Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, August 7, 2008
Note: In an amazing feat of mental elasticity and neural ambidexterity, I HTML-coded today's entire C&J...backwards.
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the vice presidential candidates debate at Washington University in St. Louis: 56
Days `til the 16th annual Great Falls Balloon Festival in Lewiston/Auburn: 8
Number of registered Kossacks as of early yesterday morning: 172,284
(Source: Jotter)
Maximum number of U.S. Army generals fired or replaced for cause during World War II: 23
Number fired or replaced for cause during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined: One
(Source: Harper's Index)
Amount by which Americans hiding money in offshore tax havens cheated the federal government last year: $100 billion
(Source: Chicago Tribune via The Week)
Current pressure in our Honda Civic's tires after we inflated them yesterday: 240 psi
-
Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
On the theory that gritching alone will not improve anything, here's a positive suggestion for world betterment: I move that we pay members of Congress precisely the median wage in this country. Fifty percent of Americans will earn more than they do, 50 percent less. The median goes up, they get a raise. What could be fairer? Median is currently a little under 50K for a family of four. Welcome to the real world, honorable members.
---September, 1999
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Animal cruelty...
-
CHEERS to Thomas Friedman. There lieth a danger in dismissing certain dead-tree-press columnists because they sometimes say stupid things like "Suck on this" and "the next six months will be the most critical six months until at least six months from now": namely, sometimes they're right on:
[M]y trip with Denmark’s minister of climate and energy, Connie Hedegaard, to see the effects of climate change on Greenland’s ice sheet leaves me with a very strong opinion: Our kids are going to be so angry with us one day.
We’ve charged their future on our Visa cards. We’ve added so many greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, for our generation’s growth, that our kids are likely going to spend a good part of their adulthood, maybe all of it, just dealing with the climate implications of our profligacy. And now our leaders are telling them the way out is "offshore drilling" for more climate-changing fossil fuels.
Madness. Sheer madness.
But at least it's good old-fashioned, red, white and blue American madness. The Danes may have Hamlet, but we've got Dick.
JEERS to justice at the speed of tortoise. Osama bin Laden's chauffeur, Hoke Hamdan, was found guilty yesterday of providing material support to terrorists, but cleared of actually plotting with them. Says legal professor Jonathan Turley:
The verdict is likely to be dismissed around the world due to the means used to secure it. The tribunals have been rightly ridiculed as kangaroo courts, even by conservatives.
Ironically, if President Bush had simply relied on the justice system, these men would likely have been convicted and sentenced years ago. Instead, after spending millions and losing credibility around the world, the Administration is struggling to secure a handful of convictions before Bush leaves office to offer some vindication for this ill-conceived system.
The good news: no death penalty. The bad news: he'll spend the rest of his life in line at the DMV.
JEERS to John McCain. If for no other reason, he deserves to lose in a massive landslide for personally plopping Paris Hilton into the middle of a presidential campaign during a time of war, recession, environmental catastrophe and general gloom. And what does it say about his fitness to lead the country when Paris Hilton comes off as the adult in the room? I think it says, "Here's your rocking chair---get used to it."
CHEERS to money money everywhere (as long as by "everywhere" you mean nowhere). Iraq is reported to have a---are you sitting down?---$79 billion surplus. Unfortunately, a Shiite lawmaker there says, "Hold the phone in such a manner as to make you pause for a moment!" Apparently Iraq's surplus is just a figment of the imagination. Wow---just like ours!
JEERS to radioactive conundrums. The current Republican slogan, "A chicken in every pot and a nuclear power plant in every back yard," may have hit a bit of a snag. Seems we're having a little trouble disposing of our existing nuclear waste (you can only sell so much to movie theatres as "butter-flavored topping"). Oh, and of course paying for it:
Even if no new reactors are built, getting rid of the country's nuclear waste will cost $96.2 billion and require a major expansion of the planned Nevada waste dump beyond limits imposed by Congress, the Energy Department said Tuesday.
The revised cost estimate for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas came as the presumed Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, renewed his call for building as many as 45 new power reactors by 2030.
At the same time, he announced the GOP's new slogan: "Ready, Fire, Aim!" Catchy.
CHEERS to honoring our casualties. On August 7, 1782, George Washington created the Purple Heart, a decoration to bestow honor on soldiers wounded during their service to our country. The recipient, said Washington, "has given of his blood in the defense of his homeland and shall forever be revered by his fellow countrymen." It only took Republicans 222 years to dishonor, tarnish and abuse it. Well, you know how they are when they set their mind to something...just no stoppin' 'em.
-
-
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda... GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. Kossack Slinkerwink asks: What The EFF IS The Matter With TIME?
Rickets?
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda... GONG!!!
-
-
CHEERS to paying cash. Have credit card, will get screwed! Eleven jerks were indicted in the largest identity theft case in history---41 million credit card numbers, including a bunch in Maine. If I ever get the chance I'm gonna slide their dicks through a credit card machine. Just to see the display read: "Transaction denied for insufficient size."
JEERS to more red ink and less black ink. Wow---the Portland Press Herald is going through some tough times. They're announcing staff cuts at a rate of once every three months, and the latest round came yesterday. They also announced some format changes. I don’t want to say they're drastic, but the masthead on my paper this morning reads: Portland Press Pamphlet.
JEERS to America the Gullible. Fool us once: On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Johnson a big fat stick to wield in dealing with reported North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces. It was all crap---the attacks never happened but we bought it anyway. Fool us twice: Years later George W. Bush did virtually the same thing by ginning up bullshit documents and other phony evidence to concoct a bogus case for invading Iraq, but we bought it anyway. Here, let me try: Hey America! Send me all your gold and diamonds or our Mad Zombie Clown Defense Shield will be penetrated by proton-eating devil wombat dogs in Boston Whalers!!! (What the hell...it's worth a shot.)
DUH! to ideas that are doomed to fail right out of the starting gate. So the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (NAMBLA) came up with the brilliant idea of "Self-deportation." The way it works is, immigrants turn themselves in voluntarily so they can be boxed up and shipped back to where they came from. The pilot program is running in Phoenix, San Diego, Santa Ana, Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina, and the results are in: "As of Tuesday afternoon, only one person---in Phoenix---took the offer." And that was only because he thought "self deportation" had to do with sitting in a dark room behind a plexiglass screen watching strippers. Silly mayor.
-
One Year Ago in C&J: August 7, 2007...
JEERS to General David Petraeus. The de facto Commander-in-Chief was the '04-'05 supervisor of a shoddy distribution process that allowed over one hundred and ninety thousand guns---not to mention tons of helmets and body armor---to fall into the hands of insurgents, who are now using them to kill our troops. On the bright side, not a single Blackhawk attack helicopter has fallen into enemy hands. Yet.
JEERS to unexpected cave-ins. No, not the mine accident in Utah (we hope the trapped miners get out safely), but the Democratic collapse on the FISA bill last week (et tu, Jim Webb???). The only thing I can figure is that this must be some elaborate trap for Republicans. Next time, just cover a snakepit with palm branches, okay? [8/7/08 Update: No trap. More like a cocktail party for Bush. Thanks a lot.]
-
And just one more...
CHEERS to Garrison Keillor. And happy 67th birthday to the iconic American humorist. His name is synonymous with A Prairie Home Companion, but he's also an active columnist and unabashed liberal. In his latest, he meets a cop watching his 10 year-old daughter play in a little league baseball game:
"Tough times," he said. I nodded. We might've gotten onto politics then, but we got onto music and Ireland and so forth, but I thought, "Here is a guy the candidates have to talk to this summer." A cop is a realist and he knows where [Norman] Rockwell leaves off and surrealism begins, and here is his girl taking a big lead off third base and he loves her so beautifully and unabashedly and wants the world to be there for her when it comes her time to fly.
I'm 65 and have a good life and can't claim that the Current Occupant has done me much harm at all. It's when I think about ten-year-old girls I start to get hot under the collar. This clueless man has dug a deep hole for them and doesn't seem vaguely aware of it. He has spent us deep in a hole, gotten us into a disastrous war, blithely ignored the long-term best interests of the country, and when you think of the four thousand kids who now lie in cemeteries, and for what? - you start to grind your teeth. For the sake of the girl with the beautiful swing, I hope we get a better president than the disgusting incompetent we've wasted eight years of our national life on. Think twice about who you put your arm around, Senator McCain.
Whoops. Too late.
-
Oh, and if you see this guy again, please tell him I'd like to buy him a drink. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Acting on a tip from hunters who indicated the presence of Bill in Portland Maine, [Hugo] Rainey said that the researchers trekked on foot through mud for three days to the outskirts of Cheers and Jeers, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the nearest road. "When we went there, we found an astonishing amount of Kossacks," said Rainey, speaking from the International Primatological Society Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland.
---CNN.com
-
