She still thinks Katie Couric was the problem…
Speaking to Fox New’s Sean Hannity in an interview to air Monday, Palin said she wants nothing to do with Katie Couric, the CBS Evening News anchor who’s line of questioning facilitated one of the most memorable political foibles of the 2008 presidential campaign.
“As for doing an interview, though, with a reporter who already has such a bias against whatever it is that I would come out and say? Why waste my time? No,” Palin told Hannity of Couric, according to excerpts obtained by Time’s Mark Halperin.
“I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism. And I have a communications degree. I studied journalism, who, what, where, when, and why of reporting,” Palin continued. “I will speak to reporters who still understand that cornerstone of our democracy, that expectation that the public has for truth to be reported. And then we get to decide our own opinion based on the facts reported to us.”
“Does this reporter make my ass look stupid?”
“No, your stupid ass makes your ass look stupid. And so does saying stuff like, ‘I want to help clean up the state that is so sorry today of journalism.’ Also.”
November 23rd, 2010 at 07:16am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Media,
Palin,
Politics,
Republicans,
Wankers
The secret to avoiding Michael Chertoff’s Rapiscans?
Pay $180 for Michael Chertoff’s Clear ID!
Maybe he’s supplying the surgical grope-gloves too. Boy, I sure am glad that the Bush era of cronyism and corruption is finally over…
November 22nd, 2010 at 07:07pm
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Corruption/Cronyism,
Terrorism,
Wankers
The opening of the hilariously bad 80s horror movie, Necropolis. The best part of the movie starts at around 3 minute in or so (for context) – bear in mind that this scene supposedly takes place in the 17th century (NSFW).
Here’s the full playlist, for those who want to watch the whole gloriously cheesy epic.
November 22nd, 2010 at 11:21am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Monday Media Blogging,
Movies
This week’s quote is from Angie – all I remember is that it stars Geena Davis…
In this world, the less broken have to take care of the more broken. I learned that from my son.
And, of course, there’ll be other people’s baby bunnies…
Awww.
November 19th, 2010 at 11:26am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Friday Quote & Cat Blogging
George Soros is not impressed:
According to multiple sources with knowledge of his remarks, Soros told those in attendance that he is “used to fighting losing battles but doesn’t like to lose without fighting.”
“We have just lost this election, we need to draw a line,” he said, according to several Democratic sources. “And if this president can’t do what we need, it is time to start looking somewhere else.”
No kidding. Obama has shown nothing but contempt for peons like us, but maybe he’ll pay a little more attention to Democratic gazillionaires. Maybe.
November 18th, 2010 at 07:29am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Democrats,
Obama,
Politics
Well, this is certainly charming…
During the premiere of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” Sunday night — a boy named Tre who went to school with the Palin kids wrote a status update that read, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska, is failing so hard right now.”
The comment sparked an intense response from Willow — who replied on the boy’s wall, “Haha your so gay. I have no idea who you are, But what I’ve seen pictures of, your disgusting … My sister had a kid and is still hot.”
Willow followed up that comment with another that read, “Tre stfu. Your such a f**got.”
(…)
After more users began to gang up on the Palins, Willow dropped another message that read, “Sorry that you guys are all jealous of my families success and you guys aren’t goin to go anywhere with your lives.”
Hey, remember when Sensitive Mama Tolerance Grizzly wigged out over Rahm’s “fucking retarded” quote?
Just as we’d be appalled if any public figure of Rahm’s stature ever used the “N-word” or other such inappropriate language, Rahm’s slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities – and the people who love them – is unacceptable, and it’s heartbreaking.
What a lovely and enlightened sentiment. Funny that she doesn’t seem to have a problem with her daughter using the word “faggot,” though. Why, it’s almost as if slurs that can’t be applied to her own family members don’t count. Or maybe she just doesn’t think gays are God’s children, or that anyone loves them.
(Cross-posted at MyFDL)
November 17th, 2010 at 09:42pm
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Palin,
Wankers
Yeah, I know today should be Weekly World News, but this was just too good to wait, plus the WWN has been mostly right-wing crap for months now.
Here it is, the Taiwanese CGI people’s take on the new TSA security regime:
(h/t twolf)
November 17th, 2010 at 06:16pm
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Monday Media Blogging
Yep, more Boston building photos – but look, one of them’s in color!
November 16th, 2010 at 11:25am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Photoblogging
Always be sure to focus your groin before traveling by plane.
You’ll thank me.
November 16th, 2010 at 07:21am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Terrorism
All pictures of the same building, actually…
November 15th, 2010 at 11:25am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Photoblogging
One of the great commercial moments from Ye Olden Tymes:
There I was, there I was, there I was… IN the Congo!
November 15th, 2010 at 07:11am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Monday Media Blogging
This week’s quote is from Spice World. Yes, I watched it. No, I don’t know why.
It is time to hang your pants on the hook of darkness, whether they’re clean or not.
And, of course, there’ll be other people’s OK Go with dogs…
Whee!!!
November 12th, 2010 at 11:25am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Friday Quote & Cat Blogging,
Monday Media Blogging
Screw the middle-class to fund goodies for the rich. I know, that never happens, right?
The goals of reform, as Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson see them, are presented in the form of seven bullet points. “Lower Rates” is the first point; “Reduce the Deficit” is the seventh.
So how, exactly, did a deficit-cutting commission become a commission whose first priority is cutting tax rates, with deficit reduction literally at the bottom of the list?
Actually, though, what the co-chairmen are proposing is a mixture of tax cuts and tax increases — tax cuts for the wealthy, tax increases for the middle class. They suggest eliminating tax breaks that, whatever you think of them, matter a lot to middle-class Americans — the deductibility of health benefits and mortgage interest — and using much of the revenue gained thereby, not to reduce the deficit, but to allow sharp reductions in both the top marginal tax rate and in the corporate tax rate.
It will take time to crunch the numbers here, but this proposal clearly represents a major transfer of income upward, from the middle class to a small minority of wealthy Americans. And what does any of this have to do with deficit reduction?
Let’s turn next to Social Security. There were rumors beforehand that the commission would recommend a rise in the retirement age, and sure enough, that’s what Mr. Bowles and Mr. Simpson do. They want the age at which Social Security becomes available to rise along with average life expectancy. Is that reasonable?
The answer is no, for a number of reasons — including the point that working until you’re 69, which may sound doable for people with desk jobs, is a lot harder for the many Americans who still do physical labor.
But beyond that, the proposal seemingly ignores a crucial point: while average life expectancy is indeed rising, it’s doing so mainly for high earners, precisely the people who need Social Security least. Life expectancy in the bottom half of the income distribution has barely inched up over the past three decades. So the Bowles-Simpson proposal is basically saying that janitors should be forced to work longer because these days corporate lawyers live to a ripe old age.
Way to hand-pick a pair of evil elitist bastards to chair your deficit commission, Mr. President. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone want a second term less.
November 12th, 2010 at 07:28am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Economy,
Obama,
Politics,
Republicans,
Wankers
Dubya sure does love his waterboarding:
George W. Bush reveals in his memoir, Decision Points, that he personally waterboarded VP Dick Cheney.
(…)
“Dick was so in favor of waterboarding, that I thought he should experience himself to see what it was like. He thought it was a very effective tool.” Bush went on to say that after waterboarding Cheney as a “test” he used it on two other occasion to get the Vice President to keep his mouth shut on certain issues.
“Dick was making me look bad a few times with the press. He was too arrogant. So, I had to waterboard him to get him to shut his pie hole!”
(…)
Dick Cheney, who hasn’t read Bush’s book yet, said that “Bush went a bit overboard with the waterboard stuff. He got a little waterboard crazy. He wanted everybody waterboarded, Andy Card, Karl Rove… one day he even wanted Laura waterboarded. I’m sure he’s waterboarding his staff in Crawford to keep them in line.”
Bush said that when he sees Cheney next month at a conservative conference in New Orleans, ‘I’d love to take an hour or so and waterboard Dick again. I had so much fun waterboarding Dick. It was a hoot!”
Bush said that he, personally, was never waterboarded, but “if I ever do anything wrong, I wouldn’t mind. But I’ve never done anything wrong. I have no regrets.”
I just hope there aren’t any photos of Dick Cheney naked, wearing nothing but a hood and some electrodes…
November 10th, 2010 at 11:25am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Bush,
Cheney,
Torture,
Weekly World News
Imagine having to choose between Linda McMahon and Joe Lieberman.
Would Lieberman try to win the Democratic nomination (unlikely the outcome would be any better than last time), or would he just go straight to an independent run again? As an added bit of fun, the Connecticut For Lieberman Party has pretty much been taken over by people who aren’t exactly Lieberman fans, so he’d have to come up with a new imaginary party banner to run under.
My fondest hope is that the CFL actually runs ads against him. What would be sweeter than seeing 27 seconds of Lieberman-bashing followed by “This message has been paid for by the Connecticut For Lieberman Party”?
November 10th, 2010 at 07:05am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Elections,
Lieberman,
Politics,
Republicans
Who among us does not love overpasses?
November 9th, 2010 at 11:29am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Photoblogging
Amazing.
The lead investigator for the presidential panel delving into the BP oil spill said on Monday that he had found no evidence that anyone involved in drilling the doomed well had taken safety shortcuts to save money.
Fred H. Bartlit Jr., a prominent trial lawyer hired to lead the panel’s inquiry, disputed the findings of other investigators, including plaintiffs’ lawyers and members of Congress, who have charged that BP and its main partners, Transocean and Halliburton, had cut corners to speed completion of the well, which cost $1.5 million a day to drill.
“To date we have not seen a single instance where a human being made a conscious decision to favor dollars over safety,” Mr. Bartlit said on Monday as he opened a detailed presentation on the causes of the April 20 disaster on a drilling rig off the Louisiana coast, which killed 11 workers and led to the biggest offshore oil spill in American history. “They want to be efficient, they don’t want to waste money, but they also don’t want to get their buddies killed.”
Really? None at all?
The only charitable conclusion I can draw is that when Bartlit says stuff like “we have not seen a single instance where a human being made a conscious decision to favor dollars over safety,” he means that favoring dollars over safety is institutional corporate policy. That I could buy.
November 9th, 2010 at 07:26am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Corruption/Cronyism,
Energy,
Environment,
Obama,
Wankers
The financial crisis, as explained (surprisingly well) by insane Taiwanese CGI:
November 8th, 2010 at 11:29am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Corruption/Cronyism,
Economy,
Monday Media Blogging
CAP’s Bracken Hendricks attempts to make the case for addressing climate change in the right’s own terms:
I worry that conservatives’ lock-step posture on climate change is seriously out of step with their professed priorities. A strong defense of our national interests, rigorous cost-benefit analysis, fiscal discipline and the ability to avoid unnecessary intrusions into personal liberty will all be seriously compromised in a world marked by climate change.
In fact, far from being conservative, the Republican stance on global warming shows a stunning appetite for risk. When faced with uncertainty and the possibility of costly outcomes, smart businessmen buy insurance, reduce their downside exposure and protect their assets. When confronted with a disease outbreak of unknown proportions, front-line public health workers get busy producing vaccines, pre-positioning supplies and tracking pathogens. And when military planners assess an enemy, they get ready for a worst-case encounter.
When it comes to climate change, conservatives are doing none of this. Instead, they are recklessly betting the farm on a single, best-case scenario: That the scientific consensus about global warming will turn out to be wrong. This is bad risk management and an irresponsible way to run anything, whether a business, an economy or a planet.
This is all true, but the problem is that conservatives’ nonchalance and outright denial of the risk of global warming doesn’t contradict their approach to economic, health, or military risk: it mirrors it.
Conservatives are only risk-averse in theory – in practice, their operating principle is to grab a buck and score a political point whenever they can and damn the consequences. Not only that, but if global warming can’t be fixed using their toolkit of tax cuts for the rich, spending cuts for everyone else, or invading someone, they really can’t be bothered.
(Cross-posted at MyFDL)
November 8th, 2010 at 07:02am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Economy,
Environment,
Politics,
Republicans
Luci is decidedly underwhelmed with the roles Mr. Deity has to offer.
November 7th, 2010 at 03:20pm
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Monday Media Blogging,
Mr. Deity,
Religion
This week’s quote is from the amazing Dexter Gordon jazz movie, ‘Round Midnight:
It’d be the greatest city in the world, if I could just find some okra.
Mmm, okra…
And, of course, there’ll be other people’s hyraxes…
With free bonus alpaca!
November 5th, 2010 at 11:20am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Friday Quote & Cat Blogging,
La Jolla/San Diego,
Photoblogging
The Blue Dogs’ own opposition to effective stimulus and financial reform led directly to the Republican wave which cut them in half. (And I’m guessing that their opposition to the public option and support for the Stupak Amendment didn’t help them much either.)
And it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch of corporatist wankers. Too bad it had to result in the ascendancy of even bigger corporate wankers. Johann Hari sums it up nicely:
This is the story of the modern Republican Party. They use the cultural signifiers of the good people of Middle America to get their emotional identification, meanwhile they pillage Middle America and redistribute its wealth to the rich….
This is all made easy for Republicans by the fact that most of the Democratic Party slithers in the same trough of corruption, begging from the same billionaires and corporations, and so can deliver only a tiny notch more for ordinary Americans. This makes left-liberal ideas look discredited, when in truth they are largely discarded.
Unless and until we get some kind of robust public campaign financing, this is just going to get worse and worse. The Democrats’ own corporate corruption has essentially given the GOP license to run even further and further to the right, secure in the knowledge that the other side is too compromised to truly oppose them.
November 5th, 2010 at 07:20am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Corruption/Cronyism,
Democrats,
Economy,
Elections,
Politics,
Wankers
Yeah, I guess maybe I have kind of a thing for stairs.
November 4th, 2010 at 11:44am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Photoblogging
Maybe I just don’t understand politics or legislation or something, but I’m still mystified why Obama and the (for now) Democratic Congress didn’t simply split up the vote on extending the Bush tax cuts. Why not have separate votes for the lower- and middle-income tax cuts and the high-income tax cuts?
Instead of battling with the Republicans over whether the one extension bill includes the tax cuts for the rich, let them vote on those separately. If they pass, that’s too bad, but at least the Republicans own it and make themselves even more clearly the part of the rich. Especially if they vote against extending the tax cuts for everyone else.
Of course, it’s probably too late now that the Republicans have won the House, and I don’t really hold out a lot of hope for anything getting done in the lame-duck session, but it sure looks like yet another missed opportunity to me.
November 4th, 2010 at 07:39am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Democrats,
Obama,
Politics,
Taxes
In a nutshell, the Democrats got crushed because they, behind Obama’s fearless leadership, failed to deliver. Yes, they passed a lot of bills, but they were compromised and weak at best. They actually managed to pass a healthcare reform bill that most people hate, they passed a weak financial reform bill, they passed a stimulus bill that was too small and poorly-designed to reduce unemployment (but continued to brag about how the economy’s in recovery), and they appear to be mostly twiddling their thumbs in the face of a massive foreclosure crisis.
Not only that, but the Obama administration has repeatedly belittled and insulted the Democratic base while screwing over core Democratic constituencies like Latinos, unions, women and gays.
And of all the Democrats to survive, why did it have to be Harry Reid? Ryan Grim kinda-sorta defends him as merely doing his president’s bidding, but that’s not really a ringing endorsement when Obama has been such a destructive tone-deaf fool. Reid should have been resisting Obama’s efforts to make the Democratic Party toxic, not facilitating them. The money quote:
Reid… is merely the contemporary Democratic Party distilled to its essence. Over the past decade and a half, the party of FDR, JFK and LBJ drifted away from its foundation and found refuge in a transactional politics that is being forcefully rejected by voters. Presented with the chance to make history, Democrats made deals — with pill makers, with device makers, with hospital executives, with hedge fund managers, with swaps dealers, with auto dealers, with “non-bank financial institutions.” As the tide turned, Democrats found those corporate interests scurrying back to the GOP. When the party turned back to its people, they were nowhere to be found. Compromise in pursuit of a broadly popular, unifying agenda is a forgivable sin. Compromise just to put points on the board leads to a blowout.
Well, I’m sure that will certainly improve now that the Republicans control the House and probably have functional control of the Senate…
November 3rd, 2010 at 07:32am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Corruption/Cronyism,
Democrats,
Elections,
Obama,
Politics,
Unemployment,
Wankers
Kind of a geometrical theme today…
November 2nd, 2010 at 11:39am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Photoblogging
Technically speaking, it’s not actually campaign finance, but it’s a key part of the whole corrupt system of skewed incentives that has made our government a wholly-owned corporate subsidiary:
Why would members of Congress be prepared to take a vote that is both bad on policy grounds and also could hurt their own political survival? Erskine Bowles is a large part of the answer. Bowles is an unsuccessful politician, having twice lost in runs for the Senate in North Carolina.
Yet, he is very successful financially. He pockets $335,000 a year as a director of Morgan Stanley, one of the huge Wall Street banks that was rescued by taxpayer dollars in the fall of 2008. He likely pockets a similar sum from sitting as a director of GM, another company rescued by the government.
This means that Bowles pockets close to $700,000 annually (@600 monthly Social Security checks) from attending eight to twelve meetings a year. This must look like a pretty attractive deal to current members of Congress. In other words, the message Bowles is sending members of Congress is that if you betray your constituents and vote to undermine Social Security, you will be amply rewarded even if the voters give you the boot.
For this reason, Bowles should be a very scary figure to supporters of Social Security. By example, he is telling our elected representatives of Congress that they need not worry about either good policy or their voters’ wishes. Unfortunately, many members of Congress may find Bowles career to be an attractive route to follow.
This scares me at least as much as the obscene quantities of corporate money sloshing around in the system, an it’s even harder to regulate. Sure, you can impose restrictions on politicians becoming lobbyists immediately after they leave office, but just how much can you legally restrict how (or how well) they make a living?
November 2nd, 2010 at 07:26am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Corruption/Cronyism,
Elections,
Politics,
Social Security
Ross Douthat shows off his Mad Historical Knowledge:
The central premise of the White House’s policy-making, the assumption that an economic crisis is a terrible thing to waste (as Rahm Emanuel famously put it), turned out to be a grave tactical mistake. It drew exactly the wrong lesson from earlier liberal eras, when the most enduring expansions of government — Social Security in the 1930s, Medicare in the 1960s — were achieved amid strong economic growth, rather than at the bottom of a recession.
Well, I suppose it is technically correct to say that the 1930s were not a time of recession…
November 1st, 2010 at 05:42pm
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Economy,
Healthcare,
Media,
Politics,
Republicans,
Wankers
People Are Awesome:
A bit more of an X-Games flavor than I’d like, but still an awful lot of cool and amazing stuff.
November 1st, 2010 at 11:23am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Monday Media Blogging
He actually believes that war with Iran, or at least the serious threat of it, is the best possible way to stimulate our economy. As David Swanson points out, he’s completely full of it… as usual.
Swanson also reminds us how very much more Europeans get in return for their supposedly crushing tax burden, and how much we’re being hurt by our politicians’ stubborn refusal to even contemplate cutting our massive defense budget instead of Social Security.
November 1st, 2010 at 07:52am
Posted by Eli Permalink
Entry Filed under:
Afghanistan,
Economy,
Iran,
Iraq,
Media,
Unemployment,
Wankers,
War
Previous Posts
