From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
We now join The Joy of Painting, already in progress...
"And we're almost done with our portrait of a teabagger rally on the mall. We've done the Washington Monument, so tall and pointy... And the capitol in the background, regal and grand... Beautiful fall day... Happy little clouds... Perfect day for a rally... Let's just grab a dab 'o canary yellow and make us a happy little sun riiiight...[skritch skritch skritch skritch]...here. My sun is on the right. Yours could be on the left... Or wherever ya want to put it... Doesn’t matter. As long as it's your sun. [dab dab] There we go.
Now, you can't have a teabagger rally without teabaggers. That would be silly. So let's take a dab of purple...and a bit of blue and red and peach...and let's populate that mall with teabaggers, shall we? [skritch skritch skritch skritch skritch] Lots and lots and lots of happy little teabaggers... [skritch skritch dab dab skritch skritch] ...just protestin' their little hearts out. There must be sixty or seventy thousand there. But that seems kinda small, so let's make this a really big rally and add a couple million more: [skritch skritch skritch skritch skritch dab dab dab skritch sktritch skritch skritch] There we go. Just go where your imagination takes ya. Two million teabaggers and they're just havin' a grand old time. Marchin' and shoutin', shoutin' and marchin'. Happy happy happy.
Okay. Next we'll take a dab of white, and reeeeal lightly...light like a feather, a little baby birdy feather ...we'll just add in a tiny hint of froth around the corners of their mouths. [dit dit dit dit dit dit] There we go. [dab dab dab] Frothy frothy...like a vanilla milkshake. Very nice.
And finally...we'll take the edge of our little trowel here and add a few protest signs. Wouldn't be a protest rally without protest signs, would it? Course not. [skritch skreetch skritch skreetch] Little signs... Some square, some rectangular... Happy little signs. They're just glad to be there, waving in the air under the sunshine. And we'll just add a few little slogans on 'em, so people who look at our painting will know they're here protesting the federal deficit: Obama equals Hitler...Keep government out of my Medicare....Beck/Palin 2012. And maybe one more: No Olgiharky, Morans! There we go.
And we're done---a happy little portrait of a two-million-marcher tea party on the mall on a beautiful September day.
I'm sure whatever the tea party looks like in your painting, it's a happy one, too. Thank you for joining us. Until next time, happy painting and God Bless."
[With apologies to the late Bob Ross, whom I adored in all his frizzy-haired serenity]
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Note: Wow...did you see the House "disapprove" of Rep. Joe Wilson yesterday? I've never seen a deliberative body use a badminton racquet like that before.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Capitalism: A Love Story comes out: 16
Days `til the Common Ground Country Fair in Unity, Maine: 9
Income gain by Americans 65 or older in 2008---the only demographic to see its income rise: 1.2%
Drop in income among 45-54 year-olds, the demographic that fared worst last year: -5.4%
(Source: USA Today)
Percent of Americans who said they intended to keep their car for at least four years in 2008: 46%
Percent who say they intend to keep their car that long in 2009: 59%
Age of our Honda Civic: 17 years
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 161 (including 3 floods and 1 gentleman who is apparently anticipating one). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: A pug on a surfboard is always most excellent.
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CHEERS to auction fever! You wanna piss me off? I mean, really piss me off? Go to the Netroots Nation auction site, find the 65 items on which I placed bids...and then top me. Yeah, "bostonbidder," I'm lookin' at you...right in your beady, soulless eyes! I intend to win that inauguration-eve postal commemorative thingamabob even if I have to cash in my 401k to do it! I will pilfer Social Security checks from the old lady across the street. And, yes, if necessary I shall sell my body as a paintball target for extra cash. But I shall...have...my...trinket. Come and join the fun!!! But be prepared to duck.
JEERS to the madness---MADNESS, I tell you!---of big government. How can our nation ever look itself in the mirror again? It's just awful what we've become:
The Census Bureau added some clarity Thursday to the fierce debate over government's role in health care: Without government intervention, the number of uninsured would have soared last year.
Though the 46.3 million people without health insurance in 2008 was slightly more than in 2007, private and employer-based insurance declined significantly. What made up the difference: Medicare, Medicaid and the state Children's Health Insurance Program.
All of which are swamped these days with an influx of patients suffering hammer-thumb injuries from hanging their Hugo Chavez portraits in their living rooms, herniated discs from hauling their busts of Karl Marx around without lifting with their legs, and sprained ankles from failing to do proper warm-ups before moving trunkloads of cash from conservative households to mansions belonging to illegal immigrants. Socialism looks so easy...until you try it.
CHEERS to Barack the Enforcer. Two stories that suggest #44 is kicking #43's ass when it comes to defeatin' the evildoers. First, he sent a missile down the gullet of a high-level al Qaeda thug in Somalia. Bullseye!!! But he's also taking a bite out of Islamic extremism just by...not being George W. Bush:
Arabs and Muslims' more positive feelings toward the new U.S. president are believed to have helped deflate al-Qaida's anti-American rhetoric, which found a receptive audience during the administration of former President George W. Bush, who was widely resented in the region. ... Evan Kohlman, a terrorism expert at globalterroralert.com, said al-Qaida appears to have been unable to come up with a way to confront the popularity of the new U.S. president. Obama has pursued a policy of seeking better ties with Arabs and Muslims, giving a landmark speech in Cairo in June, moving to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq and taking a somewhat harder stance on Israel in the peace process.
Soft power. What a concept.
CHEERS to classy broads. Wow---Lauren Bacall turns 85 today. Let's all whistle Happy Birthday to her. You do know how to whistle, don't you? You just put your lips together and...do something or other, I forget.
JEERS to private-sector death panels. Crystal Lee Sutton, the inspiration for the heroic character played by Oscar-winner Sally Field in Norma Rae, has died at 68. Had her insurance company not acted like heartless assholes two months ago, she might still be here:
She went two months without possible life-saving medications because her insurance wouldn’t cover it, another example of abusing the working poor, she said. "How in the world can it take so long to find out (whether they would cover the medicine or not) when it could be a matter of life or death," she said. "It is almost like, in a way, committing murder."
The next time some right-wing prick whines (read: lies) about the government wanting to kill grandma, I'll remind them that Crystal Lee Sutton was likely sent to an early death by the oh-so-holy private insurance industry...leaving her with 11 grieving grandchildren. And four heartbroken great-grandchildren. Not that the industry would notice---after all, they only care about counting beans.
CHEERS to the return of the Kings. Whew---the withdrawal symptoms are finally easing, now that Jon Stewart has returned to his Daily Show perch. So has his evil steptwin, Stephen Colbert, who makes a ha-ha:
"The GOP has so much momentum that they're already looking forward to who can take down Obama in the 2012 election. Last week The Wall Street Journal suggested Dick Cheney. Which can only mean one thing: somebody at The Wall Street Journal lost a fiddle contest to Dick Cheney."
Music to my ears.
JEERS to doing the time warp. Yesterday the House "disapproved" of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-Rudeville) for his "You Lie" moment during President Obama's speech last week. It was pretty much a toothless gesture, but I'm glad they followed through with it. Meanwhile, the Boston Globe's Derrick Jackson writes that the roots of Wilson's thuggish remark run deep. As in...deeply back in time:
IN HIS 1969 book, political analyst Kevin Phillips envisioned Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy becoming an "Emerging Republican Majority." A New York Times review said, "Full racial polarization is an essential ingredient of Phillips’ political pragmatism. He wants to seek a black Democratic party, particularly in the South, because this will drive into the Republican party precisely the kind of anti-Negro whites who will help constitute the emerging majority."
While a distressing amount of what Phillips foretold came to pass for many years, the poison of polarization finally faded enough to see the election of Barack Obama. Today the Republicans are the shrinking minority, who, with no strategy to improve the country, have only the polarization card to play. ...
The danger in this is obvious. It is one thing to disagree with the president. It is another to disrespect the office and delegitimize his citizenship. America still has too many gun-toting crazies for the Republicans to yell "You lie!’’ in a crowded theater.
Meanwhile, former President Jimmy Carter agrees. So between the racism and the overseas military quagmire, it kinda feels like the 60s again. All we're missing is some crazy reference to Laugh-In.
CHEERS to crazy references to Laugh-In. Forty one years ago today, in 1968, Richard Nixon appeared on the show and uttered the immortal words, "Sock it to me?" Yeah, I wish we'd gotten the chance. Thanks a lot, Gerald.
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Five years ago in C&J: September 16, 2004
CHEERS to Fox News Smackdown on the 8s. HANNITY AND colmes, O'Reilly, and the rest got smoked last week by...the Weather Channel. C&J warns our readers: the meteorological talking heads use the word "fair" a lot...but they are so biased in favor of low pressure systems.
CHEERS to Marion Carr Knox. On '60 Minutes II,' the scrappy 86 year-old former secretary of Bush CO Lt. Col. Jerry Killian gave Dubya a whuppin': "It was a big no-no to not follow orders." "I think it is plain and simple. Bush didn't think that he had to go by the rules that others did." Does Karl Rove have a page in his playbook on taking down defenseless old ladies?
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And just one more...
CHEERS to one big happy ****ing family. Yesterday Kossack snafubar posted a comment down a ways in C&J that perfectly captures both the hypocrisy of relatives who live on the far right (my partner, Michael, has several)...and the frustration of their progressive kinfolk who endure them:
Jeers to my ****ing cousin (who I have been estranged from for over five years, estranged because I got so tired of hearing her defend Bush, "Mission Accomplished", and insisting that the only problem with Gitmo is that there aren't more people in it...
Just called to say "hi" because (she says) I never call her.
Then she asked for $300.
Then –
(you really should sit down, seriously)
--after going on a diatribe for ten minutes about the evils of socialism and Obama's submission to "Jew" Rahm Emmanuel - -
she tells me that since her unemployment has run out...
she's going back to school.
But why is she borrowing money from me if she has enough to go to college?
Well, you see, she'll be able to pay me back in just a few weeks...
...as soon as she gets her Pell Grant.
She'll be majoring in stand-up comedy, we presume. Watch yer back, Lewis Black.
Oh, and today is "Collect Rocks Day." Or, as Michele Bachmann calls it, "Replace Your Old Brains With New Ones Day." Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"I wouldn't dignify Bill in Portland Maine by peeing on his leg. It wouldn't be worth wasting the urine."
---Rep. Pete Stark
9/12/09
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