From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Intercepted by my mole!
Michael Steele, Chairman
Republican National Committee
Washington, DC
Dear Chairman Steele,
With the midterm elections at our doorstep, it's crucial that everyone in the Republican leadership do their part to pave the road to victory. To that end, we have outlined this itinerary for you. It takes into account your strengths as RNC chairman and how your presence can be leveraged to sell our message and sway the mindset of the American voter.
September
Guam
The Northern Mariana Islands
Puerto Rico
U.S. Virgin Islands
Check P.O. boxes at our top donors' offshore tax havens in the Caribbean
Tony Hayward welcome ceremony---Siberia
Koala photo-op--Perth
Find that Wikileaks guy!
October
Parapet-to-Parapet canvassing--Great Wall, China
Cheese tasting in Paris (Have a gouda time!)
Grip 'n Grin @ summit of Everest
Honorary Oktoberfest beer pourer--Hofbrauhaus, Munich
Deliver Halloween candy to Space Station
November
Election eve party with penguin caucus--Antarctica
We've taken the liberty of packing your bags (yes, we remembered your lederhosen for Munich). A car is idling outside your office now. Safe travels and thanks for being an invaluable part of the team!
Sincerely,
Congressional Republicans
Senate Republicans
Gubernatorial Republicans
Tea Party Republicans
K Street Republicans
C Street Republicans
Country Club Republicans
Theocrat Republicans
The Koch Brothers
Why, he's gonna be a busy li'l bee.
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, September 13, 2010
Note: If you live in the Philadelphia area and have some free time tomorrow afternoon, you can watch Adam B moderate a free panel discussion at 4:30 on the upcoming Supreme Court term. The panel includes SCOTUSblog's Tom Goldstein, Stanford Law professor Pam Karlan, Penn Law professor James Feldman and George Mason Law professor Ilya Somin. It's happening at the UPenn Law School and is sponsored by the school's American Constitution Society chapter and the Philadelphia Lawyer chapter. Click here to RSVP. The event is strictly BYOPW (Bring Your Own Powdered Wig).
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til primary elections in Massachusetts, Delaware, New Hampshire, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island and Wisconsin: 1
Days `til the Common Ground Country Fair in Unity, Maine: 11
Estimated cost of the environmental damage caused each year by the world's top 3,000 companies: $2.2 trillion
(Source: Harper's Index)
Number of consecutive months during which American consumers cut back on their credit card use: 23
(Source: AP)
Number of U.S. children being raised primarily by their grandparents, a 16% increase from 2000: 2.9 million
(Pew Research analysis of Census data)
Rank of "Landfill" and "Casino" among most unpopular proposed projects in a person's hometown: #1, #2
(Source: USA Today)
Number of the original 29 W.W. II Navajo "Code Talkers" still alive, after the death of 91 year-old Allen Dale June last week: 2
Patriots 38 Bengals 24
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Mondays with Mark Twain
In anticipation of his upcoming autobiography, a few tidbits from America's #1 snarkster:
Be good and you will be lonesome.
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I thoroughly disapprove of duels. I consider them unwise and I know they are dangerous. Also, sinful. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet retired spot and kill him.
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An uneasy conscience is a hair in the mouth.
Something Newt Gingrich will never have to worry about.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: The following is brought to you by the National Council of Overcaffeinated Chihuahuas.
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CHEERS to unfurling their true colors again. One thing about Glenn Beck's "I Have A Scheme" rally a couple weeks ago is that you just knew that a whole bunch of attendees were itchin' to bring their crazy signs. But, no, said Mr. Beck---we can't give folks anything that might distract from our message of peace and love. And so they kept their signs at home. But over the weekend the teabaggers marched in D.C. again, and this time they were back in fightin' form. This morning I opened my Portland Press Herald and saw two classy signs. The first one has a photo of Obama with the caption: "Undocumented Worker." (If the subtlety is lost on you, that's code speak for "Illegal Alien." Clever!) And the second reads: "To Do: Pray, Buy Ammo, Vote." Ahhh, that's more like it. Welcome back to Crazytown, kids!
JEERS to getting kicked in the head. That's all I can figure musta happened to Newt Gingrich because, given his stature as a former Speaker of the House, his latest line of attack is true tinfoil hat stuff:
"What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?" Gingrich asks. "That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."
"This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president," Gingrich tells us.
"I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating -- none of which was true," Gingrich continues. "In the Alinksy tradition, he was being the person he needed to be in order to achieve the position he needed to achieve . . . He was authentically dishonest."
Of course, it's all fake outrage...no real emotion or authenticity behind it, just Newtonian political calculation of the coldest sort, and just in case you missed the dogwhistle message: the President of the United States is a scary black Manchurian candidate whose goal is to force us to live in thatched huts, carry huge jugs on our heads and eat grubs for dinner. How inflammatory. How paranoid. How---(ya really want the truth, Newt?)---boring.
CHEERS to pandemonium across the pond. What's even better than a big juicy American political scandal? A big juicy BRITISH political scandal! And what's even better and juicier than a big juicy British political scandal? A big juicy British political scandal involving RUPERT MURDOCH! Wheee...
[T]he existence of the Blue Book also threatens further embarrassment for David Cameron, the Prime Minister, who has so far supported Mr Coulson, now his chief spin-doctor. ... Mr Coulson has consistently denied any knowledge of the illegal methods during his term as editor [of Murdoch's News of the World]. ... However, the issue reignited last week when MPs voted to refer the issue to the powerful Standards and Privileges Committee following fresh allegations about what Mr Coulson really knew.
Ahhhh, yes. "What did he know and when did he know it?" Music to my ears.
CHEERS to inconvenient truths. To be honest, I didn’t pay much attention to the 9/11 anniversary activities. Watching a bit of NBC's re-broadcast of their coverage from nine years ago was enough to re-horrify me all over again, and thinking about how the Portland Jetport security screeners let Mohammed Atta slip through that day makes me feel, well, embarrassed. But I learned something this weekend that might also come as a shock to the people in this country who don’t seem to know the difference between peace-loving Muslims and terrorists:
It turns out there was a Muslim prayer room on the 17th floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center, where Americans and other traveling Muslims prayed every day. ... In other words, there already was a "ground zero mosque"---used by Muslim Americans who were murdered just like everyone else.
Wow. I think the most shocking part about this is: I learned something on a weekend.
JEERS to Hell on earth. On this date in 1922, the temperature reached 136 degrees Fahrenheit in Azizia, Libya---the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth. If you don't count the flaming assholes in the GOP.
JEERS to premature jubilation. Mullah "Oh Me!" Omar, bin Laden's 9/11-attack enabler and "supreme leader of Afghanistan’s Taliban guerrillas," says his forces are ready to declare victory over America in Afghanistan. I'm not so sure he's being sincere. For one thing, most vanquishers tend to show their faces as they walk among the vanquished, and he's nowhere to be found. For another thing, that Taliban aircraft carrier with the "Mission Accomplished" banner looks totally like a rental.
YAWN to the MTV Music Awards. Every year I don’t watch them and then I wake up the next morning to find out I missed some earth-shaking milestone in pop culture. So last night I turned 'em on so I wouldn’t miss out. What I got was mediocre tunes that may or may not have been lip-synched, commercials every five minutes for new movies, and sadly no moments of zaniness that will have gums a'flappin' this morning. But at least Justin Bieber showed up to sing something incisive:
Baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby baby.
I don’t care what side of the political spectrum you're on. That's deep.
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Five years ago in C&J: September 13, 2005
CHEERS to extended life warranties. Early reports suggest the death toll from Hurricane Katrina may be lower than expected. And instead of just appreciating that fact, Rush Limbaugh had to run his mouth off on Friday with this: "That could be good news...for 'some' people. You never know how the left is gonna react to a lower death toll..." Yeah, well, here's a hint, asshole: Woo-hoo!!
JEERS to Butthead Brown. The FEMA head, who apparently thought his job was to make disasters worse, resigned yesterday and good riddance. His replacement is David Paulison, the guy who told us to duct-tape everything that did or didn't move in our homes. John at Americablog has the punchline: "Great. So we've gone from Brownie (aka Drownie) to Duckie." Squeak Squeak...
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And just one more...
CHEERS to a soliloquy to remember. Hey, have you noticed that there isn’t a series of books out there---let's call 'em Obamaisms, to pull a name out of thin air---cataloguing our current president's endless stream of verbal gaffes? That's probably because, unlike certain other presidents, he has the capacity to think before he speaks. To many in the bubble-insulated punditocracy, basic eloquence equals "too professorial" and therefore unacceptable because it lacks "flannel-wearin' authenticity" or "earthy grittiness" or...something. Forgive me, but if the answer Obama gave about religious freedom during Friday's press conference is considered too professorial, the pundits are on some serious drugs. This is one reason why I pulled the lever for the guy:
With respect to the mosque in New York, I think I’ve been pretty clear on my position here, and that is, is that this country stands for the proposition that all men and women are created equal; that they have certain inalienable rights -- one of those inalienable rights is to practice their religion freely. And what that means is that if you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site.
Now, I recognize the extraordinary sensitivities around 9/11. I’ve met with families of 9/11 victims in the past. I can only imagine the continuing pain and anguish and sense of loss that they may go through. And tomorrow we as Americans are going to be joining them in prayer and remembrance. But I go back to what I said earlier: We are not at war against Islam. We are at war against terrorist organizations that have distorted Islam or falsely used the banner of Islam to engage in their destructive acts.
And we’ve got to be clear about that. We’ve got to be clear about that because if we’re going to deal with the problems that Ed Henry was talking about, if we’re going to successfully reduce the terrorist threat, then we need all the allies we can get. The folks who are most interested in a war between the United States or the West and Islam are al Qaeda. That’s what they’ve been banking on.
And fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world are peace-loving, are interested in the same things that you and I are interested in: How do I make sure I can get a good job? How can I make sure that my kids get a decent education? How can I make sure I’m safe? How can I improve my lot in life? And so they have rejected this violent ideology for the most part---overwhelmingly.
And so from a national security interest, we want to be clear about who the enemy is here. It’s a handful, a tiny minority of people who are engaging in horrific acts, and have killed Muslims more than anybody else.
The other reason it’s important for us to remember that is because we’ve got millions of Muslim Americans, our fellow citizens, in this country. They’re going to school with our kids. They’re our neighbors. They’re our friends. They’re our coworkers. And when we start acting as if their religion is somehow offensive, what are we saying to them?
I’ve got Muslims who are fighting in Afghanistan in the uniform of the United States armed services. They’re out there putting their lives on the line for us. And we’ve got to make sure that we are crystal-clear for our sakes and their sakes they are Americans and we honor their service. And part of honoring their service is making sure that they understand that we don’t differentiate between "them" and "us." It’s just us.
That ad-lib should be required reading for every school kid in America (and an uncomfortably large number of adults who seem to have forgotten the lesson). In fact, this morning I hired a skywriter to etch it in the heavens. I figure he'll be done by 2015.
Have a nice Monday. Oh, and the Senate's back in session this week so be sure to do some warm-up eye rolls so you don’t hurt yourself. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"You know, I released a statement today saying this is not a bake-off. Get your Bill-in-Portland-Maine pants on."
---Christine O'Donnell
9/10/10
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