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23 February 2009

どうもありがとうミスターロボット

Best. Acceptance. Speech. Evar.
"It's so heavy," said Kato of the award. A native of Japan, he struggled with his English in good humor before a star-studded audience. "Thank you very much. Thank you, my supporters. Thank you, all my staff. Thank you, academy. . . . Thank you, my company. Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto." -- Kunio Kato, Best Animated Short Winner

21 February 2009

Saturday Shuffle

Coming Down [Butchered] - The Cult
The Mark Has Been Made (live) - Nine Inch Nails
You Can't Quit Me, Baby (live) - Queens Of The Stone Age
Light My Way - Audioslave
Rolling - Soul Coughing
Spanish Blue - Aqua Velvets
Bellybone - Robert Bradley's Blackwater Surprise
Making Plans For Nigel - Primus
Safe - Kittie
The Boy With The Thorn In His Side - The Smiths

15 February 2009

Axelrod gets it

“This town talks to itself and whips itself into a frenzy with its own theories that are completely at odds with what the rest of America is thinking,” he says. Once the frenzy got going, it didn’t matter that most polls showed support for Obama and his economic package: “If you watched cable TV, you’d see our support was plummeting, we were in trouble. It was almost like living in a parallel universe.”

For Axelrod, the moral is “not just that Washington is too insular but that the American people are a lot smarter than people in Washington think.”
Frank Rich is firing on all cylinders, today.

Overdosing on this culture can be fatal. Because Republicans are isolated in that parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber, they are now as out of touch with reality as the “inevitable” Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa.

The G.O.P. doesn’t recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started. That obliviousness gives the president the opening to win more ambitious policy victories than last week’s. Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill.
Ah, the pundit class.

I need to find me the kind of job where my--assuredly generous--compensation is in no way impacted by my being so consistently wrong on the very areas and topics I allegedly focus on.

A McDonald's cashier wouldn't last a week with a similar track record for accuracy.

14 February 2009

Saturday Shuffle

Valentine Edition

Love Me Do - The Beatles
Strangelove - Depeche Mode
Radar Love - Golden Earring
Love Song - Tesla
Love Me Tender - Elvis Presley
Friday, I'm In Love - The Cure
Lover, You Should've Come Over - Jeff Buckley
Love Bites - Def Leppard
Who Do You Love? - Bo Diddley
Love In An Elevator - Aerosmith

Bonus:

Sea of Love - Tom Waits

09 February 2009

Talk about tone-deaf

Someone fetch me my ear trumpet:
Geithner Said to Have Prevailed on the Bailout
By STEPHEN LABATON and EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON— The Obama administration’s new plan to bail out the nation’s banks was fashioned after a spirited internal debate that pitted the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, against some of the president’s top political hands.

In the end, Mr. Geithner largely prevailed in opposing tougher conditions on financial institutions that were sought by presidential aides, including David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, according to administration and Congressional officials.

Mr. Geithner, who will announce the broad outlines of the plan on Tuesday, successfully fought against more severe limits on executive pay for companies receiving government aid.
Because with the economy crashing and unemployment and foreclosures soaring, successfully fighting pay limitations for millionaires is JUST the scalp you want for your wall.

Good luck selling this to people whose "night out" (assuming they can still have one at all) involves the Golden Arches.

Somebody needs to remind Timmeh, here, that if you're going to stand up for millionaires, at least stand up for *competent* millionaires. These are the folks that got us here, in the first place, not the ones swooping to the rescue. If someone drives the Caddy off the cliff, you take his keys, not give him a Rolls with the beaded seat cover.

Team Obama better get rid of this seeming inaugural hangover, soon.

07 February 2009

Saturday Shuffle

My Body Is A Cage - Arcade Fire
Wolves - Kittie
The Drifter - Clutch
People Equals Shit - Richard Cheese
100,000 Years (live) - Kiss
Online - Gnarls Barkley
To All The Girls - Wyclef Jean
Lorca Not Orca - Coil
Wanted Man (live) - Johnny Cash
At This Moment - Billy Vera and the Beaters

01 February 2009

Pretend like you've been here before

Jack. Ass.

Daschle Delayed Revealing Tax Glitch

Thomas A. Daschle waited nearly a month after being nominated to be secretary of health and human services before informing Barack Obama that he had not paid years of back taxes for the use of a car and driver provided by a wealthy New York investor

Daschle, one of Obama's earliest and most ardent campaign supporters, paid $140,000 to the U.S. Treasury on Jan. 2 and about two days later informed the White House and the Senate Finance Committee, according to an account provided by his spokeswoman and confirmed by the Obama administration.

Although Daschle had known since June 2008 that he needed to correct his tax returns, he never expected the amount to be such a "jaw-dropping" sum and "thought it was being taken care of" by his accountant, spokeswoman Jenny Backus said.
A month?

Daschle spent 1979-2005 in either the House or Senate. 26 years on the Hill and he didn't think $140K was important enough to mention before then?

In this economy?

However much truth to it there may be, no one is going to accept "I thought my accountant was taking care of it" as an explanation. Don't know about you, but a "correction" a fraction of that size would have me either in jail or in whatever circle of audit hell the IRS saw fit to put me.

Obama's team is clearly responsible for proper vetting, but it's a mighty tough thing to do when the vet-ee forgets to talk about the pile of taxes he forgot to pay. And Daschle has no excuse for forgetting something else: this isn't about him, it's about the credibility of the administration. Whatever happens, he can go right back and snuggle up to the health care industry--where he's been for years. Obama now needs to try and navigate the laundry list of calamities before him with the egg ol' tax dodge Tommy threw on his face.

If this were anyone else, his ass would be--and still should be--gone.
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