Hey, AIG found out a way to carry out a stunning public relations ploy by giving up their bonuses, while totally paying themselves big bucks as "retention bonuses"! Ad-mir-able! Deb Cupples discusses it here.
At Angry Bear, rdan quotes self-serving statements of AIG execs made to FT, in which they explain how retention bonuses are way better.
Bill O’Reilly, as you may recall, doesn’t believe that any homeless veterans
exist in this country as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now this may seem to contradict observable reality, but you have to
remember, this is Bill’s opinion, which is worth millions of
dollars a year to FoxNews, thus making it one of the finest opinions
that money can buy.
Our co-blog Buck Naked Politics rounded up blogger commentary on the trampling/stampeding death one Wal-Mart employee as a result of over-enthusiastic Wal-Mart shoppers here. Mr. Swift has a somewhat different take. Like William Kristol, who urged Bush to pardon wiretappers and torturers (see our nutshell summary), Mr. Swift would like to see Bush pardon the Wal-Mart shoppers and---following Kristol's lead---award the offenders the Medal of Freedom.
"After following his work for a few years, it seems fair to say that
Pastor Swank’s default discursive mode will soon be indistinguishable
in tone from the ravings on a bottle of Dr. Bronner’s soap." (Gavin M., Happy Swanksgiving)
"Blatt is the kind of guy that, had he been born a turkey..., he would have spent his formative years
dreaming of growing up to be a spokesman for Butterball. (Clif, The True Meaning of Thanksgiving)
"I don’t know about you, but I’d rather convert to Mormonism than attend
a Republican punk rock concert or watch a conservative performance
artist perform. And what would a conservative performance artist do
exactly? Smear her chastely-clothed body in crude oil while chanting
“Drill, Baby, Drill”?" (Clif, Young, Dumb, Hung, and Full of _____)
Without presuming to argue the religious questions addressed in the post, we were very interested in the conclusion of Poputonian's post at Rumproast, which takes a sharply incised line on the GOP conception of the free market.
The reason we started this blog is that when we read something like this ourselves, we can't think of anything to say. As Roy Edroso says:
It's like that scene in Post Office
where Bukowski's finally had enough of that co-worker who's always
muttering insults, and wheels on him only to realize that the guy is
lost in a private fog and has no awareness of him or anything else
around him. It takes a lot of the fight out of you.
by Blue Stockings | First, check out his opinion piece at Politico, where he mentions her along with other "quiet" GOP reformers busily enforcing those ends-in-themselves for the unreflecting "thinkers" of the GOP, small government and lower taxes.
I am struck by how many of my colleagues around the country were quietly
advancing the kinds of reforms and conservative principles that
Washington politicians would do well to emulate.
It takes no particular perspicacity to note
that our holidays-without-the-holy came about not through the
secularizing efforts of "Northerners and atheists," the gangs of
post-doctoral post-modernists slavering to gnaw on the soft edges of
Christendom, but through the commercializing efforts of the various and
sundry pillars, columns, flutes, and scrolls of American state
capitalism. The gradual erosion of "Merry Christmas" in favor of "Happy
Holidays" doesn't mark a moral retreat in the face of religious
multiculturalism or anti-Christian laïcité. It marks the commerce-driven extension of a shopping season,
one that now extends from before Halloween to the post-New Year sales.
"Happy Holidays" isn't culturally inclusive; it's commercially
inclusive.
Which --- as the sinners of Hadleyburg remarked in a slightly different context --- has got the Hallmark on it.
Nutshell version: Bush could perform a real service to me and other discredited neocons by (1) lying some more; and (2) pardoning the worst offenses of his minions so that no one connected with his administration can discredit us further.
by Damozel | Like Nora Ephron, I am practically in love with Chris Matthews despite
his many, many flaws and excesses. Watching him when he isn't talking but listening causes a thrill to go up my leg. So I am trying to decide how I feel
about this.
by Blue | Procrustean economics major and so-called "libertarian" Megan McArdle has attracted more than her usual heaping helping of well-deserved loathing and contumely. I have collected a few of them here for posterity.
by Blue Stockings | I can't stand Sarah Palin, but the squeamishness over Turkeygate doesn't sit well with me. I said why here, but IOZ says it better. Thanksgiving Day seems like the right time to make this point.
Thanksgiving celebrates the day that Pilgrims and Indians sat down to eat together before the gay secularist
Indians divided this country and tried to foist their atheism and
savage decadent culture on the God-fearing pilgrims.
by Blue Stockings | I don't think so. But it's a meme that's emerging since the Lieberman thing and the media are running it for all it's worth. Here's a piece by James Kirchick in The New York Daily News to prove it, all "Obama isn't afraid of the raging, impotent netroots because Joe Lieberman blah blah netroots furious rah rah blah dee blah blee." Read it yourself.
by Damozel | ....wielding Jonah Goldberg's hilarious, oxymoronic diatribe as her personal weapon of choice. As chronicled by Gavin M. of Sadly, No!, this tale is (partly, though only partly) the tale "of her New York rampage, baying through the streets with book
awave."
by Teh Puppet Mistress | Via Politics After 50, this link to a site where you can tell them what you think of them. You can write your own letter or use theirs.
But hers is awesome. "I just had a certain bone to pick, so I picked it," she says modestly. It's good all the way through, but here are my favorite bits:
The United States has some serious problems: an ugly war, a shaky
economy, a bad government (on the way out, at last). It's been a rough
eight years. So of course it must be someone's fault, and Daniel Henninger has a simple explanation: blame the atheists.
Especially blame the atheist's successful war on Christmas. He says, "A
nation whose people can't say 'Merry Christmas' is a nation capable of
ruining its own economy."
by Blue Stockings | Palin is interviewed. Turkeys are slaughtered in the background. I'm just not sure how to interpret that. Or rather, I can't improve on HuffPost.
Some videos you just have to see to believe. On Thursday, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin appeared in Wasilla in order to pardon a local turkey in anticipation of Thanksgiving. This proved to be a slightly absurd but ultimately unremarkable event. But what came next was positively surreal. After the pardon Palin proceeded to do an interview with a local TV station while the turkeys were being SLAUGHTERED in the background!! Seemingly oblivious to the gruesomeness going on over her shoulder, she carries on talking for over three minutes. Watch the video below to see for yourself. Be warned, it's kind of gruesome.
Yeah, it is. But maybe it will do people good to see where their food comes from?
by Teh Puppet Mistress | I've been steadfastly ignoring this latest wingnut meme all week, but The Toot sees off the most recent attempt of wingnuts who miss blowing hard on the big bullshit horn about their superior superiority and want to feel right-eous and holler and bloviate about something. They need their fix of self-congratulatory self-righteousness.
