Posted 5:11 PM by Gene

The TWXSTERS, giving the heave-ho to their cable business, celebrate by aping Forbeslist in their FLAGSHIP and adoring 100 allegedly beautiful (Mary J. Blige?!?!?) "stars" (we suppose the former Kingdom of Luce means skin-deep, as ever), and we think we could put together a list of our own 100 most beautiful from the days they still had beauty, and whatever the TWXSTERS' endorsement the pretenders would all slink hopelessly back to the green room.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

Oops:

Highest ever: NYC mtg delinquencies up 74%

Does that include all those fancy-dancy zillion-dollar penthouses?

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

Cablebzzzzzzzzzztvision gets bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt in the bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt newspaper bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt biz.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt!

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 5:00 PM by Gene

We figured: How will Speaker Babs and her fellow co-conspirators D and R "solve" the food-price problem?

BY THROWING MONEY AT IT!

Posted 4:57 PM by Gene

"It irritated me," says Cody McDonald, a Judith Basin County commissioner. "When these things were named a hundred years ago, they didn't mean to offend anybody. … And it's a waste of time. Everybody's still going to call it 'Squaw Coulee.'"

It
KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH!
irritates
KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH!
me
KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH!
too.
KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH! KLUMPH!

Posted 3:51 PM by Gene

Global warming may 'stop' scientists say
Rise in temperatures could halt until 2015 because of natural variations in climate

When do we get global cooling -- again?

Posted 1:26 PM by Gene

An elephant never forgets? George W. Bush's lost e-mails

That elephant sure does look like a flea's underfed nephew.

Posted 1:24 PM by Gene

You were "lucky", Mr. Holt. Someone FOUND your son's killers.

Posted 1:14 PM by Gene

Our favorite Branson East colyumnist Mike does it again:

Here's an exchange I heard the other day:

Press agent 1: "The reason they're called the Outer Critics is because you want to keep them out of the theater!"

Press agent 2: "Have you seen the one who looks like a 1930s film star?"

Press agent 1: "Oh, that's being too kind."

Press agent 2: "No, I mean it. She looks like Vivien Leigh."

Press agent 1: "She looks like Vivian Vance."

Press agent 2: "How about the one with the crippled husband?"

Press agent 1: "I bet the polio picnic in 'Cry-Baby' went down well with him. No wonder they didn't get nominated."

I'm not even going to try to top this kind of malicious theater talk.

Hey if you Branson East bozos put out shows the way you can exchange put-downs....

Posted 1:04 PM by Gene

The Rockefellers want to remake Standard Oil!

Well, not quite. Can you imagine what wealth it would take to do it? Even ST. WARREN couldn't. Pfffffffffffffffft!

Posted 12:52 PM by Gene

Just now at my neighborhood Mickey D's, here comes FunTimes -- "Celebrating Earth Day in April!" Well, better late than never we say, especially with the suggestions on how to be ecologically correct on the back cover -- like "reuse grocery bags"! And "bring a garbage-free lunch to school"! We won't comment on the latter except to say in fairness to the Mick we recall the clamshells, so Ronny has done better -- although we wonder how much better since He now serves eat-in food in bags.

We may also ask how much better when we see this conveniently hidden away from the content, above and to the right of the legalese:

Printed in Canada on recycled paper.

Now how much more energy did it take to send a recycled FunTimes from Canada then it might have taken to print it here? Or is North America's Most PC Country™ so environmentally correct that nothing we could do could use less energy than Canada?

God knows Ronnie loves shooting Himself in the foot; must remind Him of those delicious McDonald's hamburgers.

EEEEEEEEEEEEvery day should be Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeearth Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

Posted 8:17 PM by Gene

THE FUTURE OF MEDIA: We remain dubious that people will want to watch tiny TV on a computer for very long, though we've done it ourselves, with no little frustration. The day will come for a full-screen, full-fidelity picture, but until then BigMedia will waste a lot of money on it, which gets us smiling because bad news for BigMedia is good news for us.

We also admit to being dubious about advertiser-supported music, especially after our visit to We7; when we clicked on a album (Cult TV Themes by Laurie Johnson) for every track got the message, "Track unavailable[:] We are sorry, but this track is currently unavailable in your region (United States)". We know a few kinks must be worked out in beta (and We7 is definitely beta) but we wonder if such sites are nothing but kinks.

(Both links via the usual ArtsJournal)

Posted 6:20 PM by Gene

ALL THE NEWS YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Inflatable pig lost after Roger Waters' Coachella set

We could provide some jokes, but the ASSPress has already provided the punchline.

Posted 6:11 PM by Gene

EXPLAINER
Life in an Austrian Dungeon
What 24 years in a windowless basement will do to your health.

I don't know, but I can guess what such baldly chortling teases can do to your Web site: there is not A SINGLE AD on Stale.com's home page. How long can St. Warren continue the philanthropy, especially now that He has a multi-billion-dollar sweet tooth?

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

The new holy word in the Wall Street Casino: DILUTION.

Uh, boys, sell more stock to plug a leaking piggy bank and the existing shareholders may NOT be pleased.

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

Bush Blames Democrats for Sliding Economy

But of course -- evil Democrats passed the ethanol legislation that's helping to drive food and gas prices up!

Which Democratic president wanted the Democratic congress to pass the ethanol legislation?

GEKKO KUDLOW must be ticked. He still thinks the economy isn't sliding.

Posted 4:56 PM by Gene

The signal similarity of the sad tales of The Messiah and the 15-year-old dolt is that whom the Media Gods create They would also destroy -- reluctantly. They knew The Messiah stood for truth and justice, more so out of the mouth of His sainted Mentor; They knew the dolt was like a free breakfast, lunch and dinner every day once They could get Their synergistic hands on her. Alas, Their heroes had feet of clay and brains of lead, and now thus they must turn on them -- reluctantly, but vicariously.

Posted 3:36 PM by Gene

Which presidential candidate does Woodster the Perv support?

We can guess which one would go to his movies -- out of allegiance to the cause.



Woodrow Who? indeed.

P. S.



At least Schnozzola and Ethel were willing to be seen.

Posted 3:11 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The League of Nations should still relocate to Khartoum.

Posted 11:20 AM by Gene

Mel "I ♥ JEWS!!!!!" Gibson and Aaron "Dilbert" Brown remind us of the Shuberts' (or FDR's, or whomever's) alleged maxim: he may be an SOB, but he's our SOB.

Posted 11:13 AM by Gene

Pelosi: At News Conference This Morning, President Should Agree to Work with Congress to Help the American Economy

MY WAY!

And yes, if it were the other way around we'd say the same thing.

Posted 11:09 AM by Gene

ABC's Cuomo describes himself as an advocacy journalist (Romy hed)

Aren't they all?

Posted 10:07 AM by Gene

An ultrageek -- a LINUX programmer, developer of "the ReiserFS filesystem"! (sic) -- has been found guilty of first-degree murder, the sort of thing we puzzle doesn't happen more often.

(Via -- where else? -- Slashdot)

Posted 10:02 AM by Gene

Hmmm, this is interesting: The New York Sun's Web site went back to its previous (and more user-friendly) design.

Do you suppose these changes for change's sake are all they're cracked up to be?

Posted 9:42 AM by Gene

How do you suppose The Messiah's pastor's church is doing these days?

Very well, we suspect.

Posted 8:45 AM by Gene

When Nukeman's assistants make fun of the Barbie doll, the first impulse is to snicker. The snickering should stop when we comprehend the NUKES.

Iranian markets have been inundated with smuggled Western toys in recent years partly due to a dramatic rise in purchasing power as a result of increased oil revenues.

And part of the solution is for DWIGHTs to stop sending the price of oil to $100,000 a barrel -- as if.

I wonder -- what does Nukeman's crew think of Hello Kitty?

Posted 8:33 AM by Gene

This, given the source, we may suppose to be a form of satire:

Carey was engaged in a rivalry nearly as fierce as Biggie and Tupac's: a yearslong cutting contest with Whitney Houston, whom she matched melisma for melisma, bromide for bromide.

Unfortunately, we know Stale.com, and we know Jody is chiseling a statue with words, creating another immortality in Eight-Octave, which is why we don't pay as much attention to Michael "Lehrer" Kinsley's snark as we used to.

Posted 8:26 AM by Gene

When "experts" assure us the Saudis are getting at least very eeny-weensy-teensy more moderate we can liken that to one tick of the second hand in a year.

Posted 8:25 AM by Gene

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour yesterday said that he is too conservative to be John McCain's running mate....

Too conservative? Too sleazy.

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

Price fixing in England -- by "Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever and...Kimberly-Clark"?

I guess because they couldn't do it here.

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

What makes Kirk Kevor -- KERKORIAN a serial buyer (and seller) of auto stocks?

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

Guenther Platter, the Austrian Interior Minister, said: "We are being confronted with an unfathomable crime. Everything that has happened here goes beyond one's imagination."

Don't boast -- you gave the world HITLER.

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

P. S. Oh SHUT UP, Annie. Your friend Gray-DON is rubbing his hands. (So is UB IGER.) This is SI's version of "MARILYN".

Don't some people ever think of ANYTHING other than getting their names in the press?

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

Nooz for GEEKS:

India Launches 10 Satellites At Once

And how many do we outsource?

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

So much for that fawning Forbeslist fool the eighty-something Mr. Brady: The Drunken Slob has lost a chunk of his Noo Yawk audience from his predecessors -- and he badly trails BOOMER ESIASON!

Calling all sycophants! Calling Jeff "MENSA" Greenfield! Calling the staff of Zeitgeist! Calling Sen. Morals and Sen. Boobs McKeating! Drunk needs help! STAT!

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

God knows how many ways ASSPress can slant a poll, but what if PILLHEAD gets his way -- and he loses?

Be careful what you wish for; it might cut your audience in half.

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

18.6 million vacant homes! That took a lot of reporting.

Posted 10:44 AM by Gene

Today is not a good day for teenage country stars, present or former, but at least this one wasn't self-inflicted.

Posted 9:28 AM by Gene

Republican U.S. presidential candidate John McCain accused North Carolina's Republican Party of being "out of touch with reality" over its refusal to pull an advertisement criticizing Democrat Barack Obama.

FLIP...

Days after denouncing fellow Republicans for producing a television advertisement linking Senator Obama to polarizing comments made by his former pastor, Senator McCain is softening his opposition to political use of the issue and is even stoking the story by publicly condemning newly published inflammatory remarks from the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr.

FLOP!

Posted 9:26 AM by Gene

We are sorry these people in show-biz are having trouble finding work after the Civil War, but then we're sorry they're in show-biz.

Posted 9:24 AM by Gene

If only we could know about tiresome publicity stunts before they could break, so we could stop their breaking, so we could preserve what little is left of our Internet-addled sanity.

Posted 9:22 AM by Gene

[O]ur analysis of more than 24,000 deals between 1996 and 2006 reveals that companies that acquired through the last downturn (2001 to 2002) generated almost triple the excess returns of companies that made acquisitions during prior boom years.

St. Warren is more than a mere God, He is -- the universe!

Posted 9:14 AM by Gene

Olympic torch relay begins North Korea leg free of protest

Where would we be without the ASSPress?

Posted 9:06 AM by Gene

And in other worlds of megalomania:

...minimal progress....

Please -- let there be more minimal progress!

Posted 8:25 AM by Gene

What is St. Warren up to? Is He trying to create another Kraft Foods? Or is He trying to build a Unilever from scratch? Either way it sounds like another chronic underachiever. We would like to know what's in it for Him, other than more Holy Warren Empire building.

P. S. With $10 billion in debt we may wonder how long Mars Inc. will remain the world's most secretive corporation.

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

If it's Sunday, it must be Big Double-A-Scribble Time:

1. New GM Brand Czars Will Influence Product
Quartet Empowered With 'Voice' in Incentives, Vehicle Development

And how many times has the big GM rearranged the deck chairs on its leaky boat?

2. Let's see: Newspapers took in 39 percent of all U. S. ad spending in 1940, but only 15 percent today. That looks REAL BAD until you think that radio hardly ran any ads at all compared to today, and TV didn't exist, and the Web didn't exist, and you didn't have MARKETERS plastering ads on sidewalks and urinals and ballparks and school buses, so we'd bet these masters of the half-truth are taking in considerably more than they took in 68 years ago, even with the "decrease" -- and the "death watch".

3. Whither Wendy's Under Nelson Peltz

Here's whither, if we had to guess: It'll spend lots more money on stupid, condescending, annoying, irritating, junk-financing TV ADS while neglecting the product. Such has always been the fate of the second tier moping behind Mickey D. These money-juggling entrepreneurs wouldn't have it otherwise.

Posted 2:57 PM by Gene

Jay of the WaPost writes:

Our real problem is the bottom 30 percent of U.S. schools, those in urban and rural communities full of ­low-­income children. We have seen enough successful schools in such areas to know that many of those children are just as capable of being great scientists, doctors, and executives as suburban children are.

In the name of counterintuition we get silly, stupid writing. What constitutes a "great" scientist? Or a "great" doctor? Or especially a "great" executive? See, but hacks don't have to think, they can just write. Education must be about creating more technocrats. Dubya decreed it. Jay believes it. Getting the bottom 30 percent of U. S. schools up to par merely means more technocrats. And not everyone has the cranial wherewithal to be "great". Using "great" is just as bad as the self-serving inflated numbers of new-minted Chinese and Indian technocrats this typist complains about. Dammit, we have enough Steve Greers. Modern America lacks a soul; factory-producing millions who are supersmart in school and become "GREAT" technocrats is the answer to the wrong question.

I expect better from The Wilson Quarterly; I guess we can stop expecting.

Posted 2:15 PM by Gene

BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

To ease some of the pain, studios have again enlisted the help of Madison Avenue firms, whose client brands will pony up considerable coin -- mostly overseas -- to tie in with tentpoles.

For example, partners like General Mills, Target, Mattel, Lego, Esurance and Puma are shelling out more than $80 million in promo support for WB's "Speed Racer."

Similarly, "Iron Man" has its own shopping list of brands, including Audi and LG Electronics, while "The Dark Knight" has Nokia, Domino's, General Mills and Microsoft's Xbox on board. M&Ms, Dr. Pepper, Expedia and Kraft Lunchables will shill for "Indiana Jones." And naturally, brand-friendly "Sex and the City" isn't left out, with Mercedes-Benz, Skyy vodka, Coty fragrances and Glaceau Vitaminwater.

Brands with multiple movie pacts include Burger King, which is cooking up promos for "Iron Man," "The Incredible Hulk" and "Indiana Jones," while 7-Eleven is also supporting "Iron Man" and "Hulk."

All have ads planned to roll out weeks before the pics unspool with in-store and in-theater ads and displays, TV, print, radio, direct mail, sweepstakes and online campaigns.

Alas, this enthusiasm is followed with a question:

The studio marketing machine may be working overtime to get its messaging across to moviegoers. But is it too much?

Nothing is too much for any CEO who wants to live forever.

The only thing these TENTPOLES are missing are commercial breaks.

P. S. from March 16:

"It's part of Americana," Steve Greer, Big G's global equity and events director, said of the franchise. "It's a classic that will always be part of a kid's and a family's world."

We wonder why more of these people with six-figure do-nothing jobs in consumer products don't run for Congress. They don't merely mouth clichés, they live them.

Posted 12:36 PM by Gene

Debate without moderator? Obama declines

Does The Messiah have a DUBYA problem?

Posted 12:32 PM by Gene

Nick and Matt issue A CHALLENGE TO JO-NAH AND JPOD: We can be as sycophantic and flatulent writing about pop-cul-TYURE as YOU!

May this be a DUEL TO THE DEATH -- where nobody's rep survives.

Posted 10:18 AM by Gene

I guess it's not quite time to cut and run there, Dems.

Posted 10:15 AM by Gene

What could be more tiresome than a spat between THE GREATEST GOVERNOR OF ALL TIME and THE GREATEST ACTOR-TURNED-DIRECTOR OF ALL TIME?

Posted 10:14 AM by Gene

Thanks again, Dubya -- for NOTHING.

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

NOW they tell us:

Student debt may not be worth it (Home-page hed)

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

The CEO of GE BANCORP'S GAMES SUBSID breaks wind with his mouth:

“It took us 200 years to evolve from the French Revolution. China started in 1949.”

1. 1949 + 200 = 2149. I think today's Chinese can wait. 2. A nation that can "evolve" from the Reign of Terror to a Vichy "government" to Jjjjjjjacques "Saddam" Chiracccccc evolves solely in a manner of speaking.

Shut up, Monsieeeeur Rrrrrrrrrrogge.

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

Is this hack Josh pining for The Mogul's Friend's job? Sure sounds it.

Posted 12:59 PM by Gene

We know all the arguments against drug legalization, and one of the strongest is that society shouldn't condone recreational drug use. But it is not clear how much longer we can condone the carnage in our streets and elsewhere in the name of stomping out a drug problem that seems to poke up somewhere else with each new stomp.

Posted 12:50 PM by Gene

If there's an argument for press bankruptcy (in several senses) it's the Friday front-page advertorials in USAOKAY!!!!! They're so outlandish you expect SUMNER to show up on an AdAge back cover boasting, "USATODAY has sold more of our properties than any other media outlet. They know what to do." They surely do: selling the NFL draft; selling this year's tentpoles with the excuse they're fan-popular "nostalgia" (read: condescending creative exhaustion). There was only one bit of legitimate news above the fold, and that couldn't scream its way past the ads. That's why the Newseum (financed by the USAOKAY!!!!! people) rings false; it's just advertising for a noble cause.

Posted 12:46 PM by Gene

The Messiah is a superior snob. Media types are superior snobs. No wonder their marriage was made in...heaven.

Those who think The Messiah will be a one-termer are deluding themselves. We still recall all the ads for CLINTON'S-ONE-TERM calendars in the back of R. Emmett's rag. And the GOP may be weaker in 2012 than it is now -- regardless of how many stupid things He does.

Posted 10:18 AM by Gene

Robert Mugabe fails to regain parliament in Zimbabwe election recount

Or does he?

Posted 9:38 AM by Gene

SAM LITTLE congratulates himself for having taken one of The Messiah's friends off His Web site. Just one problem: there are many more friends where that came from.

Forty-two months since FONTS, Sam.

Posted 9:36 AM by Gene

Mort Zuck digs deep into his increasingly unoccupied pocket and pulls out...a paper!

Is this the end of Useless News, Mort?

Posted 2:23 PM by Gene

Some people think by throwing their money at outfits like Hahvahd Mutual Fund they're somehow (to use a word they like to use) IMPACTING the future. Oh yes they are: they're financing more skollars who sound as though they repeatedly IMPACT themselves on the head with a two-by-four, not to mention all manner of investment bankers who IMPACT parents with ever higher bills.

You'd think a Rockefeller would know better. Rockefellers don't know better.

Posted 1:29 PM by Gene

Last year's top five picks--LSU quarterback JaMarcus Russell, Georgia Tech receiver Calvin Johnson, Wisconsin tackle Joe Thomas, Clemson defensive end Gaines Adams and Penn State tackle Levi Brown--took just under a third of last year's rookie money, while the top 10 picks accounted for half. Those breakdowns are in line with those in 2000, when the top five picks took home 32% of the money; the top 10 picks took 51%.

So how does ESPNCORP turn THE DRAFT into a two-day industry?

Posted 1:10 PM by Gene

Fred Thompson Says He'll Not Consider VP

Who asked you?

Posted 1:05 PM by Gene

Even as it (and its fellow in unpaid advertising) boasts of another TENTPOLE MASTERPIECE, the Big V breathlessly informs us that veteran of plastic surgery Carrie's doing a one-woman tourist trap for Branson East next year, which, combined with thoughts of tentpoles, once again makes me pinch myself to realize what an age of artistic GENIUS we live in.

Posted 12:00 PM by Gene

"So that when a company like Clear Channel starts gobbling up all the radio stations or, uh, uh, you know, Rupert Murdoch starts having his eyes on a bunch of different media outlets, they can outbid a lot small--smaller outlets."

FLIP...

And all of a sudden, the candidate has decided to appear on FOX News Sunday with Chris Wallace. Wallace attributed Obama’s decision to a "count-up" clock that marked the days since Obama first agreed to appear as a guest.

FLOP!

JPod! Does this make The Messiah con-SER-va-tive?

Posted 11:43 AM by Gene

Beijing bans smoking for Olympics

Whether it helps with the smog remains to be seen. (COUGH! COUGH!)

Posted 11:35 AM by Gene

BULLETIN!!!!!

CRUDE SURGES AFTER REPORT THAT U.S. FIRED TOWARD IRANIAN SHIP IN GULF

DWIGHT and company go YIPPEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Posted 9:23 AM by Gene

Now -- can New York's Not-So-Finest (the hacks, that is) start a riot? After all, these typists have proven they can create a God.

We want to see Honorary fighting a riot. He'd hole up in City Hall somewhere, counting the billions in his afterlife.

Posted 9:21 AM by Gene

Red Ken -- the Crime Fightin' Man!

Posted 9:19 AM by Gene

Entertainment Weekly has been criticized as being too soft on the entertainment industry....

Couldn'ta done it without you, B. S. DEFENDER.

Posted 9:08 AM by Gene

EXCUSE OF THE WEEK: Seymour Harold What's-His-Name is WALTER BRENNAN!

Posted 8:58 AM by Gene

The Jim Cramer of foodstuffs has a name, and it's Dwight Anderson.

Thanks a lot, BizWeek. But why couldn't you have reported this instead of palming us off two-day-old stuff from Der Spiegel? Looking for another DONALD to trumpet?



Obviously he didn't buy up every picture.

Posted 8:55 AM by Gene

Hello Jeff? This is your friends the Chinese. Yeah. We want to talk to the Dalai Lama. Well, not the Dalai Lama, his representatives. Well you see we want to protect your business interests. The business of China is business. Anyway, we'll let you know when we've managed to brush him off. We have our business interests to protect too! 'Bye.

Posted 6:55 PM by Gene

Even IF SLIME told the truth, some people do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Posted 5:45 PM by Gene

And it's not just Forbeslist.com:

Keys cancels Cleveland concert with swollen vocal chords

Has anyone thought the Web is so much better at spreading errors of all kinds than the old fashioned news biz? Where's the advantage of that, Professor?

Although this did come from ASSPress, which is as old-media as you can get.

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

The success of Eight-Octave's latest masterpiece suggests that, contrary to all those obits, the recorded...SOUND biz can yet twitch its corpse; there are still enough people who can be marketed and CHEAP CHANNELED into buying an album, whatever its merits (or especially lack thereof); and just a few "lucky" "breaks" and a few more overpublicized masterpieces could create a floor to this biz' freefall, and the noise would pay for itself again, with the extra added attraction of overexposure on the Web, which with a little work could make CHEAP CHANNEL into a champion of artistic diversity.

Posted 4:58 PM by Gene

Microsoft Prifts Fall, Miss Estimates (from Forbeslist.com's home page)

Somebody using Office?

Posted 2:50 PM by Gene

Humans flirted with extinction 70,000 years ago

We can guess what a few obvious activist groups must be thinking.

Posted 2:29 PM by Gene

One point's difference -- an eighteen-point lead for the Tories!

England's politics is almost as invincible as ours!

Posted 12:53 PM by Gene

Is Microsoft's Ballmer a bad dealmaker?

@#$%&*#$%*!%+@*^*@#!#% NO!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 12:48 PM by Gene

The worse the economy gets...the better the stock market gets!

Posted 9:58 AM by Gene

What making nice with the Libyans did:

Several Western ambassadors walked out of a Security Council meeting yesterday after a Libyan representative compared Israel's actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis in the concentration camps.

Posted 9:54 AM by Gene

The Secretary of Kellogg's does something useful:

Gutierrez: Don’t Forget to Redeem Converter-Box Coupons

Posted 9:15 AM by Gene

Next step for the Chinese: to raise the price of gas to $100 a gallon while so choking themselves on smog they'll need jackhammers to break through it to make way for all their shiny new cars.

Posted 9:10 AM by Gene

BOOBS McKEATING CALLS CEOS "GREEDY"!

RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE!!!!! MUTINY MUTINY MUTINY!!!!!

Posted 8:43 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: 1. The Messiah thinks graffiti is fine. 2. The Messiah is this year's Che.

Posted 8:23 AM by Gene

I suppose we should be pleased that Ford turned a surprise profit, but the pleasure may wear off quickly with the knowledge that a lot of that profit has come from closing a good chunk of the company.

Posted 8:13 AM by Gene

If untold reasonably young reporters and editors are taking buyouts, why does the eighty-something Jim Brady still have a platform? And why does Forbeslist let him get away with his endless flattery?

A special NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD to Bootlickin' Jim!

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

Interesting observation about The Messiah, though it comes from JPod:

He never smiles. He never, ever smiles.

But then I doubt if God did too much smiling for Michelangelo.

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The time has again come for con-SER-va-tives to stomp their feet and whine and scream and cry about how public transit is such a COMMUNISTIC IDEA.

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

Scientists offered $1 million to grow laboratory chicken

PETA doesn't object to frankenfoods?

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

Clinton's win still leaves her the underdog

How long will the hacks stick with this shtick?

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

It’s early October 2008, and Democratic nominee Barack Obama maintains a steady lead in the presidential race, although Republican standard-bearer John McCain, the most dogged campaigner in American politics, remains within striking range.

Suddenly, something happens overseas that throws the presidential campaigns off the TV screens entirely: Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, on vacation in Italy, is arrested and brought to The Hague to face war crimes charges....

Don’t think it can’t happen. I think the arrest abroad of an American is only a matter of time and, between now and November, is at least as likely as another terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Since when has Politico.com been running satire?

Posted 4:57 PM by Gene

Wait! Isn't it too soon for THE GREATEST ACTOR-TURNED-DIRECTOR OF ALL TIME to run for an Os-CAR®?

Posted 4:55 PM by Gene

I thought we solved the problem with AMBAC!

Posted 4:54 PM by Gene

But then, no financial fad can be forever.

We now have second thoughts about whether SBUX can stage a MICKEY D! comeback. People don't eat coffee.

Posted 4:51 PM by Gene

Speaking of which, how many who are long rice are long APPLE?

Or to put it another way, how many are borderline psychopaths?

Posted 4:48 PM by Gene

THE "PANIC PHASE" OF THE CREDIT MELTDOWN IS OVER -- ENDING WITH THE COLLAPSE LAST MONTH OF BROKERAGE BEAR STEARNS -- AND STOCKS ARE POISED TO POST STRONG GAINS IN COMING MONTHS!!!!!!!!!! veteran mutual-fund manager Bill Miller says. (Enthusiastic BUY-NOW! first-graf overemphasis added)

...Even as the credit crunch mounted last year, Miller maintained bullish stances on those troubled sectors, including two prominent fund holdings that became poster children for the crisis: Citigroup Inc. and Countrywide Financial Corp.

NO COMMENT.

Posted 11:52 AM by Gene

At U. of Georgia, Furor Over Clarence Thomas

Let me guess -- it's not because of Anita, it's because he's CONSERVATIVE. But then a-ca-DE-mics are always good at putting up smokescreens, they living their whole lives in a FOG.

Posted 11:51 AM by Gene

“It’s extremely unlikely that today’s children will have shorter life expectancies than their parents. From everything I see, we continue to make rapid progress at extending life as a result of improvements in medical technology and personal health practices," such as smoking less, says Samuel Preston, a professor of demography at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "Yes, we are fatter than we used to be but the implications of that have not been nearly as severe as has been popularly assumed."

And for proof of this we need only turn to the concurrent epidemic of anorexia, pfffffffffft.

Posted 11:48 AM by Gene

Despite his reputation as a swordsman, Mailer ironically won the Literary Review's "Bad Sex in Fiction Award" last year for his clunky depiction of intimacy between Hitler's parents in "The Castle in the Forest."

NUF SAID.

Posted 11:47 AM by Gene

For God's sake why should we begrudge Boobs his disability pension? And it this raises questions about whether he is fit for office, we could say the same of most of our other presidents.

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

And of course these same JIM CRAMERS!!!!! take the words of HENRY BLODGETS!!!!! as holy writ, meaning G000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000GLE at $5,000 a share along with gasoline at $10 a gallon.

Or GE BANCORP down $4, the sort of thing that makes us smile.

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

When do the people start taking the names of these JIM CRAMERS!!!!! who are driving oil and grains through the roof?

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

Commisioner offers reassurance after shootings leave 4 wounded

Reassurance of what? That there'll be more shootings -- and more NO SNITCHIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The best thing muni-CI-pal officers can reassure us of is that they haven't had ghetto crime under control in decades, and never will again.

Posted 4:56 PM by Gene

Leaving the train station on the way home I saw a hundred or more screaming yelling happy people waving Hillary signs, with a few big banners for The Messiah amongst, everyone cheering and smiling, the policemen moving them back to clear the traffic, and I thought, if only I could be that merry, supporting a candidate. Why must political happiness end in youth? Scanning the ballot at the polling place in the middle of work (quite a respectable turnout -- over 200 when I left) I saw most of the candidates ran unopposed. But for an artificially contrived rivalry between a couple of candidates too far close in outlook to merit anything but scorn this would be another gloomy run-of-the-mill marking of time, something the hacks seem incapable of remembering when they speak with grin to the mirror of soaring interest.

Did you know RON PAUL!!!!!'s on the ballot in Pennsylvania? I didn't. So is Gov. Hucklechuckle, who was holy before The Messiah took Heaven lock, stock and barrel away from him.

Posted 11:27 AM by Gene

Jacobs Media said, "The radio industry, led by the NAB, has been aggressive in fighting against the merger. And while we agree that satellite radio poses a threat to traditional AM/FM radio, there's nothing in the data that indicates that either service has significant momentum. In fact, there are signs that they have to fight to maintain the customer base that they already have."

Now give me a second, I have to think: three or four years ago there was this fellow named -- I'm guessing here, so I may not be right -- Horace...Stang! who got a big contract from XM and said he was going to change the face of radio. After a few press releases from DA POST!!!!! he disappeared. We do not blame the satradio "subscribers" for ditching on it.

Oh, now I know -- his name was Strong -- Harvey Strong! That's it!

Natch, the story doesn't even mention Strong.

(Via IWantMedia)

Posted 7:00 AM by Gene

A bad day for people who swear by Romy: SLIME's editor at the Journals is quitting (can we make that a protest vote?), and He's buying NEWSDAY! What we will stalwarts for the First Amendment do?

What we always do: Pretentiously bury our heads in the sand and take them out every now and then to spin and sell.

Posted 5:37 PM by Gene

MySpace Poisons News Corp. as Investors Shun Murdoch

Can anyone say why throwing billions into the Web would NOT have turned it poisonous?

``When you have such a powerful asset as MySpace and you can't successfully monetize it, that's a problem for investors,'' said Daniel Poole, assistant research director at National City Corp., which manages $34 billion in Cleveland.

And National City knows about monetizing. Pfffffffffft!

(Via IWantMedia)

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

Okay, STALE.COM alumnus, since you've been trained by your resume NOT to say what's wrong with The Onion, we'll do it for you: At best its humor is cutely whimsical, at worst it repeats itself again and again and again. And Virginia, since you seem to believe it's very very VERY good, name one instance of its brilliant humor from the last twenty years you can cite without turning to a computer or reading a back issue.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 5:30 PM by Gene

Run-up in agricultural prices to take center stage
Forum hosted by the CFTC will debate role of speculators

TRANSLATION: Who can say NOT ME! the loudest?

Posted 4:19 PM by Gene

Obama predicts Clinton win in Pennsylvania

Is The Messiah priming expectations or merely inept?

Posted 4:13 PM by Gene

Rance pats his business on the back, citing an oil wonk as saying consumers do so differentiate by brand, even as the expert he chose admits in the seventh graf that "discount retail outlets such as Wal-Mart and Costco and supermarket chains such as Kroger have experienced a significant jump in recent years in retail gasoline share, reaching a combined 13% at year's end...and 'we continue to see that share grow.'" No, I do not think we love BIGOIL just yet.

Posted 4:10 PM by Gene

"GENIUS":

The teen drama has been around for literally thousands of years. Helen of Troy was barely a teenager when she was abducted by the king of Athens because he had the hots for her, and hello, talk about drama.

Clearly SUPERADAM!!!!! needs TWICE the number of National Magazine Awards, and maybe a fifth the subscribers.

Posted 4:05 PM by Gene

Thanks, Wall Street Casino, for bringing even the thought of food rationing here!

In time this bubble will burst, but not before these options maniacs have inflicted serious damage.

Posted 10:25 AM by Gene

Fresh from authorising a £50 billion debt swap to shore up the British banking system, Gordon Brown was preparing today to discuss Third World education issues with Shakira, the Colombian pop star.

The Prime Minister is due to hold telephone talks this evening with the sultry Latin singer, whose hits include Hips Don’t Lie.

We'd say there'll always be an England, but we don't know for how long.

Posted 10:08 AM by Gene

Insiders Keith and Michael daydream:

TIMES MAY BE FIT FOR BLOOMBERG MERGER

Then again, we know HONORARY, and the only thing better than running with SEN. HOLE-IN-THE-BAGEL would be to get your name on the Paper of Re-CORD's FRONT PAGE for three months.

P. S. at 10:20 a.m. HONORARY's putting out lots of feelers -- how about some profs at JOHNS HOPKINS?

The letter mentions the mayor’s personal wealth, but says that’s not what makes him an attractive candidate.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Posted 10:05 AM by Gene

Which raises the question, ROMY, since you posted the link: Because your friends the HACKS forever tell us of the insightful GENIUS from the ED and ERIC of COMEDY, why not have THEM emcee a debate?

Posted 9:43 AM by Gene

LALA's in a bit of a tizz because SLIME'S Major Bowes act has hit an air pocket. It is a wonder this didn't happen sooner; but we shouldn't forget the hacks, with their propensity to sell anything, fueled the craft and helped put it in the air, and commissioned months of non-stop buncombe piloting it. This year the aviation has been nowhere near as intense as before, which would seem to prove LALA's contention that "kids 2 to 11" are abandoning it.

Posted 9:28 AM by Gene

I never thought I'd see the day when I would be unhappy to be sent home. Five years ago, when I was gainfully unemployed, I might have chafed, but I'm so used to work now that I can't imagine loafing; I hate taking vacation days. To get to the point there was a huge fire in a warehouse almost diagonally opposite from our workplace, and it might have passed as unnoticed as a seven-alarmer could but a strong northeast wind blew the smoke right into our building and made my eyes sting; embers dotted the walkway and the grass. With our ventilation shut off and the water pressure low our director sent us packing. Seeing the above picture it is no wonder our cities have been so prone to arson; this was a fire trap, and give a local retard two sticks and you have three "news" helicopters flying over the neighborhood. I still faintly reek of smoke, though I've gotten out of my clothes.

Here's hoping we're more or less back to normal tomorrow; I was looking forward to a sea of Hillary and Messiah signs at the entrance (the building is a city polling place).

P. S. A company called APB Transportation was ensconced there; not long ago it had put a spiffy sign atop the building. Oh well.

CORRECTION at 10:00 a.m. IfItBleedsItLeads.com is reporting the trucking company survived, but something burned.

Posted 9:27 AM by Gene

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Hamas would accept a deal creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip if it was approved by Palestinians in a vote, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said on Monday after talks with Hamas leaders.

Carter said he had "no doubt that both the Arab world and the Palestinians, including Hamas, will accept Israel's right to live in peace" within pre-1967 war borders.

But some of Hamas's commitments to Carter, in talks he held with the Islamist group's top leader Khaled Meshaal in Damascus, were short on details and remarks by a Gaza-based Hamas official suggested the movement was not abandoning long-held positions.

TRANSLATION: SAP!

Posted 7:59 PM by Gene

"If we imagine a life without the arts," she says, "it would be a horrible, ugly world."

The way the AHTS are these days it's a horrible, ugly world WITH them.

(Via the usual AHTSJournal)

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

No one has to tell MB2 he can condescend with the best of them!

Just get him started on fast-food restaurants, or the BOSS.

Posted 5:07 PM by Gene

I wouldn't get too excited, DUHB: Ben Frankenstein's docudrama bombed.

Posted 5:01 PM by Gene

There is no stopping the hacks. It will NEVER be enough to report on business, no; we must idolize it, and turn its CEOs into SUPERHEROES. Thus LEGENDARY WELCH; now -- LEGENDARY IGER.

A NEUHARTHISM OF THE MONTH AWARD TO THE ECONOWIZ, and an argument why its writers MUST emerge from the comfort of anonymity and be BYLINED.

Posted 1:47 PM by Gene

That's a brilliant idea, Modraj! Shoot them! SHOOT the protesters! Then all those CEOs will really be proud of their two-month paid vacations and luxury boxes!

Posted 9:09 PM by Gene

Speaking of dogs that won't stop barking, every @#$%&* cable news channel must have its BANSHEE PROFIT CENTER: BILL!!!!! LOU!!!!! KEITH!!!!! JACK!!!!! They scream at the top of their lungs to gain advertising revenue -- and only. We cannot trust any of them because their beliefs are clearly fungible. That they come across as honest as professional wrestling doesn't help. So long as we have screamers we should not trust one word from any cable-news outfit, including definite and indefinite articles.

Posted 9:08 PM by Gene

Having endured a musical vagrant tonight I think I know why The Messiah gets to me: He wouldn't hurt a fly -- even if a whole kennel made its home on His street.

Posted 11:42 AM by Gene

We must say we may have judged the Pope a bit harshly by insisting he was spreading platitudes, but speaking before Catholic YOUNUHVERSUHTEE execs and the League of Nations is bound to bring out the blather in nearly anyone. It is now clear the chief focus of the Pontiff's visit is to combat priestly sex abuse, and he has been forthright about it, as well he had to be, for the church in the U. S. is in a bad enough way without pervs in its midst.

Posted 11:39 AM by Gene

We feel sorry for these college kids deprived jobs at the Bear, but not that sorry, as they'll have other chances to earn zillions creating high-tech tulip manias and impossible trading vehicles, not to mention trading long in oil and wheat.

Posted 8:40 AM by Gene

If Russia is BACK!!!!! it's going to have to work some more on coming back first.

Posted 9:23 PM by Gene

Bush Chooses New HUD Chief

Well hello, Mr....Guvnor!

Posted 7:34 PM by Gene

That two senior members of the Over-the-Hill-But-Not-Over-It gang we hacks called "conservative" campaigning for them are endorsing The Messiah now means He is conservative too.

Posted 6:28 PM by Gene

In a hard-to-read article (dark type on a grayish-brown background) "an entertainment blogger for b5media" (roll the eyes) says the concert business is going kerflooey, weighted down with geezer acts, and all because all those kids are listening to their faves on the Web. We expect such keyboard testing from entertainment bloggers (and from DOW 36,000, who once opined OPERA IS HEALTHIER THAN EVER!!!!!), but riddle me this: Between the end of the seventies and the beginning of the Web boom newer powerhouse acts had plenty of time to establish themselves. Why didn't they? Maybe because they weren't so powerhouse. Next to today's "acts" they're positively the Beatles. Entertainment bloggers and like minds will NEVER admit pop music's simply been getting worse and worse -- but then they wouldn't be entertainment bloggers.

(Via the usual Arts & Letters Daily)

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

Isiah Thomas out as Knicks head coach

This doesn't even qualify as ho-hum anymore.

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

OH oh, this MUST be bad news:

Housing downturn now hitting upscale Dallas areas

Posted 5:20 PM by Gene

Dalai Lama: 'Nothing positive' has come from talks with China

Which is why it pays for China to keep talking.

Posted 5:16 PM by Gene

Psychologist: 'No Traditional Foster Care' for Polygamy Kids

TRANSLATION: All the king's horses and all the king's men....

Posted 5:14 PM by Gene

Lindsay Lohan to Dad: Stop Talking to Reporters

We COULD say something about pots and kettles, but will hold our tongue instead.

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

The point is that most movies are terrible. Most movies have always been terrible.

Is that why you've praised so many of SLIME's movies, JPod?

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

Dokoupil: It's the right time to build a temple to journalism [Romy, who else?]

Posted 5:07 PM by Gene

Bad News Really Is Bad News For Citi

Unless you're in the Wall Street Casino, then it really IS GOOD NEWS!

Posted 4:59 PM by Gene

Speaking of He, today we saw two eager young beavers at an intersection flipping arrow-shaped MESSIAH signs as though they were skateboards, which got us thinking about all the humongous balls the W-Higs rolled through city streets for Tippecanoe -- which got us revising his old campaign song:

What has caused this great commotion-motion-motion,
Our country through?
It is the ball a-rolling on-on,
For Barack the Messiah -- He is God!
For Barack the Messiah -- He is God!
And with Him we'll beat little Hill, Hill,
Hill is a used-up pill.
And with Him we'll beat little Hill.

Like the rushing of mighty waters, waters, waters,
On it will go,
And in its course will clear the way
For Barack the Messiah -- He is God!
For Barack the Messiah -- He is God!
And with Him we'll beat little Hill, Hill,
Hill can go back to Bill.
And with Him we'll beat little Hill.

But shouldn't "we" be capitalized too?

Posted 4:57 PM by Gene

Also via IWantMedia, LEGENDARY DAVIS is stepping aside, to be replaced by a bean counter, meaning LEG stepped aside because He was afraid His bean would be counted.

What will He do without His worshipers?

Posted 4:55 PM by Gene

A big surprise: Useless News is cutting its frequency and circulation, meaning Mort Zuck can make every issue into a list, or maybe turn the rag into perpetual college guide, or maybe he can just run it into the ground, as per usual.

Posted 4:51 PM by Gene

Mugabe - Britain is trying to 'steal our country'

Highly unlikely, given how PC it is.

Posted 4:48 PM by Gene

It appears, contrary to what I expected, and shouldn't have, the Pope is floating through America on a cloud of platitudes.

Posted 4:47 PM by Gene

Google Profit Report Rewards Options Traders With 17,530% Gain

I guess this means the idiots are back, and GEKKO KUDLOW can hug himself again.

Posted 6:16 PM by Gene

Sallie Mae, the largest U.S. student loan company, on Thursday affirmed its 2008 profit forecast, but warned of a "train wreck" in the $85 billion education financing market without urgent government intervention.

Is there any debt UNCLE SUCKER can't and won't be made to guarantee?

Posted 6:10 PM by Gene

WHAT THE PUBLIC GETS: ANOTHER TERMITE-INFESTED TENTPOLE FINANCED BY CEOS WHO WANT TO SCHMOOZE.

Burger King, 7-Eleven, Audi, Estée Lauder...TO BE CONTINUED.

Posted 5:33 PM by Gene

Somebody with too many keys on a keyboard to pound has typed a book-length Thinker pose claiming Gen X is The Greatest Generation (two clichés within six words, blecch) because it invented G000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000GLE and all the other high-tech wonders (for today, we'll agree), but the TWXSTERS get a sort of revenge by linking to an article on "the do-it-yourself generation" that ran "51 Years Ago in Time" in 1954.

P. S. It's 5,743 on Amazon.com. We're not that impressed.

Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

I am tired of the same smelly shoe always swapping both feet.

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

THE MARKET CAN DEFY GRAVITY AGAIN!

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

West, the chart-topper most determined to burn his likeness into the walls of pop's Valhalla, cares deeply about what it means to be a hero. Wednesday, he didn't take a spear to the gut the way Wagner's Siegfried did, but he did confront terror, doubt and filial grief in a show that carried his braggadocio into the realm of myth itself.

TRANSLATION: Neither the news biz nor the Col. have laid off enough.

Posted 9:25 AM by Gene

These are the best questions, bar none, asked in a debate this election season....If the ABC game plan was to utterly undermine the “liberal media is giving them a free ride” complaint they succeeded in spades.

Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos turned in shoddy, despicable performances!!!!!!!!!! [Great TV cri-TIC overemphasis added]

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!

Posted 9:22 AM by Gene

I want to set the record straight. Jeff is an outstanding CEO, and the GE financial model is as attractive as ever. I will endeavor in retirement not to step in it again.

Where's the BIG BUT, LEGENDARY?

While Mr. Immelt’s job seems secure for now....
BUT....

On Wednesday, Welch, who retired in 2001, said he would be "shocked beyond belief" if Chief Executive Jeff Immelt again missed an earnings target. He said he'd "get out a gun and shoot" Immelt if GE missed an earnings target.

Never mind, that BUT is TOO big.

Posted 9:01 AM by Gene

The signing of the "guaranteeed [SIC] completion contracts" signals that SAG's not expecting a quick resolution to the talks.

GOOD!

Posted 5:34 PM by Gene

Newsday stock-swap sale could save Zell $245M

It's official: Col. doesn't have a clue.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

A video posted on YouTube showing Philippine doctors laughing while removing an object from a patient may lead to charges against the surgeons and cost them their medical licenses, officials said Wednesday.

Yes, people are that stupid.

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

VT spokesman respects media more since campus massacre (the usual Romy)



We wonder why.

By the way, look up "nbc news" in Google Images. Yep, you would have guessed.

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

And if the Catholic church's all-too-humanness has lost it its speaking voice, so trendiness lost it its singing voice. And we doubt this will get any better; the next pope -- and yes, we must think that -- will most likely come from what academics will screamingly insist NOT be called the third world, and just as the third world is held hostage to fads like liberation theology, so is it more susceptible to GHEEtars.

(Via ArtsJournal)

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

'Such a Cute Pope'

We aren't one of those face-scrunching church-'n'-staters, but we wonder if Dubya and the Pope didn't embrace a little too -- tight. Then again, he is a Re -- Catholic, and Catholics are a huge constituency, and lots of Catholics are Republicans, so we do understand the touchy-feely.

On the other hand we wonder if making His Holiness into Jes' Folks -- hugging him on the shoulder like a long lost relative, singing "Happy Birthday" to him -- doesn't diminish the man, and his mission. Yes, it is all well-meaning and neighborly. But if the Pope is ordinary, so must be the Church. And the Church has given too much evidence of being very ordinary lately.

Posted 3:46 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: LEGENDARY WELCH IS PLOTTING A COUP!

Posted 3:37 PM by Gene

Is John McCain Bob Dole?
Or is he Dwight Eisenhower? (Actually, that may depend on whether Barack Obama is Mike Dukakis or John Kennedy.)

DUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH....

Posted 3:34 PM by Gene

We don't know how much of this is union types stomping their feet, but given how the LONG-OIL BOYS are GRINNING we wouldn't be surprised if the airlines are cutting down on their fuel consumption. We just hope they don't try to test what it means to "run on fumes" in the real world.

Posted 3:31 PM by Gene

The crisis in the markets has ended -- AGAIN!

Posted 3:09 PM by Gene

That LALA can devote 1,198 words to the last of the "Nine Old Men" says that, however violently they plug the business, news hacks can't hide the fact that they have ever less and less worth plugging.

Posted 5:36 PM by Gene

"Candidate on a High Horse," colyumnist on a high horse, six of one....

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

Graffiti AH-TISTS have a new weapon: LIGHT POLLUTION.

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

So Boobs, if we declare a "gas-tax" holiday and the price of gas keeps going up, how does that help? Huh, Boobs?

And how do we make up the revenue GUSHER, huh Boobs?

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

AP NEWS ALERT!!!!!

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Associated Press has learned that the State Department is warning U.S. diplomats they may be forced to serve in Iraq next year.

Ooooh! The HORROR! Oh well, now they can be close to all those BEEB correspondents they forever listen to.

Posted 5:21 PM by Gene

So Fred Silverman Jr. lied. Who knew?

(Also via the ubiquitous ArtsJournal)

Posted 5:18 PM by Gene

An emotional J.K. Rowling said on Monday she had stopped working on a new novel because her creativity was stifled by a fan's bid to print an unofficial encyclopedic companion to her Harry Potter series.

We thought it was the DEPRESSION, MS. ROWLINGCORP.

(Via the usual ArtsJournal)

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

Eating today at my local lovable Mickey D's and remembering this pioneering TV commercial with THE JUGGLER'S predecessor (the jingles were dorky even then -- notice too the Capitol "Hi-'Q'" music in the open, a relic from Hanna-Barbera; betcha they wouldn't do THAT no more), I remembered the boast Mick made on His Golden Arches -- "Over 500 Million Hamburgers Sold", whatever. But if you want a really outlandish number, total the Mick's sales for the last 25 years -- and then adjust them for inflation. We have no idea what it would be, but we'd guess it's over $1 TRILLION -- proof people are literally gluttons for punishment.

Odd that he's still around after eating all those delicious McDonald's hamburgers.

Now the Mick is staging its own American Idol. Why not have a contest for the next Ronny McD?

Posted 9:39 AM by Gene

THE GOLFING MACHINE is...a LOSER. He ISN'T HAPPY about it. Neither are all the CEOs who PRAYED for the first time in their lives, without God hearing them.

MS. ROWLINGCORP, DOOCE, THE GOLFING MACHINE, THE MESSIAH, MRS. MESSIAH -- why must EXTREMELY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE WHINE so much?

Posted 8:12 PM by Gene

It's official -- misery loves companies...again.

Nopw let's do the Surviving Airlines Countdown: ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four....

Posted 8:10 PM by Gene

Well at least some people can bleed red, white and blue -- in February American cars were eight of the top-ten most stolen in Houston.

Posted 8:07 PM by Gene

Absolut�s �Mexico U.S.� Map Angers Many [A BIG FAT NEWSMAX!!!!! SIC!!!!!]

And you must STILL be angry punctuating like that!

Wait a second! Don't they use their question marks upside-down in Mexico?

Posted 8:05 PM by Gene

'Annie Oakley' changes her tune

Folks are dumb where I come from,
They ain't had any larnin'.
Still they'll always vote for me,
Doin' what comes natur'lly!

Posted 8:03 PM by Gene

For Cuban youths, revolution means more free expression

TRANSLATION: The Soviets had rock music too.

Posted 8:00 PM by Gene

Proving once again why he's one of America's all-time-greatest leaders:

WASHINGTON - Former Vice President Walter Mondale, who played a key role in the U.S. boycott of the 1980 summer Olympics in Moscow, isn't joining those who are urging President Bush to skip the opening ceremonies at the Beijing Olympics.

Instead, Mondale called on the U.S. to take an active role in getting the Chinese government to speak with the Dalai Lama about the situation in Tibet.

Posted 7:58 PM by Gene

However legally justified she is, why do we hope a. MS. ROWLINGCORP loses, or b. that her rep takes a pasting?

Posted 7:55 PM by Gene

I've got a brilliant idea, Congressjerks -- let's help the poor people pay for the food prices you helped raise with your BIOFUELS MANIA by giving more financial aid to them?

How 'bout it, SEN. CONSCIENCE ETHANOL?

Posted 7:52 PM by Gene

We feel sorry for the 400-odd losing their jobs with THE TWXSTERS, but we wonder how many more jobs Hellywood could shed without us much noticing.

Posted 7:51 PM by Gene

Be patriotic! Spend your rebate money!

Didn't spending money get us into this mess in the first place?

Posted 7:49 PM by Gene

Chrysler LLC and Nissan Motor Co Ltd unveiled a production alliance on Monday covering small cars and full-size pickup trucks.

Under the terms of the deal, Nissan will build a small car for Chrysler using the North American automaker's design in 2010 and Chrysler will build a new full-sized pickup truck for the Japanese automaker using Nissan's plans in 2011, the companies said.

So -- who will build the better vehicle?

Posted 7:44 PM by Gene

Here is one reason it is not worth blogging. We've no doubt a whole array of SUPERDUPERMEGAGIGABLOGGERS who referred to this photog's GUILT will say nothing. (We will not hold our breath awaiting MICHELLE THE LOUDMOUTH.) We confess to having joined the crowd, too -- it is too easy to join the crowd blogging -- if only because of a longstanding distrust of the hacks and their propensity to turn themselves into martyrs. If the photog was guilty of nothing it shows our government's total incompetence. That they held a member of the press for so long, though totally unjustified, is nonetheless an echo of the P-Ulitzer-Prize-winning end of an UNJUST WAR.

(Via the usual Romy)

(Links fixed 7/4/2008; story originally a Yahoo! News link)

Posted 8:07 PM by Gene

I finally heard -- the REMARKS our pundit superiors are in such a big foamy airy bubble about. The Messiah starts off all right, if restating the obvious: that much of the Rust Belt has seen little change in decades. Then instead of suggesting a solution He unaccountably goes into the kind of automatic pilot we'd expect of a God Who's done well for Himself, the distillation of what every limousine liberal has thought since the first Rolls, but it never occurs to Him it might be off the mark because He's never talked to an unadmiring crowd before, especially in the mirror, and natch this crowd praised the Lord too. I will not guess whether the remarks do anything good or bad -- this campaign's coverage has been nothing but guesses -- but I will say The Messiah may be one of the most inept public speakers this side of...DUBYA. And he doesn't even have the mitigating charm of non-sequiturs.

Posted 4:01 PM by Gene

WE COULD HAVE SPENT THE MONEY FOR IRAQ ON OUR ROADS! WE COULD HAVE SPENT THE MONEY FOR IRAQ ON HEALTH CARE! WE COULD HAVE SPENT THE MONEY FOR IRAQ ON OUR CHILDREN'S EDUCATION!

SO LET'S GET OUTOUTOUTOUTOUTOUTOUT OF IRAQ SO WE CAN SPEND THE MONEY!!!!!

Posted 12:50 PM by Gene

Next-door neighbor Scott Alnwick, 17, said, "But I'm not mad. He did what he did [and] I'll be friends with him - just don't rob me."

I don't think you'll have to worry about that for a while.

Posted 12:40 PM by Gene

The finance units at Jeffrey Immelt's conglomerate are running out of tricks. (Subhed of article on home page)

Tricks? The company of LEGENDARY WELCH? PSHAW!

Goldman Sachs analyst Deane Dray, who didn't bump his rating on GE down to "neutral" from "buy" until after the earnings miss Friday...

Give that man a BIG RAISE!

...took Immelt to task for reaffirming guidance in mid-March and failing to deliver.

NO COMMENT.

Posted 12:16 PM by Gene

SI in His Vanity Fair has run an article proving Doris Day is a recluse. She has also been violently grief-stricken over her film career. Miss Day has known far too much tragedy in her life, so that's understandable at least; but we believe her private suffering is vastly overshadowed by the joy she has brought to people -- indeed how much we'd never have known if she hadn't broken her leg in that auto accident, and not forced herself to become a singer. Clearly the public pluses so monumentally outweigh the private minuses as to make it no contest.

P. S. One of her tragedies was the loss of her beloved Rock Hudson. We recall that well; the hacks tried to turn it into a health panic because Hudson was such a virile, healthy heterosexual. There is one way an earlier rollout of the Web would have done the public some good.

Posted 10:35 AM by Gene

A pioneering notion of RENDELLISM (sorry to use the word three times in one day) was that decommissioned military bases would magically transform themselves into industrial parks, housing developments, tourist destinations, and so on. What's happened to the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro is mostly so on -- nearly nine years after its closure, practically nothing has happened. Well, something might have happened if the local GUVNORS hadn't given the store away to BABBITTS, and if BABBITTS hadn't then given the housing store away. Wouldn't it have been better to sell the ground piecemeal, or just tear up the airstrips and make a nature preserve? We'd guess the few successful conversions have had HUGE inflows of GUVMENT AID anyway.

Posted 10:02 AM by Gene

LAST GRAF OF 58:

"It's gonna happen again somewhere," he says. "I just hope I'm not there."

Posted 9:56 AM by Gene

MORE genius from Hellywood:

MGM [SIC] is getting acquainted with "Bobism," buying Ben Wexler’s comedy spec and setting it up with ContraFilm's Beau Flynn and Tripp Vinson along with Adam F. Goldberg.

Story's centered on a shy collegian who discovers that life in 1,000 years will be based on his blog.

ME! ME!!

(Via CuteLittlePinkPaper.com)

Posted 9:49 AM by Gene

Our new may-er and Sen. Righteous O'Redlight come up with a new twist on RENDELLISM: an "AEROTROPOLIS"!

TRANSLATION: Five O'Hares in one space with lots of overpriced stores.

Posted 9:45 AM by Gene

We must post this in full:

Students Make a Field Trip to a Brothel

What’s a course on American consumption without a class trip to a brothel?

A dozen students in Randolph College’s American Culture Program traveled this week from Lynchburg, Va., also home to the late Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, to the Chicken Ranch, a desert bordello outside Las Vegas, the Associated Press reported.

Nothing like a field trip from God’s country to Sin City. “It’s fascinating,” Nicki Amouri, a Randolph junior, told the AP. “Not many people get to do this.”

To prepare for their voyage of discovery, the students read The Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson. They watched a 20/20 episode on prostitution, which is legal in several counties in Nevada. Then they strode into the “best little whorehouse in the West,” as the business bills itself.

There the students sat to chat with the ladies of the Chicken Ranch. Among the questions: “Do you consider yourself a feminist?” and “Do you still give a military discount?” Yes and yes.

The trip to Nevada originated, the AP reported, in a professor’s interest in water conservation. —Sara Lipka

Sorry for the WALTER WINCHELL JR.!!!!!!!!!!

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

Zimbabwe is not in crisis, says Mbeki

We were about to say, it takes one to know one.

Posted 9:05 AM by Gene

Trevor Immelman...Brandt Snedeker...Ian Poulter...Steve Flesch...Stephen Ames...Paul Casey...Arron Oberholser....

For the first time in their lives, some CEOs are PRAYING.

No, we did not forget Wrong-Way, who would be where THE GOLFING MACHINE is but for a fluke of fate. And he's exciting too.

Posted 8:50 AM by Gene

Bush unlikely to boycott Olympics

I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I'M SCAAAAAAAAAAAARED!

Posted 8:41 AM by Gene

Okay, we don't like seeing cute little bunnies tested either. But if the results don't work, you'd better be prepared to be SUED, PETA.

Why do we think being squooshy toward animal rights and squooshy for Islamists go hand-in-hand?

Posted 8:37 AM by Gene

Well, The Econowiz bylines it Philadelphia, but....

Job growth since 2003 has been 3.2% compared with Ohio's 0.5%. Greater Philadelphia has large concentrations of high-tech companies and business service operations. Even some of the state's grittier areas have been reinventing themselves. Ten times as many Pittsburghers work in the city's hospitals and universities as in the steel industry. Taken as a whole, the state has seen 16.9% growth in employment in education and health services since 2000, and 15% growth in jobs in professional and business services.

So? Here's guessing 90 percent of those jobs have government mixed in. And if I were a Pittsburgher I might not be so proud of that factoid. RENDELLISM may provide good superficial stats, but can it govern? Casinos and ballparks and convention centers and theaters and ever growing health-care and KOLLEDGES say NO.

Posted 4:52 PM by Gene

IDIOCY: Here in EDDIETOWN!!!!!, hotels are the new condos. They have to be because Babbitts have wasted so much money on condos. At 17th and Sansom someone is reviving a fine old Arte Moderne office tower to the purpose -- and that we can see, as the offices have mahogany paneling and the rooms are too small for offices. At 15th and Locust, however, someone is planning a twenty-plus-story hotel -- right across the street from a white-elephant condo, and also across from an apartment house. With another apartment building on the corner diagonally opposite and another large hulking condo nearby the intersection will be bathed in black on a sunny day, and no one in any of the buildings will have a view - but heck, money is for BURNING!

(Corrected 4/12 at 12:30 p.m.; wrong address for the hotel under renovation.)

Posted 4:51 PM by Gene

You keep wasting our time like this, SUPERADAM!!!!!, and we'll come up with an acronym of our own: EILM -- and no, we will NOT spell it out.

Posted 8:53 AM by Gene

'Pure Country' to open on Broadway

Okay -- which is Branson and which is Branson East?

Posted 8:45 AM by Gene

Bye Lucy Van Pelt! Watch the football on the way out!

Posted 8:10 AM by Gene

CATASTROPHE! Imagineering and Six-Sigma "unexpectedly" fail GE BANCORP's earnings!

Now we'll really have to promo THE GAMES!

The sharpest drop in segment profit came at the conglomerate’s financial divisions, with commercial finance down 20 per cent and GE Money consumer finance down 19 percent.

Hmmm...maybe being a BANCORP doesn't make THAT much sense.

...the company wasn't able to complete asset sales, due to tighter credit markets....

And maybe doing the AL ROKER with our subsids isn't what it used to be either.

Posted 5:42 PM by Gene

4 Bulgarians arrested in $2 million ATM thefts

ATM thefts, eBay -- wherever you turn, Bulgarians. Think we should ask why?

Or is that Romania? Romania, Bulgaria -- what's the difference?

Posted 5:40 PM by Gene

A police chief attempts to be comforting:

"Millions of people every day travel the freeways of Los Angeles and about 1% of our murders every year happen on the freeways," Bratton said.

One percent of millions is a lot of people, chief. Hell, what are people in LALA?

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

The latest from the psychosis that is big business:

American's Passengers Cranky, Investors Confident

We may assume the passengers aren't investors and the investors aren't passengers. Whatever works.

OR:

"We have obviously failed to complete the airworthiness directive to the precise standards that the FAA requires, and I take full responsibility for that," Gerard Arpey, American's chief executive, said at an industry event in California.

And I'll take full responsibility in a year when high fuel prices drive our competitors out of business and we're rolling in dough, BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Or something like that.

And from the psychosis that is politics:

"What responsibility does the senior leadership of the FAA bear for letting this situation spiral out of control?" asked Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., of FAA administrator Nick Sabatini. "Is this one of those things like ABU GHRAIB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! where you sort of get rid of the people way down low but nobody up top ever has to be accountable?" [Overemphasis added]

Yep, I think ol' Rocky has a customer-service initiative too -- with the guys who win the Pulitzers, and flash the red lights on their cameras. Put Rocky and LIAR LIAR in a room together and you'd never know who told the first lie.

Posted 3:18 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Yes, even in Hollywood, insidey supercolyumnists sometimes have to make work for themselves.

Posted 12:44 PM by Gene

DAMN! Now the world will never know why DAN BLATHER was PERSECUTED.

Pfffffffffffffffffffft!

Posted 12:04 PM by Gene

Wyler intends to skew the lead role younger, placing Ben-Hur in his mid-20s. New version will also downplay the religious aspects of the source material.

“We want to look at the spirituality within the piece rather than directly relating it to a specific religion,” Wyler said. “It’s a very complex story. It’s been 50 years since my father’s version, and we think we can bring something new and contemporary to it in the same way that ‘Gladiator’ did for that genre.”

TRANSLATION: An agnostic gorefest.

Posted 11:46 AM by Gene

11:44 BofA calls bottom for chip stocks

We can guess how they do it. "BOTTOM!!!"

Posted 10:23 AM by Gene

Happily LIAR LIAR's former boss the dimwitted Mencken imitator EM has a plan too: he'll fight back with...GROVER!

Thank you, EM, for bequeathing us with TWO LIARS!

Posted 10:20 AM by Gene

Donors had begun to complain that while the Campaign to Defend America had built a large organization – it has, Brock said, 29 staffers, most devoted to "research," – it had failed to show it could mount a large-scale media campaign....

Brock's words, and his unpaid chairmanship, reflect alarm that Democrats are missing an opportunity to define McCain, even as the presumptive nominee tours the country telling his own story. The plan, conceived last fall, had been for the Fund for America to raise $100 million from wealthy Democrats, and to transfer it to groups including the Campaign to Defend America and America Votes, a Soros-backed independent group aimed a strengthening Democrats' field organizing.

But Fund for America has been unable to raise the money, and Campaign to Defend America had agreed not to raise its own money. Last Thursday, Brock said, he informed an official of the fund that his group would begin directly raising its own funds, a move that puts the usefulness of the Fund for America in question.

TRANSLATION: Actions speak louder than LIES.

P. S. at 12:47 p.m.

I think too often conservatives viewed Brock as simply a traitor — not that there is anything inaccurate about that — but failed to see that his real talent was as a fundraiser and businessman.

Doesn't that make him a TRUE con-SER-va-tive?

Posted 10:15 AM by Gene

Isn't this the second time the ChiComs have boasted of thwarting a terrorist plot against the GE BANCORP GAMES? That must make those overpaid CEOs feel good!

Posted 10:11 AM by Gene

I'll trade you for all that AW-FUL therapy and your alleged four million page views and $40,000 in ad revenue a month.

This is just as real as Ms. ROWLINGCORP's whining. Shut up, DOOCE.

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 9:49 AM by Gene

CEO PAY is an ENTITLEMENT!

Posted 9:39 AM by Gene

News Corp. May Join Yahoo Bid With Microsoft

Don't do it, SLIME! You'll only spend more money!

Posted 9:36 AM by Gene

AAUGH! Charlie Brown pulls the football back on LUCY!

One possible new job for Ms. Couric: succeeding Larry King at CNN.

Well, that IS something to look forward to!

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 5:32 PM by Gene

Our only hope is that what happened to G000,000,000,000GLE happens to the greedmeisters of oil and commodities, for whom no loss can be severe enough.

Posted 5:27 PM by Gene

This must be the biggest police and armed-thug escort of a sputtering flame in history.

Little Jeffy is smiling.

Posted 5:16 PM by Gene

Why should we worry about "zombie computer gangs" when so many zombies already use computers?

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

Too Many Beer Ads Ran During NCAA Tournament, College Presidents Say

Pffh-hh-hh hh hh hh hh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

Oh, and how many DIVISION I BASKETBALL CHAMPIONS signed THE LETTER?

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

ONE political leader out at the GE BANCORP GAMES' opening -- how many more to go?

Meantime, The Messiah is pondering.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

It would appear that both political parties intend to "solve" the housing bust by seeing who can throw more money out the window.

P. S. SOLVED! Pffffffffft!