Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

Sunday Nibbles.

During a typical Sunday with the same repertoire company playing the same parts, two memorable vignettes; one long and stupid, and one brief and chuckle-inducing.

First, The Stupid.

On “Fox News Sunday” maybe someone can tell the putty-eaters that pronouncing “nuclear” as “New-Kew-Ler” is oldspeak and and makes them look all pouty.


Then, on to Chris Wallace who apparently believes that beginning a conversation about how to make the world safe from nuclear weapons = dumping every American nuclear warhead in the ocean and announcing that we’re now defenseless.

Wallace: If we all give up all out nuclear weapons won’t that leave us vulnerable to a Rogue State that develops an atom bomb and then holds us all hostage!?!

Axelrod: Did your dad drop you on your head a lot when you were a baby?

Wallace: Then why aren’t you Commie finks in the White House all behind an awesome missile defense?

Axelrod: When and if it doesn’t suck or cost a zillion dollars, we’ll take a look at it.

Wallace: Why not shoot the North Korean missile down? Huh? Huh?

Wallace: Some critics say Obama is a sucky bad man who kisses European ass and got nothing back.

Axelrod: Whoever said that is an idiot who hasn’t bothered to read what really happened.

Wallace: Yeah, but the faggy socialist Europeans don’t want to send troops to fight the evil terrorists in Afghanistan!

Axelrod: They already have troops there. Dumbass.

Wallace: Ok, fine. “More” troops. They won’t send “more troops”.

Axelrod: We’ve made some progress. You have to remember, Chris, that Fox News Name Brand Prezit George W. Bush fucked things up so badly and never had anything resembling a plan for Afghanistan…

Wallace: Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!

Wallace: You guys predicted unemployment 1t 8.5 percent. Given that your prediction is wrongwrongwrong and it might go to 10%, shouldn’t Obama resign in disgrace?

Wallace: Now that you’re in the car business...

Axelrod: The auto companies came to us, remember? We didn't invade fucking Detroit, OK? They were circling the bowl and came to us begging for help, not the other way around.

Wallace: Blah blah blah. So do you think your greedy, mooching slag friends in the union will have to give up some of the gold-plated benefits they stole from real wealth producers?

Axelrod: Unions have already made historic concessions, and you fucking well know it.

Wallace: LaLaLaLa. I-cannot-hear-you!

Newt Gingrich then came on and did his “Freak Out The Pig People” finger-puppet show, pausing only briefly to mention that people didn’t like the way the “last Administration” (whoever the hell they were) behaved before diving right into some patented Newtocalyptic “Red Dawn”

mouth-poo about EMP weapon attacks taking out the American energy grid and “waking up one morning” to something “just like 9/11”.

At his core, Ginrich is of course merely a huckster who has found that being a few dozen IQ point higher that the average wingnut means he can carve himself out a much better gig “leading” the Mob Right with half-digested sci-fi sub-plots in which “Newt Gingrich” is the hero than he can doing anything honorable or productive.

(Which is why I firmly believe if Ronald D. Moore had done the patriotic thing and at least taken a pitch meeting with this clown about his crappy idea for a Battlestar Galactica story line about the hard-drinking, heart-breaker, hotshot Viper pilot Newt “Zeus” Ginrichington, who repeatedly saved the fleet from the Liberal Cylons but was never sufficiently appreciated...maybe we’d all have been spared having this smirking back-stabbing 1990s retread thug shoved back in our faces.)

That’s the first bit.

The second part is a little more self-congratulatory…

As you may know, during last week’s exciting installment of “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down”, your humble scrivener devoted all of his mad “Encyclopedia Brown” skillz and a ridiculously large percentage of his “SCMD” prep time to the mysterious Case of the Well-Coached Secretary.

To wit, one Timothy Geither, who had gone from a verbal bantamweight with no punch, to a credible middleweight into whom someone had drilled some decent forensic fundamentals.

Causing me to opine last week that one could:

“…practically reverse engineer the briefing book that the White House locked them up in the basement and drilled them on for the previous 10 days.”

And to obsessively carefully count up the deliberate, hammering repetitions of big, key words, as well as the sprinkling in of:

“…impressive, tripartite phrases like "Terrifically talented professionals" and "smart, thoughtful, credible".

And even suggested that, just below the surface, Mr. Geithner may be stitching a little Shakespearean inflection into our britches:

Timmy Geithner goes with The Bard on “Meet the Press” to explain why financial crises suck:

The quality of meltdowns is not strained.
It droppeth as the brutal rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice bonuses:
It bonuses him that fucks up and him that unfucks the fuck up.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest
...

Well score one for deductive reasoning.

Yesterday on ”The Chris Matthews Show”...

John Heilemann (of New York Magazine) notices that Timmy Geithner’s piss poor public presentation skills “have improved pretty dramatically”. And now “he looks a lot better on teevee”.

Heilemann: The reason being, “the White House has brought in Michael Sheehan”

(A little context from this week’s “Business Insider”

...
Well, the big March stock rally certainly helped, but New York magazine credits Michael Sheehan, the Clinton-era media trainer. Sheehan also did some work on Barack Obama, prepping the then-senator for his 2004 convention keynote "and last year’s nomination acceptance as well as his televised debates with John McCain. (At one point Sheehan told Obama that their goal was to make McCain come across like Mr. Wilson from “Dennis the Menace.”)

"

Matthews: Oh! He’s great!

Heilemann: The “legendary Democratic messaging guru and media trainer -- Obama’s speech coach and debate coach -- to work with Geithner. And they’ve been working together for the last couple of weeks and it seems to be having some effect.”

Matthews: “He used to run the Shakespeare Theater, Michael Sheehan. … Maybe he’ll make him speak in Big Words and not those little comic book words he speaks in.”

To which I can only add, in your face, Encyclopedia Brown!