From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
"Mission Accomplished" Turns 11
Today he divides his time between
painting and counting his money.
Once upon a time, there was a steely-eyed warrior named Commander Codpiece who lied his pantaloons off to get his country to approve going to war with another country. It would be easy, he said. Piece of cake! And sure enough, the mighty forces under Commander Codpiece made quick work out of deposing a two-bit tyrant in a far-off land. So Commander Codpiece dressed up in a flight suit and pretended to fly a plane out to an aircraft carrier, where he made a
victory speech under a banner that said MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. And oh how the pundit class swooned:
"Speaking as a woman, and listening to the women who called into my radio show, seeing President Bush get out of that plane, carrying his helmet, he is a real man."
---Laura Ingraham
"Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day."
---Joe Klein
Codpiece size: XXS
"…a one-time fighter dog."
---Wolf Blitzer on Bush
"Here comes George Bush. You know, he's in his flight suit, he's striding across the deck, and he's wearing his parachute harness, you know---and I've worn those because I parachute---and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. You go run that stuff again of him walking across there with the parachute. He has just won every woman's vote in the United States of America. You know, all those women who say size doesn't count---they're all liars. Check that out."
---G. Gordon Liddy
"[T]he president deserves everything he's doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. ... Here's a president who's really nonverbal. He's like Eisenhower. He looks great in a military uniform."
---Chris Matthews
In fact, winning the war was
so much fun that Commander Codpiece went on winning it for another eight years until his successor decided that enough winning had been won. When it was all over, hundreds of thousands of people had
lost their lives, limbs and minds and Commander Codpiece's taxpayers were on the hook for
upwards of six trillion victory dollars. But the important thing is, Commander Codpiece and the very serious pundit class are living happily ever after to this very day. The End.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, May 1, 2014
Note: C&J is posting early this morning so I can take my partner Michael to get his colonoscopy. He'll be half asleep as he gets hot air blown up his tuchus, and soon after he gets home he'll have no recollection of what anybody said during it. So it's kinda like attending a tea party rally but with really good drugs.
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Tomorrow!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Independence Day:
84
Days 'til
International Tuba Day:
1
Percent of American consumers who view energy efficiency as a priority, up from 72 percent in September:
79%
(Source: UT Energy poll)
Amount by which manufacturing costs in China were less than in the U.S. in 2004 and this year, respectively:
14%, 5%
Expected year during which U.S. manufacturing costs are expected to achieve parity with China's:
2018
(Source: Boston Consulting Group report)
Increase in the pending home sales index in March, the first increase in 9 months:
3.4%
(Source: National Association of Realtors)
Portion of Americans who own a smartphone:
7-in-10
(Source: Nielsen Research)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
All right, we've got W. off to Washington at long last, and here we are, stuck with Gov. Rick Perry. I realize President-elect Bush is pushing the unlikely notion that what the nation needs is for Congress to become more like the Texas Legislature---a thought so alarming I can only fall back gasping---but in truth our very own dreaded Legislature is almost upon us. Jan. 9 and they'll all be here, leaving many a village without its idiot.
As a matter of politeness and patriotism, all Texans are obliged to fall in line and wish our new governor the best of luck, which I cordially do, and besides, I have been pointing out for years that he has good hair. Really, really good hair.
---December 2000
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Puppy Pic of the Day: In Arkansas, a survivor emerges…
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It's in sight!
CHEERS to May! The month of flowers, Mom's Day,
BASIC's 50th birthday, Armed Forces Day, Victoria Day, "End of the Middle Ages" Day (May 29—for Republicans it's a day of mourning), and Cinco de Something or Other. Britain gets a Bank Holiday---or as the banksters call it here, "a day ending in y." Memorial Day weekend kicks off summer in 22 days. Full moon arrives on the 14th, so mark your calendar to wink at Neil Armstrong that night. Plus: is this the first month of the year we may actually make it through without the furnace kicking in? (I'm not holding my breath---mainly because when I go outside I can still see it.) As usual, today's highlight is the Daily Kos contributing editors dancing around the Maypole later this morning. If they follow their usual routine, they'll end up with a bent pole and a huge granny knot.
CHEERS to leaving a trail of bread crumbs. Over in Wisconsin a judge struck down a voter suppression law disguised as a "voter ID law." And since Republicans will never stop trying to ram them through, it's cool to see that the Wisconsin decision may help smash other similar laws across the country. Says the New York Times editorial board:
For the first time since the Supreme Court junked a core provision of the Voting Rights Act in June, a federal court has used the strongest surviving part of the act to strike down a state’s voter-identification law, and, in the process, has set out a detailed road map for upcoming challenges to similar laws around the country.
Supporters of these laws insist they are necessary to prevent fraud at the polls, though such fraud is basically nonexistent. The real point is to deter from the polls significant numbers of Democratic voters, particularly minorities and the poor. That was the heart of the reasoning by Judge Lynn Adelman of Federal District Court in Milwaukee, who issued an extraordinarily thorough 90-page ruling on Tuesday invalidating Wisconsin’s voter-ID law as a harmful solution in search of an imaginary problem. … “A person would have to be insane to commit voter-impersonation fraud,” he added, pointing to high costs of being prosecuted for that crime compared with the low benefits of casting one additional vote.
But not quite as insane as people who commit voter-impersonation-fraud fraud.
JEERS to consolidated crap. Just gonna sneak all this into one innocent-looking blockquote. Feel free to ignore it, but I need to at least document the ugly for time-capsule purposes:
Oklahoma botched an execution as bad as it could be botched, Israel cut off peace talks with Palestine, Syria is still a mess, storms are huge and deadly down south, the armed Bundy nuts are setting up roadblocks in Nevada for god-knows-why, kidnappings and forced marriages of hundreds of young women are happening in Nigeria, there's been another oil-car train derailment (Virginia this time), Bob Hoskins died, net neutrality is on the ropes, East Ukraine more closely resembles the wild west, there was a shooting spree in a Georgia town where everyone is required to own a gun to prevent shooting sprees, first-quarter GDP sucked hard, and the bamboo has started invading our yard for another year.
Okay, that was icky. Back to happyville…
Hello, gorgeous.
CHEERS to a memorable growth spurt. On May 1, 1931, the Empire State Building was dedicated. It was the tallest building in the pleasant village of New York until 1972, when the World Trade Center rose above it. It regained its "tallest" status in the worst possible way 28 years later. But today it once again plays second fiddle to the
new One World Trade Center tower. There, there, Empire State---if it's any consolation, King Kong always liked you best.
CHEERS to the mighty iron horse. Happy birthday to Amtrak, which turns turns 42 today. Be sure to wave to the conductor as he roars by while you're stuck in traffic.
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Five years ago in C&J: May 1, 2009
JEERS to confounding the congresswoman from Minnesota...again. How much do we marvel at the astonishingly small number of neurons firing in Minnesota congresswoman Michele Bachmann's head? We're still counting the ways. Here's #392: Monday she accused Franklin Roosevelt of causing the Great Depression by ramming through the "Hoot-Smalley tariffs." Um...not quite:
"Cha Cha Cha!"
Here's what really happened: When Franklin Roosevelt took office, unemployment was already about 25%. And the tariff referred to here was actually the Smoot-Hawley bill, co-authored by Republicans Sen. Reed Smoot of Utah and Rep. Willis Hawley of Oregon, and signed into law by President Herbert Hoover.
I'm sure Ms. Bachmann regrets the error and will refresh her memory by reviewing her 5th-grade history book. Or as she calls it: "My trusty doorstop."
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And just one more…
(tongue-in-cheek) CHEERS to the most awesomest Preznitential moment evuh! Seriously, when I think back to the hero worship that surrounded Bush's carrier photo-op ten years ago, I'm stunned by the way so many supposedly intelligent, professionally-trained journalists and analysts behaved like two-year-olds who had just discovered Sesame Street for the first time. So here's one more for old time's sake from Tweety:
Separated at birth.
Chris Matthews: Americans love having a guy as president...a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy ... They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits. We don't want an indoor prime minister type, or the Danes or the Dutch or the Italians, or a Putin. Can you imagine Putin getting elected here? We want a guy as president.
I'll leave it up to you whether to laugh or cry.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
When you think about naval warfare in World War II, you typically don't associate it with Cheers and Jeers.
---Best of USA
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