Laura Ingraham Solves Unemployment

Yes, I know, it’s Fox News, and it’s Laura Ingraham, of the GOP-Is-It-A-Nazi-Salute Ingraham, one of the most hate-filled human beings on the plants. But recently she was discussing unemployment, and people on unemployment and what could be done to move those people back to work and, well, it went like this:

Ingraham:

“What if we just cut off the unemployment? Hunger is a pretty powerful thing. I don’t mean physical hunger, because people who truly are in need, need help, but [not] people who can work but refuse to work.”

Jon Taffer:

“I have friends in the military who trains military dogs Laura, and they only feed a military dog at night, because a hungry dog is an obedient dog. Well, if we are not causing people to be hungry to work, then we are providing them with all the meals they need sitting at home.”

Yes, they think the way to move people off the unemployment rolls is to starve them.

In America, we will see to it that you starve if you don’t need to be on unemployment. But then who gets to decide who needs unemployment? The Eva Brauns Laura Ingraham of the world? The self-entitled rich bitches who look down upon those people on unemployment and suggest we deny them food?

Or we let Jon Taffer, who I have never heard of but a quick Google search describes him as a “television personality” who thinks we should treat the unemployed like dogs until they learn to be obedient.

There are only so many ways to tell these two morally bankrupt, uncaring, rightwingnuts off, but the best and easiest is:

Fuck you.

Tilman Fertitta: COVIDIOT of the Week

Tilman Fertitta owns the Houston Rockets; He owns Landry's restaurant chain. He owns the Golden Nugget casinos … and much much more. He’s got more money than any one person should have—an estimated $4.8 billion—and he has 45,000 people depending on him for their paycheck.

He’s also a the ISBL Covidiot of the Week, and here’s why …

He recently ;aid off all 45,000 of his employees and then went on Laura Ingraham's Fox News show brag about it. Guest host, Brian Kilmeade, was guest-hosting for Ingraham, who ALLEGEDLY was attending a Klan Wife Potluck, and Kilmeade offered Fertitta—not his employees—sympathy for the situation. But Fertitta’s doing good, y’all, saying:

“I’m holding up, I’m holding up pretty damn good, but I’ve got 45,000 employees out there that we’ve had to furlough that is so tremendously unfortunate, that we have to get back to work as soon as we can. These unemployment numbers of 16 million, and there’s no telling what it’s going to be next week. That’s what’s so sad about this whole crisis.”

And Kilmeade asked how hard it was to lay off employees and, well, for Fertitta, it wasn’t that hard:

“You know, Brian, I went through the ’87 crisis, the 2000, the 2008 [recession], and it’s kind of something you realize is, you are doing your people a favor if you get them furloughed first, because they they’re the first to the unemployment line after the severance that you give them, and it’s a trick that I learned many years ago.”

Wow; he's learned to be the first billionaire to kick his employees to the curb. COVIDIOT. Maybe he could take a smidge of that $4.8 billion and continue paying them yourself, rather than put them on the national unemployment rolls. Right?

Look at it this way, the Unemployment Insurance rate of $600 a week would tally up to about $270 million for ten weeks of unemployment, or just 17% of Fertitta’s wealth that he’s keeping to himself.

The rich get richer …

The Funny Papers

Yeo, Mike Luckovich, Bill Bramhall, Jim Morin, Michael de Adder, David Fitzsimmons, Scott Stantis, Clay Bennett, Nate Beeler, Bruce MacKinnon, Joe Heller

Burning Bridges ... And Pissing Off JLo

Luckily I have a boss who knows that I’m a dick with a smart mouth and that I do love my job because sometimes the things I say could get me fired ... like the time my boss was in a mood and was ranting about his employees and saying things like,

“I wish … yada yada yada.”

And I replied,

“You know what I wish? I wish I had a time machine so I could go back to the day you offered me this job and say, ‘F**k you.”

And, before you ask, he laughed , and, yes, I am still employed. But I’ve always wondered about the way to quit a job … to burn those bridges … scorch that earth … leave nothing but ruin in your rear-view mirror and know there isn’t a chance in Hell you’ll be hired back or get any kind of reference anywhere.

Case in point: Sara Hammel.

I don’t know this woman but I’m thinking a job as a hostess at Red Lobster will be the only job she can get now … especially when JLo puts a hit out on her.

See, Hammel, a longtime People writer, quit the magazine recently, but not before writing a Scorched Earth Resignation Letter to editorial director Jess Cagle and other top editors:

Dear People Magazine,

I quit.

It’s not me, it’s you. It’s been a wildly dysfunctional 14 years, and you’re an entirely different magazine than when we first got together. I swear half the current staff doesn’t know my name, despite my contribution to something like fifteen hundred stories in your celebrity annals, so here’s a refresher: I worked inside your London, Los Angeles and New York bureaus, covered breaking news in nine countries, and dealt with too many celebrities to remember.

Sara sounds like she has issues with people not remembering her.

My first celebrity assignment for you was Spice Girl Geri Halliwell in 2002. My last was Robert De Niro in April 2016. In between, there were memorable encounters galore, including making the gorgeous and empathic Mariska Hargitay ugly-cry (turns out she cries at like every charity-related event, phew), enduring an Oscar winner’s public bullying over an intimate dinner…

Sadly, she fails to name the bully.

… facing a personal crisis at Tom Cruise’s wedding in Rome, getting basically, kind of spat on by a snotty J. Lo (okay, it was like a very wet pffttt in my general direction, really obnoxious) …

 JLoogy?

… having fun with endless lower-key celebs like Rosario Dawson and Kyle MacLachlan and Michael Douglas, observing just how stiff and awkward George Clooney is around kids, insulting Sheryl Crow’s baby, and getting groped/harrassed by an A-list [omitted] performer in New York and Paris (that’s not to be flip—it was violating as hell. I’m still pissed I didn’t jab him in the balls with my pen).

I want names!

… This is just what the entitled stars and their bat—t crazy publicists put me and many other talented, hard-working reporters through. You people, as it turns out, are worse. Stupidly, we expect loyalty and support from you after years of service. We are naïve. Despite your nicey nice, glossy and chirpy veneer, some of us think of you more as the Leo DiCaprio of magazines, using up every beautiful model that crosses your path (“beautiful model”= “award-winning journalist” in this scenario), discarding them, and pretending you leave no wake behind you.

Like I said, hostess at Red Lobster.

I’m oddly surprised my tenure here is ending not with explosive hatred stoked by a cold dismissal from an insensate behemoth (i.e. you)  — a fate I watched ashen-faced friends and colleagues endure before my eyes during the Los Angeles bureau’s 2008 culling  — but with a slow fade-out and a final venting of my gossip-weary spleen.

Then again, that’s why I’m happy being freelance. I’ve survived something like eight rounds of layoffs where talented colleagues were bitch-slapped into oblivion and, I hope, will never give their nights, weekends, relationships and sanity again to keep up with an email chain about whether Jennifer Aniston is pregnant at 47 because of those tummy photos and what kind of mom will she be, when really she just had an extra burrito at lunch; but oh, wait, the rep says it’s just a rumor so there’s no story this week after all.

Someone needs to settle herself.

I will say, what happens after that is that my debut teen mystery, the one I spent my adult life making into a reality, but which, despite the schlock regularly featured in its pages and online, People decided to ignore — more to the point, they ignored me entirely — even after I toiled away for them for 14 years. They wouldn’t even give me a digital post that I wrote, sourced, and agreed to remove the name of my book from (LOL). That book is called The Underdogs.

Ah, so therein lies the rub. Sara wrote a book and expected People magazine to promote it for her and when they didn’t, well, she began the venom-spew.

I’ll leave you with the kicker:

As I was crafting this letter, a Tweet came through from one of your top editors, Kate Coyne, crowing about her full-page People feature promoting her brand-new book, accompanied by a colorful screenshot. “Don’t ask how, but I got in touch with someone at @people—now I’m in the new issue. So grateful!”

You should be, Kate. Enjoy it while it lasts.

And now we’ve come full-circle. Another People employee did get her work promoted in the magazine, but Sara did not. I’m guessing green, while Sara’s color, is not a good look on her.

Hammel has a memoir out … on Kindle, perhaps because no respectable publishing house would touch her … called “Red Carpet Regret: Confessions of a Cynical Celebrity Journalist.”

On the other side, People is holding its head up high … I now, People magazine is trying to act all dignified, and a spokeswoman said:

“We don’t comment on personnel matters.”

No, but they do slyly destroy those to trash the Goliath. Or maybe send JLo and Clooney out to tag-team Sara Hammel into nothingness.

Random Musings

When we were at South Carolina Pride a few weeks back, Carlos found a kilt he wanted to buy. His grandfather was from England — he moved to Mexico as an adult and lived there the rest of his life — and Carlos has always been an Anglophile.

Now, his kilt isn’t plaid, it’s a dark green, but it’s very cool, and once it arrived to the house, he decided he wanted to wear it to our wedding. I had other ideas — I always do — of keeping it simple, with each of us in a nice black jacket, white shirt and nice — nice — jeans.

Carlos said, “Jeans?????”

I said, “Kilt????”

He’s wearing the kilt, and that’s fine, because it looks good on him, but I did ask that he wear a nice black jacket and white shirt. So, he showed me the white shirts he had in the closet; not one from this century, so imagine dirty dishwater white color; and there wasn’t a black jacket in sight.

So, Carlos, who hates to shop, set off in search of a black jacket, a white shirt, and some black boots to wear with his kilt. When he returned home, happy as a clam to have found the items, he gave me a little preview; nice jacket; very nice crisp white, white, shirt, and some cool black boots — rough-trade boots, if you will.

I sat in the chair and muttered, “Wow, you get a whole new outfit for the wedding and I’m wearing my old black jacket.”

“I knew it!” He shrieked, and my ears began to bleed.

“Shout it to the whole neighborhood,” I said.

Carlos walked to the living room window, threw it up, and shrieked outside, “I. KNEW. IT!!!!!”

Today I went and bought myself some new, nice, cool, jeans, a new crisp white shirt, and three pairs of new shoes, you know, because I will not be outdone at my own wedding!!

Last week the Labor Department reported that 248,000 jobs were created last month, pushing the unemployment down to a six-year low of 5.9%.  

Thanks Obama.

See, Rightwingnuts? That's how “Thanks Obama” works. Say Thanks to the President for fixing the mess created by George W. Bush.

And then sit down.

So, naturally, other than my own upcoming marriage, was the news out of SCOTUS this week, which paved the way for marriages in at least five — and perhaps up to eleven — new states. 

I got a huuuge kick out of some of the GOP wingnuts who called the Supreme Court a bunch of unelected judges — um, yeah, that’s how it works — and said they were activist judges.

Funny, though, had the Supreme Court ruled the other way these asshats would have been praising these non-elected activists for doing their jobs.

GOP? Take a seat; you don’t have a dog in this fight any more.

Speaking of GOP loons … Mike Huckabee.

That’s really all that need be said, but I love this Tweet, and the response from Jesus H. Christ.

Who knew Jesus was so funny?

I watched a new comedy last week called A To Z; it’s one of those “relationship” comedies, but it’s just quirky enough not to be sappy, and just well-written enough to be actually funny.

As in the scene where our couple is sitting in a trendy martini bar and the bartender asks the girl if she likes her “Martini Navratilova.”

He then offers to make her a “Martini Luther King Jr.”

Okay, it made me laugh, and I also got a little tingly with the adorkable male lead, Ben Feldman.

I do so love a dork; hell, I’m marrying one!

American Horror Story Freak Show started last night and, naturally, Jessica Lange was brilliant, and fearless and fabulous, and a bit shocking. Plus, all kinds of oddities, some real, I think, and some not, I think. And, if you have a fear of clowns, well, yeah, you know.

Next up for Ryan Murphy, creator of AHS, is American Crime Story, the first season of which will focus on the OJ Simpson trial.

Having lived through it, I’d think that case would be better suited under the Freak Show umbrella.

Did I mention I’m getting married? I think I may have …

At any rate, just yesterday a judge down in Charleston County issued a marriage license to a same-sex couple; one half of the duo was his own sister.

Yup, the Honorable Irvin Condon, accepted a marriage license and fee from his cousin, Charleston County Councilwoman Colleen Condon, and her fiancée, Nichols Bleckley.  After the requisite 24-hour statutory waiting period, Judge Condon says he will issue Condon and Bleckley their marriage license unless a court of competent — is that a trick question — jurisdiction orders him not too.

This would make Colleen and Nichols eligible to become the first same-sex couple to be legally wed in South Carolina.

And then just as that news broke, came the news that Richland County, home to the capital, Columbia, and just a hop, skip and a jump from Smallville, has also begun issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

In freaking South Carolina!

Richland County Probate Judge Amy McCulloch said she accepted applications for the first time because, “I believe it’s time for this to change. It’s a fundamental right to be with who you want to be with.” She also said she changed categories on the county’s marriage license paper application from “bride” and “groom” to “Applicant 1” and “Applicant 2.”

Like Judge Condon, McCulloch is also waiting to see how the Attorney General’s office or the state Supreme Court reacts to taking marriage-license applications from same-sex couples.

But it’s shocking to hear that same-sex couples are getting marriage licenses in, again, freaking South Carolina!

UPDATE: Our wingnut Attorney general has asked the state courts to halt the issuance of marriage licenses; for now, because one day soon he'll look a bigger fool than he did yesterday.

On the flip side, asshat, wingnut, douchebag Utah Republican state representative Kraig Powell opened a bill file in the Utah legislature to revise marriage statutes, suggesting that the law be rewritten to refer to same-sex marriages as "pairages."

I ask that the law be rewritten to refer to Powell as an effing moron, and I think my bill will pass first.

Look at that Clay Aiken, so sharp-tongued and quick-witted.

Clay is running to be North Carolina second district representative, and recently had a debate with the incumbent Republican Renee Ellmers, who, like all race-baiting goose-stepping GOPers keeps trying to tie her opponent to Barack Obama because, well, I guess they think that’s bad.

And Clay ain’t playing that, and when Ellmers uttered the line, “This Obama-Aiken economy is just killing us,” Clay responded, “You might need to get a new writer because calling it the Obama-Aiken economy is just preposterous.”

Still, Ellmers kept at it, this time alluding to Aiken's vocal prowess and showmanship while discussing the U.S. military:

“It's almost as if as an entertainer, you believe that you can just go in with a song and dance and change the mind of the military leaders.”

Aiken said, and it still makes me giggle, “The most embarrassing reality show in the country right now is Congress.”

Two snaps up for Aiken!

The Height Of GOP Stupidity, Part One: Lindsey Graham

Oops. This isn't
Lindsey Graham;
it's closeted homosexual
Paul Lynde

There are times when I give the GOP the benefit of the doubt. No, seriously, I do. I think maybe they are simply misguided in their thinking; maybe they aren't as educated, maybe they......

Yeah, then something like this comes along: our beloved[?] senator from South Carolina, the undeniably heterosexual Miss Lindsey Graham is actually asking government contractors to put their employees on layoff notice before the November elections, he says, to pressure Congress to address the scary movie "fiscal cliff."

Um, but is it me, or does it seem downright moronic, to lay people off, put people out of work, in these tough economic times, just to make a point. I mean, it is right? Unless, Miss Lindsey’s 'point' is to make unemployment rise and then blame Obama for it.

But would the GOP be that desperate and that incredibly stupid to sacrifice jobs just to win the White House?

That, my friends, is a rhetorical question.

This here's Lindsey.

Graham was joined by Grampa John McCain on his "Layoffs Are The Way To Go" tour which he hopes will bring attention to the $500 billion in automatic cuts scheduled to begin in January if Congress does not find other ways to cut spending. And Miss Lindsey is saying, "Politicians, you know, quite frankly respond to pressure.”

No, they don't, Lindsey, otherwise we wouldn't have any of these last second, ooh, we’re almost broke, quick everyone vote, budget meetings. Y'all sit on your asses up there for two years and then come back to your home state and beg us to send you back so you can 'finish the job' you never actually started. And for you, Miss Graham, to suggest that Americans actually lose their jobs just so you can make a point, is the height of GOP Stupidity.

Part One.

source