Best NFL Mock Draft Pick Ever

Matt Taibbi:

28. New England – HANK PUDSNIFFER, G, Northwestern Iowa School of Mines

Belichick rattles off at least one “What the fuck?” pick in every draft, where he spends a first or second-round choice on a guy who isn’t even in the CBS list of 1000 draft prospects; all you can find is one grainy YouTube video of the guy performing in an arm-wrestling contest on Croatian television. Note: I actually think the Pats end up with Mark Ingram somehow, but there’s a WTF pick in there somewhere, guaranteed.

Matt Taibbi on Olbermann Suspension

How Matt Taibbi is able to continually squeeze through the bullshit and come out crystal clear on the other side is beyond me, but his analysis of the Olbermann campaign contribution kerfuffle is spot-on.

We had a whole generation of journalists who sat by and did nothing while, for instance, George Bush led us into an idiotic war on a lie, plus thousands more who spent day after day collecting checks by covering Britney's hair and Tiger's text messages and other stupidities while the economy blew up and two bloody wars went on mostly unexamined... and it's Keith Olbermann who should "pay the price" for being unethical? Because, and let me get this straight, he donated money, privately, to politicians?


This is absurd even by GE's standards. There is no reason, not even a theoretical one, why any journalist should be prevented from having political opinions and participating in election campaigns in his spare time. The policy would be ridiculous even if we were talking about an evening news anchor -- because the only "ethical" question here is the issue of NBC wanting to preserve the appearance of impartiality and being unable to do so, because political contributions happen to be public record and impossible to hide from viewers.

Tea Bagger Welfare

Love Matt Taibbi:

But these Tea Partyers make themselves fair game with their preposterous absolutist stance on government. If you call Obamacare radical socialism and unemployment insurance a parasitic welfare state program—well, guess what, asshole, you’re going to get rung up when we find out you had your whole family living off state medical aid and farm subsidies.

Wealth, Religion, and David Brooks

Matt Taibbi is poking at David Brooks again, but I happen to agree with this particular passage:

A few weeks before that I tried on a friend’s recommendation to get into Entourage and gave up after it struck me that it was the same show as Sex and the City – a drama about a foursome of impulsive yuppies with lots of disposable income who spend half of each show buying brand-name consumer products to make them feel better about having no brains/soul. And the plot of pretty much every reality show is the same: ordinary middle American Joes with poor taste meet silver-tongued, fake-boobed Hollywood/New York shopping expert, who tells them what a shitty house they’ve been living in and what ugly shoes they’re wearing, and hands them a bunch of cash so that they can shop themselves back to superficial respectability. The public seems to have a limitless appetite for this awful stuff, which makes me wonder if it’s possible to clinically diagnose an entire country with depression.

Matt Taibbi: Wall Street's Bailout Hustle

Rolling Stone has posted Matt Taibbi's latest screed on the incestuous, co-dependant relationship between the banking industry and the governmental enablers that have given away the financial farm while simultaneously rogering the American citizenry.

It's infuriating, and Taibbi lays it all out there in the harsh light of reality. The cons. The schemes. The double-crosses. And the modern-day robber barons with egos so large that you would need dump trucks to move them from place to place.

On January 21st, Lloyd Blankfein left a peculiar voicemail message on the work phones of his employees at Goldman Sachs. Fast becoming America's pre-eminent Marvel Comics supervillain, the CEO used the call to deploy his secret weapon: a pair of giant, nuclear-powered testicles. In his message, Blankfein addressed his plan to pay out gigantic year-end bonuses amid widespread controversy over Goldman's role in precipitating the global financial crisis.

The bank had already set aside a tidy $16.2 billion for salaries and bonuses — meaning that Goldman employees were each set to take home an average of $498,246, a number roughly commensurate with what they received during the bubble years. Still, the troops were worried: There were rumors that Dr. Ballsachs, bowing to political pressure, might be forced to scale the number back. After all, the country was broke, 14.8 million Americans were stranded on the unemployment line, and Barack Obama and the Democrats were trying to recover the populist high ground after their bitch-whipping in Massachusetts by calling for a "bailout tax" on banks. Maybe this wasn't the right time for Goldman to be throwing its annual Roman bonus orgy.

Not to worry, Blankfein reassured employees. "In a year that proved to have no shortage of story lines," he said, "I believe very strongly that performance is the ultimate narrative."

Translation: We made a shitload of money last year because we're so amazing at our jobs, so fuck all those people who want us to reduce our bonuses.

Taibbi Takes Brooks to Task on Haiti Column

Ouch. This is going to leave a mark.

In his True/Slant blog, Matt Taibbi hatchets David Brooks into little bitty pieces over a recent Brooks column on Haiti. In true Taibbi fashion, once you get past the shocking prose and focus on the salient points beneath, head-scratching commences.

Could Taibbi be correct about the intent of Brooks' words?

Brooks:

Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth — with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.

As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book “The Central Liberal Truth,” Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.

We’re all supposed to politely respect each other’s cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

Taibbi:

TRANSLATION: Although it is true that Haiti was just like five minutes ago a victim of a random earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people, I’m going to skip right past the fake mourning period and point out that Haitians are a bunch of lazy niggers who can’t keep their dongs in their pants and probably wouldn’t be pancaked under fifty tons of rubble if they had spent a little more time over the years listening to the clarion call of white progress, and learning to use a freaking T-square, instead of singing and dancing and dabbling in not-entirely-Christian religions and making babies all the fucking time. I know I’m supposed to respect other cultures and keep my mouth shut about this stuff, but my penis is only four and a third inches long when fully engorged and so I’m kind of at the end of my patience just generally, especially when it comes to “progress-resistant” cultures.

I'm sure that there will be much chatter about this piece on the left and the right. Let's sit back and watch the fun, shall we?

Matt Taibbi - Onward Christian Warriors

Over at True/Slant, Matt Taibbi does his usual fine work in completely decimating David Brooks over his Obama's Christian Realism column in the New York Times.

Taibbi opines that Brooks is painting Obama with the very same religious warrior brush that he used on George W. Bush not long ago.

Brooks is a perfect example of the kind of spineless Beltway geek we always see beating the war drum at times like these. It’s because nebbishly little dorks like Brooks and Paul Wolfowitz and David Frum got their books dumped in high school that we end up dropping daisy cutters on Afghan sheep herds and shipping working class American kids halfway around the world to get their nuts blown off. That sounds like a simplistic explanation, but anyone who doesn’t have a keen ear for the pencil-pusher’s eternal quest for macho cred is going to have a hard time understanding Washington politics. Brooks’s columns have always been the easiest way to take the pulse of that particular dynamic, and it sure seems now that bureaucratic momentum for intervention and more intervention is re-inflating the chests of these Beltway generals.

Let's hope that Taibbi isn't misreading Obama, because the last thing we need is yet another administration that believes the US has a religious mandate to kill people in other countries.

Image via dullhunk's photostream on flickr
 

Video: Matt Taibbi on Obama

If you're not reading Matt Taibbi's blog, or his columns in Rolling Stone, you really should. I mean, really.

Drug Companies Make Their Move

Matt Taibbi writes a scathing indictment of the incestuous relationship between our government and the pharmaceutical industry in a posted aptly titled PhRMA’s Big Bribe Comes In.

Taibbi notes that PhRMA is launching a staggering ad campaign in an attempt to get weak-ass language into the health reform bill, similar to that contained in the Baucus bill, as part of a deal with the Obama administration.

Say Taibbi:

Now we’re also seeing pressure from a group of freshmen and Blue Dogs, who have composed a letter to a quartet of House Committee chairs requesting that the Waxman language be removed from the health care bill and replaced with the PhRMA language, which happens to be the language the White House is pushing and which will appear in the Baucus bill in the Senate. The pro-PhRMA language retains the preposterous government subsidy to the pharmaceutical industry in the form of laws banning Medicare from negotiating market rates. It is completely useless and of no possible social benefit to anyone except pharmaceutical companies, but this group still managed to get 60 people to sign this letter.

Money talks, and bullshit walks, as they say.

Best Newt Gingrich Article Title Ever

Newt Gingrich Changes What’s Left of his Mind on End-of-life Care

Matt Taibbi has the details on how the Newtster has completely reversed his position on the concept of "Advanced Directives" when it comes to end-of-life medical care just so he can climb aboard the rickety wagon of death panel dipshits opposing allowing Medicare and any "public" option to pay for the very programs Newt supported earlier due to their massive cost savings and compassion-filled approach to the terminally ill.

Requiem for a Maverick

Matt Taibbi, writing in Rolling Stone, has a fascinating piece on what went wrong with John McCain and his campaign, and the Republican brand in general.

I witness the whole pathetic mess summed up a week before the election, on a baseball field in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. The campaign has scheduled an outdoor rally, with a joint appearance by McCain and Palin, at this crucial moment in the race. But now there is driving snow and sleet, trees downed on roads all around, and the campaign — with no alternate indoor plan — is forced to cancel the event at the last minute. I watch as locals keep pulling up to the field, looking for the candidate, a lonely, rain-soaked "Country First" banner whipping back and forth above the stage. The whole scene captures the essence of the McCain run perfectly: Instead of a plan, they had an endless succession of dumb ideas scrapped at the 11th hour in favor of even dumber ones.

It was like that all election season. McCain kicked off his campaign with a stump speech that emphasized his inspirational personal story and experience. Then he picked someone even less experienced than Obama as his running mate and switched to a strategy of attacking his opponent's relationships with people like Bill Ayers. When that petered out, he switched to a new line of attack, trotting out the socialism business and claiming Obama was running for the office of "redistributionist-in-chief." The McCain camp tried running against the press, they tried running against Washington, they tried running against the Bush administration, they even tried running against the "liberal feminist agenda" — the latter just a few weeks after Sarah Palin called herself a feminist.