In the Washington Post today Richard Cohen poses the question “What if Cheney’s Right?” He starts out by assuring us that he considers Cheney to be the biggest liar this side of beyond but maybe, just maaybee, he’s right about this torture thing being effective.
Torture is a moral abomination, and President Obama is right to restate American opposition to it. But where I reserve a soupçon of doubt is over the question of whether “enhanced interrogation techniques” actually work.
He then goes on to point out that even though Cheney lied through his teeth about the WMD in Iraq and pretty much everything else he’s said since, could be possibly be telling the truth just this one time? After all, there’s some CIA memos that the former VP is just sure he saw once and he’s positive they said that torture works. So could it be true?
That is is a soupçon of bull doo is pointed out by Ezra Klein who reminds Cohen that only two weeks ago he wrote the following:
Of course it works—sometimes or rarely, but if a proverbial bomb is ticking, that may just be the one time it works.
The First Dude got screwed again at the key party.
I wasn’t going to write about the White House Correspondents’ Dinner because, like Thers (really, do not click the link in his post), I’m not a huge fan of it, but this was too gross not to highlight:
With his wife back in Alaska dealing with a natural disaster, Todd Palin was being led around the brunch by Fox’s Greta Van Susteren, who is apparently his host AND handler.
POLITICO started to chat with Alaska’s “first dude” when Van Susteren intervened. The host of On The Record told us this brunch was “off the record” - no talking with the husband of former Republican vice presidential nominee, Gov. Sarah Palin.
Asked why, Van Susteren told us - as we held pen, pad, recorder and camera in hand - well, you know, at these things you can’t always figure out who’s on the record or off the record when you chit chat. And, she added, with all the background noise Palin could easily be misquoted.
Say what you want about Chris Matthews’ “leg tingle,” but could you ever imagine him doing something like this with, say, Michelle Obama? On three ... one ... two ... three ... *urp*!
Mark Halperin, one of the whitest men in America, wrote the following weird header (accompanied by a stock photo of what I guess is his idea of what a “white man” looks like) to pitch another post that mentions nothing about white men being excluded from consideration to replace Justice Souter:
White Men Need Not Apply
Nobody knows the troubles white men in this country have seen. Thank god Brave Mark Halperin is around to remind us about it. [via Balloon Juice]
“I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I’m not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it’s an interesting coincidence.”
One problem, though, as ShortsandPants notes, the year was 1976 and the president was Republic [sic] Gerald Ford.
In 1976, an Army recruit at Ford Dix, New Jersey, complained that he was feeling tired and weak. He died the following day. After Swine flu was diagnosed panicked officials persuaded Gerald Ford that the entire population needed vaccination. About 40 million people were vaccinated before another fear took hold - that the vaccine was more dangerous than the disease - and the programme was aborted.
We think you’re missing the point of this exercise, Jesse. The fairly simple idea here is to apply to you the same rules that you have repeatedly applied to others. So, as per the Jesse Watters School of Ambush Interviews, you no longer get to decide whether or not to answer our questions. It wasn’t up to Hendrik Hertzberg, or Amanda Terkel, or William Arkin, or a host of other people you ambushed. So now it’s not up to you.
This is going to be fun to watch.
RELATED: Our short Twitter run-in with Jesse the big fucking pussy here.
UPDATE: I was duped, along with a lot of other people. The Jesse Watters Twitter account is fake. D’oh! Well played, whoever was behind it.
I signed up for the Glenn Beck newsletter yesterday and today my email box is stuffed with stupid:
On Today’s Program
Earth Day!
Glenn takes some callers eager to celebrate Earth Day by cutting down trees live on the air. There’s nothing better than the sound of a good chainsaw blazing away on Earth day. Check out this call from Tim in Cleveland, who is cutting down trees in Ohio.
Mike in Tulsa celebrates Earth Day by running all of his lawn equipment at the same time.
God, I hate these people.
[TRANSCRIPT OF CALL WITH TIM BELOW THE FOLD—5:05pm AUDIO ADDED]
Name a major political story broken by a White House correspondent. A thorough debunking of the Bush case for Iraqi WMD? McClatchy Newspapers’ State Department and national security correspondents. Bush’s abuse of signing statements? The Boston Globe’s legal affairs correspondent. Even Watergate came off The Washington Post’s Metro desk. [...]
It’s not that the reporters covering the president are bad at their jobs. Most are experienced journalists at the top of their game—and they’re wasted at the White House, where scoops are doled out, not uncovered. The day of a typical White House correspondent consists, literally, of waiting to be told things. Legitimate security concerns and a tightly scripted political world keep the presidential press corps physically corralled and informationally hostage.
I think Jake Tapper could really use a hug right now.
Here’s the video of John Rich’s performance that made Watters cry. If those folks in Atlanta were real Americans they would have beaten Rich to death for wearing a lady jacket. I’m not sure why Hannity announced right after Rich finished that the audience was “suffering.” That’s not a nice thing to say, Sean! Did you mean because of the jacket? Did you order them not to kill him for wearing women clothes? Jesse (hah, that’s a girl’s name!) also tweeted that the song “is the ‘Proud to be an American’ of our generation.” I think he’s right about that. *urp*
[Hat tip to the General for letting us know that Watters tweets. We are now “following” Jesse, just like he follows the people he stalks. It’s a funny, mixed-up world we live in!]
UPDATE: I was duped, along with a lot of other people. The Jesse Watters Twitter account is fake. D’oh! Well played, whoever was behind it.
I guess FOX News is going all in on batshit crazy because last night Pamela “Atlas Shrieks” Geller, one of the craziest loons in the nuttersphere, was a guest on Greg Gutfeld’s Red Eye:
MORE: Last week Gutfeld said Eminem doesn’t have balls, he “only has boobs.” If I were Greg, I’d ease up on the boob jokes. From this pic that Geller took, it looks like the dude’s sporting quite a rack.
This is a guest post from Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler. Enjoy.
REJOICE! REJOICE!: We have been relentlessly reporting (click here and then here for starters) about how circus clown Rachel Maddow, Rhodes Scholar, has been feeding us rubes comfort food with her mugging and preening and pirouetting and juggling and tittering and guffawing and smirking and winking and face-squinching and life-enjoying. What a perfect pile of crap! We had a modicum of faith that she would put down the spoon and stop feeding us rubes comfort food by immediately stopping her mugging and preening and pirouetting and juggling and tittering and guffawing and smirking and winking and face-squinching, but the circus clown is getting more piss-pitiful with each passing day. As we noted previously, Friday night Rhodes Scholar and clown car occupant Maddow shoveled more comfort food, smothered in mugging and preening and pirouetting and juggling and tittering and guffawing and smirking and winking and face-squinching and life-enjoying gravy, our way and when the analysts in our head asked us what we thought, all we could blurt out was what a piss-pitiful, perfect pile of crap:
MADDOW (4/10/09): And later: The future of the Republican Party and teabagging. I‘m sorry we have to go there again. Sorry.
The analysts in our head asked us if Maddow was sorry and, even though we have no idea, we are certain that she was not sorry. The analysts also asked us what the clown car occupant could be thinking and we answered that we didn’t know and then the analysts asked us something that made us uncomfortable and we shouted and shouted for them to get out of our heads but they wouldn’t!! And then we realized we only had one head and the shouting got LOUDER and LOUDER!!! We yelled, “Be gone! Be gone!!! We are but rubes!!! Be gon—Serenity now. Serenity now. Serenity now. Serenity now. And continue…
Returning to the teabagging, the Rhodes Scholar clown car occupant wanted to say the term, comfort food’s main ingredient, a million times more. We have no idea but we’re sure she wasn’t sorry. While the world continues to believe what the Washington Post’s dimwit twit Al Kamen wrote about Al Gore’s Christmas card in 1999, Maddow applies her face paint, clown nose and big floppy shoes and restarts the mugging and preening and pirouetting and juggling and tittering and guffawing and smirking and winking and face-squinching and life-enjoying. Let’s indulge again:
MADDOW (4/10/09): And later: The future of the Republican Party and teabagging. I‘m sorry we have to go there again. Sorry.
Honk honk! The clown car occupant is signaling the rubes that a perfect pile of crap, disguised as comfort food, is ready to be served, hot and steaming and full of tea-sperm. We can imagine that she thinks, as she mugs and preens and pirouettes and juggles and titters and guffaws and smirks and winks and squinches her face and enjoys life, how wonderful it would be if a conservative was named Sanchez because then the clown car could deliver even more comfort food for us rubes, but of an even dirtier variety:
WIKIPEDIA: Dirty Sanchez is the act of smearing fecal matter or felch on the upper lip of a partner during (or following) various types of anal sex.
Rejoice! Rejoice! No fecal matter or felch will be served with the comfort food tonight, rubes. Alas, there will be no Dirty Sanchez. But when a conservative Sanchez emerges, Bozo the Rhodes Scholar will signal us by honking twice and then proceed to smear fecal matter and felch all over her TV studio. Unfortunately for her, all clown Maddow can do now is mug and preen and pirouette and juggle and titter and guffaw and smirk and wink and squinch her face about boring old teabagging:
MADDOW (4/10/09): Last night on this program I was joined by Ana Marie Cox for a rather difficult discussion about teabagging. Conservative activists and Fox News Channel teaming up to organize protest actions that include sending tea bags to members of Congress pledging to teabag the White House. ....
At the risk of saying the “teabag” more than my conscience can bear, there are two remaining points here that I would hope to still be able to clear up.
The analysts have asked us to clear something up, too! Is Ana Marie Cox, who we imagine likes saying her last name over and over to herself in the mirror while she mugs and preens and pirouettes and juggles and titters and guffaws and smirks and winks and squinches her face and enjoys life, Beavis or Butthead? Perhaps the most famous graduate of Oxford Clown University can clear that up for us. Does Beavis like saying their last name over and over or is that Butthead? The analysts would like to know because “Cox” is a fun word and the rubes are demanding it. Or are you too busy saying “teabag” and “teabagging” more than your conscience can bear to let us know? Or is your mouth full at the moment?
WIKIPEDIA: Teabagging is a slang term for the act of a man placing his testicles in the mouth or on or around the face (including the top of the head) of another person, often in a repeated in-and-out motion as in irrumatio The practice vaguely resembles dipping a tea bag into a cup of tea.
Give the rubes what they want. Give them the Cox and the balls. Served on a heaping plate of piss-pitiful comfort food with a steaming side of a pile of crap. While dimwit twit Al Kamen and his vicious Al Gore Christmas card smear (covered extensively in our incomparable archives) live to see another day.
Remember our old pal Mushy, the radio personality wannabe? This kind of thing must really chap her ass: Bob Ney, the disgraced GOP congressman who recently got out of the slammer after serving time for his role in the Abramoff scandal, has picked up a radio talk show host gig:
Starting today, the former Ohio GOP congressman will be hosting a midday chat show on a right-wing West Virginia radio station…
In the show…Ney will focus on “ethics, earmarks, prison reform and Ohio politics.”
It’s not some bogus-ass podcast or BlogTalkRadio dealio either—Ney has an actual radio show with a transmitter and everything. Kinda like our buddy Scooter, only without the brains, sense of humor and superior FM radio transmission capabilities. Eat your heart out, Mushy.
