WE HAVE A WINNER: Another tough choice this week, because there were some VERY funny entries. But we’ve decided the winner is Leslie of bluntpolitics.blogspot.com with the caption: “It really is an empty suit.” Continue reading “Weekend Caption Contest #2”
Three videos, three ways to look at Obama’s “Special Olympics” comment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKlYT2bseII In case you haven’t see it yet, President Obama channeled Joe Biden last night and said something offensive and stupid on the Tonight Show.
Seems Obama went bowling while on the campaign trail last summer and embarrassed himself by rolling a 37. He explained to Jay Leno that he’s been practicing on the White House bowling alley, but said his lack of success is “like Special Olympics or something.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD0EcujFSn8 Next we have MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. He had seen an early NBC feed of the Tonight Show and was horribly dismayed by Obama’s remark. Not because it was offensive, but because it might damage the President. As Olbermann wailed mournfully to his guest “What do we do? What does he do about that?”
Of course, if President Bush had made the offensive comment, Olbermann would have known exactly what to do. No dithering. He would immediately have named Bush “Worst Person in the World.”
Finally, we’re proud to present a video that will show both President Obama and his apologist in chief exactly what bowling looks like in the Special Olympics. These kids are good, damn it.
Mrs. Editor of IHateTheMedia.com teaches autistic children. She wants to cordially invite President Obama to her school and so he can meet some of these kids and see the error of his ways.
She does not extend the same courtesy or invitation to Keith Olbermann.
Vladimir Putin spied on Reagan, Chris Noth and Karl Malden spied on Putin
By now you may have seen the 20-year old photo that surfaced this week. It shows a young Vladimir Putin posing as an innocent tourist, just casually running into President Reagan on the streets of Moscow. You know, back in the days when Vlad was an eager young KGB agent.
Pete Souza, who is now President Obama’s official photographer, snapped the photo in 1988 while working for the Reagan White House.
Who knows? Maybe it’s Putin, maybe it’s not. But what we find amazing is that we are the first to identify two other people in the photo.
We’ve labeled Putin as #1 in this photo. The man we’ve labeled as #2 appears to be actor Chris Noth of “Sex and the City” and “Law & Order.” The man we’ve labeled as #3 is definitely actor Karl Malden of “The Streets of San Francisco” and “Patton.” (Click image for larger photo.)
It’s well-known that the KGB often planted agents and had them portray ordinary Soviet citizens. But we now have photographic evidence that the Reagan White House played a tense game of diplomatic oneupsmanship and had actors portray agents.
Take that, Vladimir Putin.
Source: Sky News
Top 10 gaffes by Barack Obama and Joe Biden. All on video.
No matter what the American press keeps telling us, the foreign press is growing less enchanted with Camelot every day. Especially the British press. And even more especially the Telegraph.
This administration is setting a torrid pace for screw-ups and misstatements and just plain dumb comments. It’s only been 60 days. Of course, we expected that when we got Joe Biden, but no one expected the greatest orator in history to foul up so often.
The Telegraph has compiled a list of the Top 10 gaffes by Obama and Biden.
Far as we can tell, the tough part must have been limiting the list to ten.
Above is the Telegraph’s choice as Number 10. To see the rest of the list, click here. Prepare to laugh.
Obama stabs union in the back, crosses picket line to tape Tonight Show
It wasn’t an official strike, just a protest. But 100 or so members of the Screen Actors Guild picketed NBC’s Tonight Show in Burbank last night. And President Obama’s limo sped past them faster than Joe Biden putting his foot in his mouth.
Here’s how Variety explains it:
The protest was organized in hopes of bringing the issue of SAG’s contract stalemate to Obama’s attention. The Membership First faction of SAG has been urging members to vote down whatever deal’s sent out for ratification due to its perceived shortcomings in new media.
“I told the president’s office that there would be demonstrators outside NBC to alert him to the fact that many of our members won’t be able to make any living if this deal’s shoved down our throats,” said Scott Wilson, who organized the event.
SAG national board members Frances Fisher and Nancy Sinatra attended along with former board members Michael Bell and Susan Savage.
What a great story. It has Hollywood. It has unions. It has a floundering socialist president screwing Hollywood unions.
It has everything except someone to sympathize with.
Source: Variety
Courtney Friel is the hottest woman on Cable News. Oh, shut up. We just said what you were thinking.
Anchor Babe Courtney Friel of Fox News is the hottest woman on cable news. Here are a few photos of Courtney in her bikini.
Anchor Babe Courtney Friel of Fox News, the hottest of the Fox News Women Anchors, was interviewed recently by SoupCans. The anchor goddess answered the following question:
Soup: How did the gig with Fox News come about?
Friel: Well…I went on a date with Roger Ailes…OMG- I’m joking!! Actually, the process was pretty standard. My agent sent FOX a DVD which had 2 reels on it – entertainment and local news. Then I flew to NYC for an interview. Next I got an offer so I left LA and moved to the Big Apple! I’m in my third year at FNC already!
So does that mean she’s not going out with Roger Ailes? He hasn’t swept the most beautiful woman on television into his evil web of conservative conquests? Does it mean she’s available?
Maybe not. She also revealed in the interview that she’s married to some other TV guy blah-blah-blah. We really didn’t concentrate on that part of the interview.
Let’s make this clear right up front. We would leave our wives for Courtney. Is that so wrong?
Here are a few photos of Courtney in her bikini, Click thumbnails for larger image: Continue reading “Courtney Friel is the hottest woman on Cable News. Oh, shut up. We just said what you were thinking.”
Obama gets newspaper publishers award, closes ceremony to the press
This one is nutty even in the twisted world of Washington, DC.
The LA Times reports that our Fearless Leader set to receive the “Newsmaker of the Year” award this afternoon from the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a group of black publishers from across the nation. They’ll all get together at the White House, shake hands, and pose for all the photographers.
Oh, wait. They won’t pose for the photographers because the event has been closed to the press.
That’s right, the guy who claimed he was going to head up the most transparent administration in history is shutting the press out of the ceremony in which he’s being honored by the press.
The teleprompter must have called in sick today.
Source: LA Times, NewsBusters
Iranian blogger “commits suicide” in prison
This is a tragic story. But let it serve as a chilling warning that the internet must remain free. Let’s just let the people who broke the story explain it in their own words:
Omid Reza Mir Sayafi, a 29-year old Iranian blogger and journalist died in Evin Prison in Tehran on March 18. In December, he was sentenced to two and half years in prison for allegedly insulting religious leaders, and engaging in propaganda against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Mir Sayafi was still awaiting an additional trial for insulting Islam.
According to the Human Rights activists in Iran website, Omid Reza suffered from deep depression in jail and was prescribed medications of which he apparently took too many. Dr. Hesam Firouzi, a jailed doctor and human rights activist says he urged prison authorities to send Omid Reza to a hospital outside prison but that prison doctors refused, and would not perform even basic tests.
A campaign has been launched in Facebook to “Hold Iran Responsible for Death of Blogger Mirsayafi in Prison”.
Blogger Mojtaba Saminejad says Omid Reza had communicated to him two days before his death that he would possibly be allowed to exit the prison in the coming days to visit a hospital. The blogger says he was led to expect better news than this.
Omid Reza said his blog was cultural and it was not his intention to insult anyone. The attached video is called “Iran: A Nation of Bloggers.”
No funny closing comments on this one. Our sympathies go out to Reza’s friends and family. And our best wishes to other Iranian bloggers currently being held in other Iranian prisons.
Source: Global Voices, Iran: A Nation of Bloggers
Olbermann, Leno admit the awful, embarrassing truth
Did you catch habitual liar Keith Olbermann on the Tonight Show the other night? We didn’t think so.
The only thing interesting about it – other than Jay Leno’s continued race to the left – was the moment when Keith and Jay confessed to the fact that they are embarrassed by the their employers.
It went like this:
LENO: Can I ask you a dumb question? It’s called American Insurance Group? Is that the name?
OLB: I believe that’s it, yes.
LENO: Is this even an American company? Or is this one of these phony things where you’re chopping down trees and you call yourself The Evergreen Preservation Society?
OLB: It’s a brand name.
LENO: Is it even American at all?
OLB: It probably was at some point. But you know, when you go to initials, as you know, its usually a sign something’s changed. Just going by your initials you really don’t want to be identified as the company anymore.
What a bonehead. Would someone please point out to Olbermann that his employer is one of those companies that goes by initials instead of its full name.
And then would someone please point out to these two financial geniuses that it’s actually the American International Group, not the American Insurance Group.
Source: NBC (formerly the National Broadcasting Company)
Outrageous Quote of the Day:
“What I did or did not [do] is being investigated by a committee by me.”
Charles Rangel, D-NY, March 19, 2009 on CNBC Squawkbox
We sincerely hope you get to the bottom of what you did or didn’t do, Charlie. The American people are lucky to have a dedicated dependable deplorable public servant like you in Washington, DC.
A-Rod leaves Madonna for A-Rod
Based on the really strange photos in the April issue of Details magazine, Alex Rodriguez has found his one true love. And it turns out to be none other than Alex Rodriguez.
Now we realize this guy has never been mistaken for a genius. And we realize that some people think Madonna looks like she’s been rode too hard and put away wet (did that line reveal too much about the childhood years we spent on the farm?). And we realize the baseball season is long and arduous and a man can get lonely on a two-week road trip to Detroit, Cleveland, and Baltimore.
But putting all that aside, what the hell was this Rodriguez thinking when he posed for these photos?
Ahh, we just realized the problem. We mistakenly thought there was thought involved. But then we remembered this was A-Rod.
Or as he’s now known in New York, A-Hole.
Source: Details
Are Obama’s primetime TV appearances designed to damage Fox?
President Obama is wearing out his welcome with America’s television networks. Especially at Fox, home of his harshest critics.
The economy is struggling, advertising sales are dropping, ratings are sagging, and all the networks lose revenue every time Obama interrupts their regular primetime programming. But none are impacted as severly as Fox.
Obama always requests primetime coverage on Tuesday, the one night of the week that does the most damage to Fox.
Fox “owns” Tuesday nights thanks to its two-hour American Idol programming block. Next week the network will be forced to shift its line-up, pushing each of the regular “Idol” broadcasts back a day.
“At a time when we’re struggling not only financially but to build audiences, this doesn’t help on either front,” one network executive said. “These repeated interruptions — and the rumor of even more to come — really make it difficult to build audience flow and loyalty. We will all lose one or two million dollars for this.”
“I believe in the president and his policies, and as broadcasters we have a responsibility to provide the airtime,” said another network insider. “But these frequent primetime requests are wreaking serious havoc with our schedule and our advertisers. Ratings are down everywhere and the airtime is costing us all significant dollars when we can least afford it.”
So much for the “stimulus” plan.
But let’s get to the more important issues. Adam Lambert. Did you love his version of “Ring of Fire?” Or did you hate it?
Source: The Live Feed
CNBC’s Haines and Burnett turn on Rangel about his tax problems
Representative Charlie Rangel (D-NY) didn’t know what he was getting into when he stepped in front of the CNBC cameras early this morning. Hosts Mark Haines and Erin Burnett invited the congressman on the show to discuss why he backs legislation to disallow the AIG bonuses.
First, Mark and Aaron jumped on Rangel about changing the compensation plan for a company in the middle of the game. But after Rangel was given a chance to defend his actions by claiming that AIG employees “violated the public trust” and “destroyed the economy,” the fireworks began as the conversation took a turn as Mark Haines went after him with a vengeance about his own alleged tax problems.
Haines turned the conversation with this: “With all due respect, congressman, when you talk about violating the public trust, you’ve had some tax issues of your own.” And that’s when the real fun and games started.
We love it. Some in the mainstream media are starting to grow a pair.
Al Gore flunks physics at UC Berkeley
According to the latest issue of Forbes, Professor Richard Muller tools around uber liberal Berkeley in a Toyota Pirus.
Nothing out of place here, right? Wrong.
“It doesn’t save me money,” he explains. “It doesn’t help slow global warming. I just love the technology.” Muller, named a MacArthur genius in 1982, goes even further. He scoffs at the greens’ favorite energy theories and says people like Al Gore and Thomas Friedman are exaggerators of global warming, pure and simple.
Here at IHateTheMedia.com we wonder just what former future President Gore must think when he hears such blasphemy coming from an august professor.
The answer, obviously, is that Gore doesn’t think much (that sentence has two meanings and both of them are true).
Gore lives in a world of massive denial. To him, Professor Muller is just a dumb blond, Bill Clinton really didn’t have sex with that woman, and when Credence Clearwater sings ”Fortunate Son” the lyrics really say “I am a senator’s son.”
Source: Forbes
“Borat” star talks his way into Alabama National Guard
Sacha Baron Cohen, best known for playing “Borat,” has done it again. This time he talked his way onto an Alabama National Guard base by posing as the producer of a German documentary.
Cohen was eventually busted after being recognized by a cadet.
“It’s an embarrassment to the Alabama National Guard,” said Staff Sgt Katrina Timmons. “Since then we have put in protocols to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
Embarrassed National Guard officials fear the footage will end up in an upcoming movie featuring Cohen as Bruno, a gay Austrian fashion writer. The name of the film is “Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America For The Purpose Of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable In The Presence Of A Gay Foreigner In A Mesh T-Shirt.”
“He was treated like a member of the media and escorted around. He was put in a uniform like he requested to allow him to get a taste of what it was like to be an officer candidate,” Timmons ruefully admitted.
Cohen is a genius. Or a lunatic. Or both. We’re not sure.
Source: Breitbart
Iraq’s making progress everywhere except the American media
The results of a new poll conducted by ABC News, the BBC and Japan’s NHK must make editors and reporters around the nation take a big gulp and say, “Didn’t see that comin’.”
It shows big progress everywhere they looked. But you probably won’t read about it anywhere except an editorial in Monday’s Investor’s Business Daily.
Check out these numbers:
85% of Iraqis said their neighborhood security was “good,” up from 62% a year ago and 43% in August of 2007.
Those who support democracy jumped to 64% from just 43% in 2007.
58% feel “very good” or “quite good” about the state of affairs in Iraq. That’s up from just 22% in 2007.
When asked what their main concerns are, war, security and terrorism took a backseat to jobs and prices.
“In short, it sounds like we not only won the war, but the peace as well,” IBD concluded. “And for those who cast a skeptical eye on the idea that any Islamic country could ever be democratized, it turns out the former President Bush is winning that debate too.”
Some results IBD didn’t mention:
96% of Iraqis think John Kerry is a pompous liar. 98% think Harry Reid is a pathetic liar. And 100% of Iraqis think John Murtha is a big, fat liar.
Source: Investor’s Business Daily
Islamic MTV: Simultanously moronic and oxymoronic
Tough to imagine anything more moronic than MTV nor anything more oxymoronic than the term “Arabic MTV.”
Walk down the street in any Arab capital and you’ll see burkah-covered women. Yet turn on the TV in any Arab living room and you’ll find a dozen music video channels filled with bared flesh.
Enter Ahmed Abu Haiba, the founder of 4Shbab TV, which calls itself “Islam’s own MTV.”
The idea behind 4Shbab is simple, he says. Mainstream music videos are “lewd” and do not represent the Arab world’s cultural values. He says they are haram, or forbidden and sinful in Islam.
4Shbab TV is Abu Haiba’s attempt to put young people back on the right path, he says, in a way that is fun and entertaining. Music videos from around the world – not just “Islamic videos,” but anything that’s positive, he says – air alongside call-in shows and contests like “Who wants to be an Islamic pop star?”
“Ask people in the street and they will tell you that these channels are something strange in our culture,” he says. “They smash our identity and confuse people, especially the younger generation. They give them a misunderstanding about their own lives.
Arabic MTV. We can’t wait to see Madonna in a burkah singing “Like 72 Virgins.” al-Vis Presley singing “Jailhouse Rocket Grenade Launcher.” And purple caftan-clad Prince with his rendition of “Party Like It’s 1399.”
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Headline of the Day:
“Hybrid car sales go from 60 to 0 at breakneck speed”
Big news for Commissar Obama: Central planning doesn’t work any better here than it did in the Soviet Union. You can build them, but that doesn’t mean they’ll come.
Source: Los Angeles Times
The truth about Scientology revealed in cartoon show, not by the news media
What does it say about the media when we get more truth from cartoons than from the news?
The sickness that is called moral relativism keeps the politically correct media from coming out and saying what’s pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain: Scientology is a crock.
It’s a wacky religion concocted by a science fiction writer with too much time on his hands. It’s one of the biggest scams in history. Right up there with the “stimulus” package.
Here’s a great mash-up of L. Ron Hubbard and a South Park episode. It combines the denials of a Scientology spokesman with South Park’s animated version of L. Ron Hubbard’s actual spoken words.
We don’t know which is funnier – Hubbard’s words, South Park’s animation or John Travolta’s pilot uniform. But that’s another story.
We have to go now. We have a call from Xenu on line two.
Source: YidWithLid, Wikipedia, Xenu the evil Galactic Supreme Ruler
Glenn Beck ratings skyrocket, Olbermann up, Maddow down, has anyone seen CNN?
Glenn Beck ratings at Fox News is the big story in cable news this week. He has leapfrogged Sean Hannity to #2. What was CNN thinking when the let this guy get away?
Note: here’s a more current article on the ratings: O’Reilly-Hannity-Beck go 1-2-3 in cable news ratings again, Fox destroys competition again
The biggest news in cable news this week is the remarkable rise of Glenn Beck at Fox.
His Friday night special drew huge numbers and leapfrogged his show above long-time #2 Sean Hannity. What was CNN thinking when the let this guy get away?
As for the rest of the cable news pack, some were up a little, some were down a little. And Larry King continues to be CNN’s last man standing.
The accompanying chart looks at the top 10 cable TV news shows for March 13, 2009.
Source: MediaBistro, Nielsen Media Research
Hollywood shock:
Insider says “American Idol” is fixed
Say it ain’t true, Paula.
One cog in American Idol’s production machine says the show is completely fixed and that producers have already chosen the final four competitors.
According to an unnamed female production staffer, Danny Gokey, Lil Rounds, Adam Lambert and Alexis Grace will be seen in the finals. She insists she’s not speculating. “Those are the people,” she said.
But that’s where the agreement ends. Judges and producers reportedly can’t agree who the final two should be.
“Adam Lambert and Lil Rounds are better singers and musicians than Gokey and Grace, but they’re too much like past winners and ‘A’ successes,” the woman said. “Adam’s too close in style and sound to Chris Daughtry, while Lil Rounds is a dead ringer for Fantasia. Even their background stories are similar!”
“The producers really want it to be Danny or Alexis,” she added. “They think they’re very commercially viable, have a good image and a great story.”
We knew this thing was fixed a couple years ago when Sanjaya didn’t win. C’mon, that guy was a major talent.
Source: NY Daily News
Michael Jackson sells out 50 London concert dates, apocalypse is near
Michael Jackson is still remarkably popular in London. In the same freakish way, we assume, that the Elephant Man would still be popular in London.
Jackson scheduled a series of “final” concerts in the English capital. Demented Englishmen snapped them up so quickly that more concerts were hastily scheduled. Fifty of them. And they sold out. 750,000 tickets in all.
That’s an average of 40,000 tickets an hour. More than 650 per minute. More than 11 per second. Fans from Japan, Belgium and Dubai lined up to to buy the tickets. One lunatic stood in line for two days. According to Radio & Records:
Chris Edmonds, managing director of Ticketmaster UK, said, “We often talk about unprecedented demand, but this week we have witnessed a live entertainment phenomenon. We have seen a truly amazing level of interest and demand for tickets from fans from across the world for the Michael Jackson shows at The O2 over the last 3 days. The success of the general on-sale today has led to Michael Jackson and AEG Live adding even more dates, taking the total amount of performances to 50. Today, we saw well over 250,000 fans hitting the Ticketmaster site at 7 a.m. for the general sale tickets. This was undoubtedly the busiest demand for tickets for an event which we have ever experienced.”
Jackson is expected to perform his hit song “Black or White,” except this time he will perform both roles.
Source: Radio and Records
Madonna sees Angelina’s bet, raises her one, wants to adopt another Malawi child
Take that, Miss Smartypants Angelina Jolie. Madonna says she might just adopt another poor child from Malawi. And if she’s in a good mood, she might even get the permission of the child’s family first this time.
Some cold-hearted critics accused the Malawian government of playing fast and loose with the nation’s adoption laws when it allowed Madonna to adopt David Banda.
Reuters reported Madonna’s reaction:
“Many people — especially our Malawian friends — say that David should have a Malawian brother or sister,” she said in response to emailed questions from Malawi’s the Nation newspaper.
“It’s something I have been considering, but would only do, if I had the support of the Malawian people and the Government.”
“Or if I can sneak the kid out in my purse,” she said under her breath.
Source: Reuters
Bernie Madoff would rather be known as a crook than as a Democrat, media agrees.
Remember Jack Abramoff, the lobbyist who spread money around as if it were peanut butter and Washington, DC were a slice of white bread?
The media felt it was their patriotic duty to expose the recipients of his largess, especially since most of them were Republicans.
Have you seen any headlines announcing that Bernie Madoff, the perpetrator of the biggest Ponzi scheme in history, was a huge Democrat donor? Well, he was. Here’s how OpenSecrets.org reports it:
In total, he and his wife, Ruth, have given $238,200 to federal candidates, parties and committees since 1991, with Democrats getting 88 percent of that. Overall, Madoff and other individuals at his company, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, gave $372,100 in campaign contributions since 1991, with 89 percent to Democrats. The firm spent $590,000 on lobbying in the last 11 years, all but $10,000 of it with the lobbying firm of Lent, Scrivner & Roth.
The media demanded that Republican politicians return Abramoff’s donations and his money wasn’t even stolen. When will they begin demanding that Democrat politicians return Madoff’s stolen money?
It says a lot about the current political environment that this guy would confess to being a crook, but keep quiet about being a Democrat.
Although we can’t really say we blame him.
Source: OpenSecrets.org
Media sleeps through Porkopolis Tea Party
Cincinnati has long been nicknamed “Porkopolis” because of its long association with the pork industry. So it’s a particularly poetic twist of fate that Porkopolis should be the scene of a huge Tea Party tax protest this Sunday.
Thousands of latter day tax rebels showed up in the city’s Fountain Square for the Cincinnati Tea Party, a grass-roots effort protesting Washington’s recent record setting spend-a-thon. But did the mainstream media notice?
“Unless you frequent conservative websites,” NewsBusters noted, “you’d have no idea that such events were being staged.”
In fact, over 150 Tea Parties have been brewing across the country, despite being virtually ignored by major news outlets (with the notable exception of Fox News and CNN).
Instapundit reader Ed Steiner attended the Cincinnati rally and provided a firsthand account of media bias in action:
One of the local TV stations—WCPO—did a hatchet job on the Tea Party…The station did a 30-second scan of the Square and then did its own internal Fairness Doctrine by highlighting the few Obama supporter signs and doing an interview with the local Dem Party chief.
Here’s a philosophical question: If an event occurs but the news media don’t cover it, does it make an impact? Or put another way, if the news media report something but no one listens (Air America anyone?), does it have an influence?
Don’t touch that browser! Stay tuned for more Tea Parties come April 15.
Source: NewsBusters, Pajamas Media
