From Alton, Illinois, in the true-blue United States of America:
Sound over all waters, reach out from all lands,
The chorus of voices, the clasping of hands;
Syng hymns that were sung by the stars of the morn,
Sing songs of the angels when Jesus was born,
With glad jubilation, bring hope to the nations:
The dark night is ending and dawn has begun!
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun!
All speech flows to music, all hearts beat as one!
The dark night is ending and dawn has begun.
These words were composed by John Greenleaf Whitter in 1873, when the wounds from the Civil War were still fresh; in the wake of the past eight years (or maybe 40?) these words seem just as fitting today as they were then. The hymn itself is powerful; wait 'till you hear it sung! The moment the election was called for Barack Obama, this song started playing in my mind, and it hasn't stopped playing since.
Cheers and Jeers begins......Right NOW!
DISCLAIMER: AAbshier's Cheers and Jeers are not affiliated in any way, shape, or form, with Bill in Portland Maine's Cheers and Jeers. The use of the words JEERS and CHEERS , the swoosh/gong device, pie references, pootie pics, lusty wenches, mattress references, whomps, moist, and flicked peas are all used with permission of Bill in Portland Maine and the members of the C&J Café community. Any further resemblances to BiPM`s Cheers and Jeers are deliberately coincidental. So there.
Note: I'm posting this from work, so I won't be in comments much this morning. Play nice, or I will sic Rahm Emmanuel on you.
Note 2: If 9-11 changed everything, 11-5 changed everything for the better!
Doc's Bad Joke of the Week
(In the gray box so you can avoid it and not miss anything else)
Some quick hits to start your week:
-What's an archeologist?
Someone whose career is in ruins.
-Why was King Tutenkhamen considered the best pharaoh in all of Egypt?
Because he always showed up in cuneiform.
-What's the difference between a building containing a Sarah Palin rally and a porcupine?
On a porcupine, the pricks are on the outside.
Here's a parting shot at John McCain:
Election Retrospective: Because, really, has anyone gotten enough of the past 6 days?
Cheers to the worldwide jubilation we saw on Election Night. The joy and relief seen in Grant Park was matched by celebrations in four African nations
(or if you're Sarah Palin, "states" or "provinces"); Japan; England, France, Italy, Germany, Indonesia, and Australia (never mind Robin Meade's incredible understatement at the end of the foregoing clip); and Canada. At least to this point, I haven't found any nations jeering our new President-elect; in fact it is cool to be an American overseas again, finally!
Cheers to our publishers of newspapers and magazines. The overall industry may be suffering (U.S. News and World Report just went web-only) but right after Election Day you couldn't find a paper anywhere, it seemed! At least in St. Louis, where I looked, it was impossible to get a Chicago paper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was hard to find, and even the Belleville News-Democrat, of all papers, was impossible to find! I did finally score The Alton Telegraph, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and, in a stroke of luck, I found the last copy of USA Today in an isolated paperbox. I suspect Time and Newsweek are going to be difficult finds also. (Pre-publication update: No joy on either magazine so far, and I have checked a number of outlets that have already sold them out!) I've never seen such a run on newspapers (and now magazines) after an election in my lifetime!
Cheers to the director, or producer, or whoever it was that allowed Keith Olbermann to call the election for Barack Obama on MSNBC's coverage of the night. Of all the calls I watched, his had the most emotion by far (we'll leave out Britt Hume's clenched-teeth "inevitable results" call on Faux News), and for all of us who watched Mr. Olbermann as often the sole voice speaking truth to power on cable news the last few years, it was great that he was given that opportunity. Once more, with feeling:
A Cheer within the Cheer for that young woman at Spelman College, prostrate with relief and happiness over the call. She had a lot of company, in our nation and around the world!
Cheers to cool posters you might not know about (click on image for full size view):
This poster was created by an artist in Los Angeles, and sent free of charge to the Missouri Obama offices for display. I had hoped to snag a copy, but missed out!
Jeers to coming up just short in Missouri. What. the. hell? For only the second time in the past 100 years, Missouri managed to be on the wrong side of a presidential election victory. This occurred even in the face of an unprecedented effort by the Obama campaign on all aspects of the campaign, including repeated appearances by the candidates, heavy advertising on TV and radio, and a comprehensive ground game. Our own grog has a great analysis piece up at Show Me Progress, so definitely give it a read if you're interested. As happy as I was over the national win, I really wanted, for my fellow campaign volunteers and for all of us, to bring in the win for the Show-Me State also.
(Fun Fact: The other time Missouri missed? With another Illinois politician: Adlai Stevenson in 1956. He carried the state in his losing effort against Dwight Eisenhower.)
Cheers to the cartoonists' take on history. A number of often deeply moving cartoons were produced by artists across the nation, including Nate Beeler, Jeff Darcy, R. J. Matson, Steve Greenberg, and Zapiro, but the best of the lot, as far as I'm concerned, was drawn by David Horsey of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
Cheers to fast getaways. The Embraer 190 regional jet used as Sarah Palin's campaign plane must have wanted to get away quickly after dropping off Moose-alini, her family, and entourage at Anchorage. As reported by Mudflats:
In a message to [JetBlue] employees on the company’s intranet, JetBlue says "aircraft 239, the McCain-Palin charter jet, set a new record by jetting from Anchorage, to Buffalo nonstop. At 2,694 nautical miles, this was the longest E190 flight ever operated by any airline on the planet!"
(Emphasis mine) The aircraft will be returning to line service soon--after they fumigate all the "you betchas" and "thanks but no thanks" from the aircraft's interior!
Cheers to the heroes of the campaign--the many thousands of us who volunteered our time to bring this election home for Obama and Biden, even if it was donating just a few hours. A friend of mine wrote this to me after the victory on a forum we both frequent--but what he wrote could be addressed to everyone who helped:
You worked a lot harder than I did, Andy, and you motherfucking EARNED THIS.
But I honored a promise I made back in '04... when Obama gave his speech, and I said here on the board that if he ran, I would support him. I actually phonebanked, put signs in my yard, politicked at work and with friends, and wore buttons around. I've never, ever gotten that involved before... I've never actually BELIEVED in a candidate before this year.
But you, sir, and your gorgeous bride have sacrificed much for this, and you deserve every accolade which can be sent your way for your efforts. We might butt heads now and again, and you might be a bit more partisan than myself (or most others here, LOL), but you truly believed in this campaign with all your heart, and worked your ass off to make this happen.
YES. WE. DID.
Well done, Andy and Nancy. Well done indeed.
Finally, Cheers to the one I love the most, Nancy:
That's us at the Presidential candidate forum at Yearly Kos 2007. Who knew then that we were looking at the next President sitting amongst those seven candidates that attended?
She watched me leave the house every Sunday starting in September to go canvass, when we could have been doing things together (you should see the project list that built up in my absence!) but not only did she never complain, she even encouraged me to go out and work! To have her full support, and her full understanding of how important this was, meant everything to me.
It's party time! What do you have to Cheer (besides the election) and Jeer (besides Sarah Palin) about today?