From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Wanna hear a joke?
President Bush walks into a bar and says, "I will live and lead by these principles: to advance my convictions with civility, to pursue the public interest with courage, to speak for greater justice and compassion, to call for responsibility and try to live it as well. In all these ways, I will bring the values of our history to the care of our times."
Funny, huh.
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, March 15, 2007
Note: Tomorrow's C&J will be a west coast-friendly affair. Join us around 4pm PDT (7pm EDT) and find out who's having my baby.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til "Play ball!": 17
Days 'til Bush leaves office: 676
Average duration of the 130 civil wars fought worldwide since 1945: 11 years
Rank of Iraq's civil war among those 130 in terms of fatalities per year: 9
(Source: Harper's Index)
Amount U.S. airlines have collectively lost since 1947: $14 Billion
(Source: Air Transport Association via Newsweek)
Number of states in the union: 32
(Source: Heritage Foundation)
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Your Puppy Pic of the Day: "Eh, we'll catch the bad guys later...Zzzzz..."
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NEW! Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Could I suggest something kind of grown-up? Despite Rumsfeld's rationalizing, we are in a deep pile of poop here, and we're best likely to come out of it OK by pulling together. So could we stop this cheap old McCarthyite trick of pretending that correspondents who are in fact risking their lives and doing their best to bring the rest of us accurate information are somehow disloyal or connected to al-Qaida?
Wrong, yes, of course they could be wrong. But there is now a three-year record of who has been right about what is happening in Iraq, Rumsfeld or the media. And the score is: Press---1,095, Rumsfeld---zero.
---March, 2006
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CHEERS to the GREAT STATE OF MAINE. We told Massachusetts to bite the big one 187 years ago today, splitting off to become the 23rd, or "Bean Boot" state. We've been kicking ass ever since. Tonight: Lobster. Ayuh!
CHEERS to victory. That is to say, VICTORY!!! The Iraqi military says that peace and prosperity have been restored throughout Mesopotamia. Hooray---we win and the evildoers lose. Last American soldier home is a rotten egg.
JEERS to March 15. Today is the Ides of March. If your name rhymes with Bulius Baesar, watch your back.
CHEERS to cutting through the crap. Today's must-read is actually yesterday's lead editorial in The New York Times, wherein the prosecutors scandal is rightly called out as Politics, Pure and Cynical:
Time and again, President Bush and his team have assured Americans that they needed new powers to prevent another attack by an implacable enemy. Time and again, Americans have discovered that these powers were not being used to make them safer, but in the service of Vice President Dick Cheney’s vision of a presidency so powerful that Congress and the courts are irrelevant, or Karl Rove’s fantasy of a permanent Republican majority. [...]
The Justice Department has been saying that it is committed to putting Senate-confirmed United States attorneys in every jurisdiction. But the newly released documents make it clear that the department was making an end run around the Senate---for baldly political reasons. Congress should broaden the investigation to determine whether any other prosecutors were forced out for not caving in to political pressure---or kept on because they did.
Polite golf clap to Republican Senator John Sununu, the first Republican to call for Speedy's exit. I'm likin' where this is headed.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda... GONG!!!
We interrupt this broadcast for another edition of The C&J One-word Answer Man. Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota asks:
"Is Halliburton trying to run away from bad publicity on their contracts? Are they trying to run away from the obligation to pay U.S. taxes? Or are they trying to set up a corporate presence in Dubai so that they can avoid the restrictions that currently exist on doing business with prohibited countries like Iran?"
Yes.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers...
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda... GONG!!!
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CHEERS to our adopted grandma. Happy 74th birthday to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. A tough old gal with a heart 'o gold. Her present from C&J: permission to go kick Scalia in the shins.
P.S. Stay healthy, Ma'am.
JEERS to niggling thoughts. What keeps me awake at night is the probability that, right now, a prominent Democrat is doing---or scheming to do---something dishonest, unethical and/or illegal that will cause a scandal that the right-wingers will tear into like Dennis Hastert with a box of Oreos. Whoever you are, stop it.
CHEERS to giving General Peter Pace the old "tuckus salute." After the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff defended the "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" policy because he thinks gays are "immoral," Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson came out swinging in The Washington Post:
Since 1993, I have had the rich satisfaction of knowing and working with many openly gay and lesbian Americans, and I have come to realize that "gay" is an artificial category when it comes to measuring a man or woman's on-the-job performance or commitment to shared goals. It says little about the person. Our differences and prejudices pale next to our historic challenge. Gen. Pace is entitled, like anyone, to his personal opinion, even if it is completely out of the mainstream of American thinking. But he should know better than to assert this opinion as the basis for policy of a military that represents and serves an entire nation. Let us end "don't ask, don't tell."
By August, please, before I turn 43. Hooah!
CHEERS (cruelty to Native Americans notwithstanding) to #7. Happy Birthday to Andrew "I Was Censured And All I Got Were These Lousy Pantaloons" Jackson, born 240 years ago today in South Carolina. Pay your respects here. But don't disturb his rest...the old man was a mean sumbitch.
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One Year Ago in C&J: March 15, 2006...
JEERS to the misleader-in-chief. George W. Bush, in his PR speech Monday, once again---just as the neocon playbook requires---tried to bamboozle America again:
Since the morning of September the 11th, we have known that the war on terror would require great sacrifice---and in this war we have said farewell to some very good men and women.
Yeah, and I hear we've lost a bunch in the Iraq war, too. Why'd we go there, again?
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And just one more...
CHEERS to seeing the sights (if ya know what I mean). My goodness...thanks to eyetracking technology, we now know that, when men---such as, say, General Peter Pace---look at pictures of men, their eyes inevitably drift "down there." Not only that, but "Men tend to fixate more on areas of private anatomy on animals as well, as evidenced when users were directed to browse the American Kennel Club site." Ruff Ruff, big boy.
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Floor's open. What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless Testimonial:
"They found that the acute effects of Cheers and Jeers were as effective as a nicotine patch."
--- Dr. Robert West, professor of health psychology
University College London
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