Troopergate Not Over, Economy Still A Mess, Palin's A Big (Wardrobe) Spender, And Franklin Raines Goes Up On The Culprit Board
Hi everyone. Tonight we have double BREAKING NEWS. It's a twofer! Thankfully, they have opted not to double the graphics as well, so we're still able to see Anderson Cooper's pretty head. We kick things off with new developments in the Troopergate saga, which I guess just won the battle of the breakingest (?) breaking news story. Okay, so the deal is that Sarah and her "first dude" Todd, are going to be deposed on Friday because of the whole trooper firing thing. You thought that was over, you say? Well, you were half right.
Candy Crowley then joins us live to explain that this is actually related to another investigation of the incident, this time by a non-legislative board. Palin herself requested this investigation because she felt the other one was just a political hit job. Of course, now she claims that investigation found she did nothing wrong, though on this planet, it found the opposite. Anyway, I'm assuming she believes (or believed at the time of her request) this non-legislative board will deem her free and clear of all charges, but there's a chance they could actually recommend a punishment. And with the results likely to come just before the election, oh how I will laugh if that happens. Seriously, could she have set herself up for a worse bungling?
In a subsequent Candy Crowley piece from the trail, we learn that McCain is still STILL talking about Joe the Plumber. You know, the guy who isn't really named Joe, isn't a licensed plumber, owes back taxes, and would actually get a tax cut under Obama's plan. That guy. I mean, WTF? It's like Republicans don't care about real people; they care about caricatures of real people. And once again, McCain talks about spreading the wealth around like it's some kind of horrible thing, when he himself supported the same kind of policies back in the day. Wouldn't it be nice if someday a member of the media could just point that out. I know you guys have the google. What gives?
Anyway, flipping over to Obama, he's talking about how McCain wants to give all the money to Joe the Hedge Fund Manager. Oh good lord. You're killing me here, Barack. Then McCain is all, "I've been tested!" and Obama is like, "You're out of touch," and . . . blah!!! Jesus, can we just vote and get it over already? After Candy's piece, Anderson informs us that the Troopergate deposition is going to be held here in St. Louis. The Palin's are coming. Awesome.
Time to hang with John King at his Magic Map. The good news for McCain is that it's looking like he might hold onto West Virginia . . . and that pretty much ends the good news. Seriously, this could be a bloodbath. But BUT there's a possibility the race is a lot closer than the polls are showing, so I continue to clutch my pearls.
On now to our nightly panel . . . strategy session . . . whositwhatsit with our current conversing kids consisting of Joe Klein, David Gergen, and Tara Wall. The convo starts off on Troopergate with The Gerg acknowledging that Palin is becoming a liability. You think? Tara is all in a huff because Anderson just introed her as a McCain supporter. Well okay, she's not in a huff, but she wants to clarify that she hasn't come out to support anybody. Because it's not completely obvious who she's supporting or anything. Cut the crap, Tara. Man, you know it's bad when your own supporters don't even want to be identified as such. But anyway, Anderson of course apologizes because he's polite like that and then Tara goes on to blame his profession (and Tina Fey) for hurting Palin. Nice.
Joe basically makes the point that Palin is hurting herself because she doesn't seem to know anything. Today's thing she didn't know is the definition of precondition (in relation to diplomacy). Tara stays on the "blame the media" train and whines that the press doesn't ask Obama this stuff, causing Joe to be like, "dude, I just interviewed him." And what's Joe's verdict? Obama is pretty strong on foreign policy and especially impressive when it comes to the goings-on in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, I'm not sure Palin can even locate Afghanistan on a map. But anyone who asks her to try is a total sexist and/or in the tank for Obama! So there.
Next up, we get a clip of the interview Wolf Blitzer did today with McCain. The Wolfbot brings up the Powell endorsement and McCain goes off on a tangent about taxes, again misrepresenting and outright lying. I cannot believe the Wolfbot did not challenge this: "but to spread the wealth around is certainly not something that I would ever do, that I would ever do." Hello! He is on tape saying he opposed Bush's tax cuts because they disproportionately favored the wealthy and that "when you reach a certain level of comfort there is nothing wrong with paying somewhat more." Now he is championing the same kind of cuts and calling Obama a socialist. Someone, please, ask him about this. Lord, it can't be that hard.
Transitioning now to Ali Velshi at the big wall. If you thought the absence of Ali for a day or so meant the economy was all better, well my friend, you would be wrong. First of all, we lost about $700 billion in stock value today and job losses are, shall we say, not good. Ali tells us that this time of the year we should be up about a million jobs, but instead we've lost about 750,000. Just in time for the holiday season. *Sigh*
A surreal little segue now to a Joe Johns piece on how the Palin family has used $150,000 of RNC money on fancy clothes and accessories. Because all Joe six-packs regularly drop $75,000 at Nieman Marcus. Apparently this is all legal, but pretty unprecedented. The campaign tries to do damage control by informing us she bought off the rack. Oh wow, so she's really slumming it then. They also tell us the clothes will go to charity after the election and I'm sure that decision was in no way made right after this story broke. And then there's this: ". . . some bought before the convention have already been returned." Wait, what? I might be misreading this, but are they saying she wore the clothes for appearances and then returned them to the stores?! Poor teenage girls do that when they really want to go to prom but can't afford the dress; not VP hopefuls!
Meanwhile, the Obamas are a bit more frugal . . . to the point that Barack has holes in his shoes. But it doesn't matter because by golly, Palin is one of us. You betcha. In all honesty, I really do think this story if kind of overblown. I'd much rather them spend the time looking at her ties to the Alaska Independence Party or just, you know, freakin fact-checking the crap that's coming out of her mouth about Obama on a daily basis. I think it was Bay Buchanan who said the other day that the media seems to be obsessed with Palin and as much as it seriously pains me to agree with Bay, in 360's case, she might be right. Or maybe it just seems that way because there's been a lot of news about her lately. There does appear to be some sort of strange fascination going on though.
Moving on now to 360 playing us a clip of Palin possibly or possibly not agreeing to release her medical records. I guess the interpretation is up to us and if she doesn't like how it plays, well, she'll just clarify tomorrow. Anyway, we then bounce back to our panel and The Gerg tells us she should release the records on Friday. May as well. That day will probably be a loss for her anyway. Anderson then turns to Tara to ask if others are right and McCain should attack Obama on character. You know, I really hate it that character assassination is now considered a "strategy." It'd be nice if someday someone would stand up and say this isn't a tactic, this is an unethical behavior. Whatever.
Speaking of unethical behavior (I rocked this transition!), we're on to the night's "Ten Most Wanted List, The Culprits of the Collapse," segment, AKA, "10 Assholes Who Screwed Us Over." In a piece from Tom Foreman, we learn our current contestant is Franklin Raines, former CEO of Fannie Mae. Okay, so years ago the world wasn't imploding and things were actually going good. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were putting low and moderate income people into homes with the backing of the government and everyone was happy. Then around 2003/2004, Fannie got accused of cooking the books, a charge Raines flatly denied. But well, they had been and not only that, they hid their problems. Raines soon resigned, but he left behind the precursor to our current mess. The end. Nice little bedtime story, huh? After Tom's piece, Anderson reads us all the already-named culprits, which at this point is a fairly long list that gets longer every day. It's like he's doing "The 12 Days of Christmas," except with corrupt dream-killers. Or something.
"The Shot" tonight is Obama doing some boogying via satellite on Ellen. Obama claims that Michelle may be a better dancer than him, but he is a better dancer than John McCain. Well come on Barack, the man doesn't want to break a hip. Zing! Yes, I'm going to hell. "I give him props for doing that. I've had people try to get me to dance on television," says Anderson. Hee, I like when he gives props. So down with the people. Erica Hill notes that Anderson has also gone on Ellen and wonders if she attempted to get him to dance. She did not. "I just can't bring myself to do it. I don't know. No," says Anderson, getting all adorably flustered and making me totally forget how dumb it is that he'll go and get shot at, but won't dance. Damn, he's good. You know what time it is? That's right, crew dancing time! I've seen this clip a zillion times, so I think it's time for me to finally ask this question: Dude, what's up with the yellow hat?
The webcast contained Erica talking to us, Erica talking to Ali Velshi (who tells us people are confessing their financial sins to him), and Erica talking to Anderson. Our non-dancing anchor is not opposed to others dancing. In fact, he'd like to see John King break it down. I would go for that. At this point, some security thingee pops up on my screen and asks me if it should act like a server and when I'm all, "No!" it's like, "well screw you, I'm killing your webcast." Ohhh noes. When I get it back a few seconds later, Anderson and Erica are talking about multiple weddings involving Pamela Anderson. Obviously I have missed something here. Anyhoo, in other news, blog funny man Jack Gray has confirmed he will be meeting us in the flesh on the webcast next week. But actually, one of the comments to his post reminded me of something; some of us have already met Jack Gray. That'll do it.
Candy Crowley then joins us live to explain that this is actually related to another investigation of the incident, this time by a non-legislative board. Palin herself requested this investigation because she felt the other one was just a political hit job. Of course, now she claims that investigation found she did nothing wrong, though on this planet, it found the opposite. Anyway, I'm assuming she believes (or believed at the time of her request) this non-legislative board will deem her free and clear of all charges, but there's a chance they could actually recommend a punishment. And with the results likely to come just before the election, oh how I will laugh if that happens. Seriously, could she have set herself up for a worse bungling?
In a subsequent Candy Crowley piece from the trail, we learn that McCain is still STILL talking about Joe the Plumber. You know, the guy who isn't really named Joe, isn't a licensed plumber, owes back taxes, and would actually get a tax cut under Obama's plan. That guy. I mean, WTF? It's like Republicans don't care about real people; they care about caricatures of real people. And once again, McCain talks about spreading the wealth around like it's some kind of horrible thing, when he himself supported the same kind of policies back in the day. Wouldn't it be nice if someday a member of the media could just point that out. I know you guys have the google. What gives?
Anyway, flipping over to Obama, he's talking about how McCain wants to give all the money to Joe the Hedge Fund Manager. Oh good lord. You're killing me here, Barack. Then McCain is all, "I've been tested!" and Obama is like, "You're out of touch," and . . . blah!!! Jesus, can we just vote and get it over already? After Candy's piece, Anderson informs us that the Troopergate deposition is going to be held here in St. Louis. The Palin's are coming. Awesome.
Time to hang with John King at his Magic Map. The good news for McCain is that it's looking like he might hold onto West Virginia . . . and that pretty much ends the good news. Seriously, this could be a bloodbath. But BUT there's a possibility the race is a lot closer than the polls are showing, so I continue to clutch my pearls.
On now to our nightly panel . . . strategy session . . . whositwhatsit with our current conversing kids consisting of Joe Klein, David Gergen, and Tara Wall. The convo starts off on Troopergate with The Gerg acknowledging that Palin is becoming a liability. You think? Tara is all in a huff because Anderson just introed her as a McCain supporter. Well okay, she's not in a huff, but she wants to clarify that she hasn't come out to support anybody. Because it's not completely obvious who she's supporting or anything. Cut the crap, Tara. Man, you know it's bad when your own supporters don't even want to be identified as such. But anyway, Anderson of course apologizes because he's polite like that and then Tara goes on to blame his profession (and Tina Fey) for hurting Palin. Nice.
Joe basically makes the point that Palin is hurting herself because she doesn't seem to know anything. Today's thing she didn't know is the definition of precondition (in relation to diplomacy). Tara stays on the "blame the media" train and whines that the press doesn't ask Obama this stuff, causing Joe to be like, "dude, I just interviewed him." And what's Joe's verdict? Obama is pretty strong on foreign policy and especially impressive when it comes to the goings-on in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, I'm not sure Palin can even locate Afghanistan on a map. But anyone who asks her to try is a total sexist and/or in the tank for Obama! So there.
Next up, we get a clip of the interview Wolf Blitzer did today with McCain. The Wolfbot brings up the Powell endorsement and McCain goes off on a tangent about taxes, again misrepresenting and outright lying. I cannot believe the Wolfbot did not challenge this: "but to spread the wealth around is certainly not something that I would ever do, that I would ever do." Hello! He is on tape saying he opposed Bush's tax cuts because they disproportionately favored the wealthy and that "when you reach a certain level of comfort there is nothing wrong with paying somewhat more." Now he is championing the same kind of cuts and calling Obama a socialist. Someone, please, ask him about this. Lord, it can't be that hard.
Transitioning now to Ali Velshi at the big wall. If you thought the absence of Ali for a day or so meant the economy was all better, well my friend, you would be wrong. First of all, we lost about $700 billion in stock value today and job losses are, shall we say, not good. Ali tells us that this time of the year we should be up about a million jobs, but instead we've lost about 750,000. Just in time for the holiday season. *Sigh*
A surreal little segue now to a Joe Johns piece on how the Palin family has used $150,000 of RNC money on fancy clothes and accessories. Because all Joe six-packs regularly drop $75,000 at Nieman Marcus. Apparently this is all legal, but pretty unprecedented. The campaign tries to do damage control by informing us she bought off the rack. Oh wow, so she's really slumming it then. They also tell us the clothes will go to charity after the election and I'm sure that decision was in no way made right after this story broke. And then there's this: ". . . some bought before the convention have already been returned." Wait, what? I might be misreading this, but are they saying she wore the clothes for appearances and then returned them to the stores?! Poor teenage girls do that when they really want to go to prom but can't afford the dress; not VP hopefuls!
Meanwhile, the Obamas are a bit more frugal . . . to the point that Barack has holes in his shoes. But it doesn't matter because by golly, Palin is one of us. You betcha. In all honesty, I really do think this story if kind of overblown. I'd much rather them spend the time looking at her ties to the Alaska Independence Party or just, you know, freakin fact-checking the crap that's coming out of her mouth about Obama on a daily basis. I think it was Bay Buchanan who said the other day that the media seems to be obsessed with Palin and as much as it seriously pains me to agree with Bay, in 360's case, she might be right. Or maybe it just seems that way because there's been a lot of news about her lately. There does appear to be some sort of strange fascination going on though.
Moving on now to 360 playing us a clip of Palin possibly or possibly not agreeing to release her medical records. I guess the interpretation is up to us and if she doesn't like how it plays, well, she'll just clarify tomorrow. Anyway, we then bounce back to our panel and The Gerg tells us she should release the records on Friday. May as well. That day will probably be a loss for her anyway. Anderson then turns to Tara to ask if others are right and McCain should attack Obama on character. You know, I really hate it that character assassination is now considered a "strategy." It'd be nice if someday someone would stand up and say this isn't a tactic, this is an unethical behavior. Whatever.
Speaking of unethical behavior (I rocked this transition!), we're on to the night's "Ten Most Wanted List, The Culprits of the Collapse," segment, AKA, "10 Assholes Who Screwed Us Over." In a piece from Tom Foreman, we learn our current contestant is Franklin Raines, former CEO of Fannie Mae. Okay, so years ago the world wasn't imploding and things were actually going good. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were putting low and moderate income people into homes with the backing of the government and everyone was happy. Then around 2003/2004, Fannie got accused of cooking the books, a charge Raines flatly denied. But well, they had been and not only that, they hid their problems. Raines soon resigned, but he left behind the precursor to our current mess. The end. Nice little bedtime story, huh? After Tom's piece, Anderson reads us all the already-named culprits, which at this point is a fairly long list that gets longer every day. It's like he's doing "The 12 Days of Christmas," except with corrupt dream-killers. Or something.
"The Shot" tonight is Obama doing some boogying via satellite on Ellen. Obama claims that Michelle may be a better dancer than him, but he is a better dancer than John McCain. Well come on Barack, the man doesn't want to break a hip. Zing! Yes, I'm going to hell. "I give him props for doing that. I've had people try to get me to dance on television," says Anderson. Hee, I like when he gives props. So down with the people. Erica Hill notes that Anderson has also gone on Ellen and wonders if she attempted to get him to dance. She did not. "I just can't bring myself to do it. I don't know. No," says Anderson, getting all adorably flustered and making me totally forget how dumb it is that he'll go and get shot at, but won't dance. Damn, he's good. You know what time it is? That's right, crew dancing time! I've seen this clip a zillion times, so I think it's time for me to finally ask this question: Dude, what's up with the yellow hat?
The webcast contained Erica talking to us, Erica talking to Ali Velshi (who tells us people are confessing their financial sins to him), and Erica talking to Anderson. Our non-dancing anchor is not opposed to others dancing. In fact, he'd like to see John King break it down. I would go for that. At this point, some security thingee pops up on my screen and asks me if it should act like a server and when I'm all, "No!" it's like, "well screw you, I'm killing your webcast." Ohhh noes. When I get it back a few seconds later, Anderson and Erica are talking about multiple weddings involving Pamela Anderson. Obviously I have missed something here. Anyhoo, in other news, blog funny man Jack Gray has confirmed he will be meeting us in the flesh on the webcast next week. But actually, one of the comments to his post reminded me of something; some of us have already met Jack Gray. That'll do it.
posted by eliza at 11:53 PM
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