Archive for November 16th, 2009

For those of you that know the show, this is 10 minutes of beautiful memories spanning all 5 incredible seasons (I teared up a little; shut up).

YERP!

For those of you that never watched it, I sorely envy you.

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit.

The fuck did I do?

The Equalizer has passed away. Thanks for many years of brilliant acting (me and the Mrs. are particularly fond of The Wicker Man).

The only confirmation of Ken Ober’s death that I could find online (besides people’s status updates on Facebook) is Wikipedia. So, there’s a pretty good chance that Mr. Ober is still alive.

But if not, then thanks for all the comedy you gave to the world (Mind of Mencia notwithstanding).

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Three headlines today. Top left is one of the Jets lying on his back, legs raised, one hand on his ass, one on the back of his thigh (headline: Jets hit bottom). Top right is a photo of Oprah removing the chimp-maul lady’s veil with a photo of Mandrea Peyser below — it took me three minutes to figure out that they hadn’t accidentally run the same photo twice (headline: Brave heart). Bottom half of the page is an EXCLUSIVE that warns us that “State Democrats want to impose $1,000,000,000 in new taxes on health-care providers — costs that ultimately be passed on to patients” (headline: THAT’S SICK!).

Howzabout some context: The price of premium rates have gone up across the board from November 2008 to November 2009. GHI raised their HMO rate 30% and their PPO 30%. Aetna raised their HMO rate 20% and their PPO 27%. Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield raised their HMO rate 39%, but their PPO rate actually dropped 3%. Other providers raised their rates including HIP (HMO +25%, PPO +15%), Oxford (HMO +15%, PPO +16%), Atlantis (HMO +10%, PPO +10%) and HealthNet of NY (HMO +9%, PPO +10%).

So, what this newspaper is doing is trying to get its readers angry at Democrats for having the audacity to consider taxing the companies that, despite record profits, jacked up their prices by as much as 39%. And I could be wrong, but isn’t one of the things that the current reform addresses is a maximum for how much people would have to pay for health care? If so, where does the Post get the balls to imply that the costs will be passed on to patients?

Oh, that’s right. Because they’ve been insisting that the reform will never pass.

Sigh.

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The cost to renovate City Hall? $90,000,000.

That’s almost as much as Bloomberg spent mailing me things every other day which I threw out without reading!

He should totally pay for it himself.

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There are roughly 1,000 pedicabs in the city. As of Friday, if you don’t have a special license plate, you can’t be a pedicab. As of today, only 321 people have gotten their licenses.

And of them, 23 are competent drivers.

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Post looking great at 208 informs us that today is the New York Post’s birthday. But the paper assures us that it isn’t “acting its age.”

“Our headlines are not receding. Our writing is as sharp as ever. If anything, the paper is less gray than it was a few years ago.”

If you say so.

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Another EXCLUSIVE! Lou Dobbs quit CNN? Not so much.

In fact, CNN gave him $8,000,000 to go away.

Dobbs says it will take him “weeks, probably months” before he decides what to do next (besides scowl at his Mexican spouse), but he’ll be on The O’Reilly Factor tonight which leads some folks to believe that he’ll wind up as another Fox News Opinutainer.

I think Dobbs belongs on TV — every time I hear him on the radio, I get worried that Kermit the Frog is choking to death on moose semen.

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Great photo on page 3 of Suri Cruise holding her Elmo doll in the rain and wearing high heels.

You read that correctly. Katie Holmes dressed her 3-year-old in heels. In the rain.

Katie and Suri are in Boston because Tom Cruise is shooting his new movie there (Knight & Day).

I don’t know what the movie is about, but I think I can make an educated guess: Cruise plays Jim Knight, a closeted homosexual with an infatuation for Doris Day. He drives across the country trying to buy as much Doris Day memorabilia as he can, paying for the trip by having sex with men in rest stops. One day, he meets Carlton Day (John Travolta) who claims to be Doris’ grandson. They have loads of gay sex and head for the Day estate (where Carlton has promised Jim the ultimate collector’s piece — Doris Day’s pelvic bone). Along the way, the man embrace their homosexuality (and each other) and learn that hobbies are nice, but life is more than collecting lobby cards. Joel Schumacher directs (and has gay sex with the cast).

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Why does everyone seem surprised that Hillary Clinton responded to what Sarah Palin said in her “book” (“Should Secretary Clinton and I ever sit down over a cup of coffee, I know that we will fundamentally disagree on many issues, but my hat is off to her hard work on the 2008 campaign trail.”) with “Why I absolutely would look forward to having coffee.”? She’s a successful politician (not a hockey mom or a pitbull with lipstick or a quitter or a moron). If she had said, “Why on earth would I want to do that? She’s an idiot.” then people might have thrown tea in the ocean or called her a Nazi or demanded to see her birth certificate.

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2012 made $65,000,000 this weekend. That’s more than Disney’s A Christmas Carol had made since it opened 10 days ago.

Plus, 2012 has won just one fewer basketball games this season than the Knicks.

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Isn’t it weird that all of the mouth-breathers are blaming the Fort Hood shootings on “political correctness” and not the fact that, despite being investigated for having terrorist ties by the Terrorism Joint Task Force, Hasan was able to buy a gun at a store in Texas — and the FBI never shared that knowledge with, say, its own terrorism unit?

So weird.

Even weirder: This.

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Rudy 9iu11ani gets almost a full page to (yet again) insist that Obama loves terrorists, doesn’t care about American citizens’ rights and safety, and something else that I couldn’t understand (I think it was something about suffering succotash).

Rudy also announced that he will be getting a Twitter account.

I so wish he was a Red Sox fan.

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Mandrea Peyser’s page is chock full of… words.

SPITZ PUTS THE ICK IN ‘ETHICKS’ (I see what she did there) (re)tells the tale of her trip to Harvard to hear Eliot Spitzer give a talk on ethics. It’s poorly written (!) and includes a sentence that I’ve tried to understand for three solid minutes. If you can translate it, please get in touch with me. “Eliot Spitzer will never run from questions about his past until he faces it.”

(and no, the preceding and following sentences add no context)

Baby collector Jolie at it again tells us that Angelina is adopting a baby from Syria.

Anti-religion zealot Maureen’s new spew draws some of the most hilariously spurious charges against Maureen Dowd that I’ve ever seen. Mandrea insists that (just like her previous “Catholic bashing”) Dowd is now attacking Jews. “…she referred to the profiteering of ‘blood-sucking banks’ — a blatant reference to Adolf Hitler’s and Louis Farrakhan’s favorite coinage, ‘blood-sucking Jews’…” Of course, she’s just sharing what Menachem Rosensaft and Jason Dolinsky wrote in the New Jersey Jewish News. But she obviously agrees with them. The men also kvetch, “She contrasts the ‘cycle of greed and concupiscence’ of what she calls ‘Goldmine Sachs’ (hint hint) with the ‘virtuous’ Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Calvinism.’”

Who out there thinks of Jews when they hear the adjective “blood-sucking”? Anyone? Me, I think of vampires. But that’s just me. I guess Mandrea has never heard of Twilight or True Blood.

Oh, and referring to Goldman Sachs as Goldmine Sachs is about as anti-Semitic as a knish with too much salt. People loathe Goldman Sachs NOT because they hate Jews, but because they bankrupted thousands of Americans and are now paying out billions in bonuses (after those same Americans helped their company not go out of business). I find Mandrea’s piece on Dowd’s anti-Semitism to be anti-Semitic.

But the major article today (complete with yet another sizeable picture of Charla Nash’s face) is Confronting ugly truth about us. It begins, “Try as we might, we just can’t look away. Her face is our own.” Speak for yourself, ugly. “A ‘freak show!’ critics wailed. A quest for ratings, cynics snarled.” Um… you do realize that you’re talking about your co-workers, right?

She goes on to ridicule Oprah because, when Oprah asked Charla how she eats, she revealed that she can only eat liquids through a straw, Oprah said, “Well, at least it helps you keep your weight down.”

“It was a deeply revealing moment, as Oprah projected her own obsessions about weight and appearance onto Charla’s wounds — a weird attempt to relate to her subject,” screeches Mandrea. Or, you know, an attempt to lighten the mood. Either or.

The best line in the piece, though is this one: “Unlike French face-transplant recipient Isabelle Dinoire, who was stoned when she was mauled by her dog, Charla did nothing to contribute to her maiming.”

Blaming the victim is such fun.

“We are a society completely obsessed with youth and beauty, with Botox and face lifts and the promise of eternal youth. With Twilight and True Blood, and characters who never get old, let alone develop a wrinkle.”

So she has heard of Twilight and True Blood. Huh.

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Cindy Adams begins today’s column thusly: “My lot in life is to divine your every need and supply it.”

Really? Then get in the box.

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Kehman Clarke, 25, stopped by his ex-girlfriend’s apartment to visit one of her children (I’m assuming the one that he helped make). He and his ex (who is currently pregnant) started to argue. He left. He returned and knocked on the door.

When she opened it, he threw gasoline on her and set her on fire (with a match). Her children were watching.

He turned to leave and slipped in the gasoline, setting himself on fire. She ran to a neighbor who helped douse the flames. She fled to the roof to get away from Kehman. Kehman ran outside and put out the flames on his own body.

Then, when the fire department and ambulances arrived, he pretended that he was an innocent victim and started to get treatment. Thankfully, a neighbor saw this and informed cops that the man on that gurney over there is the guy who started the fire.

The woman was taken to a hospital and is in stable condition. No word on her unborn child.

I propose that we permanently remove “man” from this asshole’s name.

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The editorial section is a cavalcade of stupid today.

Dick Morris stops drinking hooker pee long enough to burp that Obama is dropping the ball on investigating how the Fort Hood massacre came to pass (Changing the Subject). “As soon as the killing spree was over, Obama hastened to call it ‘an act of violence’ — obscuring the obvious fact that it was the most serious terror attack on US soil since 9/11.” Yeah, how dare Obama not jump to a conclusion! Why would he insist on gathering facts instead of issuing an immediate decree? It’s not like the mainstream media took a full week before they stopped crediting the wrong person with bringing the shootings to an end, right?

Dicks Made Of Throw-Up (sorry, Ralph Peters) continues his anti-Obama jeremiad (part 497 of infinity), breaking down why almost every Muslim nation in the world is now more terroristy thanks to the POTUS.

“Obama, it seems, just strolls from greatness to greatness. Among world leaders, only North Korea’s Kim Jong-il commands such media adoration from his homies. Not one establishment media outlet will weigh the obvious damage our president’s ludicrous Cairo speech did to the Middle East and to our security.”

1) This is one of the right wing’s favorite lies — that everyone in the media loves Obama. It really isn’t hard to find people complaining about the POTUS. In fact, why not read the paper you write for, dummy? I’d say that the Post is an establishment media outlet, wouldn’t you? And, oh look, they’ve published the ramblings of a jerk who has weighed the obvious damage that Obama’s Cairo speech has done! What are the odds?

2) Comparing Obama to Kim Jong-il was classy.

3) Referring to people who support Obama as his “homies” was even classier (with a side order of racism).

ACORN’s Nutty Suit ridicules ACORN for suing Congress for taking away its federal money. What a shock.

Jennifer Rubin defends Sarah Palin in Pummeling Sarah Palin: Round Two. Jennifer’s arguments are all absurd (she has 1,000,000 Facebook friends! people don’t take her seriously!). And, despite her claim that “much of the claptrap has been debunked,” the facts that Sarah Palin doesn’t believe in evolution, does believe in death panels, lied about the Bridge to Nowhere, and needed someone to write her book for her are irrefutable.

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Where’s Charles “The Mission of The Post Is To Destroy Our President” Hurt? Has the DC Bureau Chief been silenced (a least until the lawsuit against the Post dies down)?

Gift horse!

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PULSE has a three-page spread of vampiric fashion.

Why do they hate Jews so much?

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The Knicks are 1-9.

The Nets are 0-10.

I remain 0-0.

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Rosie O’Donnell revealed that her wife moved out of their home two years ago.

Then she ate a ham.

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Let’s look in the old E…W. mailbag.

Dear Jed,

I would very much not like to see Sarah Palin as she hawks the “book” she “wrote” on TV this week. What shows should I avoid to make this happen?

Sincerely,

D. Letterman

Dear D.,

Caribou Barbie will appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show today, Good Morning America, World News and Nightline on Tuesday, Good Morning America and The Sean Hannity Show on Wednesday, then she’ll take a day off to complete the Jumble she’s been working on for the last month (fingers crossed!), and finish her tour on Friday on 20/20.

According to the Post, “In a perfect world, she’d said on her Facebook page, that she’d also like to chat with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Greta Van Susteren.”

But we all know that, in a truly perfect world, Sarah Palin would shut up and go away forever. You betcha.

Dear Jed,

Don’t you have chores to do?

Sincerely,

Teresa

Dear Teresa,

Consider today’s entry finished. Now where’s that vacuum cleaner?

See you tomorrow, kiddies!