Posted 8:15 PM by Gene

Sorry Jo-NAH, a promo's a promo -- and this is a DOUBLE promo.

What happened to all those 75 million, Mr. B? Did they go bye-bye like Larry's BRAIN?

(Or maybe King Richard just said, since our megazillion-earning interviewer made an ASS of himself I'D better control the VIDEO.)

Posted 7:50 PM by Gene

Hey c'mon, JonBoy, isn't this, uh, piling on? Don't you realize the TWXSTERS sold Bloomy for prez? And now you're number two -- a DEFINITE number two! You don't have any right endorsing presidential candidates! Even if you CAN get your dozens of interns to help you write 6,979 WORDS!

Besides, He has His own PR department in The Paper of Re-CORD.

Or,

The president's press secretary Jon Meacham said today....

Is being number two THAT bad? Just remember Avis, you'll feel better.

Or, WHO NEEDS NEWSRAGS?

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

As I said the other day, the left won't hear of entitlement cuts and the right won't hear of tax increases. How many times must I say SIX OF ONE....

Posted 2:58 PM by Gene

Great: The SEC is sniffing around Citigroup -- and its SIVs.

Why couldn't they have chosen another acronym for those things -- like HOLEs?

Posted 2:16 PM by Gene

In the continuing saga of Whatever Happened to Instapundit?:

Why are fewer men going to college? [George Leef]

Glenn Harlan Reynolds explores that question in this piece on [SIC] TCSDaily.

Reynolds suggests that the answer may be "that men aren't so much underrepresented in college as women are overrepresented. This is plausible. There probably are too many people going to college in general, and it may be that men — more likely to choose, or at least consider, high-paying but unfeminine alternatives like plumbing, or other, more 'masculine' alternatives like military service — are less likely to wind up in college as an unthinking extension of high school."

I particularly like the phrase "an unthinking extension of high school."

Last year, I suggested pretty much the same thing here.

That's another way of saying you don't need a college diploma to be an Instapundit.

Out of curiosity I also checked the Alexa ranking (for what that's worth) of B. S. DEFENDER. Within the last few months it's fallen below 100,000. He writes about nothing but Web 2.0 anymore. No one wants to read such guff. NUF SAID.

Posted 12:12 PM by Gene

Strange that the Best-Selling President Pervez has declared a state of emergency now; we'd say Pakistan's been in a state of emergency since 1947, and especially since THE @#%$*& "FATHER" OF THE COUNTRY started his nuke biz.

Posted 12:05 PM by Gene

Our intrepid NASA handymen fixed the solar array on the orbiting garage, which means it can rattle around in space for a few more years.

We're not making fun of them, only that our GUVMENT thought it necessary to put a solar-powered garage in orbit.

Posted 11:49 AM by Gene

In news that seems to have gone unnoticed outside Denver and central Massachusetts, a "banker" jumped to his death yesterday. What was odd about this "banker" is that he "ran" a college and later "ran" a bank. He "ran" both as scams. His life suggests that HYER EHDYUKAYSHUN and finance share something of a soft underbelly.

(Second link via Chronicle.com)

Posted 11:47 AM by Gene

I HATE PRESS RELEASES CALLED NEWS!

A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO LAMA!

Posted 11:00 AM by Gene

Mark my words: these frauds will settle on Monday morning. They will settle because every show-biz news hack wants them to; indeed from their mournful tones they've been praying for the first time in their lives. Of course there are far more of us who want to see them strike, who want their arrogant, incompetent industry to get a big hurtful comeuppance. But both sides already agree in one thing: they're better than their audience. This will unite them to settle -- on Monday morning.

Posted 10:04 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Watch for a huge severance deal for this guy too -- and the many others to follow.

Posted 10:00 AM by Gene

In more news of the MENSA MAN of CRIME:

O.J. Simpson and a memorabilia dealer initially hoped to videotape The Juice's Las Vegas hotel heist and televise the operation to make money, an FBI source said Friday.

Where? On Comedy Central? Or Cartoon Network?

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

Who knew the ED RENDELL of the WEST had a BAD side?

Pffffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 1:45 PM by Gene

Two days ago I ended a 15 month professional affiliation (indirect) with the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) -- which is why, during those 15 months, I did not write as a journalist on health care issues (except one passing reference once in a column on something else), because of course that would have been a conflict of interest. But now that my professional affiliation is finished, I feel compelled to say this: Of all the anti-corporate scapegoating that the political left engages in, perhaps the most pernicious is the left's continuing attempt to paint pharmaceutical companies as bad guys. The fact is that, every single year, PhRMA companies vastly improve tens of millions of American lives and flat-out save millions more. Our free market system, and the competitions therein, work well in the pharmaceutical industries to provide the resources for life-saving research while keeping downward pressure on prices that no government program could ever accomplish. And the people I worked with at PhRMA care deeply, in a very personal way, about keeping their industry strong not just because it provides them a paycheck but because of the good that the industry does. PhRMA's senior vice president of communications, Ken Johnson, is clearly motivated largely by a sense of idealism about the industry's life-saving mission -- in part because his longtime boss, PhRMA president and CEO and former U.S. Rep. Billy Tauzin, had his own life saved from cancer by the medical advances that only a free-market pharmaceutical industry could possibly have developed. PhRMA and conservatives may not always agree, but 90% of the time they will be on the same side, and for all the best reasons. It is an industry worth defending.

Yes, this puppy slobber is DEFINITELY the answer to those COMMIE LIBERALS.

Indeed there is no difference between this and the paroxysm of grief the Beltway suffered when the fraud THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST died. Shut your trap, Armstr...Quin.

Posted 1:34 PM by Gene

Still, the consequences of the decision to describe 9/11 as the beginning of a war rather than a criminal investigation....

It seems the man who wants to establish a "rhetoric beat" has some untouchable rhetoric of his own. Just as the clown Gekko Kudlow tries to change the subject when it comes to the credit bust, so this clown tries to change the subject when it comes to liberals' spinelessness on foreign policy. Maybe Iraq was bad, but that any liberal would limit us to a criminal investigation on 9/11 shows just how vain and cowardly knee-jerks -- of BOTH stripes -- can be.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 1:21 PM by Gene

GEKKO "DICK GRASSO WAS VASTLY UNDERPAID" KUDLOW RULES:

Message to all you worrywarts out there: The U.S. economy remains strong. There is no recession ahead. Goldilocks rules.

I.e., a fairy tale rules.

Posted 1:13 PM by Gene

President Bush yesterday warned Democrats that if they do not confirm his attorney general nominee, Michael B. Mukasey, the U.S. might have no attorney general for the remainder of his term.

Would anyone notice?

Posted 1:11 PM by Gene

In "American Gangster," time doesn't fly, it explodes.

In movie ad-blurb copy, words don't fly, they mewl, cower, whine, fawn, belch, pretend, prevaricate, posture, annoy, sell -- they do anything and everything but be honest.

Is MisTAH HunTAH becoming the Robert "Over the" Hilburn of fillum?

Posted 9:38 AM by Gene

Since when has a Fantasy and Profanity League member in good standing used a pencil?

Posted 9:28 AM by Gene

Great: Our astronauts get to play Electricians in Space.

Why did we have to put that rattletrap up there?

Posted 9:23 AM by Gene

When an "Arab leader" accuses Nukeman of wanting the bomb may we count that as the definitive truth?

Posted 8:54 AM by Gene

CURLEY (Nyuk! Nyuk! Nyuk!) SPEAKS AGAIN:

"We -- the news industry -- have come to that fork in the road. We must take bold, decisive steps to secure the audiences and funding to support journalism’s essential role in both our economy and democracy, or find ourselves on an ugly path to obscurity...."

Well CURLEY, you know what Yogi Berra said: When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Posted 8:41 AM by Gene

Both parties have different ways of sticking it to the people. With the Democrats it's the internal Siberian expulsion. With Republicans it's one form or another of bribe taking. Looks like the GOP wants to come out on top in the which-party-can-shaft-the-public-better game.

Posted 8:22 AM by Gene

Speaking of money, notice anything about this? Do you think it at least slightly resembles



this?

Of course there's a reason: the bigger and fancier we make our hospitals, the more they need insurance companies and TAXPAYERS, and their expenses grow so fast that the old Taj Mahals have to come down for new ones, and so....

Anyone for a $20 billion hospital?

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

Who in his right mind believes the drug-store superchains are good for anything but cloning themselves and their profits? Who would "trust" a 10,000-store company in the first place?

Posted 6:28 PM by Gene

We wonder at what point chastity belts become mandatory equipment for teachers.

Posted 6:14 PM by Gene

And when not financing junk television two of our big consumer-products bastions take a relaxing break by suing each other over coffee-can design.

Posted 6:10 PM by Gene

Fortunately -- for now -- the imbecile typists are playing down democracy's bludgeoning in the Confederacy, fairly apt on a day Chrysler fired 12,000.

Posted 6:01 PM by Gene

Does it not occur to the tulip growers investing in the Dalai Lamas of Mountain View that maybe their company shares an economy?

Posted 6:00 PM by Gene

Howie Hairshirt, Jeff Greenfield and Sen. Morals are dancing.

Posted 5:53 PM by Gene

Martina Hingis's "retirement" (more like a forced resignation) answers our question about Andy Reid, and the answer is no. Tennis is inundated with the CEO crowd who'll sponsor anything to put one over on their plebe help, and there's no reason to think they'll abandon a sport so good to their egos, though it often has the excitement of watching a large puddle evaporate. As for Martina, she's just another druggie in an industry where it's an increasing exception not to be, either for muscle or pleasure.

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

Perfect timing by an ALTERNARAG:



In an age of BRITNEY and PARIS shame cannot stick, but we wonder if this isn't the end for Andy Reid. He has shown the world he wasn't much of a father; his sons have returned the favor by proving they weren't much as sons. The drug rot has become so pervasive we do not laugh at stories like this. We especially don't laugh when a brave local policeman lost his life to a thug, just another shooting in the land of Mr. iPhone, a shooting inspired by drug abuse. Meanwhile Andy makes his millions doing what too many coaches could do -- get outcoached by the couch potatoes. Under the circumstances we rather hope the final score on Sunday is Dallas 70-3.

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

This was a courageous move. No doubt these officials will be villified as humorless old fogies (and in no small measure by the idiot HACKS who've prolonged this book sales pitch), but they did the right thing. This SUMNER publicity stunt was getting out of hand. Had they approved of putting this half-witted farceur and front for dozens of ghostwriters on the ballot it could have created a groundswell for a fake campaign. Having voted for JIMMAH and John Anderson and Dubya I know what a wasted vote is like. We don't need to formalize the waste. The republic should salute these fine party leaders for going into the teeth of a hurricane-like BIGMEDIA FRAUD, and emerging with their reps burnished.

Posted 3:35 PM by Gene

NOOOO!!!!! The Voice of the Zeitgeist concedes! It's cutting its rate base by half-a-million!

NUMBER TWO FOREVER!

Posted 2:23 PM by Gene

Motto of the Week:

As a prominent South African told me before I left for Zimbabwe, a surefire sign that you’re in an undemocratic country is the proliferation of presidential pictures.

Posted 1:18 PM by Gene

See, I could have told all the little SUMNERITES hardly anybody outside the self-absorbed media community pays the slightest attention to Nick Dorken's beloved gossip belch, that all it spews are a higher level of insults, that people won't buy a book issued by a Web site whose contents are already free, that a $250,000 advance for such a book is an instant trip to the remainder pile -- but then who pays attention to me?

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 11:51 AM by Gene

Well GEEKS, here's your chance: will people buy LINUX PCs or not -- even at $199 -- even at WAL-MART?

Posted 11:40 AM by Gene

Oklahoman sales/marketing veep now oversees newsroom

Get REAdyyyyyyyyyy, get reaDYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY, the WORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRLD is cominnnnnnnnng to an ENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNND!!!!!

Posted 10:26 AM by Gene

It must be that time of year -- put thirty or forty slips of paper in a hat, toss 'em around, pick three, toss 'em in a hat, pick one...

Yep, it's time to choose the Os-CAR® winner for "BEST" SONG!

Posted 10:24 AM by Gene

Bad sportsmanship on the field, bad sportsmanship in the stands -- USA OKAY!!!!! is surprised?

Posted 9:56 AM by Gene

Top GOP senator: Attorney general nomination 'at risk'

...Sen. Arlen Specter.... [?????]

Okay, the TWXSTERS SAY this Senator wished to remain anonymous, but Mr. O'Specter IS the only one quoted here, and how many Senators like to see their quotes in lights?

Posted 9:45 AM by Gene

We need to know BOTH parties are full of "BUMS"?

Posted 9:21 AM by Gene

When we learned BUGMEISTER and ST. WARREN had pooled Their assets for eternal press releases, we knew something fishy was up -- namely, the thought that They could CURE the world's maladies. This, of course, is hubris, and evidently Their hubris is being tested in Africa, where no amount of money seems to stop AIDS. It is preposterous to think science can't stop it -- after all, science is on the verge of making a lot of utopian nightmares possible -- but then again GUVMENT should have comprehensively disproved the idea of wealth as panacea, and maybe AIDS needs something a little less complicated than vaccines -- like teaching teenagers not to sleep together, for starters.

Posted 9:19 AM by Gene

Not content to cram zillions of passengers into flying sardine cans, the airline industry wants to turn its pilots into overworked truck drivers convoying non-stop.

Posted 9:14 AM by Gene

Schumer Asserts Iran War Would Destroy G.O.P.

And make Speaker Babs even MORE powerful?

Posted 8:51 AM by Gene

If (as John McLaughlin's former sidekick says) Babs is THE MOST POWERFUL SPEAKER EVER, but she can't get anything done, wouldn't that make her less than most powerful?

Posted 8:47 AM by Gene

We knew this smelled when we saw the hed:

Al Qaeda Hacker Attack Scheduled To Begin November 11th

Yeah. They announce these things in advance. And of course there's a reason this smells:

...reports DEBKAfile....

Meaning SAM LITTLE has already posted a dozen times on this and gotten 200,000 comments.

Posted 8:33 AM by Gene

The pittance that is a current Social Security payment was intended to maintain the doddering retirees of yore in their accustomed condition of thin gruel and single-car garages. Such chump change will hardly suffice for today's vigorous sexagenarians intent on (among other things) vigorous sex, in places like Paris, St. Bart's, and Phuket.

How can present Social Security allotments be expected to fund our sky-diving, bungee-jumping, hang gliding and white-water rafting, our skiing, golf and scuba excursions, our photo safaris to Africa, bike tours of Tuscany and sojourns at Indian ashrams, our tennis clinics, spa treatments, gym memberships and personal fitness training, our luxury cruises to the Galapagos and Antarctica, the vacation homes in Hilton Head and Vail, the lap pools, Jacuzzis, and clay courts being built thereat and the his and hers Harley Davidsons?

And we haven't even touched on the subject of Social Security's civil union life partner, Medicare. It won't take much sky-diving, bungee-jumping, hang gliding, and white-water rafting before we all require new hips, knees, elbows, back surgery, pacemakers, and steel plates in our heads. And the expense of these will be as nothing compared to the cost of our pharmacological needs. Remember, we are a generation that knows drugs. From about 1967 until John Belushi died, we created a way of life based almost entirely on drugs. And we can do it again. Except this time, instead of us trying to figure out how to pay for the fun by selling each other nickel bags of pot, you the taxpayer will be picking up the tab. And did I mention that we'll expect to be airlifted to the Mayo Clinic every time we have an ache or a pain? Nothing smaller than a Gulfstream G-3, please.

T'aint funny, O'Rourke.

Posted 8:24 AM by Gene

Another indication the credit crisis is OVER: Citigroup may have to cut its dividend!

Now that's optimism!

(Updated story here)

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

The latest thing in news-hack CW is that Ron Paul is THE MAN, no doubt because he's a Glibertarian, and Glibertarians are free-market liberals. Let's see how much of a man he is when his candidacy gets single digits in the primaries.

(Never mind either that he seems less a man than something wired by Dr. Frankenstein.)

P. S. It doesn't hurt when some of his more devoted followers push the cause with SPAM.

Posted 8:11 AM by Gene

STRIKE! Strike long, strike hard, strike BITTERLY!!!!!

Posted 8:09 AM by Gene

Who wants to bet that, at SUMNER's suggestion, the ERIC SEVAREID OF COMEDY does NOT register in South Carolina's primary?

Posted 5:58 PM by Gene

Meantime we've only had our twenty-seventh debate and Hillary's won in a landslide.

These typists will NOT let US decide.

Posted 5:53 PM by Gene

52% of Americans support military strike against Iran

Which means roughly that 80% of REPUBLICANS are for it and 80% of DEMOCRATS are against it, and 80% of MODERATES can't make up their minds.

Let's stop playing games with numbers. It may be necessary to do this, but it would not be wise without broader support, to say the least.

Well, close enough, but not surprising.

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

The Hollywood Stenographer calls Mr. Nothing's computerized masterwork "cerebral."

Does that mean he has to think extra hard to be unfunny?

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

Why we need global think tanks:

The International Energy Agency, the western countries’ energy watchdog, has warned that crude oil inventories declines showed the market needed more supplies.

Brilliant think-tanking!

P. S.



The countries in blue are members of this brilliant organization's parent. Most of the other nations will eventually rule the planet.

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

Russia moves to cut elections oversight in ex-Soviet states

Jeez, Belly Kisser, if you're going to run a totalitarian oilocracy stop dancing -- do it NOW.

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

The Big Double-A Scribble must have a TV editor, and he must give ideas to our consumer-products betters how they can waste OUR money. To wit:

If you're looking for reliable entertainment that brings a wide audience, then "Criminal Minds" is a good bet, though the show's reliance on dark violence and oddball criminals could give pause to more conservative marketers. [Emphasis added]

But consider the preceding graf:

Top "Criminal Minds" sponsors last season included telecom giants Verizon Wireless, Sprint, Cingular and AT&T Wireless; Home Depot; and, interestingly enough, sleeping medications such as Rozerem and Lunesta. Does that mean people who watch "Criminal Minds" are insomniacs who love home-repair and talking on the phone?

Perhaps it merely means BIGPHONE is trying to further mistify already addled customers into juggling their gouge-alike cell services. And we are not surprised ABE AND THE GOPHER have found another toilet to pour their money down. That said, if these are the principal sponsors that gives us slight cause for hope as not EVERY member of the American Society of Willfully Ignorant Advertisers believes GOOD TASTE IS CENSORSHIP.

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

"[T]hey're not a model of intelligent management."

That would be putting it mildly, David Stern.

But then consider who owns the Knicks and you don't have to be a model of intelligent management.

Posted 2:29 PM by Gene

DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGWHIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!

THE CREDIT CRISIS HAS ENDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OOPS! STOCKS ARE GOING DOWN?!?!? CUT IT ANOTHER HUNDRED POINTS! TWO HUNDRED!!!!!

Nope! BOINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGNGNGNGNGNGNGNGNG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can we have some of that happy juice you're guzzling?

Posted 12:07 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: A comedian is selling a movie and a book. He ends up selling a movie and two books. Don't we have enough selling?

Posted 9:05 AM by Gene

Miller (or rather that South African brewer) is putting out a lower-calorie beer, which thankfully it will not call Miller Lite Lite.

Posted 8:58 AM by Gene

The Fantasy and Profanity League may hold off. This strike will be settled in three days, if it happens at all.

P. S. at 2:35 p. m. It sez here the FPL may strike Friday. The sooner, the better -- and the LONGER!

(Revised as I'd already posted on SUMNER'S COMEDY CENTRAL NEWS NETWORK -- about a dozen dozen times)

Posted 8:55 AM by Gene

The Three-Headed Dog withdraws from a big leveraged buyout because of "the continuation of poor conditions in the debt markets."

DOW UP 500!

Posted 8:44 AM by Gene

This should make con-SER-va-tives happy: Sarko's getting a big pay raise!

Now does he deserve it?

Posted 8:40 AM by Gene

Another GEKKO KUDLOW HALL OF FAME.

Posted 8:36 AM by Gene

Spain's idea of justice:

Prosecutors were seeking sentences of up to 38,976 years each for the eight lead defendants -- 30 years for each of the people killed in the attacks, 18 years for each of the wounded, plus more time for other terrorism-related charges. But the most time any can spend in jail is 40 years. Spain has no death penalty or life imprisonment.

We suspect the CHICKENS are happy for it; at least the holy cockroaches know they're SORRY.

Posted 7:55 PM by Gene

Robert Goulet was born in the wrong time. Had he been born thirty years earlier he might have occupied the same noble place as John Raitt (you know -- BONNIE'S FATHER), but he started off too late with Camelot -- he and Ed Sullivan saved that show -- and despite that strong and virile baritone he too readily became The Voice of Easy Listening (especially as he recorded for Columbia, a label with too many such voices), and even his dashing looks may have counted against him as he became a second-string TV star and later Mr. Vegas, a particular burden when his career careened past self-parody. But it is hard not to hear "If Ever I Would Leave You" (ideally from the cast album, in that majestic Robert Russell Bennett - Philip Lang orchestration, not his later recordings) in the mind's ear and think, in the brief time before he became something else he was something else.

Posted 5:57 PM by Gene

There are nine personal vehicles per thousand eligible drivers in China and eleven for every thousand Indians, compared with 1,148 for every thousand Americans....Were China and India to increase their rates of car ownership to the point where per-capita oil consumption reached just half of American levels, the two countries would burn through a hundred million additional barrels a day. (Currently, total global oil use is eighty-six million barrels a day.) Were they to match U.S. consumption levels, they would require an extra two hundred million barrels a day.

End America's gas addiction! Sell a car to China!

Posted 5:51 PM by Gene

The deposed monarch of Merrill Lynch walks away with $161.5 MILLION!

LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRY KUDLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!

Posted 5:24 PM by Gene

And when Gabby insisted they buy a corset to "lift everything up" and make the dress look better, Cirenza drew the line again. No corsets. Not now. Whether Gabby knows it or not, her mother thought, a corset is the last thing an 11-year-old needs. [Last graf]

When I read (or rather skim; I know such things by heart) stories like this I think of Tom Wolfe's brilliant line (I've quoted it before) about how the high mucky-mucks of Yale reacted when a granite block clunked next to its fine Beaux-Arts art museum: "They took it -- like a MAN." We have to take young teens as sluts-in-training like a man because (said this before too) we don't control the culture, SLIME and SUMNER do, and their tentacles are so vast as to smother discontent at the source -- although God knows the public's been trying. And then the hacks help out with their ein-volk-ein-reich-ein-NEWS-BIZ philosophy, a considerable part of which is to fling every damning word at people who believe the human race should have morals (PRUDE, HYPOCRITE, CHRISTIAN, ETC., ETC., ETC.). Besides look who's its PROFIT CENTERS. To be sure our STATEMEDIA are an argument for revolution, but they so pacify us we can't even respond with a whimper.

Posted 5:17 PM by Gene

Gordon Bethune, former CEO of Continental Airlines, once commented on reductions in the quality of service that "You can take so much cheese off the pizza that nobody will eat it."

And while you're at it get rid of the peanuts too!

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

This might be the way around Useless News's corrupt college rankings: for every school to swallow hard and put its own stats online. It might be the only way.

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

[L]eaving SI for ESPN the so-called mag is like leaving The Four Seasons to check into a Hampton Inn.

Just one problem with that Romy-approved analogy: Under King Richard's management the Four Seasons has turned scruffy while Bristol's Hampton Inn has added thousands of four-star rooms.

Posted 5:05 PM by Gene

U.S. spent $43.5B on intel in 2007

Of which, thankfully, the amount wasted is classified.

Posted 2:29 PM by Gene

G. I. JOE JOINS THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS!

Well, he may.

Posted 11:32 AM by Gene

Heroically surging Mike Huckabee has a PC con-SER-va-tive playlist!

The CORNER typists will masticate this for DAYS!

Posted 11:14 AM by Gene

Don't go near ROMY. He's in a SOUR mood today because "most news orgs ignored weekend war protests." Never mind that most times when there's been a war protest it's been the opposite of ignored. It makes us think that if, say, 100,000 attended an anti-abortion rally in Washington Romy's friends would be smilingly ignoring that. The consolation prize is the next time there's an anti-war rally maybe Romy's friends will be moved by this piteous plaint to over-cover it.

Posted 10:48 AM by Gene

G000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000GLE's selling cell phones!!!!!

GET OUT THE STRAITJACKETS!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 10:37 AM by Gene

We have quagmires like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch because 1. Too many people MUST drink water from plastic bottles instead of taps, and 2. Too many of these people say, "Duh, I'll just throw it in the street, duhhhhhhhhhhhhhh," where it washes into sewers and out to sea. Great thinking on both parts.

Posted 9:05 AM by Gene

Remember how we gave the store away in consumer electronics and white goods? Well look what's happened to the company that can't make up its mind what its name is, Matsushita Electric Industrial...er, Panasonic:

Costs for a massive cell-phone battery recall helped depress profit for the second fiscal quarter 17 percent at Matsushita....

Last month, a fire broke out in a Matsushita plant in Osaka that makes lithium-ion batteries. The company is investigating the cause of the fire. Repairing the plant will cost 2 billion yen ($17.4 million), and the plant will resume part of its operations Nov. 1, Matsushita said.

Matsushita also recently replaced faulty parts in driers, massage chairs, microwaves, refrigerators and other products, adding to such extra expenses, it said.

With that kind of "quality control" how can such a company stay in business without pushing products mindlessly out the door -- the way OURS did?

Posted 9:02 AM by Gene

Well, maybe Chrysler CAN come back: Its CEO the former terror of Home Depot suggests his company will spend less on advertising, meaning it will now have to sell its cars, and not relying on the pitch for a crutch. This can only be good news -- for Chrysler, its dealers and suppliers...and our sanity.

Posted 8:40 AM by Gene

Mogul's Friend, who knows how insufferable Hollywood's producing bigwigs are from years of fawning over them, tells us the members of the Fantasy and Profanity League pull one mean trick by managing to be even more insufferable.

STRIKE! STRIKE HARD! STRIKE LONG! STRIKE COSTLY!

Posted 8:13 AM by Gene

The bad news: SELIGFEST's ratings were up.

The good news:

The four-game series averaged 17.1 million total viewers, 8 percent better than last year’s all-time low 15.8 million, and a 10.6 household rating and 18 share, 5 percent better than last year’s St. Louis Cardinals-Detroit Tigers matchup.

That’s nowhere near the 15.8 household rating that Boston’s 2004 victory over the Cardinals averaged, and in fact it ranks second-worst among all Series since Nielsen began measurements in 1968.

More good news: SLIME will have to dish out millions in "makegoods." But we wouldn't have SELIGISM without all those CEOs saying, "I WAS AT THE WORLD SERIES AND YOU WEREN'T!!!!!"

Posted 7:01 AM by Gene

Another European bank has huge losses related to Babbitts. Wall Street smiles.

Posted 6:54 AM by Gene

Meantime New York's Sun has a brilliant idea:

Like a New Sound? Invest in the Band

Wouldn't that be kinda like investing in subprimes?

Posted 6:51 AM by Gene

EXCELSIOR: Count on USAOKAY!!!!! to get excited: instead of fillum soundtracks being greatest-hits anthologies, they're now solo albums, complete with the inevitable filler.

Of course we've never heard of any of these geniuses, and after their mind-boggling work on these masterpieces we doubt we ever will again.

Posted 6:47 AM by Gene

For God's sake, SKNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNX, if the entitlements problem is that bad -- and we have no doubt it could become very bad -- there are two alternatives: raise taxes or cut benefits. The Republicans will never hear of the former and the Democrats will never hear of the latter. All that remains is posturing.

Posted 9:16 PM by Gene

Impossible to see how the Democrats could top the Republicans, but they have -- not only can they run a do-nothing Congress, they do nothing in secret!

Now when do they get indicted?

Posted 6:04 PM by Gene

MEDICAL SPIN:

Infant mortality strongly correlates with low birth weight and preterm births, both of which are likelier among teen mothers. And the U.S. has nearly three times Canada’s rate of teen births, and about seven times Japan’s and Sweden’s. If you break down infant mortality rates in the U.S. even further, by race, you find that both “the pre-term infant mortality rate and the teen birth rate are considerably higher for blacks than for whites.” This means that America’s diverse ethnic mix plays against it in comparisons with more homogeneous countries. Once you factor in America’s high rate of low-weight births, an interesting statistic emerges: “If in Canada the distribution of births by birth weight was the same as in the U.S., their infant mortality rate would rise to 7.06.” Conversely, if the U.S. had Canada’s distribution of low-weight births, its infant mortality rate would drop to 5.4.

This is an outrage. What this guy named Howard (any relation to you-know-who?) says in so many words is if we massage the numbers we don't need socialized health care. I don't want socialized health care either, but dammit we should be ashamed at all the babies born out of what used to be called wedlock, and that they aren't entitled to better treatment. This kind of verbal legerdemain can only convince people we need more government health supervision, something that will help neither the poor nor the preemies.

Posted 12:01 PM by Gene

Somebody painted a Hitler moustache on Jo-NAH's book on Amazon.com.

That's okay; he can respond with 500 Star Trek posts on THE CORNER.

Posted 11:12 AM by Gene

EBAY'S AUCTION OF THE YEAR!!!!!

(Via Spiegel International)

Posted 10:51 AM by Gene

Mark the date: January 3! That's when Hillary's coronated!

Posted 10:49 AM by Gene

Want to market your brand better? Then tell a story. That's the top finding from an intensive three-year study titled On the Road to a New Effectiveness Model released this month.

Don't these clowns tell enough fairy tales?

Posted 10:34 AM by Gene

Schwarzenegger: Pot 'Not a Drug'

Ah-NULT! Will you STOP jumping up and down and waving your hands and yelling and whistling and impressing the hacks with what a great guy you are?

Posted 10:12 AM by Gene

Okay, Chief Nine-Fingers! Now's your chance to come out for BIG OIL!

Posted 10:05 AM by Gene

SARKO GETS MAD!

But can he govern?

Posted 10:00 AM by Gene

A SUPERDUPERMEGAGIGABLOGGER calls for a BOYCOTT of TNR'S ADVERTISERS!!!!!

America's academic publishers are quaking in their boots.

Wait a second! Aren't the John Templeton Foundation and the Hoover Institution con-SER-va-tive?

(Via MS. TRAVERS)

Posted 8:57 AM by Gene

SUPERADAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! wins the DOUBLE-A SCRIBBLE RAGMAN OF THE YEAR AWARD, confirming he runs a BAD OVERRATED RAG.

Posted 8:55 AM by Gene

This is a Halloween costume?

Posted 8:52 AM by Gene

Elsewhere the Big V tells us Moammar is making a movie! He calls it Years of Torment.

WE KNOW.

Posted 8:45 AM by Gene

All this mammoth PR -- the threat to drape our StinkyInky headquarters with an ad -- and all THE GREATEST SITCOM COMEDIAN IN HISTORY comes up with is AMIABLE?!?!?

P. S.

For one night only, Jerry Seinfeld will host a late-night talk show for Fox, according to Variety. It should make for a good drinking game: one shot for every mention of Bee Movie!

Pfffffffffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 8:29 AM by Gene

Hoooooooooooooo-hummmmmmmmmmmmm, now the franchise is worth $4 billion, zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

P. S. at 10:15 a.m. And of course SELIGISM once again shows its might in the ratings! Pffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 10:40 PM by Gene

The professional press scolds are back to wagging the righteous finger at news hacks for covering a horse race, meaning we've already gotten more horse-race coverage than ever, and we aren't even in 2008 yet.

Posted 8:15 PM by Gene

Okay, we admit Hummers can do some good. So why not sell them to government agencies -- instead of the money-burning clowns who use them to wave a middle finger?

Elsewhere in the Big Double-A Scribble, the lia -- ad agencies are in a tiz because "rock stars" are "overwhelming" the product pitches with their genius. First off, we will not repeat the name CHEVY CHASE again. Second, what happened to JINGLES?

"Listen, it's sensitive business," said Peter Greco, senior VP-executive music producer at WPP Group's Y&R Advertising. "They are using our media dollars to gain exposure."

I am now convinced media bigwigs attend an oratory school where they learn how to make pretentious excuses for their job failings. And it's not Churchill they're learning.

Posted 8:04 PM by Gene

Our astronauts have found "metal shavings inside a joint" to a solar panel on the Space Station.

With every new disclosure comes another reason the ISS was a total boondoggle.

Posted 6:07 PM by Gene

While idly searching Footlight Records' site (which has had a reprieve since its closing notice, for which we and other record nuts are grateful), scanning the foreign-soundtrack albums for the ultra-cheesy seventies crime potboilers whose covers are far sexier (and perforce far better) than the movies ever could be, we came across an excerpt from this French cinema masterwork: Michael Kael Contre la World News Company, based on an alleged TV news satire on Ca-NAL PLEW and starring Victoria Principal (who judging from her face must have been desperate for a job) and the bulbous shrimp Mickey Rooney (a long way from the PTL Club) and the former Mr. Barbra Streisand impersonating an actor. The disco font in the poster art leaves little guessing who World News Company is; in truth this is one "satire" that makes CNN look good. As the AllMovie gang describes it:

Christophe Smith made his directorial debut with this media satire, set on December 14, 1999, about a TV news network in cahoots with Washington on Operation Crazy Guru -- a plan to get a U.S. president re-elected for a third term.

Pause for a second. The agents of these three American has-beens were so hungry to let their clients make asses of themselves they forgot one minor detail: the Twenty-Second Amendment. Ah, but what's a little piece of scrap paper when you're making a farce? Not intentionally, it would seem. Then again, by THE CONSPIRACY's standards, this is hyperrealism. (Then again, ask these maroons what the Twenty-Second Amendment is and they'd say it ended Prohibition.)

Just one question: Why is that phone bleeding?

(We steeled ourselves up for the video. Awful is a compliment. Where to begin? The cheap opening sets suggesting a third-string French public-affairs program and an ad hoc telemarketing center, complete with laptops [?]; Babs's ex seated in front of a creased wall-map from National Geographic, with a hurriedly printed name plate on his desk [we think even MOUTH OF THE SOUTH would have been classier]; two of the -- principals climbing up a stopped escalator so the camera could track them...and we presume Tammy's friend's voice box was an attempt to find the rollicking humor in cancer. Obviously Messieur Smith must have had great faith in Dolby to render him intelligible. [And it doesn't even sound like a voice-box. Stupide!] But as we said, this is hyperrealism. The American dimwits were dubbed for the French audience which at least would have rendered their sailor-cussing romantic.)

(Update on 1/19/2008 at 6:40 p.m.; I forced myself to look at the video again and evidently the escalator was moving, but the monitors are maybe five inches thick, which made me think of laptops; it still looks like an ad hoc telemarketing center, and the clip is still and expulsion of hydrogen sulfide.)

Posted 6:06 PM by Gene

If all the big clothing retailers had to give up on sweatshops how much clothing would they have left to sell?

(Via Cheapie Marketwatch)

Posted 2:58 PM by Gene

"Look at the sales numbers for the old guys, Paul Simon, Neil Young, McCartney. They're not setting the world on fire," Azoff says. "The labels look at the Eagles and say 'maybe it'll sell a million and a half,' and relative to what those records cost to make and market, they don't want to make the investment. I talked to the labels prior to making the Wal-Mart deal, and I asked how much marketing money they had. Three million. Wal-Mart spent 40 million on Garth. Reaching our fans and inspiring them to buy the album, that's what it's about."

TRANSLATION: Albums by the Geritol Geezers are big-loss-leading sinkholes -- only being big as the Wal may cover up the holes.

Posted 2:22 PM by Gene

In China, there are plans for a coal-fired power plant to go on line nearly every week.

COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!

Posted 2:12 PM by Gene

We have no need or desire to join in the social-networking craze. The minuscule pluses -- the very remote chance of meeting an attractive woman, say -- are more than outweighed by the minuses of spam and being harassed by strangers, not to mention identity fraud. Does anyone in this age have the guts to say, "None of your business"?

Posted 2:03 PM by Gene

Perhaps no one can tell people where to live, but it appears no one will be telling fires where to go anytime soon.

Posted 1:58 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: LALALAND has been RENDELLIZED too, being more reliant on the parasitism of show-biz than ever, and if there's a Fantasy and Profanity League strike (please strike!) a lot more "little guys" will get hurt, which will make people very sad, especially the little guys who make Forbeslist.

"TESTING TESTING, mike on? Oh. Look what happened during the baseball strike," said former Warner Bros. Chairman and Dodgers CEO Bob Daly, now retired, who is no stranger to labor disputes. "Attendance was down and didn't come back right away."

In this case, he added: "The average person doesn't pick sides. They just say, 'Why can't I watch "Law & Order" and "Desperate Housewives?" ' " [WORDS ADDED]

Do these frauds ALWAYS speak for public consumption? And why must hacks like Claudia and Dick act as human megaphones?

Posted 1:22 PM by Gene

It appears Merrill Lynch's CEO is getting the ax for proposing a merger. We don't understand this -- isn't merging and merging what the Wall Street Casino is about? That he led his company to go hog wild with SUBPRIMES seems almost an afterthought, or grounds for denying it.

Posted 11:22 AM by Gene

The Catholic Church, like many others, paid a tremendous price for being trendy. We're leery of anecdotal evidence from a con-SER-va-tive paper but if young people really are coming back to the Latin Mass it's a sign that the old-fogy virtues never completely died, and that new up-to-date things cannot offer comparable solace, being so adrift from tradition.

Posted 11:19 AM by Gene

"[W]e're bludgeoning our audience."...

"...[I]n the little free time I have, why would I want to go to a theater and feel bad?"

WILL YOU BLITHERING IMBECILES SHUT UP?!?!? NOTHING MAKES YOU HAPPIER THAN BLUDGEONING US AND MAKING US FEEL BAD!!!!!

Posted 10:53 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: If Iran builds nukes -- so what? Just so long as MoveOn.org stays our friend.

Yes, we're not especially fond of Veep Big-Oil, but you don't give us much choice, do you.

Posted 6:24 AM by Gene

Jonathan Yardley, who usually has far more sense, unwittingly confirms the liberal's definiton of "bi-partisan." At best it means the squishy middle, easily led into our foolishness; at worst it means an infestation of copperheads. We do not like the screaming that passes for politics these days, but we've a hunch this well-paid talking head Mr. Brownstein would only be satisfied with "bi-partisanship" that confirms his prejudices. We would not be craven enough to ever say we're "bi-partisan" in endorsing certain policies. The problem is civility passed out of politics when it became synonymous with weakness, or toadying, and we need weakness and toadying just as much as we need the screaming, and these days we get all three.

Posted 6:15 AM by Gene

Sometimes we are mind-bendingly overburdened with information. Most of the information, we know, is valueless or ephemeral, but with more and more Web sites providing more and more information, and with more and more of that information sheer trivia, it becomes a greater chore to keep up with it. This press release is a prize example. Did the ASSPress really have to take a political poll about Halloween? How vital is a demographic breakdown of candy-giving? Does the world really need to know some people have qualms about their children's safety receiving it? We seek a beachhead of knowledge and drown in mere dubious facts, and even after we've died of information overload public disservices like the ASSPress pour more of them over our carcasses.