Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Headlines - Wednesday

A warm welcome to Leanne's Gary, all the way up in Alaska!
 
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Sexist much?

Calling your running mate a MILF doesn't really demonstrate the family values and moral stance hyped by the Republican Party, so there must have been some major scrambling at McShame headquarters after www.votefortheMILF.com was exposed as being owned by the McCain campaign.

Huge gaffe. And what a laugh!

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An alarming number of suicides among Houston-based Army recruiters -- including two in recent weeks -- has prompted calls by a senator and veterans' advocates for closer scrutiny of high-stress recruiting duty during wartime.

And the ones they actually get to enlist are committing suicide at a rate 20% higher than last year.

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Cops arrived on the scene of a shooting to find the victim's family attending the victim, holding pressure on his wounds and otherwise reassuring him that help was on the way. As the victim's older brother held the dressing on the wound and reassured his younger brother, a police officer said "move aside sir, we need to question the victim." The brother, of course, said "Excuse me? My brother don't need questioning, he needs an ambulance!"

So they tased him. And when the victim's mother protested, they tased her. And when the victim's father protested, they tased him. The only reason they didn't tase Grandpa and Grandma was that the Grans didn't make it there in time to get tased, they were too busy waving their canes and yelling "you kids get off our lawn!" to shuffle over for their turn getting tased.

Meanwhile, the folks who got tased have been charged with assault for, err, viciously throwing their bodies in front of police tasers. And the kid survived (no thanks to the cops who were more concerned about torturing the kid's family for being concerned about their son's welfare), so hey, all's well that ends well, right?

Ah yes, just another day in Soviet America...

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h/t Tim

Lies, Half-Truths and Contradictions: Palin's poor-mouthing: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=14&entry_id=30967

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Richard Cohen has written volumes defending the administration that brought us this current disaster. Today, he brings us this intriguing, and depressing, and worrisome point

Topical Depression  

It comforts me that Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and an architect of the financial bailout plan the House rejected yesterday, is a specialist in the Great Depression. This, of course, was the economic calamity that beset the United States from 1929 to about 1942 and ended only when America went to war. What stopped the Depression was a worldwide bloodbath.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/29/AR2008092902660.html

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George Bush in lipstick - with a degree in journalism

It looks like I picked the wrong day to quit drinking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRkWebP2Q0Y&eurl=http://www.americablog.com/

Why didn't she mention "Moose Fancy"? "Russki Watchers Quarterly"? "Global-Warming Denial Digest"? "Gun-Toting Beauty Queen Monthly"? "Witch Hunting Illustrated?" "The Journal of White Trash Baby-Naming"? "No Blinking Magazine"? or "Maverick!"?

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On Friday's Hardball, Chris Matthews interviewed his daughter, Caroline, as one of the student members of the group Concerned Youth of America, and just didn't bother mentioning the familial relationship. Apparently his daughter had asked not to be identified as such and, rather than interview another member of the group and thus preserve his journalistic integrity (heh), Matthews went right ahead anyways.

It's such a small-beer breach of what passes for journalistic ethics nowadays as to go almost un-noticed, although in the halcyon days of journalism it would probably have gotten him fired or at least earned the censure of his peers. It simply doesn't compare, though, with the likes of Andrea Mitchell reporting on the bank bailout plan - and blaming Obama for its failure - while married to Alan Greenspan and not making full disclosure of that fact before every report.

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Hugo of Arabia

Two weeks after McCain said Spain was in Latin America, we get this: 

McCain, talking about energy policy, stresses the importance of "ensuring that America is secure, and not dependent on oil from people like Hugo Chavez or other parts of the Middle East which is, as we know, could be destabilized under certain sets of circumstances."

Can we just get this guy a map or a little mini-globe that some staffer can keep handy?

From Jesus' General:

Sarah Clark
National Geographic

Dear Ms Clark,

I've always suspected that National Geographic was a liberal publication. My suspicions were confirmed today when I saw your map of the Middle East. Venezuela is nowhere to be found. Obviously, you put up new maps to embarrass John McCain after he called out Venezuela as a Middle Eastern country.

I also noticed that your maps showing the shape and location of Pakistan, Alaska, Russia, and Spain do not match the descriptions given by Sen. McCain and Sarah Palin.

I'm enclosing new maps that conform to Palin-McCain specifications. Please use them.

Heterosexually yours in a chaste and biblically appropriate kind of way,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot




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I just had to laugh when I read this bit in Adam Nagourney's Times' piece today about lowering expectations so thoroughly that Palin will look awesome in the debate if she even attains mediocre GOP concerns about Palin's performance in the upcoming debate:

"I think she has pretty thoroughly—and probably irretrievably—proven that she is not up to the job of being president of the United States," David Frum, a former speechwriter for President Bush who is now a conservative columnist, said in an interview. "If she doesn't perform well, then people see it.

"And this is a moment of real high anxiety, a little bit like 9/11, when people look to Washington for comfort and leadership and want to know that people in charge know what they are doing."

I love conservatives' capacity for rewriting history. When people "looked to Washington" on 9/11, they didn't get comfort and leadership—they got seven minutes of Bush sitting in a classroom like a frozen git and then flying around the country in Airforce One while Cheney took to an undisclosed location. Bush had no clue what the hell he was doing.

Which makes Frum's analogy accurate in a way he did not intend: Palin may well live up to Bush's performance after 9/11, but that would not be the good thing he suggests by rewriting what the president's performance actually was.

And, by the way, I also love how conservatives screech like rabid banshees as the merest hint of a liberal not treating 9/11 with sacred gravity, but minimizing it to suggest that Republican anxiety about the upcoming vice-presidential debate is "a little bit like 9/11" is just fine and dandy.

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This year's top 10 censored stories. Go read them all.

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Yesterday on Glenn Beck's radio show, right-wing columnist and doughy pantload Jonah Goldberg and Beck railed against the bailout proposal and blamed congressional Democrats for creating the entire financial crisis. 

BECK: I can't look at Barney Frank any more. I can't take it.

GOLDBERG: I almost think he should be in jail! I almost think the guy should be in jail!

BECK: Oh I do too! I absolutely do. I think — honestly, I think we should have at least, bare minimum, we should have stockades in front of the Capitol building. Some of these people are out and out criminals on what they have done. […]

GOLDBERG: It is an incredibly poisonous situation. You know in the middle ages, Harry Reid would have his stomach cut open and a half-starved weasel thrown in, for the kinds of things he's doing. It's outrageous!

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And this guy is unelectable why? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAGzLfmV4Ks&eurl=http://maruthecrankpot.blogspot.com/ 

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From The Washington Note  

Paraguay President Fernando Lugo, while attending both the United Nations General Assembly meetings and the Clinton Global Initiative, shared with friends over dinner some of the other meetings he had been having in New York.

He met this head of state. . .and that head of state. . .and so on. . .

. . .but then the room went silent and then broke into subdued laughter when he confided that he was approached about meeting with GOP Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

President Lugo turned the meeting down with Caribou Barbie.

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4,176 soldiers killed in Iraq; 606 in Afghanistan.

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Winning hearts and minds in Pakistan too

Suspected US missile strike kills 6: http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=399265

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