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October 7, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Unuttered Utterations and Which Witch is Which? Edition

Tattlesnake’s ‘Media Insider’ says cool cats and kittens should not be swayed by the ‘official’ story regarding Rick Sanchez’s bouncing from the Corporatist News Network otherwise known as CNN. The reason Jon Stewart’s hilarious portrayals of Sanchez as something of a babbling idiot were so devastating is because, well, he’s something of a babbling idiot. (As evidenced by his comments about Stewart’s alleged ‘bigotry’ and Jewish ownership of the media.) Word is, CNN has been looking for a reason to dump this ratings-tank boob without having to pay off his contract. Like most Big Media bobbing heads, Sanchez’s contract no doubt had a standard clause that said if he did anything egregiously immoral, racist or embarrassing in public that had the potential of bringing scorn upon CNN, such as shaving his public hair on live TV or wearing a hood and announcing his selection as a Grand Imperial Wizard of the KKK, he could be summarily dismissed and his contract immediately cancelled with the balance due unpaid. CNN knew its man – with Rick’s fetid history of on-air loopiness, it was only a matter of time until Sanchez crossed the line, and this just happened to be that moment. Of course, Sanchez has now issued the stock Pro Forma Apology to the Universe, (you’ll find it between ‘Memo, Traditional Format’ and ‘Resume, Classic Form’ at your local Big Box stationery store), and eagerly looks forward to his “new future of opportunities” somewhere else. That ‘somewhere else’ will probably be the graveyard shift at Fox Business Channel where Roger Ailes has provided a comfortable if little-watched retirement village for dimbulb dogmatists who have bottomed out elsewhere in MediaLand. Here’s to not seeing you again, Rick!

vampira_odonaRepublican Tea Party senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell, when not busy denying she’s a witch, told Fox News she was refraining from national campaigning to focus on the concerns of Delawareans. (That would be the denizens of tiny Delaware, not a race of talking plants in “Star Trek-The Next Generation,” although any confusion is completely understandable.) Howsomever, as Rachel Maddow recently exposed, the Anointed Chipmunk has not been doing much campaigning in Joe Biden’s home turf, either; no public events scheduled, nor interviewing forays with the local media. Is this evidence that she’s given up, facing a 20-point deficit in the polls and broad exposure of her two decades of public nuttiness? Her campaigning seems to be confined solely to running a batty ad where she informs voters up front she’s not a member of a coven (she only ‘dabbled’ in witchcraft, folks), and that she’s just like them, when they haven’t taken their meds. Aside from the roasting over hot flames any Dem candidate would receive from the rabid right for confessing even a fraction of Christine’s abuses of sanity, God Girl’s latest revelation that she’s been receiving ‘classified’ information that China is planning some kind of invasion of the US isn’t really classified or new. Your Tattlesnake has a couple of pals who were paid to teach English in China, only this was not the standard grammar-and-syntax English most of us think of when the subject comes up. Instead, what they were really hired to teach was street-American patois and the intricacies of our popular culture. (One friend spent a whole class on Elvis Presley, for example.) The Chinese ‘invasion’ is no secret, either, only it won’t be military – as reported by several financial publications, the Chinese are using their abundant hoard of US dollars to buy up large tracts of American land; it seems reasonable, more reasonable than Christine, anyway, that the Communist tyrants in Beijing plan to use that real estate to set up factories to manufacture their cheap junk here, once the US labor laws have been sufficiently weakened by Christine’s GOP to allow the kinds of unsafe job conditions and meager salaries Chinese workers endure. (Or maybe they’ll just use prisoners, as they mostly do back home.) What the little Non-Witch misses is that a good Christopublican corporation, Walmart, is the chief importer into the US of Chinese-made goods; her Republican Party has been the main driving force behind suspending tariffs and other regulations to prevent foreign nations from having this kind of power within our country; and notorious picked-by-Jesus ‘president’ Junior Bush borrowed $2 billion a day to pay for his bumbled, illegal war in Iraq and lavish tax cuts for his wealthy family and their rich friends. If ODon weren’t already losing large in the polls, it might behoove her opponent to point this out – yet another thudding contradiction that is going to kill the GOP in future elections.

– Why is it that this morning, an atheist
did not see an image of Richard Dawkins in her burnt English Muffin, or Madalyn Murray O’Hair in her Lay’s Sour Cream & Onion potato chip? For that matter, Buddhists have not reported visions of Siddhartha in the swirls of their Cream of Wheat, nor have Jews spotted Moses in bowls of chopped chicken liver. For some reason, only Christians, and especially those of the odiferous American variety, seem to have this penchant for apprehending the Christopublican-sanctioned Jeffrey Hunter Jesus in everything from Melba toast to grilled cheese sandwiches. What does that say about the dominant religious delusion in the US? “Whoa — I see God in my snacks!”

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

July 16, 2010

The Tattlesnake – Dick Cheney Doesn’t Have a Pulse Edition

Rachel Maddow reported July 14th that five-heart-attacks-since-he-was-37 Dick Cheney is hanging on by a thread following complete heart failure, kept alive only by a machine called a LVAD resting externally on his belly that keeps his blood moving. Ironically, because an external machine is circulating his blood rather than his damaged heart, Cheney apparently has no pulse, not that I would have sworn he had one before. Although I wouldn’t wish death on any human being (leave that to the kill-crazy wingnuts; I’d rather see him in jail), and Deadeye Dick marginally qualifies in that category, this would seem to be close to the end of the line for the Torture Boy – the doctors can do no more except a full heart transplant and he’s physically in such bad shape he likely couldn’t survive the operation. (Although the sci-fi plot possibilities of Cheney receiving the heart of, say, a peaceful Buddhist monk and publicly renouncing his past self is nearly irresistible. “I’ve done wrong and now I must pay the price! President Obama, put me in prison for war crimes – waterboard me, I insist! And I’m donating all of my millions in wealth to Green Peace! Liz, stop crying like that!”)

If he goes, are we going to be subjected to the full-pomp, days-long state funeral, or will every news outlet but Fox let him pass with just a brief mention and obit? I also wonder if, in his final moments in this realm, a fearful-of-judgment Cheney will pull a Lee Atwater and ask forgiveness for his past crimes and deceptions?

© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.

March 18, 2010

2010 Astroturf Teabaggers Just 2000 Brooks Brothers Rioters Redux

cartoon-astroturf-teabagger

Rachel Maddow video: Reviewing the History of Fake Conservative Protests

“Bush’s Conspiracy to Riot”
– Robert Parry, Consortium News, Aug. 5, 2002, updated Aug. 5, 2009.

“Brooks Brothers Riot”
– Wikipedia

February 5, 2010

Telling the Truth About the Blue Dog Democrats

Think President Obama had a 60-vote majority in the Senate that was spoiled by the election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts? Think again. Aside from ‘Independent’ (McCain Republican) Joe Lieberman, There are ten die-hard ‘ConservaDem’ Blue Dog Democrats, as well as another five senators who tend toward Blue Doggerel. That means progressives would have had trouble getting even fifty votes on any important reform legislation. Read on, especially below the fold:

cartoon-blue-dog-dems

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December 31, 2009

The Tattlesnake – Odd Quotes at Year’s End Edition

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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April 16, 2009

The Tattlesnake – Short Cuts in New Ruts Edition

Double-Dipping Teabag Hag: The Ol’ Tattler’s failing peepers can’t be sure, but I believe I saw the same woman who was sporting the insulting ‘Kerry Band-Aid’ at the GOP convention in NY circa 2004 wearing a hat adorned with hanging teabags yesterday at one of Fox News’ corporately-sponsored tea parties. Just a quick impression: She’s probably the head of the Pig Whistle, Louisiana, chapter of the DAR, the treasurer of the local ‘I Love Sarah’ Fan Club, chairwoman of the county Republican Party, and a good Southern Baptist who, in the name of the Lawd, beats her kids regularly “just to keep the li’l buggers in line.”

BTW, shouldn’t the videos of these astroturf ‘spontaneous events’ be repackaged by some bright young Republican sociopath into a TV reality show called “Just How Stupid Are You?”

Meantime, over at Rachel Maddow last night, a good point was made – I think by Ana Marie Cox — about the anti-tax FNC Teabag Party nonsense. She pointed out that most of these dismal events were held in public parks – in other words, land paid for and maintained by taxpayer funds. If you hate taxes and government so much, go hold your damn teabag party or your own private property and don’t make those who think you’re nuts foot the bill, not only for the land, but the clean-up afterwards. And would all of those tax-haters sprouting gray and white hair at those FNC rallies please return their Social Security checks and refuse medical treatment courtesy of the government?

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September 11, 2008

The Tattlesnake – H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks Mom and Other Randomized Media Bleat Edition

Bush Two in a Pantsuit
or, Summer and Smoke and Mirrors

“…[T]he media is failing to apply the same standard to John McCain [and Sarah Palin] that they did to Al Gore in 2000.”
– DDay, “Why The Media Game Is Rigged,” Digby’s Hullabaloo, Sept. 9, 2008.

– It’s becoming pretty obvious that McCain’s Veep pick, Sarah Palin, regardless of the GOP blustering over her ‘smarts,’ is actually just the Bush Boy in a Beehive, a crackpot-religion dingbat from the Great White North with a predisposition to pathological deceit, close ties to big energy corporations, a willingness to use taxpayer money to help herself and her family, disregard for the law, and a slave of Talking Points with a lack of curiosity about, or grasp of, the world around her. While she may not mangle the English language as much as the Installed One, she hews to the same repetition of bumper-sticker slogans and shows her deep ignorance whenever she goes off-script. (Just look at her recent confusion when she tried to ad lib regarding Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – she didn’t know they were already private companies with investors.) Since the GOP Convention, she’s been repeating the same speech provided her by – voila! – a Bush speechwriter! (Change you can believe in – if you’re an idiot.) Of course McCain’s Rovian handlers want to keep Gov. Gaffe-O-Matic from even the nearly-toothless jaws of the American Big Media – imagine the reaction if Independent Voters and others with any scrap of rationality remaining get the hint she’s another bumbling blank slate like the current Dunce Cap in the Oval Office – Disaster! — and there just aren’t enough Christopublican Whack-Jobs and Small-Town Dead-Enders to shoehorn Grandpa and the Beauty Queen into office.

Sure she’s going to have a sit-down with ABC’s Charlie “Capital Gains Tax” Gibson soon, but no doubt she’ll have the questions in advance and there will be a teleprompter off-camera to help her through the answers. Besides, ditzoid Gibson is an in-the-tank Republican fawner – he won’t be tossing any hardball faster than asking her to name her five children in order of birth and how the whirlwind of celebrity has affected her family. Perhaps there will even be a touching video tribute to the joys of snowmobiling featuring hubby Todd and the score from Rocky. Daughter Bristol could then host a fashion show of maternity clothes for high school girls, and Sarah could have her ‘fired’ cook talk Gibson through a diaper change of baby Trig. Political junkies be forewarned: Look out for a tiny flesh-colored earpiece in place during the Biden debate with Steve Schmidt or some other Spawn of the Country Club Jesus feeding her the responses.

– Laugh of the Week: The McCainiacs claiming they won’t make Lady Vain available for open questioning by the BM because US reporters won’t act with the proper ‘respect and deference’ for Alaska’s Beauty Queen Runner-Up. Ha, ha, this is absurd even for Rick Davis – since when did an American politician morph into British royalty? Let’s put on our Rove Smear Cap for a moment: If the Obama camp refused to let Biden be interviewed for the same reason, you just know Karl’s Korps would be endlessly repeating the line: “If he can’t stand up to the media, how’s he going to stand up to Putin?”

– It’s also becoming pretty obvious that we should be calling this the Palin-McCain ticket, as the hapless former Navy Flyboy isn’t the one bringing out the curious crowds on the campaign trail. The wretched McCain just stands there behind her, a blob of aged empty-eyed flesh — occasionally appearing appalled at how low he has sunk, but mostly fidgeting, gaping in senility, and working at maintaining a semblance of a genuine smile. The level of audience interest palpably drops into single-digits when he steps up to speak. It must be galling to McSame that after all these years his fevered presidential aspirations are in the hands of an irritatingly perky nitwit from Alaska and Bush’s Rove-clones who destroyed his presidential campaign in 2000. Wife Cindy must be getting an earful of vicious bile in private.

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August 21, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Rachel in TV Lady Clothes Edition

Wit and Intelligence Increasingly Crawling Its Way Onto the Cable TV News Schedule as Maddow Nails Down Her Own MSNBC Hour

As mentioned by Your Tattlesnake months ago, Rachel Maddow has finally sealed a deal with MSNBC, getting everything she wanted – choice of guests, choice of topics, no ‘funny’ comedian co-host, and the coveted spot following the cable news network’s most successful entry, Countdown with Keith Olbermann. Her as-yet-untitled show debuts on Sept. 8, 2008 at 9:00pmET, just in time to dissect the presidential election with Maddow’s arched-eyebrow irony, unpretentious delivery and solid grasp of the issues. Rachel’s naturally attractive TV presence, fetching both men and women viewers, should put her in good shape to make a serious run at CNN’s Larry King Live and that unwatchable bag of flaming dog poop hosted by Sean Hannity over at Fox. (Sorry, Colmes.) Word is The Verdict with Dan Abrams will move to the slot following Rachel’s show and that NBC execs are seeking a political comic in the mold of Bill Maher to fill out the late-night hour at eleven ET, with VH1′s Paul F. Tompkins and The Daily Show’s John Oliver said to be leading the list of candidates. All four shows would then be rebroadcast starting at midnight, mercifully ending the present low-rated ‘doc bloc’ programming. MSNBC will also cause regressive heads to spontaneously combust as the network embraces the liberal/progressive label with more gusto since they found out – guess what? – in the current horrid economy, L/P’s have more disposable income than the poor wretches still watching Fox, a strong selling point to advertisers.

Prediction: Rachel will dominate the time slot by November.

July 6, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Drowning Down at the Old Rumor Mill Again Edition

From Everybody’s Favorite: Various Possibly Reliable Sources Who Wish to Remain Anonymous:

– China has already given the back-channel ultimatum to the Bushites – attack Iran and interrupt the flow of Iranian oil vital to the Asian nation’s economy and China will interrupt their loans and imports to the US, causing the American markets to crash even further and faster. The question is: will the mad Bush-Cheney neocons, drooling over an assault on Persia before Junior leaves office, pay attention?

– It’s a done deal: Bill Clinton has allegedly started secretly raising money for a run at the New York Governorship in 2010. Not only is Big Dog tired of campaigning for other people, he also sorely misses having political power. And he wouldn’t mind a spot in the record books as the first president to also be elected governor of two different states, one prior to the presidency and one after.

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March 11, 2008

The Tattlesnake – Fired Tuck Edition

Filed under: Commentary,Opinion — Tags: , , , , , , — RS Janes @ 6:11 am

Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson is not even a misbegotten American journalist’s idea of a journalist — it’s a laughable enigma how this spoiled son-of-privilege ever ended up on television pretending to be one. He’s as much a slab of tasteless turkey as any his relatives have ever slapped on an aluminum tray with lumpy gravy and called a meal, and his on-air snippy condescension, mixed with his sniggering crested-blazer boarding school style, added up to such a wince-inducing media presence that you have to wonder if his well-heeled family owns stock in the company. “Give my little nephew a job on your TV thingy.” “Sure thing! Does he have a bow-tie?”

Finally, after months of rumors, MSNBC cut the cord March 10 on Tucker’s daily hour-long Dork-a-thon, although the cable station has lamentably promised Carlson will continue to annoy viewers with his occasional political analysis – a sly short-pants conservative bookend to Pat Buchanan’s raspy ‘Incredible Shrinking White Man’ dementia.

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