March for Our Lives Event Map Link
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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
A Nation Bamboozled
Today is the anniversary of one of the most avoidably-idiotic days in American history---the day Republicans shot our country in the face and expected a parade of sweets and flowers for it. It's the 15th dumbstickiversary of the invasion of Iraq. As always, we mark the occasion with a reminder of some of the lying and/or moronic statements made by the band of Very Serious People who orchestrated and/or promoted the debacle. Feel free to hurl rotten tomatoes as you see fit...
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." ... "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators."
---Dick Cheney (8/28/02) and (3/16/03)
"Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof---the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
---George W. Bush (10/7/02)
“I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?”
---Bill O’Reilly (1/29/03)
The cafeteria menus in the three House office buildings changed the name of "french fries" to "freedom fries," in a culinary rebuke of France stemming from anger over the country's refusal to support the U.S. position on Iraq.'
---CNN (3/12/03)
We know where [the WMDs] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
---Donald Rumsfeld (3/30/03)
[T]he antiwar crowd is still spinning a doomsday scenario. But it's getting harder and harder to take seriously the claim that freeing Iraq will make it harder to win the war on terrorism. Indeed, there's plenty of evidence to the contrary. [...] Who said war never solved anything?
---Brendan Miniter, The Wall Street Journal (4/8/03, now apparently scrubbed from their site)
"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals."
---Charles Krauthammer (4/19/03)
Ted Koppel: [Y]ou’re not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraqis going to be done for $1.7 billion?
Andrew Natsios [Agency for International Development]: Well, in terms of the American taxpayer's contribution, I do. This is it for the U.S.
---Nightline (4/23/03 at 2:30 mark)
4,516 American service personnel lost their lives during the war, with another 32,000 wounded. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who died. But, please: do continue telling us why the Bush II administration’s image deserves to be rehabilitated. I’m all ears.
P.S. Lest we forget, Lord Dampnut, aka Cadet Bone Spurs, was rah-rah on Iraq, too, until it all went south and he started lying to try and cover for his terrible judgment.
P.P.S. Minimum amount of time that U.S. taxpayers will be paying costs associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an AP analysis: 100 years. Surprise, kids! That means you, too.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, March 19, 2018
Note: You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Contrary to popular opinion, this is not a good thing. The other dreamer is evil and drives a steamroller.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til “Play ball!”: 10
Days ‘til the Maine Flower Show in Portland: 3
Rank of the FBI, Planned Parenthood, the “Me Too” Movement and special counsel Robert Mueller among most popular institutions and people in a list polled by NBC News: #1, #2, #3, #4
Value of goods we export to Canada and the amount Canada exports to us, respectively: $320 billion, $307.6 billion
Rank of Finland on the latest World Happiness Report measuring 156 countries: #1
Rank of the United States, down from 14: #18
Size of the average pothole in Donald Trump’s America: 2 feet wide, 6 feet deep
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Puppy Pic of the Day: ”Onward...”
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CHEERS to a meeting of the great unwashed orange rabble. If you’re going to be in northern New England on Saturday, April 14, we hope you can squeeze in lunch in C&J’s stomping grounds. The meetup starts around noon at The Snow Squall Restaurant, 18 Ocean Street in South Portland. We’ll eat, we’ll drink, we’ll swap #MarchForOurLives stories, and place bets on just how big the Democratic tsunami will be in seven-and-a-half months. To RSVP or get more info: email Kossack nhox42 at nhox42[at] gmail.com ASAP so we can let the restaurant know if they’ll need to add an extra delivery from the Pabst Blue Ribbon truck. Hope you can make it!
CHEERS to previews of coming attractions. Saturday’s marches against gun violence are six days away, and I really don’t think the NRA and its bought-and-paid-for politicians have any idea how deafening the primal scream is going to be for action now. But here are a couple items that suggest what’s coming. First, a single tweet by Stoneman Douglas survivor and march co-organizer David Hogg got a student-shaming Maine state representative and Trump cultist to drop his reelection bid (with a huge assist from Democrat Eryn Gilchrist, who entered the unopposed race Thursday to challenge him). And second, this ad promoting the marches, featuring an opening line that’ll peel the bark off a tree:
Oh, and FYI: the number of marches and rallies set in stone for this Saturday in DC and around the world is 819. Or, if you’re using the Wayne LaPierre Scale of Concern, that’s eyes bugged out 8.19 inches.
JEERS to dick moves. I don’t know much about Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe. I don’t know why he got fired Friday night by Jeff Sessions on the orders of Donald Trump. I don’t know why they did the deed less than two days before his retirement. But here’s what I do know: That’s a shitty thing to do, by which I mean it’s a Republican thing to do. And when Republicans do shitty things, I’m reminded that I also know this: the midterms are in 232 days on November 6th.
P.S. Pretty shitty state of affairs when I repost tweets from people who once endorsed torture:
Then again, we live in strange times.
P.P.S. Nice...
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JEERS to Reaganomics, Part Umpteen Zillion. Here we go agaaaain! Oklahoma Republicans took one look at red state Kansas’s disastrous experiment with trickle-down economics---“lower taxes, lighter regulation and a raft of business-friendly reforms”---and said to themselves: Yeah, cut us a slice ‘o that! And you’ll never guess how it turned out, except of course yes you will:
Conservatives passed all of it, setting in motion a grand experiment. Now it's time for another big election, but instead of campaigning on eight years of achievements, Republicans are confronting chaos and crisis. Agency budgets that were cut during the Great Recession have been slashed even deeper. Rural hospitals are closing, and teachers are considering a statewide strike over low wages.
"I'm not scared to say it, because I love Oklahoma, and we are dying," said Republican state Rep.Leslie Osborn. "I truly believe the situation is dire." […] Gov. Mary Fallin and GOP leaders have been unable to reverse course because of a constitutional quirk that says any tax increase needs a three-fourth's majority vote of the Legislature. […]
Teachers are in shorter supply too. There are about 1,500 fewer teachers in Oklahoma than in 2010, according to a recent study, and nearly 20 percent of districts have shifted to a four-day school week to save money.
So what does the likely winner of the 2018 gubernatorial election---Lt. Governor Todd Lamb (R)---have to say about the fact that Oklahoma is turning into a poorer, more desolate, angry, earthquake-prone wasteland littered with decreasingly-productive fracking and oil wells? He says, "I'm opposed to tax increases, period." In fairness, he added: “There’s nothing about our situation that creating a 69,960-square-mile Mad Max World theme park can’t fix.” (I call dibs on the gyrocopter.)
CHEERS to avian homecomings. Another sign of impending SPRING! Once they make it through Customs, the swallows will be returning to the San Juan Capistrano Mission in California today. And there’s some especially encouraging news this year, thanks to a little human fake-out ingenuity:
[Swallows expert Dr. Charles] Brown, a professor of biological sciences from the University of Tulsa, has headed up a mission program since 2012 to lure swallows back after years of declining numbers because of urbanization.
A strategy of broadcasting bird calls and building a row of simulated nests appears to be having the intended effect, said Mechelle Lawrence Adams, the mission’s executive director.
“We saw a lot of birds last year,” she said.
Another effective lure: free turndown service and mints on their pillows.
CHEERS to letters from the C&J mailbag. Sent via Pack Mule Express:
Dear Shaikh Ijaz of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League party in Punjab,
Hello! How are you? I am fine, although it sure is cold here in Maine---we can barely feel our toes Ha Ha! I bet you can relate during certain times of the year, also!
I’m writing to commend you for banning dance parties in your Punjab region because you wish to “stop vulgarity and the promotion of Western culture among youths.” I agree. Sixty years ago we censored Elvis Presley’s vulgar hip gyrations, and life was orderly and wonderful. Then the forces of depravity unleashed our savage animal lust by reversing that decision and “letting it all hang out.” Today kids here participate in mass marches and influence policy at the state and federal level in numbers not seen since the 1960s. Who knows where their unbridled quest for power (and dancing!) will end---perhaps with all us adults IN PRISON???
Don’t let this happen to you, my good friend Shaikh. Encase those kids’ boogie shoes in cement if you must. There’s too much at stake. And if you’re ever in Maine, please look me up. I’ll be the one with the frozen feet. Ha Ha Ha! Unless it’s summer.
Sincerely, Billy in Maine
As with all our letters: packed in six pounds of glitter.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 19, 2008
JEERS to John McCain. Last night I went out and asked every six year-old I could find whether or not the Sunni members of al Qaeda were going to the Shiite Iranians for guns and training. They all said, "No, you twit...any idiot knows that!" Well apparently not John "Twit" McCain. Wow, imagine that: shocking ignorance on a vital national security issue by a guy who claims to be a genius on national security issues. On the bright side, if he ends up succeeding George Bush, at least we know the transition will be seamless.
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And just one more…
JEERS to the Very Seriousest of the Very Serious People. Since the universe is taking a bit of time this week to look back at the clusterfuck that was the Iraq War, it's worth pulling this gem out of cyber-storage once more. This is Tom Friedman's 2003 rationalization for why inflicting pain and punishment on Iraq was teh awesome. Literally, he told the Middle East: "Suck on this"...
“What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, ‘Which part of this sentence don't you understand?’ You don't think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna to let it grow?
Well Suck. On. This. Okay? That, Charlie, was what this war was about. We could've hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We could’ve hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.”
On the one hand, what a typical American know-it-all bully jerk. On the other hand, if someone's going to present himself as an expert on sucking, I can think of few people more qualified than Tom Friedman.
Oh, and congratulations to Vladimir Putin for his win yesterday with 138 percent of the vote---a new record. Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
“Cheers and Jeers has turned into a hive of liberal activism, most often with individuals representing the interests of Rubberduckistan, not the United States.”
---Sebastian Gorka
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