Tuesday’s Mini-Report

November 28, 2006

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* The post-election season hasn’t been kind to the Bush White House. A new Harris poll shows the president’s job performance rating dropping to just 31%, down three points since late-October. Overall, 31% of Americans also believe that things in the US. Are going in the right direction, which is a four-point up-tick over the last month.

* When soon-to-be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that she’d skip over Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and name someone else House Intelligence Committee chair, many assumed the gavel would go to Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), who was next in line. As of today, Hastings is no longer in the running. There’s some ambiguity about whether Pelosi rejected Hastings, or Hastings withdrew from consideration, but either way, he’s not getting the job. Rep. Rush Holt’s (D-N.J.) name is in the air as a possible candidate.

* For Newt Gingrich to tell a New Hampshire audience last night that the nation might need a “different set of rules” to regulate free speech to prevent terrorism was odd. For Gingrich to say this at a First Amendment award dinner, honoring those who stand up for freedom of speech, is classic Newt. (thanks to SKNM for the tip)

* Remember those awful “robo-calls” in the run-up to the election? The Federal Trade Commission has a proposal on the table to ban most recorded sales calls to telephone customers, unless the person gives written permission. Telemarketers are urging policy makers to reject the measure.

* In Estonia today, the president seemed rather preoccupied with the country’s flat-tax system. Of course, it’s better then him being preoccupied with a pig.

* Is it accurate to describe the war in Iraq as a civil war? The Daily Show explains the situation as only it can.

* It fascinates me that the Republican National Committee would replace one chairman with an Abramoff problem with a new chairman with a bigger Abramoff problem.

* Dick Morris believes Nancy Pelosi is sexist — against women.

* I don’t imagine James Dobson is going to be happy about Sean Hannity’s online dating service. Apparently, gay customers are welcome.

* I suspect Liddy Dole may have a little trouble raising money to retire NRSC debt this year.

* And finally, let’s not forget that to know Karl Rove is to dislike Karl Rove.

If none of these particular items are of interest, consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

Newt should try get New Hampshire to change its motto from “Live Free or Die” to “Live Free AND Die”

About that FoxNews ripoff of the The Daily Show: I see that the executive producer of 24 is involved. I wonder how many shows in before the host tortures somebody (I mean, besides the dozens of television viewers).

  • RE: fake news, does anyone else here think that one of the factors that helped push the voting public towards the Dems, and turn the tide against the administration, was Stephen Colbert’s “speech” to the Correspondent’s dinner? I think that may have been much more influential than other items, maybe just as influential as Murtha’s phased withdrawal statements. Or am I just full of it?

  • Note to the Daily Show—it should be called a “faith-based can of whoop-ass.” Now if we could only get the Pentacostalite ‘Vangees and the Church-O-Godder Fundees to mix it up like the Sunni and Shia—we’d solve have of America’s problems in a heartbeat. Or at least, an American version of World Cup soccer….

  • About that FoxNews ripoff of the The Daily Show:

    A note to people who are wondering how bad it is and thinking, maybe I’ll check it so I can laugh at how bad it is.

    DON’T DO IT.

    Trust me. It isn’t even funny in a not-funny way. Imagine a 50 car pile up, two hundred ebola victims, the view from any street corner in Bagdad, the aftermath of Hiroshima, Katrina and the tsunami that wiped out half of the Pacific.

    Now add a basket of dead kittens.

    All of that together is still funnier by a factor of a thousand than the 1.32 minutes I watched. And to include a personal dislike: None of the HO-stesses appear to be wearing bras.

    And speaking of dead pigs, what the fuck is wrong with the President? Did the sight of Merkel get him so excited all he could talk about was pork?

  • Hooray for Nancy!!! Passing over Hastings just raised my esteem for her a hundredfold (could it have had anything to do with all the frantic emails she must have gotten from all of us in the b’sphere?). And Holt is a perfect candidate, smart as a whip. But then I’m partial to nuclear physicists, and he’s a grad of my daughter’s (also a physicist) college to boot.

  • Did you check out the last words in Hastings’ statement announcing that he wasn’t getting the job? “Sorry, haters, God is not finished with me yet.” Before that he sounded pretty mellow about the whole thing. He must read the blogs. Well, Alcee, if you are reading this, let me assure you that this was not about race. And if you were really innocent of the whole bribery thing even though 432 Congressmen thought otherwise, well, then I guess you have to learn how to pick your friends better.

  • Bush is already concentrating on raising one half of a billion dollars for his library, complete with a “think tank”. If that isn’t a joke… He has made a huge mess of the entire world, we are in WWIII thanks to his insane invasion of Iraq and BS speeches about axis of evil, etc. Having destroyed everything, like a spoiled 10 year-old boy, he loses interest, and wanders off to other things. Let someone else clean it up, as always. The guy has failed at every endeavor ever undertaken, now we as a nation face it, too.

    Watching his bluster and ongoing resistance to any change of course in the middle east is appalling. He has to go to Jordon to meet the Iraq PM because he is afraid to go to Iraq. He makes us look weaker and weaker in Arab eyes, and that only increases their aggression. I went to school with Arabs, I know how they think, and this invasion was doomed from it’s inception. Now, the situation will only get worse, no matter what we do.

    Bush will go away soon, but the horrors he has created will remain and stain all of us for generations. WWIII is up and running, nothing now can stop it. Soon, it will be the world against Israel and America, and we can thank ourselves for not jumping up and resisting back in 2000 when Bush grabbed power. When the same thing happened in 2004 because of the bogus voting machines, again, nobody said anything. Now that people are beginning to wake up, perhaps some changes can occur, but the war is up and running.

    We are in the midst of a Holy War, the worst kind there can be. Read about the Crusades if you don’t know about them. When Popes and religious fanatics grab headlines making political moves, it is a mess and bodes well for none of us.

    I am glad the Bush administration is being slapped down. I just wish it had happened sooner. If we had jumped on the voting after the 2004 debacle, we may have had a chance. Since it went through with no objections (especially by John Kerry), the world saw us as one with the Bush mentality, and we lost all standing in the world. Now, the world is blowing up in war, and we are in the middle of it.

    People, stand up and demand the government get rid of the electorial college. If popular vote had been respected, Gore would have won in 2000 and we would not be in this mess.

  • Is it accurate to describe the war in Iraq as a civil war?

    On the one hand, what difference does it make what we call it? On the other hand, what do they gain by denying the obvious??

  • “Dick Morris believes…” is a completely illogical use of words in the English language. Stringing these three words together this way assumes either a) that Dick Morris has a brain and can think, or b) that Dick Morris has an internal logic system that allows him to choose one thing over another based on the one thing being more factual than the other. Neither assumption is based on any observable facts. “Dick Morris” is actually a failed prototype of a family robot that managed to escape from the lab, and the positronic brain contained within is seriously compromised.

  • Regarding TV news:

    This afternoon I caught a Wolf Blitzer interview with Jimmy Carter. As usual, Wolf had his obligatory list of questions (presumably including “Are you a threat or a menace?”)

    Carter is promoting a new book primarily on Palestine. By now, Carter IS pretty much an expert on the Middle East, and began to explain several critical inaccuracies that have been repeated often.

    Problem was, Wolf had no interest. He was concerned only with his little list of questions and how long Carter’s segment was. So, we wound up with little — even though Carter made an effort to “talk over” Wolf to get his points across.

    An example of why TV news is shit.

    PS: I HATE Blitzer questions. He always includes too much unnecessary blather, such as:

    “Mr. Carter, what part do you think Egypt, located across the Red Sea from Israel, formerly led by Anwar Sadat who you had a close relationship with, and an adversary of Israel in two wars in a span of less than ten years that have led to much of the current tension that affects countries like Iran who, as you know, was the site of the 444-day hostage crisis in 1979, plays in the Middle East right now?

  • Let me share this litle nugget about the war from Jonah Goldberg at the Corner.

    “…I think the pro-war side had the better argument at the time. But sometimes the better arguments turn out to be wrong when tested by reality.”

    Ah yes. Reality.

  • Does Bush even know what a flat tax means? And that a tax policy that works for one country doesn’t mean it will for another country with 300 times its population and a much larger income delta? I bet all he knows is “flat tax” = “I get richer”. Greedy bastard.

  • What Stewart, Colbert and Olbermann prove is that the left is hipper and happier than the ranting right.

    • Comments are closed.