From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
The Noble Opposition
As the country circles the drain from years of financial gluttony and neglect, here's a snapshot of how leaders on the other side of the political fence are stepping up to the plate to help save America:
Party leader Joe the Plumber doesn’t like the Employee Free Choice Act but he doesn’t feel like explaining why. Mainly because he hasn't bothered to read it. He's a busy boy, you see, and it's very time-consuming to travel around the country explaining why he doesn’t like things he doesn’t know anything about.
Party leader Sarah Palin was invited and then uninvited to be the headliner at a national GOP dinner and was replaced by Newt Gingrich. Even though the Alaska governor claimed it was an innocent communication error, organizers refused to re-invite her because, of course, they only have two more months until the event and have already moved on to the blowing-up-balloons stage. But at least now Palin can devote more time to not accepting federal funds for wasteful things like schools and help for the unemployed.
Party leader Rush Limbaugh is using the flooding in North Dakota to make "dyke" jokes as residents of Fargo cope with the possibility that their town could be wiped out. Levity is important in times of crisis, especially jokes that makes fun of minorities. LOL, ladies and gentlemen!
Party leader Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina says that accepting federal money for schools is a form of child abuse. And party leader Bill O'Reilly says people who use the internet are child molesters. Just a hunch, but I bet the dedicated medical and mental health professionals who deal with actual child abuse and molestation cases every day might beg to differ. Probably with their middle finger.
Party leader Rep. John Boehner approved a GOP budget proposal that basically says, "Let's give the Bush plan another 50 years to work." He was too embarrassed to unveil it himself, so he sent out his second-stringers to twist in the wind.
Party leader Senator John Cornyn hopes that Minnesota continues to suffer the consequences of having only one sitting senator, and threatens to launch World War III if Al Franken is seated. He'll need a declaration of war from Congress for that, but I'm sure he's got the clout to push it through. The tricky part will be drawing the rest of the world into a global fisticuffs over a U.S. Senate seat.
Party leader Rep. Michelle Bachman puts words in the Treasury Secretary's mouth and then warns that America will cease to exist if he is allowed to do what he never considered doing in the first place. Got that?
And party leader Glenn Beck---who famously said, "[W]hen I see 9/11 victim's family, you know, on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh, shut up.' I'm so sick of them. Because they're always complaining"---continues to flog his "9/12" campaign which, as Stephen Colbert notes, "...is not for families directly affected by 9/11. Just people building their careers on it."
I used to wonder what a political party would be like if it consisted of all the crazy aunts and uncles people keep locked away in their basements and attics. Mystery solved.
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, April 2, 2009
Note: Arugula, bitches!
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til summer: 80
Days `til the 20th annual RajunCajun Crawfish Festival in Orlando: 16
Percent of Americans who say they're unable to get a good night's sleep (most citing the economy as the main reason): 46%
(Source: National Sleep Foundation via The Week)
Number of injuries or arrests on the Mall the day of Obama's inauguration: 0
(Source: Secret Service/Capitol Police)
Years since Eric Carle's book The Very Hungry Caterpillar was published: 40
Date by which the head of Russia's foreign-service academy says the U.S. will have totally disintegrated: 7/4/10
(Source: Harper's Index)
Number of letters in "Fuck You, Comrade Asshole": 21
-
Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
I am a great admirer of John Maynard Keynes, who first pointed out that government needs to spend money during recessions, but there is a difference between frittering money away on tax cuts for the rich and using the public's money for public purposes of lasting benefit to all.
If Congress wants a public works program, here's one suggestion. Somewhere between one third and one half of all the public schools in America are between dilapidated and falling apart (many of them in rural areas as well as inner cities). This is not a problem addressed by mass testing. To put money into schools is a sound investment of public money. It pays off in the future, and you don’t have to do it again for quite some time. That would in turn give the ever-pressed school districts more leeway to hire more and better teachers.
---August, 2001
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: The ancestry of the Saluki goes back some 5,000 years. This is one of the newer models.
-
CHEERS to a royal welcome. The president and First Lady arrived in Jolly Old England yesterday. (Factoid: only 8 percent of the population there is both old and jolly.) The highlight of the day was meeting the Queen. A transcript of the historic moment:
The President: Your majesty.
Her majesty The Queen: Arise, Sir Loin of Beef! Ha ha, just kidding...I say that to everyone. So...you're the new chap, eh? Couldn't possibly any worse than the last guy, I suppose. What were you thinking? I mean, really---how could 59 million, 54 thousand and 87 Americans be so bloody stupid? Have you met my husband, Prince Lazybum? Sixty two years of nothing but brandy and snuff, brandy and snuff, snuff and brandy, snuff snuff snuff and more brandy, like he thinks money grows on bleedin' trees.
It got pretty quiet after that.
JEERS to more idle hands. Business is booming at companies that print pink slips, but it sucks everywhere else. Here's a preview of Friday's jobs report number:
"Job losses in the U.S. private sector accelerated in March, more than economists' expectations...Private employers cut jobs by a record 742,000."
I post that not to depress you, but to remind myself that "economists' expectations" seem to be wrong most of the time. They predict high and the numbers come out low. They predict low and the numbers come out high. They predict a bull market and it becomes a bear market. They predict they'll be laughed out of the building for being wrong so often and they end up being promoted and relied on even more. They predict they'll poop Krugerrands and they end up pooping just regular poop. They predict we won’t remember how wrong they are but we do, thanks to the Google. Now here's a prediction of my own of which I'm reasonably sure: I'll never be invited to speak at an economists convention.
CHEERS to the original tin-foil man. Inventor Charles Martin Hall patented a cheap way to make aluminum 121 years ago today. And made the world safe for paranoids everywhere. Remember: Shiny side out! Shiny side out!
JEERS to lookin' for evil in all the wrong places. Dan Froomkin, the excellent online columnist for the Washington Post, analyzes the official (though hardly surprising) news that torture is bullshit:
[Abu] Zubaida was the first detainee to be tortured at the direct instruction of the White House. Then he was President George W. Bush's Exhibit A in defense of the "enhanced interrogation" procedures that constituted torture. And he continues to be held up as a justification for torture by its most ardent defenders. But as author Ron Suskind reported almost three years ago---and as The Post now confirms---almost all the key assertions the Bush administration made about Zubaida were wrong.
Zubaida wasn't a major al Qaeda figure. He wasn't holding back critical information. His torture didn't produce valuable intelligence---and it certainly didn't save lives. All the calculations the Bush White House claims to have made in its decision to abandon long-held moral and legal strictures against abusive interrogation turn out to have been profoundly flawed, not just on a moral basis but on a coldly practical one as well.
Indeed, the Post article raises the even further disquieting possibility that intentional cruelty was part of the White House's motive.
There it is. Dungeonmaster Dick Cheney got his rocks off by fancying himself as Jack Bauer in a Stetson and alligator shoes. That torture is ineffective (let alone immoral and illegal) meant nothing to him. He just wanted to know that the scary brown people were screaming, writhing and pleading for their lives, never mind that it led to bad info that sent our intelligence agents on wild goose chases (fortunately for them they weren't wild quail-hunting chases). So to set the record straight: the U.S. wasn't made safer because of Cheney. It was made safer in spite of Cheney.
CHEERS to the new arrival. The suits at MSNBC may have called off their search for a 10pm host (apparently the Countdown reruns rake in a lot of dough), but they've shaken things up in the 6 O'clock slot. Last night Keith Olbermann broke the news that radio powerhouse Ed Schultz will replace David Shuster starting Monday. It'll be refreshing having a host---and a scrappy one at that---who proudly says he's pro-labor and pro-union and who doesn't shrink from the word "liberal." We're hoping that, like Rachel Maddow, he'll bring on some fresh faces to spar with rather than the same tired old talking heads. (Pat Buchanan: it's safe to go home again---the missus took down the trapeze.) But the name---The Ed Show---is wimpy and needs work. My suggestion: "Good evening, I'm Ed Schultz. Welcome to Relax, I'm Just Bustin' Your Balls."
CHEERS to mo' money. On April 2, 1792, Congress authorized the establishment of a U.S. Mint. The resolution was described as "curiously strong."
-
Five years ago in C&J: April 2, 2004
CHEERS to 3-6pm Air America host Randi Rhodes. Wow. "Journalists are so freakin' lazy---no wonder the president gets away with ev-er-y-thing!" And Wednesday's Nader smackdown? Whew...Hell hath no fury like a liberal Brooklynite scorned.
CHEERS to April 8. It'll be Condi's Come-to-Jesus moment in front of the 9/11 commission. But new testimony from FBI whistleblower saying Condi knew of Al Qaeda's plans long before 9/11 could sink her. Will clingy Christian Dior gown be enough to distract the panel? [4/2/09 Update: Ahh...life was so much simpler for Republicans in the days before she spoke those immortal words into a live microphone: "I believe the [PDB] title was, Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States." Damn hippies and their damn commissions.]
-
And just one more...
JEERS to a dumb way to lose my business. Just for shits and giggles, yesterday I decided to do a little writing at a local coffee shop called...[unfolds the napkin he wrote the name on so he wouldn't forget]...Starbucks. As they were preparing my five-bagger of Earl Grey tea, I inquired: "My good fellow, have you any wireless World Wide Web capabilities in this pleasant tavern?" His response (I kid you not): "Yeah, but you gotta have a special card which you need to register on a web site to get." He didn’t give me the URL of the web site (which would be worthless anyway, because I couldn’t go to the web site without a card which I need to register for at a web site and...oh, never mind, it's complicated), but he did inform me that the fast food place across the street had hassle-free wireless. Yes, indeed it does, and it's wonderful. They also have delicious Earl Grey tea. And a great view of Starbucks.
Oh, and welcome to the world, baby Kossack Zachary John, born last Saturday in Luxembourg and weighing in at 8 pounds, 11 ounces. The newbie is the son of Kossack "Cactus Jack Wallace" and his wife, Mrs. Cactus Jack Wallace. Remember C&J's golden rule, Mom and Dad: It's never too early to form a presidential exploratory committee. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"If Gordon Brown keeps slobbering over Bill in Portland Maine, he'll come down with anal poisoning and may die from it."
---Rush Limbaugh
4/1/09
-