Posts tagged: Emily Litella

Emily Litella: Act V — What’s Good for Romney Isn’t So Good for Hagel

By , February 15, 2013 8:29 am

Remember the Democrats’ feigned outrage over Mitt Romney’s income taxes? How they wanted him to come clean and lay 10 years of his IRS filings on the table when the standard was two? Remember how Harry Reid claimed Romney had not paid taxes with the only shred of evidence being a shadowy, unnamed source?

Well, apparently, that was then. This is now, and it’s Chuch Hagel, for Hell’s sake, and he’s only up for Secretary of State. So what’s the problem? Why’s Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) doing such nasty things to our boy? I mean, really! Or words to that effect:

But with his latest attack on Hagel, Cruz has gone too far. Cruz has every right — indeed, he has an obligation — to question Hagel vigorously. He has a right to demand relevant information. He has a right to vote against Hagel; indeed Republicans are now filibustering the nomination.

But he doesn’t have the right to smear Hagel, with no supporting evidence, with insinuations that the nominee received money from foreign governments or extremist groups.

“We do not know, for example, if he received compensation for giving paid speeches at extreme or radical groups,” Cruz told the Senate Armed Services Committee before it voted Tuesday to approve Hagel’s nomination. “It is at a minimum relevant to know if that $200,000 that he deposited in his bank account came directly from Saudi Arabia, came directly from North Korea.”

The “only reasonable inference” to draw from Hagel’s refusal to provide additional financial information, he said, is that “there was something in there that they did not want to make public.”

As the committee chairman, Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, pointed out, Cruz was attempting to unilaterally rewrite committee rules, which require two years of financial information, instead of the five Cruz demanded. And Cruz’s sleazy innuendos about hidden foreign money are undercut by a separate requirement to disclose any transactions with a foreign government — going back 10 years. (Emphasis supplied)

So it’s with a drum roll, that I bring Emily Litella back on stage because apparently, it only matters if it’s a Republican doing it, whatever the it is at the moment. Get it?

Emily Litella: Act II

By , January 4, 2013 11:10 am

A leading environmentalist and opponent of GMOs (genetically modified organisms), Mark Lynas, has issued a blunt statement that he was wrong to oppose GMOs.

I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.

As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.

So I guess you’ll be wondering—what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.

Emily Litella was available for comment.

Norman Borlaug would be pleased.

Maybe He Meant Higher “Steak” Taxes?

By , December 13, 2012 7:22 am

Why do we listen to this plutocrat when we apparently don’t want to listen to this one?

Emily Litella comes to mind.

Never mind indeed.

Warren Buffett’s $1.2 billion share buyback from a single unnamed investor likely helped that person’s estate save substantially on taxes, just one day after the Berkshire Hathaway CEO said the rich should actually be paying more, not less, when they die. With the “fiscal cliff” looming and … taxes set to rise dramatically in less than three weeks, the timing was seen as advantageous — and, according to Berkshire watchers, also out of place in the context of Buffett’s recent tax activism. … Berkshire said it bought 9,200 Class A shares from “the estate of a long-time shareholder,” whom it did not name, at $131,000 per share, a price in line with where Berkshire has traded in recent weeks. …

Yet given his wealth and his own self-professed low tax rate, Buffett has been called out in some quarters for not practicing what he preaches.

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