Thursday, January 9, 2014

Chris Christie Bridge Scandal




Rachel Maddow had been reporting for weeks that Republican Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie may have closed down a section of the George Washington Bridge as political payback aimed at the democratic mayor of Fort Lee, Mark Sokolich, who didn’t endorse Christie for re-election. The bridge was closed for 4 days creating major traffic problems for the residents of Fort Lee. Supposedly the official reason for the bridge shut-down was a “traffic study” but there was no evidence of any traffic study. The story broke wide open yesterday when emails sent by Christie’s administration were released  proving the speculation to be true. One email said “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” Chris Hayes even discussed the damning emails with Mayor Sokolich.  Every major news organization jumped on the story except Fox of course. It took them hours to even report the news of the emails and when they finally did it barely got a mention and they actually told their audience to just “google it.” Pundits hilariously dubbed the scandal “Bridgeghazi.” Christie held a press conference today to address the damning emails and it was so delicious. I watched it while following my liberal pundits' twitter feeds and was cracking up the whole time as Christie denied any wrongdoing. Christie claimed he didn’t even know Mayor Sokolich and that he wasn’t even “on his radar.” I actually laughed out loud when research director for Media Matters then tweeted “I didn't even know Ft. Lee had a mayor” in jest. Even people who don't care about news should really care about this scandal, especially if Christie plans to run for President in 2016.

Monday, January 6, 2014

Jay Carney With a Beard


So today White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney appeared at the first White House press briefing of the year with a beard. And then “Jay Carney” was trending on twitter. And then this happened. And this. And this.  Carney said of his beard, "My wife likes it, so there." Well, Mr. Carney, we like it too. Thank you, beard gods, I think I can die now.

Friday, January 3, 2014

David Kirkpatrick




New York Times’ Mideast Correspondent, David Kirkpatrick recently wrote this detailed, epic article on the 2012 Benghazi attack. Kirkpatrick made an appearance on Meet the Press last week to discuss the article alone and in a later segment with Andrea Mitchell. The piece completely discredits the right wing conspiracy theories about Benghazi that try to demonize the Obamaa dministration so of course Fox has been attacking it. So much so that many war reporters have started to push back saying that Fox doesn’t even know what journalism is. But Fox reached an all time low when they hosted a “Benghazi expert,” who recently advocated assassinating President Obama, to peddle their Benghazi lies. I just want to give major kudos to Kirkpatrick and the New York Times for an outstanding article and I’m thankful that real, quality journalism still exits in this world of right-wing nonsense.

Ezra Klein



 Recently it was reported that one of my favorite journos, Washington Post blogger and MSNBC contributor, Ezra Klein was looking to start a new media venture. I’m such a huge fan of Klein’s Wonkblog so I was afraid that would mean he would no longer be writing for the WP. My biggest fear happened yesterday when The New York Times reported that Klein planned to leave after unsuccessfully getting support from the WP for a new website he was planning. He made an appearance on The Last Word last night to discuss the Affordable Care Act but, of course, made no mention of his personal plans. I just hope now he will finally host his own show for MSNBC. I don’t care how or why or when, just please, please, please make it happen. Pretty please with lots of sugar and charts on top?

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Noam Scheiber


My first illustration of 2014. It’s Noam Scheiber, senior editor for the New Republic magazine. NR has been killin’ it lately so if anyone hasn’t noticed I highly recommend.