From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
It's time once again to play History: Cruel...or Kind?
Round 1
John McCain claims there's "substantial evidence" that illegal immigrants from Mexico started wildfires in Arizona.
History will be cruel because...there wasn't and they didn't.
History will be kind because...if the two Americans charged with starting the Wallow Fire flee to Mexico, renounce their American citizenship, become Mexican citizens, illegally cross the border into the United States and start another wildfire, then John McCain will be vindicated!
Verdict: History will be CRUEL. This falls on the McBizarre scale somewhere between denying he marketed himself as a "maverick" and bringing Hobbits to the Senate floor. But the Sunday morning shows will continue booking him every weekend all the same.
Round 2
Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, suspecting his wife was cheating on him with a Nassau County police detective, allegedly convinced the Nassau County Police commissioner to order an internal investigation to dig up dirt on the hunky badged beau, in part because O'Reilly was thinking about plopping down a big chunk of money to help fund a police training center at the local community college.
History will be cruel because...Nassau County taxpayers footed the bill for Mr. O'Reilly's personal vendetta, and when they get wind of it I bet he'll be getting some sternly-worded letters in his mailbox, and maybe a flaming poop bag or two in front of his gated compound.
History will be kind because...c'mon, pinhead, who hasn't commandeered their local police department for personal business, using a big wad of cash as an, um, "incentive?"
Verdict: History will be KIND. And thanks to a generous donation from Mr. O'Reilly to the Bill in Portland Maine Stripper Bar Fund, I can render that verdict with complete and impartial confidence! Now, for old time's sake, here's Sting to play us out...
Round 3
Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann mangles history, claiming the "shot fired around the world" happened in Concord, New Hampshire, that John Quincy Adams was a Founding Father, that John Wayne was born where he wasn't, that Elvis was born on the day he wasn't, and that the Founding Fathers ended slavery.
History will be kind because...everyone makes mistakes.
History will be cruel because...holy crow, not mistakes like those!
Verdict: History will be CRUEL. Or at least it will be until Michele Bachmann rewrites it, after which it will be KIND. (Neat trick!)
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, September 1, 2011
Note: Here's the schedule for the Labor Day weekend. C&J will be not be writing or posting (i.e. laboring) on Monday. We will be writing but not posting on Tuesday. We will be both writing and posting on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And on Saturday we start working on our Marcus Bachmann barbarian costume for Halloween. (I hope I don’t run out of sequins.)
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til President Obama unveils his BIG (or small) Jobs Plan: 6 7
Days `til the Atlanta Dragon Boat Festival: 9
Approximate percent of homeless youth in New York City who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender: 40%
Date of the opening of the True Colors Residence for homeless GLBT youth: 9/1/11
(Source: Cyndi Lauper via Kossack rserven)
Percent of Americans who believed in 1991 that religious leaders should stay out of politics: 20%
Percent who believed that in 2008: 44%
(Source: National Congregations Study)
Fees charged to the Pentagon over the past ten years for containers of library books returned late from Iraq and Afghanistan: $720 million
(Source: MSNBC)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment (this week in honor of Dick Cheney's new book):
Excuse me. I don't want to be tacky or anything, but hasn't it occurred to anyone in Washington that sending Vice President Dick Cheney out to champion an invasion of Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein is a "murderous dictator" is somewhere between bad taste and flaming hypocrisy?
When Dick Cheney was CEO of the oil-field supply firm Halliburton, the company did $23.8 million in business with Saddam Hussein, the evildoer "prepared to share his weapons of mass destruction with terrorists."
So if Saddam is "the world's worst leader," how come Cheney sold him the equipment to get his dilapidated oil fields up and running so he could afford to build weapons of mass destruction?
---September, 2002
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Stem cell therapy WIN! "The treasured family dog has become so boisterous that they have to watch her more closely to make sure she doesn't overdo it."
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CHEERS to September! Congress straggles back to work after a month off (for Republicans, a month trying to dodge the wrath of their constituents with varying degrees of success). The kids are back in school. Labor gets its day and Obama announces his jobs plan. 9/11 turns ten (as if it needs to be said, that is not included in the cheer). Shoppers jam stores looking for the perfect Autumnal Equinox, Rosh Hashanah and Mexican Independence Day gifts. ("Another tie? You shouldn’t have!") New England gets insanely beautiful as summer turns much too quickly into fall. Hurricanes continue to be petty and vindictive. (Don’t fuck with us, Katia---we're not in the mood.) And I feel confident enough to make the following prediction: A Republican candidate will say something so daffy that psychiatrists across the country will write books about it. (Call it a crazy hunch.) Oh, and as of today, according to Atrios, "…the 14 months of the stupid season really begins. Oh joy." And yippeekayay!
JEERS to getting rolled again? President Obama can't even seem to win a battle that the White house itself started...or can he? Scheduling his BIG (or small) jobs speech to a joint session of Congress for Wednesday would've coincided with the Republican candidates debate. So John Boehner---who I guess has to approve these joint speeches with Harry Reid---said, of course, "NO!" Obama said, "okay," and now he'll preempt the opening game of the NFL season instead. TV repairmen will be working overtime starting next Friday morning fixing snack-related dents and performing beer bottle extractions from millions of flatscreens. This will, to the GOP's horror, lead to lots and lots of new jobs in that field, a rebound in the economy, and a massive tea party defeat in 2012. Point: Obama, jiu jitsu master. I think.
JEERS to the War to End All Wars to End All Wars. Seventy-two years ago today, on September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland and started World War II. The U.S. wouldn’t officially enter the fray for another two years, but when we did we kicked Fuhrer butt. Today we salute all our veterans who fought the real Axis of Evil...and also two special Luftwaffe vets who unwittingly helped shorten the war by months. Let's not do it again, shall we?
P.S. Today's special on the House cafeteria's dessert cart: Freedom Strudel.
CHEERS to busting the banksters. David Dayen at FDL has seen Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto’s complaint against Bank of America, and says it's a whopper:
[T]his complaint is a stick of dynamite to the foreclosure fraud settlement, exposing it as a useless whitewash that won’t deter banks from their criminal practices. Masto joins other skeptical AGs here in not acceding to such a dereliction of duty, and instead she lays out a thorough case of systematic fraud, in this case by Bank of America, at every step of the mortgage process. […] This is a portrait of a criminal enterprise, and to anyone who thinks the other mortgage servicers are somehow more chaste than Bank of America, I have some Bank of America stock to sell you.
I don’t understand all the details---I typically only go to the bank to steal pens and sniff the carbon paper. But my main emotion after reading that is, I admit it, bloodlust. I want those fuckers (and their counterparts at their competitors) to go to jail and feel the kind of financial pain that we little people have for so long. I also don’t know much about Ms. Masto. But if she pulls this off (with help from a few other tough AGs in New York, Massachusetts and elsewhere), she'll become a folk hero. Tune up your banjo, Pete Seeger. History may be a'callin'.
JEERS to spoiling the fun. Y'know, Republicans are so blatant about hating on labor, that you have to wonder why they want to go through the motions of "caring" by marching in, say, the Wausau, Wisconsin Labor Day parade. But the mayor threatened to pull funding for the annual event if they weren't allowed to participate, so participate they will. They'll be easy to spot, that's for sure. While other groups will be tossing candy to the crowd, they'll be the ones throwing pink slips.
CHEERS to historic ringy-dingies. Happy Emma Nutt Day! On this date in 1878, the first female telephone operator in the U.S.---the aforementioned Mrs. Nutt---started working for the Telephone Dispatch Company of Boston. She was brought in after the existing operators---a bunch of male telegraph tappers who turned into snotty unhelpful little twits when they started talking to actual people---were fired. And on tomorrow's date in 1878 they used those skills to form the first customer service call center.
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Five years ago in C&J: September 1, 2006
JEERS to people Jesus would go postal over. Unscrupulous loan sharks are skittering around military bases like cockroaches, preying on soldiers and their families:
The report says "payday loan" stores (so named because their loans are often due on a borrower's next payday) have sprung up by the thousands around military bases and elsewhere in the past decade.
Lenders typically charge $15 to $25 per $100 loan for two weeks, and most loans are extended for several weeks. The report says the average loan is $350 and has an annual interest rate of 390% to 780%. The average borrower, it says, pays back $834 for a $339 loan.
May your tallywackers get caught in your coin-rolling machines. [9/1/11 Update: Now regular bloodsucker banks are getting in on the payday loan scheme. What could go wrong???]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to Minty freshness. "The new America the Beautiful State Quarter is here! The new America the Beautiful State Quarter is here!" The latest in the series represents the Great State of Mississippi:
Historic sites in Vicksburg are depicted on a U.S. quarter that was put into national circulation Tuesday. … The quarter depicts the USS Cairo gunboat and honors the Vicksburg National Military Park.
I've locked all the doors in C&J, and by god you're gonna stay here until you learn somethin'…like this from the Historic Naval Ships Association:
In the same year she was commissioned, USS Cairo had the dubious distinction of being the first armored vessel in the history of warfare to be sunk by an electrically detonated torpedo, today called a mine. On December 12, 1862, in the Yazoo River approximately 10 miles north of Vicksburg, Cairo was struck by two torpedoes, sinking in less than 12 minutes with no loss of life.
After 102 years beneath the muddy waters of the Yazoo River, Cairo was raised in 1964, by a group of private citizens who called themselves "Operation Cairo." Currently on display within the Vicksburg National Military Park, Cairo is the only surviving vessel of her class.
With the release of the Mississippi quarter comes a special gift in the form of a new surefire pickup line that'll soon be heard in bars and churches from coast to coast: "Hey, is that an ironclad in your pocket or are ya just happy to see me?" Awesome.
Have a nice Thursday. If you need me for anything I'll be in the basement pulling the snow shovels I put in storage last month out of storage. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"The last act of President Abraham Lincoln when he was in office was to secure our national motto, In Bill in Portland Maine We Trust, on a coin."
---Rep. Michele Bachmann
8/28/11
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