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January 22, 2011

Keith Olbermann’s Final ‘Countdown’ at MSNBC Has the Stench of Comcast All Over It

Filed under: News,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:28 am

keitholbermann
Last night, Friday, January 21, in what I know must have been a surprise to much of his audience, Keith Olbermann announced this was the last “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” thanked his viewers and those who had helped put the show on the air over the years, and then calmly read a James Thurber story named “The Scotty Who Knew Too Much,” the moral of which was: “It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers.” It was an odd, unsettling moment in the context of Keith’s departure, and it’s still not clear if Olbermann quit or MSNBC fired him; the only official announcement from MSNBC being an exercise in bland Corpospeak opacity:

“MSNBC and Keith Olbermann have ended their contract. The last broadcast of Countdown with Keith Olbermann will be this evening. MSNBC thanks Keith for his integral role in MSNBC’s success and we wish him well in his future endeavors.”

Richard Adams, writing in The Guardian (UK), apparently believes Olbermann was fired:

“Keith Olbermann, the liberal, outspoken anchor of MSNBC’s Countdown show, had his contract dramatically terminated by the US cable news network’s parent company NBC on Friday night.

“Olbermann had two years of a four year contract remaining, worth an estimated $30m, and was the network’s highest-rated personality, responsible in large part for MSNBC’s orientation as a liberal, Democratic-leaning channel.”

Although Comcast ferociously denies they had anything to do with this – and it is barely possible Keith simply refused to work for them and ended his contract by mutual agreement with MSNBC — the juxtaposition of FCC approval to take over NBC/Universal and Olbermann’s blink-quick departure reek with the stench of conservative mega-corporation Comcast sending a chilling message to the cable news network’s employees – especially air personalities Rachel Maddow, Ed Schultz and Lawrence O’Donnell – that if they go too ‘progressive’ in their shows, if they pull back the curtain on corporate malfeasance and corruption with too much zeal and fact, they could find their contracts suddenly cancelled as well.

(The new prime-time MSNBC line-up, BTW, is O’Donnell in Keith’s slot at 8:00ET, with Ed Schultz moving into O’Donnell’s current 10:00ET berth. Rachel will stay in her current time slot.)

Thankfully, Keith is still owed $14 million on his contract, so he will have a chance to take a breather, review his options, and make a comeback elsewhere, perhaps even at the struggling third-place CNN. As Rob Soto at Etidbits.com speculates:

“As for our opinion on what’s next for the liberal anchor, don’t be surprised if Olbermann ends up on CNN sooner than later. Their ratings are in the tank, their new Parker/Spitzer series is a disaster (with Kathleen Parker reportedly not very happy being there) and is a poor lead-in to the new Piers Morgan Show. The entire evening lineup needs a makeover, and fast. Olbermann reportedly still has two years on his contract and will get paid his annual salary of about $7 million. However, what is not known at this point if he has a non-compete clause in his contract that would prohibit him from appearing on a rival station until his two-year contract is over.”

VIDEO: Olbermann signs off on final Countdown

I’ve been a regular viewer and fan of Keith Olbermann’s since he first started Countdown eight years ago and I hope he shows up on the TV machine again soon; to paraphrase his sign-off, and mix in some Dylan Thomas, I wish him good luck, and I know he won’t go gently into that good night.

© 2011 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

May 2, 2010

The Tattlesnake — Glenn Beck’s Greased Rail Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Quote — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 4:21 am

News Item: Glenn Beck Has Lost 1/3 of His TV Audience Since January

A Shame He’ll Miss Out on the Tar and Feathers

Unlike his semi-serious colleagues O’Reilly and Hannity, Beck was always just a babbling flash in the pan; a sideshow freak-out of raving, nearly incoherent right-wing outrage and contradictory conspiracy theories. He had to keep topping himself in craziness or risk boring his audience with deadly repetition. He’s now run out of ideas and gone with the latter, and his viewers are turning him off, so his only hope for a final ratings coup is to go out like a flaming comet with a total on-air screeching psychotic meltdown and then R&R at some luxurious mental rehab facility. But don’t fret for Beck – he’s made many more millions from his strange circus act than most legitimate clowns.

With his ratings dropping, nearly all of his A-line advertisers gone, and his goofy Prof. Irwin Corey and Howard Beal Meet Joe McCarthy routine growing stale, isn’t it high time for Uncle Rupert to show Glenn Beck the door?

“Let’s put Beck’s ratings into context. Yes, in the world of cable news, his numbers are impressive, and virtually any host would be happy to have them. But look how far Glenn Beck has fallen recently. In late January and into February, the program was averaging 3 million viewers each week. And late last year, the show spent month after month flirting with that figure. Today, the viewership is trending around 2 million (Last week it was exactly 2.01 million viewers.) — which means that in a span of just three months, Glenn Beck has lost nearly one-third of its television audience.” […]
“Corporate America (aka the beloved free marketplace) wants nothing to do with Beck. … Today, there are less than a handful of nationally recognized advertisers who appear willing to purchase air time on Glenn Beck. Think about the deep, deep discounts Fox News likely has to offer the remaining advertisers in order to get them to come aboard. (And the show is supposed to be a hit.) Now add to that equation the fact that Glenn Beck has lost 1/3 of its audience since January, and you can see where this is heading for Fox News.
“How soft are Beck’s current ratings? He’s now posting the type of numbers that his show used to get when he was on vacation and somebody less famous stood in for him, like when he took a few days off in late March and his show averaged 1.9 million viewers. Beck’s been back from his March vacation for weeks now, but his ratings are roughly the same as when he wasn’t even there.”
– Eric Boehlert, “Glenn Beck Has Lost 1/3 of Its TV Audience Since January,” Media Matters, April 20, 2010.

Prediction: Beck will be off of Fox News before 2011.

April 11, 2010

Would Palin Really Like to Compare Her Experience on Nukes with Obama’s?

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Quote,Toon — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 7:34 am

cartoon-palin-comparison

“Now, the president, with all the vast nuclear experience that he acquired as a community organizer and as a part-time senator, and as a full-time candidate, all that experience, still no accomplishment to date with North Korea and Iran.”
– Sarah Palin at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, April 9, 2010, as quoted by Media Matters.

In fact, as Media Matters points out, as a US senator, Obama traveled overseas to investigate nuclear stockpiles in other nations, co-sponsored a nuclear non-proliferation bill with Republican Sen. Richard Lugar in 2005, introduced another bill, the Nuclear Weapons Threat Reduction Act (S.1977) in 2007, and did his college thesis on Soviet nuclear disarmament long before entering politics. Actually, the Nobel committee cited Obama’s lengthy record of trying to limit nuclear weapons as one of the reasons he received the Nobel Peace Prize last year.

What experience does Sarah Palin have in this area? Zip, zilch and zero.

If I were an inexperienced beauty pageant contestant like Palin I wouldn’t get snarky about anyone else’s lack of experience in anything – it only tends to remind the public – that large majority who aren’t part of your personality cult – of how vacuous and ignorant you really are.

BTW, Bush, Cheney and the GOP had eight years to ‘accomplish’ something in regards to Iran and North Korea. What did they have to show for it? Increased atomic and missile warhead testing by the N.K. and an accelerated nuclear program by Iran, in response to Republican threats of invasion. Obama’s been in office for a year; let’s see what he accomplishes in eight.

March 29, 2010

The Dying of the Right: Frum Fired For Telling the Truth

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Toon — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 3:22 am

cartoon-frum-fired-aei

“Republicans originally thought that Fox [News] worked for us, and now we are discovering we work for Fox.”
– David Frum on Nightline, March 22, 2010, blowing Fox’s whole ‘fair and balanced’ mumbo-jumbo, as quoted by Media Matters.

“Waterloo”
– David Frum, Frum Forum, March 21, 2010

“David Frum: “What the Hell is Going On at Fox News?”
– Jamison Foser, Media Matters, March 18, 2010

December 31, 2009

The Tattlesnake – Odd Quotes at Year’s End Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Quote — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 7:26 am

Random blips on the mental radar selected randomly, with commentary in brackets:

“One of the very difficult parts of the decision I made on the financial crisis was to use hardworking people’s money to help prevent there to be a crisis.”
– George W. Bush, Jan. 12, 2009. [Translation to English from Bushspeak: 'I used your money to bailout my family and wealthy friends on Wall Street and in banking because my administration didn't do its job of properly regulating them.']

“Um, you guys said that we, um, did this for the show.”
– Falcon “Balloon Boy” Heene, to his parents during a TV interview, Oct. 15, 2009. [This should be the motto of the Republican Party.]

“I think we all have a screw loose in this business.”
– Kyra Phillips, inadvertently speaking the truth on CNN, Oct. 9, 2009. [This should be the motto of the US national media.]

“Give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney, and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.”
– Jesse Ventura, former MN Gov. and Navy SEAL, on CNN, May 11, 2009.
[This line should be emblazoned across the bottom of the screen every time a clip of Cheney speaking is shown.]

“I don’t know anything about cars.”
– Edward E. Whitacre, Jr., when he took over as CEO of GM, June 9, 2009. ['Gee, how could we be going bankrupt?']

“You can’t convince me that the founding fathers wouldn’t allow you to secede.”
– Glenn Beck, April 14, 2009. [They might make an exception in Beck's case.]

“So you need to get deep into why he is what he is, instead of just saying, ‘Well, he’s a homosexual so how do I handle him, and how do I be Christian?’ Well, I think you ought to tell him, ‘Listen, son, you know, here’s what the Bible says about this, and it’s called an abomination before God, so I’ve got to tell you the truth because I love you.’ That’s what I think.”
– Pat Robertson’s advice to the parents of a gay son, on CBN’s “The 700 Club” June 9, 2009. [Right after this broadcast, Pat ordered out for a BLT.]

“An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: ‘If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?’ ‘No,’ said the priest, ‘not if you did not know.’ ‘Then why,’ asked the Inuit earnestly, ‘did you tell me?’”
– Annie Dillard

“Ted Kennedy’s dad, by the way, Joe Kennedy, sympathetic to Hitler, sympathetic to the Nazis.”
– Rush Limbaugh, as quoted by Simon Maloy at Media Matters’ LimbaughWire, Aug. 8, 2009. [George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, helped finance the Nazis even after WWII began, and was forced by the US government to stop. Whatever Joe Kennedy's sympathies, he never contributed financial backing to Hitler's Third Reich.]

“The Army, the Marines do not have uniforms that fit that big an ass.”
–The always classy Limbaugh again, commenting on Hillary Clinton, Sept. 22, 2009, also via Media Matters. [This from the manly Lard Lad whose 'anal cyst' was too big to allow him to wear the uniform.]

“Nearly half of all US children, including an overwhelming majority of black children, will eat meals at some point during their childhood paid for by food stamps, an indicator of poverty, a study showed Monday.”
– AFP, “Half of US kids depend on food stamps during childhood: study,” Nov. 2, 2009. The study was done by the American Medical Association’s Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine. [Out of a population of about 300 million, 66 million Americans now collect food stamps, a record high number. Nearly 50 percent of US children need food stamps to eat regularly.]

“The urgent necessity is to make a decision — whether or not it is right.”
– David Broder’s sage advice to Obama on Afghanistan, proving once again why Uncle Fudd is the dean of doomed Washington punditry, from the Washington Post, Nov. 13, 2009. [Say, Dave, if your life were on the line, would you be this cavalier about whether Obama's decision was wrong or right?]

“The white Christian heterosexual married male is the epitome of everything right with America!”
– Michael Savage, from his radio show June 17, 2009, as quoted by Media Matters. [Okay, so when does the former Michael Alan Weiner come out of the closet?]

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November 21, 2009

The Tattlesnake – Frank Luntz is a Scum-Sucking Pig Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Toon — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 5:59 am

(With apologies to our porcine friends who also happen to suck scum, but don’t have much influence on the electorate.}

While some readers may chastise me for gross understatement in the title, and I take their point, I decided to keep this clean, or as clean as you can when describing the contents of the sole working Port-O-Potty on free chili and beer night at a baseball game.

“[A]sk a question in the way that you get the right answer.”
– Frank Luntz on his ‘fair and balanced’ polling methods.

What makes Republican word-whacker Frank Luntz my target is that he is an intentional and dedicated deceiver of the public, smart enough to know full well what he’s doing, but blithely willing to trot out his wares — borrowed from the misuse of modern psychological techniques to sell the gullible what they don’t need joined with a carnival conman’s shell game pitch — for the temporary benefit of his bank account, while his country slides into a wreckage of divisiveness and debt. If you’d like to find the home base for the decimation of our public speech into ignorant, inflamed, fearful, flag-draped hatred; the revision of our history into a reeking bonanza of selfish suicidal capitalism, evangelical Christian crapola and nasty neoconservative warhawk bilge; and the reduction of our political discourse into so much overheated, oversimplified, covertly racist, sound-bite slag, you can point to three names: the late Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, and the lesser-known, but every bit as important, Frank Luntz as the authors of the meltdown in progress.

“Luntz is glibly amoral, worrying only about whether language has the right effect, not whether it’s true.”
– Steven Poole, commenting on Luntz’s book “Words That Work” in The Guardian (UK), July 21, 2007.

It was Frank’s notion to rename a bill allowing more pollution as the ‘Clean Air Act’; it was Luntz who told the GOP to re-label estate taxes as ‘death taxes’ so that the wealthy paid less while the rest of us took up the slack; it was his demented mind that connected Iraq to 9/11 and instructed Republican pols to always preface any mention of the failed Iraq incursion with ’9/11 changed everything’; behind nearly every current and past GOP talking point, endlessly repeated in the Right-Wing Echo Chamber, you’ll find Frank’s pasty round face, tirelessly choosing just the right words to convince a malleable faction of the American public to eat corporate Republican turds and think it’s prime rib.

frank-luntz-pig

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October 15, 2009

Rush Channels Colbert

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Quote,Toon — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 8:30 am

cartoon-rush-channels-colbert

Hear Limbaugh’s ‘color-blind’ rant here.

“First: Color-blindness is an impossibility. Socialization, history and the institutional facts on the ground make being honestly color-blind quixotic. But, second: Were it possible, it would be a disability, just like, well, red-green color-blindness.” […]
“Simply put: It is impossible to be color-blind in a racist society. And anyone with pretenses to the contrary is not only lying to themselves and everyone else by extension, but is also perpetuating racism.”
– Frederic Christie, “Racial Color-Blindness: As Bad as Regular Blindness,” Associated Content, Nov. 18, 2008.

Limbaugh’s “Color-Blind” History of Racially-Charged Comments
– Media Matters, Oct. 13, 2009.

April 25, 2009

The Tattlesnake – Even Under Obama, Our Two-Tiered Justice System Rolls On Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Quote,Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:02 am

Why Are Glenn Beck and His Media Colleagues Walking Free While Minnesota’s ‘RNC 8′ Are Prosecuted for Terrorism?

Real Texans, natives from those parts of the state not dominated by the alligator-cowboy-boot luxury of the oil-pump Petrograds of Dallas or Houston, claim that, even in its death throes, a poisonous snake is still dangerous. Poke it with a stick and, with it’s a final ounce of waning spite, it will snap and try to kill as it writhes its last.

Such is the case with the fading right-wing media and their cohort in the Republican Party, their only hope for continued relevance encapsulated by the fervent wish that the increasingly popular President Obama fail miserably, and take the country down with him. These neocon elite know, even from their musings of history by the dim firelight in Plato’s cave, that a successful Obama spells the end, at least in their lifetimes, of the modern ‘free market’ corporatist-conservative movement blueprinted by Milton Freidman and his acolytes, and set into motion by Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and the two Bush presidencies, culminating in the Dubya-initiated disaster of our current economic crisis, the inevitable historically-repeated result of stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

But the Limbaughs and Becks, Hannitys and O’Reillys are also battling with each other for ratings from a dwindling, aging audience, causing them to engage in a war of words wherein they must out-do one another in issuing paranoia-laden proclamations in a voice of sullen outrage, bray archaic Cold War bombast or, in the case of Glenn Beck, display the tearful, fearful ramblings of a man losing his mind.

Not that any of them actually believe any of the guff they spread daily – they are mental itinerant workers who are well-paid for peddling a continually shifting ideology – when Bush said we are not at war with Islam, he was statesmanlike and diplomatic; when Obama does it, he’s surrendering to our Muslim enemies. When Bush ordered Shock and Awe bombings of Baghdad that killed innocent Iraqi teenagers, that’s understandable – the unfortunate ‘collateral damage’ of war; when Obama orders the three teenage pirates threatening the life of an American citizen shot, he’s killing kids. When Clinton was in office, seemingly his every movement, even firing staff in the White House Travel Office, was worthy of a special prosecutor; when Obama talks about holding those accountable who illegally ordered torture, he’s turning the country into a banana republic. And on it goes, an endless stream of swill offered up by the millionaire shills for the entertainment division of the Fox funhouse mirror of political propaganda, toiling in the fields planted by Edward Bernays, Joseph Goebbels, H.R. Haldeman and unsung laborers in behavioral psychology and mass marketing who devoted their professional lives to convincing the public to buy products they don’t need and adopt political ideas that empty their bank accounts and lower their wages, while tempering their minds to accept ever larger loads of pernicious claptrap that serves the profitable interests of the wealthy moguls who bankroll the whole anti-democratic, anti-Constitutional neoconservative operation.

Every day, in the safe confines of the radio or cable TV studio, these media evangelists of the New World Order wrestle with indomitably evil straw men, unleash torpedos of invective at liberal ghost blips on the radar, launch fusillades of bile at comic book enemies from the Eisenhower era, crucify those they detect as suspicious of Jesus’ divinity or conservative Republican provenance, and, most hilariously, mount fearsome attacks on the mythical Left-Wing Media, the corporate conglomerate parents of which are owned by wealthy capitalists who invest on Wall Street, seek further tax cuts for their upper-income bracket, deregulation for their companies, pay good money to lobby politicians, and, in many cases, own a piece of the outlet that broadcasts the daily doses of outrage and hate to the lower caste of ignorant, addled Proles seeking an easy leftist scapegoat for what has happened to their country in the wake of the misrule of the elite Republican right.

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April 24, 2009

Another of Col. Rove’s Crimes Against America

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Quote,Toon — Tags: , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 4:38 pm

cartoon-col-roves-crime

H/T to Media Matters for the quote.

Also read this at Media Matters:

“Whether or not the federal government should shift education funding to vouchers is a policy disagreement. Nobody is talking about investigating policy disagreements. Torture is a crime. Illegal activity doesn’t become legal simply because the president wants it to happen.”
– Jamison Foser, “Gaps in the Right-Wing’s ‘Banana Republic’ Rhetoric,” Media Matters, April 24, 2009.

April 23, 2009

Heil to the Funken Fuhrer!

Filed under: Quote,Toon — Tags: , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 7:00 am

They say you are what you eat — maybe Gordy has had one too many rats…

“On his radio show, [G. Gordon] Liddy is referred to in German as Herr Funken Führer, ‘Dear Radio Leader.’ That’s interesting given that Liddy has praised the original Führer, saying Hitler ‘made me feel a strength inside I had never known before… Hitler’s sheer animal confidence and power of will [entranced me]. He sent an electric current through my body.’ I guess like many of Liddy’s rants, his nickname on his radio show probably makes more sense in the original German.”
– Jeremy Scahill, “G. Gordon Liddy’s Sexist Attack on Joan Walsh of Salon,” Rebel Reports, April 21, 2009.

gliddynut

April 19, 2009

Fox News Gets It Right?

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Quote — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 8:55 am

Has Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing propaganda channel had a flash of sanity and a change of heart on the tea party demonstrations and the secession talk? Like Fox News, I report, you decide.

1. “[Why have] we listened to [this] movement? The same protesters back then as the ones today — the world [isn't] a safer place. Why do they even have any credibility based on their failure after failure, historically speaking?” […]
“They do organize this thing with very anti-American ideas.”
– Sean Hannity on his Fox News show.

2. “I think there are some sincere demonstrators. I just think they haven’t thought it through. Because for every cause there’s an effect, all right? And then what happens? Are you responsible for that?”
– Bill O’Reilly on The O’Reilly Factor.

3. “You know, I was struck by how uninformed and morally empty these demonstrations were. These demonstrators are morally vacuous, they’re stupid, they’re disingenuous.”
– Fred Barnes on Fox News’ Special Report.

4. “You saw the protests. Some of the placards on display: ‘The idiot is going to start World War III.’ ‘Stop your terror.’ ‘Baby killer.’ ‘Spoiled fascist.’ You get the idea. And there’s a lot of anti-Americanism and, frankly, there are a lot of anti-Semitic statements in some of the different protests.”
– Sean Hannity on his Fox News show.

5. “It was the activists, who were the ones who are the extremists, who were the ones advocating militant ethnic separatism [at these protests]. You had folks with T-shirts mugging for the cameras in front of city hall. These are people who do nothing more than try to sabotage our sovereignty.” […]
“The kind of quote-unquote ‘pride’ that a lot of these activists are touting now goes much further than just being proud about one’s heritage and one’s roots.”
– Michelle Malkin on The O’Reilly Factor.

6. “These kids don’t know anything. A lot of these are poor kids, struggling along in those schools and struggling to gain some sense of identity, so they’re going to wave the flag because they feel somehow they are fighting for the United States. And they’re even going to get into crazy arguments — all kinds of stupidity. I mean, they use kids as demonstrators. The kids know nothing, but at their heart, they feel like they’re giving a voice to what their uncles, their aunties, you know — the Minutemen and the far right wing that wants to throw everybody out.”
– Juan Williams on The O’Reilly Factor.

7. “Here’s what I don’t like. I didn’t like a lot of these signs: racist or anti-immigrant, [and these] people holding the flag up. It seemed to be, in many, many ways, outrages, some of the things that were said and done.”
– Sean Hannity on his Fox News show.

8. “Especially, Chris, because reasonable Americans are probably having a difficult time finding anybody to root for. On the one hand, you have, you know, tens of thousands of people demonstrating, waving flags, against the idea [of] America. What a repellent spectacle.”
– Brit Hume on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace.

9. “There seems to be an antagonistic edge to these protestors that is just making matters worse.”
– David Asman, guest hosting Fox News’ Your World.

10. ASMAN: “But Ron, let me just ask you, are they going to secede from the Union, these states in the Southwest?”

MAXWELL: “Well, the mere fact that we’re talking about this, why should we have this as a possibility? Why are we creating the conditions where 15 and 20 years from now, who knows what’ll happen? Do we want a separatist movement like what’s going on in Canada with Quebec or a separatist movement like the Basques?”
– David Asman, guest hosting Fox News’ Your World, talking to film director Ronald F. Maxwell.

Make sure to read below the fold:

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April 14, 2009

Fox News Teabags America

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Toon — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 4:56 am

Headline: FOX NEWS TAKES OWNERSHIP OF TEA PARTIES…

cartoon_fox_teabags_us

Definition of ‘teabagging’ from the Urban Dictionary:

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January 6, 2009

The Tattlesnake – Them That’s Got and Stan Getz Edition

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 8:12 am

And This Day in Hell…

“Them that’s got shall get,
Them that’s not shall lose…”
– From “God Bless the Child (That’s Got His Own),” by Arthur Herzog Jr. and Billie Holiday, and recorded by her for Okeh Records in 1941.

“Free market capitalism — as a faith — really is an inverse of Marxism. It is a theology that believes their system will bring paradise on earth and moral perfection. When their system is in power in the real world, their true believers claim that any problem only happened because their ideology has not been applied with sufficient purity.”
– Larry Beinhart, “The Fall of a Free Market Prophet,” Common Dreams, Dec. 7, 2008.

“Sometimes the Invisible Hand is all thumbs.”
– Jared Bernstein, C-Span, April 16, 2008.

“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
– Ernest Hemingway [Bush reversed the formula, but it's still true today.]

So far we’ve seen the Top Dogs – underline ‘dogs’ – of Wall Street and Detroit parade before Congress insisting they need our tax money to bail them out. The former ‘Masters of the Universe’ have made so many stupid short-term decisions they have shamed their MBA parchment into so much worthless sheepskin accorded to those who can pay the tuition, or have the family clout, to squeeze them through college. To add insult to injury, the bankers who have fleeced us for billions in the name of providing credit to keep businesses going have refused to use our money to provide credit to keep businesses going, instead financing bonuses for themselves, luxury retreats at pricey resorts, and apparently precipitating a sit-down strike by 300 union workers at a Republic Windows and Doors factory in Chicago last month. Not only were these people unceremoniously fired and given one day to clear out, the company reneged on its contract to provide wages and vacation pay owed them and the severance pay they were guaranteed. That’s right – Republic refused to pay wages and vacation pay already earned and blamed it on the Bank of America, while they hastily moved their Chicago equipment to Iowa. BoA received $25 billion of our tax dollars to avoid just this kind of situation. Fortunately, thanks to nationwide publicity for this sit-down strike, and support from near-President Obama, the Republic workers finally received their back wages and other pay, but let’s see this for what it was: A naked attempt to bust the union, and it was mostly successful. Republic’s union workers are still out of a job and the company has set up a low-wage non-union plant in Iowa. (Incidentally, inquiring minds would like to know: who is paying the salaries of Republic’s top executives and how much do they make?)

Morality and ethics hardly exist in the corporate boardroom but, if this isn’t wrong, what is?

How to correct it? Let’s hope President Obama takes a page from Franklin D. Roosevelt, especially his Economic Bill of Rights speech delivered January 11, 1944, during the Second World War, which included:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

As FDR concluded: “All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

“America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.”

If we have those rights, the economy will take care of itself.

What Does Late Jazz Sax Player Stan Getz Have to Do with Our Economic Meltdown? Read on:

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December 14, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Big Media Blago Beat Blow Out Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 7:48 am

Bored and Lazy Big Media Drooling to Catch Obama in Blagojevich Dragnet

Have you noticed? The Big Media have been desperately trying to shoehorn Barack Obama into the ethical problems of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, even though there’s not a particle of evidence that he was in any way involved. The Chris Matthews Crank-It-Up-Loud-and-Stupid Machine over at MSNBC presented a good example of the ugly process in action:

“MATTHEWS: Barack Obama, of course, rose to political power in a city, Chicago, in a state, Illinois, known for corruption. But Fitzgerald made clear that Obama was not implicated today. Here he is, quote, ‘The complaint makes no allegations about the president-elect whatsoever.’ Obama said this afternoon that he had no contact with Governor Blagojevich over who was gonna fill that Senate seat.

“Still, there are many unanswered questions, including that one. What conversation did occur between Blagojevich and Barack Obama about who would fill his Senate seat once he became president? Obama said this afternoon there were none at all.

“What conversations, if any, did Governor Blagojevich have with Rahm Emanuel about his replacement as a Democratic candidate in the special election in Chicago? Will this Illinois scandal in any way distract Obama from dealing with the financial crisis? What happens to Obama’s Senate seat now? Who gets to fill it? The disgraced indicted governor? The state legislature? Who? And what is it about Illinois that seems to make the state’s politics so relentlessly corrupt?”
– Chris Matthews, “Hardball,” Dec. 9, 2008, as quoted by Media Matters.

Jeepers, Tweety, that’s one Olympic leap of pure, empty, pull-it-out-your-keester speculation. Wasn’t Matthews once seen in a public men’s room in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during the Republican National Convention? Wasn’t Sen. Larry Craig convicted of soliciting men for sex in a similar place? What does this say about Matthews? And what is it about Minneapolis that seems to attract so many gay men to their public facilities? There are some ‘unanswered questions’ concerning Mr. Matthews’ conduct in Minneapolis during the Republican National Convention and the American people demand answers. (See the way this works? Take even the most tenuous, ridiculous association and blow it out of proportion ending with the dire ‘unanswered questions’ malarkey. There are always ‘unanswered questions’ about everyone and everything – it’s just that most of them are time wasting and ludicrous. Eating in a restaurant where mobsters occasionally dine does not make you a Mafia kingpin, except in the RNC’s Bizarro World of infinite guilt-by-association and silly questions.)

As far as the ‘relentlessly corrupt’ Illinois, Tweety and his pals should check some other states such as Alaska, Alabama and Florida, all of which ranked ahead of Illinois in the number of political scandals between 1998 and 2007. Wait, as Jamison Foser at Media Matters recently noted, USA Today already did: “[O]n a per-capita basis … Illinois ranks 18th for the number of public corruption convictions the federal government has won from 1998 through 2007…”

This is the line of ‘logic’ being used as the BM line up to slather over yet another invented ‘scandal’ for Obama — already they’re trying to make this his ‘Blagogate.’ Even the New York Times has the green-eyeshade on backwards as it attempts to conflate Obama’s passing acquaintance with Blago with involvement in some sort of shady business with the Rodster. As Eric Boehlert points out:

“The larger point is that in order for the Beltway press to gin up the Blago story this week, basic journalism guidelines had to be set aside and in some cases brazenly ignored. That’s the only way this story worked because simply reporting the facts as presented by the prosecutors would have made it painfully clear that, in terms of Obama’s involvement, there was none. In fact, Obama had thwarted Blago’s money-making scheme.”

But the worst of the bad lot was Liz Sidoti of the (Guilt By) Associated Press. In her December 10th article “Analysis: Scandal threatens to dog Obama,” she actually kicked off with these two vapid, meaningless paragraphs:

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November 15, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Miller Shills for the Wasilla Chinchilla on Billo and Other Atrocities Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 8:39 am

Plus a Weird Election 2008 Factoid and a Plea to the GOP

“In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.”
– H.L. Mencken

Gov. Snowjob said on Larry King Nov. 12th that there is nothing wrong with “calling people out” on their past associations, defending her lame McCarthyite attempts to link Obama to Bill Ayers and the Weather Underground. She added that she expected she would be called out on hers as well. Good. Let’s see, she’s openly palled around with and supported for reelection convicted felon Sen. Ted Stevens, corrupt ex-Governor of Alaska Frank Murkowski, and she’s married to a former member of the Alaska Independence Party, a group that despises and wants to secede from the United States. Imagine if Obama had strongly supported two crooks and his wife once belonged to an organization that hated America? C’mon, Big Media, time to apply some fairness here, and Sarah asked for it.

Speaking of Sarah the Terror: Miller and Palin, Sittin’ in a Tree:

“Listen, she’s a great dame. People are fascinated by her because the left hate her. I think the left hate her — mostly women on the left hate her, because to me, from outside in, it appears that she has a great sex life. All right? I think she has non-neurotic sex with that Todd Palin guy. I think most of the women on the Upper East Side, their husbands haven’t been aroused since Mailer signed copy [sic] of The Executioner’s Song at Rizzoli’s back in the early ’70s.
“So they look at her, and they hate her. I think that snowmobile looks like mechanized foreplay to me, and that’s why people are fascinated by it.”
– Dennis Miller on “The O’Reilly Factor,” Fox News, Nov. 12, 2008.

I remember when Dennis had a functioning frontal lobe and was even occasionally clever, but years of drinking, drugs, chickenhawk fear, raging ego and his wiseguy notion that he’d just jump on the money train of what he thought would be generations of Republican rule softened his gray matter to the point where he’s defending a vacuous Alaska opportunist he once would have gleefully impaled with humor. BTW, I wonder what ‘non-neurotic sex’ is — the Moose Mama ‘Missionary Position’ (that would be a ‘rear mount’) or the opposite of whatever you call it when Miller picks up his paycheck these days?

My sympathies to the frustrated Mrs. Miller, if she’s still around – married to a goofball who thinks snowmobiles equate with foreplay can’t be a pleasant existence.

It’s was so bad even Billo took note of what had surfaced in his ‘No Spin Zone’ punchbowl:

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August 24, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Toss It in the Potpourri and Heat with Steam Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion,Quote — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:47 pm

Prediction: The next big McCain exploding-cigar-of-elitism flap: We now know the Jes’-Plain-Folks McCain’s spent $273,000 last year alone on household employees — what used to be called, in a less euphemistic age, ‘servants’ – but what isn’t mentioned is the hot-n-heavy rumor that they hired some, uh oh, undocumented workers amongst the various butlers, maids and nannies and, double uh oh, didn’t pay SS or taxes on the illegal imports. (Those without their papers have likely been canned and shipped back by now.) Gee, Senator, what’s your position on immigration again?

Quotable Corner:

“That’s right. The McCains pay $270,000 per year for butlers and maids–that’s $50,000 more than the median value of an American home.”
– Nitpicker, Aug. 21, 2008.

“If you had made last year as much money as John McCain spent on household help alone $273,000 — you’d be richer than 95% of American families.”
– Mark Kleiman

“When John Edwards was running for president, and the media were obsessing about his wealth, they linked his fortune to his policy positions. Surely John McCain — who can’t remember how many houses he owns, ‘jokes’ that you aren’t rich unless you make $5 million a year, and supports tax policies that would save him and his wife, Cindy, nearly $400,000 a year — should be held to the same standard?”
– Jamison Foser, Media Matters, Aug. 22, 2008.

And don’t forget to read the ‘Priceless’ McCain ad by davefromqueens on The Daily Kos.

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