News Roundup for 11/25/09

Giuliani, shown tickling John McCain on Celebrity Jeopardy

-Headline of the day-
"Rudy Giuliani, Serial Rumor Monger."

Rudy Giuliani's Senate campaign seems to be going about as well as his presidential campaign. A few days ago, source close to Rudy said he would definitely make it official within 48 hours -- Rudy was throwing his hat in the ring.

"120 hours later (and counting)," the report tells us, "the world is still waiting to hear from Rudy. And as the minutes, hours and days pass, the scoop is feeling more and more like a red herring." Is he running? Isn't he? Seems like he kind of ought to say something either way. "Instead, he's been silent and invisible while the momentum generated by the story has morphed into confusion," we're told.

Everyone knows that Giuliani likes the attention and lately that attention's come in the form of being a frequent talking head on the teevee machine, which is probably a pretty good gig. You may not have noticed, but there's no requirement for pundits to ever be right about anything, so Rudy gets to say all sorts of crazy shit without any consequences. This isn't the way campaigns work and it isn't the way being an actual Senator works. You're supposed to be kind of good at it, where as a teevee pundit you can be wrong all the damned time -- I give you William Kristol as proof of that.

Anyway, is Rudy running? Is he not running? Who knows? And screwing around like this is a good way to turn "who knows?" into "who cares?" Hell, I'm losing interest already -- and I'm into this kind of stuff. (New York Observer)


-That's not the way I remember it-
Sean Hannity is mad that the president doesn't use the term "war on terror." Turns out that not using those words is the worst thing ever. I'd explain why that is, but for the life of me I can't figure out what difference it makes.

Anyway, he got former White House press secretary Dana Perino to go on his show and talk really fast. I think she does that so that she can shoot right by some unfortunate facts before you know what happened.

The shootings at Ft. Hood were brought up and Dana launched a little bit of BS. "They want to do all of their investigations," she said. "I don't know. All of the thinking that goes into it. But we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term. I hope they're not looking at this politically. I do think we owe it to the American people to call it what it is."

You know, I seem to remember a terrorist attack that happened during Bush's term. A big flaming catastrophe, in fact. And then another one involving anthrax. So maybe she means that other than the two terr'ist attacks that happened during Bush's terms, there were no two terr'ist attacks that happened during Bush's terms. Which is a really unique way of looking at things. (Think Progress)


-Bonus HotD-
"Rightwing uproar over Best Buy's 'Happy Eid al-Adha' wish to Muslims."

Seems the big box retailer put out a Holiday wish to Muslims in a circular and now all the frootloops on the right think it means they hate America and love the terr'ists. See, because all Muslims are Islamic extremists in the same way that all Irish Catholics like to blow shit up.

This story got picked up by the rightwing loony bin at FreeRepublic.com, where the freepers decided that this would be a good time to go completely mental. They're all jamming Best Buy's customer forums to announce that they aren't going to buy anything from Best Buy and that -- and this is verbatim -- "you are celebrating a muslim holiday that commemorates human sacrifice to please Allah."

Wow. Imagine that. Of course, this whole Christianity thing is based on human sacrifice, but I guess we aren't supposed to think about that. Anyway, this way of describing the holiday's not exactly correct and can more accurately be described as "bullshit." It actually commemorates a story a lot of Christians will be familiar with and see as evidence of God's mercy. So there's that.

Still, there's nothing like a good old fashioned freak out to really get a wingnut's juices going. And actually being as close to totally wrong as is possible is just gravy.

Here's what I say; spend stupid amounts of money at Best Buy to get gifts for the wingnuts on your list. That ought to be fun to watch... (Minnesota Independent)