Damn it. We didn’t even know Keith Olbermann was on vacation.
Source: Associated Press
Headline of the Day
Your tax dollars at work
Federally-funded group teaches teens how to tell if they’re gay
Sigh. Sometimes we just don’t know what to say. This is one of those times.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has given a non-profit group called “Advocates For Youth” more than $16,000,000 over the last 15 years. They run websites that help teens figure out if they are gay. They teach them how to come out of the closet. And they teach them how to get active in causes like abortion and sex education.
Does this really need to be done and does it really take $16 million dollars to do it?
How tough can this be? If you a guy and you like the pictures of naked guys, you’re gay. If you’re a woman and you like the pictures of women, you’re gay. If you see a picture of President Obama and you get a thrill up your leg, you’re Chris Matthews.
Case closed. Did we earn our $16,000,000?
Source: CNSNews.com
Our condolences to that smarmy, lying a-hole Keith Olbermann
Keith Olbermann’s mother died on Saturday. As much as we dislike everything about Keith Olbermann (and have ever since he was a young sportscaster in Los Angeles), losing a parent is always a sad event. It’s something you never really get over.
This video is Olbermann’s tribute to his mom. You’ll love her, even if you hate him. You’ll quickly see where he gets his caustic outlook on life and his love of baseball.
Sincerely, our best wishes go out to Keith Olbermann.
Source: MofoPolitics.com
Video of the Day
Barney not being Frank with Harvard student
“How much responsibility, if any, do you have for the financial crisis?” Simple question. But, not for Barney Frank. Let this be a warning: do not ask Rep. Frank (D-MA) questions that may make him uncomfortable.
“PROMISES, PROMISES:
Obama tax pledge up in smoke”
One of President Barack Obama’s campaign pledges on taxes went up in puffs of smoke Wednesday.
The largest increase in tobacco taxes took effect despite Obama’s promise not to raise taxes of any kind on families earning under $250,000 or individuals under $200,000.
This is one tax that disproportionately affects the poor, who are more likely to smoke than the rich.
To be sure, Obama’s tax promises in last year’s campaign were most often made in the context of income taxes. Not always.
“I can make a firm pledge,” he said in Dover, N.H., on Sept. 12. “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”
He repeatedly vowed “You will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime.”
Now in office, Obama, who stopped smoking but has admitted he slips now and then, signed a law raising the tobacco tax nearly 62 cents on a pack of cigarettes, to $1.01. Other tobacco products saw similarly steep increases.
The AP story continued:
“Listen now,” he said in his widely watched nomination acceptance speech, “I will cut taxes—cut taxes—for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.”
An unequivocal “any tax” pledge also was heard in the vice presidential debate, another prominent forum.
“No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama’s plan will see one single penny of their tax raised,” Joe Biden said, “whether it’s their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment tax, any tax.”
An observation: A smokers tax could prove very costly to a party whose entire platform is nothing but smoke and mirrors.
Source: Associated Press via Breitbart
Hugo Chavez: “Capitalism needs to go down”
Yeah, well, if Hugo was so smart he could write his own speeches instead of just recycling Obama’s.
Source: Drudge Report
Congressman calls Pelosi “crazy,” “mean as a snake,” “Tom DeLay in a skirt.”
During a talk at Auburn University, the Alabama congressman said Speaker of House Nancy Pelosi is “crazy,” “mean as a snake” and “Tom DeLay in a skirt.”
Will his comments cause trouble when he gets back to Washington, DC? Probably not.
“They (Pelosi and Harry Reid) don’t talk to us,” he said. “They’ve got the vote, and they can do what they want.”
Although we admire Rogers’ candor, we do not understand why he would say such a terrible thing about Tom DeLay. We are confident that DeLay looks much better in a skirt than Pelosi.
Source: South Union Street
Why does the media hate and ignore Michael Savage?
There’s an old saying that “Any ink is good ink.” But when it comes to radio talk show host Michael Savage, there’s almost no ink.
Savage is America’s third largest talker based on number of affiliates and listeners. Top dog Rush Limbaugh has “about 600 affiliates.” Sean Hannity has “over 500.” And Michael Savage reportedly has 400. Yet the difference in press coverage received by the three talk titans is startling.
We searched Google News for the year 2008. “Rush Limbaugh” and was mentioned 68,400 times. Sean Hannity was mentioned 18,600 times. But Michael Savage scored only 5,910 mentions. Obviously, Limbaugh is the king daddy and in another league compared to everyone else. But how do you explain the vast difference between the coverage of Hannity and Savage? Savage has 80% as many affiliates as Hannity, but received but gets only 31% of the press coverage. And, by the way, he is a man that has published over 20 books.
To double check our theory, we also searched Google News for the last month. The finally tally was Limbaugh 9,398 mentions, Hannity 621 mentions, and Savage a mere 137 mentions. That number puts him far closer to overwhelmingly unpopular and unsuccessful talk show hosts like Stephanie Miller (73 mentions) and Ed Schultz (44 mentions) than to peers Limbaugh and Hannity. Yet Savage has far more affiliates and a far larger audience than either of the liberal hosts.
Yes, Savage is combative. Abrasive. Harsh. Acerbic. Outspoken. But he has a large, loyal audience and there’s no logical reason for him to be ignored by the liberal and conservative press.
Here’s to you, Michael. For what it’s worth, you’re not being ignored by IHateTheMedia.com.
National Enquirer says grand jury investigating John Edwards’ misuse of campaign funds
A federal grand jury is looking into misuse of campaign funds by former presidential candidate John “Baby Daddy” Edwards. The North Carolina scam artist allegedly used the money to pay off the mother of his love child. Attorneys will neither confirm nor deny the grand jury investigation.
We know, we know. It’s the Enquirer and you don’t want to believe a word they say. But they were the people who broke this story and hung onto it like a bulldog to a bone.
To review:
Last summer, the NATIONAL ENQUIRER caught Edwards visiting his mistress Rielle Hunter in the Beverly Hills Hilton. After vigorously denying the affair for months, Edwards admitted the affair on national television in August after the ENQUIRER published spy photos of Edwards holding his love child earlier that week.
Edwards has also denied paying either campaign staffer Andrew Young, who claims to be the child’s father or Rielle Hunter, his admitted mistress, any funds from the campaign war chest. Fred Baron, a longtime Edwards supporter, claimed to have provided the hush money. Baron died last fall.
IHateTheMedia.com will neither confirm nor deny that we always thought Edwards was a pathetic poltroon, a bloodsucking parasite, a prating coxcomb, a puny whipster, a canker on society, a carnal cur, a cream-faced loon, a decayed dotant, a jackanapes with scarves.
Thanks to the William-Shakespeare.org “Shakespeare Insult Generator” for their assistance with this story.
UPDATE: Andres Young now says there is a John Edwards and Rielle Hunter sex tape
Source: National Enquirer
Alex Trebek says politicians are afraid to appear on Jeopardy!
They’re holding try-outs for Jeopardy! this weekend in Montgomery, Maryland, just down the road from Washington, DC. But host Alex Trebek doesn’t expect any politicians to show up.
“If we were to try to attract elected officials, say, as contestants on the program, we’d be hard-pressed to come up with more than three, because most of them realize the danger of appearing on camera and not being particularly bright with regards to what’s going on in our country,” Trebek said. “So they don’t want to take that chance. There have been very few elected political officials who have appeared on ‘Celebrity Jeopardy,’ and they have not done very well.”
The attached video demonstrates the danger of appearing on Jeopardy! Oh, well, that’s what happens when you try to answer questions without a teleprompter.
Source: Politico.com
Headline of the Day II
US gives $50,000 for quake-hit Italy
1. That’s not even a down payment on a 2009 Ferrari 599 (manufacturer’s suggested retail price $320,580)
2. Maybe they could also toss in some DVDs and a couple iPods.
3. If Italy accepts their bailout money, will Obama have the power to remove Berlusconi? (thanks to Jonah Goldberg at National Review).
Source: Economic Times
And in Australia, they speak Australian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr7zhnctF4c Barack Obama did his best Dan Quayle impression on Sunday when he announced in a Strasbourg speech that Austrians speak a language known as Austrian.
“It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There’s a lot of — I don’t know what the term is in Austrian — wheeling and dealing — and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics.”
President Obama will announce later today that in Australia they speak Australian, in Brazil they speak Brazilian, and in Taiwan they speak Taiwanese.
Source: HotAir.com
Headline of the Day
“Detroit cops break up massive pillow fight”
Three comments:
Use a pillow, go to jail. (rimshot). No, it didn’t involve Kwame Kilpatrick and his mistress. (rimshot) When pillows are outlawed, only outlaws will have pillows. (rimshot)
Thank you. We’ll be here all week.
Source: DrudgeReport.com
London Telegraph on Obama: Isn’t it time for him to go home yet?
Like this, for example, from the London Telegraph:
Barack Obama really does go on a bit
Isn’t it time for him to go home yet? It is good, in theory, that the new President of the United States is taking so much time to tour Europe…But his long stay means that we are hearing rather a lot from him, way too much in fact.
His speeches have long under-delivered, usually leaving a faintly empty sensation in this listener even though I welcomed, moderately, his victory last year as offering the possibility of a fresh start and a boost to confidence.
The Telegraph continued:
His performance at the first press conference in London with Gordon Brown featured moments in which he sparkled – his riff on loving the Queen was a high-point. But most of the serious answers that I listened to were interminable, windy and not very impressive. At points there were pauses so long that it appeared he had simply lost his train of thought.
Today, we were treated to another set-piece Obama speech, and my didn’t he go on a bit? The crowd in Prague was huge, and initially wildly enthusiastic, but what he served up was not any more impressive than his damp squib in Berlin last year…
The Telegraph concluded with this stinging assessment:
The Obamas have handled their trip well and in their public appearances have been a credit to their country. But I’ll wager that within a year or so he’ll be marked down as a wind-bag.
We were surprised to learn that President Obama delivered damp squib in Berlin last year. Perhaps that’s why the Brits are upset. They only got some DVDs and iPods.
Source: Telegraph.co.uk
What happened to the congressional uproar about AIG executive bonuses?
All they could talk about in Congress a couple weeks ago was the AIG executive bonus issue.
The vigilantes in Congress were going to tax ‘em. Grab ‘em. Put ‘em back in the U.S. Treasury where they belong. And maybe tar and feather the execs while they were at it. It was the most important issue of the century.
Then it all went away, mysteriously replaced by the kind of eerie silence found only at the National Library.
Daniel Schwartz, a Hartford employment law attorney, may have an explanation for the new, quieter, more gentle tone in Washington, DC. It all revolves around the case of a Connecticut-based company called Mortgage Lenders Network that found itself in a situation remarkably similar to AIG:
The company had built a nationwide presence by making subprime loans and was in the midst of building a big new headquarters in the state. But by late 2006, it was going through some financial difficulties as credit lines came to a halt and then it allegedly failed to pay some employees commissions–at least $1.6 million total. (These were, after all, the same employees, who participated in the company’s subprime lending practices.)
Ultimately, MLN filed for bankruptcy. What did the state do then? It had an investigator from the Department of Labor look into the situation and ultimately issued an arrest warrant for the Company’s president back in March 2007 for failure to pay wages and sales commissions on time.
Schwartz concludes:
“…if the State was willing to go after an employer for failing to pay just $1.6M in wages and sales commissions, is it fair now to suggest to employers in Connecticut, like AIG, that they can now simply ignore obligations they make to their employees because they are going through financial difficulties and can’t really afford to pay them?”
Speak a word of those bonuses now and Nancy Pelosi will put her index finger before her lips and personally tell you to sssh!
Source: Connecticut Employment Law Blog via WSJ.com
And at the end of seven innings, the score is Teleprompter 1, Obama 0
President Teleprompter once again demonstrates his oratory skills for the adoring masses in France during his post-G20 European tour.
Olbermann uses understatement for the first time, admits “I’m the a-hole.”
Just when you were beginning to think Keith Olbermann was completely out of touch with reality, he goes and makes sense.
While interviewing new MSNBC host Ed Schultz, Olbermann pigeonholed all the other role players at the network.
“Alright,” Olbermann said, “you’ve got the conundrum all of us have as this thing gets more and more successful. The show’s got to look like a relative of all the other shows right before it and right after it. But not too much. I mean, Chris is the political inside-baseball guy. Rachel is the affable, charming policy wonk. I’m the a-hole. What are you going to be?”
We don’t really know which is more surprising: Olbermann acknowledging his assholishness or his belief (despite ratings evidence to the contrary) that MSNBC is getting “more and more successful.”
Source: Finkelblog.com
British sex scandal makes Clinton look like an amateur
Nigel Griffiths, a former member of Parliament, has been busted for wild sexcapades in his office inside the House of Commons. It involves sex, photography and numerous adult beverages.
Here’s how News of the World reports it:
Incredibly 53-year-old Griffiths wants you to believe he has “little recollection” of spending 38 minutes taking 27 explicit images of a woman spread-eagled across the furniture of his ground floor Commons office, just yards from the Prime Minister’s own Commons office.
It was such an unmemorable sex session that he also apparently barely remembers, just half hour later, spending another hour and 40 minutes taking a further 44 pictures at a second location.
On Friday Griffiths’ lawyer David Price blamed the MP’s loss of memory about the Remembrance Day romp on being “under the influence of alcohol”. But at one point he had recollected enough to create the time to transfer those 71 snaps from his camera to his laptop.
Former President Bill Clinton was undoubtedly dismayed by this story.
“The I-was-too-drunk defense,” former President Bill Clinton reportedly thought. “Why didn’t I think of that one?”
Source: News of the World
“STUDIOS SCRAMBLE AS DVD SALES DROP”
What’s that? DVD sales are dropping? How is that possible? President Obama buys ’em 25 at a time.
Source: Variety via BigHollywood.com
Diary of a Mad Black Woman
(with apologies to Tyler Perry)
California Democrat Representative Maxine Waters comes out in this 2008 video clip and admits the truth. “This liberal” wants to nationalize all the oil companies. She wants the government to run them.
Now that this administration has used the financial crisis to get its hands on the banks, Wall Street, and the auto companies, what sounded so preposterous a year ago suddenly seems far more ominous.
It never hurts to remind everyone what’s really on the minds of liberals.
“Woman Dies After Receiving Botched Silicone Injections In Buttocks”
Research shows that 85% of women think their ass is too big. 10% of women think their ass is too little. The other 5% say that they don’t care – they love him and would have married him anyway.
Source: WCBS-TV
Biden puts foot in mouth again. Credits stimulus for fire station funded by Bush.
Joe Biden showed up in North Carolina Wednesday to tell folks that the “stimulus” money isn’t reserved for Wall Street and car companies. No way, Joe assured them.
While appearing at an outdated fire station in Pikeville, NC, Biden promised billions for home loans and community projects like a new fire station for the good Pikevillians.
“We’re investing in places like this all across the country,” Biden bragged, “to demonstrate the vital role towns like this play in the recovery.”
Uh-oh. Fact check on register three, Joe.
The bulk of the money for the new fire station was secured last year. You know, last year when George Bush was president.
State Sen. David Rouzer, Pikeville’s Republican congressman said he helped nail down the construction funds out of last year’s regular federal budget.
“They’re coming in and cherry picking the best projects and switching out the money, saying it’s stimulus money,” Rouzer observed. “But it was already approved and in the pipeline. It’s totally disingenuous to come down here and say this is stimulus money, when regardless of whether a stimulus bill passed, they were getting the money.”
In other news, Biden announced that the Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam and the 1939 New York World’s Fair would also be built with stimulus money.
Source: McClatchy
What happens when you do a Google Image search for “obama” and “poster?”
We got a note this morning from the Executive Research Director here at IHateTheMedia.com.
“I was searching the internet last night for a copy of Shepard Fairey’s red, white and blue Obama poster. So I did a Google search for ‘Obama’ and ‘poster.’ The results are hilarious. You’ll probably do a story on it.”
We tried it. Sure enough. Up came dozens of funny variations of the Shepard Fairey poster. We’re sharing some of our favorites with you.
UK Guardian: “The question that flummoxed the great orator”
There is some immense disconnect between American media and British media. While the American media swoons at the feet of Barack Obama, the British media has been writing about his feet of clay.
Here’s the UK Guardian’s scathing review of one of the President’s British news conferences:
Barack Obama, the World’s Greatest Orator (™all news organisations), didn’t exactly cover himself in glory when the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson asked him a question about who was to blame for the financial crisis. Normally word perfect, Obama ummed, ahed and waffled for the best part of two and a half minutes. Here, John Crace decodes what he was really thinking…
Click through and read the rest of it. It’s hilarious.
Source: UK Guardian
Democrats demanded Bush exit strategy, timeline for Iraq. Couldn’t care less about Obama and Afghanistan.
Of course, while the Bush strategy left the left quivering with anger, the Obama strategy was greeted with virtual silence by the same critics.
One thing we do know – Obama’s adding another 4,000 troops on top of 17,000 troops he previously okayed.
“The only exit strategy will be to leave the Afghan people to deal with their security problem,” said Richard Holbrooke, one of President Obama’s foreign policy advisors. He also said Obama’s priorities include training the Afghan army and the national police force, reducing corruption, and reducing violence throughout the country.
Huh? Doesn’t that sound exactly like what Bush said about Iraq?
Sure, there have been a few small protests here and there, but we’re still waiting for John Kerry to announce that American soldiers in Afghanistan are terrorists. We’re still waiting for John Murtha to announce that American soldiers in Afghanistan are killers. We’re still waiting for Harry Reed to announce that we’ve lost in Afghanistan.
And we’re still waiting for Nancy Pelosi to get back from her latest Botox session.
Source: CNSNews.com
