I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
I'd like to think of something witty to say, but I can't. So instead I'll just laugh my ass off for a bit.
I saw the category for "Biggest Crisis Next Year" and thought the answer was "Bob Novak." Given that he's a walking embarassment to journalism. Alas, he's still allowed to appear in public and was just responding to the question.
whaa?
they had a capitol gang bang in tijauna? Penicillin??
Looks to me like Novak pretty much nailed it, on Iraq.
Looks to me like Novak pretty much nailed it, on Iraq.
mike
Really? I thought his response (or, to be fair, the transcript) was totally incoherent. "The revulsion in Islam"? Just WTF does that mean?
(And it's worth pointing out that the best way to be a prognositicator is to be incoherent. It's kept Nostradamus in business all these years...)
Nostradamus nails it:
"The twin spires crumble as the drunken monkey slumbers,
In his panic, he sets the East ablaze,
The mustached dictator will be his scapegoat..."
Quatrain 139, I think...
Some were pretty close, some were laughable. I give Margaret Carlson the John Edwards award for Worst Job of Faking Specificity in a Prediction ("92% . . . or maybe 40%. Depends.").
I don't know how she keeps her job.
Any of them, really.
SHIELDS: That's right. Hey, thank God for penicillin, Mark.
That's an image I'd never considered. I would have bet Shields had never ... been to Mexico.
don't dis Mark Shields. Ignore his CNN appearances, where he performs more for the audience (I'd say or do that to make six figs on TV). Read his sensible columns. He's easily the top on-the-trail reporter of all the talking heads.
He's a former operative, became a journalist. Knows elections and voters, unlike most beltway journalists.
Best paragraph:
O'BEIRNE: I predict the biggest crisis next year will be the axis of evil. When George Bush so labeled those three countries in January, his critics thought it was random and overly dramatic, and now we're seeing the triple threat, possibly nuclear, of North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. He was awfully prescient.
On the list of 2003's Top 10 Most Idiotic, Batshit-Insane Statements on Politics, this has got to be at least 3rd or 4th.
You hear that sucking sound?
Is that the sound of erzatz journalists sucking ass?
Or the sound of journalism itself dying?
(or maybe the bong's gotta leak)
Why is Novak on the air and NOT IN JAIL? He makes me sick.
Well, they got the Democratic primary race down exactly, didn't they?
Par for the course for prediction. "Predicting" that war with Iraq would be a problem? That's not a prediction, not last December it wasn't. And also par for the course is the non-prediction of Howard Dean's campaign. This is the nature of prediction as a political tool. The biggest problem with prediction is that often policies are set that depend on the predictions coming true, as we saw in Bush's approach to the Iraq war.
I like how Al Sharpton is the biggest problem of them all.
Had none of these people ever heard of Howard Dean at the time, by the way?
--Kynn
No one can be blamed for not seeing Dean's rise. It's the cinderfella story. But the rest is totally hilarious. Sharpton? I mean, come on. Even I can put aside the Tawana Brawley stuff after 15 years. Revulsion of Islam? Maybe in Richard Perle's wet dreams. Korea? Hey, what happened to Korea anyway? What's that light streaking toward Seattle?
A few of them aren't bad on the polling favorable numbers.
Are these the same kinds of pundits that predict Bush is unbeatable in '04?
Atrios-- you seem to have linked to last year's show. The transcript for this year is: http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0...2/27/
cg.00.html
In any case-- their outrages of the year were mostly pathetic in this very tumultous year of war and unneccessary death. What are they outraged about?
Shields-- tax cuts before the Iraq war.
Novak-- dems filibustering Bush's judidical nominees.
O'Beirne-- unrestrained federal spending.
Carlson-- the medicare bill.
While Carlson's and Shield's items are bad-- how on earth are they the OUTRAGES of the YEAR?????
We're talking about an illegal war with no WMD, lying about WMD by Bush, horrible diplomacy before the war, horrible planning for after the war, and on and on. The war cost us hundreds of billions, pissed off billions of people, and killed thousands of people. And nobody on that fucking show that any of this was outrageous? Just pathetic.
Are these the same kinds of pundits that predict Bush is unbeatable in '04?
The bigger question is, does anyone even listen/watch the Capital Gang? They all need to heal over a die - on the show. In some mass cult ritual suicide.
But first make predictions of the effects of their deaths of course.
Margaret Carlson's brother got all the brains in the family.
RUSSELL: OK, I really predict that in a year from now, it will be about the same, unless, God forbid, al Qaeda hits us again, at which time Bush's ratings go back to 92.
Jeebus, how many times would Bush get to fuck up?
After another attack won't Americans assume that Bush in fact didn't make the US any safer after all?
Alex is so right! Four hundred, plus, Americans dead, countless thousands of Iraqis. The beltway whores are still fellating Bush. That's the god damn outrage of the last 50 years!
thanks for once again persuading me not to watch the 24/7 'news' channels.
It's like a symphony of stupidity.
And in that symphony, Bob Novak holds the last thrilling idiotic note.
To Whomever Is Releasing Drugs in the CNN Studio Air Vents:
Please stop. It's making the talking heads even more incoherent than usual.
Sincerely,
The American Public
When Atrios implies that the pundits aren't worth the money they're paid, he fails to mention how much fun it is to go on teevee and pretend to be journalists.
"Why is Novak on the air and NOT IN JAIL? He makes me sick.
four legs good"
well, why not ask his boss, send your letters to:
Mr. Richard Parsons
President
Time Warner
75 Rockefeller Plaza
NY NY 10019
or send email to Novak's syndicate:
info@creators.com
Didn't Novak used to host Capitol Gang? I noticed that Shields is hosting it now. Keep those cards and letters coming to Richard Parsons, maybe he will give Robert "Traitor" Novak the boot.
One more thing, anyone who wants to tell Capitol Gang that the outrage of 2003 was Novak's complicity in the betrayal of a CIA case officer can use this handy form to do so:
http://www.cnn.com/feedback/form...s/form5.html?
26
"I predict we will keep our jobs because the american idiots will keep watching this crap. What time does the open bar close?"
If anyone ever had a moment of doubt about the worthlessness of television punditry in American, this exchange demonstrates beyond the shadow of a doubt that MY broadcast frequencies are filled with the worst kind of gaseous, inane, and useless utterances by big fat windbags with not one useful thing to say, who in their overpaid cluelessness sit on their pompous asses week after week emitting the worst kind of sulpherous stench. I'm glad I don't have cable.
Like a character in Cheers, Sheilds is right once in a while, but the program has become one of the most useless things in TV: I' d rather watch the weather.
With a single line, Margaret Carlson hits the trifecta, in one swoop winning awards for:
Shortest Climb Up the Tree
Stoutest Branch Ventured Onto
Closest to the Trunk
I think[Lieberman]will have the Jewish vote.
An amazing woman. Given a blacksmith's forge, hammer and anvil, Margaret Carlson commands the power to bend spoons.
Flitcraft: That was hilarious. Keep it up!
.
I stopped watching local news a long time ago. Then I stopped watching network news. Now I've stopped watching cable news.
I think this was their plan all along.
holy crap they're dumb! reading Atrios, I have come to realize that we need a FAQ. Like, where did this latest rumor that Howard Dean has been born again come from? Novak says, "Nobody, nobody knew Howard Dean, who he was, the -- they still don't know very much about him. He's still a kind of a mystery. I understand he's found Jesus. He hadn't before. He was very secular. And he's going to carry him on the bus now. But it's a surprise, and it's going to be very interesting." Is this insane or is it just me?
Novak hasn't technically committed a crime. The federal law pertinent to what he did explicitly omits journalists, unless they engage in a pattern of such activity.
However, Novak was a witness to a crime, and he continues to assist the White House in protecting the person who has compromised our national security. He isn't protecting a source; he's protecting his access.
Seraphiel sed: Novak hasn't technically committed a crime. The federal law pertinent to what he did explicitly omits journalists, unless they engage in a pattern of such activity.
However, Novak was a witness to a crime, and he continues to assist the White House in protecting the person who has compromised our national security. He isn't protecting a source; he's protecting his access.
EXACTLY. If he would put national security ahead of his OWN INTERESTS, maybe we could put all this Plame game to bed.
That would be a little much to ask of a true patriot, I fear.
.
Apologies for the extra Aye-Aye (w/o slash).
Btw, I wrote to Novak's betters with the same sentiment. Please, join in.
.
"Well, if the war's completely successful, it'll be Bush's war. If it is completely unsuccessful, it'll be Clinton's war."
What the fuck?? I don't think any of these people have a clue as to what the hell they're talking about. And they're paid how much?? For brilliant insights like this? Only in America, folks. Only in America.
Alex - Linking to last year's was kind of the point. We are now in the position to judge their predicting skillz.
Anyway, Mark Shields rocks on Fridays on the NewsHour. Strangely enough, David Brooks comes off as cogent and reasonable there, which he does not do in his NYT column. Maybe he's trying to nudge that bastion of the SCLM a little to the right, but he needn't bother with Bill Safire there; that guy's like Rush Limbaugh with a penchant for prescriptive linguistics instead of OxyContin.
"I understand he's found Jesus. He hadn't before. He was very secular. And he's going to carry him on the bus now. But it's a surprise, and it's going to be very interesting."
Big mistake for Dean to start invoking Jesus. He really should have left that to the conservatives. Now, Bush's people (and the conservative media) are going to paint him as being someone who flip-flops on issues of "faith". He should have just stuck to the issues which are relevant: Iraq, our economy, healthcare, the environment. Fuck Jesus! Leave that non-issue for the wingnuts to embrace.
56k: Thanks for the idea. Feedback form submitted.
None of them, including Robert Novak, predicted that two senior officials from the Bush administration would out a CIA agent in direct contravention to Poppy Bush's law... will wonders never cease?
Its all just garbage anyway. No one really knows what'll happen six months from now.
...And that's what scares me.
RUSSELL: OK, I really predict that in a year from now, it will be about the same, unless, God forbid, al Qaeda hits us again, at which time Bush's ratings go back to 92.
Jeebus, how many times would Bush get to fuck up?
After another attack won't Americans assume that Bush in fact didn't make the US any safer after all?
Cheryl
I took that as tongue in cheek.
"Well, if the war's completely successful, it'll be Bush's war. If it is completely unsuccessful, it'll be Clinton's war."
What the fuck?? I don't think any of these people have a clue as to what the hell they're talking about. And they're paid how much?? For brilliant insights like this? Only in America, folks. Only in America.
gene214
Another joke ( actually what most people here claims happens when Bush fucks up).
JJJ--- I see now, thanks. I think initially Atrios had a different title to the post, so it wasn't as clear. Also, I had just watched the show Sat night and was pissed off at them, as I usually am, for their idiocy....
You can't fault them for being so wrong, I suppose.
Their banality, knowingness and complete lack of insight on the other hand. . .
interesting that carlson chews up sharpton - the only left-leaning voice on the dem circuit. those who believe that dean's message is left-leaning need to reread the definition of left-leaning.
If i was scalia & co., I would want sharpton for president and moseley-braun for vice. From the debates, sharpton has the rallying cry of a preacher and moseley-braun has the sensibilities of a grandmother. If how you govern is indicated from your success at public debating (which is how it used to be!) then sharpton easily wins.
Alas, I wake from my slumber to realize I live in the land of the ignorant, the greedy and the WHITE (i'm white). The land of truthlessness, the land where white men can be ignorant fools yet still be president; where a preacher is disdained for using civil rights as political discourse. A land where wrong is right, where might is right and ignorance rules!
(can I get an amen?)
I stopped watching local news a long time ago. Then I stopped watching network news. Now I've stopped watching cable news.
Me, too.
WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!?!?!?!?
Markov - why don't you move to Zimbabwe? I hear they treat their crackers well there.
Thank you, Atrios, TV hacks taking up time pretending to be Jean Dixon is one thing that drives me wild. My guess is a strict analysis of their abilities would be about 11% outside of a 48 hour time frame. Probably about 15% within one.
Fire the whole lot of them and get some reporters to tell us what has actually happened. That's what we call news in the real world.
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