In business news after receiving billions of dollars in government bailout money, the company Chrysler ended up filing for bankruptcy protection today. Chrysler was founded in 1923 by Walter P. Chrysler, but it really took off under his younger brother, Jesus H. Chrysler, who’s I guess like some kind of marketing genius.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Chrysler filed for bankruptcy today. But, actually, President Obama said Chrysler was forced to file for bankruptcy because even though the unions and the banks had agreed to make sacrifices, a small group of hedge fund managers refused to help out. Boy, where is that waterboarding when you really need it?” – Jay Leno
“I’m glad you’re all in a good mood, but I’m a little bummed out today because I made a bad investment. So stupid! I opened a Chrysler dealership in Mexico City.” – Jay Leno
“During his speech to the nation last night, Obama told the American people they should cover their mouths when they cough to prevent the spread of swine flu. And today, he told Joe Biden to cover his mouth whenever he talks.” – Jay Leno
“Vice President Joe Biden got himself in a little bit of hot water because earlier on the ‘Today’ show, he’s shooting his mouth off. He’s saying that the subways in New York City are not safe because of swine flu. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, Joe, listen to this — the subways weren’t safe before swine flu.” – David Letterman
“Oh, man, Biden did it again. God may have taken away Bush, but by golly, he gave us Joe Biden. You see this today? Joe Biden was on the ‘Today’ show, and he said he would tell his family members not to take any commercial flights and don’t ride in any subway cars because of this swine flu. You know, I don’t think Joe Biden ‘s going to catch swine flu, but it’s pretty obvious he has a case of foot-in-mouth disease.” – Jay Leno
“You know who’s really worried about this swine flu? Kevin Bacon.” – Jay Leno
“Sports fans are being asked to stay home in Mexico because the flu spreads in large crowds. In New York, they’re trying a similar thing at Yankee Stadium by making sure the prices for tickets are so high that no one can afford them.” – Jimmy Kimmel
“Actually, you don’t want to panic, because the CDC says it’s all about prevention. For example, they’re now telling people if you do put lipstick on a pig, do not use that same lipstick on yourself.” – Jay Leno
“New York City is taking every possible precaution to avoid swine flu. For example, I was over at St. Patrick’s Cathedral earlier today, lighting a candle, and I happened to notice that they have replaced the holy water with Purell.” – David Letterman
“More than 300 schools in 14 states are closed now, 200 in Texas alone. The swine flu is like a new snow day. I would be delighted if I was a child at this time. But whenever something like this flu happens, it’s important, I think, to find someone to point the finger at and usually the person who’s responsible is the person who stands to benefit from it. So that is why I’m blaming the people at Purell for the swine flu. They started this. I know they did it and if they’d just come clean, I think we’d all forgive them, right?” – Jimmy Kimmel
“According to one of the news services, U.S. pork producers are now lobbying the United States government to change the name of this swine flu because they say it’s bad for business. And, you know, actually, they’re right. You cannot catch swine flu from eating pork. Oh, sure, you can get heart disease, obesity and high blood pressure, but not the swine flu.” – Jay Leno
“The government does not want us to call it the swine flu. They’re calling it the 2009 H1N1 virus. The reason for the change is they want people to know you can still eat all the pork you want without any risk to your health, except diabetes, obesity and heart disease.” –Jimmy Kimmel
“And the big political story, of course, is that 79-year-old Senator Arlen Specter has switched parties. We’re learning more and more about exactly how this deal went down. In fact, I understand to sweeten the deal, as a signing bonus, the Democrats offered him a Life Alert and a year’s supply of Ensure.” – Jay Leno
“Anybody see President Barack Obama’s press conference last night? Well, did you know that during the press conference, three more Republicans defected?” – David Letterman
“Arlen Specter has been a Republican for a long time, so it has got to be tough, don’t you think? I mean, for years you’re lying out of the right side of your mouth, and now suddenly you’ve got to start lying out the left side of your mouth.” – Jay Leno
“Senator Arlen Specter, though, has really left the Republican Party, which is like resigning from Chrysler.” – David Letterman
“Well, actually, other senators are talking about jumping ship as well. There’s talk John McCain may go back to the Federalist Party.” – Jay Leno
“I guess in the world of politics that’s very exciting, Specter switching from the Republican Party to the Democrats. But what would be really cool for me is if I could just get my mom to switch from Leno.” – David Letterman
“Thousands of women in Kenya have vowed to withhold sex until their nation’s leaders stop their bickering. The women said they got the idea after a recent visit by Hillary Clinton.” – Jay Leno
“It’s happening more and more. The New Hampshire Senate now has passed a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in New Hampshire. So, New Hampshire could go from the Granite State to the Tasteful Marble Countertop State.” – Jay Leno
This video from Letterman about Cheney’s recent criticisms of Obama is absolutely hilarious:
As for how Obama is doing, this article in the Washington Post is all good news:
Even the ongoing multiyear drought in the SouthEast is over, although I don’t think Obama can take credit for that.
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