Bob and Jerry in The Onion

From the latest issue of The Onion:


LOS ANGELES—Bill Walton, the former NBA Most Valuable Player and popular current NBA broadcaster, spent the entire running time of Tuesday night's Milwaukee Bucks–Los Angeles Lakers game lavishing praise and affection on his son Luke, a Lakers small forward.


"Just look at my big boy Luke standing tall and proud," Walton said during the visiting team introductions, ignoring the on-screen graphics displaying the career stats of Bucks All-Star guard Michael Redd. "While my mentor, shaman, and spirit guide John Wooden taught me 99.999 percent of almost everything I knew about the greatest sport in the world, Luke taught me everything else—and even more about that greatest game of all—the ceaseless jubilant dance of the great ever-turning mandala of Life. Truly, the boy is father to the man. The boy is father to the man."


"Nice pass!" Walton added, as Luke found himself boxed in at the post and kicked the ball back out to the top of the key, where Lamar Odom's jump shot put the Lakers up 11-9. "Nice pass indeed."


"It does my old heart good to see Luke keep on truckin' in this big old City of Angels, where I made such fond memories in a different era and learned for myself, like the great poet Bob Dylan once asked a heartbroken nation, how many roads a man must walk down before they could call him a man," Walton continued, as the second quarter of play began with the score already an astounding 67-44 in favor of the Lakers. "Yes, I may indeed be suffering from a 'touch of gray,' as the great Jerry Garcia once said, but with the sight of my pride, my joy, and my only true immortality before me, I will get by."

Our President Actually Said This

"I think any time you murder somebody, you're a criminal."

VH Hanson: "These are not dark days: these are great days"

Victor D. Hanson on Iraq:


So let me quote Winston Churchill of old about the gift of our present ordeal:


"These are not dark days: these are great days--the greatest days our country has ever lived."


Never more true than today.


Several hundred thousand Iraqis might disagree.

"May"?

"You may think that I am obsessed with Israel and the Middle East."


-- Marty "thank god my wife's loaded" Peretz

Daniel Menaker Gently Spanks Powerline

Be careful, Mr. Menaker.


Perhaps the Senior VP and Executive Editor-in-Chief of Random House is under the impression that the Powerline fellas are merely charming -- if bland -- grassroots pundits from the Midwest. He could be forgiven for thinking that "Minnesota nice" still exists -- even though it's as dead as Paul Wellstone.


And, yes, we admire his attempt to rehibilitate their crappy writing.


"Marvellous" is an alternate spelling of the word, favored by some wordfreaks like me, and Anglophiles, and those who generally like to double the consonant--for the sake of a vestigial eye-brain pronunciation connection--when allowed (as in "rivetted").


But Mr. Menaker, please consider this alternative approach: Don't bother! When Powerline wrote of "a man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius," they were not referring to Al Gore.

Dobbs Is Crazy, Auletta. Deal With It.

Ken Auletta:


[Lou] Dobbs's actual politics are not easily categorized, and his book, like his nightly program, contains opinions that are both satisfying and infuriating to the right and the left. On Dobbs's office wall is a framed drawing with a note from Kurt Vonnegut: 'You, as the only big-time television personality capable of not only feeling but experiencing sorrow for American working stiffs, are our hero.' The left, to which Vonnegut belongs, can embrace Dobbs for his opposition to big corporations and his support for a higher minimum wage, national health insurance, and abortion rights. The right likes him for his views on immigration, political correctness, gun control, the United Nations, and all efforts to limit American sovereignty. Dobbs believes that the middle class, which he has described as being composed of two hundred and fifty million Americans, is taken for granted, an argument that could be challenged by those who point to the growth of middle-class entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare, or to the unwillingness of elected officials to offend this constituency by curbing entitlements.

This is disingenuous.


Let's look at Dobbs's resume:


-- "[I]t is hardly a secret that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is something akin to a Soviet-style aggregation"


-- He uncritically quotes the Heritage Foundation


-- Pretends that Iran is this close to a nuclear bomb


-- Loves the Minutemen


-- Is a jingoistic bastard


-- Not too sure about evolution


-- Believes that Jews don't celebrate any holidays in December


Perhaps it makes for a juicier article for Dobbs to be portrayed as something other than a right wing loon, but that's not really the case.


(Thanks MM)

Q: Why Is Jon Chait More of a Loser Than Don Imus?

A: Because at least Imus's stupid ideas were his own.


TNR's Chait, yesterday:


So allow me to propose the unthinkable: Maybe, just maybe, our best option is to restore Saddam Hussein to power. ... Hussein, however, has a proven record in that department. It may well be possible to reconstitute the Iraqi army and state bureaucracy we disbanded, and if so, that may be the only force capable of imposing order in Iraq.


Don Imus, almost a year ago:


We'd be much better off if we were dealing with somebody there who we knew, who we could reason with, get him to not shut the oil off, get him not to attack their neighbors, and stop torturing people. ... Well who better than Saddam Hussein?


Notes Ackerman, "Apparently, when you're "Frankie's" best homey, you can say that shit and not fear any reprisal at TNR."

Why Marty Peretz Blows, In One Sentence

Wow.


I am one of those who believes that Tom Wolfe is among the most penetrating and understandably literate social observers and social commentators of the age.

Need Help With IPod

We got a whole host of new stuff dumped on our Ipod over the weekend -- live Prince, Beatles, Zep, etc., but can't figure out how to transfer it to iTunes. (We've got the latest version -- 7.0.2. )


Anybody got ideas?


OH: If you'd be so kind, please e-mail 'em to misterbones - at - gmail dot com.


UPDATE: Many, many thanks to those who tried to help out -- JT, RS -- but as we explain to one correspondent, we blew it. We deleted 'em all.


800. Fucking. Songs.

Happy Thanksgiving Gubbins!

In an unrelated note, this is really funny.


Stop pissing on my motherfucking God and not lusting after my sweet, sexy legs.


Annie baby, if we weren't betrothed to K-Lo, we'd totally take you up on that offer of Coors Lite and, uh, you know.

Found Art

From Ace's musty joint* comes these delicious comments to his Altman post (sorry, no link):

Altman was another one of those guys who Hollywood thinks is great, and tells us is great, so we're supposed to think he's great.


But really, not so much. Much of Hollywood's product is just playing to itself. Like Altman. Like Aaron Sorkind or whatever his name is. It's like they're all making movies and shows for each other. It's so friggin' incestuous.


As an aside, I would like to meet the guy who came up with Vicodin. He can come over to my house and fuck my sister.


Posted by Barry at November 21, 2006 10:56 PM

The kicker:


Can you please link a picture of your sister?


Posted by Man Who Invented Vicodin at November 21, 2006 11:08 PM

*Ace, congrats on the new logo. It's a start! (Now, if you'd only learn to write/think)

President Bush Apparently Not Content to Limit Abuse of Media to U.S.; Foreign Press Fair Game, Too

Sweet Jesus.


Q I would like to ask you -- as you mentioned before, Indonesia now is growing toward democratization, and how do you think the process of democratization in Indonesia -- the progress of democratization is going? And I have a second question.


PRESIDENT BUSH: How many do you get to ask here in Indonesia?


Q Excuse me?


PRESIDENT BUSH: How many questions do you get to ask? (Laughter.) Keep firing away. You're just setting a bad example for the American press corps. (Laughter.)


Q Well, lots of Indonesians think that you have a hidden agenda going here --


PRESIDENT BUSH: Oh, yes?

Found in the Bowels of Crooked Timber: This Made Us Laugh So Fucking Hard

19. I’ve given up on everybody. Surely there’s no point in grownups continuing to read fiction. Time is short, there’s too much real stuff we still don’t understand but need to, Richard Dawkins is a better writer than any novelist; and if you’ve read Tolstoy, Flaubert and, yes, Henry James you’ve already learned all you’re going to about human nature from any novelist.


46. ...Note to “Richard Dawkins is a better writer than any novelist”—that is the most touching confession of an utter lack of aesthetic sensibility that I’ve ever seen. Don’t fret; it’s like you’re color-blind, or tone-deaf, or such.

We Will Do Kathryn Jean Lopez

From these posts, it's clear Miss Lopez needs a dose of the ol' lovemaking of the crow.


Because we a) care about the state of public discourse, b) are unimpeachably patriotic, c) would love to see Mitt run for Preznit, and d) are, at the moment, single, we will take one for the team.


Which should, at the very least, get us blogrolled by Atrios.

Thank God for Small Blessings!

InstaTesticle:


If there were any justice, [Cox & Forkum's] work would be in newspapers across America.

As Dan Riehl Would Say, "LOL!"

Peggy Noonan:


This is the path [Bush] will take to build his popularity and create a new legacy. If the Democrats let him.

A Question We Can't Answer

Reader's Digest -- a company that is up to its ears in debt -- was just sold for $1.6 billion, almost the exact price paid for Youtube.


WTF?

After Being Canned, Spencer Ackerman Finally Spanks TNR

Spencer Ackerman, famously fired from TNR last month -- "the irreconcilable ideological differences between myself and the top editors at the magazine have been clear to me for months" -- has finally gotten a few things off his chest.


Writing for his new employer, The American Prospect, he attacks TNR's "latest spineless Iraq editorial":

Among the most annoying of TNR tropes is the flight to meta-analysis as soon as the recognition dawns that the magazine can't win an argument. And here, it pains and saddens me to say, TNR embraces it like a security blanket. First, TNR concedes that nothing it can possibly desire is likely to occur: "The U.S. presence in Iraq will not last long. Perhaps this new political reality will serve as shock therapy, scaring Iraq's warring factions into negotiations that can prevent the worst sectarian warfare. But perhaps not." The "perhaps not" is an intellectual prophylactic: it changes the subject before one can ask what in the world the U.S. could tell the Sunnis and the Shiites that could make them believe that that their interests are better served by peace than by war. If TNR has any idea what it means by this, it has an obligation to say so. But -- and, my friends, I can tell you, because I went to those Thursday editorial meetings for years -- these people have no idea what they mean.



No matter. Then the magazine calls for super-duper diplomacy with Iraq's neighbors -- but the kind of diplomacy that rushes blood to TNR's crotch: "It, too, must be brutal: It must include threats and promises, alliances and coalitions -- with the threat of being left out. A new campaign should lay the groundwork for agreements prior to the calling of a peace conference that would include Iraq's parties and its neighbors, as well as the United States, the European Union, and Russia." Hysterically, the magazine concedes in the next sentence that it has no idea what the endgame of that diplomacy ought to be -- or, in TNR-speak, "That's not clear." As long as we bloviate around the negotiating table, apparently, the magazine will be satisfied. (In this sense, TNR's posture is modeled after Bush's approach to North Korea.)

Then, finally, comes the coup de grace. Now that TNR has dispensed with its empty attempt to discuss what ought to be done about Iraq, it comes to the real question:

[A]s we pore over the lessons of this misadventure, we do not conclude that our past misjudgments warrant a rush into the cold arms of "realism." Realism, yes; but not "realism." American power may not be capable of transforming ancient cultures or deep hatreds, but that fact does not absolve us of the duty to conduct a foreign policy that takes its moral obligations seriously. As we attempt to undo the damage from a war that we never should have started, our moral obligations will not vanish, and neither will our strategic needs.

Please believe me when I say that this makes me want to cry, since I used to love working for TNR. But the magazine is setting itself up for making the same mistake over and over and over again. This is the emptiest of evasions -- a fetishization of "seriousness" without ever actually being serious. In one of my last pieces for them, I wrote that "Faced with a disastrous war, the most important consideration is not 'Were we wrong?' but 'Why were we wrong?' and 'How can we avoid being so wrong in the future?'" I begged TNR during my time there to address these last questions. But now it's dawned on me that my former friends never will.

Mitch McConnell: "We expect from them the same level of cooperation we extended to President Clinton."

Mitch McConnell, on Hugh Hewitt's show:


HH: Right. Senator McConnell, today, the New York Observer quotes Chuck Schumer, your colleague from New York, as saying that judges are the most important. One more justice would have made it a 5-4 conservative, hard-right majority for a long time. That won't happen. How do you respond to that?


MM: Well, judges are important. And we've gotten two Supreme Court justices. Both of them we expect to be solid conservatives in this current Congress. In addition to that, in spite of the fact that we haven't gotten every single judge, the overall vacancy rate is 5.7%, which is lower than at any time in recent memory. The vacancy rate actually is the lowest it's been in the last 20 years. So we have been able to get a lot of judges on the bench, and we expect to have the same kind of cooperation from them, that has previously been extended when we had divided government. Let me just give you some statistics. In the last two years of the last three presidents, all of which were in divided government, the Senate has confirmed on average 92 judicial nominees, including 17 circuit court nominees. So the precedent in recent years, when you have divided government, in the last two years of an administration of both parties, is that you are able to confirm a significant number of judicial nominees, including circuit court nominees. We expect from them the same level of cooperation we extended to President Clinton. We decided he'd been elected president, and we were not entitled to deny him all of his judges. Elections do have consequences, and in the last two years of the Clinton administration, when we had 55 Republicans in the Senate, we still confirmed over 70 of his judicial nominees, including 15 circuit court nominees. Now a lot of conservatives would say why did you do that. Well, the reason we did it, he won the election. And President Bush won the election, and we expect the same level of cooperation from them, as we gave them under similar circumstances. If we don't get it, let me just confirm again, Hugh, that in the Senate, everything is related to everything else. The minority has a lot of power in the Senate. This is not the House of Representatives. Everything will be linked to everything else. And if they're looking for cooperation from us in moving legislation on the floor, which they will need to be able to do anything, it's going to be tied to fair treatment of the President's judicial nominees.



The reality :


All this changed in 1996. Rather than openly challenge President Clinton's nominees on the floor, Republicans decided to deny them Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. Between 1996 and 2000, 20 of Bill Clinton's appeals-court nominees were denied hearings, including Elena Kagan, now dean of the Harvard Law School, and many other women and minorities. In 1999, Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch refused to hold hearings for almost six months on any of 16 circuit-court and 31 district-court nominations Clinton had sent up. Three appeals-court nominees who did manage to obtain a hearing in Clinton's second term were denied a committee vote, including Allen R. Snyder, a distinguished Washington lawyer, Clinton White House aide, and former Rehnquist law clerk, who drew lavish praise at his hearing -- but never got a committee vote. Some 45 district-court nominees were also denied hearings, and two more were afforded hearings but not a committee vote.


Even votes that did occur were often delayed for months and even years. In late 1999, New Hampshire Republican Bob Smith blocked a vote on 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals nominee Richard Paez for months by putting an anonymous hold on the nomination. When Majority Leader Trent Lott could no longer preserve the hold, Smith and 13 other Republicans tried to mount a filibuster against the vote, but cloture was voted and Paez easily confirmed. It had been over four years since his nomination.

We're Pretty Sure...

...that "Pencementum" won't enter the vernacular any time soon.


Thank. You. Jesus.

Isaac Chotiner, We Think We Love You

TNR:


...Lieberman is trying to boost his own importance by playing coy. He wouldn't "rule out switching parties largely because Tim Russert, the show's host, 'kept pressing me on it.'" Let's hope Russert doesn't press him next time on whether he rules out joining Al Qaeda.


Take that, Marty!

Uh, K-Lo...

Man, we knew she was dumb, but we assumed Lopez was at least familiar with the point of Photoshop.


But no.


Is it me? Besides being horrified at her blouse, couldn't any reasonable person conclude this was the real deal? Not the biggest deal, but if you're going to PhotoShop, gals, make it obvious or don't do it.

"I Admired Your Mom. I Don't Like Sittin' in the Back of the Bus, Either."

(more here)

The Last Thing We Wanted to Read on a Tuesday Morning...

...is this nausea-inducing sentence from Captain "Special" Ed:


In all my years, I have never understood the supposed charm of the Mile High Club.


Ew.

Good Christ

Raj reviews Borat for Pajamas Media and -- apparently just to arouse our ire -- throws in this non sequitur of a second graf:


It'’s not for nothing you have to sign a drawer full of legal protection agreements before you ever get to pitch a story to the likes of Stephen Spielberg or that all Lord Stephen'’s scripts are numbered and that you have to sign for them individually, if he deigns to let you read a copy.


Would it kill this jackass to spell "Steven" properly? (We won't even address his atrocious use of commas and the egregiously missing hyphen!)

But Do They Know About Our Loose Women and Love of Alcohol?

Noonan says that our "divided government" -- our two-party system -- "confuses our enemies."


What Dow Jones exec is she fucking?

This Makes Us Hot

Fill in the Blank

La Shawn:


"Let'’s speak plainly. Republicans got their bleep kicked Tuesday night."


Any guesses? We're going with ovaries.

Hugh Hewitt to Christopher Hitchens: "[Y]ou're an equal opportunity bigot."

Not that it matters:


HH: Christopher Hitchens, we'll continue to talk to you, and pray for you. And we'll talk to you next week.

Proof that Hitchens Can No Longer Hold His Liquor

"Kicking Ass"? Maybe Not.

Charles Pierce, 1. Rahm Emanuel, 0.

Howard Dean was right about Iraq before you were, and he was right about a 50-state electoral strategy before you were. Please feel free to mention both of these facts when they come to blow sunshine up your ass today.


Hehindeedy!

"I am so fucked."

Fuck You, Ledeen

Mr. Faster, Please:


And it could well be worse. Much worse. It's hard to think like Khamenei/Ahmadi-Nezhad/Zawahiri/Assad et al, but they surely see the scimitar of Allah lopping off W's head, and they will be encouraged to accelerate their drive for ultimate victory. It would not surprise me at all to see renewed attacks against Israel and against what is left of the government of Lebanon by Hezbollah and Hamas, and my heart breaks for the Iraqi people, who will undoubtedly be subjected to an intensified assault.


Yeah, Mike. Until the Dems took power everything was peaches 'n' cream in the Middle East.


What a dick. (Make yourself useful, Ledeen; find your daughter another job for which she lacks the qualifications.)

Shorter Steny Hoyer

(Via The Plank)


Toe the line, assholes, or hit the bricks.

Funniest Line of the Day (as of 7:33 a.m.)

From Hugh Hewitt:


President Bush will not flag in the pursuit of the war, and Senator Santorum is now available for a seat on the SCOTUS should one become available.


Can't. Breathe.


Laughing. So. Very. Hard.


UPDATE: You too, Bradrocket?

But as Far as We're Concerned...

...It's a lovely day.

Pajamas Media Gets Huge Scoop!

Ah, we kid. Gasbag Richard Miniter -- who looks to us like Orson Welles in his later, fatter, more unproductive years -- talks to Mary "I think these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists. And they're keeping ... their African-American brothers enslaved" Matalin.


Nice job, guys!


("The profession of a prostitute is the only career in which the maximum income is paid to the newest apprentice," said Booth, which -- if those wrinkles are anything to go by -- means it's time to trade that pay-for-play GOP skank in!)

It's Called Karma, Pal

Hewitt:


37 counties in Pennsylvania use the ESS & Ivotronic.


These machines are experiencing massive failures.


If you vote for one candidate, the opposing candidate lights up.


Rendell votes are counting for Swann. Santorum votes are counting for Casey and so on


County Boards of Elections or the PA Dept of State are refusing to take action.


They don’t see the disaster that is coming.


Teh Funny! But will we donate to the Santorum legal fund? Ah, no.

Voting

Our polling place was an absolute mess. Despite having voting there in 2004, we weren't on the rolls!


The lady next to us suspected foul play; we figured incompetence.


Eventually, we voted by affidavit and were assured that our vote would be counted. ("The cops take the ballots at the end of the day." Ah, that's reassuring!)


We picked Democrats across the board. Why? Cuz fuck the GOP.


Fuck 'em all.


YEP: "Hooray for Democracy! Now go stand in line (it’s probably raining, right?) and wait for forty-five minutes for a broken voting machine to pretend to “record” your “vote.”"

Rove: "The Washington Post coverage of Virginia is so elitist, it’s unbelievable."

Karl Rove on Hugh Hewitt's show:

HH: And Virginia, you’re confident about Allen? Because Democrats would have us believe that Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio are lost.


KR: Well, you know, it’s interesting. The Washington Post, you’ve got to remember the mindset. Most of the people who are commenting on these races live inside the Beltway, and get the coverage of the Washington Post. The Washington Post coverage of Virginia is so elitist, it’s unbelievable. They ran an article, which was one of the most revealing pieces of journalism I’ve seen. They ran it in the Style section, but the fact that the editors of the Post would consider this useful material….it contrasted Northern Virginia, NVA, with what they called the rest of Virginia, ROVA. And they said that language in Northern Virginia meant something different than the rest of Virginia. For example, they said in Northern Virginia, when you said the word lab, you were referring to your dog, your family dog. Whereas in the rest of Virginia, use the word lab, you were talking about the place where you cooked up methamphetamine.


HH: Wow.

Here's the article that got Rove so worked up. It's pretty thin gruel.


Why was Rove reading the Styles section anyway?

Ed Driscoll, Not So Swift

Ed Driscoll got pissed because Chris Dickey -- son of James -- wrote


Sunday was judgment day for Saddam, who probably will hang. Tuesday will be judgment day for Republicans. What will happen to them afterward, well, we'’ll have to wait and see.


Man the torpedoes! In a tizzy, Driscoll replies


Is Dickey sorta...kinda...almost...but..not quite...tacitly implying that he'd like to see Republicans hanged?


Ah, no, Ed, he's not. And, fyi, our little behatted friend, when we say "fuck Rumsfeld," most of us have no desire to anally penetrate the Defense Secretary.


Yeah, expect maybe John Boehner.

Vote Democrat, Please

Bob's Old Crush Recovers from Cancer

Says the AP:


Marianne Faithfull has made a full recovery from breast cancer and plans to resume a postponed world tour, her spokesman said Monday.


The article mentions that Faithfull "gained fame in the 1960s as the girlfriend of ... [Mick] Jagger," but neglects to mention who she spurned:


She turned to America's bard for a follow-up single, covering Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." Although it bombed, Faithfull had the opportunity to hang out with Dylan at the Savoy Hotel. She reports that he slouched at a typewriter and began pecking a massive poem about her. When he learned she was about to marry, he tried to talk her out of it. His words fell on deaf ears, however. When he couldn't talk her into bed, he reportedly "turned into Rumpelstiltskin" and ripped up the poem.

Your Weekly Dose of Gubbins

We had a fairly big week here in Shandyville; according to the sitemeter, we've just gone north of 98,000 visitors. More importantly, according to this search on ask.com, we're experts on how elephants fuck!


Thus, a la the Oscars, we must give thanks.


So, La Gubbins, thanks! In all seriousness, if we ever lost you as a reader -- if, say, we wrote something mean about cherry kisses -- we'd probably hang up the spikes.


AND: ...yes, Twisted Dog, too, for whom this haiku is dedicated:



Autumn brings hot chicks
To cold hipster Williamsburg
More Thai places. Fuck!


-- Li Po Wang, 456 b.c.



ALSO: If you like hot chicks, Bellhaven beer and pong-pong, click here.

Tristero Has a Question for La Shawn Barber

You really care to defend that the marriages Haggard performed, that the pedophile priests performed are more authentic than a civil marriage by say, a Justice of the Peace who worships the Flying Spaghetti Monster but doesn't go around banging underage boys or whores?


Let's see: a three-letter, one syllable adverb denoting the affirmative...

"Bloggers are great."

Here's what the bloggers do. They notice something in the news or something they've observed that maybe the "traditional" media hasn't covered or is spending much time on. But they think it is significant. So, they give the story a 2nd life (or first). And they talk about it. And others talk about it. Before you know it, it is leading the news.


And of course, the most successful -- in my opinion, are the ones who constantly update their blogs. And these bloggers are just starting.


Watch over the next couple years to how influential they will become. I like the Note, instapundit, taranto, many more. Bloggers are great.

-- Jimmy Orr, White House Internet Director

So That's Why He Wears the Hat!

"Are You French?"

Charles Pierce, 1. Laura Bush, 0.

You are not a geneticist. You are not an epidemiologist. You are not a military strategist or a constitutional lawyer or the Manners Police of the national discourse. You're a librarian from Bugtussle. Thanksgiving is on the way. Go home and make sure the liquor cabinets are locked.


A. Fucking. Men.

Teh Civility

The Green/Rainbow Party candidate, in particular, never fails to bring a chuckle. Her earnestness combined with her kooky ideas are right from central casting for someone who represents the Green/Rainbow Party. While it is beneath the nature of this blog to mock anyone’s physical appearance, it is my journalistic responsibility to note that she has a gap in her front teeth that reminds this viewer of Leon Spinks.


-- Dean Barnett


Whether she's faking the gap is, of course, anyone's guess.

Roger L. Simon is a Smart Man

Why are Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann still employed? I mean they've had their chance, haven't they? It's been a while. Can't MSNBC come up with something better than that?


-- August 15, 2006


NEW YORK -- Things are looking up at MSNBC, with the channel registering double-digit gains in viewers and adults 25-54 for October while Fox News Channel led all news networks for the 250th straight week.


Leading the charge was "Countdown With Keith Olbermann," which jumped 67% in viewership and 61% in the adults 25-54 demographic compared with October 2005. "Countdown" averaged 637,000 viewers (including 233,000 in the demo) for the month, according to data released Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research. It's nowhere near "The O'Reilly Factor" (which led all of cable with 2.1 million viewers) but it beat CNN's "Paula Zahn Now" in the demo and narrowly missed tying it in viewership.


-- November 1, 2006

Make Sure Your Words Are Soft and Sweet

I'm looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can't find it.


-- Ralph Peters, March 5, New York Post


Iraq is failing. No honest observer can conclude otherwise.


-- Ralph Peters, today

TS on the Fritz

Anybody know what's going on?


(Perhaps a cyber jihad attack?)


UPDATE: Whatever that was appears to be