Tag: the daily beast

Wendy Davis perilously close to a #DOOM call from… The Daily Beast.

(H/T: Hot Air Headlines) Seriously, if I wrote this people would tsk-tsk me as being a hyper-partisan.

As if things weren’t going badly enough for Wendy Davis, the Texas gubernatorial candidate got caught inflating her campaign’s finances this week by counting a Willie Nelson concert as a contribution.

Davis, the Texas Democrat best known for her 2013 filibuster against an anti-abortion bill, is facing an uphill battle to beat state attorney general Greg Abbott to lead the Lone Star State in November. Polls have Davis consistently trailing by 10-15% and the erstwhile Democratic rock star, who is already on her second campaign manager, seems to be on course for an early election night and a big MSNBC contract.

Admittedly, I am a hyper-partisan, but in this particular case I’d be also a pretty accurate one. If not downright ‘prophetic:’ Wendy Davis will make a great addition to the MSNBC lineup, for the stereotypical given value of ‘great.’ Continue reading Wendy Davis perilously close to a #DOOM call from… The Daily Beast.

The original Daily Beast post itself is unworthy of direct comment, of course.

Two passages from this hysterical (in a good way) Reason article by Matt Welch stand out:

Disgraced ex-sock puppeteer Lee Siegel, whose cranky-old-man cultural criticism and woe-is-me whining have led to a fruitful career writing for every single liberal publication you’ve ever heard of, has landed, like these people do, at The Daily Beast, where he has just coughed up one of the lamest hairballs of a political semi-humor column you will ever read: “Memo to the South: Go Ahead, Secede Already!“

I was trying to remember why this Siegel guy was pinging my memory.  Thanks, Matt! And then there’s this:

A ban on carbon emissions. How many living-wage jobs do you expect to produce through bicycle power, President Gilligan?

This reminds me – also in a good way – of one of Sam Kinison’s infamous comments about Dr. Ruth.  Said comment is far too filthy to repeat on such a refined website as this one; I guess that you’ll just have to look it up.

#rsrh Hey, does Newsweek owe anybody reading this any money?

Yeah, well, you may want to get that paid back Real Soon Now.

Newsweek & Daily Beast editor in chief Tina Brown sought to calm her staff today following remarks from majority owner Barry Diller suggesting that the magazine could cease publication of its print edition as early as this year.

“Barry Diller would like to make it clear that he did not say on the earnings call as reported that Newsweek is going digital in September,” Brown wrote today in a memo to staff, obtained by POLITICO. “He made the uncontroversial, industry-wide observation that print is moving in the direction of digital.”

I’d recommend that you not take a check. Continue reading #rsrh Hey, does Newsweek owe anybody reading this any money?

#rsrh The Daily Beast hit with a virus?

I was going to comment on Barack Obama’s Air Force One fundraising phone call – like Hot Air, my immediate verdict is “Likely legal, but deliciously desperate, bitter begging on a depressed and despondent President’s pathetic part” – but this is what I got when I clicked on the article this morning:

Well, that’s embarrassing…

#rsrh Newsweek merging with the Daily Beast.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!

:breathe:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!

So, now it’s wor… Oh, never mind: somebody beat me to the joke already.

:pause:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA!

Moe Lane

PS: The best part?  Used to be that these kinds of transactions were vanity purchases on the part of the print entity.

#rsrh Belated advice for Lisa Murkowski.

She must be wondering right now where it all went wrong. I suggest that a goodly portion of it can be seen via this passage from the article on the looming upset in the GOP AK-SEN primary:

Even before the results poured in, Murkowski revealed her frustration with the impact that Palin had on the race in an interview with The Daily Beast’s Shushannah Walshe, who spoke to the incumbent senator at a last-minute Murkowski rally in Wasilla.

OK, stop right there.  The Daily Beast?  She’s a Republican, and she’s complaining to The Daily Beast?  No.

No, no, no.

They are the enemy.  They hate us, and by ‘us’ I mean the GOP.  Yes, they’re up on the sidebar – but I don’t bloody trust them, and neither should Murkowksi.  If this lapse of judgment is diagnostic… well.  No wonder it looks like she lost.

Moe Lane

Just a reminder: Geithner’s tax problem wasn’t less* than Daschle’s.

He was merely first in the queue:

Despite the fact that Geithner sailed through the confirmation process—while Daschle went up in flames—Geithner’s tax troubles were actually far more egregious. People tend to give Geithner a pass, because the overall amount he owed was smaller and it just involved Social Security and Medicare, rather than income tax. But Geithner actually acknowledged years ago that he owed the taxes—but didn’t pay them until he was nominated for the Treasury job. That hardly counts as a mistake.

Daschle, for his part, failed to count as income the value of a car and driver he received from a New York private-equity firm, InterMedia Advisors, during 2005-2007. He also overstated charitable contributions and understated income from InterMedia, which paid him $1 million a year. Daschle filed amended tax returns last month reporting $128,203 in additional taxes and $11,964 in interest. The revised tax returns were submitted after President Obama announced that he intended to nominate Daschle to be secretary of Health and Human Services.

Geithner’s situation was nonetheless a bigger ethical lapse. As an employee of the International Monetary Fund in 2001 and later years, Geithner was responsible for sending a check to the IRS to cover his own payroll taxes. He didn’t do so. What he did do was submit a request to the IMF for reimbursement of those taxes. And he collected.

Continue reading Just a reminder: Geithner’s tax problem wasn’t less* than Daschle’s.