From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Monday Morning Muzikal
Like WineRev and Kula2316, Muzikal203 is one of Daily Kos's rising stars, writing compelling diaries that consistently appear on the recommended list. She's currently studying law in Columbus, Ohio. And believe you me, it's gonna take every ounce of her rhetorical skills to make it through the latest edition of our grueling interview series, Yes, We're All Staring at YOU!
Cheers and Jeers: How long have you been blogging and what brought you to Daily Kos?
Muzikal203: I haven't been "blogging" in the way that's done here for very long. I've started and stopped blogs before on social sites like MySpace and Facebook, and I did a lot on message boards through the last year or so of high school and all of my undergrad career. So I started blogging in earnest when I joined Daily Kos. I suppose I'm getting close to a year now---I know, I'm still a baby. I ended up on Daily Kos after people kept linking to it on the Barack Obama One Million Strong group on Facebook. I came and checked it out and decided I loved the format and being able to talk to people in real time about issues. So the time that I was spending on the Facebook group ended up being spent here. I thought I wouldn't have anything else to say once the election ended, but clearly I was wrong, LOL. Also, I arrived during the Obama versus Clinton wars, and as an Obama supporter (and someone who loves talking to people who agree with her just as much as those who disagree), I found a place on the web to go to learn about all sorts of issues, and give my opinion. I was good at debating people before, but since I've been participating here, I'm almost unbeatable in a debate about politics.
Where were you when President Obama was sworn in and how did you react?
I was at school. I have a couple of classes on Tuesdays and there's a four hour break between the two, and I saw no point in going home. I was going to watch "from a secure undisclosed location" in the building on my laptop by myself, but as we all know the Internet feeds were really slow that day. So I went up to watch it on the TV---and got stuck listening to the idiots on CNN for a while---with some other students. It was really cool because I think everyone who was in the building ended up in the cafe by the time he was actually getting sworn in. I didn't cry, I just sat there and smiled. Usually when big things happen in my life, I don't have huge reactions because I tend to feel like it's not really happening. But at the end of the inauguration after the Benediction---which the crowd I was with loved---I was glad I didn't watch it by myself. But I was really happy, on cloud 9 for the rest of the day.
What kind of music makes you feel invincible to the GOP horde?
This is a tough one. As you can probably tell from my username music is a huge part of my life. To feel invincible, I listen to all sorts of stuff, but when I'm really feeling bogged down and drained I listen to Gospel music. Now, if I'm angry, I'll listen to some of the rap I have---which is very limited---because when I sing along more often than not I get to cuss a little. But I like to think I'm naturally invincible to the GOP horde. We had a saying in marching band that we would chant when we were doing campus tours during band camp: "We don't need no music, cause we've got lots of soul!"
You're a law student. If you end up as Dick Cheney's defense attorney at his war crimes trial in The Hague, would you be more likely to use the Twinkie defense, the Chewbacca defense, or the Satan's spawn defense?
Well, first I'd ask the judge if I could withdraw from the case! Assuming the judge said no, I'd have to go with Satan's Spawn since I'm not entirely sure what the other two defenses are. But I don't know how effective that would be since I doubt any jury anywhere would have much sympathy for Satan's Spawn, so either way he's pretty much screwed. What about temporary insanity?
What's the one book every Kossack must read?
I read a lot. Right now I'm into historical books. I think every Kossack must read at least one slave narrative---they're really powerful. My personal favorite is Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs. It's really amazing what people had to go through back then and the resilience it took for them to not just give up. As an African American woman, I found Harriet's story particularly moving as I tried to imagine what I'd do in the same situation. Also it shows that people from different backgrounds can work together for the common good which is something President Obama is asking us all to do now that we are in such a tough situation. Now would be a good time to read one because it is Black History Month.
Which Obama do you like better---the fiery campaigner Obama or the timid Ralph Wiggum Obama?
I like fiery campaigner Obama better, especially if he's being fiery with a smile. I'm not a big fan of the serious/frown look he adopted towards the end of the campaign, so maybe I just like him more feisty. I think he really connects better with people when he's all "Fired up! and Ready to go!", and he seems to be having more fun when he's fiery. I like it when he seems like he's actually enjoying himself. Plus, I love seeing him interact with regular people.
Finish this sentence: In the kitchen I make a mean...
Macaroni and Cheese---at every family gathering that's what I have to make. I even ended up having to make it for my own graduation party! My Grandma taught me how to make it, but I've perfected it to an art. She made the mac and cheese for Thanksgiving this year and asked me how it was. I told her "It's good, not as good as mine, but good," and she couldn't disagree with me. I love to use a lot of cheese, so I don't make it very often because cheese is expensive, and it can't be healthy to eat that much cheese at one time. I also love to bake---my favorite thing to bake is Lemon Pound Cake from scratch.
If it was up to you, what would your economic recovery package look like?
As a law student my biggest concern is student loans, I'd like to see them find a way to forgive some of them or at least stop the interest. I promise I'd still spend the money I saved from it. A lot of people my age who are doing the college/ grad school thing will end up with that same huge problem. I'd also put back all of the funding for education that they took out. Education. I also agree with the infrastructure funding which will give a lot of people jobs as well as fix the roads---they really are pretty bad even here in Columbus---and bridges. My brother lives in Minnesota and I wasn't sure if he used that bridge that collapsed or not, so it was really scary for us when it crumbled. They also had to shut down a major bridge in downtown Columbus to avoid something like that happening here. It doesn't make any sense that a lot of things we rely on haven't really been updated since the 60s. Other than all that, I'd also settle for a nice check for a few thousand dollars.
No waffling here: dogs or cats?
Turtles! I'm actually afraid of dogs, so if I had to pick between the two, I'd pick the cats because they're more laid back, they seem less needy, and they don't scare me. But my sorority's mascot is a Turtle, so it would trump everything.
I have one question left, but I need to go warsh mah duds in the Scioto River. Please ask and answer the final question yourself...
What's the best advice you've ever gotten?
"Engage brain before opening mouth." I admit I don't always follow it, but I find that when I say certain things in the heat of the moment when I haven't really thought it though, I end up regretting that I said it. As I get older, I'm better at holding my tongue, and trust me, it saves me from so much unnecessary drama. :o)
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, February 16, 2009
Note: Can we please at least agree to disagree? Great---that means I win!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Oscars: 6
Days `til the National Cherry Blossom Festival: 40
Number of credit card solicitations sent to Americans last year: 5,200,000,000
Percent that were responded to: 0.5%
(Source: Harper's Index)
Final auction bid last Thursday on a handwritten 1864 speech by Abraham Lincoln: $3.44 million
Number of American historical manuscripts that have sold for more than that: 0
Tomorrow's golfing outlook for Baghdad: Sunny and 68
(Source: The Weather Channel)
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New Monday feature: "Pimping Pittsburgh!"
Brought to you by the Netroots Nation Convention August 13-16:
Visitors arriving from the Pittsburgh International Airport approach the city through the Fort Pitt Tunnel and are delivered into a downtown glistening with skyscrapers. Banked on all sides by water and lush green hills, Pittsburgh was described by one New York Times writer as "the only city in America with an entrance."
---Pittsburgh.net
And not many people know this, but Carnegie hated melon.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: "Hey! I can see Russia from my house!!!"
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CHEERS to batting .500. There were two arguments I wanted to hear Democratic lawmakers and the beltway pundits make yesterday: 1) that Republicans voted in lockstep against the largest middle-class tax cut in history, and 2) Republicans are total hypocrites for suddenly "embracing" deficit-hawkism after eight years of out-of-control spending. The former was a bust, but the latter got tongues a'wagging, starting with Senator Chuck Schumer on ABC's This Week::
"On the floor of the Senate...I heard over and over again, "This is a trillion dollars that we're not paying for." I never heard that mentioned when it came to the Iraq war, which is $1 trillion which we're not paying for. I never heard it mentioned when George Bush changed a surplus of $300 billion into a deficit of over $800 billion. So all of a sudden, the reason to be against this [recovery plan] is deficit spending. But when it was [the] Iraq war or tax cuts for the highest-income people, we never heard it."
On NBC's Meet the Press, David Axelrod agreed:
"Here's what kind of interests me, though. For eight years when we were doubling the national debt, I didn't hear many of these people moralizing about, about spending. I didn't hear them scrutinizing. We passed--they passed a bill in 2003 to rebuild the economy of Iraq that was nearly $100 billion with no accountability built in, and I didn't hear anybody, any of those guys standing up on the floor and saying this was a mistake."
He got an able assist from the MTP roundtable:
David Gregory: Gene, you wrote something about what Republicans were up to this week that was pretty tough. You wrote this: "Republicans are using this debate as a branding opportunity, positioning themselves as careful stewards of the public purse. This is absurd, given their record when they were in charge. It's also cynical. They know that some kind of stimulus will get passed anyway. If it works, they'll claim their principled intransigence made the plan better; if it doesn't, they'll say, `I told you so.'"
Eugene Robinson: Yeah, I'm, I'm sticking with that. ... And that's the essential problem. By kind of going with the, y'know, low tax, low spending ideology that the party has hewn to for decades now, you get the base. But that's a shrinking base and you don't win elections.
Ron Brownstein: Y'know, you don't even have to look back to make the point that Gene is making. During the Senate debate, 36 of the Senate Republicans voted for an alternative that would have cut taxes over the next decade by $2.5 trillion, reduced the top marginal rate to 25 percent. For John McCain---who voted for that alternative of a $2.5 trillion tax cut over the next decade--to talk about "generational theft," I mean, pot, meet kettle. ...
David Gregory: David Axelrod just said that Republicans are hypocrites for now standing up and saying we should be stewards of not just the economy, but of our spending, and that we should be deficit hawks. ...
Eugene Robinson: The way to sum it up: there are no atheists in fox holes, [and] there are no deficit hawks in unemployment lines.
And, finally, Andrew Sullivan practically went apeshit on The Chris Matthews Show:
"If they hadn’t spent the amount they spent the last eight years, we wouldn’t have this crisis in the sense that we'd have much more leeway to spend our way out of the recession! The one moment you don’t want to be a fiscal conservative is when the global economy is headed down into a downdraft! And yet that's the one moment these Republicans pick to allegedly stand up for their principles? It's insane!!!"
Now soaking in a tub of ice water this morning: the collective ass of the Republican party.
JEERS to thinking small. This is just our opinion, but we think President Obama should've pushed hard for a recovery package of $1 trillion. Why? Because we've already seen a $700 billion package (TARP) swallowed up by the banks with all the effect of a whale ingesting a single nibble of plankton. These days the word "billion" inspires all the excitement of finding a penny under a parking meter. But "Trillion"? Now you're talkin', baby! Trillion is sexy. Trillion is hefty. Trillion produces the same endorphin rush as swan-diving into a vat of chocolate. When used in everyday conversation you don't just say trillion, you say "Trillion, BY GOD!" So unless the president adds another itty bitty $210 billion to the package before tomorrow's signing in Denver, I'm afraid I cannot guarantee I will feel consumerifically emboldened. Until this is resolved, consider my planned purchases of Tic-Tacs and a box kite on hold. (But not liquor because, of course, that's medicine.)
CHEERS to the last useful thing the Vatican ever did. On this date in 600, Pope Gregory the Great decreed that "God Bless You" would become the religiously correct response to a sneeze. Because the old response---"Jeez, dude, that sounds bubonic!"---was scaring off the faithful.
CHEERS to the return of Ginsburg's gavel. Hey, cancer! You just got your ass kicked by a 78-pound, 75 year-old lady:
The pancreatic cancer for which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had surgery on February 5 has been determined as TNM Stage 1 by doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. All lymph nodes proved negative for cancer and no metastasis was found.
That sound you hear is Antonin Scalia strapping his shin guards back on. (We hear it takes him three hours---he's Velcro-challenged).
JEERS to same thugs, different name. Blackwater, the company that hires and trains mercenaries (Rule #1: Safety locks? We don’t need no stinkin' safety locks!) is changing its name. Reason: They believe it's time to "drop the tarnished brand for a disarming and simple identity" (Disarming? Ha ha! They made a funny!). So they're going with a new identity, at least until they've got a fresh string of fuckups under their ammo belt and have to change it again. If you're really anal about keeping your Rolodex updated, the new name is: "Xe". Make sure you pronounce it correctly: "Ass."
CHEERS to President's Day. All ya gotta be is 35, a natural-born U.S. citizen, and a permanent resident here for 14 years. Check off all them boxes and you, too, can grow up to be Franklin Pierce, Millard Fillmore, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson or Martin Van Buren. Hail---and two snaps---to the Chiefs. I love the smell of musk in the morning.
P.S. C-Span is out with the latest presidential rankings based on the verdict of 65 historians and their Magic 8-Balls. Top 10: Abe, George, FDR, TR, Give 'Em Hell Harry, JFK, Jefferson, Ike, Wilson, Reagan. George W. Bush isn’t considered the worst one just yet. Mainly because it's a looong way to the bottom.
ALLLLLRIGHTY THEN! to Bob Schieffer. Yesterday on Face the Nation, ol' BS played the role of batty old man with sweatpants hiked up to his nipples who mixes his TANG with milk and scares the neighbor kids:
"I thought friends would be fascinated to hear about my dental implant. They weren't. So I told a colleague if I bring up my teeth again, just say, 'there's something on your ear,' which will be the reminder to me to talk about something else."
How sweet. Here, let me try: "Bob, there's something on your SHUT...UP!!!"
JEERS to the Wacky Widdle Wacko. Kim Jong Il is one year closer to death today---67 years batty. In the C&J tradition we send our many blessings...to anyone north of the 38th Parallel plotting to lock him in a freezer.
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Five years ago in C&J: February 16, 2004
CHEERS to the Riverside Press-Enterprise. Southern California newspaper drops Ann Coulter's column because, "we will not harbor columnists whose work is threaded with invective." And they didn't want to pony up for rabies shots.
CHEERS to the real Sunday sports story. Earnhardt, Jr.'s Daytona win is quaint and all, but John Daly battled divorce, alcoholism, suspension, and 189 straight PGA losses before winning yesterday's Buick Invitational. All hail the comeback kid.
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And just one more...
["And just one more..." is closed today due to the Presidents' Day holiday. It will return tomorrow at its regular location and time, which is here and now, except 24 hours into the fuuuuuuuuture.
---By Order of Millard Fillmore
A President]
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Oh, and Happy Birthday to TPM's Josh Marshall, who turned 40 yesterday. Welcome to the council of village elders, sir---Bingo starts at 11. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"The institutions under which we live, my countrymen, secure each person in the perfect enjoyment of Cheers and Jeers."
---John Tyler
A not very good president---but he had 15 kids, so we say: "Attaboy, Tiger!"
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