More Stimulus Coverage, TARP Outrages Continue, Cheney Is A Fear-Mongering Liar Who Needs To Disappear (Just Saying), And Calling The Cops On The Cops
Hi everybody. If you guessed we're kicking things off with BREAKING NEWS, you win the prize. So what's the what tonight? President Obama believes he'll have the votes to pass the stimulus bill this week. C'mon CNN. That's not "breaking." That's, like, probably-going-to-happen-in-the-future-news. They're not even trying anymore.
Anyhoo, Ed Henry joins us live for more and from there we go to a piece in which we learn that Obama is afraid our current economic situation is going to go from a crisis to a catastrophe. Hm. That sounds a little too much like the last guy for my tastes. Don't give me flashbacks, Obama. We also learn that Wall Streeters who got bailout funds are going to get hit with a $500,000 salary cap for officials, which sounds good, but like with everything else these days, there doesn't seem to be any means of enforcement.
Next up, we have Ali Velshi at the Wall of Doom. Ruh-roh. At first he just stands there and talks to us, yet his mere presence near the wall makes me nervous. It actually turns out not so bad though because tonight all we get is CEO pictures and the corresponding bazillions of dollars they make. It's mentioned that some aren't too keen with the government dictating salary caps, but hey guess what? You want government money, you get government salary caps. Capiche? Oh also? On Friday the first jobs report of 2009 comes out. Me thinks we'll be seeing the Wall of Doom again. *sigh*
Pontification time! Our panel seats tonight are being warmed by David Gergen, Ed Rollins, and Jamal Simmons. Good picks. The majority of the conversation is about the stimulus bill and what Obama should do or should have done and yadda yadda. Really the only thing I want to mention is Jamal noting how much Obama has reached out to Republicans and gotten nothing in return. This brings a curious comment from The Gerg: "Jamal, listen, it was great music, great reach-out, but there has not been compromise on the contents, philosophically."
Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't that total crap? Didn't Obama ad extra business tax breaks for the Republicans? And didn't he get the Democrats to strip out the birth control funding? I'm sure there's more too. The Gerg makes it sound like Obama just invited a couple of Republicans to a Super Bowl party. I mean, my God, when you look back at what the Democrats went through when they were the minority party...Obama deserves some serious props here.
On now to a Randi Kaye piece for the angry-up the blood portion of your evening. You know all those companies we gave money to in the first round of TARP? Yeah, well, they're still paying out bonuses and apparently there's nothing we can do about it because Congress forgot to put in the take-backsies clause, otherwise known as clawbacks. Instead, we can only get bonus money back from the top five executives of a company, and only in cases of fraud. So, in other words, we just got totally screwed over. Your tax dollars at work...putting in someone else's swimming pool.
If you're not already mad, you're probably about to be. In our next piece, Tom Foreman brings us the crazy ranting of a guy you might remember as our former VP. The man spent the majority of two terms in some darkened undisclosed location, but now he's getting chatty with Politico.com, who was nice enough to let him spew a bunch of crap, apparently unchallenged. Nice stenography there, guys. Anyway, in the interview, Darth Vader pretty much says that the Obama camp is more concerned with reading terrorists their rights than keeping America safe. Which...just... you know what? Seriously, f*** that guy. There's really not much else to say.
To discuss this interview, we're joined by David Gergen and Peter Bergen. Anderson Cooper starts us off with some sanity: "...he said at one point that people in the Obama administration, you know, feel that it's OK to just talk nice to terrorists and they'll go away. I mean, I don't think I know of anyone in the Obama administration who actually believes that." Thank you, Anderson. Peter says there are aspects of the Patriot Act that made us safer, but he's skeptical about Cheney's claim that "coercive interrogations" (torture!) have as well. He then goes on to talk about a study he did that found the Iraq war actually created more terrorists.
Another gem from Anderson: "there is a certain level of arrogance that if somebody doesn't agree with him it's that they're not smart or they don't understand the argument." Exactly. Rumsfeld was the same way, calling critics, "morally confused." The Gerg thinks it's unfair of Cheney to insinuate Obama is closing down Gitmo "willy nilly," when in reality he's going to take a year to figure out how to do it right. Anderson and Peter then talk about the falsehoods we've been told about the people in Gitmo and recidivism rates.
This was a good segment. A million times better than Campbell Brown's coverage of the interview (don't get me started). If they had more time I wish they could have gotten into how torture doesn't work (there's tons of evidence). Interrogator Matthew Alexander comes to mind. Check out his interview on the Daily Show. Anyway, kudos to 360 for actually practicing journalism, unlike the hacks over at Politico.com.
From here we get a tease from Anderson that I find worth quoting: "Next, guess who might want a career in politics? That's right. Joe the plumber. Apparently, being a correspondent wasn't that much fun. So, yes. We're going to tell you what he has said. I'm not sure why we're going to tell you. I'm not sure why we're even still putting him on TV, but it's sort of, you know. I don't know. Why not?" Bwah! Does David Doss have a gun to your head? It's your show!
Luckily, the Joe the Unlicensed Plumber story is just a headline and not a package. Erica Hill tells us he spent some time on Capitol Hill giving advice to Republicans. Doesn't that sound like the plot of an SNL sketch? But no, it really happened. The best part? When asked if he'll run for office, he replied with this: "I don't know if the American public deserves me." Seriously, there are no words.
"It's amazing that the 15 minutes aren't up. Somehow I thought they'd run out long ago, " says Erica Hill. "They were up long ago. Yes. It's like a train wreck. I don't think he knows, sort of, you just, slow down and watch a little bit. Yes. Anyway, yes. What do you do?" says Anderson. I love how, even though this guy is inexplicably loved by a portion of the GOP, they're not even trying to pretend he's a legitimate person.
Moving on to an Erica piece on Michelle Obama, but I got distracted. When I turn my attention back to the show, Anderson is telling Erica that he went to high school with a guy that's in the picture of Michelle talking at HUD. Apparently Anderson ran for office in the tenth grade and this guy "spoke" for him, but I don't actually know what that means. Spoke for him? Like, vouched for him? Anyway, man, talk about a reminder that our anchor and I live in different worlds. His classmates are top government officials and mine? Well, probably only a small percent are in jail. And hey, nobody got shot while I was there (not the case after I left), so yay for that. Ah, public school.
We round things out tonight with a Jeanne Moos piece. I haven't seen one of these in a while. The whole gist of this thing is that some dude got pulled over for speeding and proceeded to call the cops...on the cops. Bold. Jeanne's voice-over starts off as so, "So there you are waving your arms around, being wrestled to the ground by a highway patrol officer. Who are you going to call?" and I immediately yell, "Ghost Busters!" It's like Pavlovian or something. Then at the end of the piece there's a Ghost Busters clip, which kinda cracks me up. Eh, your mileage may vary.
The "shot" tonight is what Anderson calls the "Ballistic Bale Boogie," which is a dude getting down to the Christian Bale freak out dance-remix. Man, are the Internets a beautiful thing or what? Particularly amusing to me is this video doesn't have a huge amount of views yet, which kinda has me imagining the 360 kids searching around for, and watching this crap all day. The bleeping is insane. I guess they got over their "we can't play this" stance from last night. Anyway, everybody's getting in on this remix thing now. The next best one I've seen is Christian Bale vs. Bill O'Reilly. It's freaky how well it fits. And then of course there's the 360 Crew that has to get in on the act. Well, in edited form from a previous tape anyway. Good times.
We had a surprise visit from Jack Gray on the webcast tonight. I guess he wanted to come defend his name against the smack that Erica and Anderson were talking yesterday. All is made right with some pink berry, but Jack fears Erica will continue the trash talk after he leaves, accusing her of being that girl from high school. Yeah, we know that girl. Am I the only one that immediately thought of that 30 Rock episode where Tina Fey goes to her high school reunion thinking that everyone picked on her in high school, only to find she was the mean girl all along? Just me then? Okay.
The show was pretty good. Some hard stuff. Some fun. I don't really have any complaints. Except...dude, when are they going to air Gary Tuchman's Texas piece? Just wondering. And that is all.
Anyhoo, Ed Henry joins us live for more and from there we go to a piece in which we learn that Obama is afraid our current economic situation is going to go from a crisis to a catastrophe. Hm. That sounds a little too much like the last guy for my tastes. Don't give me flashbacks, Obama. We also learn that Wall Streeters who got bailout funds are going to get hit with a $500,000 salary cap for officials, which sounds good, but like with everything else these days, there doesn't seem to be any means of enforcement.
Next up, we have Ali Velshi at the Wall of Doom. Ruh-roh. At first he just stands there and talks to us, yet his mere presence near the wall makes me nervous. It actually turns out not so bad though because tonight all we get is CEO pictures and the corresponding bazillions of dollars they make. It's mentioned that some aren't too keen with the government dictating salary caps, but hey guess what? You want government money, you get government salary caps. Capiche? Oh also? On Friday the first jobs report of 2009 comes out. Me thinks we'll be seeing the Wall of Doom again. *sigh*
Pontification time! Our panel seats tonight are being warmed by David Gergen, Ed Rollins, and Jamal Simmons. Good picks. The majority of the conversation is about the stimulus bill and what Obama should do or should have done and yadda yadda. Really the only thing I want to mention is Jamal noting how much Obama has reached out to Republicans and gotten nothing in return. This brings a curious comment from The Gerg: "Jamal, listen, it was great music, great reach-out, but there has not been compromise on the contents, philosophically."
Maybe I'm wrong, but isn't that total crap? Didn't Obama ad extra business tax breaks for the Republicans? And didn't he get the Democrats to strip out the birth control funding? I'm sure there's more too. The Gerg makes it sound like Obama just invited a couple of Republicans to a Super Bowl party. I mean, my God, when you look back at what the Democrats went through when they were the minority party...Obama deserves some serious props here.
On now to a Randi Kaye piece for the angry-up the blood portion of your evening. You know all those companies we gave money to in the first round of TARP? Yeah, well, they're still paying out bonuses and apparently there's nothing we can do about it because Congress forgot to put in the take-backsies clause, otherwise known as clawbacks. Instead, we can only get bonus money back from the top five executives of a company, and only in cases of fraud. So, in other words, we just got totally screwed over. Your tax dollars at work...putting in someone else's swimming pool.
If you're not already mad, you're probably about to be. In our next piece, Tom Foreman brings us the crazy ranting of a guy you might remember as our former VP. The man spent the majority of two terms in some darkened undisclosed location, but now he's getting chatty with Politico.com, who was nice enough to let him spew a bunch of crap, apparently unchallenged. Nice stenography there, guys. Anyway, in the interview, Darth Vader pretty much says that the Obama camp is more concerned with reading terrorists their rights than keeping America safe. Which...just... you know what? Seriously, f*** that guy. There's really not much else to say.
To discuss this interview, we're joined by David Gergen and Peter Bergen. Anderson Cooper starts us off with some sanity: "...he said at one point that people in the Obama administration, you know, feel that it's OK to just talk nice to terrorists and they'll go away. I mean, I don't think I know of anyone in the Obama administration who actually believes that." Thank you, Anderson. Peter says there are aspects of the Patriot Act that made us safer, but he's skeptical about Cheney's claim that "coercive interrogations" (torture!) have as well. He then goes on to talk about a study he did that found the Iraq war actually created more terrorists.
Another gem from Anderson: "there is a certain level of arrogance that if somebody doesn't agree with him it's that they're not smart or they don't understand the argument." Exactly. Rumsfeld was the same way, calling critics, "morally confused." The Gerg thinks it's unfair of Cheney to insinuate Obama is closing down Gitmo "willy nilly," when in reality he's going to take a year to figure out how to do it right. Anderson and Peter then talk about the falsehoods we've been told about the people in Gitmo and recidivism rates.
This was a good segment. A million times better than Campbell Brown's coverage of the interview (don't get me started). If they had more time I wish they could have gotten into how torture doesn't work (there's tons of evidence). Interrogator Matthew Alexander comes to mind. Check out his interview on the Daily Show. Anyway, kudos to 360 for actually practicing journalism, unlike the hacks over at Politico.com.
From here we get a tease from Anderson that I find worth quoting: "Next, guess who might want a career in politics? That's right. Joe the plumber. Apparently, being a correspondent wasn't that much fun. So, yes. We're going to tell you what he has said. I'm not sure why we're going to tell you. I'm not sure why we're even still putting him on TV, but it's sort of, you know. I don't know. Why not?" Bwah! Does David Doss have a gun to your head? It's your show!
Luckily, the Joe the Unlicensed Plumber story is just a headline and not a package. Erica Hill tells us he spent some time on Capitol Hill giving advice to Republicans. Doesn't that sound like the plot of an SNL sketch? But no, it really happened. The best part? When asked if he'll run for office, he replied with this: "I don't know if the American public deserves me." Seriously, there are no words.
"It's amazing that the 15 minutes aren't up. Somehow I thought they'd run out long ago, " says Erica Hill. "They were up long ago. Yes. It's like a train wreck. I don't think he knows, sort of, you just, slow down and watch a little bit. Yes. Anyway, yes. What do you do?" says Anderson. I love how, even though this guy is inexplicably loved by a portion of the GOP, they're not even trying to pretend he's a legitimate person.
Moving on to an Erica piece on Michelle Obama, but I got distracted. When I turn my attention back to the show, Anderson is telling Erica that he went to high school with a guy that's in the picture of Michelle talking at HUD. Apparently Anderson ran for office in the tenth grade and this guy "spoke" for him, but I don't actually know what that means. Spoke for him? Like, vouched for him? Anyway, man, talk about a reminder that our anchor and I live in different worlds. His classmates are top government officials and mine? Well, probably only a small percent are in jail. And hey, nobody got shot while I was there (not the case after I left), so yay for that. Ah, public school.
We round things out tonight with a Jeanne Moos piece. I haven't seen one of these in a while. The whole gist of this thing is that some dude got pulled over for speeding and proceeded to call the cops...on the cops. Bold. Jeanne's voice-over starts off as so, "So there you are waving your arms around, being wrestled to the ground by a highway patrol officer. Who are you going to call?" and I immediately yell, "Ghost Busters!" It's like Pavlovian or something. Then at the end of the piece there's a Ghost Busters clip, which kinda cracks me up. Eh, your mileage may vary.
The "shot" tonight is what Anderson calls the "Ballistic Bale Boogie," which is a dude getting down to the Christian Bale freak out dance-remix. Man, are the Internets a beautiful thing or what? Particularly amusing to me is this video doesn't have a huge amount of views yet, which kinda has me imagining the 360 kids searching around for, and watching this crap all day. The bleeping is insane. I guess they got over their "we can't play this" stance from last night. Anyway, everybody's getting in on this remix thing now. The next best one I've seen is Christian Bale vs. Bill O'Reilly. It's freaky how well it fits. And then of course there's the 360 Crew that has to get in on the act. Well, in edited form from a previous tape anyway. Good times.
We had a surprise visit from Jack Gray on the webcast tonight. I guess he wanted to come defend his name against the smack that Erica and Anderson were talking yesterday. All is made right with some pink berry, but Jack fears Erica will continue the trash talk after he leaves, accusing her of being that girl from high school. Yeah, we know that girl. Am I the only one that immediately thought of that 30 Rock episode where Tina Fey goes to her high school reunion thinking that everyone picked on her in high school, only to find she was the mean girl all along? Just me then? Okay.
The show was pretty good. Some hard stuff. Some fun. I don't really have any complaints. Except...dude, when are they going to air Gary Tuchman's Texas piece? Just wondering. And that is all.
posted by eliza at 11:45 PM
2 Comments:
Hi Eliza,
Maybe the Gerg had a headache, was ill or in pain. He is usually on the mark but that great music statement made no sense to me. Especially in light of everything you mentioned that Obama has done. He sounded like some of the impatient bloggers who want results in 5 seconds instead of an old pro who's been around. I can't watch any coverage of those wretched moneied crooks for my sanity and blood pressure. The same with any story about Cheney. I truly feel he is either evil incarnate or the anti-Christ. The guy is acting like we are suppose to miss him and his utter lack of wisdom. Anne D.
@Anne--The Daily Show did a great segment on the Cheney interview tonight (Thursday).
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