The Weekly Rewind

My fellow prisoners fellow readers… as we embark on the final weeks of the presidential campaign, I urge you to take the time to learn about the issues and not resort to shameful, pathetic name calling and accusatorial statements.
The Weekly Rewind starts… right now!

Applaud: to proof that the end of 8-years of disaster is coming to an end. Earlier this week “President” Bush created a special council that will guide the transition to a new administration that will start meeting next Wednesday to begin mapping out an orderly handoff to Sen. Obama or Sen. McCain (I’ve said many times that 1/20/2009 can NOT come soon enough, and with this, it’s starting to become official… Whoo-Hoo!)

Heckle: to the US economic crisis now branching out to an international economic crisis. We are boned…

Applaud: to a record-breaking voter registration drive season. The better news, in eight of the most tightly fought presidential race states (Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico and New Hampshire), is that Democrats added over 800,000 voters to the rolls while republicans lost 300,000. (Cautious optimism is my order for the next few weeks. I’m excited, but not counting my chickens until it’s all over but the shouting… lest I get monumentally pissed on November 5th…)

Heckle: to an inane quote from a man on the brink of political obscurity. In an interview with right-wing magazine Newsmax earlier this week, Sen. Lieberman (I r-CT) called Sen. Obama’s worldview “naive” and, when asked if Obama could bomb Iran if it came to it, Lieberman replied, “I worry about that.” (Who the fuck cares what Joe Lieberman thinks? The man is as politically dead as Bush’s legacy. If Dems win the White House, the Senate and the House, his sphere of influence will be as small as Bush’s currently is, if not smaller)

Applaud: to more word-fumbling from Palin which, every time it happens, shows she’s not ready for the world stage. While speaking at a San Francisco fundraiser last Sunday, she praised U.S. soldiers in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and said; “They are also building schools for the Afghan children so that there is hope and opportunity in our neighboring country of Afghanistan.” (Huh, how about that. So evidently Palin not only sees Russia from her house – which is a lie by the way – she can apparently see Afghanistan as well. Fascinating…)

Heckle: to the continuing incompetence of the Sen. Ted Stevens (r-AK) prosecutors. If they don’t kill the case against him, I’ll be surprised…

Applaud? Heckle? Depends? to the start of the new SCOTUS season this past week. One of the first orders of business will be arguments about limiting lawsuits against tobacco companies, and since this Court is very “business-friendly”, my guess is that their ruling will favor the tobacco companies. (but on the plus side, maybe we’ll finally hear from the Silent Justice… though I doubt it)

Applaud: to searching for the truth behind the current financial crisis. As House republicans strain themselves in defending deregulation they supported, going as far as releasing a report that reads; “In the midst of the most serious financial crisis in a generation, some claim that deregulation is entirely to blame. […] This is simply not true”, the House Oversight Committee is getting ready to examine the causes of the financial crisis. (Does it merit investigation? Yes. Will it do anything? No)

Heckle: to lip service. Earlier this week Vice President Dick “President” Cheney spoke at the White House Conference on North American Wildlife Policy in Reno. During the speech Cheney made the claim that this administration has championed wildlife preservation… (wait, what? Championed wildlife preservation? Seriously? He said that with a straight face?? This administration has been a wildlife and environmental disaster since they took office and ANY attempt to say otherwise is downright laughable. If you believe that, I have a nice bridge to sell you in Alaska…)

Applaud: to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-WV) who said earlier this week that his panel will investigate “extremely disturbing.” claims by two military eavesdroppers that they listened in on private calls to home from American military officers, aid workers and journalists stationed in Iraq.” (Listening in on your own military leaders? WTF???)

Heckle: to inane reports that don’t hold water. In their vain effort to preempt a state ethics report on Gov. Palin, the McCain campaign released a report this past week that “clears her of any wrongdoing” in the firing of her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, based on public filings and Todd Palin’s affidavit… (Nothing to see here, move along citizen. Clearing Palin of any wrongdoings based on an affidavit from her husband is ridiculous, even by McPalin standards. That act alone should prompt the state of Alaska to investigate this further…)

Applaud: to a NY Times report that ties Gov. Palin to t she dismissed Alaska’s aforementioned public safety commissioner over her family’s dispute about one of his troopers. The report says that the commissioner and his aides were contacted about the office in question “three dozen times” over a 19-month span by Palin, her husband and seven administration officials…

Heckle: to dispiriting news from NIE’s. A draft version of the new National Intelligence Estimate comes to the conclusion that Afghanistan is in a “downward spiral” while casting doubt on the Afghan government’s ability to curtail the Taliban’s rising influence. Another NIE report warns that unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq could “unleash a new wave of violence” tjat will reverse all security and political gains achieved over the last year. (And yet McPalin continues to spew forth that Iraq is now a victory and Afghanistan is not vital…)

Applaud: to New York Times columnist David Brooks who said earlier this week that Palin “represents a fatal cancer to the Republican party.” (’Nuff said…)

Heckle: to a sign of the tumultuous times our nation is now facing. The National Debt Clock in New York’s Times Square can no longer keep pace with the ever-growing national debt that has hit more than $10 trillion under “President” Bush’s watch. A new clock with two extra digits will go up next year. (Keep this in mind; a vote for McCain is a vote for a third Bush term and, in essence, a continuing growth of our national debt. Let’s not mortgage our future the way the market’s been mortgaged off…)

Applaud: to whomever punched Lehman Brothers CEO Richard Fuld last week. After heading to the gym following his interrogation in front of House members he was punched in the face at by a man angry at the Lehman failure. (Karma Baby! Would it be wrong if I said I wanted to buy the assailant a beer?)

Heckle: to former republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Do I really need to give a reason? Sigh… fine... for writing that McCain should flip-flop and distance himself from the bailout that he voted for. We should mention that, at first, Newt was for the bailout then quickly flip-flopped and tried to tell republican lawmakers to vote against the bailout. (Again; Newt was part of the problem in the republican wipe-out in the late 90’s, why on earth would conservatives listen to a damn word this man says?)

Applaud: to Karma, baby! Last month, republican (big surprise, huh?) Louisiana state Rep. John LaBruzzo announced a plan that would pay ‘poor’ women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied. After incorrectly predicting that people would “get excited” about his idea, he’s now been removed from his position as vice chairman of the House Health and Welfare Committee. House Speaker Jim Tucker, also a republican, said Labruzzo’s comments “impeded his abilities to help lead critical health-care reform.” (Ya think? The fact he thought people would get excited about this Stalin-esque plan shows that Mr. LaBruzzo has quite a few screws loose… but one can never escape Karma)

Heckle: to an ever-disappointed American public. A new Gallup poll shows that a scant 9% of the American public are satisfied with the way things are going in the United States, which is the lowest such reading in Gallup Poll history, easily beating the 12% recorded in 1979.

Applaud: to the ever-shrinking presidential approval rating. Another new Gallup Poll shows that “President” Bush’s job approval rating has fallen to the record low of 25%, a mere one percentage point higher than Richard Nixon’s time-of-resignation approval rating of 24% (His legacy is circling the bowl, and there’s little he can do about it…)

Heckle: to more disastrous economic news, attributable to the Bush(whacked) Administration. The federal budget deficit hit a new record in the 2008 budget year with a $438 billion shortfall for the budget year that ended last week. The previous record was posted in 2004… smack-dab in the middle of Bush’s 8-year reign of horror. (I know it’s trite, but 1/20/09 can NOT come soon enough

Applaud: to being caught in your own web of irony.

Heckle: to plans to screw the public with their pants on… again. In order to pay for his health care plan while keeping it “budget neutral,” it was discovered this week that McCain would have to slash $1.3 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid over a 10 year period. Extra heckle to Palin for lying through her teeth at a rally in Florida earlier this week. When asked about Social Security, she said that they will “protect the entitlement programs that Americans depend on.” (And if you believe that, I have a you-know-what to sell you you-know-where…)

Applaud:to delicious irony. Which presidential contender said THIS in 2000? “Sooner or later, people are going to figure out if all you run is negative attack ads you don't have much of a vision for the future or you're not ready to articulate it.” (If you guessed Sen. John McCain, you would be right… and this perfectly supports my theory that the McCain version 2000 is no where close to the McCain version 2008… he’s aligned himself with Bush and his failed policies and would be a de facto third Bush term. Who in their right mind would want that???

Heckle: to double-standards; presidential race style. Despite criticizing Obama’s “relationship” (a term I use very loosely) with Bill Ayers, McCain is trumpeting an endorsement from Leonore Annenberg, widow of ambassador and philanthropist Walter Annenberg. If you think you’ve heard that name from somewhere before, it’s because the education board that Obama and Ayers sat on is named after him… (ahhh, how I love thee sweet, sweet irony…)

And this week’s TOTW was a hard one to determine, as we had plenty of conservative wingnuts spewing off about one thing or another… but we finally decided on one that does a nice job of describing how the current administration feels about people.

During a White House press briefing earlier this week, press secretary Dana Perino suggested the Bush administration would oppose any effort to extend jobless benefits and explained their position by saying the best way to help the economy is for unemployed people to simply “get back to work.”

Amazing, isn’t it? Why didn’t anyone ever think of that?? Just get back work, then you won’t be unemployed anymore… WOW! Thanks Dana… you schmuck.

And because of that, Dana Perino is this week’s Tool… of the Week.

A new feature in TBWA’s “Weekly Rewind”, the Un-sung Liberal Champion of the Week. This week the award goes to Oliver Clark. Mr. Clark was the man who posed the second question at this past week’s debate and was insulted (as I would have been) by McCain's condescending response of “You probably never heard of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac before this” and responded with a nice-worded post in which he said; “Well Senator, I actually did. I like to think of myself as a fairly intelligent person. I have a bachelor degree in Political Science from Tennessee State, so I try to keep myself up to date with current affairs. I have a Master degree in Legal Studies from Southern Illinois University, a few years in law school, and I am currently pursuing a Master in Public Administration from the University of Memphis. In defense of the Senator from Arizona I would say he is an older guy, and may have made an underestimation of my age. Honest mistake. However, it could be because I am a young African-American male. Whatever the case may be it was somewhat condescending regardless of my age to make an assumption regarding whether I was knowledgeable about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” (Nicely said Oliver. I, personally, was a little taken aback when McCain made that remark as I would have liked to have thought that a fair amount of the American public knew who those organizations were after the Savings and Loan Scandal. McCain, like George Bush, seems to talk to the American people like we are five years old and need everything “dummed down” in order for us to comprehend the issues. I find that insulting, especially since it seems more and more likely that McCain, again like Bush, is the one that needs things dummed-down in order to understand…)
All I have, take ‘em as you will…