The Weekly Rewind

Well, well, well… It’s Friday, another end of another week, and we all know what that means don’t we? Yep, another exciting, stupendous, thought-provoking edition of BWA’s Weekly Rewind is due.

Will there be more applauds or more heckles this week? Only one way to find out isn’t there?

So, without further ado… awayyyyyy weeeeee gooooooo….

APPLAUD: to former President Bill “Bubba” Clinton for stating, in a speech to Arab students in the U.A.E., that the war in Iraq was a ‘big mistake.’

HECKLE: to “President” Bush. As always, on general principles alone.

APPLAUD: to Democrat Bill Nelson for having a nice, sizable lead over Kathryn "I gave the 2000 election to Dubya" Harris for the US Senate seat in Florida. Nelson has 55% and Harris has 31%. Is it wrong for an educated, married man in his early 30's to giggle like a school-girl after hearing this news? I hope not, cuz I can’t contain myself.

HECKLE: to White House Press Secretary; Scott “I wish Ari was still here’ McClellan. The man is a mental fur-ball, plain and simple. All Americans are traitors? How much longer until he’s jettisoned, or “resigns”, in the “Great GOP Comeback Attempt of 2005?”

APPLAUD: to the Pentagon’s inspector general who is going to probe (“You using the whole fist there Doc?”) U.S. defense undersecretary Douglas Feith, who was a chief architect of the Iraq war. Why? They are going to review if he gave unconfirmed intelligence to the White House about Iraq. “Turn and cough Mr. Feith.”

HECKLE: to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi for his audio taped threat to cut off the head of Jordan’s King Abdullah II. That doesn’t seem particularly smart to me…

APPLAUD: to the Senate Banking Committee who, this past Wednesday, approved the nomination of Ben S. Bernanke to be chairman of the Federal Reserve. One of the few real, non-crony choices in Bush’s administration, it’s good to see him get approved quickly. Too bad the news got overshadowed by other acts of stupidity and banality by both parties this past week.

HECKLE: to Karl Rove. For being the egotistical, megalomaniac that he is. Judging by what has transpired this past week, (Dick and Bush calling out their critics for example), it seems as though he is charge of the White House again.

APPLAUD: to the FCC for agreeing that blogs (or web-logs for you non-in-the-know types) are just as much "press" as everyone else. Good news indeed.

HECKLE: for being a bad loser. Doug Forrester, the Republican candidate on the losing end in the race for New Jersey governor, explained to the Newark Star Ledger that he blames the “President” for his losing his bid for office. A heckle for the pouting, but a retro-applaud for him losing in the first place.

APPLAUD: to push-backs as “President” Bush saw a few of his ‘pet’ second-term projects get severed this past week, ANWR and the extension of deep tax cuts on capital gains & dividends, among them.

HECKLE: to former Illinois Governor George Ryan for whining for the cameras. When asked about former U.S. Senator Phill Gramm (R-TX) and his testimony, Ryan sniffed that maybe investigators should probe what role, if any, Gramm and his wife played in the Enron collapse. (For a better idea of what this is all about, check out two prior posts I wrote early on in this blog’s life, Part 1 and Part 2)

HECKLE: to the former Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Kenneth Tomlinson, who e-mailed White House strategist Karl Rove and bragged about a push for conservative programming on U.S. public television. What a putz. However;

APPLAUD: for Tomlinson resigning and for the Inspector General of CPB probing (again, there’s that word) Tomlinson and his incredibly short-sighted views.

HECKLE: to SCOTUS nominee Samuel “Don’t call me ScAlito” Alito. For no other reason than to make sure we remember his name.

APPLAUD: to Miami Mayor Manny Diaz (I-FL) for easily wining a second term. The election was non-partisan and pushed back two weeks due to Hurricane Wilma.

HECKLE: to The National Legal and Policy Center for filing a complaint against Sean "Diddy" Combs, saying the hip-hop mogul violated election law in his 2004 "Vote or Die" campaign by promoting Democrat John Kerry and opposing President Bush. Uh, sure…whatever you say. I seem to recall Combs saying that Kerry wasn’t smart enough to be President… how that’s a promotion of Kerry is beyond my scope.

(note to self- Supporting one candidate and opposing another is evidently a 'bad' thing....must keep that in mind.....yeah right!.....Sorry to interrupt folks, Scott)

APPLAUD: to the State Department for allowing the Red Cross to have access to its Guantanamo Bay site. But…

HECKLE: for not allowing U.N. Human Rights experts the right to visit. How can the U.S. state they are against China and Cuba’s human rights violations when we won’t even allow ourselves to be probed? (There's that word again.)

APPLAUD:? HECKLE? You decide. FEMA has announced that it will stop paying for evacuee’s hotels after December 1st. Is this a move to ease the budget? Or just another example of this administration’s incredible lack of common sense.

APPLAUD: for ICANN getting a reprieve. Earlier this week, a U.N. Technology summit was being held in Tunisia (Tatooine?) with the big issue being control over the internet. Many nations had wanted oversight turned over to a U.N. agency (which always run smoothly), Control will stay, for now at least, with ICANN and the U.S. Next year ICANN will be independent of the U.S. Government, which when all is said and done probably is what helped to sway things in favor of keeping the control with ICANN.

HECKLE: to the U.S. Media. Hello??? Reading news items from overseas one can read many articles about the accusations flying around that the U.S. used white phosphorus in Iraq as a weapon. Is anything being mentioned here at home???? Not really. Come on fourth estate, do your duty!!!

APPLAUD: to Fidel Castro for laughing off CIA reports that he has Parkinson’s. The applaud is not so much for the news itself (the man is a tyrant) but for him making the CIA even more of a laughing stock by, literally, laughing at them. I mean, can we trust anything the CIA says right now? Though the self-reference of him being El Cid, draws a HECKLE.

HECKLE: to Fox News’ Bill “Wanna see my microphone” O’Reilly. Because we can. Actually, it’s because we can’t choose just one from his many, and recent, boneheaded comments to heckle him on (blow up San Francisco, his creation of an enemies list – though I so badly want to be included on it –, his sexual exploits, or more correctly his attempts in sexual exploits). So we’ll just go for a trifecta and say… all of them.

Once again we notice more heckles than applauds (what else is new) and as we always say, welcome to George W. Bush's America...