All the Single Ladies

Kathryn Jean Lopez, on 1/27/13 C-SPAN airing of a National Review Institute panel of ladies:

"So how can we get single women to realize that the government is not their husband....?"

If K-Lo didn't exist, Jane Austen would have to be reanimated just to invent her.

(No link up yet.)

Fraction of a Half-Wit

Howie "The Putz" Kurtz deployed one of my pet peeves in this recent post:

Fox News offered Sarah Palin a new contract before she decided to part ways with the network where she has held forth as a commentator for the last three years.

However, it would be hard to describe it as a generous contract....

The new contract offered by Fox, say people familiar with the situation, would have provided only a fraction of the million-dollar-a-year salary. It was then, they say, that Palin turned it down and both sides agreed to call it quits.

He did this again on his CNN show today.

The Putz uses "a fraction" as a synonym for "a small fraction."   $999,999/1,000,000 is a fraction of one million dollars.  It is, in the context of Sharia Plain, an insanely generous contract offer.  

I suspect that the Putz uses the term "a fraction" because no one will tell him what the actual offer was, or because he promised O'Reilly he wouldn't mention a specific dollar amount or percentage.  Most likely, the Putz is just assuming what everyone else is -- that FOX has wrung the last useful dollar out of Palin and would be insane to keep paying her at the expired rate.  As a media reporter, Kurtz is a joke.

Comic Strips Welcome the 20th Century

Dick Tracy greets a gay couple:



http://www.gocomics.com/dicktracy/2013/01/22

The possibly Asian character (George Tawara) is based on George Takei.  Regrettably, the strip doesn't identify Brad as George's husband.   

And while this represents progress of a sort, The Mole has been reduced to working as maître d’hôtel at a Lawry's Steakhouse knockoff, at least until Dick Tracy brains him with a garden hoe.

Meanwhile, Gil Thorp is exploring interracial dating, in black and white.  Still no romance between Gil and Marty Moon.



We all need to meet the peacock sometimes.

http://www.gocomics.com/gilthorp/2013/01/19

Not Affiliated With the Fat FOX Fuck

In advance of a planned biography of FOX News Channel heavyweight Roger Ailes, someone is  buying up domain names with Fat Bastard's name in it, such as rogerailesbook.com.

Seems an opportune to time to again disclaim that Roger Ailes, the blog, has nothing to do with FNC President Ailes, FNC in general or anyone or anything else affiliated with FOX.  This site is a non-profit -- and how! -- opinion blog, operated as a labor of love for you, dear reader.  Its humble administrator is perhaps 100 lbs. and 40 million dollars lighter than Fat Bastard and, while he will undoubtedly enjoy checking out of the library a tome which portrays Fat Bastard in an unfavorable light, he has nothing to do with the book or any website wars it engenders. 

We now return you to your irregularly scheduled program.

Pinch-Quitter

Fox News Channel simply wasn't big enough to contain Sharia Plain and Dennis Kucinich.  Something had to give.

And that something was Fat Bastard giving himself a pay raise with the savings.

We Must Get Ace of Spades Mental Health Treatment

Favorite line in Ace's call to action against the mediatatorship: "Now, until recently, liberalism had at least tried to give some lip service, and perhaps some actual consideration, to the faggy notions of process, fairness, access, and such."

Ace is a very conflicted soul.

Ace also opines:

Fox alone isn't enough. For one thing, any venture needs competition; Fox doesn't really have competition, not for the audience it's targeting.

For another thing, frankly, look: Fox is often pitched too low to do any good with any but the already-alarmed. (Which I consider to be possibly a function of a lack of competition.)

And it never puts him on the teevee either.

Has Ace forgetten about PJTV and The Blaze and ReasonTV and BreitbartTV and The Right Network?  It's almost as if he's given up on internet triumphalism.

Unfortunately, Ace doesn't offer any solutions about what should be done, apart from demanding that billionaires not named Murdoch or Anschutz or Zuckerman or Snider or Bain Capital LLC or Adelson (in the 51st state) "band together to purchase or build a media outlet."  

A high-pitched media outlet, presumably.

Maybe even an actual dog whistle.

Rudy Con Fail

Over at Newsbusters for Children, an unemployed sportswriter and all-around dolt claims that  "there was also a pro-choice, pro-gay marriage Republican in office while Dunham lived in New York (Brooklyn) in the form of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani."

No, there wasn't. Guiliani supported domestic partnerships (which conferred very limited benefits) when he was mayor of New York City.  Afterwards, he supported civil unions but not marriage equality; and supported a federal constitutional ban on equality in the event 5 or more states got gay happy.  In 2011, long after he left office (and stopped campaigning for President) Rudy took the position that the marriage equality should be left to the states, but also criticized the New York Legislature for legalizing same-sex marriage. In other words, he does not support gay marriage.

The rest of the article is even more idiotic and dishonest (falsely accusing an actor of calling Republicans Nazis), but once you recognize that the dolt is lying about his main example of a tolerant G.O.P., there's no reason to waste more time on the dolt.

There's The Rubb

Jennifer "J-Rubb" Rubbin is down on Dancin' David Gregory for not giving Colin Powell the high, hard one on yesterday's Pressed Meat Fun Time Hour:

“Meet the Press” isn’t what it used to be. After a remarkably softball interview with President Obama on New Year’s Day, moderator David Gregory on Sunday let former secretary of state Colin Powell filibuster through one question after another, never following up or, as they used to do in the good old days, confronting the interviewee with statements that directly contradict his spin. Several examples suffice to show that Gregory is ill-prepared, doesn’t listen to the answers or has no interest in conducting tough interviews of the Obama administration’s surrogates. (Maybe it is all three.)

Powell asserted that Chuck Hagel is “superbly qualified” to be defense secretary. Umm. You would think an interviewer would ask: But doesn’t he lack executive experience?

You'd think!  How could Powell possibiy defend Adolf Hagler with a clever comeback to that poser?

After Reagan's inauguration as President, Hagel was named deputy administrator of the Veterans Administration. In 1982, however, he resigned his post over a disagreement with VA Administrator Robert P. Nimmo, who was intent on cutting funding for VA programs. Nimmo had referred to veterans groups as "greedy", and to Agent Orange as not much worse than a "little teenage acne". ...

After leaving government employment, Hagel co-founded Vanguard Cellular, a mobile phone service carrier that made him a multi-millionaire. While working with Vanguard, he served as president and chief executive officer of the United Service Organizations and the Private Sector Council, as deputy director and chief operating officer of the 1990 G7 Summit, and on the board of directors or advisory committee of the American Red Cross, the Eisenhower World Affairs Institute, Bread for the World, and the Ripon Society. He also served as Chairman of the Agent Orange Settlement Fund and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Although he was pressured by some to run for Governor of Virginia, where he had lived for 20 years, in 1992 Hagel moved back to Nebraska to become president of the McCarthy Group, LLC, an investment banking firm. He also served as a Chairman and was CEO of American Information Systems Inc. (AIS), later known as Election Systems & Software, a computerized voting machine manufacturer jointly owned by McCarthy Group, LLC and the Omaha World-Herald company.  On March 15, 1995, Hagel resigned from the board of AIS as he intended to run for office. Michael McCarthy, the parent company’s founder, was Hagel’s campaign treasurer. Until at least 2003, he retained between $1 million and $5 million in stock in Election Systems & Software's parent company, the McCarthy Group.

When Powell dodged Dave's qualification question with this string of irrelevancies:

GEN. POWELL: I think there are a number of reasons.... From there, he went to other things in life. He supported President Reagan in his run for office and as a result of that, he received an appointment as Deputy Director of the Veterans Administration. To show you the kind of courage this guy has and what he believes in, he quit after one year because he felt the Veterans Administration was not doing a good job for veterans and he couldn’t take that. He went back to private life, started a cellular company. In those days, it was something rather remarkable and new, made a fortune, did very, very well, and he continued to serve. And while he was running that cellular company, he also was president of the USO which was in trouble.

....He also has been co-chairman of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board. He’s also on the defense policy board. This is a gentleman who knows all of these issues in depth. 

...Dave's failure to follow-up on executive experience was unforgivable.

If I didn't know better, I'd think J-Rubb really didn't care about Senator Hagel's executive experience. But that couldn't be. I'll hear no cynical suggestion that J-Rubb is disloyal to the facts.

Tennessee Pride

Glenn Reynolds' bald brother in arms speaks:

NASHVILLE, Tenn.- Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security has suspended the handgun carry permit of a local man who threatened to "start killing people" to protect his Second Amendment right.

In a statement released Friday officials said they had suspended the handgun carry permit of James Yeager, CEO of Tactical Response based on "material likelihood of risk of harm to the public".

On Thursday, a video of Yeager angrily claiming he would "start killing people" if President Barack Obama moved forward with gun control measures began to go viral on the internet.

"The number one priority for our department is to ensure the public's safety. Mr. Yeager's comments were irresponsible, dangerous, and deserved our immediate attention. Due to our concern, as well as that of law enforcement, his handgun permit was suspended immediately. We have notified Mr. Yeager about the suspension today via e-mail. He will receive an official notification of his suspension through the mail," Commissioner Bill Gibbons said.

The professorial cracker is of course silent on his pro-gun pal, although he found the time for a topical "Helen Thomas is old" joke.

Let's You and Him Fight

Jonah Goldberg, in his latest incarnation as Dr. Doughlittle, channels his pale mate, Derbyshire, in imagining the slaughter of Africans:

The news that an entire family of elephants was slaughtered by poachers in Kenya is depressing. I’m a big squish when it comes to charismatic megafauna, the technical term for really awesome big animals: tigers, whales, dolphins, elephants, lions etc. But I’m also a conservative in the purest sense of the word. The conservation of these creatures is its own reward. They speak to our place in the universe, the majesty of God’s creation, the imagination of children, and countless other intangible factors that resonate from the Bible to literature to our own childhoods.  

To that end, while I’m not sure it makes a lot of sense for the U.S. government to get officially involved militarily, I would love to see some foundation hire some ex-special forces to lend a hand in the worthwhile effort of shooting poachers.

There's literally no problem that shooting foreigners won't cure!

Pantload would shootl the poachers himself, but he's 43 years old, his family can't afford the lost income, and his ass is sorry.  However, he's on the fence as to whether American fodder soldiers should give their lives to save his pachyderm pals. He can be convinced, but he's just not there yet. 

Note also that Pantload's reverence is reserved for those awesome beasts he doesn't eat and/or which can't dine upon him for logistical reasons.  God's majesty and our place in the universe aren't reflected in future bacon cheeseburgers or human residents of Third World.

Grand Old Police Blotter: Three Generations of PaulSots Is Enough Edition

Another libertarian tosspot trying to avoid responsibility for his criminal offspring:

US Airways denied serving alcohol to the 19-year-old son of U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, and the grandson of former presidential candidate Ron Paul, who was arrested Saturday morning at Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
...
When the plane landed about 10:49 a.m., Paul was charged with consuming beer/wine underage, disorderly conduct and being intoxicated and disruptive.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Lt. Blake Hollar said the teen was possibly served alcohol on the plane, but a US Airways spokesman said Monday that wasn’t the case.

“It is important to note that William Hilton Paul was not served alcohol onboard his US Airways flight from Lexington to Charlotte this past Saturday,” said Todd Lehmacher, via email.

Rand Paul’s office issued a brief statement: “Sen. Paul is a national public figure and subject to scrutiny in the public arena. However, as many parents with teenagers would understand, his family should be afforded the privacy and respect they deserve in a situation such as this.”

The privacy Paul and his family deserve is zero.  The little PaulSot was disruptive and abusive in a public arena, either on an airline or in an airport.  Neither Billy Paul nor his old man have done anything to earn anyone's respect, ever.

Punk III even tried to avoid arrest by dropping his dad's job as Senator.  At a minimum, Senator Paul needs to confirm whether he authorized his son's claim of congressional immunity.

Roger's One Sentence Review

Agenda 21, by Glenn Beck and Harriett Parke: If Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote an Amish romance novel after suffering a traumatic brain injury, it would be better than this.

Fun and Fungibility

Apparently ATM cards provided for public assistance can be used at ATM machines which happen to be located inside strip clubs, liquor stores and bars, at least in the Empire State.  And the pecksniffers are pecksniffing:

“This is morally scandalous,” said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. “I have nothing against strip clubs, but that’s not what benefits are for. I don’t blame [recipients]. If you are poor, it’s a crummy life and you want to have a drink or see a naked woman. I blame the people who are in charge of this.”

The New York Post sniffs that those who use their ATM cards at "jiggle joints" and "gay dive bars" could have chosen to withdraw funds from wholesome BofA branches just down the street.

Don't tell the New York Post or the Catoads, but the same folks could have cashed out at the BofA teller and then taken the cash to the titty bar next door.

Just Remember

Everyone who is permitted to address you today on the idiot box regarding the "Fiscal Cliff" legislation has just had his or her top marginal tax rate increased, at least theoretically.

Calibrate accordingly.

Update:  Edited for clarity.