McCain Presses Pause On His Campaign, The Preznut Gives Us A Little Talk, More On The Bailout, Hanging In Montana, And Palin Speaks!
Hi everybody. You know, I've been watching this campaign for, oh, about 35 years now, and recently I've been thinking, it's just not weird enough. Well, today is my lucky day. Anderson Cooper tells us the BREAKING NEWS that John McCain has decided to suspend his campaign. A week ago the dude thought the fundamentals of our economy were strong . . . and now he's rushing back to Washington to save us from impending financial collapse. Our hero! Except, well, Washington doesn't exactly want him, and if you watch this hilarious Letterman video, you'll see that he didn't exactly take the express into town. Also? It makes me feel so safe to know that when the going gets tough, my potential president calls a timeout.
Next up, we're played a clip of Skippy because, well, the networks are required to acknowledge that he is unfortunately still president. Bush is like that kid with his eye on graduation day, who just found out he has one more big paper to do. The object here is to explain to the American people what the hell is going on with our finances, but when the Decider speaks, I mostly just hear the "whaa-whaa-whaa" of Charlie Brown's teacher. I did catch a little bit though. Apparently, if this bill doesn't get pushed through, banks could fail, businesses could close, home values could plummet, Saddam Hussein could provide hidden weapons to terrorists or help them develop one of their own . . . wait. Sorry, I'm getting my fear-mongering statements mixed up. Congress pressured into quickly voting on massively important issues always works out great for us, doesn't it?
On now to a Candy Crowley piece on McCain's decision to suspend his campaign. She informs us that McCain is down in the polls. What a coinkidink. And, of course, if he suspends his campaign, that means Friday's debate will be postponed. And if Friday's debate is postponed, that means the VP debate will be postponed. And if they then never get to the VP debate, well, I'm sure the McCain camp will be really broken up about that. Obama, on the other hand, is basically like, "dude, I can walk and chew gum at the same time." No suspension for him. It's on! The two candidates actually do manage to come together to put out a joint statement that pretty much says the bailout sucks, but the financial crisis is real. And hey, I actually agree with that. Though I've been a little flippant about the meltdown, make no mistake, we're in big trouble here, people. But this bailout on the fly is insane.
Moving on to discussion with David Gergen, Candy Crowley, and John King. The Gerg thinks McCain's decision to stop campaigning is political. You think? And Candy tells us that the Obama camp unsurprisingly thinks the same thing, though the whole decision initially threw them for a loop. Anderson points out that neither candidate is even on the committee that's doing the bailout negotiations. Maybe McCain is hoping most people won't find that out? Then Candy notes that it's actually the Republicans that are holding up the bailout negotiations and John King, who is traveling around the country, let's us know that the little guy, i.e. you and me, is pissed. So there you go.
Next up, we have a Tom Foreman piece on Henry Paulson again pleading his case on Capitol Hill. Paulson's hair is totally on fire over how much we're in trouble and specifically how much he really needs everyone's money. But details? That's not how this whole fear-mongering thing works. Luckily Congress seems to have learned, if only a little. The Bush administration might even cave on executive compensation. It's the baby steps that warm the heart.
For discussion of the bailout, we're now joined by Jessica Yellin, my PBS peep David Brancaccio, and Ali Velshi. Ali actually seems a little frazzled, and I gotta say, it's freaking me out a tad. He was calmer during Gustav. David is happy to bring us some actual optimistic news. You see, he was a bit bummed because he doesn't understand this whole bailout, but it turns out the Congressional Budget Office doesn't understand it either and that's, like, their whole thing. Isn't that great? Um, do the people at PBS know what "optimistic" means? Anderson wants to know where all these ticked off politicians have been the last 20 years. Probably counting their campaign donations.
Next up, 360 goes Daily Show on us! Woo! I love it when they do that. We're played old clips of Bush saying that our financial institutions are strong and we shouldn't bail companies out. You know, the opposite of what he just said in his little speech tonight. Good on 360 for pointing that out, but as a friend noted to me after the segment, "What's sad is it's like we're excited they're doing as good a job as the fake news for once." Sad indeed. (Do it more!)
Even more discussion now, this time of the crazier variety because we're joined by Paul Begala and Bay Buchanan. Really though, they keep it mostly sane. As expected, Bay pretty much backs McCain's decision to go back to D.C. Paul's just boggled and thinks the whole thing is weird. Me too. Something is off here. Are we sure McCain is still healthy? Anyway, the best part of this segment is learning about how many votes the candidates have missed while campaigning. It turns out that John McCain has missed more votes this year than anyone in the senate, including stroke victim Tim Johnson. Says Anderson, "So basically, John McCain has missed more votes than a guy with a stroke, and Obama has missed almost as many votes as a guy with a stroke." Bwah! Tim Johnson's looking pretty good right now, isn't he?
Erica Hill has our headlines tonight and we once again get thrown a tiny morsel about the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. Today residents returned to the decimated town of Galveston. Brian Williams anchored Nightly News from Houston and you can see his interview with the mayor and another package on Galveston at the MSNBC site.
Moving on now to a John King piece coming at us from Montana. He's still doing his U.S. tour and this time we get a little interview with Governor Brian Schweitzer (and Mr. Ed!), who relays that his constituents are none too happy about this bailout. After the piece, John and Candy break down the battle ground states for us. From there the discussion turns to Sarah Palin and we're played a clip of her interview with Katie Couric. Yes, she actually talked to another member of the media. Katie asks her about campaign head Rick Davis and his connections to Freddie Mac. Palin answers with some blather about him recusing himself, which is crap. To her credit, Katie presses, and we're met with an awkwardly long silence, followed by almost the exact same line Palin just gave us. Okay, that's mildly terrifying. It's like the woman is a wind-up doll with a handful of phrases. And her boss wants to press pause on his campaign. Jesus. Will someone please, please tell me that this is just all one massive punking and we're not really considering a ticket that is looking worse than Bush and Cheney.
"The Shot" tonight is a YouTube clip of a dude in a banana costume chasing a dude in a gorilla costume at a high school football game. Slightly amusing. The not amusing part is that school officials actually had the suited trouble-makers arrested. Oh, c'mon! Where's the fun? Man, those uptight officials should be grateful that all they had to deal with was primate-related hijinks. Because my former high school has recently had a sporting event or two end in gunfire. It's a hard knock life, people. No need to freak over running bananas.
The webcast continues to hold my attention and I'm bemused by Erica's range. For example, during one commercial break, she's hard core pimping the website (which is annoying, by the way) and doing her job for "The Man" by talking up The Best Political Team on Television. "It's not just a phrase. It's true," she tells us. "You gotta admit it." Uh, no, actually I don't. But anyway, in the next commercial break, she spends the whole time talking about smelling burnt popcorn in the studio. Bwah! Oh, and should be noted that Kevin thinks the smell is more like burnt toast. And Ali Velshi? Well, Ali just wants some food and a nap. Financial crises are hard!
I caught one other webcast too where Erica says that Tony is no Kevin. Oh, harsh! It's okay Tony, I still love you. There's also David Blaine talk and I have written in my notes that "they have a PA," but for the life of me I have no idea what that means. Shorthand fail! Also? Psst, sometimes we can hear you when I don't think you mean to be on. Just saying. I await the accidental spilling of juicy gossip. And while I'm prattling on about non important stuff, Anderson, dude, just because you say you're blogging, doesn't make it true. It's not the no blogging that's annoying; it's the claiming every single night that you are, and then, not. Nobody likes a blogging fibber. The show was okay tonight. Really heavy on the discussion. But so I end on a positive note, yay to 360 for using the blog and only the blog to cover the OJ trial. That'll do it.
Next up, we're played a clip of Skippy because, well, the networks are required to acknowledge that he is unfortunately still president. Bush is like that kid with his eye on graduation day, who just found out he has one more big paper to do. The object here is to explain to the American people what the hell is going on with our finances, but when the Decider speaks, I mostly just hear the "whaa-whaa-whaa" of Charlie Brown's teacher. I did catch a little bit though. Apparently, if this bill doesn't get pushed through, banks could fail, businesses could close, home values could plummet, Saddam Hussein could provide hidden weapons to terrorists or help them develop one of their own . . . wait. Sorry, I'm getting my fear-mongering statements mixed up. Congress pressured into quickly voting on massively important issues always works out great for us, doesn't it?
On now to a Candy Crowley piece on McCain's decision to suspend his campaign. She informs us that McCain is down in the polls. What a coinkidink. And, of course, if he suspends his campaign, that means Friday's debate will be postponed. And if Friday's debate is postponed, that means the VP debate will be postponed. And if they then never get to the VP debate, well, I'm sure the McCain camp will be really broken up about that. Obama, on the other hand, is basically like, "dude, I can walk and chew gum at the same time." No suspension for him. It's on! The two candidates actually do manage to come together to put out a joint statement that pretty much says the bailout sucks, but the financial crisis is real. And hey, I actually agree with that. Though I've been a little flippant about the meltdown, make no mistake, we're in big trouble here, people. But this bailout on the fly is insane.
Moving on to discussion with David Gergen, Candy Crowley, and John King. The Gerg thinks McCain's decision to stop campaigning is political. You think? And Candy tells us that the Obama camp unsurprisingly thinks the same thing, though the whole decision initially threw them for a loop. Anderson points out that neither candidate is even on the committee that's doing the bailout negotiations. Maybe McCain is hoping most people won't find that out? Then Candy notes that it's actually the Republicans that are holding up the bailout negotiations and John King, who is traveling around the country, let's us know that the little guy, i.e. you and me, is pissed. So there you go.
Next up, we have a Tom Foreman piece on Henry Paulson again pleading his case on Capitol Hill. Paulson's hair is totally on fire over how much we're in trouble and specifically how much he really needs everyone's money. But details? That's not how this whole fear-mongering thing works. Luckily Congress seems to have learned, if only a little. The Bush administration might even cave on executive compensation. It's the baby steps that warm the heart.
For discussion of the bailout, we're now joined by Jessica Yellin, my PBS peep David Brancaccio, and Ali Velshi. Ali actually seems a little frazzled, and I gotta say, it's freaking me out a tad. He was calmer during Gustav. David is happy to bring us some actual optimistic news. You see, he was a bit bummed because he doesn't understand this whole bailout, but it turns out the Congressional Budget Office doesn't understand it either and that's, like, their whole thing. Isn't that great? Um, do the people at PBS know what "optimistic" means? Anderson wants to know where all these ticked off politicians have been the last 20 years. Probably counting their campaign donations.
Next up, 360 goes Daily Show on us! Woo! I love it when they do that. We're played old clips of Bush saying that our financial institutions are strong and we shouldn't bail companies out. You know, the opposite of what he just said in his little speech tonight. Good on 360 for pointing that out, but as a friend noted to me after the segment, "What's sad is it's like we're excited they're doing as good a job as the fake news for once." Sad indeed. (Do it more!)
Even more discussion now, this time of the crazier variety because we're joined by Paul Begala and Bay Buchanan. Really though, they keep it mostly sane. As expected, Bay pretty much backs McCain's decision to go back to D.C. Paul's just boggled and thinks the whole thing is weird. Me too. Something is off here. Are we sure McCain is still healthy? Anyway, the best part of this segment is learning about how many votes the candidates have missed while campaigning. It turns out that John McCain has missed more votes this year than anyone in the senate, including stroke victim Tim Johnson. Says Anderson, "So basically, John McCain has missed more votes than a guy with a stroke, and Obama has missed almost as many votes as a guy with a stroke." Bwah! Tim Johnson's looking pretty good right now, isn't he?
Erica Hill has our headlines tonight and we once again get thrown a tiny morsel about the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. Today residents returned to the decimated town of Galveston. Brian Williams anchored Nightly News from Houston and you can see his interview with the mayor and another package on Galveston at the MSNBC site.
Moving on now to a John King piece coming at us from Montana. He's still doing his U.S. tour and this time we get a little interview with Governor Brian Schweitzer (and Mr. Ed!), who relays that his constituents are none too happy about this bailout. After the piece, John and Candy break down the battle ground states for us. From there the discussion turns to Sarah Palin and we're played a clip of her interview with Katie Couric. Yes, she actually talked to another member of the media. Katie asks her about campaign head Rick Davis and his connections to Freddie Mac. Palin answers with some blather about him recusing himself, which is crap. To her credit, Katie presses, and we're met with an awkwardly long silence, followed by almost the exact same line Palin just gave us. Okay, that's mildly terrifying. It's like the woman is a wind-up doll with a handful of phrases. And her boss wants to press pause on his campaign. Jesus. Will someone please, please tell me that this is just all one massive punking and we're not really considering a ticket that is looking worse than Bush and Cheney.
"The Shot" tonight is a YouTube clip of a dude in a banana costume chasing a dude in a gorilla costume at a high school football game. Slightly amusing. The not amusing part is that school officials actually had the suited trouble-makers arrested. Oh, c'mon! Where's the fun? Man, those uptight officials should be grateful that all they had to deal with was primate-related hijinks. Because my former high school has recently had a sporting event or two end in gunfire. It's a hard knock life, people. No need to freak over running bananas.
The webcast continues to hold my attention and I'm bemused by Erica's range. For example, during one commercial break, she's hard core pimping the website (which is annoying, by the way) and doing her job for "The Man" by talking up The Best Political Team on Television. "It's not just a phrase. It's true," she tells us. "You gotta admit it." Uh, no, actually I don't. But anyway, in the next commercial break, she spends the whole time talking about smelling burnt popcorn in the studio. Bwah! Oh, and should be noted that Kevin thinks the smell is more like burnt toast. And Ali Velshi? Well, Ali just wants some food and a nap. Financial crises are hard!
I caught one other webcast too where Erica says that Tony is no Kevin. Oh, harsh! It's okay Tony, I still love you. There's also David Blaine talk and I have written in my notes that "they have a PA," but for the life of me I have no idea what that means. Shorthand fail! Also? Psst, sometimes we can hear you when I don't think you mean to be on. Just saying. I await the accidental spilling of juicy gossip. And while I'm prattling on about non important stuff, Anderson, dude, just because you say you're blogging, doesn't make it true. It's not the no blogging that's annoying; it's the claiming every single night that you are, and then, not. Nobody likes a blogging fibber. The show was okay tonight. Really heavy on the discussion. But so I end on a positive note, yay to 360 for using the blog and only the blog to cover the OJ trial. That'll do it.
posted by eliza at 11:51 PM
3 Comments:
So Eliza.............
"Next up, we're played a clip of Skippy because, well, the networks are required to acknowledge that he is unfortunately still president."
If I did not know better, I would truthfully think that you were trying to KILL me. Seriously. Holy cripes! "Skippy"? - pure classic IMHO.
Also wanted to point out that I am happy to hear I am not the only one who hears Charlie Brown's teacher when "Skippy" speaks. Personally I recently mentioned that someone needs to put siperglue in his coffee so that he can no longer speak. I said this in a crowded store full of TV's with "him" on them. My best friend threatened to murder me, but then backed down when I cracked up the entire store. So there was that. What did he think I was going to be molested by a gang of "Skippy" supporters? Uh, not so much.
Lastly, THANK you for the end of your post. Anderson I love you and all, but you are going back to your fibber days. STOP saying it every night and then not posting at all. We know you are busy, we get you, we are sympathetic, but don't sit ther night after night and lie to your devoted. Not cool. "NON-blogging fibber" Just saying. Pointing it out night after night is just, well, pointless. Ok, I digress.
Thanks Eliza - I am not finding much levity out there, until I read your blog. Much appreciated.
Hi Eliza,
Your blog made me laugh. It's heavy duty melodrama going on right now. I am reading many columns where the thought is that the bailout proposal is too high, not clear, or not needed. Then after listening to Palin with Couric, yipes. It is a worse ticket than Bush/Cheney. McCain's theatrics are getting hard to tolerate. When "Skippy" spoke, I couldn't believe how it seemed he was removed from what he was saying. I am not buying his take of the crisis. Anne D.
@pati mc--Hee. I assure you, I have no murderous intentions. :P Only a few more months with Skippy.
I wonder if Anderson even reads the blog at this point.
@anne--Thanks. Comedy thrives in a crazy crisis. They're practically handing it over on a silver platter. ;)
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