Yesterday morning as I was trying to get my shit together and get out the door, I caught a few minutes of that bastion of morning teevee Urinalism, “The Today Show.” It was that part in the beginning where they spend about five minutes on “real news” before moving on to more important things like how many chicks Tiger Woods is banging on the side or the cross on Moses the cow’s forehead (which isn’t really a cross, but, whatever). I could tell it was the serious news part because they had serious news person Andrea Mitchell (who always reminds me of Katherine Helmond in “Brazil”) on. Andrea was reporting on climate change and Global Warming. Well, not really. She was reporting on a “feud” between Al Gore and the Wolf Killa from Wasilla, Sarah Palin, over the op-ed piece that Sarah signed her name to in the Washington Post the other day. Al pointed out how stupid Global Warming deniers are, and Palin responded with a series of snotty Facebook posts that Mitchell read on the air. Yes, that’s what journalism has become – they don’t even have to be stenographers anymore, they just pull up Facebook and read what’s there. Rather than, oh, I dunno, maybe doing some reporting on whether or not the vast majority of scientists believe that climate change is both real and man made, her report basically consisted of “Gore said, ‘Yes it is.’ Palin responded with, ‘No it isn’t.’ Gore: ‘Uh-huh.’ Palin: ‘Nuh-uh.'” It’s shit like this that (almost) makes me glad I have to go to work in the morning.

I’m reluctant to mention this sports-related item but, what the hell: Nine-and-oh, baby!

Matt Taibbi has an interesting article up at Rolling Stone, entitled “Obama’s Big Sellout.”

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers “at the expense of hardworking Americans.”
[…]
Then he got elected.

What’s taken place in the year since Obama won the presidency has turned out to be one of the most dramatic political about-faces in our history. …Obama had a clear mandate to rein in Wall Street and remake the entire structure of the American economy. What he did instead was…[pack] the key economic positions in his White House with the very people who caused the crisis in the first place. This new team of bubble-fattened ex-bankers and laissez-faire intellectuals then proceeded to sell us all out, instituting a massive, trickle-up bailout and systematically gutting regulatory reform from the inside.

But, hey, he accepted a Nobel Peace Prize by saying that the US has a right to kick ass anytime, anywhere, no matter what – you gotta give him credit for that. He’ll be out there “clearing brush” at his ranch in Chicago before you know it.

Speaking of “War is Peace,” “Escalation is Withdrawal,” “Obama is Change,” and stuff, Harry Reid says no “Public Option” is better than the “Public Option” (that was never really an option). Not that it matters, since Queen Olympia Snowe and King Joey Lieberman will never let the Medicare buy-in (which, while it’s pretty crappy in that you can’t buy into it unless you can’t get insurance through your employer and is gonna be more expensive than private insurance, apparently isn’t crappy enough for the Connecticut Crybaby) happen.

Speaking of Lieberman, break out those Dreidels, ‘cuz Chanukah begins at sundown tonight (which is what, about 3:00 these days?). Chappy Chanukah to all the Jewish folks out there. Keep your N’er Tamid trimmed and burnin’.