I can't bring myself to unsubscribe from
ABC News' The Note.
I wish I could. I've tried. But the fact is that the Note and I have a relationship. A train wreck of a relationship that I can't get away from; kind of like the girl that I discovered on my fire escape, spying on me and cutting the eyes out of every picture of a woman in my photo album. Amanda and I are still together, thanks for asking.
Anyways, In today's Mock the Note- screenplays and blackberry messages by members of congress, going below Pelosi's "Mason Dixon line," electoral cockblocking, fencing (the gay french kind) the border, Alberto Gonzalez tortures his grandparents, Arnold's "strategic growth plan" (um, yes, we all wrote the same joke), and more...
The Note: Pick Your Poisoned Apple
Never write anything down.
May 17, Washington
Halloween last year notwithstanding, I've never really wanted to be Snow White. Nonetheless, I found the title of today's Note hopeful.
Like those Americans in Red State America (or as they call it "Real America"), I value choice. You can choose to be straight or you can choose to love women. You can be Baptist or Protestant. You can deport your immigrant population or you can drive them out with guns and Jim Crow-era legislation. You can raise that child from the accidental pregnancy yourself or you can give it up for adoption (and yes, those are the ONLY two choices, don't even ask.) I love choice.
So it would seem that The Note, after years and years of insider-the-beltway jokes, agenda setting, and ignoring political candidates that upset the delicate narrative that is The Note (HIS NAME IS NED LAMONT, NOTE. 30+ PERCENT OF THE CT DELEGATE VOTE, NARAL, NOW... Any of this sounding familar?), perhaps the Note is finally ready to offer some choice.
Sure the choice is between a wide variety of poisoned apples that will kill you, but still; Progress.
The Walt Disney Company and ABC News will announce later today its latest venture intended to give consumers more choice and control over what they see, read, and hear. Content may be king, but the consumer is bigger than Jesus, as they say in Burbank and Liverpool.
Beginning today, each day's Note will have eight different lede options. Readers can pick the one that fits their individual needs.
See? Doesn't that sound amazing? Choice over my political content? All Arnold, all the time? Awesome!
Plus, someone else finally acknowledged that maybe, just maybe, this Jesus guy ought to get down off his high horse, or lamb, or whatever he rides around on. There's other shit going on in the world, Jesus. We've got car insurance to buy from Geckos and cave men, immigrants to deport and celebrites to chastize for their poor parenting skills.
And beginning next week, The Note goes all-video, dropping the old-fashioned text mode for streaming full-motion pictures of Teddy Davis sitting at his desk, reading all eight versions aloud, straight to camera.
A new day, indeed, has dawned!!!!
I begin to get suspicious. I don't know who Teddy Davis is, so I instead focus on the overuse of exclaimation points, which just screams untruthful. You remember the "Mission Accomplished!!!!" banner.
So on to today's political news, and, again, you decide what "the" lede is. Each choice comes with a primary document and then the kind of sharp analysis you have come to expect from The Note:
I KNEW IT! F You Note!
Look, I appreciate the effort to be clever, I really do, but this is exactly why we hate the Note. You promise me choice and all I get is a typical Note outline about what the Note deems to be the top stories of the day.
The Note is a tease. Everyone loves and hates the tease (I'm looking at you Al Gore 08), and the Note takes it to teastacular (new word) new heights.
You know that drunk guy at the bar running around screaming loudly, flipping back and forth between flirting, flattering, and trying to make serious conversation, usually ending up making no sense? That's the Note, and no one goes home with that guy.
As I'm all about choice, I have almost zero interest in what the Note wants to talk about. Kind of like that drunk guy. I don't care about the Sabers chances to win the Cup.
But here it is anyway:
1. The text of the Blackberry messages back and forth between two House Republicans as they listened to Karl Rove at this morning's Conference meeting on Capitol Hill, at which one leadership aide said Rove was facing Members "with increasingly hardened positions on the issue" of immigration.
"does it hurt your soul when Karl stares at you?"
"used to. don't look him in the eye. you'll be fine."
"you know he licked my wifes face once, right?"
"that's his thing."
"he told me i couldn't do anything about it. it was like that scene in crash."
"i know. i felt bad. is that how we treat blacks in this country?"
"we're republicans, that's how we treat everyone."
"ok, as long it's not just the blacks, and the gays. when i think about what we're gonna do to these thousands of immigrant families, i get all tingley."
"me too."
"seriously, my position on this issue is becoming encreasingly hardened."
"lol. and by 'position,' of course, you mean..."
"of course."
3. Josh Bolten's attaboy email to Tony Snow after yesterday's maiden voyage.
"Dear T.Snow,
Look, I know I shouldn't do this in an email, but I just can't keep it in. I was watching you. I wasn't gonna say anything when you lied in response to the first question. But when you dropped the phrase "tar baby," I knew. And then, well, then you almost cried. It broke my heart. The president and FLOTUS are going out of town this weekend. Meet me on the Truman Balcony. Bring a red rose if you feel the way I do.
Yours,
Bolty."
7. The text of the first two (failed) Note ledes proposed by the night-shift Googling monkeys.
At first, I thought it was kind of cute the Note calls its interns Google Monkeys. But when I did it, I got yelled at, so I'm left to believe that The Note employs actual Googling monkeys. It really is the only explanation for the Neil Diamond reference on Monday.
The Senate takes up immigration at 9:15 am ET and the Senate Armed Services Committee holds a 4:00 pm ET hearing on using the National Guard in a support role along the US-Mexican border.
"Um, we've been talking it over, and here's the thing: We think 6,000 National Guard troops is kind of light. We on the SASC are wondering if you want a few more, say, 40,000 or so? Look, we deploy the troops to wherever the President says we need to send troops to distract the American people from the crappy job he's doing, and right now, that's on the border. I guarantee you, the troops won't know the difference. What do you say? Please let us leave Iraq?"
Oscar Solis, the first Filipino-American bishop ordained in the United States, and other pro-immigration coalition members from Los Angeles, plan to deliver 100,000 postcards to the offices of Dr./Leader/Sen. Frist and Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid today.
This is a good plan until you see the image on the postcard.
While immigration consumes the Hill, the President will be trying to get back to his tax cut message today. He signs the Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2005 at 1:45 pm ET. He attends a 7:05 pm ET RNC gala at the Daughters of the American Revolution's Constitution Hall, and he delivers 10:30 am ET remarks to the 2006 United States Winter Olympic and Paralympics teams on the South Lawn. The RNC expects a $17 million haul and 800 attendees at tonight's event.
Democrats will respond to the President's bill signing by holding a 2:15 pm ET press conference with Sen. Reid, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), and Senate hopeful Ben Cardin (D-MD). Democrats are expected to criticize the President for "eliminating tax deductions that help students pay for college in order to give massive handouts to big business and multi-millionaires."
Ok, so the President is spending his day giving out money, pretending that a guy from Texas cares about snow sports, hitting on those hot daughters of the American Revolution, and pulling down $17 mill for his hardened buddies in the RNC. That's a good day.
The Dems? Sure, they're being responsible, but that doesn't excuse the fact that the biggest draw of their event features is two of the whitest guys in America. Let's get some college students involved here. Hot, supple, college students. Bring a keg and Kennedy is gonna get involved and then you've got a Political Par-tay.
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) will also be engaging the energy issue today. To demonstrate his support for the "Vehicle and Fuel Choices for American Security Act," Brownback joins Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), and others at 12:00 pm ET for a hybrid vehicle demonstration behind the Cannon House Office Building.
Frankly, when Brownback supports anything that isn't powered by Jesus, I'm astonished.
The hybrid vehicle demonstration? Watching Kuchinch try to parallel park his Prius.
The Washington press corps will get a look at the tanned, rested, and (some say) ready Gore at 6:30 pm ET when VIPs arrive at the National Geographic Society for the DC premiere of "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore's global warming film.
What if there was no global warming? Would Gore be as tanned as he is? If he wasn't as tanned, would he be as rested? If he wasn't rested, would he be ready (to run for president)? Probably not. Clearly, Al Gore loves global warming.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) signs the $2.85 billion housing bond component of his Strategic Growth Plan.
Man, when did Arnold become such a pussy? A housing bond? I miss the days when weed, giant oil drums filled with human growth hormone, and strippers were the main components of his Strategic Growth Plan.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post's ed board slams the President's proposal to deploy the National Guard to the border.
"Those troops could be sent to war in Iraq, which we on the WaPo editorial board still stupidly support."
"Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted yesterday it's 'just not clear' if his Mexican-immigrant grandparents settled in the U.S. legally," reports the New York Daily News.
Gonzales added though that if his grandparents were alive, he'd have them down in Gitmo tomorrow and he'd "find out."
Look, I don't like the AG for a number of reasons, but I couldn't really care less how his grandparents got here, and he certainly has achived a lot, so why doesn't the president just point to him every single time one of these anti-immigrant gasbags gets up and starts slamming Hispanics and their legacy?
Oh? Illegal immigration is the new gay marriage? Ok, nevermind then.
Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) continues his push for fencing on the border.
Enjoy the visual. I could get behind this border patrol plan if it involved dressing 6,000 National Guard troops in white outfits and giving them little swords. That would seriously be amazing.
Verizon jumps on the Bell South band wagon, USA Today reports. LINK
The Washington Post's Arshad Mohammed tries to make heads or tails out of yesterday's confusing Verizon press release.
I want to make a "can you hear me now" joke, but I'll hate myself forever.
Surveillance politics:
What if USA Today was wrong, The Note asks innocently?
Stop acting so damn innocent. What if you stop criticizing every god damn thing I do and knock off this passive-aggressive behavior, huh? I mean, it's not like it's helping anything! I'm really trying the best that I can, and I mean, ok, I'm not the best boyfriend ever, but I'm trying. Everything takes time and sometimes you don't always get everything you want right away. We've only been together two years, that's nothing! No, you're the one that needs to grow up! I don't know why you can't come home once in a while and have a real dinner, just the two of us. I don't know. What's so great about dinner anways? The guys are here because they don't they have anywhere else that they can go and watch the game. I've told you, I am trying harder in bed. Well, maybe if you didn't just lay there. Hold up, that's not fair! That's not true, I've made plenty of suggestions to spice things up. Well if you really loved me you would. You might even like it.
With regards to the national stature of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. Reynolds said that with the exception of Miami, "It's kind of an open secret that Nancy Pelosi doesn't travel much below the Mason-Dixon line."
The Note would like to apologize and issue a correction: It was not actually Representive Reynolds who commented on Leader Pelosi's unwillingess to go down below the Mason-Dixon line, it was Pelosi' husband, Paul.
The Hill's Alexander Bolton Notes that many Pennsylvania Republicans believe Rep. John Murtha's (D-PA) is blocking additional money flow to their districts and worry about the effects in their 2006 campaigns
John Murtha, Hero, Patriot, Electoral Cockblocker.
The Schwarzenegger Era:
Gov. Schwarzenegger asks President Bush for details, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The paper expects those specifics to come out today.
Specifically, Arnold wanted to know how many immigrants he's dealing with, how many heart-stopping explosions there are going to be, how did they kidnap his wife and daugher, how these leather pants makes his ass look, and how long until the bomb goes off.
2008: Republicans:
The Boston Herald takes on Romney's remark on Good Morning America yesterday in which he warned of the possibility of "looting" in the face of severe flooding; per the Herald, "the remarks puzzled local officials who reported no incidents of looting in the Bay State, New Hampshire or Maine, and prompted experts to question if Romney was raising red flags for no reason - or for political reasons."
Sorry Mitt, you have to be president or a cyborg from the future to delare a false emergency or crisis or war to race to the rescue of. Good effort though.
Bush Administration:
Tom Friedman uses his New York Times column to bemoan the Goss/Foggo era at the CIA and he suggests that the Bush Administration has been one where loyalty trumps expertise.
Tomorrow, Tom Friedman discovers electricity.
The Washington Times' Ralph Z. Hallow (he of the Rove-complimented haircut) writes that Huckabee "made it official" yesterday, "sort of." LINK
Huckabee told reporters in Washington yesterday that he is "seriously" preparing a run for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. He said the biggest impediment is money and added that he wouldn't mind being tagged as a "populist."
"'I have more in common with the people working in the kitchen than with those sitting at the head table,' he said."
So, this is news. The Huck is poor. Like, "I want to run for president because I'm an inshape governor who can appear socially moderate but deep down I'm like Bush but donors don't know me yet so they won't give me the $20 million I need to really get this thing off the ground" poor. You know, just like the Mexicans working in the kitchen.
Politics:
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) will give back the $23,000 he received for a screenplay after the producer who gave him the money pled guilty yesterday to fraud.
Ok, this is of special interest to me because this is my hometown congressman. As I was going through the Note today, making, um, Notes (how meta), I originally skipped this item. A congressman returning money because someone he knows went to jail. It happens all the time. But then it hit me:
UNITED STATES REPRESENTATIVE DANA ROHRABACHER WROTE AND SOLD A SCREENPLAY! Holy God. Can you imagine? I want another diary just so I can spend my time dreaming what it might be about.
Dan Godrocker, a renegade surfer and amatuer screenwriter, is in a desperate race against time to save a small beach community from a maurading band of dark-skinned visitors who descend on the town like locust. No one know where exactly they all came from, but Dan has to use all of his wit and skills, to save the world. When his greatest hope, a charasmatic but clueless world leader makes the fateful decision to abandon his conservative principles and turns his back on Godrocker, Godrocker enlists the help of a rogue cyborg super-spy kindergarten teacher from the future, who is also, ironically, not from America. It's a race against race as Godrocker must overcome his fear of foreigners while simulatiously shooting them in the face with a magical gun given to him by the mysterious dark lord of the land, Cheney.
Rock on, Note, rock on.
Matt
PS- As I'd like to turn this into a daily diary, please feel free to shoot me an email if you'd like to contribue.