From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
May 1, 2003: A Very Serious Day
Ebert should've sued.
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"It is a very special feeling to land on a carrier, and it is from there tonight that the president is going to make what amounts to an end-of-the-war-in-Iraq speech. ... Tonight the president is going to describe how the war has essentially, if not officially, ended."
---ABC News anchor Peter Jennings
"Speaking as a woman, and listening to the women who called into my radio show, seeing President Bush get out of that plane, carrying his helmet, he is a real man."
---Laura Ingraham
"Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me."
---Joe Klein
"…a one-time fighter dog."
---Wolf Blitzer on Bush
The only boat Bush should've
ever been allowed to go near.
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"Well, I---in the first place, I think it's envy. I mean, after all, Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man. And here comes George Bush. You know, he's in his flight suit, he's striding across the deck, and he's wearing his parachute harness, you know---and I've worn those because I parachute---and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman's vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn't count---they're all liars. Check that out. I hope the Democrats keep ratting on him and all of this stuff so that they keep showing that tape."
---G. Gordon Liddy
"[T]he president deserves everything he's doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. ... Here's a president who's really nonverbal. He's like Eisenhower. He looks great in a military uniform."
---Chris Matthews
"The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men---the shock troops of a hateful ideology---gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the beginning of the end of America."
---George W. Bush
"We have no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved in the [sic] September the eleventh."
---Bush, four months later
And this is the moment where we collectively ralph our Cheerios.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, May 1, 2013
Note: While the Meals on Wheels program has been savagely decimated by the sequester, the Meals on the Wings of Satan's Dragons is still running normally. Place your soul in the basket and the tuna casserole's all yours, Granny. ---Rep. Eric Cantor
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Mt. Washington Cog Railway.
Don't look down.
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Independence Day:
64
Days 'til
Lost Sock Memorial Day:
7
Increase in home prices over the last year in 20 major markets:
9.3%
(Source: S&P Case-Shiller Index)
Year the
Mount Washington Cog Railway began service (it just opened for its 144th season):
1869
Height of the summit, which the train travels three miles to get to:
6,288 feet
Percent chance that Arizona Republicans have apparently sold their brains for a bag of magic beans:
100%
(Source: Arizona's new
anti-gun-buyback law)
Percent of horses in the 2012 Kentucky Derby who had the thoroughbred Mr. Prospector in their pedigree:
95%
(Source: Harper's Index)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 186 (including 3 False Christs and 1 depressing test score). Soul Protection Factor 14 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Meet Lentil, "Ambassadog" for pets and people with cleft palates.
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It better have Klingons in it.
CHEERS to May. The month of flowers, Mom's Day, Buddha's birthday, Armed Forces Day, Victoria Day, "End of the Middle Ages" Day (May 29—for Republicans it's a day of mourning), Cinco de Something or Other, and I hear there's a special election in South Carolina coming up May 7th that will be Mark Sanford's Waterloo. Britain gets a Bank Holiday---or as the banksters call it here, "a day ending in y." Memorial Day kicks off summer in 23 days. A new
Star Trek opens in 16 days. ("Live long and
Squeeeeee!!!!!") Full moon arrives on the 24th, so mark your calendar to wink at Neil Armstrong that night. Plus: this is the first month of the year we may actually make it through without the furnace kicking in. As usual, today's highlight is the Daily Kos contributing editors dancing around the Maypole later this morning. Give 'em a wide berth, though---if one of 'em loses their grip they'll take ya down like bowling pins.
CHEERS to the contest in the commonwealth between the common man and the wealthy man. Ladies and gentlemen, the primary voters in Massachusetts have spoken, and the Democratic candidate in the June special election to fill John Kerry's U.S. Senate seat is…
Congressman Ed Markey!!!!!! He's 66, hails from Malden, graduated Boston College, served in the U.S. Army, married Susan, champions energy issues, had a cameo in
Gods and Generals, and says the teabaggers are "allergic to science." He'll face a California-raised millionaire private equity investor named Gabriel Gomez who has a bright future ahead of him. As a private equity investor.
CHEERS to strategically idle hands. Happy International Workers’ Day! Protesters will be out marching by the gajillions today in over 100 cities including NYC. If you can't actually skip work in protest, organizers say that whatever you can do over the course of your day to "disrupt the status quo" would be splendid. Today I'll attempt to work from the other side of the couch. Wish me luck---it's uncharted territory.
CHEERS to the mighty iron horse. Happy birthday to Amtrak, which turns turns 42 today. Be sure to wave to the conductor as he roars by while you're stuck in traffic.
JEERS to the Captain Queegs of Christianity. NBA center Jason Collins came out as a gay man this week, and the response has been hugely supportive. Fellow athletes, titans of civil rights, beloved celebrities and even Presidents Clinton and Obama have cheered his emergence from the closet. But then there are the assholes, like ESPN sportscaster Chris Broussard, who just have to play the big bad bearded boogeyman card:
"Those godless heathen also stole my strawberries!"
"If you’re openly living that type of lifestyle, then the Bible says you know them by their fruits. It says that, you know, that’s a sin. If you’re openly living in unrepentant sin, whatever it may be, not just homosexuality, whatever it maybe, I believe that’s walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ. So I would not characterize that person as a Christian.
What intelligent and compassionate people know instinctively is that Collins came out because, like all gay people, he knows that sexual orientation is hard-wired and he could never become a so-called "ex-gay" even if he wanted to. On the other hand, I'm reasonably confident that, if he really wanted to, Chris Broussard could reverse his chosen lifestyle and become an "ex-asshole." But I'm not holding my breath.
One World Trade Center rises. (But
I still [heart] the Empire State Building.)
CHEERS to a memorable growth spurt. On May 1, 1931, the Empire State Building was dedicated. It was the tallest building in the pleasant village of New York until 1972, when the World Trade Center rose above it. It regained its "tallest" status in the worst possible way 28 years later. But today it once again plays second fiddle to the
new World Trade Center. Actually, pretty much every building on this continent does now:
[W]hen the last pieces of its spire eventually rise to the roof, the 104-floor skyscraper that replaces the fallen twin towers will be just feet from becoming the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Officials had hoped that would happen Monday, but the weather did not cooperate and it was postponed due to high winds. The event will be rescheduled when conditions permit.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey says the spire pieces and a steel beacon will be lifted at a later date from the rooftop to cap the building at 1,776 feet.
There, there, Empire State---if it's any consolation, King Kong always liked you best.
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Five years ago in C&J: May 1, 2008
YIKES to nature's wrath. Just days after the northern Maine hamlet of Fort Kent bade farewell to a record-snowfall winter (200 inches), its 4,233 residents were walloped by severe flooding. That can only mean one thing, according to right-wing evangelists: a gay couple just moved into town.
CHEERS to crack police work (or is that police-on-crack work?) Guess what, kids? Nelson Mandela is on the United States' terrorist watch list. I always thought he looked shifty. He blinked too much.
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And just one more…
(tongue-in-cheek) CHEERS to the most awesomest Preznitential moment evuh! Seriously, when I think back to the hero worship that surrounded Bush's carrier photo-op ten years ago, I'm stunned by the way so many supposedly intelligent, professionally-trained journalists and analysts behaved like two-year-olds who had just discovered Sesame Street for the first time. So here's one more for old time's sake from the King of pre-school:
Oh, Tweety, what are
we going to do with you?
Chris Matthews: Americans love having a guy as president...a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy ... They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits. We don't want an indoor prime minister type, or the Danes or the Dutch or the Italians, or a Putin. Can you imagine Putin getting elected here? We want a guy as president.
I'll leave it up to you whether to laugh or cry.
Have a nice Wednesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Reality is for those who can't handle c&j.
---Laurence Lewis
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