RMoney’s campaign is making increasingly desperate statements defending, denying, and obfuscating his apparent continued stewardship of Bain Capital from 1999 to 2002 and trying to turn the ship around before it hits an iceberg. On CNN’s State of the Union yesterday, Romney adviser Ed Gillespie told Candy Crowley that the presidential candidate had “retroactively retired” from Bain Capital. Gillespie was asked to clarify the 1999 Press Release from Bain announcing that Romney would be taking a part-time leave of absence to manage the 2002 Winter Olympics. Continue reading
politicrap
Last week, one of our faithful overlords gave us an article about a simplistic method for Canadians to figure out their true political leanings.
Once we got into the comments, however, someone piped up that a tool for evaluating the same in America would be nice to have. Dogs, ever the helpful one, gave us that link, and we had some fun with it in that thread.
We learned that Ethnology Nerd is almost definitely a red, and that at least a few of us think some (probably small number of) folks really do deserve to go to jail for the eternity of their time on this planet.
In the end, I thought it might be fun for a bunch of us to take the test, (linked above) and see where we fall as a group. The test only takes about 10 minutes, and if everyone posts their results here in the comments, I can round them up in a few days and do a little analysis, and then we can get to work on taking over the world from a more pragmatic perspective. I’m sure certain tendencies will reveal themselves, but I expect to see some interesting results.
If you already did this in the previous post, and have a second to repost your results here, it’ll make life easier for me from a collection standpoint.
So yesterday we played an insane little game called Find Today’s Worst Politico Article Ever. And the Crasstalk Army rose to the challenge. You risked turning into David Broder-esque Beltway Zombies and actually spent time looking for the crappiest pieces of Politico crap that ever got crapped out.
Here’s the worst of the worst (remember, this is just one day’s worth of Politicrap):
Semicarbazone and Epuff both suggested Bristol Palin’s Memoir: ‘Not Afraid of Life’
Essentially, this is a 4 paragraph article mentioning when the book is coming out, followed by a short blurb by a publisher. In fact everything in this article is probably going to be found on the inside sleeve of the book.
Except the conclusion of the article, of course, which states: “On Tuesday morning, Bristol posted on her Facebook fan page for the first time since December.”
Semicarbazone also suggested this hard-hitting interview with Andrew Sullivan.
HidingInCanada submitted this one, mainly due to its lulz-worthy headline: Rahm Emanuel Taps Desiree Rodgers.
KnightOfTheBurningRiver submitted this piece of Mittens-related hackery. Do people actually read this crap? I refuse to believe it.
Semicarbazone found that Politico has basically given up and is now just stealing its Sarah Palin news from The Times of India.
Pssshwhatever found Politico obsessing over Eliot Spitzer’s awful CNN show in Aspbergian detail.
But there could be only one winner on this day, and that goes to Epuff, for nominating this thing. Amazingly, Politico figured out how to connect Charlie Sheen, Mike Huckabee and Chris Matthews into a fine bouillabaisse of SEO linkbait crappiness:
Two and a Half Mean: Huck says Matthews like Sheen
The awful play on the words. The use of a colon. The rhyming. As Charles Barkley would say, “that’s just turrrrible.” The rest of the article just repeats a few dumb soundbites that Huckabee made right before eating his fifth Hardee’s burger of the afternoon and fucking his cousin. Of course, Politico doesn’t actually ever take sides. They just repeat what the pundits say. See, journalism is easy when you’re as even-handed as Politico is! And if you can throw Charlie Sheen into the mix, go for it!
So congratulations to Epuff on winning our first-ever Politico contest. Here’s a little something I wrote in her honor. I think it really capture’s Epuff’s essence.
And yet we had no ideal Mistress stretching her form up to the clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses twisted into the shape of Byzantine rings! No reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of the too great weight of our courage!
We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses.
Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.
“Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!”
As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and suddenly there were two cyclists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two persuasive but contradictory reasons. Their stupid swaying got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself — vlan! — head over heels in a ditch.
Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse!
As I raised my body, mud-spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart. A crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense and its upholstery of comfort.
We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress of its powerful back, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins.
Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth.
If we can agree on nothing else, let us at least agree to agree that POLITICO (All caps, please. K THX) is absolutely terrible. Politico is the Qadaffi of websites. No… Politico is the Charlie Sheen of websites. Unhinged, incomprehensible, obsessed with meaningless bullshit and you need a chlamydia test after fucking with it.
So why don’t we throw a little contest for the Crasstalk Army:
Let’s prowl Politico in search of the most execrable, mundane, pointless or otherwise awful article on the site today and post a link in the comments.
Tomorrow we’ll announce the winner. The prize is a very special Crasstalk post, written by me, extolling your virtues and affirming your place in history. Who wouldn’t want that?
So to inspire you, I found this pathetic aborted fetus of an article. Here’s the headline:
Smitten: GOP gushes with more Obama praise
First of all, stop gushing on Obama, GOP. Also, you can’t just put “Smitten:” at the front of a headline and expect it to make any sense. Usually you do something like that if you want to attribute the statement to someone. Like for example, “Scientists: Charlie Sheen Not Actually a Real Drug.” See, that would make sense.
To prove the writer’s point that the GOP is gushing on Obama, it goes on for about two solid paragraphs with a lukewarm Haley Barbour quote and then wraps up with this:
In his typical overly-Texan tone, Perry said the president is “a good talker” rather than communicator.
Perry though made clear that he thinks the Obama may like to hear himself talk, frequently mentioned how “long” the president took to answer some of the governor’s questions.
WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? GAHHHHHHHHHH POLITICO. WHY DO YOU TEASE US WITH SUCH BULLSHIT????