Weather über alles

Politico.com broke the news of Scott McClellan’s memoir, and it was soon All Bush All the Time in the mediasphere. Or more to the point: All Iraq All the Time, for the deceitful origins of the war in Iraq are the major focus of the former press secretary’s tell-all.

 

The McCain campaign may have no choice but to double down on Iraq — what other issue does the candidate have? — but it can’t count on smear tactics or journalistic and public amnesia to indefinitely enforce the McCain narrative. As the McClellan circus shows, unexpected bombshells will keeping intervening — detonating not only on the ground in Iraq but also in Washington, where more Bush alumni with reputations to salvage may yet run for cover about what went down in 2002-3.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald would have it, we will be borne back ceaselessly into the past. Or so we will be as long as Americans continue to die in Iraq and as long as politicians like Mr. Bush, Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton refuse to accept responsibility for their roles, major and minor, in abetting this national tragedy.

Frank Rich

For more on McClellan and media hubris, see Jamison Foser.

I turned on Meet the Press just now, just in time to see Russert ambush McClellan with a gooey home movie of the farewell party for Scotty at the White House. WTF? Did Karl Rove give that movie to Russert? Tell him to play it? Was Russert on the conference call when Rove decided how to deal with Scotty? And what kind of chutzpah does it take for punkinhead to challenge McClellan on donating profits from the book to our troops?

Tim Russert is a national disgrace. The war’s #1 enabler, he’s also the media judge and jury for each and every j’accuse that comes Bush’s way. McClellan, btw, has apologized to Richard Clarke for having smeared his patriotism while Little Scotty was still channeling Karl Rove.

Wow. I just watched three minutes of Meet The Press. You can bet I won’t do that again anytime soon. Especially not when punkinhead is coming back from the commercial break to talk to Harold Ickes, Hillary’s surrogate toad du jour, albeit only one toad among many.

With each passing day, the Hillaryites are coming to resemble the Free Republican morons more and more. Fuckit, let me just say this once: Obama supporters are not your ex-husband — get over it on your own time, not ours. There is nothing about or within Hillary that is capable of exciting anyone, but she has proven herself as capable as Karl Rove of getting people worked up over lies and misdirection.

No, women haven’t been treated well in our society, historically or currently, but that has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton, Wall Street’s useful tool in the Senate. Put another way, I’m white, but if someone calls me an n-word lover, that doesn’t make me an n-word. Fox News calling Hillary Clinton a feminist doesn’t make her one, and there’s nothing in her actual record to suggest that she is. I’ve never once read a definition of feminism that encompassed serving on Wal-Mart’s board and voting repeatedly to fuck over their employees. Feminism has never been a voice for war, not in Iraq, not anywhere. And feminism has never supported Wall Street’s rape of the economy. 

Hillary Clinton is a feminist like I’m a spokesperson for Weight Watchers. Altho, in this case, one of her rallying points is very applicable: rhetoric is not the same as action. Show us the action HRC has taken on behalf of women who weren’t widows or orphans. Show us the legislation she’s passed that protects women in the workplace, and that helps ensure pay equality.

My email’s the same. If Hillary has an actual feminist voting record, I’d like to learn more about it.

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The recording industry would probably point you to this copyright story, but then would never tell you that their lawyers would be backing the usurpers who’ve made millions from Basil Zangare’s mother’s poem, Footprints in the Sand.

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Even the Rev. Sun Myung Bush Moon can’t afford to keep publishing the little read Washington Times on Saturdays.

That, and not publishing on Saturday, makes it much easier to ignore those embarrassing late Friday press releases and resignations.

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Dday on that Charlie Savage story about administration rules changes that you probably didn’t — but should have — read.

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Al Giordano has some magic numbers and Hunter spells it out in even more stark detail.

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Hunter also has some names of Obama donors that surprised me a bit: Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Steve Ballmer’s wife, and Richard Melon Scaife’s ex-wife.

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Karl Rove had one gem to pass on while in Rochester:

[Rove] was with Bush and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. The president told her to “take off those stupid pink gloves.”

Pink fucking gloves? Maybe if you’re a Mary Kay rep calling on a D.A.R. member….

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Tracking down earmarks after it becomes clear that the feds have just funded a criminal enterprise.

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Liberal arts teach you to see things from more than one perspective. The White House stooge who accused Scott McClellan of taking 30 pieces of silver for his tell-all book probably isn’t bothered at all that a Marine in Fallujah was trying to convert Muslims for just one silver coin apiece.

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Best Ford Falcon story you’ll ever read.

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Gay friendly Italian restaurant / churches. In Indiana. Even as violence directed against the GLBT community increases in gay-friendly Minnesota.

Meanwhile, Andrew Zimmern is the latest Cities’ food critic to talk up the Golden Globe Mall on Pierce Butler

As Brian puts it so eloquently, “I assure you there are more white people on the streets in Thailand and Vietnam than there are in this building. I almost hate to share this tip with you, but I imagine all these extremely hardworking and friendly people could use all the support they could get.”

I’m in and out of there once or twice a week, and have been going to that location since the Mall owners were using the building as an Asian food warehouse. And yes, it’s very rare for me to see another Euro-American while I’m there.

Once you’ve found the Golden Globe Mall, chances are you’ve already driven past Double Dragon, Shuang Hur on University (same owners as GGM), and Ha Tîen, three of the best places to buy Asian food and groceries in St. Paul. And no, not one of them is short on rice.

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Addenda:

Ciresi to stay on sidelines?

Bush and redemption

Local ad revenues boost newspaper online income

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And yes, the move went great. Nick wanted to make us all a quiche, but we voted him down and made him order pizza instead. Then, after Nick offered to treat us all to an early showing of Sex in the City, we broke up and all went home to watch the Stanley Cup championship game, or rather, we would have watched it had not fucking KARE-11 banished the game to miniscule box in the corner (where 2/3ds of the goals were scored) while some weather intern kept repeating the same bullshit about the weather over and over and over again until there was nothing left to scare anyone with. 

Every local channel went all-weather from 7-8 pm last night. KARE, the NBC affiliate, could have just run a crawl across the bottom of the screen, but no, they had to preempt what could have been the last game of the Stanley Cup.

Worst TV programming ever. They even acknowledged there was next to no chance of our getting a tornado, but they wouldn’t relinquish the screen to show the game. IF there is a market for this much weather, it’s a market created by weather scaremongers. 

I’m a piss poor hockey fan, but I’m so pissed at KARE-11 that I deprogrammed them from my TV last night. I have no time for people who wet their beds over possible bad weather. KARE’s programming decision was disgraceful. Rather than serve their viewers, they chose to scare them with doppler weather maps.

Douchbags.

And, unlike everything else in this item, I’m not lying about the weather bullshit.

 

4 Comments

  1. “Actually, [Carty] claims her grandmother first wrote it in 1922, and then young Carolyn wrote it, and it is unclear, from a brief e-mail exchange with a reporter, if Carty understands what it means to have written something.”

    The Footprints story is priceless!

  2. Still, the important thing to take away from this story is that when times are tough, Jesus will carry us out of the bar to a cab. He won’t pay the fare, though.

  3. Of course, Judas could cover the tab.

    All TV stations think that they need to spend as much time on TV as possible during “severe storms.” It’s a plus of cable TV (not satellite, because that usually just goes out when it rains); no local news to fuck up programming.

  4. Which makes it doubly vile when a b’cast station has exclusive rights to a one-time live event.

    Once digital b’casting has replaced analog, there will be NO EXCUSE for stations like KARE to override other programming when all their braindead, senile viewers will have to do is flip to the next channel, KARE 11.2, to see the weather.

    A good friend is a weather nut. I refuse to let him talk about it around me. Weather, like shit, happens. Discussing it is pointless.


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