Wednesday, February 25, 2009

More Bobby Jindal Please

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal delivered the official GOP response to President Obama's State of the Union style address to Congress, and all I can say about him is, "More please."

Here's the first part of the speech:



Even Fox News hates him. It's terrific. And the best part is that the GOP seems to think the Bobby Jindal is the Republican equivalent of Barack Obama. That's roughly the equal to comparing the acting talents of Paris Hilton and Marryl Streep.

Jeff Crouere, the former executive director of the Louisiana GOP, said:

"From the insiders I’m talking to, Jindal’s in the top three, right next to Palin and Romney. He’s the rock star of the Republican Party right now.”


More please.

(Side note: if Jindal, Palin and Romney are the three heavy hitters for 2012, the Republican Party is terrificly fucked)

But there's more to Jindal than just his Kenneth the Page vocal stylings. He's also experienced at exorcisms.

Here's Max Blumenthal's recap of an article Jindal wrote in an obscure Catholic magazine, the New Oxford Review, titled “Beating a Demon: Physical Dimensions of Spiritual Warfare”:

"During his years at Brown University, Jindal pursued his Catholic faith with unbridled zeal. Jindal became emotionally involved with a classmate named Susan who had overcome skin cancer and struggled to cope with the suicide of a close friend. Jindal reflected that “sulfuric” scents hovered over Susan everywhere she went. In the middle of a prayer meeting, Jindal claimed that Susan collapsed and began convulsing on the floor. His prayer partners gathered together on the floor, holding hands and shouting, “Satan, I command you to leave this woman!”


So you remember that movie, The Exorcist, which was totally scary the first time you saw it back in 1865? Then when you saw it again recently it wasn't so much scary as it was hilariously funny and ridiculous? The governor of Louisiana thinks he did something similar to what that priest did ... only he thinks it was for real.

The man who governs a massive US state believes he helped get Satan out of a woman's body.

But wait - that's not all. And really, this is the big one here as all that other stuff - his ridiculous speaking style and his saving of souls from Satan - is really small potatoes compared with his actual actions.

Bobby Jindal turned away $98 million in federal money which was supposed to provide for the increased number of people claiming unemployment insurance during these tough economic times.

He went on Meet the Press and about a hundred other shows and made a big friggin stink about how he's got "Fundamental philisophical differences" with the President and the recovery bill, and that he didn't think it was right to accept the money because it went against his principles - well, $3.7 billion of the $3.8 billion Louisiana was offered did NOT go against his principles. That money, the $3.7 billion he accepted, is ok.

But for anyone in Louisiana looking for some help after losing their jobs during the recession, Jindal's only answer is "Fuck you."

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Louisiana lost 430 jobs per day between November and December of 2008. And because of Bobby Jindal's principals, those people are fucked.

Bobby Jindal is doing nothing more than playing politics by not accepting the recovery money, and in doing so, he is costing 430 new unemployed Louisianians the help they need as they struggle to get by.

From what I can tell, Bobby Jindal, the rising star of the Republican party, would rather get on the television and yap his trap and stand on "principle" and become the fresh face of the profoundly irrelevant GOP than help people.

Which is why in 2012, when President Obama is sizing up his competition, all I can say is "More Bobby Jindal please."

Monday, February 16, 2009

I do

Do you ever feel the need to express yourself but can’t, for the life in you, find a way? It’s like you have a gallon of whatever you want to call it to expel, and it can only be poured out through stirring straw. And to make matters worse, when you finally throw caution to the wind and place yourself in front of a keyboard, your fingers just keep knocking into each other like a bunch of clumsy adolescents. Then finally, once you feel you have a grip on yourself and you can form a complete sentence in your head, effectively transfer it down your spine, through you shoulders, down your arms, into your hands, out to your fingers and on to every appropriate key of your keyboard-- you forget why you sat down in the first place?

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Las Vegas Needs a New Mayor

At a town hall meeting in Elkhart, Indiana on Monday, President Obama made this point about those greedy fucking ass clowns in lower Manhattan:

OBAMA: "You can't get corporate jets, you can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime."


Does that sound objectionable to you? Cause it sure as hell does to the mayor of Las Vegas Oscar Goodman:

DOUCHEY VEGAS MAYOR: "What's a better place, as I say, than for them to come here? And to change their mind and to go someplace else and to cancel - and at the suggestion of the president of the United States - that's outrageous. That's outrageous and he owes us an apology. He owes us a retraction."


What's a better place than Vegas for these brokers to go Mr. Mayor? How bout the fucking offices these money grubbing irresponsible ass holes already work in? How bout that? Considering that their overblown salaries are now being heavily subsidized by you, me and the rest of the American public, how bout these thieving banking scumbags don't take any trips at all? And do you know why they shouldn't? Because they aided and abetted a world wide economic meltdown. Therefor, no whore buying trips to Vegas.

The really great part of this is that the mayor of Las Vegas is asking the President of the United States to apologize for telling financial institutions that they can't go to one of the only cities in the country where smoking, gambling and whoring are all legal while asking the tax payer to foot the bill.

Un-fuckiong-real.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

WaPo's Michael Fletcher Embarasses Paper, Self, Journalists Everywhere

Last night, at President Obama's first prime time press conference, meant to address theeconomic recovery bill currently being hacked to death Congress, Michael Fletcher of the Washington Post asked this:



Yes, you heard his question correctly, "What is your reaction to Alex Rodriguez's admission that he used steroids as a member of the Texas Rangers?"

All I can say is ... ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS MICHAEL FLETCHER?!?

Fucking baseball? The economy is on the brink of collapse, two wars are being waged with hundreds of thousands of American lives at stake, some lawmakers are calling for an investigation into whether the last president committed war crimes and you, Michael Fletcher, a very serious member of the very serious Washington press corp, are asking about fucking BASEBALL?

Mr. Fletcher, could you PLEASE tell me what jack ass actually sits down twice a month and signs your paycheck? Seriously, how in God's name are you employed. Notice it was a Cheetos eating, pajama wearing BLOGGER who asked arguably the toughest question of the night:

SAM STEIN, Huffington Post: "Today Senator Patrick Leahy announced that he wants to set up a truth and reconciliation committee to investigate the misdeeds of the Bush administration. He said that before you turn the page, you have to read the page first. Do you agree with such a proposal, and are you willing to rule out right here and now any prosecution of Bush administration officials?"


Now, I am sure Michael Fletcher is a nice guy. I'm sure he's a great writer and a generally smart dude. That said, when the president gets on television, invites about 150 reporters and calls on 13 of them to ask him questions about the biggest economic crisis in 7 decades, blowing your extremely exclusive opportunity to pose a question to the leader of the free world on A-Rod injecting juice into his ass to smack a baseball to ungodly heights is not only stupid, it's useless and an utter waste of a chance to get information that actually matters.

ADDING: The 150 or so people invited to the White House to question the president on his economic recovery package represents roughly 0.0000005% of the US population. In such an exclusive club, with such an exclusive opportunity to question the president, it is staggering to think a professional purveyor of information would ask a question about fucking baseball. God save the Fourth Estate.

Friday, February 6, 2009

HuffPo's Diane Francis Wrong on Media

Diane Francis wrote this today on the HuffPo:

"Frankly, specialty channels, reality TV and the blogosphere are very entertaining but they are hardly bastions of our freedoms, values or of facts that have been well-tested and curated by professional content-providers in editors' and producers' chairs."

I'll give Ms. Francis that, yes, there are blogs/podcasts etc that are not "bastions of freedom" - however, these giant companies or "professional content providers" are not much better, if not worse. Yesterday I watched Wolf Blitzer lead a 10 minute panel discussion on the Situation Room about Air Force One and how awesome it is. That's it. No new interesting facts, or some profile of the pilot or who gets to work on it, just Jeffrey Toobin saying "When you see Air Force One in a foreign country there is a sense of pride that goes along with it." No shit Jeffrey! It's a giant friggin plane with America plastered all over it! The only way I'd feel more pride is if it was being taxied out to the runway by a fleet of hummer limos stuffed with Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders.

But it goes beyond that isolated incident. I've watched the cable news these past few weeks and heard quite a bit about the stimulus bill and whether it should be called the recovery bill and who Obama invited over for cocktails and it's full of spending but not enough tax cuts and it's too expensive.

You know what's been conspicuously absent from all this mind numbingly stupid chatter? WHAT IS ACTUALLY IN THE FRIGGIN BILL! I don't know whether to support the thing or hate it because the "professional content providers" are REFUSING TO PROVIDE ANY ACTUAL INFORMATION ABOUT IT! Isn't that their job? You know, to inform the public? I have seen a breakdown of how many McDonald's Apple Pies I could buy with $825 billion, but I NO IDEA what tax cuts, programs or incentives that $825 billion consists of.

While I do agree with Ms. Francis that the media business model needs to change, there is something else that needs to change first - its job description. If "professional content providers" don't want to give the public anything of substance, that is fine, there is another great American industry waiting for them called Entertainment.