Cheers and Jeers: Thursday

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

Help Bush's Legacy Live On

Tonight the charred Republican baton is passed. Assuming PUMA doesn’t succeed in their last-ditch effort for a Hillary Clinton-Sarah Palin ticket, John McCain will accept his party's nomination for President of the United States. I plan to watch it with the volume down, replacing his rhetoric with armpit farts.

But though my eyes will be on the screen, my thoughts will be on the George W. Bush Preznidential Libary at Southern Methodist University. I understand it's going to be a massive structure, costing half a billion dollars. But what on God's earth could he fill that space with? It sure as hell won’t be books, and exhibits of his "positive" achievements could barely fill a presidential broom closet.

I have some ideas, though. This is just a partial list, and I offer it as a gift to the nation at no charge:

The 'Mission Accomplished' banner and the codpiece he wore five years ago when he declared that major combat operations had ended in Iraq. And, if possible, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier on which he spoke, would be an attention-getter.
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The chair in which he sat, frozen, at Booker Elementary School on 9/11 after he was told "America is under attack." Also his dog-eared copy of "The Pet Goat" (I understand he wrote lots of notes in the margins, including "Goat looks horny. Ha Ha!")
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A bag of pretzels, of course.
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A piece of the birthday cake he shared with John McCain in Phoenix as the levees were busting open in New Orleans. (I understand McCain still has one in the back of his freezer.)
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The golf club he swung immediately after vowing to "stop these terrorist killers."
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His famous 2005 U.N. bathroom break note
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The Segway he fell off of in 2003.
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A credit card bill forwarded from the White House to "The People of the United States of America" with a balance of $10 trillion.
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The August 6, 2001 PDB: Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside US.
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Some aluminum tubes.
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The vial of baby powder Colin Powell used to scare us to death at the United Nations.
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A photo collage of the U.S. soldiers who died during the Iraq war underneath a sign that says, "Oops!"
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And on a continuous loop in the lobby: a recording of the push-poll question he used to destroy John McCain in 2000: "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" Y'know...just to show what a classy guy Bush is.

The above items (well, besides the aircraft carrier) would only fill a fraction of the space. So what would you add to help fill it with artifacts that will preserve the essence of his presidency forever?

Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Cheers and Jeers for Thursday September 4, 2008

Note:  In preparation for winter, C&J is supporting the annual "Coats for Blastocysts" campaign, sponsored by Focus on the Family.  Please donate your old coats, caps, sweaters, gloves, mittens, and galoshes to help the most vulnerable of our citizens to stay warm this winter.  Remember: blastocysts are people, too...and they have very thin skins.

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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Bush and Cheney leave office: 137
Days `til the Obama-McCain debate at the University of Mississippi: 22
Percent of Republican delegates who are black: 2%
Percent of Democratic delegates who are black: 24.5%
(Source: Think Progress)
Lowest recorded measurement of Arctic ice since records started being kept in 1979: 1.65 million miles (September, 2007)
Current level with two-and-a-half weeks of Arctic summer left: 2.03 million miles
(Source: National Snow and Ice Data Center)
Amount some airlines are charging passengers to transport their surfboards: $300
(Source: The Week)
Number of times Sarah Palin lost her place last night and shouted "Oh, balls!": 2

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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:

My favorite factoid gathered by the 15,000 underutilized reporters in Philadelphia is that the opening gavel of the Republican National Convention was "acoustically enhanced" by a sound engineer to sound "better than real." Yup.

I loved the blind mountain-climber giving the Pledge of Allegiance.  (Hint to Dems: In South Texas, we have twin dwarfs with 12 fingers apiece who play the accordion.)  Of course, everybody noticed that there were more black faces on the stage than in the audience, but that's nothing.

At the 1972 Republican convention, there was an Ethnic Night party at which I saw John Volpe, the Italian-American secretary of transportation, doing the frug while a Chinese girl sang "Never on Sunday" in Yiddish.  Is this a great country or what?  Except the Republicans have proved yet again the tragic truth that White People Can't Clap On Beat.  Or is it just Republicans?

By the way, one quarter of the Republican delegates are millionaires, and fewer than 10 percent of them make less than $50,000 a year.

---August, 2000

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Puppy Pic of the Day: The mother lode

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CHEERS to waking the sleeping giant.  When it comes to digging deep to get at the root of the abuses of the executive branch that's in power, the traditional media isn't so tenacious.  But when it comes to the controversy surrounding a wisp of a vice presidential candidate, the order is given: Chaaaaarge!!!  Joe Klein:

There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized.  But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God."  The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.

I know it’s been awhile since you guys really tore into a Republican, so here's a refresher course: the ass looks juicier, but go for the shins...they're meatier.

CHEERS or JEERS to Sarah Palin.  Read my review of her speech and tell me if you think I actually watched it or not last night:

Oy.  Lots of red meat for the base.  Some overtures to the middle.  Lots of lies easily debunked by a brief visit to The Google.  Very upbeat and Marie Osmond/June Cleaver-esque.  And to think that this is the new standard bearer of the modern war-mongering Republican party?  That can only mean one thing: she's been the host for an incubating alien that will soon burst out of her chest and eat Barack Obama.

Answer: Of course I didn’t watch it.  The speech was on at 10:35 and if I'm not out streetwalking by 9:45 my pimp drops my cut by 15 percent (don’t laugh---that's $800 on a bad night.)

JEERS to hard lessons hardly learned.  It's taking something as awful as the Republican convention to make realize that waterboarding ain't the only torture this country authorizes.  Bring out the Chippendales.  Get Opera Man back up there to sing a few more nationaL anthems.  Play Bingo.  Do something!  The only winners in this thing are the ones who had the good sense---like half the Republicans in Congress---to skip it.

CHEERS to dissension in the ranks.  Ron Paul got more Republican supporters than Giuliani, Thompson, Huckabee, Brownback, Romney and David Archuleta combined (heck, he even had a blimp).  But whereas Hillary and Obama reunited in Colorado and emerged stronger, McCain and Paul have been grating on each other's nerves in Minnesota and will likely leave the place even more eager to short-sheet each other's beds.  Meanwhile, stalwart Republican surrogates Mike Murphy and Peggy Noonan got caught bellyaching about the Palin nomination over a live microphone.  Paging Dr. Phil...

CHEERS to that other city that never sleeps.  On September 4, 1781, Los Angeles (Spanish for "City of Lester the Angel") was founded by Spanish settlers.  They would've settled sooner but traffic was a bitch.

JEERS to your tax dollars hard at work.  So you think Alberto Gonzalez was an incompetent boob because he supervised the politicization of the Justice Department and did everything he could to promote torture?  Well, here's another log on the fire: he carried around top secret information as though it was his Punky Brewster lunch pail:

The Justice Department refused to prosecute former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for improperly storing in his office and home classified information about two of the Bush administration's most sensitive counterterrorism efforts.

Among other things, according to the report, Gonzales told investigators he could not recall whether he took home notes regarding the warrantless-wiretapping program and he did not know they contained classified information, despite his own markings that they were "top secret---eyes only."

Gonzales improperly carried notes about the program in an unlocked briefcase and failed to keep them in a safe at his Northern Virginia home three years ago because he "could not remember the combination," the report said.

Consider this Example #3,419 for why we need to put the grownups back in charge.  Not only do we need leaders who understand the consequences of breaking the rules (not to mention the basic meaning of terms like TOP SECRET---EYES ONLY), but we need oversight by entities that will enforce them.  And babysitters.  They all need babysitters.

CHEERS to Paul Harvey.  The radio icon---whom I listened to religiously as a kid and budding broadcaster---turns 90 today, and he's still shows up to work every morning and writes his own news and commentary tinged with flashes of his entrenched conservative ideology that drives many Kossacks crazy.  But before you write him off completely, consider this:

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who, for a time, was a regular fill-in for Harvey once told me that Harvey's program was one of the models and inspirations for his current "Countdown" show, with its eclectic mix of the important and merely interesting, serious and funny, perspective and punch.

Now you know...the rest of the story.  Good day!

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Two Years Ago in C&J: September 4, 2006...

CHEERS to Casey vs. the Creep.  Here's a quick rundown of Sunday's debate on Meet the Press.  Santorum: President Bush is "a terrific president, absolutely," we found the WMDs except we didn't, I spend one month a year living in my state, and draining the treasury to privatize Social Security is a swell idea.  Casey: "Nuh-uh!"  Loser: Santorum...for playing the dead father card.  Creep.

CHEERS to playing Whack-A-Thug.  Let's check the board and see how many al Qaeda "No. 2s" we've rounded up in Iraq since our two-week war and 3½-year occupation began:

No. 2
No. 2
No. 2
No. 2
No. 2
No. 2
No. 2
No. 2
No. 2
No. 2

Only two more No. 2s and everybody gets a free Slurpee.

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And just one more...

CHEERS to the pipes that launched a thousand (actually, more like 5,000) movie trailers.  "In a world where voiceover talent roamed the Earth, Don LaFontaine was king..."  He was also a helluva nice guy---so nice that he would often record free answering-machine messages for people across the country who requested them.  Don died Monday at 68, and now I have one less reason to get to the movie theatre early, dammit.  If you want to see him in action, this is a great tribute.  But, gee, where are we gonna find another authentic voice of dread?  Oh yeah...Cheney.

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Oh, and looka this---somebody found the earliest-known Sean Hannity baby picture.  I'd recognize that nose anywhere.  Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?

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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:

"I wrote the book, Don't Start Cheers and Jeers Without Me.  Well, I'm here!"
---Jesse Ventura
9/2/08

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