Posted 2:28 PM by Gene

UN: Drop in Iraq Violence May Not Last

Its most devoted fans will see to it.

Posted 11:32 AM by Gene

Okay, now that The Messiah's pastor has retreated further into the shadows, NOW can we give both guns to YOU-KNOW-WHO'S PREACHER?

I'm sure we can try.

Although it might be difficult because the Second Coming (or is that the first?) may not be quite as squeaky-clean as we'd previously imputed.

Posted 11:26 AM by Gene

Crazy Eddie may not want to fix up His stores, but He sure is ready to sell USED CARS!

As is His patron saint St. Warren. Hey, it's a great way to sell AUTO INSURANCE!

You don't suppose America may deserve a depression?

Posted 11:06 AM by Gene

Extruding cinema is a tough business: doing voice work for Audrey was at least as intense as chiseling out Mt. Rushmore, or painting the Sistine Chapel -- at least. Yes, producing high art is a brutal endeavor, a bone-wracking, emotionally-draining experience that...does Col. Zell REALLY want his biz to go out of?

A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD to CHRIS!

And when do America's parents stop using the popcorn restaurants as day-care centers?

Posted 10:51 AM by Gene

Daniel Gross can be irritating. American business just turned incompetent? Who built all those rattletrap vehicles in the sixties and seventies? Who turned our consumer electronics business into a ghost town? Ditto with textiles? No, incompetence isn't something that just happened to American business, though it may make for a snappy column to try to prove it.

Posted 10:43 AM by Gene

The TWXSTERS liken the Tibetan rioting to the "Intifadeh" (SIC), the sort of stupidly incendiary device we expect from hacks, who of course being open minded with a quarter of a brain and seeing the whole world clearly with sunglasses and blinders would never notice. Translated this means the Tibetans are terrorists, and China is Israel. We would like Mr. "Can Anyone Here Run This Rag?" Stengel to offer a full explanation of why Tibetans are Palestinians, with all the negative connotations it implies.

Posted 6:17 PM by Gene

• J.P. Morgan's done this before

Only his last name wasn't Chase.

Posted 5:39 PM by Gene

LIAR LIAR BROCK'S ON FIRE IN ACTION -- or, "WHERE'S THE SCRUTINY OF McCAIN'S SPIRITUAL ADVISER????????????????": A would-be Media Matters spokespoop screams and yells and throws a tantrum (which of course Romy posts, not that he'd heard of The Messiah's crank until yesterday) saying that Boobs McKeating's crank is worse; the only problem being this lout appears to be a mere Boobs suck-up (bad enough there to be sure), whereas The Messiah's crank married him, and baptized his daughters, and has been a sort of spiritual adviser for two decades; but heck you have to scream to be heard in the foot-stomping propaganda biz, and I'm having trouble hearing.

Alternet...Right Wing Watch...Tapped...HuffPo...Crooks and Liars...ThinkProgress.org...BuzzFlash...TRANSLATION: The pastor was...Wright to blame us for 9/11. I HATE PARTISANS!

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

I have a hunch "slumburbia" won't happen. Poverty has never hit the fringes and I'd suspect the neighboring affluent burgs will annex the property and demolish abandoned houses before allowing ghettos in their midsts. Also the comparison to France seems inexact; if I'm not mistaken their suburbs center around state housing projects, unlike the alleged new slums, which are entirely and proudly Babbitt-made.

Posted 1:20 PM by Gene

A reminder: Bear Stearns recommended New Century Financial.

NUF SAID.

Posted 1:15 PM by Gene

AP NEWS ALERT!!!!!

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has promised to do all he can to help struggling homeowners.

Good luck, Ben!

Posted 1:08 PM by Gene

Sorry Garry, L'Affaire Pellicano is still BOOOOOOOOOOOOORING.

Shandling's 45 minutes of serious testimony began light-heartedly when Assistant U.S. Atty. Kevin Lally asked the television star a standard question to get the proceedings underway.

"What do you do for a living?" Lally asked.

"That's a bad sign," Shandling deadpanned, drawing laughs. The implication was that he was not as well-known as he had hoped. "I'm a comedian," he said.

Does anyone outside BIGMEDIA watch cult favorites on HBO?

Posted 1:02 PM by Gene

GEKKO KUDLOW defended Dick "ZILLIONS" Grasso. Dick "ZILLIONS" Grasso was a "victim" of Gov. Whoredom. Therefore, con-SERRRRRRRR-va-tives can legally gloat.

Some people should shut up before they open their mouths.

P. S.

So, what makes a girl classy enough for the clientele of the Emperor's Club? I guess "Kristen's" belly tattoo in Latin must have helped.

Wait, isn't tutela valui the con-SER-va-tives' official motto? Oh, we're thinking caveat emptor.

Posted 10:15 AM by Gene

ODE TO A GOLDDIGGER:

"She crashed up [her stepdad's] Porsche and wanted another one, and he wouldn't give it to her, so she left," said the friend, who asked her name not be printed. (LAST GRAF)

Posted 10:08 AM by Gene

Is it us or is it that the more we learn about The Messiah, the weirder He gets?

Posted 10:06 AM by Gene

The world has just seen a thoroughly suitable prelude to THE GAMES.

Posted 9:55 AM by Gene

Bear Stearns did not have a liquidity crisis but because of "chatter" it had a sudden liquidity crisis, and now the Feds are stepping in.

You don't suppose S&P popped the bubbly a bit early?

Posted 9:51 AM by Gene

All that money and the Big Dig is "perceived as the ultimate pork barrel project."

Well, think of the Sox and the Patriots and you can forget the money.

Posted 9:48 AM by Gene

In light of the death of the Chaldean Catholic archibishop of Mosul we understand why the Pope wants "the same religious freedoms that Muslims enjoy in the West...granted for Christians in Muslim dominated countries" -- even as the only true freedom will remain with Muslims to assault non-Muslims.

Posted 9:35 AM by Gene

The Econowiz, not content to be the rag BUGMEISTER BILL turned into a CEO obsession, decides to ape Forbeslist with its uppity European "lifestyle" pile of Charmin publishing a LIST of the bestest cri-TICS of all -- and seeing that Effete Edelstein and six rock cri-TICS are on the list merely confirms that when making a list knowledge is counterproductive.

(Via the usual ArtsJournal)

Posted 9:07 AM by Gene

Mark this date on your calendars: April 17. That's when the Pope lectures nominally Catholic YOUNUHVERSIHTEE execs in DC, who will then scream to the press that they're Catholic too -- just maybe not THAT Catholic.

"Every university is committed to the pursuit of truth," said Georgetown President John J. DeGioia, "and we want to ensure that there is the opportunity for both academic freedom and for the free exchange of ideas and opinions across all issues."

But David Gibson, the author of a Benedict biography, said the pope will ask, "If you're not going to be an authentically Catholic, orthodox institution, why should you exist?"

We'll see lots of existentialism after April 17, won't we!

Posted 8:57 AM by Gene

SLIME hands over His girlfriend to SUMNER.

Puh-LEASE.

Posted 8:46 AM by Gene

And (keeping in mind this is CJR, which never met a liberal it didn't like) one reason the Wiz and LEGENDARY WELCH became Gods was because the hacks basked in their glow, and in the recognition that comes from fawning over genius. That they paid no mind to the middle-class and credit cards merely shows again that in their world anyone who makes less than $100,000 a year doesn't exist, and when someone does it's merely to confirm a point pleasing to the scribbler.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 8:43 AM by Gene

And the brief translation to this BizWeek story is we must do something, anything about the credit debacle -- and hope and pray it isn't the wrong thing.

Posted 8:38 AM by Gene

One area where Amazon.com seems to do quite well with its customer ratings is in specialist books, which tend to be reviewed by people who know what they're doing. I mention that because one of BloomyLite's columnists reviews a scathing book about the Wizard of Oz, and there is no avoiding the notion that his rep is headed to the proverbial historical ash heap. Indeed when I looked it up I found no fewer than four books which debunk his infinite wisdom. Why in the Wiz' name did we blind ourselves to him for so long? The age of Wiz was, of course the age of the omnipotent CEO, and neither could ever do wrong -- until after the fact.

P. S.

As the stock bubble swelled in the 1990s, Greenspan became mesmerized by the theory that technology had boosted productivity far more than was understood. He concluded that ``there was no bubble under way because technology expenditures weren't accounted for correctly, meaning that stock prices weren't nearly as high as they seemed,'' Fleckenstein writes.

The WIZ invented DOW 36,000ISM!

Posted 7:35 PM by Gene

The nice thing about these "symbolic" votes is that in several years the Let-Them-Eat-Cake Gang on the Hill is going to have to stand behind its posturing -- and here's wagering they'll so tie themselves up in knots tax policy will go into default mode, and members of both the public-be-damned parties will so be busy blaming one another for the mess as to create total gridlock -- but then, how does that differ from our misgovernment now?

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

Didn't AOL teach these clowns anything?

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

Or maybe not.

Posted 5:02 PM by Gene

End of subprime hits in sight

THE CRISIS HAS ENTIRELY ENDED!!!!!

Posted 4:59 PM by Gene

Is it me or does soon-to-be-ex-governor Whoring have lousy tastes in women?

Watch a report from Dupre's apartment building »

The Web that gave us live blogging now gives us live voyeuring (sort-of).

Posted 5:56 PM by Gene

In Germany the state is now allowing American Ph.D. recipients from some skools to call themselves by the honorific "Doctor", meaning they can perpetrate fraud there too.

Posted 5:31 PM by Gene

Some deaf, dumb and blind "shareholders" reward Bob Toll for a job -- well done.

That or they're Republicans.

Posted 5:29 PM by Gene

And somewhere there must be a connection between the Queen "musical" and Ashlee's alleged nose job (which Microhoo! treats with suitably annoying prominence), but it's one we'd rather not pursue.

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

Upon hearing the TRAGIC news that the Queen "musical" has closed in Toronto -- yes, that one -- and upon hearing the further explanation that "[b]y the time its Toronto run ends, We Will Rock You will have played 61 weeks, been seen by more than 700,000 people, and generated an estimated economic spin-off to the city of $250 million, according to the producers" (TRANSLATION: It lost money, and if it didn't someone's lying with statistics), we hunted up its London cast album on two of Amazon.com's sites and found another reason its customer rankings are unreliable. The semi-literate (if that) British fans LOOOOOOOOOOOOVED it (FIVE STARS!!!!!), the Americans were a little cooler to it (only four). So geography can screw up a rating too. We'd guess there are five or six reasons in all you can't trust Amazon.com reader reviews, and for us two is enough.

Posted 1:25 PM by Gene

Israel to Sanction Al-Jazeera

Do I see some peacocks wearing this as a badge of honor?

Stations from other Arab countries that don't recognize Israel, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have crews and reporters in the country, while some Arab and Islamic countries rely on freelance journalists, usually Palestinians or Israeli Arabs. The reporters are accredited by the Israeli government and allowed to cover the news freely.

Israeli media are allowed no similar freedoms in the Arab world.

Thousands of knee-jerk lockstep screaming-meemie types say "So?"

Posted 1:18 PM by Gene

Speaking of con-SER-va-tives, they gladly turn the other cheek at "cronyism" between government and business, as, after all, anything that helps business shaf -- serve its customers must be for the greater glory, never mind if people stand to get killed and businesses ruined in the process.

LUV is learning about cronyism the hard way.

Posted 1:15 PM by Gene

Men and Women: The Real Question [Kathryn Jean Lopez]

What does Jonah think of Valerie Bertinelli? She knocks him into second place on the New York Times bestseller list this week.

03/12 11:12 AM

YOU GO GIRL!

Posted 10:45 AM by Gene

When your sales are going upupUP with the same old slop why do you have to blog?

What I'd like to see: Mickey D franchises with their own blogs. The spelling and grammatical errors would be tremendous.

Posted 10:37 AM by Gene

DR. DEATH FOR CONGRESS!

Well, it does have sort of a -- ring to it.

Posted 9:55 AM by Gene

Meantime Barney calls municipal-bond ratings "ridiculous" but doesn't say what he would replace them with. He's also ready to throw $10 billion at the blight created by psychotically-building Babbitts, which if we know the best-laid plans of mice will produce a secondary blight.

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

Throw out all the econometric models—we are now officially into uncharted territory.

TRANSLATION: Is the NEW Wizard of Oz flying blind?

Posted 5:06 PM by Gene

Let's see -- we called the last big rally in the Casino the MASSACRE RALLY; what do we call this one -- THE WHORING GOVERNOR'S RALLY?

Maybe they should do it more often!

Fed action may have targeted Bear Stearns

TRANSLATION: We'll do anything, ANYTHING, to keep these houses of financial parasites from going broke!

Posted 1:47 PM by Gene

Between Justin and the late-night joke-ruiners I'd agree our country is doomed...to stupidity.

Posted 12:03 PM by Gene

OoooooOOOOOoooooh:

GOP lawmakers threaten to impeach Spitzer

Ever heard of reverse psychology?

Posted 11:59 AM by Gene

Now the latest push from con-SER-va-tives is to STRENGTHEN THE DOLLAR, meaning all those panicky rate cuts won't work.

And how will Gekko & Co. strengthen the dollar especially with the speculative commodity orgying a certain con-SER-va-tive loves SO well?

Posted 11:43 AM by Gene

Between glorified downloading and higher hi-def the popcorn restaurant is doomed. One excuse THE CONSPIRACY and the ad-blurbists always schlep out is that movie-watching is a "communal" experience. Who wants to see any Best-Picture Os-CAR® nominee of recent vintage in a crowd? Such masterworks are made for the secretive onanism that is the stock-in-trade of ad-blurbists. What few extrusions are suitable for a big audience are mere incitements for a rabble to applaud oafishly over its heads. Ultimately it should be possible to plaster a TV onto a wall, and when the Babbitts come back they'll add dedicated home-theaters to their offerings, and there'll be no need to endure sticky Coke on the floor, or sullen help in the aisles, unless you want your kids to volunteer.

Besides, do these geniuses think the low-IQ types who run the restaurants can run the equipment? And who can predict where the first pirated copies of first-runs will emanate from?

Posted 11:24 AM by Gene

Some well-meaning types want the Brits to pledge allegiance to the Queen, who might not be a third the sacred personage those who aren't assimilating pledge their allegiance to.

Posted 11:11 AM by Gene

Speaking of the TWXSTERS, are they sure people want to remind them of their "worst covers"? Then they'd have to remind them of their worst stories -- and the reminders might NEVER stop.

Posted 11:09 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Some Southern Baptists believe in the God WE believe in!

Yes, global warming is all about religion. But why should I want to worship to Gaea?

Posted 11:06 AM by Gene

The Inequality Myth

The Myth of Household Wage Stagnation

Has Gekko "Goldilocks" Kudlow been regaling the office with HIS myths?

Posted 10:55 AM by Gene

Some bank CEOs unaware of subprime holdings: Fed's Kroszner

Who says CEOs have to know?

Posted 10:02 AM by Gene

From the West End, Martin Samuel discovers...THE SECRET OF BRANSON EAST:

“Jersey Boys is a musical for people who don't like musicals,” says its director, Des McAnuff. Actually, these days just about everything is a musical for people who don't like musicals. It is the people who do like musicals who are screwed.

It might have helped, though, if he hadn't referred to "Oscar Hammerstein III."

(Via ArtsJournal)

Posted 10:59 PM by Gene

And how long before we scream at stories like this? As the ASSPress proved with its water P-Ulitzer winner if one looks long enough one can find anything wrong. Solving the drugs-in-water problem is well nigh impossible, and solving "global warming" is taking on the surrealistic nature of the dances of angels on the head of a pin. That we seem to find problems faster than we can solve them cannot be good for the body politic's sanity.

Posted 10:55 PM by Gene

Another consequence of non-stop Web news consumption is it forces you to think ahead -- as in, what unintended consequence will spring out of this one? Hard-core Republicans like Bob may demand an end to earmarks, but of course they won't end them; they'll merely embolden the money-suckers to go to the states to lobby even harder, transferring the spending from one realm to another, and not eliminating the expense. In government, who appropriates the money is almost irrelevant.

Posted 10:54 PM by Gene

The Eliot Ness story wasn't two hours old and already it became tiresome. This is a tribute to how much we seem to know about the news before it's had a chance to settle in. It's also a tribute to how much the Web has rattled our nerves and fried our brains.

Posted 2:29 PM by Gene

Spitzer Is Linked to Prostitution Ring

Bye Gov. Eliot Ness!

Posted 12:15 PM by Gene

Ditto with incompetent zillionaire CEOs -- or zillionaire CEOs whatever their competence.

Posted 12:14 PM by Gene

The mendacity of politicans in spreading gamb -- GAMING across America is why I think them a better-dressed breed of SWINE.

Posted 6:02 PM by Gene

THE USELESSNESS OF AMAZON.COM RATINGS: Okay, which has a higher star rating from the customers -- The Best Years of Our Lives or Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm? No cheating! Give up? Okay, it's the former -- by a half-star. We'll grant too the '46 Best Picture Os-CAR® winner has 141 comments next to Bill-'n'-Joe's junk's five. Of course the site (and the whole godforsaken Web) is full of pop-culture monomaniacs who'd call Jackass a masterpiece. But I'm trying to assemble a first-class DVD collection and I'm not getting any younger. And the thing is the customer ratings can be quite useful when judging home electronics or small appliances. People won't hold back on a bad experience there; if enough have had one you know a product's not worth buying. By contrast when it comes to movies or CDs they join the crowd. There are exceptions, to be sure, but they're mostly related to glorified manufacturing glitches, as with some Universal double-discs -- and most notoriously with WKRP in Cincinnati, which was chopped up due to epochal music-rights problems, not to mention Animal House, preceded on its first DVD issue with undefeatable trailers. Don't get me wrong, I want fluff along with the genius; there's a place in my collection for Hogan's Heroes and the dread Pink Panther cartoons. (Of the Valenti era I have other thoughts.) Heck I just bought the Frankie and Annette Collection. But dammit why should I have to believe cotton candy is every bit as good as caviar?

And just to go one step further: How many of the hyperactive blurb machines among the Amazon Top Reviewers would have five-starred THIS work but for an inconvenience?

Posted 4:52 PM by Gene

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

1. "DEBT IS THE NEW OBESITY!!!!!" [Emphasis added]

And WHO has gorged the public with all those subprimes and credit-card come-ons?

2. You do not dumb down a magazine like The Atlantic and profit from it.

3. Can this designer make Chrysler come up with REALLY ugly cars everyone can call "HIP"? Other car companies can.

4. No one has yet to convince us salt and processed foods can be mutually exclusive.

5. So many products are usurping other products' boundaries, and so many CEOs of companies with competing brands want their luxury boxes at THE GAMES and the right to hector their underlings for years, they may be undercutting their "exclusive" sales pitches -- which from a CEO's point of view is never bad; he'll always get HIS seats.

6. SHUCKS, Southwest Airlines is getting to be as ill-managed and customer-deaf as any other airline. Do I hear its "competitors'" executives laughing?

Posted 3:34 PM by Gene

This is the new frontier of home-video recording. High-definition recording isn't just for the Super Bowl or a blockbuster movie anymore--it can now be used at weddings, family get-togethers or a child's school play. These are memories worth capturing in the best quality video possible. And when you can easily access these events with modern camcorder formats, you'll be more likely to revisit them again and again.

TRANSLATION: Home movies are BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!!!!!

Posted 1:26 PM by Gene

This is one story that may resist the snappy retort, and I probably shouldn't talk so much as I'm -- close to the situation, but as our methods of detecting bad stuff in drinking water improve (brought on in no small way by federal mandates), of course more bad stuff would show up in trace amounts -- and as people think they can pill themselves to good health, ever the more so. Common sense would dictate that less-than-homeopathic levels of drugs in drinking water would have the same effect as homeopathy, but given how Americans medicate themselves and the stellar rep of Big Pharma we may not be talking common sense here.

Posted 11:45 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The stand-up comedy racket is trading one kind of unfunny for a smaller, grungier, "HIPPER" kind of unfunny.

Posted 11:16 AM by Gene

THE CONSPIRACY DOES IT AGAIN:

But the drive to overdo almost everything in the film only emphasizes how thinly stretched the story is, and how movies almost always resort to violence and violent action when no one knows what else to do.

Ah, but isn't Hollywood filled to its brim with omnipotents?

Posted 10:59 AM by Gene

It is not enough for the MASTERS of HYER EHDYUKAYSHUN to have their heads buried up their gazoots on matters pedagogical, political or financial, no; having long ago abandoned in loco parentis it follows that they would be blithe about their turnips' safety on campuses -- especially since so many "campuses" must compete one against another to be the best all-day nightspot they can. (Seen any pictures of spring break lately?) So when two students get killed in prominent episodes it merely formalizes that HYER EHDYUKAYSHUN has the advantage of being in stasis and out of control at the same time.

Posted 10:48 AM by Gene

We don't know why China is boasting that it's fended off two alleged terrorist attacks, one threatening THE GAMES. It can't do any good with the touristas. Besides, who would attack China when it takes the side of right? On the other hand as the alleged terrorists seem to have come from a place where M----ms congregate, we may wonder.

Posted 10:45 AM by Gene

We suppose the hacks broke out into a broad grin when they heard who's taken over (temporarily, at least) Shady Hastert's old seat. Even though their glibness is quite irritating, we must reflect it couldn't have happened without a total incompetent having warmed the seat for ages.

Posted 10:41 AM by Gene

Boobs McKeating must have rolled his eyes when he saw what BRENT wanted him to do today. Boobs surely realizes he needs the footstompers but he also knows if he falls too much in their thrall he becomes every bit the captive of wing-nuts as any Walter Mondale -- and the Democrats for now have hidden those mad relatives in the closet. And by screaming that he wants big tax breaks for the megarich BRENT wants to hold a Republican candidate hostage. But such breaks may not do what they're alleged to anymore. And the ordinary voting peons may not want them either.