Political quotes of the moment

[Tom]

MOST Dems...except Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher.  Bill Maher laid into the Democrats something awful (as in:  brilliantly!) this past Friday night.  It was a treasure trove of "here's your lail, you rat bastards!" and he's been on that kick since Obama was elected and came to office.

I don't think Maher is a Democrat though, is he?

[Jenne]

MOST Dems...except Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher.  Bill Maher laid into the Democrats something awful (as in:  brilliantly!) this past Friday night.  It was a treasure trove of "here's your lail, you rat bastards!" and he's been on that kick since Obama was elected and came to office.

I don't think Maher is a Democrat though, is he?

Used to be--but he's been pulling away in a big way due to the Iraqi war and their generaly wussiness.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

 

MEAT IS MURDER!

No seriously, you get 20 to life for Chicken Soup!

[Jenne]

[Cain]

From Jim Newell at Wonkette

The term “war room,” which was once used to describe actual rooms from which powerful people went about warring, has now been watered down to the point where it just refers to some 9-year-old intern in an undisclosed Washington dungeon linking to articles about Bob Corker, on Twitter. This is the macho macho new Senate Democrats’ War Room! Look at how buff ‘n’ tuff they are, the Senate Democrats. Ha ha, nice try. An accurate “Senate Democrats’ Twitter Page” would feature a picture of an exasperated Ben Nelson and only one message, “Whoa whoa whoa, let’s slow things down and think this through,” reposted every hour on the hour.

[Tom]

MOST Dems...except Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher.  Bill Maher laid into the Democrats something awful (as in:  brilliantly!) this past Friday night.  It was a treasure trove of "here's your lail, you rat bastards!" and he's been on that kick since Obama was elected and came to office.

I don't think Maher is a Democrat though, is he?

Used to be--but he's been pulling away in a big way due to the Iraqi war and their generaly wussiness.

I thought I remembered him being a libertarian in the 90's. Not the shitty kind, though... more of the liberal idealist type which is more or less extinct now.

[Jenne]

Yeah, he's stated on his show multiple times he's more of a Democrat "sympathizer" or something to that effect.  His libertarian leanings tend to be more on the side of pot decriminalization, but he's definitely for public welfare, etc.

[Cain]

Martin: Hey dude, did you happen to be watching Sky News about an hour ago?
Me: No, why?
Martin: they had footage of someone playing DEFCON during a report on the US's Central Europe missile shield.
Me: WTF?
Martin: yeah, I know, both slightly inappropriate and yet rather awesome. Oh, Sky News, you suck so hard.

[Cain]

When someone publishes an op-ed, longer essay, or book, they have to write a tagline.  It's usually two sentences describing their title and affiliation, and whatever big projects are associated with them. 

After watching the preview for The Invention of Lying, however, I began to wonder what these tag lines would look like if they were brutally honest.  With a nod to Megan Mcardle's "Full Disclosure" post from a few years ago, here's fifteen examples I came up with: 

- Jack Silver is a fellow at the Institute for Strategic Studies.  He has been Henry Kissinger's bitch for something like three decades, so when Henry passed on writing something for us, he was the next logical choice.     
 

- Suzie Wong has never been to the country about which she is writing.  What's in this op-ed is culled from a quick perusal of the Economist and a few phone calls.     
 

- Cass Bunstein is a law professor.  He dashed off this essay in his head while commute to work this morning, wrote it in under thirty minutes, and it's still smarter than anything, my dear reader, that will ever pop into your brain. 
 

- Augustine Cornington has been teaching at an obscure state school for two decades, lying in the tall grass, waiting for her archnemesis to make a mistake in print.  This book review is her chance to completely eviscerate him. 
 

- Joe Schlub Jr. is a law professor.  This essay is a badly mangled version of an interesting idea he heard Cass Bunstein riff on at a cocktail party last week. 
 

- Andrew McClutchen is a former governor.  He hopes that this op-ed is the first step in getting beyond that horrible sex scandal from a few years ago. 
 

- Madeleine McFadden is a former cabinet secretary, and did not write a single word of this policy essay.  It is possible she read the first few paragraphs of it, but that's being really optimistic.
 

- Jane Babbington has no extraordinary policy expertise.  She does have an awesome book jacket photo, however, and will have better hair and skin than you do until the day she dies.   
 

- Lou Marston is a very smart professor at Princeton University.  This op-ed is woefully underplaced because he took his own sweet time writing it, and this issue is from last week's news cycle.   
 

- Robert Knaus lost the capacity to write long-form essays years ago - what you just read is what an intern scraped together from one year's worth of Twitter tweets. 
 

- Ann Stoneham is the foremost expert on this topic, and cannot write her way out of a paper bag.  Her uber-competent editor busted her ass for the last 48 hours to try and convert this essay into semi-readable prose
 

- Gwen Pollard is an area expert at a prominent DC think tank.  She fervently hopes that everyone has forgotten how completely wrong she was about this topic just five short years ago.
 

- C. Thomas Pope is a professor at the University of Chicago, and his worldview hardened into an inpenetrable black mass the day he turned twenty-four.  As no amount of contradictory evidence will cause him to change his mind, he is perfectly willing to make absurd, idiotic statements without worrying that he is wrong. 
 

- Richard Jensen is a professor at Harvard University.  He has the Mother of All Balloon Payments due on his mortgage next year, so any extra income helps. 

And, of course.....

- Daniel Drezner is a professor at Tufts University, and is publishing the fifth version of exact same idea with this essay.  Seriously, the man would be nothing without the cut and paste function.

http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/09/25/what_if_author_bios_were_brutally_honest

[Jenne]

DAY-YUM.

[Remington]

PEPSI CEASES ALL ADVERTISING

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/pepsi_to_cease_advertising?utm_source=a-section

"Look, Coca-Cola is a terrific product," Nooyi continued. "Millions of people choose it over Pepsi every day. Are those people wrong? Of course not. Concepts like 'right' and 'wrong' shouldn't even apply. It's a soft drink."

Nooyi told reporters the company's $1.3 billion annual advertising budget would be put into Pepsi's savings account, spread among various charitable organizations, and divvied up into generous bonuses for the company's minimum-wage factory employees.

Claiming that "taste is subjective," Nooyi further stated that those who hadn't already heard of Pepsi were unlikely to begin drinking it now, and that the company was perfectly content to rely on word of mouth to sell its product.

"You can't taste an ad, anyway," Nooyi said. "People are going to make up their own minds regardless of whether we spend millions trying to inform them that Taylor Swift drinks Pepsi. I mean, seriously, does it really matter if Taylor Swift drinks Pepsi? She's just a human being like everybody else."

[Iason Ouabache]

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/10/greatest_press_release_ever.php

"Vitter Seeks Investigation of ACORN for Assisting Fake Prostitution Ring. CREW Seeks Investigation of Vitter for Role in Real Prostitution Ring."

[Cain]

Andrew Exum wins for all enternity at Israeli passport control:

Her: Have you ever been to Iraq?

Me: Yes.

Her: What were you doing there?

Me: Overthrowing the government.

[LMNO, PhD (life continues)]

[La Terrorista]

There was some idiot on Hannity's radio show, a few days ago, that actually suggested Cass Sustein would eventually make it a crime to eat meat.  Even if he philosophically thought it was a crime, does anyone in their right mind think he is stupid enough to try to push such a policy through?  OR, that anyone in the Obama administration would be stupid enough to agree to push such a policy through. 

WTF? He's the head of Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. He couldn't do that even if he wanted to.

I wonder if they realize THEY'RE the only ones who actually take him seriously?