43 Becomes Motivational Speaker
–Politico Staff, Oct. 27, 2009.
Here’s Stephen Colbert’s take on Bush’s first ‘inspirational’ speech:
Colbert Mocks Bush
November 17, 2009
October 29, 2009
It’s True: Junior Bush is a Motivational Speaker Now
Comments Off
April 18, 2009
The Tattlesnake – Ten Signs of the Crimes Edition
Somebody notify Planters – some of their product is running loose on the streets!
If you watched the scenes from Fox News’ tea party ‘protests’ April 15, you had to marvel at all of this fuming outrage because people making over $200K a year will pay 3 percent more in taxes, from 36 to 39, while most everyone else gets a tax cut.
Of course, the ‘FNC Tea Parties’ were not really about taxes or big government — they were about having a black president — especially one who is more intelligent and articulate than the previous inhabitant of the Oval Office and most of the teabag protestors themselves, leaving their ignorant claims of ‘white superiority’ in The Jerry Springer Show’s dumpster where they belong. It’s no longer socially acceptable for even these nimrod Fox News viewers to be open bigots, so they disguise their seething racial hatred under the ‘anti-big government intrusion, no taxation, freedom’ rubric. Yet much of the signage at these corporately-supported Astroturf rallies was solidly anti-Obama. Naturally, these people weren’t out in force every April 15 when Junior Bush was expanding the size of the federal government, surveying their phone calls and emails without a warrant, illegally detaining American citizens, torturing prisoners, asserting an anti-Constitutional right to act as a monarch, and piling up the largest deficit in history. But, then, Bush was white.
10 Most Offensive Signs From the GOP Teabag Parties:
October 7, 2008
Turns Out Palin’s Been Lying About This Too…
When I first heard Sarah Palin make the claim that she could “see Russia from her house” it sounded weird and, checking a map, seemed preposterous. Now, thanks to CNN, it’s been definitively proven an outright lie:
Sarah Palin Has Never Actually Seen Russia From Alaska
By Jed Lewison, Huffington Post
Posted on October 2, 2008Just when you thought the whole “I can see Russia from Alaska” thing couldn’t get any funnier … CNN’s Gary Tuchman delivers the goods: it turns out that Sarah Palin has never seen Russia from Alaska.
Tuchman went up to the part of Alaska from which you can actually see Russia, a remote island called Little Diomede located just 2.4 miles from its Russian twin, Big Diomede.
It turns out Gary Tuchman’s trip to Little Diomede sets him apart from Sarah Palin — because she’s never actually been there, nor has she set eyes on its neighbor in Russia.
Here’s the video of Tuchman’s report: [see the Huff Post website]
Comments Off
September 1, 2008
August 7, 2008
What McCain Isn’t Telling You About Offshore Oil Drilling
And neither is our corporately-run Big Media whose owners, no doubt, have some Big Oil stock in their portfolios.
Aside from the fact that, without federal regulation of the kind that’s anathema to neocon Republicans, there is no way to guarantee that any offshore drilling will produce lower prices at the pump, here’s the rundown on another angle of this GOP scam to reward Big Oil and then possibly deny even that trickle of offshore oil — available in ten to twenty years — to Americans, courtesy of Cenk Uygur at Huffington Post:
If We Drill in the U.S., We Don’t Get the Oil
By Cenk Uygur, Huffington Post
Posted on August 1, 2008One thing has been driving me crazy about this drilling debate — everyone seems to assume that if we drill for oil in the US, that we will get the oil. And hence, we won’t be dependent on foreign oil anymore. But we won’t get anything, Exxon-Mobil will.
The oil that comes from that drilling will not be United States property (Republicans aren’t suggesting we nationalize the oil companies, are they?). It will be the property of whichever oil company got the rights to that contract. They can then sell it to whoever they like — and they will. They will sell it on the world market, so the Chinese will have just as much access to the oil that comes out of the coast of Florida as we will.
Comments Off
The Tattlesnake – Palin: the GOPs Political Poison Pill Edition
“Her agenda was not necessarily to show me in the best light.”
– Sarah Palin to Oprah Winfrey, complaining about Katie Couric’s 2008 interview that revealed her to be an uninformed pageant sash, as quoted at NBC’s Today Show website, Nov. 16, 2009.
As this quote shows, Sarah Palin still has no idea what the role of the news media is in a Jeffersonian democracy, apparently believing that reporters should have the ‘agenda’ of lobbing affable Wiffle balls that make her look good rather than exposing a candidate’s fitness for office. That she was so vexed by Couric’s mild inquiries – asking her what she reads, for instance, becoming in Palin’s mind a ‘gotcha’ question without parallel – and then whining to Oprah that she had just been ‘pumped up’ by walking a rope line of enthusiastic followers only to encounter the bummerooski of Katie the ‘Perky One’ with microphone and camera ready to pounce on her with school-test interrogations suited to a spiteful teacher – well, it was just too much to bear!
This, then, is the Beauty Pageant Contestant (BPC) view of the world; you memorize certain attractive-sounding answers, such as advocating world peace or groceries for the hungry, and it’s not fair of the judges to delve into what particular set of policies you would promote to achieve those goals. Isn’t it enough that you have shown yourself to be a really good caring ‘people person’ by just desiring such cures for the world’s ills?
In the same way, Palin thought it was sufficient that she merely presented herself as informed on a daily basis by newspapers and magazines without actually having to bother to learn some by name or talk knowledgeably about their contents. Isn’t it enough that she said she reads all that intellectual stuff, for Pete’s sake? Hey, Real America doesn’t care – they’re too busy shooting wolves from circling Cessnas.
She showed a similar BPC understanding of the law in the campaign of 2008 when she failed to come up with any Supreme Court decision other than Roe v. Wade that entered her memory – but, then, come on — a real leader can always call on her staff to review such inane details for her, as befits a princess with a yen for higher office, such as Ms. Vice President of America.
As for calling Couric ‘The Perky One’ – the giddy Sarah often gives irony a hernia from too much stress, but this was an entry worthy of an Olympic record.
The late Kurt Vonnegut would have heartily appreciated the alternately peevishly snippy and wholesome Hockey-Mom vacuity of Sarah Palin. The Tattler can picture him with his kindly grin, the world-weary eyes twinkling in satirical amusement, a Pall Mall with a droopy ash poised in mid-air, observing one of his more incongruous characters come to life and dominating the American political landscape – always slightly absurd, now keeled over into open farce — promulgated by a national news media that is no longer paid to tell the difference.
For incongruity is the Barracuda’s calling card – she supports the infallible efficacy of sexual abstinence for teens while her own 16-year-old daughter swells in unwed pregnancy; she bleats about clean government while papering over her own administration’s manifold corruptions; she assaults small-minded cruelty while delivering velvet-gloved blows to those who dare criticize her; she talks of lofty Christian ideals while she’s perpetually immersed in petty paybacks; she decries government bailouts while the citizens of her home state accept nearly twice as much in federal money than they pay in taxes; she insinuates darkly of the evils of socialism and nationalization while Alaska annually divides its energy wealth equally among its inhabitants; she natters on about responsibility while refusing to own up to her own mistakes; she deplores politicians abusing their power while she used her office to settle personal scores; she hails freedom while sentencing other members of her gender to do without it; she supports the troops while wanting to prolong their agony in lost wars; she respects tough people who stay in the race, and then quits halfway through her stint as Alaska’s governor when either her ambition or her malfeasance, or both, catch up with her. Most of all, she admires honesty while practicing its opposite, either the result of intentional deception or the BPC’s natural tendency to slap sweet frosting on the ugly realities of human existence, especially when those realities are embedded in one’s own character.
(more…)