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Archives for January, 2005

"24" subliminally yours!

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24, is a really fun show except for those damn annoying B plot lines. Oh.. and there's always a mole, ohhh and there's always a hissy fight between two lovers over at CTU. If they could just take a lesson from The Shield which runs their season half as long, I think the show would really rock. Would it be popular called 12? Did you notice the many "Fox News Alerts" that were thrown in? I've also enjoyed the non-invasive torture methods that they use on James Heller's son. It sure looked like he was screaming up a good time. Of course they threw in a plug for the Heritage Foundation; and is that new computer gizmo called the(James) Dobson-type override? One last thing though that I just discovered. If you have a Tivo and start rewinding the show, listen hard; you can hear a voice barely audible saying "Bush is God, Bush is God"



Blog Payola Proposal to The White House

Crooks and Liars have finally decided on a quite, attractive pricing plan to see if we can get any of the administration payola money (that we think comes out of the faith based initiative programs) to hire us for hawking your policies Mr. President. Now remember, we cater to a vastly liberal audience, which are free thinkers (not freepers) with the occasional trolls thrown in, but you would be reaching an audience that is often very hostile to your ideology and programs.

Our traffic is running very high in a relatively short time, and you need to latch on to a different conduit of the internets. I mean the right wing bloggers are hitting your Stepford-Like clones already so there is no real dollar value in throwing good cash their way. You are going to need some support from the liberal side if you're going to make your second term work.

1) For a 150.00 bucks we'll use the word "freedom" and "liberty" in every third post and as a bonus we'll slip in the word "tyranny" for free.

2) For 200.00 bucks we'll constantly remind our readers that Alberto Gonzalez is from Latin dissent. Never a mention of those dreaded torture memos. Damn those memos!

3) For a 250.00 bucks we'll agree that lawyers are the cause of rising costs of health care insurance and only show videos of ambulance chasers. As a special feature, we'll show reruns of John Edwards being grilled by Tim Russert right before the election on Monday's.

4) For 300.00 bucks we'll start substituting the word "personal accounts "whenever talking about "privatization" of Social Security. Add another 50 bucks to use the word "crisis" up to ten times in a row on any given day.

5) For 350.00 bucks we'll completely throw Juan Cole under the bus and all his Middle East pessimism about Iraq.

6) For 400.00 bucks we'll start calling Fox News "fair and balanced"

7) For 450.00 bucks we'll jump on board of that "marriage amendment" thing and refute the claim that Ken Melman is gay.

8) For 500.00 bucks we'll promote a bid for Bill O'Reilly' to replace Dan Rather at CBS.

9) For 750.00 bucks we'll announce that Jerry Falwell is a true prophet. We'll show plenty of video to prove it. CGI is a wonderful thing.

and finally

10) For 1000.00 bucks we'll only post videos and stories that promote Donal Rumsfeld and the rest of the neocons as the greatest war planners of our lifetime. (They are extra because that will be a tough sell.)

This is our initiall proposal, but we wanted to get it in fast since we are sure the administration is being deluged with offers at this moment. Further revisions are forthcoming.

Sincerly,

Crooks and Liars

P.S. don't worry about the name of the blog.



Wolcott on Dubya:

Dubya's Zippity Do-Dah Day....

At NRO's Corner, Kathryn Jean Lopez is impressed by the endorphin surge President Bush displayed during his press conference today.

"I only saw parts of it so I'm not going to be particularly helpful in relaying specifics--but, wow was he in a good mood. You almost get the impression he enjoys doing these now.
Posted at 11:14 AM"

Scroll down a bit and you'll see two earlier entries from the gal they call K'Lo.

"31 DIE [KJL]
in a Marine helicopter crash in Iraq.
Posted at 09:43 AM

"FYI [KJL]
W is holding a press conference at 10 a.m.
Posted at 09:39 AM"

read on



Pentagon's No. 3 Man, Doug Feith, Resigns

WASHINGTON — The No. 3 man at the Pentagon, Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, is resigning his Pentagon position, FOX News learned Wednesday.

Feith's reasons for resigning are unclear, but Pentagon sources say the undersecretary will offer "family reasons" as his explanation. His last day will come at some point in the summer, the sources said.

Ummm. I guess that means he was fired!



Armstrong Williams calls probe a "witch hunt!"

via Buzzflash

Commentator Armstrong Williams called the probe into his $240,000 deal with the Bush administration to promote the No Child Left Behind Act a "witch hunt" and vowed to rise from the controversy that he said has brought shame to him and his profession.

"Dan Rather is at the end of his career," Williams said of the retiring CBS anchor. "I'm at the beginning of mine."

We kind of think you are at the end of yours, but maybe FNC will hire you on with all the other fallen analysts like Newt, and Morris, and North, and we have to include Geraldo Rivera with these guys for the Al Capone vault fiasco.



Thanks MSNBC, we appreciate the pub. Sort of

Rally your readers

Plus... The Web is the poor man's Tivo



Maggie Gallagher's defense: It never occured to me

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Click here to download or play WMP

Maggie Gallagher and Wade Horn appeared on the O'Reilly Factor to try and weasel out of a new payola scandal.

Gallager: It never occured to me...

O'Reilly: Innocent mistake you say?

Gallagher: I was completely befuddled...

Wade Horn from HHS says:

Horn: Under the kind of new standard, which is really kind of new...

This is kind of new in journalism Mr. Horn, where the gov't pays journalists to promot their ideas.

Why is it that these pundits who are such experts on many issues, feign ignorance when confronted with payola charges? As is just being reported, Gallagher also testified before the Senate Judicial Committee here to further Bush's agenda. It's interesting to note that Bill O'Reilly acted more outraged(view here) over allegations against Daily Kos and MyDD even though they disclosed their affiliations and were never hired to push an adminstration's agenda.



via Americablog

Arch-conservative pundit Maggie Gallagher was caught in the last day as having taken money from the Bush administration to help them "promote marriage" while she wrote about "promoting marriage" as a private journalist and didn't disclose her cozy relationship with the administration. It now gets even better.

After getting her $40,000 from the administration to help them promote their marriage agenda, Gallagher reportedly testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in favor of President Bush's Gay-Bashing Amendment to make gays second class citizens in the US Constitution.

Now, did those Senators know that when Gallagher was testifying on behalf of the Bush administration's position on marriage issues, as supposedly an independent expert on marriage, that she had in fact recently accepted money, a good deal of it, to help Bush promote his position on marriage issues? Didn't the Senators deserve to decide for themselves whether Gallagher was truly offering her independent vide on Bush's proposal, or whether she was influenced in her views to the tune of $40,000?



Click here to view or download WMP also

Sylvester Brown jr of the St Louis Post Dispatch got into it with Bill O'Reilly on The O'Reilly Factor last night.

loose transcript:

Brown: I liken you to Jerry Springer and the impact he had on ....reality TV

Brown: You can talk about Brokaw. You can talk about Russert. You can talk about Cronkite, who work for the "liberal media," but you don't see these guys calling people idiots on the air, you don't see them callin them nuts on the air...

O'Reilly tries to back out of his statements with semantics by using umbrealla statements and saying they have looney, or nutty positions. However, viewers of course will attach these labels to the people he associates them to. So if Barbara Boxer takes "nutty positions" isn't she then nutty? It's a sleazy excuse that doesn't pass the smell test. If you go and read his talking Points segments since the election, he has nary a bad word for any republican or their ideology. Where's the fair and balance in that?

Bill: What I do and say is that there are looney left wing people, or this is nuts, but I never say that she's a nut.

Bill got a little testy:

Bill: You can take your Jerry Springer and you know what you can do with it.

Brown: I can look in the mirror, can you?

Media Matters finds O'Reilly lying about the whold Boxer exchange:

O'Reilly labeled Boxer "a nut" on the January 19 broadcast of Westwood One's The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly, as Media Matters documented at the time:

O'REILLY: And, she sponsored a bill to have jet airlines be equipped with missile defense systems. [laugh] It didn't pass because -- so look. I mean, this is a nut. All right? This is a nut we got in the Senate.

hat tip(Eddy)



Another Payola scandle Brewing?

Drudge reports that columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush's push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families.

But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal, reveals Howard Kurtz in Wednesday runs of the WASHINGTON POST.

"The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples" and "educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage," she wrote in National Review Online, for example, adding that this could "carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children." Gallagher explains to Kurtz: "Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it? I don't know. You tell me." She said she would have "been happy to tell anyone who called me" about the contract but that "frankly, it never occurred to me" to disclose it.
National Review Editor Rich Lowry said of the HHS contract: "We would have preferred that she told us, and we would have disclosed it in her bio."