From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
The Maverick
(With humble apologies to Edgar Allan Poe)
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered drunk and weary,
Over how John McCain, the candidate, could be such a frigging bore
While I watched him, taped, on Fox, thinking I'd rather be from a rafter hanging, suddenly there came a banging,
As of some one violently haranguing, haranguing the butler outside my condo door.
"'Tis some hothead," I muttered, "pounding on my condo door -
If it's that Girl Scout harassing us with her cookies again, I'll buy no more." (I mean it--she's way too pushy.)
Open here I flung the ornate mahogany door (imported from Italy, y'know), when, with many a wheeze and mutter,
In there stepped a codger of the Great Depression days of yore.
Not the least effort to wipe his shoes made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, coerced the condo maintenance guy to bring up a ladder which he climbed and then perched above my condo door --
Perched upon a bust of Gore just above my condo door --
Perched, and scowled, and drooled a little, and nothing more.
Then this blindingly pale maverick beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and clueless decorum of the countenance he wore,
"Though thy hairline be receding and thy whiskers shaven, thou," I said, "sureth looketh liketh a craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient media-hypnotizing maven wandering aimlessly from thy Straight Talk motor coach –- but since yer up there,
Tell me what thy lordly number-one campaign issue is. Is it above reproach?
Straight talk now -- if I pull the lever for you, what am I voting for?"
Quoth the maverick, "Forever war."
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so carelessly spoken,
"Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some Chimp-like 'Decider' whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his poll numbers fell through the floor --
And this maverick thinks it's just swell to continue -- more, more more???
'Forever -- forever war.'"
"Neocon!" said I, "thing of evil! -- prophet still, if warmonger or devil! --
Whether Cheney sent, or whether Lieberman tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by dwindling Bacardi stock haunted -- tell me truly, I implore --
Is there -- is there nothing stopping you from fulfilling thy pledge to Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran? -- tell me -- tell me, I implore!"
Quoth the maverick, "Forever war."
"If that's all yer gonna say get the hell out of my place, you dipwit or fiend!" I shrieked upstarting --
"Get thee back to thy Straight Talk Express and thy ass-kissing media barbeques!
Leave no white hair as a token of that hawkish wet dream thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my reality-based mind unbroken! -– and quit farting above my door!
Remove thy Aqua Velva fumes from out my olfactory canal, and take thy dimpled lardass from off my door!"
Quoth the maverick, "My friends -- Forever war."
And the maverick, who apparently knows how to climb up a ladder but not down, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the now-crumbling bust of Gore just above my condo door ("Jeeves, call security!");
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is destruction-dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his grim-reaper shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that Democratic victory that lies seven months away according to the Garfield calendar hanging on my refrigerator door
Shall be vexed by this trigger-happy jerk -– nevermore!
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, April 24, 2008
Note: Yay! Today I get to change the shredded newspaper in my box!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til The Netroots Nation convention in Austin July 17-20: 84
Days `til the 134th Kentucky Derby: 9
Drop in the price of framing lumber from 18 months ago: -18%
Drop in the price of sheetrock drywall vs. 18 months ago: -40%
(Money magazine via The Week)
Increase in Exxon-Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson's compensation in 2007: 18% ($21.7 million)
(Source: USA Today)
Amount Sheik Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum (the son of Dubai's leader---please don’t make me spell his name, too) paid for the #1 camel in his country, to be used for racing or camel beauty pageants: $2.7 million
(Source: The Week)
Current delegate count for Barack Obama: 1,728
Current delegate count for Hillary Clinton: 1,595
(As of 4/24/08 via MSNBC)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
The Republicans are worried about the flag, gay marriage and the terrible burden of the estate tax on the rich. The rest of us are obviously unnecessarily worried about war, peace, the economy, the environment and civilization. Another reason to vote Republican--—they have a shorter list.
---June, 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: I've heard that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Behold Buddy.
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JEERS to volume knobs that go up to 11. A postscript to the Pennsylvania contest: I find it amusing how the intensity of these affairs ratchet up to heights befitting the second coming of Christ. Six weeks ago it was, like, "The next contest is in six weeks. Hillary Clinton is expected to... [Yaaaawn] ...easily win the state. Nothing to see here, please move along." Then, the night after Hillary Clinton easily wins the state---as was totally predicted from Day 1 (which we hear she's ready for)---it's like, "OH MAH GAWD AH PEED MAH PANTS! HILLARY WON EASILY!! NEVER SAW THAT COMIN'!" My point: Every day that goes by I'm further convinced that we are nothing more than God's sea monkeys. Non-stop amusement for the Ol' Gal.
CHEERS to The Rock. So this is what I see and hear every morning when I turn to election coverage via cable shows, the dead-tree press and Bloggerland:
Hdiclintonfhf! Fhgfvugr gijhb!!
Htbc cfj obamahfjc vfifjofd rkjr ufjdloldmf!!!
Gd judfhd dsygcfhv hj fh hje!!!
In the calm center of this din is a voice that I've come to trust implicitly. So if you want a straight-shootin' snapshot of where we stand in Primaryville---now and in the future---go watch Josh Marshall's plain-spoken dispatches at TPM. In my world, he's utterly fhgfvugr gijhb!!
JEERS to flapping your arms really fast for long periods of time. Delta and Northwest Airlines announced that they lost something like a gajillion dollars (or 23 Euros) in the first quarter of 2008, largely because of soaring fuel costs. They also announced that starting today, your seat cushion will no longer be a flotation device. It'll be a parachute.
CHEERS to catching the bad guys. Of all the lands in all the world, the United States is #1 in throwing evildoers in jail. Right now there are 2.3 million in the pokey:
It used to be that Europeans came to the United States to study its prison systems. They came away impressed. "In no country is criminal justice administered with more mildness than in the United States," Alexis de Tocqueville, who toured American penitentiaries in 1831, wrote in "Democracy in America."
No more.
"Far from serving as a model for the world, contemporary America is viewed with horror," James Q. Whitman, a specialist in comparative law at Yale, wrote last year in Social Research. "Certainly there are no European governments sending delegations to learn from us about how to manage prisons." ... Indeed, said Vivien Stern, a research fellow at the prison studies center in London, the American incarceration rate has made the United States "a rogue state, a country that has made a decision not to follow what is a normal Western approach."
Oh, pick pick pick. At least we're #1 at something. By the way, prisoner 38363489A in cellblock J is my 86 year-old next door neighbor. Gladys is serving six to twelve months for putting her trash out too early. I feel bad for turning her in, but neighborhood association rules are neighborhood association rules.
CHEERS to Roger Ebert. I started really loving movies in the mid-70s, and a lot of that had to do with the reviews that came through my teevee every week by Ebert and his late co-host Gene Siskel. Nothing else existed in the world when Sneak Previews aired. Ebert's been a real trooper lately, enduring multiple throat surgeries and now a broken hip that'll keep him away from his own film festival. I hope I have half his optimism and energy if I ever find myself in the same circumstances. Positive vibes for a speedy recovery.
P.S. Best opening sentence in a movie review so far in 2008: "Jason Segel's penis probably would not sell a lot of tickets all by itself." Really!
JEERS to poor stewardship. Get used to seeing paragraphs like this for the next, oh, rest of your life:
Federal agencies, states, tribes and concerned citizens are spending millions of dollars and thousands of hours on [fill in the blank] to reverse decades of poor management and combat the mounting threats of population and climate change.
In this case, it's waterway restoration projects. But it might as well be CO2 emissions, clear-cutting, oceans clogged with plastic, melting icecaps...you name it. Is there absolutely no way we can blame this on otters? Elk? Kookaburras?
CHEERS to giving it the old college try. Coupla students at Brown University went after guest speaker Thomas "Friedman Unit" Friedman with whipped-cream pies yesterday. I believe I speak for all us in the progressive blogosphere when I say: better luck next time.
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One Year Ago in C&J: April 24, 2007...
JEERS to junk mail. Got a postcard last week from John McCain. Seems he's officially kicking off his campaign tomorrow in New Hampshire and he'd like me to attend. Rats...I've already committed to stabbing my eyes with knitting needles that day.
DO SVIDANIYA to a real Russian bear. Former Russian president Boris Yeltsin has died at 76. He'll be laid to rest after a modest ceremony. His liver will receive a state funeral.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to the resilience of the stars and... [stomp stomp stomp] ...stripes. Big controversy last week at the University of Maine in Farmington. Seems a student did something to the American flag that caused an uproar among thems-who-judge-without-gettin'-the-facts:
It all started when [Susan] Crane, a senior at the university, took an art course entitled "The Cultural Relationship of Art and the Personal Politic." Taught by assistant professor of art Kate Randall, the course required each student to complete a project that married art with a guerrilla action or social experiment.
Crane's idea: Construct four 5-by-8-foot flags out of vinyl and colored duct tape. Then lay them out in a maze, along with clusters of smaller 2-by-3-inch flags, on the hallway floor inside the school's student center. Using a video camera, Crane would record passers-by from the knees down to see how many stepped on the flags versus how many followed the serpentine path through them.
When word got out, protestors showed up to denounce the experiment, with one of them playing the oh-so-predictable "[University officials] are joining terrorists who burn and stomp on it" card (one of 'em even sat on a flag---tsk tsk). The bottom line: 95 percent of passers-by took care to avoid stepping on the flag and Crane, A red-blooded Republican, lived to tell the tale. If I ever take that class I'm gonna try the same experiment...with Dick Cheney.
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Oh, and this just in: Charlie Rose has lost his mind. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"Bill in Portland Maine in full pornstar voice today."
---Shepard Smith, Fox News
4/21/08
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