"RNC candidate Chip Saltsman's Christmas greeting to committee members includes a music CD with lyrics from a song called "Barack the Magic Negro," first played on Rush Limbaugh's popular radio show. Saltsman, a personal friend of conservative satirist Paul Shanklin, sent a 41-track CD along with a note to national committee members… The CD, called "We Hate the USA," lampoons liberals with such songs as "John Edwards' Poverty Tour," "Wright place, wrong pastor," "Love Client #9," "Ivory and Ebony" and "The Star Spanglish banner." Several of the track titles, including "Barack the Magic Negro," are written in bold font." [Huffington Post]
This year, expect Santa's sleigh to be way less heavy than it's been in years prior. And no, it's not just the recession crunch that's got old Saint Nick down. Rather, it's that the list of naughty and nice is a bit skewed this year, as the economic climate seemed to have sent a Grinch-y chill through some of the nation's richest and sleaziest.
While enjoying your eggnog, take some time to remember these five conniving hucksters, and consider that saying: "If you have one roach, you have hundreds."
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"Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin's style is exceptionally ordinary. Nothing about it connotes authority. No detail announces that she is in charge."
And so begins Robin Givhan's September 28th analysis of the VP candidate's wardrobe. Of course, this was still a month before the news came out that Palin spent $150k of RNC money at Neiman Marcus and Saks to give her the perfect pitbull with a Chanel dress look.
Is the Washington Post fashion stylist eating her words? You betcha.
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Well since we all know how much Sarah Palin likes charging thing to the corporate card (haha, just like a woman), it should come as no surprise how much the Republican National Committee has spent on turning Eliza Doolittle into a genteel woman. Oh, but somehow the number is still pretty shocking:
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Forget Troopergate (oh what, you already have?): The state of Alaska is investigating claims that Sarah Palin spent over $21,012 in taxpayer money to lug her oddly-named daughters to and from events that they weren't specifically invited to.
Palin wrote visits to New York and Anchorage for herself and her female fam as official business, and was reimbursed for her travel by the state, but didn't even bother listing those reimbursements as a source of income on her tax return. Waah-waah.
Alaskan policy allows for family members to attend events on the house if they were "conducting official state business."
Which was obviously not the case in situations where conference organizers didn't even know the Palin family would be attending:
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Preemptive strikes have begun! Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists," (pallin' around?) back in the 70's, coincidentally coinciding with the RNC's recent allegations that Barack Obama accepted illegal campaign contributions from "overseas."
See the link guys?? Barack Obama is acquaintances with Bill Ayers, who was the leader of the radical American terrorist group The Weathermen 30 years ago. Plus Obama's middle name is Hussein, plus he says he's not Muslim but he totally is, plus…overseas money? More like overseas Al-Qaeda money!
So, if then, quid pro quo…Barack Obama=Osama Bin Laden. Simple math, really.
Except, when the RNC says "overseas" they mean where, exactly? Iraq? Iran? Afghanistan? Terroristakistan? Where, exactly, is this foreign money supposedly coming from, and how does it having anything to do with Bill Ayers? (Who, since he is an American, Barack Obama could accept the maximum campaign donations of, fyi.)
At a RNC event last week, guests enjoying beverages at the bar were ordered to chug their drink or toss it — if it was a foreign booze. That's because Cindy McCain was approaching, and bartenders, a spy tells us, were instructed to offer only domestic beers in her presence. Which meant the Heineken had to go, and the Bud Light moved front and center. (Nevermind that Anheuser-Busch is about to be a foreign cash machine.) The sake-sipping Lady McCain is, of course, heir to her father's beer distributorship, and holds more than $1 million in Anheuser-Busch stock, so maybe it was less about offering anti-American product and more about showing support for Cindy's financial portfolio.
BriWi is about one major coverage short of a nervous breakdown. It's already duly noted that NBC is scheduling Williams so many places at once that he can't even blog, but that was apparently just the beginning:
From the Olympics in Beijing to the Democratic convention in Denver to Hurricane Gustav coverage in New Orleans to the Republicans in St. Paul to L.A. tomorrow for a cancer awareness special with his Big 3 competitors.
By Williams' calculation, it comes to 38,486 miles — including two Pacific crossings, two Atlantic crossings and 10 overseas cities.
All in less than a month, remember. Well that explains why he's getting so snippy when talking about Bristol Palin, "Families are messy and complicated and American and normal…it's where public officials kind of close the door behind them. Home is home. Family's family."
Here that America? Brian Williams wants you to stop the clamoring so he can finally catch some Z's.
Though the Republicans had, arguably, little to celebrate last night, they certainly went overboard with the festivities. Which meant unintended victims in this, the "political equivalent of a Chucky Cheese."
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When accepting a party's nomination, presidential candidates hope to do two things: excite their base and woo potential swing voters. We fear John McCain may have done neither last night.
What could possibly be the reason the RNC decided to pull this introductory video for Sarah Palin moments before her speech yesterday?
Was it because Rudy Giuliani blabbered on too long?
Or was it because only Democrats saw An Inconvenient Truth and found the "PowerPoint Presentation As A Movie" genre worth clapping for?
There's a conspiracy theory brewing about how the off-air conversation between Chuck Todd, Mike Murphy, and Peggy Noonan made its way to the web. Suspects the reactionary News Busters: somebody leaked it!
Really? What gave it away? The fact that the conversation took place off-air during a commercial break, and nobody outside the network could've seen it? Sounds like somebody put their investigative journalist hat on.
Barack Obama acquiesced and agreed to appear on The O'Reilly Factor, after much taunting and mashing of teeth from Billbo himself — and a little intervention with Roger Ailes.
Trap? Perhaps. But Obama's visit to the Fox newsroom for the first time will happen tonight, as O'Reilly teased during much of last night's show.
That's tonight, as in the final night of the RNC, when John McCain will be making his nomination speech. Watching beady-eyed Bill lob cheap shots at Obama is definitely preferable to watching beady-eyed McCain make some lame jokes at the podium.
Though viewers tuning in to the loaded question segment may be disappointed: O'Reilly has this tendency to go all sincere once he's finally finagled candidates onto the program and has to deal with them face-to-face. (See: Hillary Clinton.) Cutting off Barack's microphone, however, is remains an option.
'Griffin and Olbermann were at the Chicago Cubs game Saturday, separately. Olbermann also went to Sunday's game and, during a morning email exchange, Griffin suggested Olbermann should go back to New York, instead of on to St. Paul. Olbermann responded "Seriously?"' [TVN]
Yes, Rudy Giuliani's speech about the qualifications of mayors ran long, which meant the RNC had to cancel the 15-minute "Meet Sarah Palin" video it wanted to show before the VP nominee took the stage. And yes, we were all a little anxious to see what the woman who could be a "heartbeat away" from the presidency had to say. But that doesn't mean we all took the pre-released notes about what Palin would say in her speech to whip together articles about what she actually said on stage — and then whip together articles for the wires before she even began talking. But there went Reuters and AFP, distributing copy about Palin's remarks prior to her making them. Sound familiar? That's because the Associated Press pulled this stunt at the DNC, running a precursory article about Barack Obama's speech before he took over the podium, leading to a pretty inaccurate summation of what went down that evening. (The AP even got the length of the speech wrong in its preemptive report; it had to update its copy to reflect the number of minutes Obama actually spoke.) And that whole thing got Keith Olbermann all riled up.
Battle in Seattle, the star-studded re-enactment of the 1999 WTO riots, was screened at Denver's DNC this month, but the real life equivalent was happening a week later at the Minnesota convention. The RNC already features at least three acts of random violence that are not related to Gustav, which just means you can expect a film version called Scrap in St. Paul in 10 years.
So who had the piss beat out of them by overzealous cops and cranky GOPs?
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Might MSNBC be having a change of heart over network star Keith Olbermann?
The Countdown host who's become the face (and programmer?) of MSNBC regularly anchored presidential primary debate coverage, which was once the territory not of pundits, but hard news men and women. Such a ratings draw in primetime, Olbermann then headed up Denver's broadcasts from the DNC, where he and Chris Matthews tag teamed lead coverage — and spearheaded a series of on-air dust ups with colleagues.
But this week, in St. Paul at the RNC, Olbermann is nowhere to be found. That's because he's been ordered to stay in New York, while Matthews and none other than Tucker Carlson — MSNBC's whipping boy — will lead coverage from the Republican convention; Morning Joe's Joe Scarborough will also broadcast on location.
So why no Olbermann? CONTINUED »
JOSSIP REPORTS — With budgets already stretched thin — do you know how much Keith Olbermann costs? — cable networks like MSNBC find themselves covering one of the most expensive presidential election cycles ever. Those primaries went on for eternity, and the DNC and RNC will demand a few million more bucks. And then there's the damn presidential debates still coming!
All those costs explain why network head Phil Griffin has handed down travel restrictions — namely, the number of producers heading to Denver and St. Paul is nothing like it was just four years ago, we're told. Well-placed informants tell us many producers who went to the conventions in '04 aren't going to either the DNC or RNC this year, while the producers who did make the cut will have to pull double or triple duty, handling multiple talent at the same time.
Sounds pretty crappy, but cutbacks are the reality, right?
Well, it's the reality for everyone — except a one Andrea Mitchell. CONTINUED »
Jackshaf is totes going to have his plans for boycotting the DNC /giant media clusterfuck foiled when the press shows up and is treated to Google's elaborate arrangements for bloggers. Google is setting up a two-story "camp" for bloggers covering the event in Denver next week, and for only 100 clams, even the most dubious news source can be treated like kings with a set-up that includes internet, "nap spaces," food and beverages, massages, "smoothies and a candy buffet."
The really incredible part of this story, however, is reminding us just how new this new media really is:
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How does a cable news anchor who's bathed in gutter water the past couple years try to show she's still hanging in there? By still hanging in there. Katie Couric, the CBS Evening News anchor still seen at 6:30pm every night though you wouldn't know it, will shut down her primetime convention coverage broadcast and pick up where she left off with a live Internet webcast at 11pm. Viewership will be even slimmer, of course — before the best parts are spliced into YouTube clips for everyone to enjoy.
