I just tried walking into a local Burger King about an hour ago to grab a quick bite and the sign on the cash register read, "Sorry. We are out of BURGERS!!!" Out. Of. Burgers.
You can't claim to be the Burger King, if you don't have any burgers. THE BURGER KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE BURGER KING!
... Or maybe Queen Wendy.
OJ Simpson just got sentenced to 15 years after being found guilty on 12 counts including armed robbery and kidnapping. And my one question is, what the fuck are these millionaires thinking?
Remember when OJ was everyone's hero? The Juice! He was on television, in the movies and all those Hertz commercials. He was on top of the world until he became a pariah when he allegedly killed his estranged wife Nicole Brown a decade and a half ago. I say allegedly because he was amazingly acquitted. But come on... we all know he did it.
And you'd think that the lessons learned from OJ would strike fear into the hearts of today's NFL players. But, no. You have dimwits like Michael Vick running a dog fighting ring on property he owns now serving time and out of football. And that doesn't stop NY Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress from carrying a handgun into a New York City nightclub and accidentally shooting himself in the leg. Are you fucking kidding me?
Less than a year ago, this guy was a Superbowl Championship hero, signed a $35 million contract extension and due to his actions, pissed it all away in a matter of months. And to top things off, he wasn't scheduled to play in Sunday's game anyway because he is nursing a hamstring injury. So what the fuck are you doing in a nightclub on Friday night? Shouldn't you be resting and rehabilitating your injury in order to play and support your team as soon as possible? You know, show a little loyalty to those rich, old guys that pay you millions to play a fucking game? And that's completely disregarding the gun issue!
Even if you do decide to be a complete idiot and go to the nightclub, are you really stupid enough to carry a gun (which is illegal in New York City and carries a mandatory 3 year sentence)? And then, even if you are off your fucking rocker and actually do carry a gun, maybe you should wear a decent pair of pants and not the sweatpants you wore causing the gun to fall through your belt line and go off in you pant leg, you fucking dipshit!
Now the Giants are done with his mook. He's been suspended and will most likely serve deserved jail time. I don't understand these fucking guys who think they can do anything they want because of their perceived status in society. Dude, you play a fucking game for a living. You can fall of the face of the earth tomorrow and no one would care. What makes you so special?
And this is just scratching the surface - what about Ray Lewis or Pacman Jones or half of the Cincinnati Bengals? The NFL should seriously consider a "one and done" no tolerance policy. If you get in legal trouble and it is substantiated and you're found guilty, you're done. I wonder how much of a deterrent that would be?
"I think it's important to bring somebody from outside the system, the judicial system, somebody that hasn't been on the bench and, therefore, there's not a lot of opinions for people to look at."
- Discussing his nomination of Harriet Miers, Washington, DC, 2005
For an administration so adept at the Reverse Midas Touch, where everything they touch turns to shit, the one thing I give the Bushites credit for is their ability to spin. They are Rembrandts in the art of Flim-Flam. They were able to, for eight long years, fool enough of the people enough of the time to remain in power just long enough to fill their coffers and almost destroy the country in the process. And the P.T. Barnum of the political three-ring circus that is the White House? Karl Rove.
Ron Suskind, 2004: In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.We all now know that "the senior adviser" in Suskind's piece was Karl Rove. And Rove was right. Study we did. While everyone was flipping out over the latest Bush Administration outrage, the Bushites were creating another and another. And another. Until this endless avalanche of bullshit was so overwhelming, the focus of the "judicious students of history" Rove was talking about splintered apart. There was no consolidated front. There was no one particular story that would stick.
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
GIBSON: Do you feel in any way responsible for what's happening?
BUSH: You know, I'm the President during this period of time, but I think when the history of this period is written, people will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived in President, during I arrived in President.
leg⋅a⋅cy [leg-uh-see]noun, plural -cies.Hmmm.... Oh, here's one!
1. Law. a gift of property, esp. personal property, as money, by will; a bequest.
2. anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor: the legacy of ancient Rome.
3. an applicant to or student at a school that was attended by his or her parent.
4. Obsolete. the office, function, or commission of a legate.
leg⋅a⋅cy - A gift of property by will, esp. of money or personal property; a bequest. Also Fig.; as, a legacy of dishonor or disease.
"Some reports are issued and just gather dust. And truth of the matter is, a lot of reports in Washington are never read by anybody. To show you how important this one is, I read it, and our guest read it."
For some strange reason, I'm having trouble embedding this hysterical FunnyOrDie.com video with a star-studded cast performing in Prop 8 - The Musical. So click on down there and watch. Enjoy.
President-elect Barack Obama finally called on Fox News White House correspondent Wendell Goler during his press conference to announce Bill Richardson as the new Secretary of Commerce. Fox News had been shut out for five previous conferences as Obama rolled out his economic and national security teams, so you would think Goler would have a big question to ask.
He asked Obama if he was worried about Hank Paulson spending all the bailout money before he got to the White House. And to new Commerce Secretary Richardson? "What happened to the beard?"
I shit you not. He waited through six press conferences to ask about the New Mexico governor's beard. Awesome news group they have over there at Fox. Look at the chryon: ALERT! Fox News gets to ask a question! Our pants are now wet.
I couldn't bear the thought of sitting through another Charles Gibson interview with a Republican shit for brains sitting with his deer in the headlights wife nodding her head in agreement like a couple of old farmer folk chewin' on a piece of straw and staring out at the ranch from their front porch, so I missed the very exciting Bush "I didn't do it - it was like that when I got here" interview.
I did however catch Keith Olbermann and the lowlights.
"The Wall Street decision making was done before I got there. Blame Daddy and Bubba."
"The intelligence was bad on WMD, not my fault. So what if we chose to cherrypick only what fit into our agenda."
I can't wait until I never have to listen to this nimrod again. Just hearing his voice makes me dumber. I start running into walls and tripping over the dog. Suddenly, I become entranced with shiny things and tend to play Ball in a Cup for hours. Please President Bush, stop hurting my brain.
So after a year of mortgage meltdowns, burning banks, unravelling unemployment and economic exigency, we are now officially considered in a recession. And we've been in one for the past year. No shit, Sherlock.The NBER — a private, nonprofit research organization — said its group of academic economists who determine business cycles met and decided that the U.S. recession began last December.
By one benchmark, a recession occurs whenever the gross domestic product, the total output of goods and services, declines for two consecutive quarters. The GDP turned negative in the July-September quarter of this year, and many economists believe it is falling in the current quarter at an even sharper rate.
But the NBER's dating committee uses broader and more precise measures, including employment data. In a news release, the group said its cycle dating committee held a telephone conference call on Friday and made the determination on when the recession began.
Now I'm not a financial guru, I don't have a Ph.D. in Economics from some fancy school, I don't even budget very well, but even I could figure out what was going on over the last year or so. I watched as my 401K was flipping out every time we had a 300 point gain or drop in the stock market. Hell, that's considered normal now. It wasn't like that 10 years ago was it? And yet the "experts" working in and for the White House didn't want to cause a panic and use the 'R' word.• “We don’t believe we’re going to have a recession though.” [Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/30/08]
• “I think the experts will tell you we’re not in a recession.” [President Bush, 2/10/08]
• “The answer is, I don’t think we are in a recession right now.” [Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Edward Lazear, 2/11/08]
• "First of all, we're not in a recession." [President Bush, 4/22/08]
• “The data are pretty clear that we are not in a recession.” [Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Edward Lazear, 5/7/08]
• “I don’t think we are” in a recession. [Director of the National Economic Council Keith Hennesy, 6/3/08]
• “I think we have avoided a recession.” [White House Budget Director Jim Nussle, 7/31/08]
• “I don’t think anybody could tell you right now if we’re in a recession or not” [Dana Perino, 10/7/08]
I mean, shit, if I knew what was going on, and I knew that the White House was bullshitting us the whole time, (because really, when was the last time something truthful came out of the Bush Administration, if ever?) then what happened? How did we get into this situation?
Oh, yeah. Deregulation of the markets. Thanks, Bushies. To me, it's common sense that people in power will get away with as much as they can. I don't know if greed is in our human nature - it takes a special person to hold to his/her morals and regulate themselves (simple examples are spending an extra hour at the casino slot machine, cheating on your diet, or skipping an occasional class in college). But when you are part of a conglomerate there will always be the one rotten apple (or more) that will infect the rest of the barrel. That is why true self regulation does not work in the free market.
Look at that list of quotes above denying a recession. You expect it from Bush, Cheney and Perino. And maybe even the White House Budget Director because we've seen that no one inside the walls of the Bush gang is immune to corruption and deception. But Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Edward Lazear? Director of the National Economic Council Keith Hennesy? Shouldn't these be non-partisan positions?
I have tried this before, but have been unsuccessful. Now I want you to try to think of one positive accomplishment executed by the Bush Administration. Really think about it... I can't think of one thing in the last eight years, ONE THING, that this administration has touched that has gotten better or has benefited anyone other than the cronies they work for. It's the Reverse Midas Effect - everything they touch turns to shit.
(H/T Bob Cesca for the quotes)
"I think we are welcomed. But it was not a peaceful welcome."
I've heard this phrase used multiple times over the course of the day when wondering about the upcoming Obama Administration. "How will this team of rivals/team of egos work with each other? " Someone actually said, "We're going to be looking at Senator Clinton's body language very closely." Whaaaa?!
For fuck's sake, we're going to be listening to the theories and estimations about team Obama from the very serious news media for the next 50 days! Help me, Jebus!
After President-Elect Obama announced his National Security team this morning, Chuck Todd congratulated Andrea Mitchell for getting a Secretary of State "that would make news daily." He's obviously been taking his News Hackery 101 class from the Dean of the News Hackery Department, Joe Scarborough.
ADDING... More hackery.
David Shuster: Jim, during the campaign, Gates was publicly vocal in criticizing Obama's call for getting combat troops out of Iraq in 16 months. What did we learn to day about how those tensions will play out in the weeks and months to come?
Jim Miklaszewski: Well quite frankly David, I don't think there are any tensions. When Secretary Gates took over here at the Pentagon, two of his major objectives were to, one, start drawing down the number of American forces in Iraq and he has begun that with the commanders on the ground and also to bring down the level of violence, and to hand over a viable Iraq to the incoming administration in January.
And even Obama himself was careful to point out that he wasn't talking about the withdrawal of ALL the troops in 16 months... I don't think there's much difference between Obama and Gates on that... or on Guantanamo.... [Obama] said, "I want to close the damn thing."
I should have posted this yesterday (even though it was released on Thursday for Thanksgiving).
"As far as the legal hassling and wrangling and posturing in Florida, I would suggest you talk to our team in Florida led by Jim Baker."
Click on portrait for a complete list of President Obama's Executive Orders, Presidential Memoranda and Proclamations
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