The Weekly Rewind

Well, well, well… what do you know. It’s Friday, and that can only mean one thing…

It’s time for The Weekly Rewind!!! Whoo-hoo!

It starts… now!

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Now!

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Now?

There we go…

Applaud: to the fact that, seemingly, the GOP is losing one of their key demographics, a group that was seen as an integral part of their victories in 2002 & 2004. The so-called 'Security Moms' (married women with children who have grave concerns about terrorism) are switching sides and many analysts believe their change in alliances may help boost the Democrats in this November’s mid-terms.

Heckle: to something we at TBWA touched upon earlier this week. A new poll revealed (not surprisingly to many, including myself) that Americans are more familiar with the Seven Dwarfs and the Three Stooges than they are with current events and world leaders with 77% being able to identity two of the Seven Dwarfs, but only 24% being able to name two Supreme Court justices. (An article I read stated that respondents were most familiar with Sleepy and Clarence Thomas… heh… sometimes the snark just writes itself, doesn’t it?)

Applaud: to the U.N. brokered Middle East cease-fire’s (brittle) success.

Heckle: to the fact that the U. N.’s plan for 3,500 “well-equipped troops” is not going as well as had been expected as no country has agreed to send any troops yet.

Applaud: to an article in Newsweek that has the balls to ask “Why haven't we made travel safer by now?” It’s a must read…

Heckle: to attempts at politicizing the war on terror. (But an Applaud within this heckle to the fact that it’s not working) Many White House strategists are very disappointed that the foiling of the UK terror plot hasn’t bumped Dubya’s job-approval ratings. Nope, they’re still stuck in the mud – much like we are in Iraq – at 37%. (Why didn’t it do anything to his numbers? Maybe because the U.S. wasn’t very involved in the foling and that much, if not all, of the credit goes to Scotland Yard and MI5. It seems as though Bush’s strategy of taking credit for other people’s work is starting to weaken more and more…)

Applaud: to telling it like it is and now kowtowing to this administration. Twenty-one former generals, diplomats, and national security officials released an open letter earlier this week that argued that the Bush administration’s stance on Iran is undermining U.S. security. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert G. Gard said; “It’s not a crisis. To call the Iranian situation a ‘crisis’ connotes you have to do something right now, like bomb them.” (Well sure, that plan worked so damn-well in Iraq… didn’t it?)

Heckle: to just now getting it. A federal judge ruled yesterday that the tobacco companies have violated civil racketeering laws by conspiring “for decades to deceive the public about the dangers of their product.” (Well, duh…..)

Applaud: to the fact that seven northeastern states made an agreement to form the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. This will be a “a model rule that would create the country’s first market for heat-trapping carbon dioxide by curbing emissions at power plants.” This announcement came at the same time that a University of California, Berkeley, study found that capping greenhouse gas emissions in that state alone “would create 17,000 new jobs and add $60 billion to the gross state product by 2020.” Add that to the news that data from more than 50 climate models has revealed a direct link between rises in global temperature and damage to ecosystems. (Excellent… but conservatives still believe it’s a myth… much like their popularity come to think of it…)

Heckle: to the return of violence in the Sudan’s Darfur region. Despite signing a peace deal, which can be best be defined as tenuous, the Sudan military appears to be preparing a major offensive. Because of that, aid workers are increasingly at risk, and the Sudanese population may have to go through the horrors of late 2003 and early 2004 again. Not to mention that hundreds of thousands of lives would be at risk.

Applaud: to standing by your convictions. Three NASA advisers that spoke-out against agency budget cuts submitted their resignations earlier this week, one of whom stated that their commitment to NASA’s science program “didn’t comport with the kind of advice that the administrator and the chairman of the committee were looking for.” (Which I take to mean that the scientsts wanted to speak their minds and the administration wanted them to be mouthpieces for the “greater good.” Wow, it certainly seems as though more an dmore people are refusing to bow down to the Bush political machine… maybe good things are on the horizon…)

Heckle: to Joe Lieberman. Just because I can…

Applaud: to rumors, innuendos… and facts. U.K. Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott called President Bush a “cowboy with his Stetson hat” and said that Dubya’s progress on a Middle East peace plan was “crap”, members of the Labour Party expressed broad approval with Prescott’s (rumored) opinions. (Personally, I think he was just telling it like it is…)

Heckle: to “President” Bush… as always, just on general principles alone.

Applaud: to no-shows. In a rally that was designed and planned to show everyone that Florida Senate candidate Katherine Harris still has the backing & support of her own party (I’ll pause for a moment to let that sink in) did just the opposite (if you ask me) as none of the state’s GOP heavyhitters showed up. She blamed a last-minute change of venue; I blame the fact that no one likes her. Which theory do you think is more probable? To help you answer that, let’s review; she said there was a change in venue because a tree fell on the hangar where the event was originally scheduled to be held. Airport officials said that no hangar had been damaged by a downed tree and that the rally was held in the hangar that had been originally booked… wow, looks like my theory won…

Heckle: to what could be the most idiotic comment (and I’m including Dubya’s reference to human/animal hybrids in the SOTU) regading stem cell research… and it comes from Alan Keyes (I know, the man is a tool). Keyes said that embryonic stem cell research is the “moral equivalent of Nazi medical experiments on the inmates of death camps during World War II.” He added that the result of such research would be “new legions of humans to be enslaved and brutalized.” (Wow… where do I even begin?? The man is a fuc**** idiot…)

Applaud: to the federal judge that ruled the NSA’s wiretapping program was unconstituional and that the Bush administration has been violating FISA since it started the program. Way to go Judge Taylor… way to go…

Heckle: to Dubya for saying that critics, and the judge who ruled against the NSA wiretapping program, 'Do not understand the nature of the world.' (What the hell does that mean? Give me a fuc**** break… just when you think that Bush couldn’t say anything more idiotic and condescending… he proves you wrong. What a schmuck…)

That’s all I have for this week, what are you applauding and/or heckling this week? Leave us a comment and let us know.

Take ‘em as you will…