From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Mea Culpa
Rush Limbaugh tells me that the President of the United States hates America. Dammit. What a fool I've been. What a damned gullible starry-eyed liberal fool.
Yeah, yeah…so Barack HUSSEIN Obama agreed to take the reins after his predecessor had practically destroyed the American economy, foisting on his shoulders one of the greatest burdens an American president has ever faced upon taking office. So he kept us from sliding into a depression. So he saved the American auto industry and cut taxes on the middle class. Proposed jobs bill after jobs bill after jobs bill that non-America-hating Republicans shot down before the ink was dry on any of 'em.
America hater punching a senator in the head!
(Jason Reed-Reuters)
Sure, he rubbed out our #1 enemy in a daring raid that took extraordinary judgment, pinpoint planning and nerves of steel. Sure, he decimated that #1 enemy's terrorist network. Sure, it was on his watch that our troops came home from Iraq. Sure, he actively supported the downfall of the evil Muammar Khaddafi. Sure, unlike his predecessor there have been no terrorist attacks on American soil if you don't count the anti-abortion weirdos.
Yeah he got a health care law passed---and deemed constitutional---that'll cover and protect countless people in countless ways and start getting costs under control and close the Medicare doughnut hole. Yeah, yeah---the Affordable Care Act is literally saving Americans from premature death as I write this. Pfft. I'm not falling for that old commie trap.
America hater strangling an American hero!
(NASA/Bill Ingalls)
Sure, he's supported civil rights and diversity and fair pay and job safety and equal opportunity and higher education and public service and renewable energy and less mercury and soot in our air and water...and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But we're on to him. He ain't foolin' no one. Right, Rush?
So he released his tax returns and the names of his bundlers, unlike Mitt Romney. So he wrote two best-sellers that explain in great detail why he loves America, is living the American dream, and wants to help every American have a shot at that same dream. So he's delivered eloquent and timeless speeches on America's greatness that will be quoted long after we're gone, and maintained a sense of humor and optimism reminiscent of FDR and Reagan. So what!
I mean, really. Isn’t that just the kind of pro-America thought and pro-America deed that an anti-American American president would engage in to cover for his un-American hatred of America? My god, what have we done? What...have...we done?
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, July 19, 2012
Note: Hey, New Orleans Kossacks! If you're free this evening, mlharges is hosting a NOLA Kossack meetup at 7 O'clock---including the one and only Crashing Vor---and you're invited. Join the gang at The Columns Hotel---3811 St. Charles Avenue---and look for the table with the orange decorations. If you need more info, give mlharges a shout via kosmail. Have fun, throw beads and take pics!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til President Obama's birthday: 16
Days 'til the Goose Is Loose Festival in Libertyville, Illinois: 9
Number of private U.S. citizens killed by terrorists in 2010: 15
Number killed by falling televisions: 16
(Source: Harper's Index)
Highest number of random digits memorized at the 2012 USA Memory Championship, a record: 303
(Source: Smithsonian
Per-glass price at my front-yard lemonade stand: $199.95
Number of glasses sold in 20 years: 0
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
The trouble with piling lies on top of lies is that we can't even agree on facts anymore. I read the right-wing commentators, and it's not that we're not on the same page---we're not even in the same library.
---July, 2005
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Now with bonus pootie
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CHEERS to fresh virtual faces. We don't say this often enough, but WELCOME NEWBIES! We always love it when fresh meat new acquaintances pop in to splash in the kiddie pool. Yesterday we got a visit from Kossack The Stig, who joined DKos earlier this month, and commented on our borthday shoutout to John Glenn:
John Glenn caused a lot of work for me
I worked at NASA in the mid-2000s, on the Advanced Spaceflight Training Systems team. We basically wrote the software to schedule training and certifications for astronauts, flight controllers, and the people who trained them.
We were building an all new system for this, but hanging over our heads was the example of John Glenn. We had to incorporate all of the training data the agency had, make it searchable, and find any conflicts. So that if someone who had been an astronaut decades ago was to go up again, we could figure out if they're been trained to do things one way back then, and the same thing was done very differently today (particularly for scenarios involving an emergency/rapid response).
You know...just in case. Really complicated things. But then, we had an engineering mentality, so that just made it more fun.
Welcome to C&J, Stig---always room here for one more rocket scientist. Speaking for myself, I wouldn’t last long at NASA. I have too much of an eating paste mentality.
JEERS to the boob in the bubble. Boy, Mitt Romney really thinks his shit don’t stink. This is getting beyond absurd:
A top Mitt Romney adviser signaled Monday the campaign would continue to keep the names of its bundlers private, even as he accused President Obama of giving special favors to those who have raised campaign cash. Unlike the Obama campaign, Romney has not revealed the names of his top political fundraisers, called "bundlers" because they bundle together contributions in small increments from family, friends and business associates. … Obama senior strategist David Axelrod shot back at the Romney campaign via Twitter, writing, "Only Mitt could cry cronyism while refusing 2 disclose his $$$ bundlers--as every candidate, R and D, has done for decades?
He won’t reveal bundlers, he won’t reveal tax returns, he won’t reveal any ideas for what the frack he plans to do as president (besides, y'know, repealing everything Obama got enacted). Add it all up and it's…very revealing.
Happy birthday, George!
(McGovern Center)
CHEERS to South Dakota's living moral compass. World War II hero (35 combat missions as a B-24 pilot), former Senator and Democratic presidential contender George McGovern---now head of the
McGovern Center---turns 90 today. If he'd been elected in '72, the Vietnam War would've ended sooner, progressive values would've sunk their roots deeper into the American consciousness, and the integrity of the office of the President would've held fast. Instead we re-elected a corrupt, paranoid loon who ended up resigning in disgrace and tarnishing the office. Can we pick 'em or can we pick 'em? Said Hunter S. Thompson, who would've been 75 yesterday: "Of all the men that have run for president in the twentieth century, only George McGovern truly understood what a monument America could be to the human race." Oh, what could have been…
CHEERS to the beginning of the end??? Everybody keep your head down, cuz I'm going into Syria for a second. After yesterday's bombings that killed a gaggle of Bashar al-Assad's henchmen (including the defense minister and his deputy), the dictator has disappeared. For those of you familiar with the course these uprisings take, you know that the rebels will continue taking ground, the defections of Syrian military and political muckety mucks will continue (20 generals so far), and Bashar will either flee to the loving arms of another despotic regime (Iran?), or get caught cowering inside a culvert with a pistol in his hand and doody in his britches. Honest to god, I never thought Syria would implode, ever. Now I know what my grandparents meant when they said, "Ya live long enough, ya see it all." To be continued…
No, Rush, this is
not an Oxycontin pill.
CHEERS to round things that rule our world. Even if you don't give a caddie's p'tootey about golf, chances are you'll take the occasional cursory look at the British Open leader board. The event starts today at the
Royal Lytham & St. Annes course in---wild guess here---Britain. As usual, all my money is on Tom Watson to win the Claret Jug because he has five and if he gets one more he can trade it in for---[
Zot!!! Ker-POW!!!]---the
Chalice of Immortality!!! C&J had ambitions of turning pro once until we hit one little snag. If I remember correctly, the technical term is sucking at golf.
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Five years ago in C&J: July 19, 2007
CHEERS to Richard Clarke. The former White House counterterrorism expert and author of the book ("Against All Enemies") that shredded Bush's cloak of invincibility, penned an editorial in yesterday's New York Daily News. He writes that the new National Intelligence Estimate "fails to note" three things: al Qaeda has gotten mightier on Bush's watch; the Iraqi branch of al Qaeda never would've materialized if we hadn’t invaded that country; and Pakistan is fast becoming a new spoke in the Axis of Evil. Memo to the Democrat who takes the oath of office on January 20, 2009: Hire this man...again.
JEERS to stealing our act. Over in Japan, authorities failed to level with the public about the severity of the damage done to a nuclear power plant by Monday's earthquake that measured 6.8 on the Richter scale...and now we know they built the damn thing on a fault line! Meanwhile over in Brazil, we learn that the officials ignored multiple warnings that the runway at the Sao Paulo airport was too short and slippery and could contribute to a fiery plane crash. Attention World: we elected George Bush to show the rest of you how not to run things. Please pay attention. [7/19/12 Update: So glad the Japanese nuclear industry learned its lesson. It's all about trust, y'know?]
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And just one more…
"Keep your government hands
off my NASA Shuttlecare!"
(NASA photo)
CHEERS to the new kid on the, um, aircraft carrier. Big doings today at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City. The Space Shuttle
Enterprise---the first of the shuttles and only used for test purposes---will
officially take its place in the new "Space Shuttle Pavilion." Hard to believe that the craft was first assembled 36 years ago, back when Gerald Ford ruled the galaxy and its alien-infested mining outposts. By day the
Enterprise will sit silent and stoic as visitors admire it with awe and wonder. By night it'll take part in midnight poker games with the F-16, Sea Cobra and other aircraft on board the vessel, and occasionally do bong hits with the attack choppers on the poop deck. Oh, and of course it'll get free universal shuttlecare for the rest of its life. Lucky duck.
Oh, and a quick heads-up that C&J will be off Monday, but return Tuesday with shiny new dimes for all the country's child janitors. Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"I wish this president would learn how to be Bill in Portland Maine."
---John Sununu
7/17/12
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