What an astoundingly well reported story! Kim Priestap at (Cheez)WizBang reports that Barack Obama is buying Michelle one massive, honking, studded with diamonds, and made of freakin rhodium, $30,000 ring as a little “winky, winky” thank you for being there for him the last two years. And then, to prove her point, links to a sight that says he’s NOT buying her one! A little internets research (courtesy of Sadly No!) says this is about as true as the lobster/champagne/Iranian caviar fiasco. As does this. Still, totally undeterred by “facts” she proceeds to chide him and suggest that:
instead of spending $30,000 on a ring, how about instead spending $15,000 on a ring. I’m sure there are some beautiful rings out there in the $15,000 price range that are suitable for his wife and that would adequately show his appreciation and love. Then he can take the other $15,000 and give it to a charity in Michelle’s name. I would recommend Operation Smile. For just $240, a child in a Third World nation can have the surgery needed to correct a cleft palate. With $15,000, 62 children can get the surgery that would give them a beautiful smile and a changed life.
And none of the commenters in any of the items referenced believe it’s not true either! I usually can think of something pithy, scathing and yet still witty :-) to sum up a situation but I am kind of out of words over this.
1. Link to the person who tagged you. That would be J. who writes her awesome blog at J-TWO-O .
2. Post the rules on your blog. Doing, doing.
3. Write six random things about yourself. Getting there. See below.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them. Will do my best as just about everyone I know has now been tagged. :)
* Totally gratuitous link to song I really, really like (bonus random fact as it were).
which doesn’t, um, exist. That we can see. As Marin Cogan recounts in the New Republic:
careful listeners would have noticed a recurring theme of anxiety: that Obama was going to use the newly acquired levers of government to destroy them. Specifically, conservative paranoia over the possible reinstatement of the “fairness doctrine,” a defunct policy requiring that broadcasters allow opposing points of view to be heard over the airwaves, has reached a fevered pitch. In September, George Will was warning his readers that, “unless McCain is president, the government will reinstate the ... ‘fairness doctrine.’” In October, The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page chimed in, predicting that under the spooky-sounding “liberal supermajority,” the fairness doctrine was “likely to be reimposed,” with the goal being “to shut down talk radio and other voices of political opposition.” And, two weeks before the election, the New York Post blasted: “Dems Get Set to Muzzle the Right.”
Then more fuel for the fire - On election day Sen. Chuck Schumer messed with their little minds on Faux News with this statement:
after Fox News host Bill Hemmer cornered him about the issue on the air. Schumer just smirked: “I think we should all try to be fair and balanced, don’t you?”
As part of its plan, Ford announced that the salary of Ford CEO Alan Mulally would be cut to $1 a year if Ford actually borrowed money from the government.
General Motors said that CEO Rick Wagoner also will accept a $1 salary. Chrysler LLC CEO Robert Nardelli agreed during Congressional testimony last month he would also agree to a $1 salary in return for federal help.
Mulally had a base salary of $2 million and total compensation of $21.7 million last year, according to the company’s filings. Wagoner received base pay of $1.6 million and total compensation of $14.4 million. Closely-held Chrysler does not disclose executive pay.
As painful and galling as it is, I get the logic of bailing out the auto industry. But as one of their prospective lenders, I say a condition should be that these rat-bastard CEOs get the heave-ho.
They sucked last year when they received annual compensation ranging from $14M to $21M. Some of them having been stinking up Detroit for more than 10 years, pumping out gas guzzlers and generally shitty cars in the face of looming fuel shortages and competitive forces we’ve known about for decades. They did nothing to address vital issues then, and there’s no reason to believe they’ll be more prescient and competent with a drastic salary reduction.
I could offer to teach calculus for $10 bucks an hour, and any university that hired me would save a shitload in personnel costs. But since I struggle to calculate a 20% tip in my head, it would be a poor bargain. Same thing here. Ford, GM and Chrysler need to kick these bastards to the curb. Then come talk to me about sticking their feedstaw in my wallet.
If you order by midnight tonight WorldNetDaily founder Joseph Farah will come to your home and personally clean out your drool bucket with his mustache! Act now!!!
I know it’s a little late, what with the election a month behind us, but I’ve been thinking lately about how much John McCain must really hate George W. Bush. If I were John McCain, I know I, my friends, would have spent the last month just stewing in my hate juice for the man.
I mean George W. Bush essentially destroyed John McCain’s hopes for the presidency, not once, but twice.
First in the 2000 Republican primary, by spreading false rumors in South Carolina about how McCain had supposedly fathered a black child out of wedlock.
And now, in 2008, by being so unbelievably despised by the entire solar system (Neptune is seeing a political realignment like you wouldn’t believe), that the mere fact that he and McCain had been photographed in the same room together, doomed McCain’s chances from the start.
If there is anything that George W. Bush should feel good about, it’s that he beat John McCain both by being a successful campaigner and by being a terrible president. And that’s hard to do.
It features YouTube videos from around the world of people going crazy the moment CNN officially declared Barack Obama President-Elect of the United States.
It’s amazing. Brought a tear to my eye.
People scream like the Beatles have just come on stage.
Now, can you imagine the same thing happening among John McCain supporters if McCain had won? I mean, sure, they would have been happy and all, but I just couldn’t see that level of excitement happening at a John McCain victory party.
Probably because most of his supporters were 300 years old and would have either been asleep by the time the election was called (or really asleep right after the 4:30 pm Early Bird Special), or would have been so excited by McCain’s victory that instead of cheering, they would all have just suffered massive, fatal heart attacks, and dropped dead on the spot.
If only out of concern for the health and wellbeing of those charming old folks, let’s be thankful McCain didn’t win.
YBNBY has another Loutit video here and, what the hell, a wholly inappropriate (but exceedingly well-done) mashup of LazyTown & Lil Jon here. And then there’s the stable chicken.
Palin is exactly the kind of all-or-nothing fundamentalist to whom the career of John McCain had long existed as a kind of sneering counterargument. Up until this year, McCain had firmly rejected the emotional imperatives implicit in Bush-Rove-Gingrich conservatism, in which the relentless demonizing of liberals and liberalism was even more important than policy. While other Republicans were crusading against gay marriage in 2004, McCain bashed a proposed anti-gay-marriage amendment, calling it “antithetical in every way to the core philosophy of Republicans.” While the president and other Republicans wrapped their arms around the Falwells of the world, McCain blasted those preachers as “agents of intolerance.” He talked of seeing the hand of God when he hiked in the Grand Canyon, but insisted loudly that he believed in evolution. He even, for Christ’s sake, supported a ban on commercial whaling. If there’s anything that a decent Republican knows without being told, it’s that whales are a liberal constituency.
But McCain didn’t care. Back then, his political survival didn’t depend on keeping voters artificially geeked up on fear and hatred for Mexicans or biology teachers or other such subversives. He was, after all, a war hero, and Sharon Stone’s cousin.
In short, McCain entered this election season being the worst thing that anyone can be, in the eyes of the Rove-school Republicans: Different. Independent. His own man. He exited the campaign on his knees, all his dignity gone, having handed the White House to the hated liberals after spending the last months of the race with numb-nuts Sarah Palin on his arm and Karl Rove’s cock in his mouth. Even if you wanted to vote for him, you didn’t know who you were voting for. The old McCain? The new McCain? Neither? Both?
Exactly. Of all of the Republican candidates, the only one I feared was McCain. The “maverick” of 2000 (or even 2004) would have been pretty difficult to beat, regardless of who the Dem pick was. But for all of Palin’s loud pronouncements that she was a “maverick,” too, no one ever really bought it (it was a bridge to nowhere) and in the end she became McCain’s Kryptonite, hung around his neck and sapping what little strength he had left out of him. While I thought she looked pretty good on paper prior to her selection, I knew from the moment I saw her smug froth-inducing speech at the Republican convention that it was all uphill for him going forward, regardless of the quick bump her arrival gave the ticket. He was officially boxed-in by the wingnut mouth-breathers, the same cretins who used to howl for his RINO head, and, in the end, they finally (and unknowingly) exacted their revenge.
The luster is gone. The maverick is dead. And now McCain will always be remembered, first and foremost, as a loser. In 2008, the Republican base can lay claim to that one small victory.
Holy Jeebus, the media have such a jones for Obama vs. Clinton drama-crack! I don’t think I’ve seen them do so little to overcome an addiction since they failed to quit OJ for nearly 15 years. As per usual, they ignore real stories in an effort to analyze Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton’s facial expressions with all the subtlety and perceptiveness of a PUMA divining the coming revolution from the color of a pantsuit.
For instance, I’ve seen precious little hoopla around this bit from Attorney General-designate Eric Holder during today’s national security presser:
Holder: It is incumbent upon those of us who lead the department to ensure not only that our nation is safe, but that ours laws and traditions are respected. There’s not a tension between those two. We can and we must ensure that the American people remain secure and that the great constitutional guarantees that define us as a nation are truly valued. For example, working with both Republicans and Democrats to structure policies that are protective and consistent with who we are as a nation.
[Rough transcript]
In other words, the executive power grabs, countenancing of torture in the name of security, Constitution-shredding and the inexcusable politicizing of the Department of Justice that were the shameful hallmark of George W. Bush’s DOJ operation will end on January 20.
I don’t expect the chorus of naysayers who are already prophesying doom to recognize the significance of Holder’s statement. And the mainstream media are too fixated on creating a Clinton hoohah to notice—even though what Holder said implied heaps of disdain upon the current administration, which is maybe kinda newsworthy. But it made me happy.
PS: If anyone is interested in the outcome of the Six Random Things thingie from last week, my answers (and list of prospective victims) are here.
(Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Bobby Jindal)
Hello, Rumproast! It is such an honor to join this blog. I’m sure you’re wondering what that shocking blog post title is all about, so let’s get to it!
Steve Schmidt, who just successfully managed John McCain’s bid to pathetically lose the presidency and any last shred of his dignity says:
“The question is not whether he’ll be president, but when he’ll be president, because he will be elected someday.”
Take that to the bank! But don’t expect to withdraw any money, because there isn’t any left in America!
Anyway, getting back to the shocking title of this blog post, about getting raped by your crazy uncle and being forced to have the baby even if it might kill you (for Jesus!), it turns out that Bobby Jindal really, really hates abortion. I mean really, really, really, really hates it. And if he ever became president, you could never, ever, ever, under any circumstances, have one:
...social conservatives like what they have heard about the public and private Jindal: his steadfast opposition to abortion without exceptions; his disapproval of embryonic stem cell research; his and his wife Supriya’s decision in 1997 to enter into a Louisiana covenant marriage that prohibits no-fault divorce in the state; and his decision in June to sign into law the Louisiana Science Education Act, a bill heartily supported by creationists that permits public school teachers to educate students about both the theory of “scientific design” and criticisms of Darwinian evolutionary concepts.
There’s a whole host of crazy in that paragraph about which one could write an entire book, but I’ll just deal with the abortion part.
This man will never be president if he is against abortion without exceptions. Just think about it. No exceptions. Not rape. Not incest. Not life of the mother being at risk.
Attention women of America. Consider this: You have been raped. By your crazy ass uncle Bobby (no relation). If you have the baby it will likely kill you. Is there any way you could have an abortion, to literally save your life? Not if Bobby Jindal is president, because apparently he believes that you getting raped by your uncle and suffering a painful death while giving birth to your rapechild is all somehow part of God’s glorious plan for you.
Don’t you feel better knowing that Jesus loves you?
Seriously, even Sarah Palin had the decency and wisdom (I can’t believe I just typed that) to make an exception for abortion when it came to the life of the mother being in jeopardy. And Sarah Palin? Everybody hates Sarah Palin!
There, now Bobby Jindal will never be president. My work is done.
Instead of blockquoting nearly the entire last two paragraphs of his post, which I’m in full agreement with, I’ll just direct you right to it.
This concludes today’s edition of What Tom Hilton Said.
RELATED: Since this shoehorns nicely with some of the points made in Hilton’s post, here’s the latest editorial from one of the leading pernicious hypercritical gnatrooters:
This is the mythic “independence” we’re supposed to crave — a czar who doesn’t owe anyone. It is the foreseeable result of a Dear Leader-ism prevalent in foreign autocracies, but never paramount in America until now — and it will have its benefits and drawbacks.
Wielding his campaign’s massive e-mail list, the new president could mobilize supporters to press Congress for a new New Deal. Or, he could mobilize that army to blunt pressure on his government for a new New Deal. The point is that Obama alone gets to choose — that for all the talk of “bottom-up” politics, his movement’s structure grants him a top-down power that no previous president had.
For better or worse, that leaves us relying more than ever on our Dear Leader’s impulses. Sure, we should be thankful when Dear Leader’s whims serve the people — but also unsurprised when they don’t.
Never mind David Sirota’s totally ludicrous statement that because of Obama’s “massive e-mail list” he now wields “a top-down power that no previous president had” (someone may want to tell Sanford Wallace he now qualifies for King of the Universe), but is it necessary these days to compare Obama to Kim Jong-il—while dismissing Obama supporters as star-struck, naive and compliant—to prove that you’re a 100% Grade A progressive? Or does it really only imply that you’re kind of a mouthy, condescending dick?
