From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE
Meanwhile, Over There...
Mitt Romney (from a New Hampshire Union Leader op-ed): Barack Obama is facing a financial emergency…Yet his approach has been to engage in one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history.
Stephen Colbert: May I remind the Mittpickers out there that Congress never declared war on any of these countries? So, technically, Romney is right. Our forces are just "spending a semester abroad." Y'know, sort of an international "bullet exchange program." That might explain why no one is reporting on them.
---The Colbert Report, April 26
Yesterday eight more American soldiers died in the peacetime don’t-call-it-a-war in Afghanistan. And for what? Hell, no one even tries to explain the mission over there anymore. Evildoers. Freedom. Oceans can't protect us. Corner turning. Light at the end of the tunnel seeking. Just a little longer…just a little longer…just one more "semester abroad"…or maybe two or five, who knows…
That's why efforts like the 4th annual Netroots for the Troops campaign are so important. They let our soldiers know we actually know they're over there and that we give a damn.
Netroots for the Troops assembles and ships care packages to American soldiers currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, supplying them with items they tell us they want and need---including work gloves, phone cards, CDs, DVDs, gel insoles for boots, and more.
The boxes are packed 100 percent by volunteers---including me this year, I'm happy to say---and shipped overseas from the Netroots Nation convention, which happens June 16-19 in Minneapolis.
Whether we pack a few boxes or a lot (several hundred were sent last year at the convention in Las Vages) depends on the financial support of this community.
To kick in a few bucks or a fistful (there must be one or two billionaires among us), click here for the donor page and then click on 'Make A Donation." Contributions are tax deductible. (Netroots For The Troops got its official 501(c)3 status this year, which is very cool.)
If you're a member of one of the new groups formed here at DK4: consider forming a team and pooling your donations. The link above lets you do that quickly and easily.
If you have friends, family, coworkers: Consider mentioning Netroots for the Troops to them and provide the link. Since this is a non-partisan effort, even conservatives can participate without fear of being branded a gol'durn leftie.
With only 49 days 'til Netroots Nation the urgency to get the funding in place is critical now.
If it was up to me I'd bring the troops home yesterday, but unfortunately I flunked my six-star-general mail correspondence course. So we do the next best thing: call bullshit on our leadership while continuing to let our grunts on the ground know that we're still thinking of them and supporting them. Please donate to Netroots for the Troops today. Many thanks.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, April 28, 2011
Note: Happy "Take Your Daughters And Sons To Work Day!" Also known as: "Why Is That Child Running Over My Car With A Steamroller Day."
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Netroots Nation convention in Minneapolis: 49
Days `til Harry Potter and the Deathly Pie Fights, Part 2: 78
U.S. military spending last year, and its rank among all nations: $698 billion, #1
Chinese military spending last year, and its rank: $119 billion, #2
(Source: AP)
Iran's military spending last year: $9 billion
Number of American civilians who died worldwide in terrorist attacks last year: 8
Minimum number who died from lightning strikes: 29
(Source: Harper's Index)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
As I have written before, I hate writing about abortion, because it is a subject on which so many have already made up their minds, unless or until they are personally confronted with that difficult choice---that abstract argument is of little assistance. In fact, the numbers show that those "officially" opposed to abortion---fundamentalist Christians and Catholics---have abortions at about the same rate as the rest of us. This has never surprised me, because I am a pro-choice advocate who has always known I would never have an abortion myself. The fact is that I always wanted to have children, and from about the age of 20 onward, halfway through my college career (no guarantees what I would have done before then), I think I would have been able to support a child economically (hell, I knew how to type). Whether I would have been able to raise child or was competent to raise a child emotionally and psychologically, who knows? I've watched mothers do it well with far fewer advantages than I had, I've watched mothers completely crumble under the burden. And I still think the question is, "Who decides?"
---April, 2004
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Eat yer heart out, Britain….
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CHEERS to a new shiny object to chase. President Obama released the Holy Grail of the birthers yesterday: his long-form birth certificate. And, confronted with the reality that they were now going to have to actually get a life, they dove head-first back into the crazy pool:
"It would be a big mistake for everyone to jump to a conclusion now based on the release of this document, which raises as many questions than it answers.”
We completely agree. There's something fishy about this. It was all too easy. I suspect Obama released this long-form birth certificate because he's sitting on an even longer-form birth certificate that we don’t know about yet---and I bet it's a hundred pages long and proves he's a Kenyan Muslim Socialist thumb-sucking tollbooth operator from Hoboken who hates America so much that when the red phone rings he sends it to the answering machine so he can continue plotting ways to eliminate America's grandmas. Get on it, fwoopy-hair musty-smelling rich guy! (What's his name again?)
JEERS to important messages falling on deaf ears. President Obama says he released his long-form birth certificate because, "We don’t have time for this silliness." Moments later the media immediately found time for round-the-clock coverage of this silliness. Formica countertop, meet Billy's head...again and again and again.
JEERS to doublespeak for from dummies. The oh-so-courageous "Ryan Plan"---which the Senate will be voting on soon, a schadenfreude moment that'll be sweeter than chompin' on a sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup and sugar-in-the-raw sandwich---calls for phasing out Medicare and switching to a voucher system. This is not in dispute, even among conservatives. But the word "voucher" has become so toxic in the public arena that Republicans are---hilariously, we might add---reaching for their Orwellian Cliffs Notes. Here's an exchange from a recent town hall meeting in which Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) gets put on the spot and races to his mental thesaurus:
Constituent: The Ryan program proposes to turn Medicare into a voucher program. …
Duffy: It’s a premium support it’s not a voucher.
It's not a "voucher," you see, it’s a "premium support." It's not a "potato," it's "a starchy, tuberous crop from the perennial Solanum tuberosum of the Solanaceae family." And Republicans who crafted and voted for the Ryan plan are not "mammals forming the genus Mustela of the Mustelidae family," they're just…weasels.
JEERS to words that bite back. Forty four years ago today, on April 28, 1967, General William Westmoreland said that the U.S. "would prevail in Vietnam." The producer of Laugh-In replied: "Hey, quit stealin' our material!"
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. In a letter to the editor of The Portland Press Herald, Paul Oppenheim asks: Why is it, exactly, that increasing taxes on the super-wealthy is called class warfare, while cutting programs that help the very neediest among us is called deficit reduction?
Dishonesty.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
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CHEERS to the cold stuff. Chlorofluorocarbon lovers rejoice! Willis H. Carrier received his patent for the air conditioner (specifically, his method of "dew point control") 99 years ago today. Sadly, it made the front porch obsolete and started the anti-social phenomenon known as `cocooning.' But do you want to spend your summer without it?
CHEERS to the cold stiff. Happy 253rd birthday to "#5" James Monroe. He creeped people out by wearing his revolution-era clothing and a powdered wig at a time when doing so was long out of style. He also told Europe and Russia to keep their paws off the west and then sucked up to the AARP by snagging Florida. And then this (From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien):
Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford once came calling on the president with a stack of patronage recommendations, all of which Monroe rejected. Enraged, Crawford threw a temper tantrum and demanded to know whom Monroe intended to appoint; the president replied it was none of Crawford's damn business. Crawford snapped and actually advanced on the chief executive with his cane raised, calling Monroe a "damned infernal old scoundrel." Monroe then stepped to the fireplace, seized a pair of fire tongs, and chased his secretary of the treasury from the Executive Mansion.
Historians call it "The night Monroe went mad." Fox News calls it "The inspiration for The Glenn Beck Show."
SAAA…LUTE! to the changing of the guards. President Obama is doing some expected spring cleaning inside the giant, throbbing U.S. national security Borg:
- Secretary of Defense Bob Gates is being replaced by current CIA director Leon Panetta.
- CIA director Leon Panetta will be replaced by Afghanistan strategist and crusher-of-walnuts-in-his-biceps General "Saint" David Petraeus.
- Afghanistan strategist and crusher-of-walnuts-in-his-biceps General "Saint" David Petraeus will be replaced by Lieutenant General John Allen.
- Lieutenant General John Allen will be replaced by an unmanned drone.
- The unmanned drone will be replaced by a ficus tree. (Contrary to public perception, even the Pentagon is dealing with budget cuts.)
The most amazing thing about this latest round of musical chairs is that America will have a Defense Secretary with a "D" after his name for the first time in fifteen years. It's a pretty sweet job---you make a bunch of money, you control lots of stuff that goes BOOM!, and every morning you get chauffeured to work in a halftrack with a hot tub in back nestled between the rocket-launchers. Nice work if you can get it.
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Five years ago in C&J: April 28, 2006
CHEERS to Puritan justice. During his second day in the dock, Enron founder Ken Lay blamed his troubles on "witch hunters" yesterday. Moments later he was thrown into a dunk tank and promptly sank. Okay, our bad...he's not a witch.
CHEERS to not living up to your lyrics. (via Jerome a Paris) The Rolling Stones sing "Let's Spend the Night Together", right? But when George W. Bush wants to stay in the same deluxe Vienna hotel suite at the same time as Mick and the boys, he's told "bugger off, mate." Preznit isn't concerned---it's nothing a little hunting trip with Dick Cheney can't fix.
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And just one more…
JEERS to unhelpful advice. Oh, look who popped his head out of his gated retirement community to help America with its little pump problem: failed oilman, failed baseball-team owner, mediocre student (Hey, tell me how he got into Harvard, again?), user-of-ex-presidents-as-a-human-hand-towel, and somewhat unpopular president George W. Bush. He wants to remind 'Muricans of the glory days when his energy policy as president was: Drill Here, Drill Now, I'm an Idiot.:
Former President George W. Bush wants to see more oil drilling to combat prices at the gas pump that are nearing $4 a gallon, he said Wednesday. “I would suggest Americans understand how supply and demand works. And if you restrict supplies of crude, the price of oil is going to go up and it affects gasoline."
Yes, let's help Americans understand how supply and demand works:
The problem is this: While increased oil and gas drilling in the United States may create good-paying jobs, reduce reliance on foreign oil and lower the trade deficit, it will have hardly any impact on gas and oil prices. That's because the amount of extra oil that could be produced from more drilling in this country is tiny compared to what the world consumes. Plus, any extra oil the country did produce would likely be quickly offset by a cut in OPEC production.
"This drill drill drill thing is tired," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, which calculates gas prices for the motorist organization AAA. "It's a simplistic way of looking for a solution that doesn't exist."
Somewhere off in a corner, never-to-be-President Jeb cries himself to sleep.
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:
According to a new USA Today/Gallup poll, 63 percent of Americans flatly will not vote for Bill in Portland Maine for president, and that includes 46 percent of all Republicans.
---Robert Schlesinger
4/27/11
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