2009 What Were You Thinking Award: Worst Media Blog Entry
Dec 17th
2009 was full of thoughtless commentary and while it was tough to go through all of the various media blogs and find a winner, we have found that winner.
The 2009 What Were You Thinking Award: Worst Media Blog Entry goes to “Palin will run in ‘12 on more retardation platform” by Erik Sean Nelson of The Huffington Post.
Now in all fairness The Huffington Post is a diverse publication that writes on a variety of subjects not limited to politics. Erik Sean Nelson apparently works in their comedy department and if you look at his posts, you’ll see they are mostly benign Onion-esque entries but his post (since removed) on July 3, 2009 was way outside the lines … to the point where even a galvanized Palin hater would object.
On that day Sarah Palin announced her resignation from her position as Governor of Alaska and to capitalize on the day’s events, Nelson decided to post his now infamous article:
In Sarah Palin’s resignation announcement she complained about the treatment of her son Trig who always teaches her life lessons. She said that the “world needs more Trigs, not fewer.” That’s a presidential campaign promise we can all get behind. She will be the first politician to actually try to increase the population of retarded people. To me, it’s kinda like saying the world needs more cancer patients because they teach us such personal lessons.
Her first act as President: To introduce a Pre-K lunch buffet that includes lead paint chips. Sort of a Large HEAD-START Program.
She will then encourage women to hold off on pregnancies until their 40’s just to mix up some chromosomes.
She now is in favor of abortion only in case of diploid birth.
Her policies will increase jobs because Wal-Mart is building new stores each day and someone has to be the greeter.
This will lead to smaller government because fewer Americans will have the cognitive ability to hold a government job
Queue conservative caps lock email blogosphere anger …
Besides the fact that the article isn’t funny … it’s quite a low blow. Nelson was apparently inundated with hate mail and the article was pulled a little while later and he would later issue an apology. What’s even worse is that his apology features the oddly worded line “I received some emails from the loved ones of the retarded” … ouch … proofread.
So then what happened to him. You’d imagine someone would skew him with a pitchfork or post his address online … nope … thankfully people kept a level head about the whole thing … except the Huffington Post which still allows him to publish work as of 12/2/2009.
Texas Governor’s Race Loses 2 Candidates
Dec 16th
Kinky Friedman (now running for Texas Commissioner of Agriculture)
Kinky Friedman was never going to be a contender in the 2010 Texas Gubernatorial race. With the emergence of Bill White and silky smooth Farouk Shami, there simply wasn’t enough room in the Democratic race to support a candidate … disliked by Texas Democrats.
Friedman ran as an independent in 2006 and many Democrats feel he took away much needed votes from Chris Bell (even then he still would have lost). His run this year was like Ralph Nader running for the Democratic presidential nomination but now that he’s running for Texas Commissioner of Agriculture … I think Texas Democrats might be a little more forgiving.
Larry Kilgore
Larry Kilgore makes Rick Perry look like Keith Olbermann.
Kilgore, dressed in starched blue jeans and a cowboy hat, drew some murmurs of disapproval when he launched into a rant against the U.S.
“I hate that flag up there,” Kilgore said pointing to the American flag flying over the Capitol. “I hate the United States government. … They’re an evil, corrupt government. They need to go. Sovereignty is not good enough. Secession is what we need!”
“We hate the United States!,” he said later in the speech. (SOURCE)
Kilgore has now endorsed Debra Medina … another secessionist.
Democrats (announced):
Bill White
Farouk “Silky Smooth” Shami
Republicans (announced):
Rick Perry
Kay Bailey Hutchison
Debra Medina
Can We Just Pass Something? Anything?
Dec 16th
Single payer option … gone
Medicare expansion … gone
Any idea what we’re actually keeping in this bill … gone
I like many Americans have grown tired of two things: The cost of health care and the continual battle over it. I just have one wish this Christmas and that wish is that something is finally passed.
I don’t care what we pass, in fact if someone just scribbles random lines on paper and draws a happy face and calls it the Healthcare Reform Act of 2009 … I’m perfectly content with signing that into law. Just put something in front of Obama to sign.
Alex Rodriguez Made $62,977.10 per Strikeout in 2009
Dec 12th
In 2009, Alex Rodriguez finally did what Karl Malone never accomplished, winning a championship while admitting steroid use (not sure if that is a bonus). Winning gets you a lot of love and a little more forgiveness but if he had come up short yet again, there would be a thousand posts just like this one…
In 2009 had a base salary of $33,000,000.
Stats
Games 124
At Bats 444
Runs 78
Hits 127
Doubles 17
Triples 1
Home Runs 30
Walks 80
Strikeouts 97
Final averages: .286/.402/.532
To calculate what he made for each of these categories we’ll take the number of plate appearances and divide it by his base salary:
33,000,000 divided by 524 = $62,977.10 per plate appearance. That means that whether he got a walk or home run or strikeout, he made almost $63 thousand by just stepping into the batter’s box.
Now if you take that and multiply it by the average number of plate appearances per game (4.23) … A-Rod made $266,393.13 for every game he played in 2009 (not including postseason). Now let’s say that the length of an average baseball game in 2009 (I don’t know the exact number) was 3 hours. That means that A-Rod put in 372 hours of salaried work for the Yankees at a rate of $88709.62/hour.
The following chart breaks down where his salary went in 2009:
Click for Larger Image
Kirk Cameron Makes Perfectly Reasonable Statements
Dec 12th
Kirk Cameron was recently involved in a controversial push to spread the word of God to students on college campuses. I don’t mind people believing in God but I think he took things to far. The plan was to distribute heavily edited copies of Darwin’s famous book The Origin of Species. The new version contained personal criticisms of Darwin and even tried to debunk legitimate science (physics).
The first sentence of Andrew Greiner’s recap is perhaps the best summary of the entire debacle.
Kirk Cameron didn’t evolve into a mediocre actor, whose career peaked on “Growing Pains,” he was created that way.
The internet of course is never amused by this kind of ’shove it down your throat’ evangelism and YouTube user MrRoboto113 edited Kirk Cameron’s message of faith with his own version that is definitely worth watching. (Note Audio is nsfw if you don’t use headphones)
The Glorious Return
Dec 12th
This site used to be a political blog but the domain expired and I have decided to restart the blog with political commentary but also with a broader set of topics. Please fasten your seatbelts.
Things that Died in 2009
Dec 14th
Posted by admin in Social Commentary
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Its the time of year when major news outlets begin publishing their lists of who passed away during the year and for the most part, the lists tend to be a mix and match of the following names:
Bea Arthur
David Carradine
Walter Cronkite
Dom DeLuise
Farrah Fawcett
Adam Goldstein (DJAM)
John Hughes
Michael Jackson
Billy Mays
Ed McMahon
Steve McNair
Ricardo Montalban
Natasha Richardson
Patrick Swayze
But some things died in 2009 that aren’t necessarily celebrities, including:
AIG – Yeah, AIG was DOA in 2008 but when it was revealed in March 2009 that the company was planning to pay out $165 million in executive retention bonuses and additional compensation, let’s just say that everyone on both sides of the aisle went crazy. AIG employees got the full fury of all caps lock hate mail, death threats and awesome quotes from politicians including these classics:
Even Ben Bernanke jumped into the mosh pit:
Car Brands Owned by GM – See below
Hummer (now owned by STHIMC)
Pontiac 1926 – 4/27/2009
Saab (maybe, sale to Koenigsegg group collapsed in late November)
Saturn 1990 – 2009
Christopher Dodd’s credibility - 2009 was not the best year for the Connecticut senator. Throughout the year he was dogged by allegations of a favorable loan from credit crisis darling Countrywide (a Senate ethics panel later found no evidence his loan was ‘preferential’). In addition he was dogged by allegations related to Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac and had to explain a lot about a little Irish cottage.
Dubai – Sure, everyone associated with the emirate wants you to believe that everything is going to be fine and that the recent financial disclosure won’t affect everyday business. However Abu Dhabi is now beginning to overtake the city as the world’s new exotic, over the top destination for wealthy unskilled workers and impoverished skilled workers.
Sen. John Ensign’s political career – 2009 was not a good year to be married to a Republican politician. Ensign had an affair and when confronted about it, he decided to do everything possible to keep it secret. He gave his mistress’ husband a lucrative job at a political consulting firm and his family made a payment of 96k. But that wasn’t enough and Ensign publicly admitted to having an affair after Hampton’s intermediaries claimed to have asked for exorbitant cash and compensation. Later on it was revealed that Oklahoma senator Tom Coburn attempted to broker a settlement to keep it secret but that it never materialized.
David Letterman’s image – Sure it wasn’t like he had much of an image outside of his show but after admitting he had encounters with multiple staffers, its hard to look at him the same way. Not to mention the fact that he took a beating from the conservative blogosphere who had been angered earlier in the year by a joke regarding knocking up a member of Palin’s family.
Market Value of Top Athletes – First Michael Phelps got in trouble in early 2009 following the publication of a photo showing him taking a bong hit. I don’t care what he does in his personal time but Kellogg’s disagreed and didn’t renew their contract. Then of course Tiger Wood’s is the man no advertiser wants to touch right now and has already been dropped from Gillette and Accenture.
Recession - Only on a political level. Americans are still reeling from job losses, evaporating wealth and a lack of credit.
Gov. Mark Sanford’s political career - From June 18 to June 24, no one knew where Mark Sanford was. Apparently he was on a hike in the Appalachian mountains but it was later discovered that he had flown to Argentina to see his mistress (and didn’t even call home for Father’s Day). Rather than resign, Sanford decided to stay in office and ruin the credibility of South Carolina’s political system.