From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Elizabeth Edwards gets feisty in the August issue of The Progressive. The magazine is revamping its web site so it's not online at the moment, but I don’t think they'd hold it against you if you picked up a hardcopy.
This seems to dovetail with Kos's '05 flashback Wednesday defining the difference between us and DLC Democrats:
The Progressive: Is there a split between "new Democrats" and progressives, or what Paul Wellstone used to call "the Democratic wing of the Democratic party?"
Elizabeth Edwards: John gave a speech at the DNC meeting saying we don’t need to reinvent our party; we just need to remember who we are. And who we are is the party of working people, including people who want to work and can't, [and] people who have worked and are trying to retire. That's who we are and have always been. Sometimes we need to be reminded of that.
It's easy to get misled with the DLC mantra "love the worker, love the employer." The employers can pretty much take care of themselves. So as a party our job is to give voice to those people who don’t have a powerful voice. Unless that translates into votes or contributions, it turns out a lot of Democrats just ignore these people. They use language about working class people, but they are not out there with them. They use language about the immorality of poverty, but they are not out there. ...
And so the difference, it seems to me, is not between old and new Democrats but between actual Democrats and rhetorical Democrats. Sometimes it seems we have these beliefs but it turns out it's like a Hollywood set: It's all facade and there's no guts behind it.
Or, as Kos said: "We're proud Democrats, confident and secure in the belief that we're on the right side of history and Americans will side with us if we can only get our message out. The DLC thinks this is a conservative country and we can only win if we blur distinctions with the GOP."
And given the current mindset of the GOP, that last sentence makes me want to get me one 'o them DHS vomit flashlights...and use it on myself.
Weekend...straight ahead! Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, August 10, 2007
Note: Don't play games with me, Your Highness. You weren't on any mercy mission this time. You passed directly through a restricted system. Several transmissions were beamed to this ship by Rebel spies. I want to know what happened to the plans they sent you!
-
By the Numbers:
Days `til the '08 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing: 363
Days `til the 2008 General Election: 452
Number of citations for safety violations over the past three years at the Crandall Canyon Mine that were "serious enough to cause death": 118
(Source: CNN)
Number of times the term "Clinton fatigue" appeared in major papers in July, 1999: 27
Clinton Gallup poll approval rating in July of 1999: 64%
Number of times the term "Bush fatigue" appeared as of July 22, 2007: 1
Bush Gallup poll approval rating in July of 2007: 31%
(Source: Nexis search via Atrios)
Number of words in "Your liberal media hard at work": 6
And from the Department of Hopeless Security:
Days the color-coded gut-feeling terror alert system has been in place: 1,972
Days spent at terror alert level Blue or Green: 0
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: What...no mayo?
-
CHEERS to your hairy Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great grandparents. Scientists say they discovered some 1.5 million year-old human fossils in Kenya that they say may change the shape of the human family tree by...
...possibly rearranging major branches thought to be in a straight ancestral line to Homo sapiens. Scientists who dated and analyzed the specimens---a 1.44-million-year-old Homo habilis and a 1.55-million-year-old Homo erectus found in 2000---said their findings challenged the conventional view that these species evolved one after the other. Instead, they apparently lived side by side in eastern Africa for almost half a million years.
Meanwhile, paleontologists celebrated what they believed to be the first ancient human fossil discovery in the Washington, D.C. area. Sadly it was just David Broder eating an ice cream cone on a park bench.
JEERS to TiCKO. Gee, thanks for telling us a year after the fact! President Bush was treated for Lyme Disease (named after Lyme, Connecticut, where the disease was first identified), but didn’t think it was worth, y'know, mentioning. Doctors say they caught it in time. Bush was treated for the tick-borne disease, and the ticks were treated for the Bush-borne disease.
CHEERS to the browning of America. The bigots across 'Murica are cringing today with news that over one-in-ten U.S. counties have minority majorities. (As Paul Harvey laments, "America is not white anymore.") The welcome mat is, shall we say, rather small:
Many of the nation's biggest counties have long had large minority populations. But that diversity is now spreading to the suburbs and beyond, causing resentment in some areas. Many Latinos say they see it in the debate over illegal immigration.
In northern Virginia, Teresita Jacinto said she feels less welcome today than when she first arrived 30 years ago, when she was one of few Hispanics in the area. "Not only are we feeling less welcome, we are feeling threatened," said Jacinto, a teacher in Woodbridge, Va., about 20 miles southwest of Washington. ... "I think across the board all of us feel like we're not welcome," said Jacinto, who was born in the U.S. and volunteers for an advocacy group called Mexicans Without Borders.
The punchline to this story comes to you courtesy of this AP headline: GOP hopes to make inroads with Hispanics. (Thanks for making my job a little easier, guys.)
CHEERS to mmmmmmoney!!! 52 years ago Sunday, on August 12, 1955, that dirty fucking hippie Dwight Eisenhower raised the hourly minimum wage from 75¢ to a dollar. Or, as Republicans today would call it, "a dollar too much."
JEERS to a picture that says a thousand unprintable words. TIME magazine's latest cover offers a devastating indictment of how a city was lost through human neglect. The headline:
Two years after Katrina this floodwall is all that stands between New Orleans and the next hurricane.
It's pathetic.
How a perfect storm of big-money politics, shoddy engineering and environmental ignorance is setting up the city for another catastrophe.
In today's must-read---if you can stomach it---Michael Grunwald drops a two-ton bowling ball on the Army Corps of Engineers and eviscerates the palm-greasers and pork gluttons who have allowed New Orleans to languish for two years. Would somebody PLEASE get on the phone with Effing Europe already??!
CHEERS to giving a hoot. Did you hear that peace is breaking out in the Middle East? Sort of. Turns out barn owls are an excellent natural way to get rid of crop-eating rats in Israel, but their migratory patterns take them (the owls, not the Israelis) into Jordan, where owl-killing pesticides are traditionally used by farmers. So some level-headed environmentalists from Israel, Jordan and---gasp!---Palestine are working together on the issue. Will they reach a satisfactory conclusion? Special U.S. envoy Woodsy expressed cautious optimism before excusing himself to go bite the head off a plump rodent and spool its entrails onto a fork like spaghetti. (With a dash of oregano it ain't half bad.)
JEERS to idle hands doing the devil's work. Well, I guess you can add the unemployed to the Axis of Evil. Last night on The Daily Show Jon Stewart found this clip from the recent Neil Cavuto/George Bush slobberfest "chat" on the Fox Opinion Channel. Cue the porno music:
Cavuto: Does it get a little bit hard?
Bush: I've been around long enough to be able to understand how it works and... Look, nobody likes to be called names. On the other hand, we got a bigger enemy than name-callers, and that's al Qaeda or people losing jobs.
To keep the process orderly, all those getting the pink slip today line up in front of the black helicopter. The rest of you...look the other way and keeeep walkin'.
CHEERS and JEERS to Herbert Hoover. Today is his 133rd birthday. He was an outstanding public servant---presidency excluded---and he certainly upheld those traditional Republican Values:
The president...preferred not to see the servants at all. The mansion's bell system was used to keep a distance between Hoover and the people who served him: Three rings announced his approach, requiring staff to hide in the nearest closet until he was out of sight. The same went for the groundskeepers, who found themselves jumping behind shrubs when the president was rumored to be nearby. Those staff members with an insufficient cloaking device faced the possibility of dismissal.
---From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien"
Go pay your respects. From behind the bushes, of course.
JEERS to dissin' the faith. While spinning around the Google yesterday, I stumbled on Getreligion.org, where tmatt asks, skeptically, Is God at the Yearly Kos? If you look in the comments, you'll see that Pastor Dan showed up to throw a few well-aimed lightning bolts at the notion that progressives don’t practice religion with the proper style or fervor. I say our Jesus will kick their Jesus's ass any day. ('cause he puts horseshoes in his gloves...)
CHEERS to great advances in libationology. On August 10, 1889, Dan Rylands patented the screw cap for bottles. Our rule: if it smells oakey with a hint of eucalyptus and lingering notes of berry, we let the waiter pour the wine.
-
One Year Ago in C&J: August 10, 2006...
CHEERS to mooning the President. In the latest AP/Ipsos poll, Bush musters a whopping 33% approval by We The People. Look at that again:
33
It's a pair of bare buttocks pointing to the right. Oh, America...I luvs ya.
JEERS to red meat for Fox News sissypoos. The U.S. and Britain are now at Terror Alert Level "Mommy!!" as an apparent terrorist plot to blow up 6-10 airliners is apparently thwarted. Officials say all liquids are now banned in the cabins of overseas flights. Great...just what a passenger riding on a potential time-bomb needs: an empty liquor cart.
-
And just one more...
JEERS to this cruel, cruel life. You might want to pull your hankies out, kids, because Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is hurting these days. Seems the gajillionaire needs to have a smaller yacht (260 feet) built, because he was---sniff!---having too much trouble docking his 454-foot rowboat at most of the world's marinas. I've set up a special account for Larry over at Act Greedy to help cover his expenses during this time of emotional turmoil. Please give generously.
-
Have a great weekend. Contemplate the lonely, humid life of the butt hair. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-