From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Ah, the smell of fresh gunpowder in the morning (one year ago in C&J):
In what has to be the NRA's worst PR nightmare, gun (and bomb and missile) advocate Dick Cheney shot a good friend in the face over the weekend. According to The Daily Show's Firearms Mishap Analyst Rob Corddry (via Crooks and Liars), it was a necessary action:
"Jon, tonight the Vice President is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. Now, according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush. And while the quail turned out to be a 78 year old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Whittington's face. ...
In a post 9/11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak."
Meanwhile, one year later a fresh Harris poll has Deadeye Dick at a record low 29 percent approval. I'll drink to that. So, apparently, will he.
Cheers and Jeers reloads in There’s Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Note: Guess what happens when you throw a bucket of spaghetti with meat sauce into a snowblower? Wrong. It's much, much worse.
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By the Numbers:
Days ‘til Spring: 36
Days 'til Days `til Baisakhi (Punjabi start of the New Year): 59
Market value The New York Times has lost in the past four years: 50%
(Source: The Week magazine)
Years between the awarding of U.S. patent No. 1 and No. 1,000,000: 75
Years between patent No. 6,000,000 and 7,000,000 (awarded last year): 6
(Source: Harper's Index)
Number of oversight hearings on Iraq the 110th Congress has held in its first month: 52
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Your Puppy Pic of the Day: Just in case anyone's forgotten what pure happiness looks like. [Sigh] Then they go to obedience school and lose their innocence.
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CHEERS to unbridled riches. The first YearlyKos '07 auction got underway yesterday and there's lots to like, including a week in St. Croix, a rant on The Sam Seder Show, and---if I'm reading this correctly---dinner and a movie with a real stud. Bid early, bid often. The free world depends on you.
JEERS to our Commander-in-Chief. Because all he had to do a few years back was slam his fist on his desk and say, "Goddammit, I want those Humvees up-armored now!!" But I guess that was just too much to ask:
The Army is working to fill a shortfall in Iraq of thousands of advanced Humvee armor kits designed to reduce U.S. troop deaths from roadside bombs---including a rising threat from particularly lethal weapons linked to Iran and known as "explosively formed penetrators" (EFP)---that are now inflicting 70 percent of the American casualties in the country, according to U.S. military and civilian officials. [...]
U.S. Army units in Iraq and Afghanistan lack more than 4,000 of the latest Humvee armor kit, known as FRAG Kit 5, according to U.S. officials. The Army has ramped up production of the armor, giving priority to troops in Baghdad, but the upgrade is not scheduled to be completed until this summer, Army officials said.
And yet he continues to sleep soundly at night. I can only assume he's still a thumb-sucker.
JEERS to circling the wagons. Proving once again that protecting their own asses is more important than protecting those of our troops in Iraq, House Republicans plan to use the debate on a resolution opposing Bush's escalation---which starts today---as "...a mini-political campaign, deploying a rapid-response team to counter Democrats' statements, aggressively trying to get its leaders on television and radio, and creating a 'resource center' off the House floor." If they run this campaign like the one they ran last fall, this should work out quite well. For us.
CHEERS to a Very Barry Weekend. Barack Obama officially announced his candidacy Saturday in front of the old courthouse in Springfield (all of the Simpson's characters were there). He looks presidential. His family looks First-familyish. He sounds presidential:
For the last six years we've been told that our mounting debts don't matter, we've been told that the anxiety Americans feel about rising health care costs and stagnant wages are an illusion, we've been told that climate change is a hoax, and that tough talk and an ill-conceived war can replace diplomacy, and strategy, and foresight. And when all else fails, when Katrina happens, or the death toll in Iraq mounts, we've been told that our crises are somebody else's fault. We're distracted from our real failures, and told to blame the other party, or gay people, or immigrants.
And as people have looked away in disillusionment and frustration, we know what's filled the void. The cynics, and the lobbyists, and the special interests who've turned our government into a game only they can afford to play. They write the checks and you get stuck with the bills, they get the access while you get to write a letter, they think they own this government, but we're here today to take it back. The time for that politics is over. It's time to turn the page.
And his intellectual and moral integrity are light years ahead of the current White House occupant. That can only mean there's something very, very wrong with him. Stay in the race, Kucinich, we may need you yet.
JEERS to Presidents' Day ads. They're all over TV and print hocking everything from cars to mattresses---bad actors in bad Abe and George costumes spouting lines like "We'll free your credit with no payments `til 2008!" and "We cannot tell a lie...we're dealin'!!" And advertisers wonder why they always find themselves at the bottom of the professional food chain.
CHEERS to keeping track of our beans (via Kossack LNK). If the thought of figuring out what goes into the federal budget process makes as much sense to you as meatloaf with chocolate sauce, you'll love the National Priorities web site. It lays it all out nice 'n easy. But fair warning: if you use their interactive tool to see how the gub'ment spends your tax dollars, your breakfast may end up on your monitor. This cheer has been sponsored by Windex™.
JEERS to sucking on your sorrows. "Bittersweets" candies resemble those famous sugary Valentine's hearts, but contain inscriptions for the unlucky-in-love like: TABLE FOR 1, AIM LOWER, and CALL A 900 NUMBER. We have a special candy message for the makers of these fine confections: CHOKE ON THIS.
JEERS to Newsweek. For spreading anti-Pelosi propaganda in their Conventional Wisdom Watch:
Sure Hastert had military jet, but seeking bigger one (to go nonstop) makes her sound like a 757 liberal.
Once more: she didn’t request a bigger plane...the Sergeant at Arms did. So stick your big red 'down' arrow where the sun don’t shine, editors.
P.S. Bonus JEERS for calling Anna Nicole Smith an "over-dose victim." Do you guys ever read the papers?
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Gong! Gong!! Budda Budda Budda... GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man.
E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post asks: "Why is it that abortion, a subject on which political candidates often claim to be expressing their most deeply held moral convictions, is often the issue on which they seem especially opportunistic and unprincipled?"
Duh!
Now back to Cheers and Jeers
Gong! Gong!! Budda Budda Budda... GONG!!!
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CHEERS to the sounds of victory. At the Grammy Awards Sunday, progressives made their mark:
Spoken Word Album: Jimmy Carter for Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis
Comedy Album: Lewis Black for The Carnegie Hall Performance
Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album: Tony Bennett for Duets: An American Classic.
At age 75, John Williams won his 19th and 20th Grammys for his scores for Memoirs of a Geisha and Munich.
Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year (Not Ready to Make Nice), Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group, Best Country Album, and Producer of the Year: The Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way
And, thanks to the gold bestowed on the Black Eyes Peas' My Humps, the world finally has its first award-winning song with the words, "...Let's spend time not money, and mix your milk wit my cocoa puff, milky, milky cocoa puff, mix your milk with my cocoa puff, milky, milky riiiiiiight." (But why, oh why, did it take 49 years??)
JEERS to the Maine Sunday Telegram. As a sidebar to a story on a Maine-connected soldier who was recently killed in Iraq, my hometown paper printed a list of casualties under the banner, "SOLDIERS WITH MAINE TIES WHO DIED IN WAR ON TERROR"...even though Iraq had nothing to do with the war on terrorism. Sometimes I think they do it just to piss me off.
CHEERS to new coinage. Check your pockets for the U.S. Mint's latest state quarter. Montana's design was released a couple weeks ago and it features the backside of an anorexic cow. I hope that's right---I don’t have my reading glasses on.
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Two Years Ago in C&J: February 13, 2005...
CHEERS to the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party. Knock knock. Who's there? Howard Dean. Howard Dean who? Howard Dean, the new Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Baby!! Memo to self: breakdancing after 40 = Bad Idea.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to solving the world's problems. Lest you think science in America has been completely stifled by the knuckledragger wing of the Republic party, here's a ray of hope: A molecular biologist has created the world's first caffeinated doughnut, and a rocket scientist has invented the world's first pair of comfortable high-heel shoes. In other news, the number of drag queens running in marathons has quadrupled. Film at 11.
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Floor's open. What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless Testimonial:
We don’t know what those other [global warming] cycles were caused by in the past. Could be Bill in Portland Maine flatulence, you know, or who knows?
---Rep. Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA)
2/8/07
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