10 things a satirist gives thanks for

1. The Bush Administration
2. GM’s “leadership” (What’s the difference between the cub scouts and GM? Adult supervision.)
3. Sarah Palin and her handlers
4. The voters of Minnesota. Jesse Ventura! Al Franken! (someone’s spiked the 10,000 lakes).
5. Jaguar Land Rover for applying for a bailout.
6. Barney Frank: “These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”
7. The Chicago Cubs
8. Alan Greenspan
9. The phrase “too big to fail.” Econ speak for: About to bite the dust.
10. Joe Biden: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘look, here’s what happened.’”

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Company introduces “Sarah-Cuda” hunting bow

What’s pink, cuddly and can bring down a moose or at least a Biden? The GOP hopes it’s Sarah Palin, they might want to invest in Lakota Industries adorable new hunting bow. While the pink camo is certainly fitting  … you really have to hope anything your hunting is color blind. Or maybe it will distract Dick Cheney if you ever have to go hunting with the current VP.

Other potential candidate/product tie ins:

• The Joe Biden Leaf Blower — How much hot air do you need?
• The John McCain Pistol Holster — Allows you to shoot from the hip and automatically hit your own foot.
• Barack Obama Holy Water — Everybody keeps telling me he can perform miracles.

Are Bidens in season?

Nice move: The company will donate 10 percent of Sarah-Cuda proceeds to the National Association for Down Syndrome.

Biden reaches past historical accuracy for a greater truthiness

Over at Reason, someone unearthed this gem from Joe Biden’s sit down with Katie Couric: “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘look, here’s what happened.'”

As has been pointed out at the blog:

• Roosevelt wasn’t president when the market crashed.
• Television was just an experiment. If FDR had gotten on TV and said this he would have been talking to an audience in the mid- to high-single digits.

On the plus side for the Obama campaign: This is an original idiocy and does not seem to have been plagiarized from anyone else.

Covering O’Biden or McCan’t conventions a giant waste of media money

The political conventions are perfectly timed this year, serving as a perfect antidote to the just finished Munich Beijing Potemkin Olympics. Whatever their many moral faults, the Olympics weren’t boring.

This year I became entranced with field hockey. That was fun to watch. Not as much fun as Usian Bolt, but nothing is as much fun as watching Bolt. The fun couldn’t even be spoiled by the commentator kvelling about how if Bolt had just really focused when he won the first two gold medals he really could have done something. A) He won the damn races going away, so shut up. B) He showed plain old fashioned joy while doing it, so shut up.

The only thing that could have made these games better would have been if NBC had dedicated one channel to a constant live feed of the complete lack of activity in the officially sanctioned protest sites. Oh wait. One other thing could have made this better… any sign of moral cojones on the part of the athletes. Dudes & Dudettes this is the 40th anniversary of Tommie Smith & John Carlos simply raising their fists in salute during the Mexico City games. Yeah, they had to put up with a feces storm the likes of which I can’t imagine. But they never had to wonder about their own integrity. I wish one medal winner had had the courage to receive his or her award with a piece of tape over his or her mouth. That’s all it would have taken. It’s not like you were being asked to stand unnarmed in front of a tank. My self-righteousness is unjustifiable. I participated too. I watched the damn things.  I wasn’t even willing to sacrifice changing the channel, who the hell am I to ask others to do anything?

But I digress …

Now our dusk to dawn interlude of strange and interesting sports and moral peregrinations is about to give away to O’Biden vs. McCan’t. At a time when the press is bleeding money it is impossible for me to understand the amount of money that is spent covering two events with practically no news value whatsoever. I have been told there will be some 4,000 15,000 (thanks Tim!) members of the media covering each convention. 4K people spend a week hoping one person — any person — makes a mistake by straying from the script.

It would be tougher — and more interesting — to cover a house fire. (Actually I’ve never covered a pre-scripted event, so maybe they are tougher than they look. I have covered fires. I know those are tough.)

And just a note to the O’Biden team — WHO THE HELL DOES A MAJOR NEWS RELEASE ON A SATURDAY IN AUGUST? Any bump from the announcement is dead by the time Monday rolls around and people start paying attention again. It almost looks like you didn’t want the pick of The Human Wind Tunnell to get much play.

Suffice to say, we will all be well and fully informed watching whatever snippets The Daily Show and Colbert Report decide to run.

Just as idiotic as the resources spent on covering the conventions is the importance given to them. It will be banner headlines everywhere when Obama gets the official nod but I have no idea why. I always thought news was supposed to contain … well … news. It would be amazing if anything that happens at either confab rises to a level that justifies putting them above the fold on the front page. (Note: This is jargon from back in the time when dead trees were kings of the media world. Above the fold means the news is important enough to be on that prime piece of real estate first seen by the consumer. Below the fold means it is important but still on the bottom of page one and therefore on the side of a folded paper away from the consumer. Anyone wishing to learn more useless newspeak from back when mastodons roamed the media should email me. -30-)