First off, Jon Stewart takes down Peggy Noonan.
John Schwartz of the New York Times writes about the lack of tornado shelters in Tornado Alley. Oklahoma officials are reluctant to add tornado shelter requirements to the building code, because freedom. Coming from a tornado-prone area myself, I do wonder where peoples’ heads are. Tornadoes are hardly rare in Oklahoma.
Here’s a clip and save — A Calm, Reasonable Explanation of Why Michael Kinsley Is Wrong About Austerity by Ryan Cooper.
First off – yeah, Jon, Iran-Contra!
Second – I didn’t know that Nooners was less than 39 years old?
Which she would have to be, to not have lived through Nixon’s administration, and his REAL IRS SCANDAL!!!
Boy, those 39 years have not been kind to her. She looks like an ancient ‘gin-soaked, bar-room queen in Memphis.’
But she’s not.
According to her bio, she’s in her early 60’s – and looks even older. So, Peg-O’-My-Fart, let me remind you of Nixon, the Republican President BEFORE the one with the REAL IRAN-CONTRA SCANDAL, and HIS REAL IRS SCANDAL!
Now, imagine I’m scrunching up my face like Nooners, as if someone just passed a chili-with-jalapeno-raw onion-and limburger cheese fart right in my face:
‘President Richard Nixon pushed for IRS tax audits of wealthy Jewish contributors to his Democratic rivals, demanding of a top aide,
“What about the rich Jews? . . . Go after ’em like a son of a bitch,” released White House tapes show.
“You know, the big Jewish contributors to the Democrats. Could we please investigate some of the c—s—ers? That’s all,” he tells another aide.’
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Nixon-on-tape-Go-after-rich-Jews-3109626.php#ixzz2U80uHu8P
Somehow, I think today’s IRS “scandal” pales in comparison with a President in Nooner’s lifetime who ordered his minions to have the IRS investigate rich Jewish c*cks*ckers for daring to contribute to his Democratic opponents.
One thing is just not like the other – no matter how much you wish it were so, “Noony Tunes.”
Peggy Noonan, I don’t know how anyone can listen to that smug annoying voice. I start to feel nausea after just a couple seconds. I feel for her spouse it must be a wrenching existence!
Correction I just learned from the wiki-master that she is no longer married, I feel for her dog, cat or just the walls of her apartment!
I feel for her dog, cat or just the walls of her apartment!
I feel for the door hinges on her liquor cabinet.
Oh, snap.
uncledad,
Yeah, I see he divorced her.
I’d have committed suicide, so I never had to be associated with her ever again 🙂
Coming from a tornado-prone area myself, I do wonder where peoples’ heads are.
No kidding. Last evening I heard the OK Emergency Management Chief Idiot saying he didn’t think “safe rooms” would have made any difference in either of the two schools that received a direct hit. I believe it was seven kids died in the one school. In the other, where no one died, they were all extremely lucky.
People will lie down in the street for a fetus, but an eight-year-old, t’hellwiddit.
Noonan is a master at faux horror pearl-clutching. She turned in a unintentional comedic performance on MTP that writes itself. All Stewart had to do was tee ‘er up. LOL!!!
Wow. I knew by reputation that Noonan had a thing for Reagan, but I’d never encountered that love-struck-teenager prose from her book before. Jaysus. There should be rules about automatic disqualification from punditry for anyone who could write such ridiculous hagiography.
Mistakes were made. The president was unlucky. Didn’t need no welfare states. Everybody pulled his weight. Those were the days. Oh, yeah.
I had no idea Peggy Noonan was that crazy. To think she is a “pundit” boggles the mind.
I feel for the door hinges on her liquor cabinet
LOL 🙂 Yeah, she’s pickled, a classic wet brain.. Whatever happened to baby Jane? Sounds like she was burning for Gipper.
I moved to Iowa from Kansas. You know land of dorothy- toto? What I have noticed is that people in the midwest would not be smart enough to use the shelters anyhow. And I don’t mean this as a slam. Last week our sirens went off..Two tornado’s were on the ground within 10 miles of us. You would think basements would have been full. Ah no, not so much. What was full however was front porches. EVERY idiot in the neighborhood was standing outside looking up at the sky!.Oh what I would have not given to see a herd of cows fly by and knock all that stupid flat on it’s ass. Our warning system should yell” hey asshole get in your house” .And, in the ultimate irony, I could hear one of them recalling when a tornado did go thru here and the mess it left.So they know it can, will and does happen here. And Kansas? They are even bigger knot heads..people actually load up the family in the car and go to where tornados are predicted to “watch” , none of that passive “waiting for it to come to you ” crap for these folks they go LOOKING for trouble.
So as much as I agree that there is no excuse for anything located in tornado alley to not have a shelter I think too many people still wouldn’t use them
There used to be someone over at Wonkette– Jim Newell, I think– who would skewer Peggy’s addlepated scribblings on a weekly basis. I used to wait for Friday to roll around, so I could read the latest hilarious send-up. It was like a 1940s radio soap opera starring Mortimer Snerd as the Gipper, Charlie McCarthy as Mommy, and Edgar Bergen as the Nooner. Regularly brought me to tears.
Looking an Noonan reminds me of why I gave drinking alcohol.. You think you’re hiding it and getting over unnoticed, but anybody who is sober can see that you’re shit faced. That news show must have been taped early in the morning because Noonan was in the animated drunk stage…by noon she was probably face down in a puddle of puke. She’s following in the steps of Truman Capote.
Oh, that’s supposed to be gave ” up”. See that’s another consequence of demon rum. You get voids in your thinking process. Mothers, tell your children not to do what I have done!
There was an article on NPR yesterday about the lack of basements or storm cellars as we used to call them, in Oklahoma. As usual, I was in an out of range of the radio, but what my formerly pickled brain (h/t Swami) remembers is that the soil in Oklahoma is clay, possibly similar in some ways to what we have in NC. But, the temperature and humidity ranges are much different. In the past, when moisture proofing basements was more mystery than science, it was difficult to avoid problems that resulted from temperature and moisture retention properties of the soil and building materials. It was a problem for the technology of the PAST, but not so much now. Unfortunately, basements are associated with leakage problems and may actually reduce the market value of a house. So, people tend to avoid them when building.
So this is a classic case of the market deciding on the basis of information that is no longer valid.
Goatherd, you are right about the soil. The clay soil tends to swell when wet, and contract when dry, so the foundations can be ruined rather easily with a basement. Eastern Texas tends to be clay soil that might not be far above the water table, and Western Texas is primarily soil on top of limestone. Limestone is expensive to excavate. Slab construction prevails in those areas. Basements can be rather costly to build in these areas, so usually after the storm, people pick up and rebuild.
In Urbandale Iowa they are just finishing construction on a public shelter. It was featured on kcci news(local station) last night. It is an above ground shelter costing 1.8 mllion but it will hold close to 700 people. Doors will unlock automatically when a warning is issued. It is above ground with 1 ft thick walls, HUGE glass windows that are bullet/ tornado proof. They expect they will be able to rent the space out for weddings and community events in the off season.It even has a fireplace and gardens. FEMA kicked in 1 million and the community raised the rest. So I understand in some parts of the country basements are out , but this shows that there are ways to create safe shelters without going under ground that can also have other uses for residents. AND FEMA kicked in over half.
Looks like just putting in an 8×8 safe box as a mini-basement would be worth doing, or making one small room in the house storm-proof would be worth doing. Moore, OK was in the same tornado path in 1999. Yet they elect anti-FEMA, anti-disaster-relief congresscritters because freedumb.
What part of “you get what you pay for” do they fail to grasp? The general population in the tornado areas must not have felt the “invisible hand of the market” smack them hard enough yet. What would John Galt do?
Thanks, khughes1963, I was hoping that I remembered it correctly. I think you got it straighter and clearer than I did.
I was thinking that it might be literally true that this IRS “scandal” is the worst thing Peggy Noonan has ever seen, but only because she closes her eyes to Republican misdeeds. But then I thought: What about Clinton?
Well, a couple of minutes with Google, and I found a column where she compares him to…Caligula??!?
No wonder I ignore Peggy Noonan.
Here’s another link to the Caligula story for those you who can’t afford the WSJ’s price of admission. En mi pobreza es mi riqueza
http://peggynoonan.com/article.php?article=34
Thanks, Swami. I was able to get to the column at the WSJ site once, but on clicking the link again I see it’s behind a paywall. God forbid anyone should think I’d pay good money to read the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page.
Being at work (on break) I can’t listen to the Stewart clip but it’s about time Noonan got taken down a notch. She’s been glorifying they myths of conservatism for years and as a speechwriter (“it’s morning in America”, the “house on the hill” and I think even “thousand points of light”) and occasional guest or interviewee she’s rarely taken to task. It’s high time she ntered the real world.
Nice digging C-U.
My wasn’t Nixon the potty mouth? To listen to some ostensibly prim and proper conservatives today you’d not think it the same party, though I suspect they get all proper when it suits their puposes to look down their noses at someone then quickly revert to their beastly ways when the camera stops.
Pat,
Nixon and his pals thought those were “private tape-recordings” that only he and his pals could listen to, and have a jickle-cerk over after he, and they, all left office, to relive those good, good, times!
And THAT was the freak-out over those tapes!
After reading about them, and listening to a bunch of them, I wonder what the hell was in those 18 minutes that Rose Mary Woods erased, that were even worse than what we heard?
That, must really have been BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!!!!!!!!
It was interesting reading the Wikipedia profile on Noonan.. I always thought that the slipped the surly bonds of earth thing was an original work of Noonan’s, I come to find out that she plagiarized it… and her Thousand points of Light ditty was a major flop as soon as it happened.
I remember Saturday Night Live having a field day ridiculing the awkward and cornball delivery of President Bush trying to get that little patriotic lullaby launched. It’s not conducive to repetition, but I guess if you’re in the bag with a snoot full of gin like Noonan was when she wrote it, you don’t get the normal cues that would tell you that once is powerful if said in passing, twice is over played, and more than that it becomes a joke.
Here’s someone very “odd,” pulling something out of his nether “end” – “At a congressional hearing Thursday on an abortion bill that would ban the procedure after 20 weeks of pregnancy, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told a female witness that she should have carried her pregnancy to term even though doctors had discovered the fetus had no brain function.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/24/louie-gohmert-abortion-ban_n_3332823.html
Well, I guess Ol’ Louie figures, “Hell, my Mama carried ME to term, so what’s the big deal?”
Texas has a lot of rocks, and I’d like to see Ol’ Louie crawl under one of them – and stay there!
Jayzoos H. Keerist, reminding his disciples, “Remember boys, ‘better a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy,'” just how stone-stupid must the voters in that district be, to elect, and keep reelecting, someone who’s dumber than a rock himself – and half as empathetic.
i might want to live in a world where jon stewart
is president & his writers are the cabinet.
It’s not alcoholism–it’s MENTAL ILLNESS. A very tragically public one.