Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan
Door to door Barbra Streisand concerts.
Ba-dum-bump.
Knock-knock-knock. Good afternoon, madam. Peeeeepoooool…peeepoool who need peeeeepooool. And then $28,500 appears, as if by magic.
What does that even MEAN, anyway? It’s always bothered me. Who the hell doesn’t need people, and what’s so damned lucky about it?
Eh.
Tomorrow afternoon, they’re dryrunning the PowerPoint presentation I’ve been working on this week. Problem is, I haven’t really been working on it. So please enjoy this small sample of gratuitous snark while I, you know, do my damn job for a day.
September 17, 2008 — 5:46 am
Comments: 56
First rule of propaganda
First rule of sales, too: know your target.
The Obama team seems to be selling its product over and over again to hip young urbanites. Guys — you win! We concede that demographic! Good luck getting ’em to turn out on election day.
Now you need to go for a chunk of the rest of the electorate.
Strategically, there were so many things wrong with Obama’s so-called Still ad, which pokes fun at McCain for being too old and out of it to use email — even before it turned out John McCain actually lubim some email, but is too damaged from years of torture to type it himself.
As of today, the ad is still up. Which poses the brain hurty question: is it deliberate? Is this Team O’s concept of how you play political hardball?
Wow. When did the Stupid Party get so lucky, and the Evil Party get so stupid?
Take this picture, now. It’s an outtake from a cover shoot for the Atlantic (to think that magazine once published Mark Twain, back in the day when rumors of his demise were etctera). Not really an outtake, it’s the one the photographer wanted to use.
After getting that shot, Greenberg asked McCain to “please come over here” for one more set-up before the 15-minute shoot was over. There, she had a beauty dish with a modeling light set up. “That’s what he thought he was being lit by,” Greenberg says. “But that wasn’t firing.”
What was firing was a strobe positioned below him, which cast the horror movie shadows across his face and on the wall right behind him. “He had no idea he was being lit from below,” Greenberg says. And his handlers didn’t seem to notice it either. “I guess they’re not very sophisticated,” she adds.
That, or they don’t give a shit. Look, sweetie, we aren’t confused about which party is running a scarred-up crusty old bastard and which nominated an attractive, innocent young puppy. Your job is much, much harder. You have to convince us that this crazy-evil angry old sonofabitch isn’t exactly the sort of thing we like in a president.
And remember: this is America we’re talking, not one of those pussy Yoorpian countries.
More on Jill Greenberg, the photographer who took that shot, from the American Digest. We’re classmates! (Well, not really — she went to RISD a decade after I did). In addition to taking a stealth gotcha! shot of McCain, she had some Photoshop Phun of her own with the outtakes. That goes beyond grossly unprofessional and flirts with actionable breach of contract. Here’s hoping you starve, Jill!
Update: Ace has a thread going on this. Someone in the comments, with the euphonious moniker Boobenfloppinschtoppin reminds us that Jill Greenberg is the photographer who caused controversy a couple of years ago for this:
So what is Jill Greenberg doing? She is taking babies, toddlers under three years old, stripping them of their clothes and then provoking them to various states of emotional distress, anger, rage etc. — so that she can then take photos of them this way to “illustrate her personal beliefs.”
Remember that? I sure do. The photographer/blogger quoted above, by the way, got the full liberal treatment for his pains: lies, smears, threats and calls to his boss. I revise and extend: Jill, here’s hoping you die in a fire!
UPUPDATE: by popular demand — aww, I’m just shitting you. Nobody demanded this, I just wanted to hear it again. I think I got ’em all: the complete cast of proposed male action characters from MST3K’s Space Mutiny:
[audio:bigmclargehuge.mp3]
September 15, 2008 — 7:32 am
Comments: 99
Photoshop Phun
Bonus weekend shameless partisan hackery! Click for rehue and uplargenment.
I’m not sure about the tagline. I mean, I think you should own your weaknesses whenever possible, but the double negative is a little brain-hurty.
Alternative: “Who’s bringing cool back to what, now?”
Moar.
I really hesitated over this one. It is, generally speaking, a really rotten idea to mention death within five miles of a presidential candidate. So please, dear respected members of the Secret Service, interpret the Valley Girl sentence structure as an amusing colloquialism and not a reference to actual mortality or even harm.
In conclusion, don’t lock up my ass. Thank you.
September 13, 2008 — 11:43 am
Comments: 76
It burrrrnnnnssss usssssssss
You know who really showed me something? Hillary Clinton, that’s who. I’m serial.
Her whole life was a preparation for this race. Big Feminist on Campus weds fat-face smarmy hick from Arkansas — Arkansas! Arkansas, man. There’s not even no crack-heads in Arkansas. She stoically squeezes out a kid to fluff her ‘regular jill’ resume (do you doubt it?) and plays First Lady of Upper Possumnuts until the unbearable weight of that fucking smile nearly breaks her.
Life is one humiliating kick in the crotch after another. Perpetual campaigning (for Him). Perpetual scandal. Always on guard. Always running. Always catching the shit and cleaning up the messes. And then finally…at long last…after sixty years of baking the fucking cookies — IT’S! HER! TURN!!!!!
And here comes Hopichangelo who totally steals her shit. OMGWTF???? Dude is practically jailbait. And then that moose-humping beauty queen elbows in on her first-woman-ever cred, the only thing that makes a Hillary candidacy special. Bitch stole her woman card!!!
We’ve all asked ourselves whether we could take the five years of torture and captivity that McCain survived (‘tsha! No). Could you take this? To have yearned and labored and suffered humiliations and chased one single prize for sixty long years, and just as your fingers close around it, it is slapped away. Could you put on the pants suit and the happy face and go out there and be a good trouper about it?
Nuh uh. Not me. Hillary Clinton is a better man than I.
September 12, 2008 — 10:43 am
Comments: 47
I love this election so much, I want to marry it!
“You know, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”
“You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called ‘change,'” Obama continued, “it’s still gonna stink after eight years.”
–The Greatest Orator of Our Time
One weekend, many years ago, without any warning, my employer built a speed bump at the entrance to the employee parking lot. It was a beaut, too; uncommonly deep and high. Like a ski slope. Sadly, there was no time to paint it danger orange. I came whipping in the back way in my two-seater weaselmobile, hit that thing at speed and shot into the air like a free bird. I had just enough time to look down at the ground in astonishment and think, “I’m airborne! Why am I airborne?”
So, Senator Obama, I feel yer. You do not like this place you are at, and you don’t know how you got here. Both Obama and John McCain have used the “lipstick on a pig” line before without controversy. It’s a fairly common expression. But the audience reaction makes it clear they drew a connection to Sarah “Lipstick on a Pitbull” Palin this time. So he doubles down with a “stinky fish” remark? Oy!
Of course he didn’t mean it that way. If he’d had time to mull it over, he wouldn’t dare. But Sarah Palin is worrying him like a loose tooth, and she plucked the remark right out of his head for him. There’s a reason pshrinks make patients free-associate: sometimes we blurt things that have meaning.
Like maybe Mister Hopey von Changerstein has…woman issues.
Update: well, well, well. According to the first comment on this post at Pajamas Media, Obama used “lipstick on a pig” in more speeches than one, and the crowd reacted in a way that made it clear they made the Palin connection. The commenter gives links to two YouTubes, which I can’t reach from work. If he’s described them accurately, then Hopé Changelio didn’t just blurting out something foolish. He meant it. Correction: oops. My bad. This is why I shouldn’t post until I see the YouTube. It was the “flipping the bird” thing he apparently did twice (and in exactly the same spot in the speech).
September 10, 2008 — 8:56 am
Comments: 37
Meltdown
There are few things in all the world I enjoy more than watching someone come completely unstrung in public. If that makes me a bad person…well, duh. What part of “weasel” was unclear to you?
I am frankly amazed at how prickly and snippy Obama is about Sarah Palin, and with what little provocation. I sincerely thought he was a better politician than this. Any political adviser worth a damn knows that you don’t let your Number One scrap with their Number Two, so he’s apparently off the leash and winging it. Bad for him, an all-you-can eat buffet of delightful schadenfreude for me.
I know. The graphic doesn’t make a lick of sense in black and white. Click it to download a color version — and steal, my pretties! Steal like the wind!
September 9, 2008 — 11:10 am
Comments: 59
Community organizing his own ass right into a forked stick
Well, well…the Chosen One has awfully thin skin, it turns out. Mustn’t mock. (I didn’t realize Obama’s brand of ‘community organizing’ included working with ACORN, the ‘get out the vote’ group that gets out the votes of dead people and illegal immigrants. More detail from Michelle Malkin in National Review Online today).
Obama’s early and broad appeal was largely because he was so gosh darned likeable. Even your humble Weasel bought into it. I was, like, “they love their guy, I hate our guy, we can’t win them all…let’s give them this one.”
That began to unravel long before I caught Palinmania. The disastrous trip to Europe was his first big stumble (dude, you don’t cross the Atlantic and trash talk America).
And then…Joe Biden! Fucking Slow Joe Biden, whom I have despised ever since I watched him put my favorite jurist’s tits through the wringer (Thomas, not Bork). What did that pick say? “I know what America needs, and it’s pretty much somebody exactly like McCain, but without the War Hero stuff.” Bad, bad mistake. I don’t think he could possibly have run with Hillary, but he SO TOTALLY should’ve picked somebody as new and interesting and Hopey Changey as he is, to maintain the Illusion. A gassy old DC wheeze like Biden is tragically wrong for the part.
And now it looks like Obama has a glass jaw. VP candidates brawl. It’s what they do. P candidates don’t respond. It’s what they don’t — if they don’t want to look weak and defensive.
O-pollo voluntarily came down from O-lympus. Ho ho ho. How’s that ‘mortality’ thing working for you, pal?
September 5, 2008 — 9:36 am
Comments: 79
Itch: scratched
Ahhhhh…a little higher…a little to the right. Ohhhhhh, yesssssss…that’s the spot!
Our little rootin’ tootin’ moose-shootin’ five-foot-nothing hockeymom beautyqueen done real good, didn’t she?
Okay, here’s what I don’t get. The moment I heard Sarah Palin was the nominee last week, I did what every self-respecting card-carrying noun-hyphen-adverb does in 2008 — I ran right to Google and plugged her in. I read up on her, old and new. Pro and con. Then I did a Google Images search and gave her the hairy eyeball. I wanted to hear her speak, so I watched footage of a debate performance in the Alaska gubenatorial race. I spent maybe an hour at it, and then I pretty much made up my mind.
So when I watched the repeat of her speech on C-SPAN this morning, it was exactly what I expected. I’m not being self-congratulatory. I don’t send my dad a Father’s Day card without Googling to make sure I spell his name right and I assume everyone who works with words and images does the same.
So how the hell could our mainstream media be caught so flat-footed by her performance? We know they read D-KOS, because they helped spread that stupid lying trash about Trig Palin. So, like, we know they have computers with internet. How could they POSSIBLY not read a little news while they’re at it? (You know what this means: other than the echo chamber of the op/ed pages, they don’t consume their own product. No wonder it’s such shite).
Seriously, how come nobody in the fucking media spent ten fucking minutes in the last fucking week doing their fucking jobs? See, it’s not just about bias. We also hate you because you’re HUGELY AND GIGANTICALLY INCOMPETENT. You SUCK. God. You’re too lazy and stupid to be decent partisan hacks, never mind proper journalists.
Well, thank Christ for that, I guess.
September 4, 2008 — 8:30 am
Comments: 57
Barbarians heart Sarah
I cannot beLIEVE how many pundits I like and admire (I’m looking at you, Charles Krauthammer) have got it wrong on Sarah Palin. Mark my words: she was a brilliant pick. You guys are overlooking one very important fact: I really, really like her.
Hear that? That fluttering sound? That’s the sound of ten thousand DC insiders’ eyeballs rolling in their sockets. “Really,” they harumph, “there ought to be some kind of aptitude test before we let just anybody vote.”
But, see, what you Beltway people don’t realize is, you’re freaks. Really, I love you to pieces — the pundits and politicians on my side, anyway — but you’re politics nerds. You give us (speaking in my capacity as honorary straight American here) the jim-jams.
I can’t even watch the Sunday talking head shows because you’re all like, “well, don’t forget what Ed Muskie said in the ’72 Iowa caucuses!” and everybody busts out laughing because somehow all you Poindexters know what that means. You’re like weird Al Gore zooming across the stage barking “Dingell/Norwood!” It’s enough to make mush-mouth patrician George Bush look like an ordinary guy.
It’s not just that you can reel off more politics off the top of your head than any sane person ought; it’s that you give off that creepy Rain Man vibe doing it.
So why do we read books by geeks like you? Why are you all we elect to office? Because that’s all that’s on offer.
So here comes Sarah Palin — who totally doesn’t make our freak-dar jingle-jangle-jingle — and we’re psyched. Vetting be damned; I already know Sarah Palin. I’ve known several of them.
Cute girl. Likeable. Smart. Did her homework. Partied a little, not too much. Hunted with her dad every deer season. Played on the varsity basketball team. Fierce competitor, but nice about it. Fell in love with a cute guy in High School. Got married and had a cute family. Underneath that healthy, happy, all-American façade is…a genuinely good and decent person. It happens. Honestly. That “quiet desperation” thing is mostly reserved for the arty types.
Plus — Alaska! Man, you’d have to be something as dim as a professional pundit to think Alaska is a liability. Alaska is a real life slice of the mythical Old West. I was in High School while they were building the pipeline and throwing money at people to move up there; we used to dream of going to Alaska. (One of my friends actually went and thought it was a bit of a shit-hole, but never mind — Alaska!)
So, yeah, Sarah Palin could disappoint me yet. But don’t count on it. And don’t think you’ll put anybody off by pointing out how much she’s not one of you sad Beltway twerps.
September 2, 2008 — 10:11 am
Comments: 8
I can’t decide…
DENVER (Reuters) – Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.
The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos’ National Football League team plays.
Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington’s Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party’s nomination for president.
He will stride out to a raised platform to a podium that can be raised from beneath the floor.
The show should provide a striking image for the millions of Americans watching on television as Obama delivers a speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.
Then he’ll hold aloft his magic sword and proclaim, “by the power
of Grayskull, I HAVE THE POWER!” And then lightning
shoots out of his ass.
August 27, 2008 — 4:21 am
Comments: 42