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Clinton: Send me any message, as long as it supports me

Yesterday in her (inverted victory) speech, Hillary Clinton asked people to go to her website and send her messages so she could decide what to do next. Unfortunately, if you take her up on her offer you get this:

In other words, the only message you can send to her is that you support her. Not only that, but she harvests your email address and zip code.

Incidentally, Michael Tomasky in the Guardian described Clinton’s speech as “the most abrasive, self-absorbed, selfish, delusional, emasculating and extortionate political speech I’ve heard in a long time. And I’ve left out some adjectives, just to be polite.”

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Lettuce be clear

Obama‘s problem is he doesn‘t seem like a guy who can go into an Applebee‘s salad bar and people think he fits in naturally there. He has to change to be more like that Applebee‘s guy and as he‘s done that he‘s become much more transactional. Much more, I‘m going to deliver this and this and this to you on policy. –David Brooks in the New York Times

The problem here is that Applebee’s does not have a salad bar. This might seem like a minor nit, but when you are accusing someone else of being “out of touch” with common people, it might help if you actually have a clue about the lives of those people.

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/06/03/memo-to-david-brooks-applebees-doesnt-have-a-salad-bar/

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The Winner


© Ken Catalino

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Late Night Humor

“We’re learning more and more about John and Cindy McCain. He’s on this big biography tour. I guess his wife Cindy is worth over $100 million because the family made money selling Budweiser beer. So he has a wife 20 years younger than him, free beer, and unlimited money. I think I speak for all guys when I go, ‘Why is he running for president?'” –Jay Leno

“I like John McCain. He looks like the guy who gets frisky with the new waitress at IHOP. … He looks like the guy who watches his Cadillac go through the car wash. … He looks like the guy in the supermarket yelling into his cell phone, ‘I’m in aisle three, Marge. I can’t find the brownie mix.'” –David Letterman

“And John McCain, as you know, has released all his medical records. All indications are McCain is in very good health. But of course, they’re still waiting for that report from the coroner.” –Jay Leno

“They say McCain does take some medication, including Ambien to help him sleep. But they said he could eliminate the sleeping pills if he picks Mitt Romney as vice president.” –Jay Leno

“McCain’s doctor said Senator McCain is decades younger than his age. But then, so is President Bush, who is, what, in his early 60s? But he has the mind of a 12-year-old.” –Jay Leno

“Let’s talk about the presidential Democratic primary. Over the weekend, I guess you know this, Hillary Clinton won the Puerto Rican primary. Yeah, and you know what that means? Now she is president of Puerto Rico.” –David Letterman

“In his new book, President Bush’s former press secretary said that Bush has a lack of inquisitiveness. Yeah. When he heard this, Bush said, ‘I don’t know what he’s saying, and I don’t care.'” –Conan O’Brien

“Speaking of President Bush, yesterday — this is true — during a speech, President Bush said that his economic stimulus package is working, because when people use extra money to buy a machine, that creates jobs at ‘the machine-making place’. Yeah. Then Bush introduced his new speech writer, a 6-year-old boy named Timmy.” –Conan O’Brien

“Well, it looks like the Democrats finally solved their delegate problem. It seems the Democratic Party rules panel agreed to allow delegates from Florida and Michigan to take part in the convention, but each delegate will only count as half a vote. You’ve heard of superdelegates? These are the new fun-sized delegates.” –Jay Leno

“Barack Obama says he’s now looking for a new church, preferably one where the religious order has to take a vow of silence.” –Jay Leno

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Orwell Lives

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To concede, or not to concede

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Political humor exiled from television in Russia

It is hard to read this article about media manipulation in Russia without worrying that we have started down the same path here in the US.

In Russia, journalists critical of the current administration, including popular political satirists and other humorists, have been all but banned from television. The media has gone so far as to digitally erase individuals from television programs already recorded, but before they are broadcast (this is reminiscent of the old Soviet practice of airbrushing out disgraced comrades from old photos). In one talk show the technicians erased someone who had said something less than flattering about Vladimir Putin, but clumsily left his disembodied legs in one shot.

What is really disturbing is that it is not the government itself who is telling the media who can appear and what can be said, the television networks themselves do the censoring using their understanding of the Kremlin’s likes and dislikes.  The media claims that they are not censoring, only that dissenting voices “are not newsworthy”. This is despite the fact that they have cancelled popular shows.

So, technically, they have freedom of the press, since the media can show anything they want, but in practice they are so afraid of going against the administration that only voices that are pro-administration can possibly appear.  Sound familiar?

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/02/africa/russia.php

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With Enemies like Clinton’s, who needs Friends?

A few days ago, Bill Clinton started placing blame for Hillary’s failing nomination bid on a number of “enemies”, powerful forces including a brazenly biased media, and the group MoveOn.org.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10715.html

Speaking about the press, he said that Hillary faced a hostile and imbalanced media environment. But a new study by Harvard University says that from January 1 to March 9, the media stories about Obama and Clinton were almost identical in tone. And after that (and well before the Rev. Wright mess) media coverage turned against Obama.

http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/research_publications/reports/Character%20and%20the%20Primaries%20of%202008.pdf

What caused this change? According to the report, it happened precisely after Clinton criticized the media for being soft on Obama during a debate!

Placing blame on MoveOn.org is even more bizarre. After all, MoveOn was founded in 1998 to oppose the Republican-led effort to impeach Clinton himself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_MoveOn.org

With enemies like these — a media that you can easily turn against your opponent and an organization that was founded to support you — who needs friends?

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Your government failed you, again

Richard Clarke appears on The Daily Show to promote his new book “Your Government Failed You”. But before they talk about that, Jon Stewart quotes the Bush administration’s response to Clarke’s previous book “Against All Enemies” from March 22, 2004:

Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he’s raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book.”

What makes this deliciously ironic is that the speaker is none other than Scott McClellan (when he was still the Press Secretary). Who, as you all know, has now come out with his own tell-all book critical of the Bush Administration and (as icing on the cake) has gotten almost exactly the same response from the Bush Administration to his book.

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McCain claims he will win in ‘January’

That’s fine, as long as Obama gets dibs on the election in November!

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Kennedy: I think I’ll do that again tomorrow.

Emerging today from 3 1/2 hours of risky brain surgery to remove a cancerous tumor, Sen. Edward Kennedy remarked “I feel like a million bucks. I think I’ll do that again tomorrow.”

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gNDIXzKvyoGpfOSCYkzQg0thsDvgD9126N380

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Dick Cheney – not from here

Today at the National Press Club, VP Cheney was asked about his wife Lynne’s claim that he was related to Barack Obama (eighth cousins). Then Dick put his foot in his mouth, when he explained that the same genealogical research turned up that there are Cheneys on both sides of the family tree, including a Richard Cheney on his mother’s side. “So I had Cheneys on both sides of the family and we don’t even live in West Virginia,” joked Cheney.

Not surprisingly, this joke got a very cold reception from West Virginian politicians, including Rep. Nick Rahall, who responded “We may owe the vice president a debt of gratitude for yet another great West Virginia slogan: Dick Cheney is not from here.”

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2008/06/dick_cheneys_incest_joke_irks.html

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Southpark: how to deal with Clinton

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Taped Shut

In a stunning triumph of spin over reality, the blogosphere is going crazy over a videotape — a tape that none of them have actually seen or heard, and might not even exist.

Reports have been circulated (conveniently enough on the eve of the last two democratic primaries) that there is a tape containing video of Michelle Obama ranting about “whitey” at Trinity United with Rev. Louis Farrakhan — a racist’s wet dream!

The Village Voice gives a round-up of the response from the right-wing blogophere

National Review even calls the tape “infamous”

A blogger analyses how the tape might have been misinterpreted (how can you misinterpret something you haven’t even heard?)

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McCain, (near) dictator

McCain has been losing campaign staff left and right since he decided he needed to get rid of all (current) lobbyists from his staff, but I’m not sure that the new replacements are any better.

Consider Michael Goldfarb, the newly appointed Deputy Commications Director for McCain. Goldfarb’s previous job was at Bill Kristol’s The Weekly Standard, “one of the most deceptive propaganda organs of the Bush years”. Last April, Goldfarb wrote that the framers of the constitution gave the president “near dictatorial power” with regards to foreign policy and war, and asserted that this power trumped Congress. When the Bush administration was accused of using torture, Goldfarb’s response was a sarcastic “boo hoo” (McCain claims to be against the use of torture).

With McCain’s new Deputy in charge of Propaganda Communications, we can say goodbye to straight talk.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/06/02/goldfarb/index.html

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