Thunderclees – Crasstalk

Murdered Jobs on the Blue Ridge Parkway: The Shutdown in Microcosm

Bruce O’Connell is an American job creator. All he does is grab his bootstraps, sit down at the table, and create jobs. That’s literally all he does! But thanks to the goose-stepping sturmtruppen of the National Park Service, Bruce O’Connell can’t create jobs no more.

See, Bruce O’Connell creates his jobs on federal land, by running a nearly century-old hotel on a lonely stretch of the Blue Ridge Parkway. And since the National Park Service has been deemed non-essential, O’Connell’s hotel, the Pisgah Inn (the Peak of the Parkway!), is being forced to close. This is a pain in Bruce O’Connell’s big, swingin’ American dick, because the Blue Ridge Parkway offers some of the best leaf-peeping you’ll find south of the Mason-Dixon line, and seeing as it’s October, Bruce O’Connell was hoping to get PAID, cousin. Continue reading →

Bad Sequester Ideas: The Face-Numbing Idiocy of Cutting Congressional Pay

A vision of the post-sequester world to come. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

We are rapidly approaching the wastelands Beyond the Sequesterdome, and there doesn’t seem to be anything anyone can do, except for maybe compromise on their precious principles a little bit, which was the whole point of the thing in the first place. As plenty of people have pointed out, the sequester is stupid: we are told that it is a “meat-axe” or a “chainsaw,” which are used by stupid butchers and lumberjacks, rather than a “scalpel,” which is used by smart, hunky doctors. Continue reading →

Is this the End of the Camp David Era?

Remember Jimmy Carter and how he told us all we should put on a sweater?* Jimmy Carter was an awful president, you guys, and everyone knows that.

It couldn’t have been Jimmy Carter who brokered the Camp David Accords, because the Camp David Accords brought a real and lasting peace between Israel and Egypt for the last 34 years, and, again, Jimmy Carter was an awful president who never did anything and should have stuck to peanut farming and communist coddling and just left the sweater-wearing-exhorting to the adults, the Republicans, duh. Continue reading →

How to Speak Like Rick Santorum

I assume you’ve been paying close attention to Rick Santorum’s rhetoric. If you’re not, then jeez, this must be a really boring political season for you. But if you are paying attention, then you know that Rick Santorum says things, and that the things he says, they mean things, other things, important things. Republicans seem to agree: Santorum is a good speaker, which is important in a President, unless that President is Barack Obama, in which case good speaking skills only prove what a strange, dangerous Other he is. Continue reading →

Explosion Bus is the Funniest Show That’s About to Be on the Internet

Who likes to laugh, amirite!? Damn straight! Laughter is like tiny unicorn kisses inside your brain, and should be sought out at all times!

For those of you who are old enough to remember this, Dr. Katz was once a super-hilarious show. Airing in the early days of Comedy Central, “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist” featured Jonathan Katz taking the day’s best stand-up comics to his private therapist’s couch. H. Jon Benjamin was there too, dontchaknow. After a long hiatus, Jonathan Katz is back, and OHIMGOD YOU GUYS I’M IN THE SHOW! Continue reading →

The Death of Common Sense Can’t Come Soon Enough

How many times have you heard politicians and pundits calling for “common-sense reforms?” How many times have you heard friends decrying the “loss of common sense,” or expressing a feeling that “no one in Washington has any common sense?”

Philip K. Howard wrote a book a while back called The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America. It’s a catchy title, intuitively accurate, and good enough to land Howard an interview on “The Daily Show.” At first blush, yeah…no, hell yeah! I mean, lawyers suck, amirite? Whaddya call 1,000 lawyers chained together at the bottom of the ocean? A good start, ho ho ho! Hey, let’s tell more jokes like that down at T.G.I. Fridays, the first round of Sesame Jack (TM) Chicken Strips is on me! Continue reading →

World Roundup with Mark Shields’ Jowls

Another week, another dollar. I’m left jowl.

And I’m right jowl.

And this is World Roundup with Mark Shields’ Jowls. I’d like to apologize right off the bat for being a bit late with this post. Mark switched up his denture cream, and the smell in here, sweet living Christ the smell… Anyway, his doctor says it’s for the best or whatever but the fact remains: Fixodent finds a way to make an 81-year-old man’s mouth smell worse than it does in its normal state. And that’s gotta count as some kind of accomplishment, probably. Right jowl, I need a breather… Continue reading →

World Roundup with Mark Shields’ Jowls

Hello Crasstalk, I’m Mark Shields’ left jowl.

And I’m Mark Shields’ right jowl.

And this is World Roundup with Mark Shields’ Jowls.

Mark Shields, Mark Shields jowls, Mark Shields' jowls — Your correspondents and veteran opinion-haver Mark Shields.

As jowls go, we’ve seen a lot. We’ve been there and back again. We’ve forgotten more stories than most of today’s firm-cheeked young “journalists” have followed on Twitter. We’ve jowled with jowliest of the jowls from the limpest Liebermans to the meatiest McCains—we’ve literally gone jowl-to-jowl with every established, occasionally centrist, and often infuriatingly inconsistent politician in this town, and we know you and David Brooks wouldn’t have it any other way. With our bona fides established, Left Jowl begins our Roundup in North Africa. Continue reading →

Bah, lovebug!

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If you’re one of those jerks or jerkettes who awoke this morning to a blissful, dizzying euphoria, good for you. If you want to read happy Valentine’s Day stories, Betty Crocker has put together two absolutely adorable posts on his ridiculously healthy and happy relationship with Cap’n Crocker.

For the rest of us, today’s just another Monday. Except on most Mondays, I don’t call FTD and ask them to bring me long-stemmed roses from an anonymous secret admirer.

“Ooh!” I don’t say on most Mondays, “I wonder who these are from!” “Haha,” I don’t continue on most Mondays, “guess it’s just my lucky day!” “Don’t be sad, it’s just a silly greeting card holiday,” is something I don’t say to my coworkers on most Mondays.

So whatchall doin’ this Valentine’s Day? If your answer includes…

dinner with a significant other
a date you’re excited about
the reasonable expectation of good sex

…then please head on over to Betty’s posts. We’re not tryna hear that over here.

Happy Anna Howard Shaw Day to all of you lonely hearts out there. Leave your suggestions on how to spend Valentine’s Day on your own and be totally fine with it, okay?

Lady Gaga Expected to Hatch Any Minute Now

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The Grammys are airing tonight—you’re not watching?—and Lady Gaga arrived in an egg being carried by members of the Haus of Gaga.

Two things:

1. This concept was a little soft-boiled, no? Did she poach the idea from someone else? She couldn’t have hatched a better plan? Etc. (Glasgow Rose, I’m looking at you).

2. Come the fuck on, Gaga. Look, I recognize that every unresolved phrase in pop music over the last decade sprang fully formed from your high forehead, but that doesn’t give you the right to…actually, no, it probably does give you the right to be carried aloft in a disturbingly translucent plastic egg.

Gaga warned the world of this shortly before her appearance on the Grammys red carpet. She tweeted thusly, on the Twitters: “This is Nicola, Haus of Gaga: Gaga is in incubation. Tonight’s performance is in collaboration with Hussein Chalayan and House of Mugler. X”

I don’t even know what that means.