Monday, November 10, 2008

Moralistic wingnut blow-hard Joe Scarborough opens his yap and lets a FUCK YOU escape, and he can’t even make a straight-up admission he uttered it when called out:

Poor Mika. Whatever they’re paying her, it isn’t enough.

[Via Wonkette]

Posted by Betty Cracker on 11/10/08 at 09:33 AM
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How can the GOP counter Obama’s appeal to a country weary of war, economic crisis, incompetence and mindless ideological attacks? Here’s Bill Kristol’s brilliant solution:

And it wouldn’t hurt for Governors Sarah Palin, Mitch Daniels, Bobby Jindal and the other possible 2012 G.O.P. nominees to begin bringing some puppies home for their kids.

No, really. I’ve heard rumblings about Kristol’s NYT contract not being renewed at the end of this year. This is the man who brought us Palin. He is indispensable to our cause. Perhaps a letter writing campaign to retain him is in order.

[Cross-posted at Betty Cracker]

Posted by Betty Cracker on 11/10/08 at 07:56 AM
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Saturday, November 08, 2008

Click here and scroll down.

Then click here and do the same.

Posted by poputonian on 11/08/08 at 07:40 AM
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Thursday, November 06, 2008

According to TPM, President Obama’s Press Secretary will be Robert Gibbs. Mr. Gibbs became a hero to many Obama supporters by reducing bully boy Sean Hannity to a sputtering pool of goo who had to be shop-vacced up by famous Fox invertebrate Alan Colmes.

Heh.

Posted by Betty Cracker on 11/06/08 at 10:41 AM
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Monday, November 03, 2008

Everyman’s everyman Joe “Gumby Head” Scarborough, with help from Mika Brzezinski and Tucker Carlson, was just on MSNBC extolling the abundant virtues of Sarah Palin after viewing a live feed of her rally in Lakewood, Ohio.  She’s so smart, mismanaged and misunderstood, they opined; Scarborough gushing that she was a “political animal” and “the future of the Republican party” (woo hoo!—say it’s so, Joe!).  He then offered up the ratings she garnered on Saturday Night Live and during the vice presidential debate as proof that America loved her. No, you beady-eyed ignoramus, Americans love train wrecks. Gigantic, flaming train wrecks:

McCain’s choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate doesn’t appear to be wearing well with most Americans. In the poll, 45% of registered voters rated the choice as “poor” and another 18% said it was “only fair,” while 19% called it “pretty good” and 16% excellent. [...]

Palin has a favorable-unfavorable rating of 42%-49%.

Compare that to the future of the Democratic party:

One more historic tidbit from the survey: Obama’s favorable rating is 62%—the highest that any presidential candidate has registered in Gallup’s final pre-election polls going back to 1992.

RELATED: I really wish someone would do a study regarding “train wreck traffic” for wingnut and PUMA blogs (I know, same thing).  I’d put money of the fact that at the very least 33% of their traffic is culled from snickering rubberneckers.

MORE: “Mac is back!”…

McCain addressed a small crowd in Tampa, estimated at about 1,100 people.

Local reporters pointed out that just before the 2004 election, President Bush drew about 15,000.

RELATED: As noted above, Tucker Carlson crawled out of whatever dank little hole MSNBC stuffs pundits with shitty ratings into to pump up Sarah Palin this morning.  At one point he raved that she didn’t even use a teleprompter during her rally in Lakewood.

Oops.

Republican vice presidential candidate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaks at a rally in Lakewood, Ohio, Monday, Nov. 3, 2008.

Posted by Kevin K. on 11/03/08 at 09:35 AM
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Friday, October 31, 2008

Today the Morning Joe crew was making a big deal about this video of co-host Willie Geist pretending (?) to be a McCain-Palin supporter on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  They were shocked (shocked, I tell you!) about the responses Geist got from passerbys. You’ll see at the end of it Mike Barnicle says it proves “why so many people are so right, no pun intended, to really loathe so many on the left.” Mika Brzezinski was playing the full-on drama queen after it aired (she was “troubled”!) and everyman’s everyman Joe “Gumby Head” Scarborough wanted people on the Upper West Side to “take a closer look at themselves” because they’re “really, really hostile people.” Sounds pretty bad, right? Take a look:

Yep, that’s it.

And since I’ve been documenting the “polite” way McCain-Palin supporters “disagree” with people who are backing Obama, I felt the need to bang out a quick email to them…

Posted by Kevin K. on 10/31/08 at 08:13 AM
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Saturday, October 25, 2008

When John Cole asked this question yesterday:

Am I wrong? Did I miss the McCain team pushing this story? Because I do not remember anything from them on it.

I reported in his comments (hung up in his pesky spam filter—damn you, Balloon Juice!) that in early reports on the Ashley Todd hoax I had seen a clear indication that the McCain camp had been pushing the story, but it looked like the original online articles I had seen had been rewritten (I went through my Firefox history to make sure).  Well, via BJ, I see that Talking Points Memo dug up exactly what I was looking for:

John McCain’s Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established—and even told reporters outright that the “B” carved into the victim’s cheek stood for “Barack,” according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

And this is the excised text I had read early in the evening on Thursday:

Everyone repeat along with me ... hang it around their necks.

SIDE NOTE: I’m taking a pass on feeling sorry for Ashley Todd due to her alleged history of mental illness because from what I can tell that info came solely from Ashley Todd, who lied horribly about more things than I can count over the last few days. This could just be a contemptible racist asshole’s attempt to court the sympathy vote and take off some of the heat (the media seems to be buying it), so count this skeptic out for the moment.

UPDATE: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a lot more on this story…

Posted by Kevin K. on 10/25/08 at 08:05 AM
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Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Darragh “McCainiac” Murphy writes:

The New York Post, original publisher of the Michelle Obama Lobster/Caviar/Champagne Afternoon Delight story has published a retraction.

I sincerely regret repeating and amplifying what turns out to be a shameful attempt to embarrass and undermine Michelle Obama.

I will take better care in checking sources in the future.

Goddamn, Darragh Murphy really is one of the most disingenuous people in America. I guess she didn’t feel the need to “check her sources” after a PUMA pointed out the story had been debunked in the third comment on her original post pushing this easily-dismissed nonsense (good fucking luck getting a bottle of champagne delivered to your room for only $44 at the Waldorf-Astoria—I think that’ll get you a Toblerone bar). Or I guess she didn’t feel the need to check her sources when she saw traffic coming her way from Lawyers, Guns and Money calling bullshit on her.

And regarding her sincerely regretting “repeating and amplifying what turns out to be a shameful attempt to embarrass and undermine Michelle Obama,” the original post is still up without an update/retraction and the poorly-designed flyer pushing the bogus rumor is still available in the Puma Pac Action Center (aka “Shitty Graphics ‘R’ Us") (fifth link—left—“MO Piece of the Pie, jpg,color, Aloha").

There’s a big difference between covering your ass and regretting your error.  Don’t think for one second Darragh Murphy doesn’t know the difference.

Posted by Kevin K. on 10/21/08 at 12:58 PM
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Monday, October 20, 2008

Sarah Palin talking about “Joe the Plumber” while campaigning Saturday:

“So when he left Joe’s neighborhood in Toledo, our opponent didn’t look real happy. Seems that the staged photo-op there got ruined by a real person’s question. So here’s a guy working—standing there in his neighborhood when a candidate for president shows up and he wanted more than just a handshake and a campaign button. He wanted some answers. He—Joe had asked our opponent a simple—a straightforward question, and he spoke for so many other Americans.”

I was away for the weekend so I wasn’t able to address this, but Michael Rovito sent me an email pointing out how ridiculous it is that when he asked Sarah Palin a totally non-partisan question at a “photo-op” in Philadelphia, John McCain referred to is as “a ‘gotcha’ sound bite,” but when Samuel “Joe the Not-A-Plumber” Wurzelbacher asked Barack Obama a totally partisan question near Toledo, it’s considered by Palin to be “a real person’s question.”

Fortunately, the hypocrisy of Palin’s comments this weekend wasn’t lost on some journalists and Rovito has a few links here (the CBS reporter linked at the top of this post also picked up on it). Still, a lot more members of Our Stupid Media should have called “bullshit” on McCain and Palin the minute those words dribbled out of her mouth this weekend.

Posted by Kevin K. on 10/20/08 at 09:21 AM
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Sunday, October 12, 2008

I’ve had one eye on Brokaw ever since 2003 when he cleverly smeared Wes Clark in the Democratic primary. Unlike most journalists who wear their bias on their sleeve, Brokaw is subtle in the way he lends currency to the outlandish. To see this point, and before watching the video below, consider how the existence of any measurable association between Barack Obama and William Ayers has been thoroughly debunked.

From Fight The Smears:

Smear groups and now a desperate McCain campaign are trying to connect Barack to William Ayers using age-old guilt by association techniques. Here’s the truth: the smear associating Barack to Ayers is “phony,” [Chicago Sun Times] “tenuous,” [Washington Post] – even “exaggerated at best if not outright false.” [Associated Press]

William Ayers is a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with whom Barack served on the board of an education-reform organization in the mid-1990’s. According to the Associated Press, they are not close: “No evidence shows they were “pals” or even close when they worked on community boards years ago …”

Smear groups and the McCain campaign are trying to connect Obama to acts Ayers committed 40 years ago – when Barack was just eight years old. Here’s what the New York Times reported on the connection:

“But the two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called “somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8.”

Now watch how today on Meet The Press, Brokaw allows any viewer to conclude there could be something to an Obama-Ayres association. He does this by not questioning why the McCain campaign would push a discredited story, but by simply asking if the McCain attack on Obama is working. In doing so, he allows the empty-headed WSJ writer Paul Gigot to tell us why associations are important, as in “they go to character and judgment.”

Brokaw is a fraud from Rumproast Clips on Vimeo.

Brokaw allowed Gigot’s comment to stand without any further probing or critical follow-up. Brokaw knows exactly what he is doing and he’s quite skilled at pushing stories for his favorites. He’s a journalistic fraud.

Posted by poputonian on 10/12/08 at 09:03 PM
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Thursday, October 09, 2008

Late last night and into the wee hours of the morning the blogostupid was buzzing about Jonathan Martin’s Politico post:

McCain camp making news in the morning

On what, they won’t say. 

“We’ll have something to talk about,” is all a campaign aide would allow.

Check back again in this space or over on our front-page in the morning.

Speculation was running rampant everywhere.  Martin just did a follow-up and ... it’s a steaming pile o’ non-story:

That “news” in the morning

Sure enough, it’s Bill Ayers.

The McCain campaign is launching a web ad accusing Obama of trying to hide his ties to the 60s-era radical.

“Too risky for America,” the ad concludes.

The idea here is to keep Ayers in the mix without spending precious dollars to put real points behind it on TV.  Republicans know that cable TV stations will play the spot for free, regardless of it being a web ad.

Republicans also know that megaphonies like Martin will eagerly amplify their useless crap and not be remotely upset or embarrassed that they’ve, once again, been played for fools. A principled journalist would never run with a tip from that McCain camp source again.  If you know that journalist, please introduce him or her to Martin.

Posted by Kevin K. on 10/09/08 at 07:53 AM
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Monday, October 06, 2008

I’ve heard of free speech zones, but I guess the McCain-Palin campaign is now setting up free listen zones:

Constantly under the watchful eyes of security, the media wasn’t permitted to wander around inside Coachman Park to talk to Sarah Palin supporters. When reporters tried to leave the designated press area and head toward the bleachers where the crowd was seated, an escort would dart out of nowhere and confront him or her and say, “Can I help you?’’ and turn the person around.

When one reporter asked an escort, who would not give her name, why the press wasn’t allowed to mingle, she said that in the past, negative things had been written. The campaign wanted to avoid that possibility Monday.

I hope the press could have at least enjoyed this spectacle from their holding pen:

A few minutes before Palin arrived, a disembodied voice instructed the several thousand supporters to turn to the right and “direct your attention” to a bridge spanning the Intracoastal Waterway because Palin’s motorcade was approaching.

On cue, organizers cut loose with a soaring overture, pumping it through the speakers placed around Coachman Park in downtown Clearwater. True to Palin’s frontier persona, it had sort of an Aaron Copeland vibe to it. Very stirring. Very mavericky.

[First story via our pal Ripley]

IN ADDITION: They were expecting 20,000 to turn out to see Palin today. Oops. Only 4500 attended.

Posted by Kevin K. on 10/06/08 at 01:15 PM
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Thursday, October 02, 2008

Our pal Robert Lanham has a new piece up about Sarah Palin at Radar.  Go check it out:

Anyone who remembers the movie Bob Roberts will be familiar with Palin’s type; the pseudo populist who subverts a progressive movement and co-opts it to fit his/her own image. Yup, that’s Sarah. But the frustrating thing about the Bob Roberts and Sarah Palins of the world is this: they’re typically most successful when the institutions they’re co-opting are stagnating. And let’s face facts: feminism has been suffering an identity crisis for years, and it’s only gotten worse during the 2008 election cycle.

Also, Steve M. makes a very good point:

What I find most striking about Sarah Palin’s inability to name a Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade that she disagrees with is that this would be a ridiculously easy question for a wide range of righties—not just political pros but online wingnut amateurs.  Um, the banning of public-school prayer? That still gets ordinary right-wingers’ juices flowing. How about the recent eminent-domain case Kelo v. New London? That one infuriated the Freepers. Or what about the decisions that have tried to constrain the White House’s detention policies—Boumediene v. Bush, for instance? That one also had Freeper knickers in a twist. So Palin isn’t just less informed than the average VP candidate—she’s less informed than thousands of random message-board and blog devotees on the far right.

And Wonkette has rolled out a new pic of Sarah Palin as the Ice Princess that is just plain adorable.

p.s. We’ll be rolling out another one of our open threads at 8 PM ET for tonight’s VP debate, so make sure you come on by and join in the hilarity.

MORE: I’m going to yank up this Rumproast comment of the day from my buddy Iceberg Wedge:

My hope is that Sarah Palin fails so miserably and so completely that John McCain has to stand before the nation and declare “we are all ‘Joe Six Pack’ now.”

Posted by Kevin K. on 10/02/08 at 11:47 AM
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Boogie Man will tear at your American (and allegedly forgiving) soul in ways that no other documentary has done before. As much as the tragic end of scumbag Republican strategist Lee Atwater’s life is compelling in the most push-out-the-piss kinda way, as the credits roll you’re left with a horrific and crisp vision of just how despicable and rotten Washington gamers can really be. Boogie Man also very deftly (and sometimes quietly) lays bare how unjustifiably rewarded and adulated flagrantly reckless and mean-spirited spinheads like Atwater have been by the members of our complicit, junk-hungry media.

Atwater, as some of you may know, was Karl Rove’s mentor (you know what a smoldering pile of offal he is—no need to go there).  And Rove begat Steve Schmidt, the oddly-skewed baldheaded mule spawn who’s been recently seen burping up detritus in support of his paid-to-love-him guy John McCain. That’s why this doc is an important arrival now. As much as you may be relishing the recent apparent flaming destruction of the McCain-Palin campaign, after viewing this documentary, you should be concerned that Schmidt could still pull some wild, ill-conceived Atwater-style bottom-dwellerism outta his keester that will, inexplicably, click with a majority of voters and pull the gate down, once again, on what seemed like the Obvious Choice. 

Posted by Kevin K. on 10/02/08 at 11:20 AM
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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Michael Rovito, who we wrote about earlier, was on CNN this afternoon to defend John McCain’s charges against him that he had engaged in “‘gotcha’ journalism” when he asked Sarah Palin questions about Pakistan and Waziristan at a Philly cheesesteak joint Saturday.  After Betty Nguyen, CNN news anchor and member of Our Stupid Media, asked Rovito, who is a grad student at Temple University and most definitely not a journalist, twice if he had indulged in “‘gotcha’ journalism” during his encounter with Palin, he responded thusly:

“I don’t even know what that means, but of course not. I’m not a journalist. I’m just a tax-paying citizen. And if we cannot ask a question of our veep and presidential candidates and if we do we get scorned for being a ‘gotcha’ journalist—again, I don’t know what that means—but then it’s a sense of, I don’t know, it’s almost tyrannical in a way. Like I think that comment, just speaking objectively, was kind of a blow to the integrity of journalists and tax-paying citizens who have questions that we want our vice presidential and presidential candidates to answer. I mean, I don’t get this”

So you would think Nguyen would understand that he was a citizen asking Palin some legitimate, educated questions and would appreciate his defense of the integrity of her profession, getting that he was implying that good journalism, by nature, should have a “gotcha” component, right?  Think again…

NGUYEN: “Well, what he’s trying to say, I mean, with this gotcha moment, did you try to set her up and play stump the candidate?”

ROVITO: “Of course not. No.”

Jesus Drunken Christ on a bar crawl, “stump the candidate”? Where have I heard that before?  Hmmmm…

And to close things out, Nguyen, looking like she was ready for a pat on the head and a bone-shaped biscuit, proudly announced that Rovito had claimed that he’s not a “‘gotcha’ journalist.” Quality reporting had been completed and we closed yet another chapter in the massive novel(ty) that is Our Stupid Media.

Full video here:

Posted by Kevin K. on 09/30/08 at 08:06 PM
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