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!

Posted 5:05 PM by Gene

Well, you could put it that way:

Teen: Standing by as friend slit man's throat was a misjudgment

Posted 4:51 PM by Gene

In a wide-ranging hour of questions from students Wednesday, Justice Antonin Scalia warned against expecting judges to solve society's problems and recalled his own youth with his "nose to the grindstone."

So why did you wear your nose down, Tony?

Posted 4:48 PM by Gene

And speaking of Romy:

Why couldn't the Pulitzer board find one excellent editorial?

Among so many?

Posted 4:47 PM by Gene

See? SEE? OUR POLITICAL PRIS -- PHOTOGRAPHER was granted AMNESTY! See? SEE?

Amnesty is not the same as exoneration.

Posted 9:21 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: ESPNCORP cements its business as America's leading babysitter.

Posted 9:18 AM by Gene

What do large donations to kolledges do but entrench bureaucracies -- and thinking?

Posted 9:06 AM by Gene

Hey! Where Have All the Cockroaches Gone?

This is The Cute Little Pink Paper, and this IS Noo Yawk, so we'll merely say NO COMMENT.

Posted 9:05 AM by Gene

USAOKAY!!!!! plugs a JUGGLER!!!!! So everybody's favorite weatherman Al Roker emcees fifteen programs and produces eighty others. He replaced somebody named Willard in '96. What happened to Willard?

A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO GARY!

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 5:43 PM by Gene

On his sojourn here the Pope will open his mouth about sex abuse, to which we say, not only is it about time, it's long past it.

Posted 5:35 PM by Gene

Greenspan Says Fed Didn't Cause Housing Bubble

But the formerly capitalized he says we're in a recession. Sounds like ol' Wiz is having it both ways.

Heck even the audiophile-obsessive professional investors aren't buying it.

Posted 5:26 PM by Gene

Elsewhere in the barrel of laughs called NRO is this link to an extremely long Politico story saying Goddess's endorsement of The Messiah has hurt Her popularity -- but despite citing what seem like 5,000 opinion polls not ONCE does the story mention Her ratings, which we suspect would prove for all time most polls are full-bore-lowing BULL.

And if Her popularity has declined, Moon 'n' Stars hasn't noticed.

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

He's No Terrorist ... He's an Islamic Militant [Andy McCarthy]

From today's Wall Street Journal "What's News" blurbs: "Pakistan won't negotiate with terrorists in its effort to pursue talks with Islamic militants, the foreign minister said."

04/08 04:05 PM

Wait! I thought our guy was con-SERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-va-tive!

Posted 5:15 PM by Gene

Elsewhere in the Web site of the newly-depleted Zeitgeist, a not-so-golden oldie:

During an appearance on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report", part of a media blitz he did upon announcing his new gig, Marash said he expected Al Jazeera English to be "the highest-class English-language news channel in the world."

Which, even under the best of circumstances, would not have been saying much.

Posted 5:05 PM by Gene

MESSIAH! Here's Your vice-president -- "and his new book"!

Posted 5:00 PM by Gene

THE REVENGE OF LEGENDARY WELCH: CHINESE THUGS are escorting THE TORCH.

Sure it isn't time to sell, Little Jeffy?

Posted 4:55 PM by Gene

MORE GENIUS IN ADVERTISING: For the better part of what, six weeks? I've passed a garage billboard for Semi-Pro. You remember that PEOPLE WARNER work of genius, don't you? Somebody does; the ad's been up all this time though the excretion quickly vamoosed from the popcorn restaurants (and let us not forget Center City Philthydelphia has no first-run popcorn restaurants save for a couple of ahthouses). For about eight weeks posters have also been up for Rambo XVII. Here's my question: Do the producers of the masterworks still pay for their billboards hanging forlornly on? And do they care?

Posted 8:43 AM by Gene

Mayor's Duck Is Looking A Bit Lame

This zillionaire quacker limped on His first day.

Posted 8:39 AM by Gene

The Supermanning of America hits a brick wall in Vegas, where multi-million McMansions become obsolete in less than two years. As for this would-be flipper Mr. Derentz, "who heads the company that runs the annual Harvest Festival in Laguna Hills", we hope his house won't sell for a long, long time.

Posted 8:34 AM by Gene

Well, the CEOs and the six- and seven-digit sports hacks got themselves what the latter are already inevitably describing as a "classic", although we may wonder how much of a classic when one team, to use an unfair word, "choked." We wonder too whether the public at large much cares anymore; it's all one group of stupid mercenaries against another. Only the uniforms change.

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

An apt juxtaposition on the MESS:

Washington Post wins six Pulitzers

L.A. Times retracts Shakur story

Interestingly, no award for editorial writing, as if they need one.

Come on guys, when will you give WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE DYLAN His P-Ulitzer?

P. S. at 8:46 p.m. I stand corrected: Bill got a citation. Next -- THE BOSS!

Posted 12:48 PM by Gene

Well! Glad to know who goes up against PILLHEAD from noon to 3 p.m. Since we don't listen to PILLHEAD, and since we won't listen to a LEFT-WING PILLHEAD, it's all one to us.

Posted 11:53 AM by Gene

If it wasn't clear before, it's clear now: every PR moment before THE GAMES will be about the protests, and no manner of clever Imagineering Goodthings can change that.

Didn't the LORDS of Fairfield and Lausanne even think of this? No. They never think. With their titles they don't have to.

Posted 11:51 AM by Gene

A jury has decided what a jury shouldn't have had to decide, and especially so long after the fact: that a drunk driver and psychotic picture takers killed Diana, not an evil conspiracy at Buckingham.

Posted 11:48 AM by Gene

It is now painfully obvious Col. Zell hasn't the foggiest notion what he's doing. The real question is this: Why did he spend so much of other people's money to get his name in the papers?

Posted 9:28 AM by Gene

Some TNR intern has what he thinks is the last word on that stoopid Mexican ABSOLUT AD:

Michelle Malkin, predictably, is all over it. It's admittedly a little distressing (especially to those of us from the Southwest!), and one wonders exactly what Absolut's marketing people were thinking. But what self-respecting superpower is so insecure as to start a boycott over a vodka ad featuring simply an historically accurate map?

Which, however you say it, is another way of stating liberals have a "patriotism problem".

(Sorry for the ANONYMOUS!)

Posted 9:20 AM by Gene

IOC chief Rogge: Athletes' health not in danger in Beijing

TRANSLATION: Please, please, Chinese dictators, ban all use of cars and trucks in all of China during the games, and stop up your industry too, so our sacred athletes can breathe fresh air! Please! PLEASE!

Except what's needed to get them, our sponsors and our parent firm GE BANCORP around, of course.

Rogge said the IOC executive committee would meet April 10 to examine the latest report by human rights group Amnesty International, which was critical of China's lack of progress on such issues as detention without trial, repression of human right activists and Internet censorship.

And the Lords said, all is good.

Posted 9:15 AM by Gene

MB2, AGAIN:

The market, which bewilders and annoys liberals by correcting excesses without the supervision of liberals....

Slap yourself on the back, MB2!

Posted 9:08 AM by Gene

Here's news we like: Lots of would-be Richie Riches who are long oil and wheat are now having their superexpensive cars (and planes, and yachts) repossessed -- but not, alas, before having inflicted the damage to ordinary people that gives them a permanent grin.

Posted 8:57 AM by Gene

McCain Is Vocal on War, but Silent on Son’s Service

The rhymes-with-clucks who are news hacks want it both ways, as usual. They want to know why the candidate is SILENT!!!!! But if he'd opened his yap they'd want to know why he's BOASTING ABOUT HIS SON'S MILITARY SERVICE!!!!! We think he's got it right; this isn't something to make a campaign issue about, however worthy the endeavor; and even though Boobs is a charter member of the I ♥ IMUS Club this time his tact serves him well, and he'd do best to exhibit more of it.

Posted 8:50 AM by Gene

We are sorry to learn that Charlton Heston has died. He was a link between the golden age and the SUPERMEGAPLATINUM AGE that is our own, starring in the big CinemaScope Biblical epics that drew hordes into the drive-ins while the industry marked time, preparing to make Bonnie and Clyde and works of true genius that chased mere moviegoers away. (He also made a few high-profile clunkers in the VALENTI Era, but that's a price to pay for encouraging genius.) Later of course he headed the NRA, and whatever you think of that august body he never did back down from it. He is thought to have had Alzheimer's, just as Ronald Reagan did, and now he is free from an awful disease.