Category Archives: news

I'm out of clever headlines

Tonight on Countdown, Keith Olbermann had an excellent Special Comment about Joe the Plumber, including an excellent clip of FOXNews calling Joe the Plumber out over the “Death to Israel” flap:

You know how the tagline for this site used to be “pop culture and politics?” Fuck politics. After this election is over I think I’m going to curl up with a bottle of bourbon and watch nothing but cartoons for about a month.

Are you kidding me?

McCain tells people, with a straight face, that Obama and that liberal media outlet, FOX television, played politics with the World Series?

“It’s unfortunate that the World Series’ first pitch is being delayed for Obama’s political pitch. Not only is Obama putting politics before principle, he’s putting it before our national pastime,” spokesman Alex Conant said.

The Obama campaign did not ask that the game be delayed, said a spokesman for Fox, which broadcasts the World Series.

“They asked Fox to buy the air time,” the spokesman said. “Fox went to our partner, Major League Baseball, and asked if it would be OK to delay the game to take this important political advertisement. They agreed.”

Palin tells a crowd that Obama was, to paraphrase, palling around with Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi, whom the Mccain campaign insists was the spokesman for the PLO? The Huffington Post reports:

During the 1990s, while he served as chairman of the International Republican Institute (IRI), McCain distributed several grants to the Palestinian research center co-founded by Khalidi, including one worth half a million dollars.

I’ve begun to feel like Wyatt Cenac on last night’s Daily Show.

The politically obsessed; SNL on Biden and Murtha

From last night’s Saturday Night Live: “Earlier today Democratic candidate Joe Biden and Congressman Jack Murtha spoke at a rally in Johnstown Pennsylvania where they attempted to blow the election for Senator Obama.”

Meanwhile, in the Washington Post, inadequate political junkies come out of the closet in “Capital Offense – Washington Keeps a Finger on the Political Pulse.”

“I’ve done that a million times,” Peter Barber says excitedly, when asked if he’s ever pretended to recognize a name or political term since moving to the area for grad school in public policy at George Mason. “But I always thought it was just me!”

He hasn’t lived here that long — came down from Connecticut where people aren’t so obsessed. Still, it’s not easy, he says. Especially not when there’s a whole new cast of characters and policies to memorize every election cycle.

“Like Rumsfeld,” Barber says. He’d finally gotten used to knowing that “Rumsfeld was the secretary of state,” he says, when Rumsfeld went and resigned and was replaced by that Gates guy. Now, Barber bets, “Four out of 10 people here would still say Rumsfeld” was the secretary of state.

Telling Barber that Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates were not secretaries of state but secretaries of defense just seems cruel.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to watch that SNL sketch again, it may be one of my favorites.