(Part 1 is here)
After wading through all 850 single-spaced pages of C&Js from this tumultuous year, the underlying theme of 2008 seemed to be: the left is right 90 percent of the time, and the right is wrong 90 percent of the time. The record is sitting there in black and white (although when the right gets done with it, it looks more like "black and whitewash").
It doesn’t mean we won 90 percent of the time. (What do bin Laden and Congress have in common? They both spent a lot of time caving in '08.) It just means progressive thinkers were right on most things. From the melting economy to the melting icecaps. From the case for marriage equality to the case for health-care equality. From rebuilding infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan to rebuilding it here at home.
Center-right nation? Hardly. If anything we're a far-left nation. It's just that the leaders on our team are still---despite sweeping victories in '06 and this year---too timid to stand up for the progressive positions a growing majority of Americans hold. Instead, they wrung their hands and collapsed over and over. The bogus, lie-filled cries of "Foul!" from the right---the side that has proven to be disastrously wrong on most everything for the last decade---still make the baby Democrats cry. Missing the forest for the trees, and egged on by the traditional media, they clung for another year to the mistaken notion that in order to get anything done, one has to lean ever so rightward. Result: with few exceptions, Bush and Cheney leave office having crossed off virtually every dirty deed on their to-do lists, with Congress a reliable enabler.
And here I'll make my first prediction for 2009: President-elect Obama's grand vision for unity and bipartisanship will run into more resistance than he expects, even as America's collapse worsens. The Republicans down south and elsewhere simply can't help themselves. Collateral damage is of little consequence to these cuckoos just as long as their country clubs don’t double-book their tee times.
On the bright side, at least achieving 60 votes in the Senate will be fairly easy, although I still keep wondering why the Republicans only needed 51 when they ran the joint. It looks like Al Franken will be #59, and Maine's Olympia Snowe (whom I imagine is off-the-charts embarrassed by what her party has become) will likely be a reliable #60.
But enough looking ahead---this is America, dammit, and we're reactive, not proactive. So join me below the fold as we re-react in hope and horror to the events of April, May and June, 2008. Wear a helmet and goggles---there may still be some stray PUMA spittle flying through the air.
Cheers and Jeers goes wayback in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] Right now! [GONG!!]
By the Numbers: C&J poll results from April through June
Percent of Kossacks who think Bill Richardson looks better with a beard than without one: 69%
Percent who like the idea of rotating regional primaries starting in 2012: 68%
Percent who believe we should start the country all over again because none of the Founding Fathers wore American-flag lapel pins: 53%
Percent who thought the idea of an Obama/Edwards ticket was good or great on May 15: 49%. (45% thought it was a bad or terrible idea.)
Percent who strongly favor abolishing the electoral college: 53% (Another 26% leaned yes.)
Percent who were driving less because of high gas prices in May: 68%
Among our first ladies, 42% would most like to have lunch with Eleanor Roosevelt, followed by Jackie Kennedy at 19% and Abigail Adams at 15%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Wii Dreams
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Cheers and Jeers 2008 Flashback: April
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JEERS to ruining America's pastime. President Bush got booed Sunday as he threw out the first pitch at a Washington Nationals baseball game. Big deal. These days he gets booed at cabinet meetings.
CHEERS to the writing on the prescription pad. The push for universal health care got a boost yesterday, thanks to a new survey published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (motto: "God puts it in. We take it out."). Six-out-of-ten doctors say they "support legislation to establish a national health insurance program." That's up from 49 percent in 2002:
The Indiana survey found that 83 percent of psychiatrists, 69 percent of emergency medicine specialists, 65 percent of pediatricians, 64 percent of internists, 60 percent of family physicians and 55 percent of general surgeons favor a national health insurance plan.
Also in this month's issue: You've Dropped a Lit Cigar into Your Patient's Chest Cavity: Now What? On newsstands now.
JEERS to Rip van Wanker. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke---having apparently just woken from winter hibernation---warned yesterday that there's a teensy possibility that America may be headed for a recession. His first clue: waking up to find that everyone else in the world thinks we're in a recession. Man's got some instincts.
CHEERS to Dan Froomkin. On Wednesday the Washington Post columnist offered up a lengthy summary of the latest bombshell to drop like a giant turd on the torture-happy Cheney/Bush administration:
The Justice Department memo released [Tuesday] is a key link in the chain of evidence connecting the monstrous abuse of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison and elsewhere straight to the White House. ... Marty Lederman, a blogger and lawyer formerly with the Office of Legal Counsel who now teaches law at Georgetown University, calls this "The Torture Memo to Top All Torture Memos." ... It is, in effect, the blueprint that led to Abu Ghraib and the other abuses within the armed forces in 2003 and early 2004.
There will definitely be fallout from Congress. I expect several stern statements and letters. And when Nancy Pelosi repeats her promise that impeachment is off the table, the veins in her temples will be bulging like my dad's did thirty years ago when I ran over the dog chain with the lawnmower. I was banned from watching CHiPS for a month. It hurt.
CHEERS to Howard Dean. For putting this chaotic, messy, inspiring, unprecedented, attendance-busting, 50-state Democratic primary season in perspective. This is as succinct as it'll ever get (from ABC's This Week):
"When was the last time presidential campaigns went to Montana??? I thought that was terrific! Which points up something: y'know, here we are, fussing and fuming about all this stuff that's on the cable shows. Let's look at this campaign, George. Every single state we will have had a vigorous campaign with presidential candidates in. Candidates have gone to North Dakota and Montana, never mind just New York or California. We're going to be in great shape. I know that the higher echelons of the Democratic party are wringing their hands over this. The fact of the matter is, we're having record turnouts everywhere." We get to run an election in Pennsylvania four or five months before the big election---we haven't done that in years! I think this is actually going to make it easier for us to win as long as we keep the party together."
And we all know the secret to that: booze, bongs, brats, barenakedness and badminton. Shuttlecocks ho!
CHEERS to technology and innovation. Finally---by 2011, electric cars will be whisking people all over the country, with 20,000 recharging stations that are kept juiced up by wind turbins! Wow! A dramatic turnaround for America's oil-worshipping culture? Nope, just a little common-sense foresight courtesy of Denmark. That's nice, but ya gotta admit our energy policy is still more refined. Go us!
JEERSto Kellogg, Brown & Root. Another female employee of the controversial private contractor (and former Halliburton-Cheney subsidiary) has come forward to say that male thugs in the company raped her in Iraq. A KBR spokesman says that, in light of the growing scandal, they intend to deal with the problem quickly and decisively. Starting today all female employees overseas will be issued chastity belts.
CHEERS to that meddlesome Democratic Senate. Thanks to a vote of 91-4 this week, the women guest workers of the Northern Marianas Islands won’t be subjected to slavery, forced abortions and prostitution anymore. Let us not forget that Tom DeLay---once the supreme leader of the now-derailed Republican juggernaut---called the deplorable conditions there "A shining light for what is happening in the Republican Party, and you represent everything that is good about what we’re trying to do in America in leading the world in the free-market system." What an asshole. For the record, those voting against the Senate's act of basic humanity were Republicans Vitter, Coburn, DeMint and Inhofe. Sorry for ruining all your fun, guys.
WHOOPS to words that don’t come out quite right. Barack Obama is taking flak because he said last week that some Americans are bitter. That's why you should always roll 'em in batter, sugar 'em up, deep fry 'em and serve 'em with a scoop of ice cream. But only after to eat your peas and carrots.
JEERS to bipartisanship run amok. Look, I applaud the AARP, the SEIU and the other sponsors for wanting to bring both sides together with their "Divided We Fail" campaign. But c'mon guys...your logo has a donkey's head up an elephant's ass. And he's not even wearin' a condom. (But while you're in there, flip Lieberman the bird for me.)
JEERS to the least-surprising surprise of all time. Oh my gosh! A bank got caught up in the housing debacle and lost some money. Really! And people with fancy elitist degrees on their walls are actually shocked by this:
Charlotte-based Wachovia bank posted an unexpected net loss of $350 million for the first three months of the year, as problems in the U.S. mortgage market continued to drag down financial companies that invested heavily in riskier sub-prime loans. The company announced today it would seek to raise as much as $8 billion through a stock sale---the second time this year Wachovia has moved to bolster its balance sheet with additional capital---and slash its dividend to investors.
And the week's just getting started. Got Maalox?
JEERS to the maverick of unintended consequences. Hey, my friends! John McCain has a brilliant idea for helping you save money: a gas-tax holiday! Yay! It would lower fuel bills while erasing thousands and thousands of American jobs. A chip off the old Bush.
TREMORS to quaking and waking. This morning at 4:35 the Midwest got roughed up a bit by a magnitude-5.2 earthquake (some even felt it in Florida). Also this morning at 4:35, little Tommy Tinkermeyer of Evansville, Indiana made a silent promise to God that he would never try masturbation a second time.
CHEERS to the new kid on the stump. Imagine: a relative newcomer to high office who offers a platform of hope and change travels around parts of America speaking to throngs of swooning supporters, many of them hurting from the economic collapse. And even though he has ties to some shady characters, the media fall all over themselves to praise this dynamic leader. So of course I'm not talking about Barack Obama, but Pope Benedict XVI, who flew back home yesterday after a successful five-day visit here, during which President Bush high-fived him for giving an "awesome speech." Our lingering thought: I hope somebody remembered to count the silverware before he left.
CHEERS to the morning after the biggest anti-climax of the year. Congratulations to Hillary Clinton for her 9.999-point win in Pennsylvania last night. Like Ohio and Texas, she threw everything at her worthy opponent. And while exit polls say voters considered her tactics too negative, they worked. Unfortunately for her campaign, the results do little to change the delegate count, the popular vote, or the number of states won. But primary season rolls on, so guess what, North Carolina and Indiana? Tag---you're it!!
CHEERS to the wisdom of John and Jane Q. Public. Talk about living in historic times. President Bush is now---and shall forever be---the least-liked president ever. If you don’t count the few weeks in 1910 when William Howard Taft's popularity dropped to twelve percent after he accidentally sat on a basket of puppies.
CHEERS to the green stuff! Yay! Free money!!! Thanks to loans granted to the U.S. by China, our "stimulus" checks will start arriving in the mail today. Our suggestion for how to spend it: smokes, liquor, porn and scratch-tickets. Heh...just kidding. Do the responsible thing: buy shit on eBay.
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May
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JEERS to tackling your own teammates. Lemme tell ya something, Bill Clinton. I stood out in a blizzard for two hours in February to participate in my state's caucus. My vote counts, as do all the votes of people across the country who participated (or will be participating) in their caucuses. So when you stand up on a stage and spew crap like this...
"And what are they gonna say if [Hillary] wins the popular vote [at the end of the primary season]? 'I'm sorry, we're gonna give it to the caucus states that are going Republican in November?'"
...it's dishonest, defeatist, disrespectful, and utter donkey dung. I was hoping, as time wore on, that I'd regret my votes for Ross Perot in '92 and '96. This doesn’t help, sir. And while I have your attention: please return my lawnmower.
P.S. Wednesday Hillary said, "If we had the Republican rules, I would already be the nominee." And if wishes were ponies I'd be a millionaire glue-factory owner. What's yer point?
CHEERS to the mane event. In tomorrow's Kentucky Derby, Hillary Clinton is putting her money on Eight Bells. Barack Obama seems to be backing Colonel John. And John McCain is rooting for whichever horse supports bombing Iran.
CHEERS to Underdog! Don Cazayoux won a squeaker of a victory in Louisiana's 6th Congressional District. The win is significant in three ways: 1) He becomes yet another Democrat to win in a Republican stronghold (the GOP held the seat for the last 34 years). 2) The Republicans now have fewer than 200 seats in the House. And 3) There's finally representation in Congress for American citizens who have an X, a Y and a Z in their name. Walter Xyzazyx and Ginny Yaxxixz: your earmarks are on the way!
CHEERS to newbie nuptials. Jenna Bush got married over the weekend. Papa Bush danced with the bride to "You Are So beautiful," a song that I believe is about a guy who's trying to convince a woman to take her bra off. Meanwhile Mama Bush pulled the groom aside and whispered, "How soon can I move in with you kids?" Mazel Tov!
JEERS to hell on Earth. Humanity has really been pissing God off lately. Following close on the heels of the cyclone in Myanmar (the aftermath dealt with cruelly and inhumanly by the junta), an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Andy Richter scale shook central China over the weekend. The death toll is estimated at 12,000, but you know it'll go far north of that. Meanwhile, closer to home we're dealing with wildfires in Florida and tornadoes in the heartland. If the International Space Station posts a classified ad for a cabana boy, I call dibs.
JEERS to bad "jokes" badly told. Oh no he didn’t. Oh no he didn’t. Oh no he didn't. Oh...yes he did:
During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee...joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman. "That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he's getting ready to speak," said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. "Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor."
Anyone who doubts evolution...there's your strongest living evidence.
JEERS to rude surprises. Scientists say that Mars' North Pole is made up of several layers of dust and ice. I guess that explains why my radishes never come up there.
CHEERS to gettin' lucky in Oregon and Kentucky. No surprises in yesterday's primaries. Hillary won in the "Weed grows in this state like a weed" state (3 million votes to 7), and Barack easily won the "You Want Hemp? We Got Hemp!" state. Now it's off to Montana and South Dakota, where the gloves will come off. Mainly because the voters' fingers have finally thawed out.
P.S. A Reminder to Pat Buchanan and all the other trouble-making pundits who keep suggesting Obama can't win the general election:
MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: But the question is, do you think Senator Obama can do that? Can he win?
SENATOR CLINTON: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Suck on that, you twits.
JEERS to unacceptable diagnoses. Doctors say 76 year-old Senate stalwart and progressive hero Ted Kennedy has a malignant glioma in his brain. I say he deserves a second opinion, and here it is: No, he doesn’t. And that's that. (Wow, this Ronco Denial-O-Matic works great.)
JEERS to spoiling our fun. New York Congressman Vito Fossella, who swore he would never ever, ever, ever quit in a million years, is, uh, quitting. Apparently he wants to spend more time with his families.
JEERS to America the Vulnerable. The Government Accountability Office says that, nearly seven years after the attacks of 9/11, there are still gaps in our port security that could allow more attacks on 9/11 or any other day of the year. The biggest gap was found at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but officials promised it would be plugged in 237 days. Fortunately the only boat traffic there happens in the bathtub.
CHEERS to "a speeding bullet photographed by a speeding bullet" (via Boing Boing). Check out this unbelievable shot, taken by the Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRise camera, of the Phoenix lander as it drops in on Mars. If NASA isn’t careful, they're gonna undo all of George Bush's hard work and make science cool again.
CHEERS to fitness for office. A team of doctors, mechanics and medical droids poked and prodded Barack Obama for 36 straight hours this week. Their opinion: he's so squeaky clean that you could eat off of his arteries. Meanwhile, The Daily Show delved into John McCain's innards and played back this montage of what reporters found after spending just three hours poring over 1,200 pages of records from 2000 to 2008:
"He's being treated for two small kidney stones...his high blood pressure is controlled...he's had every kind of skin cancer you can get...several benign polyps removed in a routine colonoscopy...doctors removed 34 lymph nodes in his neck...he's on six different medications for his kidneys, for his cholesterol, he takes Ambien occasionally...suffers from degenerative arthritis...he's had a lens implant in his right eye...he's had quite a few pre-cancerous lesions...vertigo..."
Vertigo? Okay then. One more reason why America should do all it can to keep him from making it to the top.
JEERS to the unsinkable Bear Stearns. Weeks after it struck an iceberg of incompetence and greed, the financial giant disappeared beneath the waves yesterday. But the quartet sitting outside their headquarters playing Nearer My God To Thee was a bit much.
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June
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CHEERS to Puerto Rico! The people have spoken! The number-crunching is over! The primary results are certified! And it's official: 90 percent of Americans still can't locate it on a map.
JEERS to sinful distractions. Crazy Muslim terrorist Barack Obama, stung by one too many preachers who left their brains at the door on Sunday morning, turned in his Trinity UCC membership card over the weekend. Now the question is, which church will he move to? I'd suggest he give my denomination a try. We always have the best pancake suppers in the world. Hence the saying: Once you try an Episcopalian flapjack, ya never go back.
CHEERS to the Bee king. A thirteen year-old West Lafayette kid with the traditional Indiana name Sameer Mishra took top prize in the National Spelling Bee Friday, correctly spelling "Guerdon" (pronounced "GR-dn"). If you're wondering what it means, the answer is: about forty thousand bucks for the little boogersnot.
CHEERS to Ted's head. Great news: Kennedy's brain surgery was successful. He told his wife, "I feel like a million bucks. I think I'll do that again tomorrow." But just to be sure he was back on his game, the lead doctor gave him a little test:
"Tell me the first thing that comes to mind when I say...Santa Claus."
"Christmas."
"Very good. How about...Sunday?"
"Mass."
"Fine. How about...Dick Cheney?"
"Go to hell."
"Yep, you're OK."
He'll be towel-snapping Mitch McConnell again in no time.
CHEERS to UNITY!!! Yesterday the Daily Kos contributing editors spent fifteen thousand words explaining why Hillary lost, when three would've sufficed: not enough delegates. I listened to part of her gracious, unequivocal endorsement of Barack Obama ("It is this belief, this optimism that Senator Obama and I share and that has inspired so many millions of our supporters to make their voices heard. So today I am standing with Senator Obama to say: Yes, we can!"), and I thought to myself, Yeah, this is going to work out just fine. She calmed nerves, soothed wounds, and reinforced the similarities between the Obama campaign themes and her own. Can we lay into the creepy old man now?
CHEERS to a good run by an odd man. Ron Paul---the man whose followers made a spectator sport out of chasing Sean Hannity down abandoned sidewalks at night---is "suspending" his campaign. BUT...he's not endorsing John McCain until he agrees to "change some of his positions." We have three words for the Texas congressman: wait five minutes.
CHEERS to rice, rice, everywhere! Yesterday at 5:01pm Pacific Time, same-sex couples in California started getting same-sex married. It couldn’t have had a better kickoff:
Lesbian rights activists Del Martin, 87, and Phyllis Lyon, 84, were the first same-sex couple to receive a marriage license in San Francisco on Monday, with Mayor Gavin Newsom presiding over their wedding ceremony. "This is an extraordinary moment in history," Newsom told a cheering, standing-room-only crowd at City Hall. "I think today, marriage as an institution has been strengthened."
Meanwhile the right-wing fundies had a little trouble coordinating their response. The locusts they hired to disrupt the proceedings did a little YMCA karaoke and then went back to bed.
CHEERS to nothing at all. Leave it to them foreigner car companies to lead the way on clean emissions. Japan's Honda is delivering a couple hundred brand new hydrogen cars that handle like a dream, have plenty 'o giddyup, and emit nothing more than water vapor. Not to be outdone, Detroit says it's working on a car fueled by a mixture of arrogance and short-sightedness, and all it leaves behind is a trail of pink slips. And it's got a rumble seat!
CHEERS to the new kid on the Hill. Wonderful! Donna Edwards is going to Washington. I think this deserves a little morning sip of the bubbly, don’t you? Good, because I just polished off a bottle of Duval-Leroy. Oh, and remember, Donna: Nancy Pelosi is a little hard of hearing, Donna, so when you talk to her you have to yell really loud at her!!! (I love freshman pranks, don’t you?)
CHEERS to the little city that could. Heh. Heh. And again I say...Heh. Like the Boston Red Sox before them, the Boston Celtics are no longer a punchline. Unless they lose next year. We New Englanders are nothing if not persnickety.
CHEERS to Condi's legacy. Our Secretary of State's name has taken on immortality in Israel. According to Tim McGirk at TIME: "Israeli TV announcers coined 'Condi' as a verb, meaning to go endlessly around in circles, accomplishing nothing." Study up, kids---we expect to see that word in next year's spelling bee.
JEERS to hanging up on us. Once again, the Democratic leadership fights tooth and nail to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Even after hearing the most shocking testimony by insiders, the House might as well have just passed a bill today with two words for the phone companies: "FREE PASS." As constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley said last night on Countdown:
"This bill has, quite literally, no public value for citizens or civil liberties. It is reverse-engineering, the type of thing the Bush administration's famous for and now the Democrats are doing. That is, to change the law to conform to past conduct. It's what any criminal would love to do---you rob a bank, go to the legislature and change the law to say that robbing banks is lawful."
So shame on you, Jimmy Carter, for signing into law a bill that was so awful it had to be secretly gutted by the executive branch and then publicly gutted by the legislative branch after 30 years of flawless execution. I hope you can live with yourself.
P.S. Dilbert is particularly prescient today.
BIG CHEERS to George Carlin. All you have to do is look at his numbers to get an idea of his success as an envelope-pushing comedian:
He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a couple of TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure in 1989... He won four Grammy Awards, each for best spoken comedy album, and was nominated for five Emmy awards. On Tuesday, it was announced that Carlin was being awarded the 11th annual Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Carlin died yesterday at 71. His last words: "Carrot Top survives..."
JEERS to weird science. I was born and raised in Mount Vernon, Ohio, a lovely little town of 15,000 that is Americana personified. But it doesn’t entirely surprise me that a teacher---yeah, a science teacher---got busted at the middle school for burning crosses into students' arms:
[John] Freshwater used a science tool known as a high-frequency generator to burn images of a cross on students' arms in December, the report said. Freshwater told investigators he simply was trying to demonstrate the device on several students and described the images as an "X," not a cross. But pictures show a cross, the report said.
Freshwater will appeal the ruling, and may get his job back, but only if he promises to use a proper branding iron next time.
JEERS to FBN (The Fake Broadcasting Network). Well, here's another fine use of your tax dollars (half a billion to be exact). A TV and radio station in Iraq that was supposed to be broadcasting pro-American propaganda was actually pumping out the opposite...because the non-Arabic-speaking American supervisors didn't know what the Arabic-speaking talking heads were saying. Their excuse: "All we heard coming out of the speakers was 'Blah Blah Blah,' so we just assumed the broadcasts were pro-Bush." Strangely, that makes sense.
JEERS to unwanted conversions from solid to liquid. Looks like we won’t be able to sell ice to the Eskimos much longer:
It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year. The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic---and worrying---examples of the impact of global warming on the planet.
On the bright side, we'll finally get an answer to the age-old question: does the seat cushion in Santa's sleigh double as a flotation device?
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And just one more...
[From June, a point we wish to repeat and, again, thank you for.]
CHEERS to the end of the end. It's over. MSNBC reported last night that, with her core support crumbling, Hillary Clinton will bow out of the race---and endorse Barack Obama---in D.C. on Saturday. To say she ran a tough campaign would be the understatement of the year, and no one will ever forget the trail she blazed---as significant a breakthrough for women as Barack is for African-Americans. With the primary contest now rapidly coming to an official end (marked by words of class and magnanimity on both sides), we would be remiss if we didn’t say thank you, pool splashers, for helping make C&J, for the most part, a "safe place" to hang out these last several months when the rancor upstairs in the diaries was most intense. To show our gratitude: peaches!
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Tomorrow in Part III: An exclusive preview of Part IV!
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