Archive for June, 2009
The Top Ten Reasons David Letterman Needs to Be Retired
(10) He is a demented, 62-year old pervert who thinks it’s funny to joke about a 14 year old being raped and forcibly impregnated.
(9) His show stopped being funny at least 15 years ago.
(8) He’s a pig who wears diapers.
(7) Living in a glass house where he refused to marry his girlfriend of many years despite fathering a son, Harry, with her, making the little boy a bastard for nearly 7 years, means this particular hypocrite shouldn’t throw stones at ANY family, for ANY reason, lest stones be deservedly thrown back at him.
(6) Where are the jokes about Sasha and Malia being raped by baseball players? Where are the jokes about dirty watermelon pickers and greasy chicken fryers instead of “slutty flight attendants”? If vulgar, sick racial jokes are never allowed, why are vulgar, sick misogynist ones? If the First Daughters of the United States are clearly off limits, why isn’t a First Daughter of the State of Alaska? Answer us that, Leftists.
(5) Would Letterman think it was funny if Conan O’Brien or some other Late Night jester joked about Letterman’s son Harry being raped at Little League? Where does Letterman draw the line, exactly, on whose children it’s funny to joke about being raped.
(4) What would CBS do if a rival network DARED air something as vulgar as (5) or (6) above?
(3) Calling him a pig who wears diapers is an insult to pigs, diapers, and pigs who wear diapers.
(2) How phallic is it that Letterman obsesses not just over rape, but of rape specifically by a large man with a giant bat? That pervert has serious Freudian, Oedipal, anger, bad hair, gruesome teeth, you name it issues.
(1) David Letterman has a teeny weiner.
Wednesday Open Thread
What’s on your mind today?
What are you doing to tell CBS, David Letterman, and their advertisers that making jokes about 14 year old girls being raped by baseball players and “slutty flight attendants” is not acceptable?
Not. On. Our. Watch.
Heed these words David Letterman: NOT. ON. OUR. WATCH.
Great Merciful Zeus, you will not get away with calling a sitting Governor “a slutty flight attendant”.
You will not get away with making jokes about a sitting Governor’s teenage daughter — or ANYONE’S daughter, for that matter — being raped by baseball players in New York.
You are a vile, disgusting, perverse, leftist of the worst order, David Letterman, on a show that stopped being funny back when we were in high school 15 years ago.
It is our determined goal to use the platform we have here to encourage everyone who reads this to stand up to David Letterman and CBS in the days ahead so they get the message that the misogynistic and sexist attacks leveled against women like Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton will no longer be tolerated.
Regardless of what you think about Palin personally — we implore you to consider this: even if you are someone who comes here and does not support the Guv like we do, you need to realize that until we can mobilize men and women alike to scream MISOGYNIST! and SEEEEXXXXXXIST! with the same vigor and volume the black community marshals whenever it perceives RAAAACISM! anywhere, then we will never have a female president.
We were slow to mobilize in response to the attacks on Hillary Clinton in the primaries because, honestly, screaming and yelling and carrying on like harridans is not who we are. However, we learned VALUABLE lessons from the black community in 2008, and the sheer abject terror they hold the MSM in. The networks and newspapers are so terrified of being called RAAAAAACIST!, so bullied by threats of boycotts, that Al Sharpton so much as farts and the suits at CBS would be down on their knees looking for more beans to feed him.
Women on BOTH sides of the political aisle need to come running whenever ANY woman in politics is attacked by the likes of David Letterman.
Clinton supporters: you need to have Sarah Palin’s back.
Palin supporters: you need to have Hillary Clinton’s back.
We need to take care of each other. Someday, maybe we’ll be on opposite sides in the general election of the millennium, but to get there we need to do to the MSM what the black community has always been so effective at: we need to TERRORIZE those suits so sexism and misogyny scares them as much as accusations of RAAAAAACISM!
The only way to do that is through sponsors.
Get to work and figure out who advertises on Letterman.
Hey PUMAs, we’re talking to you.
Hey SarahPAC and Team Palin, you need to report for duty.
Here’s the plan: we get the names of all Letterman’s advertisers. Then, we start bombarding them with faxes and phone calls and letters. Boycotts of their products must be organized to send Letterman and CBS a message.
CBS is already hurting right now because of Katie Couric’s abysmal performance as anchor. The last thing they need right now is hundreds of thousands of people demanding David Letterman’s head.
Remember what Al Sharpton, John Lewis, James Clyburne, Spike Lee, and the rest of the race-baiters did to Don Imus for his nappy-headed remark?
What Letterman said is WORSE than that — yet he knows women will forever be divided by social issues on different camps across the political aisle, and will never mobilize the way the black community does under its race-baiters.
We need to join forces and hit back EVERY TIME someone like Letterman attacks a Palin or Clinton out there. If we keep that up, we can elect a female president in 2012 or 2016…Hillary or Sarah, Palin or Clinton.
But it won’t happen if we just sit on the couch angry at that over-paid, underperforming, gasbag on TV.
We need to work together and make some noise people.
Use this thread to start the ball rolling, and tell us what YOU are going to do to swat back at the vulgar fly hosting the Late Show.
Just imagine if instead of a slutty flight attendant joke, Letterman made cracks about watermelon and fried chicken, and instead of Palin’s daughter being raped by baseball players, he made the joke about Sasha or Malia. The black community would band together and have his cracker ass off the air by morning.
What will women — and the men who stand with them — do?
May You Live Always In Interesting Times – By Sebastian Gray, for Gray Matters
Dear HillBuzz,
Yesterday, my good friend Jessie took the LSAT, after cramming and kvetching and absolutely driving herself crazy studying day and night for the last several months (“The outside world doesn’t even exist right now, and won’t exist again until after June 8th and this test is over”). For the last ten years or so, Jessie’s had her own design label, making couture dresses here in Chicago, running her shop out of her apartment not far from us in Boystown (a beaded, bedazzled, and fabric-strewn Project Runway in exile if ever we’ve laid eyes upon one…Tim Gunn eat his heart out). But, like many small businesses in the last few years, Jessie saw the embroidery on the taffeta after two disappointing years of lackluster profits and knows her business will go under soon (“Honey, when I can’t even sell at huge discounts to drag queens delivering Pie Hole on Tuesday nights, at a time when the First Lady of the United States is in bad Jason Wu drag most of the time, I know I’m one commercial break from an economic Auf Wiedersehn”). Several months ago, Jessie had to lay off her assistant and intern…and soon she’ll have to vote herself off fashion’s sinking island as well.
Hope! Change! How’s that unicorn working out for you, too?
On Election Night last year, I’ll never forget sitting next to Jessie at the Chicago Young Republicans’ event at the Hilton Towers, watching the Kool-Aid Gang carrying on across the street in Grant Park for Dr. Utopia’s victory celebration (all huddled together bleary-eyed, staring blankly into the bright lights, like they were waiting for Gozer the Gozerian to appear on stage as the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man to devour all their souls and open the ancient Sumerian portal to Hell, instead awaiting Dr. Utopia’s victory speech in his most resplendent Quinn the Eskimo mode). Jessie, in a moment of pained clarity, just said, “Well, that’s it for my business. Because if the economy didn’t kill it already, this man and his Alinsky recipe for socialism damn will.” We had all the windows open and could hear the crowd below roaring and screaming, with the network reporters on all the channels positively giddy about the ushering in of The Golden Age of Hope and Change. Jessie stared straight ahead and shed a few tears knowing full well what was ahead for all of us.
There I was, a Democrat, with a few of us from HillBuzz and Team Hillary joining our new Republican friends, knowing full well we did everything we could to stop the disaster we knew was coming under Dr. Utopia — but realizing we weren’t strong enough to effectively counter all the Kool-Aid drunk, screaming fools below.
Jessie decided that, since she’s not going to make it running her small business anymore, she should go to law school — as people for years have said to her, quite correctly, “And you didn’t go to law school, WHY?“. I talk about the women who I admire most in this world, and Hillary Clinton always comes out at the very top, for waking up each morning and putting her whole heart and soul into everything she does, win, lose, or draw. If I live to be a hundred, I will never forget the fire and determination Clinton showed on the campaign trail, particularly that night outside Pittsburgh when she belted out her very best campaign speech in the driving rain, defiant and empowered and full of fight. Well, that pretty much sums up Jessie any day of the week — whether she’s fighting to keep her business afloat, fighting to rally her friends in the CYRs to volunteer for the USO or the Special Olympics, trying her damndest to squeeze a Gold Coast debutante into hand-stitched couture evening wear, or whether she’s working hard to retrain herself to survive in the depression that’s coming (if it’s not already here already).
And I’m not talking about the kind that can be treated with paxil, zoloft, or endlessly repeating viewings of Josie and the Pussycats…I’m talking a second Great Depression that’s on its way to wipe out the last remnants of the gilded age we all took for granted the last few years.
I knew Jessie would be wiped out from taking the LSAT, so I wanted to surprise her with a small get-together of some of her friends from both sides of the aisle: CYRs, HillBuzzers, and friendly faces in general. Because I, too, am struggling to stay afloat in this economy, I’m spread really thin these days, taking a half dozen low-paying small projects all around town to make up for the two or three large gigs I’d typically have as a freelance project manager over the course of a year. Normally, I’d have the flexibility to manage my projects and still have time to squeeze in planning a fabulous fete for someone as special as Jessie, but this time I needed help, and I’m proud to say McCain/Palin once again taught me something about myself and what we all need to do to get along and stay afloat together.
A month or so ago, I had a serious falling out with a few people who backstabbed me pretty shamelessly, without so much as an apology (that I am still waiting for). My typical response to something like this is to just never speak to those people again, and to carry around that grudge forever (just like they’re a Kennedy, or an Edwards, or a Richardson, or a McCaskill). That’s more of the old me, the guy who also would never have been friends with a Republican, let alone planned a surprise party for one. But, the universe brought me the wrong French toast in 2008: in the general election, I worked hard alongside Republicans for the first time in my life and now count many Chicago Young Republicans, in particular, as good friends. I saw that when we’re all in a boat that’s sinking, it’s no time to hang onto grudges of the past, but instead it’s time to band together and set things right (and then, in 2012, hopefully elect a president who knows her way around an iceberg and how to get us out of this mess, you betcha).
So, I reached out to one of the people who backstabbed me, a guy named Warren who happens to be a very good friend of Jessie’s. I still don’t like Warren, and in fact, to be perfectly honest, I never much liked Warren and his too-old-to-be-kegging-frat-boy ilk to begin with. But, I knew Warren also wanted to see Jessie have a big celebration after all the hard work she put in — so I decided to put aside the issue I had with him (he stole a job that was promised to me, one that I had been laying the groundwork for, and then had the audacity to actually ask me how to do the job, since he didn’t have the slightest clue where to start) in the interest of the bigger picture.
I just didn’t have time to pull off the surprise without his help, and I knew damn well Jessie would NEVER in a million years think I was conspiring with Warren to plan anything, let alone a big surprise for her.
I can continue to dislike Warren, and his tendency to, when he’s not stealing jobs that should have been mine, get so drunk at parties and other events that he’s lucky someone doesn’t strip him down, stuff him into an always-at-the-ready bunny costume, and leave him passed out somewhere in Boystown, gift-wrapped for whatever Elmer Fudd should find him. Not that I have ever planned what I would do should that sort of opportunity ever arise, or anything.
But, celebrating Jessie was more important than whatever I had against Warren (and if you need help planning a party, a big drunk is a great place to start).
Just as America remains more important than most of what we as Democrats, Republicans, and Independents may have against one another politically…we need to put aside those old grudges for now, and continue to work together.
At Jessie’s party, there was a good mix of us from HillBuzz and Jessie’s fellow Republicans, all enjoying a giant table in Ping Pong eating General’s Chicken, Kung Pao Beef, and other delicious family-style Chinese dishes in the heart of Boystown, one big happy cohesive group feting one of our own for working so hard to set a new course for herself in life. Outside the windows, most of Boystown passed by in its usual whirl, oblivious to the presence of Republicans amongst them, or economic reality all around us all. No matter what else we can say about Election 2008 and its results, I still maintain the REAL Change! that happened last year was this bond that exists now between people who would have never, ever been friends or shared anything in common if not for our opposition to Dr. Utopia and his socialist agenda.
Those connections, unfortunately, continue to deepen as almost all of us now find ourselves in the same boat of either underemployment or unemployment itself. A year ago, this party for Jessie would have been held at a big steakhouse, with wine flowing freely and no expenses spared, but times are tough so it was a more restrained evening in a BYOB Chinese restaurant: we still had all the fun we would have had at three times the price, but what a difference a year does make. People with Master’s Degrees from top-ten schools have not been abe to find work in half a year. One friend got fired yesterday, in fact, and was told by her employer that she “might have Swine Flu, because she’s coughing and sniffling too much”; the employer, a wealthy woman in Wicker Park, apparently decided she could do without a decorator by instead finishing her re-do by herself, with Swine Flu a convenient MSM-supplied budget cutting and face-saving excuse (and you KNOW the economy’s in the tank when people use Swine Flu as your reason for termination).
Before the chocolate-dipped fortune cookies arrived at the end of the meal (served up on green and red ping-pong paddles in homage to the Boystown eatery’s name), I learned that all but four people at the table had canceled their cable, negotiated their cell phone bills down to almost nothing, and cut just about every extra special treat out of their lives. The women were almost all dying their own hair instead of dropping that money in salons; the men weren’t going out anymore, and were instead doing a lot of fishing for free on Lake Michigan and playing plenty of volleyball in the park instead of going to movies or taking any trips. Everyone’s rediscovering the bounty available in the public library, neglecting Borders or Amazon in favor of entertainment of the free variety. Those who own fabulous apartments with killer views have acquired, or are actively seeking, roommates to rent out what used to be an office or a workout room or a den; those of us who rent are counting the days until leases are up so they can downsize into something much, much more affordable with tomorrow so uncertain.
I shudder to imagine how bad things are in other circles if some of the best and the brightest in Chicago, some of the most successful and accomplished people I know, are all economizing this much, and are all having so much trouble finding jobs. My good friend Janelle just took a job paying about $25,000 less than she’s made in the last 15 years — and it’s an entry-level position about 3 levels below where she “should” be working at, because 300-400 people, at least, seem to be applying for every position out there. People overqualified for the job by miles applied to all the jobs Janelle would have normally taken, pushing her down the ladder to take an entry level slot people right out of college would have taken just two years ago (which means, recent college grads, welcome to McDonalds). ”It’s like I’m starting all over again at the bottom,” Janelle said, before reading the tiny strip of paper stuffed into her fortune cookie. ”May you live always in interesting times…”
“IN BED!” , everyone shouted.
I kept it to myself that this particular fortune is actually a head game played by the companies in New York City that produce most of the fortune cookies in America, because in China this doesn’t mean what Americans think it means at all: ”interesting times” is a relative term, not necessarily meaning “good times”, and having nothing whatsoever to do with any setup for fellow dinners to double-entendre by exclamation.
The Golden Age of Hope and Change certainly has been interesting these last six months.
But can any of us say it’s been good?
I would never wish interesting times like this on anyone, in or out of the bedroom. Not even on Warren, and I seriously want to stuff him into that bunny suit and leave his sorry ass on Halsted at last call.
But then I cracked open my own fortune and Fate smiled, because apparently I “will always be surrounded by true friends, even when (I) think (I) am not…”
“IN BED!”, came the shout again.
And that’s certainly something powerful to hang onto as each day all of us face one surprise after another as Dr. Utopia lurches this country closer towards socialism, and continues to destroy so much of what all of us have worked so hard for all of our lives. Unfortunately, the daily surprises are not the good kind, like walking into a room full of friends and plates of sweet and sour deliciousness after taking a grueling exam all day…but ultimately I hope we all collectively draw my favorite fortune from last night, or any night at all:
“This too shall pass…”
IN BED!
And hopefully everywhere else, in times far, far less interesting.
Sebastian Gray,
Chicago IL
What's Hillary Clinton Doing Today? June 9th, 2009
1100am – Meeting with Sukhbataar Batbold, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mongolia
Remainder of the Day: being awesome
Go, Hillary, Go!
Research needed: Pennsylvania and New Mexico Attorneys General and outsourcing of legal work
Last night, a lawyer we know here in Chicago called us with what could be a very interesting tip. He said that at a meeting he had yesterday, during a break, someone was talking about the Pennsylvania and New Mexico Attorneys General being in a great deal of trouble over outsourcing of legal work — with profits directed towards political cronies.
Here’s how he broke this down to us:
(a) In PA and NM, the AGs claimed they were overwhelmed with work and hired private firms as subcontractors to the state government to work on legal matters for the state.
(b) Investigators looked at the firms hired and saw that in many cases they were not large corporate firms that would be expected to shoulder this sort of subcontracting work — instead, they were obscure, small firms that were being paid a lot of money to do what amounted to minimal work.
(c) The investigators then looked at the firms and saw that these small operations were connected politically to cronies of the states’ political machines (in particular, the pay-to-play scams disgraced Governor Bill Richardson has been shamelessly running in New Mexico (which could very well see the notorious curly-fry eating scam artist headed to federal prison shortly)).
So, essentially, in PA and NM, the Attorneys General wanted to get state money into the hands of political operatives loyal to them, so they used this law firm subcontracting racket to launder that money: whatever was paid to the small firms essentially went into the hands of whichever cronies the small firms then directed the funds to, since the AGs could not pay those people off directly.
This is the first we are hearing about any of this — but it’s fascinating if true.
And very topical, as the lawyer we spoke to believes Attorney General Lisa Madigan could be involved in this type of scam herself. We were told to look into the records kept for the Attorney General’s office in Illinois and figure out what legal work the state subcontracts out to private firms; the next step is to identify which firms receive payments from Madigan’s office, and then determine who those firms are in bed with in the political world.
We were told all roads lead back to Illinois Speaker of the House Mike Madigan, Lisa’s father, and the Madigan Family political machine (accounting for roughly 40% of the corruption in the state).
We know there are a lot of sharp, investigative minds out there reading this site every day.
Here’s a chance to make a big contribution to exposing corruption in Illinois.
What can you find out about the PA and NM Attorneys General and the investigation into their shenannigans?
What can you find out about Lisa Madigan’s subcontracting of legal work to private firms in Illinois?
What can you find out about the firms Madigan has subcontracted to?
It sure feels like there is a story here…but we need help cracking it.
Israel Round Up
Dear HillBuzz,
The news coming out of the Middle East is usually anxiety provoking and worrisome. So, I thought I would mention something kind of cool that I spotted in The Jerusalem Post. It’s a really neat, new robot snake developed by the IDF . What will they think of next?
This item from Fox News is a bit disconcerting. An American Muslim politician who once praised ‘the jihad way’ has been invited by Secretary of State Clinton to participate in a conference call of Muslim leaders. Does this cause you any concern? In my opinion, the current administration is gently whitewashing a lot of the more troublesome aspects of the Muslim world. Do you agree with Bruce Bawer? Bruce Bawer is a gay American, living in Europe, who wrote the excellent book: While Europe Slept.
What do you think about this new appointment? Is this an indication of a trend? Or are writers like Bruce Bawer, and other conservatives barking up the wrong tree?
Did the President’s ground-breaking speech in Cairo do it for you? Here’s Caroline Glick’s take on it. Here’s Barry Rubin’s analysis. At MEMRI, they have a round-up of reactions from Arab countries. Here’s something to keep in mind as well, this is how democracy and democratic reforms are viewed in certain quarters of the Arab world.
The current administration is trying to assure Israel that America is still a close ally. Do you feel reassured?
As always, please leave questions and notes in the comments and I’ll try to include your feedback in the next round up.
Laura Rosen Cohen
Toronto, Canada
Tuesday Open Thread
What’s on your mind this Tuesday?
European writers are accurately referring to the world economic crisis as a DEPRESSION. Meanwhile, American MSM continues to shill the White House’s special blend of Hope! and Change! Kool-Aid. Completely unrelated, the worst shill for the White House on network TV currently, Katie Couric, just deservedly earned the distinction of being the all-time-lowest-rated network newscaster IN RECORDED HISTORY. There are many variables at work here, including Couric’s woeful unprofessionalism and the amateur look and feel of CBS’ broadcasts, but we do believe at least a small portion of this dramatic decline in viewership is Couric’s obvious bias and the simple fact that Americans are slowly waking up to, and rejecting, the MSM’s concerted propaganda campaign on Dr. Utopia’s behalf.
We thought it would take until the end of summer for the public to wake up on a noticeable scale.
We still think the hotter this summer gets, the worse things will be for the White House. Why? Because people we know, anecdotally, are much grumpier and harried in the summer to begin with — hot weather, high electric prices because of all that air conditioning, higher gas prices, all the hassle that goes into vacations, the kids being home from school, covering for disappearing co-workers on the job, going out and doing more things and spending more money as a result.
So, we’ve noticed over the years that the summer is when people tend to complain about things more, and also spend more time socializing, and thus complaining in groups, and that can’t possibly be good for Dr. Utopia or the MSM, which increasingly loses what remaining credibility it has.
As evidenced by those Nielsen ratings.
But, as we said, there are great many factors at work on this one, with just being our take on a few of them. What others can you think of to explain Couric’s abysmal ratings?
Give 'em Hell, Sarah
Apparently, tonight’s Hannity on FOX will be must-see TV.
Governor Sarah Palin rips into Dr. Utopia’s handling of the economy the way we’d like to see her speak each and every day. Palin warned Americans on the campaign trail that Dr. Utopia’s road to socialism would not fix our economy, bring back jobs, or do any of the things he promised they’d do. We saw Palin in person three times delivering that message, in Indiana, Ohio, and Missouri. Everyone in the stands while she spoke knew she was right.
The people who read this site of ours know she was right.
It’s just the rest of the country that listened to the MSM and all the hype for The Golden Age of Hope and Change that were stupid.
It’s rare for a politician to remind people how stupid they were by saying “Told Ya So”, but that’s exactly what Palin is doing, and we love it.
In truth, we’d love it if she’d step up her game and acted as a shadow President, each day calling Dr. Utopia out on his nonsense and saying what SHE would do instead, if she was President. That would be something to see.
From what we hear, Mark Sanford continues to gain ground amongst Republicans as a 2012 choice. The more we learn about Sanford, the more we like him — but he needs to be a psychological remedy to Dr. Utopia to win. No one knows what the MSM will be doing in 2012, but we have to assume they will be in full propaganda mode on Dr. Utopia’s behalf. But, no matter how hard they shill for him, it’s going to be hard to use the “Hope! Change!” stuff again, and “the historic chance to elect a black president” won’t be there a second time around.
That’s why we think it’s so smart for Sarah Palin to run in 2012. The historic first black president stuff is over…but history can be made with a female president. We wish and wish that was Hillary Clinton, but we’ll take Sarah Palin in 2012 if she’ll run. And, a likely Palin candidacy could just shake the DNC to its core enough to convince Dr. Utopia his Parkinson’s is starting to act up and that he needs to pull an LBJ and not seek a second term…paving the way for a Clinton-Palin matchup.
Anything related to 2012 is intensely speculative at this point, but the more Palin stays in the limelight hitting Dr. Utopia’s floundering economic message the better it is for all of us, really.
What’s being done for Palin in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina right now? If we could go back in time, one thing we wish we could have done was organize for Hillary earlier in Iowa. We wish we could have started that in 2005 for her.
If you support the Guv, don’t find yourselves in our shoes 3 years from now, wishing you could have done more for her when you had the chance. Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina should be organized for Palin just in case she does indeed make a run. It’s better to invest that time and energy and not need it in 2012 than to wish you had these days ahead of us now back again.
Trust us on that one.
Good Luck Jessie on your LSAT today!
Today we want to ask all of you out there to send good vibes to our friend Jessie as she takes the LSAT exam today.
Jessie has worked so very hard practicing and studying for this exam, which she takes today at 1pm CST.
We are rooting her on, and hope where you are today you can send some positivity into the universe on her behalf, so between the hours of 1-4pm or so, Jessie has the peace and calm she needs internally to whip through that test and show the LSAT who’s boss.
Best of luck today Jessie — someone who has always encouraged us here at HillBuzz in all of our endeavors, so we certainly want to return that favor to you today when you need it!
