tagged w/ pollitics
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‘Cut his mike,’ producer suggests
The Keating Five scandal, and John McCain’s role in it, has received relatively little mention in presidential campaign coverage, and at least one Fox News host seems dedicated to keeping it that way.
Appearing Thursday morning on Fox & Friends, radio host Mike Papatino tried to remind viewers about McCain’s intervention with federal regulators on behalf of real estate mogul Charles Keating, who was trying to avoid regulations of a savings and loan he owned during the S&L crisis of the 1980s.
F&F’s Steve Doocy told Papatonio to "pipe down," called him "rude" and demanded he "cut it out." A show producer could be overheard saying "cut his mike."
As Papatonio tries one last time to explain the details of the Keating Five scandal, Doocy again cuts him off.
"This is not the History Channel," he says.
Papatonio’s apparent crime was interrupting fellow guest Michael Reagan, the conservative radio host, who was arguing that it would be unfair to judge McCain based on his actions 20 years ago.
"It has everything to do with what’s happening today," Papatonio said before being told to pipe down.
Regardless of whether Papatonio was being rude, preserving an orderly debate certainly could not have been Doocy’s goal in silencing the guest. Not two minutes before his admonition that Papatonio was "being rude," Doocy repeatedly interrupted his guest to deliver talking points that might as well have been written by the McCain campaign.
At least three times Doocy interrupted Papatonio as he argued that McCain’s political gambit to "suspend" his campaign and delay Friday’s debate was more a response to his flagging poll numbers than an attempt to fix the economic crisis. Doocy wasn’t buying it.
"If Barack Obama wants to do so much for the economy, why doesn’t he go to his day job and work in the us senate?" he asked Reagan, cutting off Papatino’s argument. ‘Cut his mike,’ producer suggests
The Keating Five scandal, and John... more
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An e-mail that began as a rallying cry from a lone journalist to an influential circle of friends to protest the U.S. government bailout of Wall Street has ignited a national day of street protests. Some demonstrators plan to dump their rubbish in front of the bronze bull sculpture near Wall Street in downtown Manhattan Thursday.
"People are going to bring their own personal junk that they think is worth as much as the junk financial instruments that the government is proposing to buy from the Wall Street banks," says Andrew Boyd, an activist and freelance online-video artist for nonprofit groups in Manhattan. "We’re hoping that people show up with their 8-track cassette collections, their old Spice Girl CDs, their surf boards that got bit by sharks and old Enron stock certificates."
Boyd is just one of thousands of Americans from all over the political spectrum who the Bush Administration has angered with its vague proposal to hand $700 billion over to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to restore U.S. financial markets’ health. That anger has manifested itself online through e-mail, web sites and other online chatter, with one site, BuyMyShitPile.com, going rapidly viral this week. The site, a parody of the dire financial situation, is what is inspiring the self-organizing group of activists to show up in downtown Manhattan Thursday evening with all their junk. They hope to make their simmering fury palpable to Wall Streeters getting off work.
"Why should people who made financially imprudent decisions be rewarded?" asks Boyd, who is best known for founding the political protest theater group Billionaires For Bush. "It’s our hard-earned tax dollars, and we’re being asked to bail these guys out at the same time as this locks out all the things that we want for the future."
Boyd’s is one of many voices of frustration. Other people’s anger spilled out online, which in turn, is fueling the planned protests’ momentum.
Arun Gupta, a 43-year-old freelance journalist in Manhattan, is someone else who was so upset by unfolding events that he was moved to action.
"I’ve been spending a lot of time reading about the intensifying crisis and the bailout plan," he says. "The more I read, the more outraged and flabbergasted I was: It became clear to me that this was the financial equivalent of the Sept. 11 attacks."
He was so upset that he banged out a passionately worded 629-word e-mail on his laptop Sunday afternoon urging his friends — and anyone else who would listen — to show up at the southern tip of Manhattan late Thursday afternoon to demonstrate. He says that he’s never organized a protest before in his life.
"This week the White House is going to try to push through the biggest robbery in world history with nary a stitch of debate, to bail out the Wall Street bastards who created this economic apocalypse in the first place," he wrote. "This is the financial equivalent of September 11. They think, just like with the Patriot Act, they can use the shock to force through the "therapy," and we’ll just roll over!"
He added:
Think about it: They said providing health care for 9 million children, perhaps costing $6 billion a year, was too expensive, but there’s evidently no sum of money large enough that will sate the Wall Street pigs. If this passes, forget about any money for environmental protection, to counter global warming, for education, for national healthcare, to rebuild our decaying infrastructure, for alternative energy.
This is a historic moment. We need to act now while we can influence the debate. Let’s demonstrate this Thursday at 4 p.m. in Wall Street (see below).
The e-mail ricocheted through the electronic ecosystem faster than the implosion of Wall Street itself, tapping into and riding the frisson of resentment among Americans at this monumental financial foul-up.---------CONTINUESAn e-mail that began as a rallying cry from a lone journalist to an influential circle... more
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WEST Australian Opposition Leader Troy Buswell says there is "absolutely no substance" to reports he once did something inappropriate to a quokka.
But he said he had heard people mention the word "quokka" then start laughing.
Mr Buswell, who has admitted to sniffing the chair of a former Liberal party colleague and snapping the bra of a Labor staffer, was questioned on the rumours today at a press conference at Parliament House.
Apparently,,,according to POP BITCH A former staffer in Buswell'soffice said he once started to grab the office chairs going 'aahww, which one did you sit in? I’ll be able to tell'. Buswell was “groaning and making sexually satisfying noises.. It was awful”, continued the staffer, “My colleagues were just stunned into silence.”
What a party trick
WEST Australian Opposition Leader Troy Buswell says there is "absolutely no... more
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Purdey
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added this
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3 years ago
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