Devoured

The New Yorker: The Fall
John McCain’s choices.

John McCain sold his soul to the Republican devil. Funniest line is this, about Sarah Barracuda:

“She’s like the plant in ‘Little Shop of Horrors,’ ” McCain’s friend Bob Kerrey said. “She’s devouring him.” (emphasis in original)

Strategery

The New Yorker: Battle Plans
How Obama won.

McCain's New Yorker Cover

Courtesy of Vanity Fair:



Vanity Fair Covers The New Yorker

Alternatives

Blogtopia is filled with alternative magazine covers for next week's New Yorker. Here are just a few:

The Edge of the American West

Jeremy Glass

News Corpse

BarelyPolitical.com

Not An Actual Magazine Cover

Carton from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that you will never see on any real magazine cover. Can't make fun of McLame! Hero! Hanoi Hilton!

Apocalypse Bush

12% of the soldiers who have died in Afghanistan died in the past six weeks. In the past six weeks, 64 American soldiers have died in the war George W. Bush has starved for five years to fight his war of lies in Iraq. Why doesn't the New Yorker magazine have a cartoon on the cover showing George W. Bush in burning hell, spending eternity looking under his desk for the weapons of mass destruction? Now that would be funny.

The press corpse continues to stink up the Presidential race. Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has dug up one of the bodies. Ron Fournier (we wrote about him here when he wrote a terribly slanted article calling Obama "arrogant") has been appointed head of AP's Washington Bureau. Apparently he's encouraging more opinion and fewer facts. Great. And since you can judge a man by the company he keeps, guess who Ron Fournier was emailing the day Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan and the Bushies were frantically covering up his tragic death? Ron Fournier, "journalist", was emailing with the Prince of Darkness Karl Rove. Here's their exchange, as summarized in a House Oversight Committee report:

Karl Rove exchanged e-mails about Pat Tillman with Associated Press reporter Ron Fournier, under the subject line "H-E-R-O." In response to Mr. Fournier's e-mail, Mr. Rove asked, "How does our country continue to produce men and women like this," to which Mr. Fournier replied, "The Lord creates men and women like this all over the world. But only the great and free countries allow them to flourish. Keep up the fight."

And after those pious niceties and expressions of patriotic solidarity, they lied to the Tillmans about how their son was killed. Reprehensible.

Edited to add: Here's a PDF of the House Oversight Committee report; the Karl Rove-Ron Fournier emails are described on page 23.

A little history is in order. Who was the biggest supporter of the Taliban in Afghanistan before 9/11/01? Why, it was George W. Clusterfuck, of course. This post at dailykos details the Bush Administration's decision to send a $43 million dollar gift to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan in May of 2001.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I don't think the U.S. government was in on the 9/11 attacks. But George Bush, a stupid, arrogant fool, did everything wrong in his first pathetic 9 months in office. He gave the Taliban millions of dollars. He ignored the Clinton administration holdovers like Richard Clarke who were running around the White House with their hair on fire over Osama bin Laden and the threat of terrorism. He spent the entire month of August 2001 on vacation, and when the CIA briefer flew to Crawford to read him the Presidential Daily Brief on August 6, 2001, with the ominous headline "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US", he told that CIA briefer "All right, you've covered your ass now". All President DumbFuckinFratBoy could think to say when the CIA dared to intrude on his brush-cutting vacation was a dumb joke. He didn't hear the urgency. He spent the month playing Solomon and splitting the baby, deciding that the country would allow stem cell research on very few cell lines, most of which are contaminated with mouse DNA. He fiddled while Osama plotted.

Worst. President. Ever.

We can't elect another stupid, out of touch, arrogant fool again. (cough, cough, John McCain)
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The New Yorker Jumps The Shark

This is the cover of the New Yorker this week. Thankfully I discontinued my subscription a few years ago, so my money didn't go into making this monstrosity.

It's every rightwing email in one loathesome caricature. Obama as a Muslim, certainly a foreigner, perhaps Osama himself; Michelle Obama as Angela Davis, or a Black Panther, or a member of Osama's bodyguards; the terrorist fistjab (thank you E.D. Hill for that turn of phrase), Osama bin Laden in the picture on the wall, the American flag burning merrily in the fireplace, all set in the Oval Office.

I look forward to their companion cover on McCain. A caricature of him in a pair of Depends underwear, holding out his empty wallet, to his wife encrusted with diamonds, asking for a little more?

A cartoon of McCain depicted as a canary, singing "Vietnam Rules, America Drools" at the Hanoi Hilton?

Or a cartoon showing McCain kicking his first wife and kids to the curb, her cane and their little baseball caps flying, as he holds onto Cindy McCain's miniskirt made of $100 bills?

Or just a naked McCain, from behind, his wrinkled white ass as he screws Uncle Sam (us)?

Hey, it's satire, right, and all's fair in modern journamalism. Wes Clark couldn't tell the truth, that being shot down and held captive don't qualify you to be President. The media attacked him like he'd said John McCain wears a G-string and pasties under his suit. But "journalists" and "publishers" and "the media" can put out complete and utter garbage like this cover and will hide under their handy First Amendment umbrella. Free press! Free press!

How free is a press that, like Chatty Cathy on steroids, regurgitates conservative propaganda every time the string is pulled?

The hitjob piece it illustrates can be read here, but don't miss the soft wet kiss the same writer, Ryan Lizza, wrote about McCain in February in the very same magazine. Or save yourself the time. Shorter Ryan Lizza: Obama bad, McCain good.

Lizza has a long, sad history of advancing right-wing memes, as it was he who named the Democratic plan for withdrawing our troops from Iraq "the slow-bleed plan", a phrase which was eagerly adopted by Fox News and their Republican overlords.

Journalism is dead. Long live the rotting press corpse.