Finding God in a Dog

CHEERS to progress on an Iranian nuclear deal, which could sink, once and for all, the case for war with Iran. Naturally, Bibi is not happy.

Feh to NATO, which can't make up their minds about what to do about the Ukraine Civil War. France and Germany, of course, want peace. The US and UK, of course, want to show NATO's strength, even if it means turning the war into another proxy war between the US and the Russian Federation. You'd think that one such proxy war would be enough.

CHEERS to same-sex marriage in Alabama. If SCOTUS's refusal to grant a stay is any indication, we can expect a 7-2 ruling declaring SSM-bans unconstitutional, with Scalia and Thomas dissenting. (Which would mean that I is right about the margin, my high school classmate is right about Scalia, and we're both wrong about Alito.)

JEERS to Samsung. In 1984 America, you watched television. In 2015 America, television watches you.

JEERS to Brian Williams for making shit up about his close encounter in Afghanistan. Now that that's done, maybe the Tea Party idiots can stop over-reaching about it.

CHEERS to the GOP for finally realizing that Sarah Palin is a fucking moron. CHEERS also to Bill Mahr for calling them out for being so blinded by partisanship that they didn't see it sooner.

CHEERS to the series Carmilla. Yes, I binge-watched the whole first "season" one day. (Quit looking at me like that — it's engaging stuff! And the Night Vale influence is quite obvious.) More on how "lesbian vampires" have become mainstream here.

JEERS to the Grammy Awards. You'd think, among all the autofellatio in the entertainment industry, they'd at least dedicate a few seconds in their "in memory" segment to the undoubtedly influential David Brockie.

And now for the end of the year CHEERS and JEERS.

CHEERS to the Dakota oil boom. Yes, fracking and local inflation have caused a lot of problems, but consider what the oil boom has bought us: jobs, cheap gas ($2.13 a gallon for the cheap stuff!!!), more consumer spending, more jobs, and both Russia and Iran have found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Americans are confident about the economy for the first time since Obama took office. And it's all going to be great as long as the oil doesn't run out...........

JEERS to the Ferguson PD, Special Prosecutor Robert McColloch, Ferguson Mayor James Knowles III ("There's no racial divide" - really?), and Missouri Governor Jay Nixon. Killing Mike Brown was bad enough. The bungled, antagonistic response to the community made things a thousand times worse. Things are going to need to change, and those changes include firing the mayor and the governor in the next elections. Which brings us to....

JEERS to the special prosecutor in the Eric Garner case. Maybe I should cheer him, since he made it crystal clear that even body cameras won't be sufficient to hold people accountable for excessive force; but the simple fact is that he didn't do his job. In case you're wondering, all these marches are basically demanding one thing: that you do your job and hold police accountable when they screw up.

JEERS to the Black Bloc --- the anarchist wing that's hijacked the police brutality protests in order to turn them to a call for revolution. Thanks for making it harder for the rest of the protesters to get their message across, you idiots.

JEERS to the Democratic Party. Bad campaigning and worse messaging doomed them in 2014; and, having abandoned the 50-state strategy in 2008, they are now left with little or no bench to speak of for the upcoming, very critical, 2018 and 2022 elections. Karl Rove envisioned a permanent Republican majority; the Democrats seem determined to do the bulk of the work towards that goal for him.

CHEERS to the European Space Agency for landing a robot on a fucking comet; to NASA for finding methane vents on Mars, which might point to actual microbial life; and to NASA again for finding over seven hundred planets orbiting other stars. We clever monkeys deserve to give ourselves a collective high-five for that.

JEERS to the European Space Agency's PR staff. You could have at least asked Matt Taylor to change shirts.

CHEERS to the end of the war in Afghanistan. Now that that's over, here's hoping we don't get involved in Iraq any time soon......actually, who am I kidding? We're going back to Iraq to clean up our mess one more time. As Jello Biafra said back in 1990....we can never, ever leave. So I hereby rescind my CHEER.

JEERS to John McCain. Last year we had to give weapons to ISIS to beat the Assad regime in Syria. This year we have to give weapons to the Assad regime in Syria to beat ISIS. Maybe the answer was to leave the Middle East alone the whole time? Are we ready to discuss that possibility yet? Maybe?

JEERS to Bill Cosby for decades of drugging young starlets. Ultimately it means that your career, once celebrated, now resembles a teacher's strike --- no class.

JEERS to the mainstream media's handling of the Ebola crisis. Boy, that was sure a hot story when the Republicans were making the case that things were bad under the Obama administration. Then the election happened, the outbreak in Dallas was contained, and the story just...went away. Almost like Ebola disappeared. Except that it hasn't, and now it's worse than ever, with over 20,000 infected and almost 8,000 dead, mostly in West Africa. Maybe the story got boring, but it's going to come back with a vengeance if the international community can't get it under control. You think that story would be worth reporting, but apparently not.

CHEERS to Taylor Swift. I'm not a huge fan of pop music in general, but you kicked ass this year. Congratulations on having the only album of 2014 to be certified platinum; you certainly deserve it.

CHEERS to the Oregon Ducks on their kick ass season. Now let's beat Florida State!

CHEERS to all our friends and colleagues from the World Horror Convention, the Lovecraft Film Festivals, and the Esoteric Book Conference. Thank you for making this a kick-ass year for me and SC. 2015 is going to be even busier and better for us! See you there?

CHEERS to Nate Pedersen and everyone else who participated in The Starry Wisdom Library. To quote contributor Edward Morris, "This is CANON! Mythos CANON!" SC's delight in particpaing in this project is only matched by my giddy, childlike delight at having so many friends and loved ones pitch in.

JEERS to everyone who keeps the Kardashian machine going by talking about them. Shut up. Sweet Jesus, just SHUT UP, so they can go away and never come back.

CHEERS to my long time pal C on her blossoming acting career. Do us proud!

CHEERS to Morbid Angel, Kreator, Arch Enemy, GWAR, Decapitated, Broken Bells, Deicide, Three Leg Torso, The Nowhere Men, The Wanderlust Circus, and everyone else who left it all on stage.

CHEERS to TeXShop and Atom, my favorite technological discoveries of 2014.

CHEERS to Veronica Chaos. Thank you for singing a duet with me at Jeff Burk's Halloween party.

CHEERS to Heather, Laura and D for being my friend these last twenty years. It's been a hard road for me, and I appreciate you helping me through it.

CHEERS to you for reading, and Happy 2015!

And now, ladies and gents, here are the CHEERS and JEERS for 2012.

CHEERS to Nate Silver. Fifty states predicted, fifty states got. In the weeks up to the election, Silver gave Obama a three-to-one shot at winning, which eventually converged on 90%. The Romney campaign, desperate to have some other narrative to keep their voters motivated, came up with this fiction of skewed polls; what's worse, they believed their own press, so that their loss, rather than expected, was actually shocking. Silver became a genius hero for millions of progressives. Statistics - that subject for which I used to be a teaching assistant at Loyola University - became cool. Flawless victory. Needless to say, I gave my mom a copy of his book.

JEERS to Nate Silver's evil counterpart, Karl Rove. Apparently, having "the math" isn't so great when "the math" is founded on bullshit. It led to one of the great meltdowns in political broadcasting history:



Needless to say, Rove has been benched by Fox.

DOUBLE JEERS to every asshat that has decided to validate their existence by shooting up a public place; may their names be forgotten. Now we're having a national batshit crazy primal scream about falsely so-called "assault weapons." We're also, for reasons that are entirely self-serving for the NRA, having a nonetheless long overdue national conversation about mental health care reform. We're talking about an armed response in schools. A long-overdue conversation about how our society accepts violence as a way to affirm one's masculinity? Not so much. Without that conversation, it doesn't really matter what we ban or how many police we add; it's only a matter of time before the next emasculated asshole shoots up - or blows up, or sets on fire - the next mall, school, church, etc.

DOUBLE CHEERS to incoming Senator Elizabeth Warren. In 2011, a Republican House Committee Chair accused her of lying about the hearing schedule. In 2012, she beat GOP darling Scott Brown for Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat. In 2013, she'll be on the Senate Banking Committee. Now the real effort to fix 2008 can begin.

CHEERS to FaceBook stock. Yeah, yeah, I know, at $38/share, the IPO was WAY overvalued. Those of us who don't get to participate in IPOs, on the other hand, got to buy at $20/share. Now it's up to $28/share. So, while you assholes are crying about your losses, some of us are making bank. Thanks! Now, if only FaceBook can find a way to monetize their services without creeping the rest of us the fuck out. Maybe with some tweaks to their gifts service?

JEERS to CNN and Fox News, both, for their inglorious, perverse botch of the Obamacare ruling. On the bright side, we had a good laugh at your expenses. Maybe from now on you'll take your time and read the fucking ruling before trying so hard to get the scoop.

JEERS to Michelle Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, and all the other little idiots that were also-rans to Mitt Romney. Congrats on making Mitt look moderate and sane in comparison.

DOUBLE JEERS to the last remnants of the vaccine conspiracy theorists. Look, Andrew Wakefield's research has been thoroughly debunked. The man's even won a lifetime achievement award for quackery. Can you please admit you're wrong and give your kids their fucking shots already?

DOUBLE JEERS to Keith Olbermann. Look, getting fired from Fox Sports is praiseworthy. Getting let go from MSNBC after single-handedly rebuilding their brand is regrettable. Getting fired in a grand hissy fit from Current TV? That's just pathetic. Good luck searching your soul; your career, if you ever have one again, is going to need it.

TRIPLE JEERS to NBC Sports, Bob Costas, Meredith Viera, and Matt Lauer, for the absolute worst Olympics coverage you could imagine, particularly at the opening and closing ceremonies. Sometimes, the best thing to do is to tell your falsely-so-called talent to Shut The Fuck Up and let us enjoy the show. Thanks for making this once every four years event completely unwatchable, you idiots.

QUADRUPLE JEERS to all the crazy-making anti-woman shit that seemed to fill every nook and cranny of 2012. Whether it's Binders Full Of Women, Legitimate Rape, sexual harassment of gamers, or the death of a rape victim in India, one can only hope that enough horrible shit has happened in the public view for the mainstream to Wake The Fuck Up.

JEERS to Climate Change for making the lives of friends and loved ones in the UK, Pacific Northwest, and New York City that much more stressful.

JEERS to President Obama for making hunter-killer robots roaming the skies above us somehow acceptable. Seriously, what the fuck?

JEERS to KPOJ management for switching formats from Progressive Talk to Sports. Because, you know, we needed another sports station. Screw you guys, and I hope terrestrial radio finally dies out.

JEERS to the entire cast of The Jersey Shore (and good goddamn riddance); The Learning Channel for being anything but; Dianne Feinstein for actively seeking to undermine the Second, Fourth and Fifth Amendments; Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock for raising the bar on incredible batshit craziness; the Kony 2012 movement for giving hipsters something to feel self-righteous about; and the 2012 Mayan Calendar Conspiracy for making the "New Age" hold on just that much longer.

CHEERS to Milagro Theater for their kick-ass production of Oedipus El Rey. True magic. Deserving of every award it received, which was a lot of them.

DOUBLE CHEERS to Sam Adams, outgoing Mayor of Portland, for some damn fine work. Gonna miss you.

CHEERS to Sylosis for the kick-ass album Monolith; Breaking Bad for the best show on television; Dr. George Seig for his collected essays; Jeremy Robert Johnson for We Live Inside You; David Shoemaker for his excellent treatment of Phyllis Seckler's writings; The Oatmeal for this awesome smack-down of a lawsuit troll; The Roots for being able to make even the shittiest music good; and the Chicago Bears for a hell of a run this year.

CHEERS a dozen or so close friends who made this year bearable. Most of them aren't on LJ, but a few of them - including nowgoesquickly and victorine - are. Thank you.

CHEERS to ednoled on his victorious return to Cascadia.

CHEERS to skeletoncrew for continuing to kick ass.

CHEERS to you for reading this. Happy New Year!

And now, a little post-MLK day C&J!

JEERS to the ongoing Iraq disaster. Has the surge really allows Iraq to achieve political stability, like it was supposed to? Apparently not -- even its supporters don't claim that any more. But, if you need evidence that the stability hasn't occurred, look no further than here:

• Kurds are asserting their autonomy by refusing to fly the Iraqi flag.

You'd think this wouldn't be an issue by now, if Iraq had been making any kind of progress over the last almost five years.

Meanwhile:

• The insurgents have apparently found a way to blow up our new IED-resistant trucks.
• New Sunni insurgent groups on the rise.
• Suicide bomber blows up a school. Another one blows up a funeral.

JEERS to the Primaries! These last few days have been a disaster for the Democrats, and in particular there has been one particular disaster that should make every Democrat sit up and take notice. I'm not talkiing about HRC's "victory" in Nevada vis-a-vie the popular vote, or Obama's "victory" in Nevada vis-a-vie gaining more actual delegates, or even the useless bickering at the debate. (Note to Obama: the answer to Hillary isn't to attack her on Wal-Mart; it's to attack her on NAFTA. Note to HRC: when you and your proxies lie about what Obama said about Reagan, it makes you look like Karl Rove. Don't do that.)

No, the real disaster, the significance of which went unnoticed by almost every Democratic blog, is that McCain won South Carolina. You might remember me metioning him a few times as the only GOP candidate who stands amy reasonable chance of being the next President, according to the polls. With him as the nominee, the general contest goes from My Shoe vs Ant to Patton vs Rommel. And we can kiss the Democratic Landslide, and all the Senate and House seats that go along with it, good bye. Unfortunately, his SC victory makes the prospect of him winning the nomination just that much stronger. Just as unfortunately, I don't see how he loses the nomination contest without a Romney resurgence, and I also don't see how Romney surges back.

JEERS to the Fed rate cut. Bonddad points out here and here (UPDATE: and here) why this is just a dumb idea. Speaking personally, a cut this big, this fast, strikes me as an admission that we're pretty much totally screwed without some stroke of unbelievable luck. And sorry, but tax cuts and/or WPA-style programs won't do it. They didn't before, after all.

Feh to Thompson. He's out. So much for that flash in the pan.

CHEERS to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Because any show where they can pull off actual character development for an emotionless robot is, yes, that good.

CHEERS to the Giants. That win was chicken soup for the Bears Fan's soul. Nice knowing ya, Farve.

Thus endeth the lunch break. Later!

CHEERS to aiden_freeman!

JEERS to milestones. Since we now lack other metrics by which to measure our progress in this so-called War on Terror, we have to go by the metric we've got: death. And today, more USGIs have died in Afghanistan and in Iraq than died in 9/11. So, there, we have our revenge now. Uh, right? Meanwhile, Scott Bateman has this little ditty on how things are going in the five years since 9/11.

JEERS to breakups. Speaking of Iraq, the balkanization has begun: the Kurds want out, thank you very much. This is a dispute over the Iraqi flag, and yeah, there's some hyperbole involved, but maybe the real lesson here is that the Kurds are itching for any excuse to succede and create an independent Kurdistan. Look for Turkey to do some more saber rattling in the near future.

JEERS to hype. From the New York Times to the Chicago Tribune to the Christian Broadcasting Network, everyone is reporting that the GOP is going to have a hard time of it this year. Folks, don't believe the hype. Things look bad for the GOP because they dug themselves into a hole, and the Democrats are taking some baby steps towards taking advantage of this, but the GOP still has an awesome GOTV machine. It's only our hard work and our money that is going to allow the Dems to capitalize on this situation.

JEERS to TMI. How can Google Calendar get you killed? Read about it here! And always practice safe information sharing.

JEERS to parody becoming real life. Crikey! It apears that Fox NewsMad TV used to have the "Aussie Hunter" send up of Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter who used to get himself into lethal situations. It's all really funny until someone actually dies from doing something really stupid with a stingray.

CHEERS to Vermont, where nudity has become the latest expression of teen rebellion. Enough so, in fact, that it's starting to push some boundaries and make the locals feel squicky. See, nudity is legal in this particular town, but much like drinking and other risky behaviors, it's different when consenting adults do it. Some are wondering whether they should change the law; others are thinking that the nudity will die when the Vermont winter sets in. Me, I'm thinking that if I participated (particularly in my present condition), the practice would cease to be cool with a quickness, and the town's tradition of nude parades can continue unabbated.

And with that, I'm going to commence unpacking.

With all this godawful heat, you'd think there'd be more light around here. Apparently that's where I come in.

JEERS to the ongoing disaster in the Middle East. The big front right now, of course, is Lebanon, and Israel is just pounding the hell out of Lebanon right now and for the forseeable future, using everything from phosphorous shells to one-ton bombs. Of course, it's not their fault that civilians got killed in the process of the air campaign and invasion -- they warned the people to leave first. I really want to give Israel the benefit of the doubt on this one, since Israel faces an existential threat, and especially since Hezbollah are genuinely evil, but this smacks a little too much of ethnic cleansing.

This is a crisis point, kiddies, and not just for Israel -- indeed, not just for the neocons, either. Christians are now faced with a decision that would make Solomon retreat to the brothel for weeks on end: either go with their morals and condemn Israel, or go with one of several interpretations of scripture that predict this war as a sign. Morals or prophecy, but not both. If the conservative evangelical movement was fracturing the Christianity that inspired King, their going with the latter is going to positively shatter it. After this, all the talk about peace and human dignity is for naught. Meanwhile, the evangelicals and other Christians who support Israel in this are embracing AL III without even knowing it.

JEERS to the failing power grid. Growing up in Chicago, we learned to treat failures of the power grid as fairly regular occurrences during the summer heat -- that is, until a massive power failure in 1999 got the mayor fuming and forced Commonwealth Edison to spend a billion dollars fixing everything. But with recent summer heat driving the demand for air conditioning (and therefore power), the transmission and distribution systems in other locales are failing from the strain. California's system had several unscheduled blackouts; hundreds of thousands of homes in St. Louis found themselves in the dark, and of course there was this severe outage in Queens. This makes me wonder what happened to The Drunk's pledge to spend several billion and several years fixing the nation's T&D woes. (NB: Chicago had a minor outage last week due to storms.)

JEERS to Mancow. In what has to be the greatest outrage in Chicago journalism since they added Jerry Springer to WMAQ-TV's nightly news broadcasts, venerable public television program Chicago Tonight has added bigot and general jackass Erich "Mancow" Muller to the lineup to provide commentary. This move is so bone-headed that it defies logic, which means that it could only have come from the mind of some Harvard-edumicated marketing genius who thinks that drawing a younger crowd means being more asinine. And somewhere out there, Allan Bloom is spinning relativistic.

CHEERS to beating the heat. Wanna get into some air conditioning? We've got your excuse for Wednesday night: Portland's Drinking Liberally is hosting Jim Derych, author of Confessions of a Former Dittohead, on Wednesday night at their usual spot (the Lucky Laborador, 915 SE Hawthorne, PDX, 7 PM Wednesday). I met Jim at YKos; he's a fun, smart guy.

And with that, I'm off to spend 8 hours in air conditioning. Toodles!

I can't wait to get home and start the weekend, so I can do --- more work. On the wedding, on canvassing for Rob Brading (click here for details) and meet me in Troutdale at 9:45 AM), and on the mass. Meanwhile, here's today's CHEERS and JEERS.

JEERS to the ongoing Iraq disaster. The latest:

• US officials restate, for the record, that there is no evidence that we have found to suggest that Iraq manufactured any chemical, biological, or nuclear weapon after the 1991 cease fire. This may seem obvious to most of us, but Rick Santorum and his pals have been claiming that 500 useless warheads from the Iran-Iraq war constitute proof that we're all lying there being no WMDs. Me, I'm still waiting for the tons of weaponized anthrax that the Drunk promised us in his 2003 state of the union address.
  
• There was a huge gun battle in Baghdad that has the whole city shut down.
  
• An amnesty deal for insurgents, including forgiveness for killing US soldiers, is back on the table. I'd be more pissed about that particular provision if I didn't just want this damn mess over with and our troops back home, now.
  
• US generals are accusing Iran of interfering in Iraq by training insurgents. Interestingly, Erick Stakelbeck mentioned similar charges against Saudi Arabia on last night's 700 Club.
  
• 10 killed in mosque bombing
  
• 25 killed in "gangland" execution-style killings.
  
• A shooting incident is threatening to halt Iraq's wheat trade, out of concerns that Iraq is simply too unsafe a place to work.

Since the Bush administration is back to trying to make the case for war in Iran, we will all do well to remember what became of their promises for Iraq.

CHEERS to shutting down a terror plot in Miami which apparently involved a bunch of whackos trying to get money from Al Qaeda to attack, amoung other places, the Sears Tower. Right now there's a lot of noise and not much actual information, but stay tuned to hear more.

CHEERS, after entirely another fashion, to Brian Bilbray's kids. Girls, please take note that as the children of elected officials, you should conduct yourselves in a somewhat more dignified manner than to post drunken party pix online .. at least until you're old enough to drink. OK? OK! (Thank you to the man who directed me to these -- name not mentioned since the post is friends-locked.)

CHEERS to the RETURN OF FUTURAMA!

JEERS to my computer. Looks like the damage isn't to my power supply, but to my chip or motherboard. I was thinking of going Mac anyway, and this looks like it will kick me in that direction. The only question I have: can I transfer the contents of my old hard drive (ex3fs format) onto the macbook pro I want to get?

CHEERS to the new precinct captain in my precinct! That person, by the way, is none other than myself. It was unanimous -- since I was the only one from my precinct to show up. One of my goals for the next two years: recruit enough PCPs in my precinct so that someone else can be precinct captain. Considering the turnover we get in this broke-as-hell neighborhood, I have my work cut out for me. Yeh, I have my work cut out for me.

And with that, I'm off to my day job.

JEERS to the ongoing disaster in Iraq. The latest and less-than-greatest:

• Al Qaeda regrouping, threatens major attacks. Blast kills six
  
• Sunnis demand puppet government meet with insurgents.
  
• 50k troops to remain in Iraq for years to come, even as the puppet government makes happy talk to the contrary.
  
• Ramadi braces for huge battle
  
• Zarqawi autopsy complete -- results withheld. For all I care he could have died by being thrown into a wood chipper and he would have deserved it. OTOH a lot of ordinary Iraqis might see this differently. We do know that he lived for 52 minutes, which may represent some admirable efforts on the part of the US military to keep him alive for interrogation.
  
• US kills seven insurgents.
  
• Cowed media spins Zarqawi death into leadership coup for Bush. Too bad the man has no actual leadership to speak of.

CHEERS to the revival of the good old days. Friday night was Gov. Mark Warner's huge party at the Stratosphere, where he invited Kossacks and Young Democrats to party on his dime. Some Kossacks and some other bloggers are wondering if Warner might be trying to seduce the Netroots into backing him, despite their differences on the war and the direction of the Democratic party. As an old veteran of pre-dot-bomb computer conventions, I can tell you without a doubt that the man is going for something that he needs right now more than our allegiance, and that is name recognition. My advice? You owe him nothing in return for his party. Drink his liquor, but save your decisions on whether to support him for after the hangover.

CHEERS for the contrarian viewpoint! Is the YearlyKos convention the affirmation of the power of the NetRoots, or is it the first big step in the anexation of the NetRoots by the mealy-mouthed DLC centrists? Justin Raimondo lets us know what he thinks here.

CHEERS to Cedwyn, Rain, Ducktape, Ava and Ayn from PeaceTakesCourage.com (Ava made this video for the convention), Kos and his two year old, PastorDan, Elizabeth D, the DailyKos C&J crowd, Hunter, Mike from Albany, Advisor Jim, Anna Nevenic, Charlie Brown for Congress, Monster, and just a hell of a lot of other people in orange. Thanks for the memories!

JEERS to losing my reading glasses along the way.

CHEERS to skeletoncrew and elfspirit for getting me home! After four days in the desert, it's good to be in a place where it's cold and rains all the time.

While we were out eating meat, watching movies, and generally taking advantage of the holiday, an unbelievable amount of really ugly stuff happened. And so, as I am waiting for the next bus, it is only appropriate that we awaken from our torpor and collectively say, "what the hell happened?!?"

JEERS to the ongoing Iraq mess. The weekend brought a new twist to the sad saga of America's latest elective war: it's own answer to My Lai. That's right kids, Haditha, the previously covered-up shooting of 24 or so Iraqi civilians by US Marines, is the story of the day. Even the one-year anniversary of the Natalee Holloway story can't make this one go away -- the stories are now a major item on cable news, complete with heart-tugging videos of mom wondering what their Marine children might have seen in there. Even the White House has to acknowledge the story. Editorial cartoonists, for their part, are wondering how we ended up back here. Me? I'm wondering what else there is that they're still not talking about -- maybe there's something we should know, for example, about those reconstruction contracts that seem to have eaten up hundreds of billions without making much progress.

Meanwhile, the long-term indicators of our success in Iraq are still pointing sharply south: the coalition is shrinking, the rebellion is holding steady, there's plenty of political corruption in the puppet government for the rebellion to exploit, the attacks are getting deadlier (2), and we're sending still more troops into the theater. When is it time to pull the plug on this death march?

CHEERS to some common sense coming in. The US has, apparently, agreed to accept a draft of a UN Iran revolution that eliminates the use of force as an option. This is a long way from guaranteeing that a third simultaneous war won't happen, but between this, the Iraq mess, and the very disturbing images coming out of Afghanistan, it may just be that the White House might not have enough political capital to start an invasion.

JEERS to bad omens, part one. Yesterday the President announced the appoint ment of a new Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson. In response, the DJIA dropped 180 points. This might have something to do with Paulson having a reputation for preferring economic chaos: as he said in 2000, "Volatility is our friend. If it wasn't for volatility, why would you need (my company,) Goldman Sachs?"

JEERS to bad omens, part two. Yesterday the US Supreme Court, in a ruling that is all too timely, said that whistleblowers are not, repeat, NOT protected by the First Amendment. Remember, it was whistleblowers that let us know about the NSA wiretapping scandals. The decision was, needless to say, 5-4.

CHEERS to the Cubs on squeaking out a rare win. Seriously, what are you guys, 5-20 for the month? Can you please remember how to play baseball? Thank you.

It's a slow, lazy Friday for me -- time to roll out some Cheers and Jeers!

JEERS to warrantless wiretaps. After USA Today revealed that the NSA was using the records of tens of millions of phone customers to help build a classifier for "terrorist" phone activity, the Drunk came on the air to assure us that they weren't wiretapping people. Conservatives like dondodson repeated the party line that this was just helping to build a baseline profile of what typical phone use looks like. And frankly, it looks like the American people bought the story hook, line, and sinker. Never mind that this program has been repeatedly lied about; never mind that it's not much of an engineering feat to tie phone numbers to other demographic data; never mind that it's hugely expensive; never mind that it probably doesn't work; never mind that this represents the biggest invasion of our privacy in history. The American people have made the trade of giving up their liberties for the faint promise of a little temporary safety, provided by people who have failed to keep us safe from two major disasters. The liars and incompitents said, trust me, and the American people bought it. Makes you wonder what they're thinking, don't it?

By the way, JEERS to Dianne Feinstein for helping to sell the White House line on this. If you are wondering, Mrs. Feinstein, why you're not much liked by the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, it's because you don't stand up to this President and his march of folly.

JEERS to false complacency. Democrats are cheering the latest polling numbers that have Democrats in a double digit lead in a generic Congressional battle, and the tantalizing promise that GOP voters might just stay home this time. Bush's detractors, meanwhile, are thrilled that his poll numbers have hit a new low of 29%. So, victory is in the bag, right? Wrong! Enter the GOP war machine: the major, mainstream media, cowed by Republican interests on Wall Street, has just started spinning out the message the GOP needs to turn things around. It's a simple formula: portray the Dems as out-of-touch cultural fascists, crank the base with a fiscally nuts, racist agenda, and keep promising the false security of eternal war and a police state. The Democrats, meanwhile, are promising --- what, exactly?

See folks, this is what happens when you pay more attention to Sun Tzu than to any person with a decent marketing background -- you let your enemy fall apart and say nothing, thus giving them time to regroup and say what people want to hear. You thought you were being clever, and it turns out you were just being incalculably stupid. The Democrats should have kicked the GOP while they were down, and sold the hell out of themselves. They didn't, and as a result, a sweep of Congress in November is all but dead. The Democrats better get started on selling the hell out of themselves now before we're ten points down and the GOP is within striking distance of a veto-proof majority in the Senate.

CHEERS to moms. Happy Mother's Day!