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Cheers and Jeers: Wednesday [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-03-19
Great Moments in The Dumbest Moments Ever Today marks the anniversary of one of the most avoidably-idiotic moments in American history—the day Republicans shot our country in the face and expected a parade of sweets and flowers for it. It's the 22nd dumbstickiversary of the invasion of Iraq. Seems appropriate to mark the occasion with our annual reminder of some of the lying and/or moronic statements made by the band of Very Serious People who orchestrated and/or promoted the debacle), while simultaneously hating on the astute lefty blogger critics who called them out on their bullshit and lousy predictions. Feel free to hurl rotten tomatoes as you see fit… "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us." ... "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." —Dick Cheney (8/28/02) and (3/16/03) "Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof—the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." —George W. Bush (10/7/02) "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence ."
—Secretary of State Colin Powell (2/5/03), holding up a vial of baby powder. “I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?” —Bill O’Reilly (1/29/03) The cafeteria menus in the three House office buildings changed the name of "french fries" to "freedom fries," in a culinary rebuke of France stemming from anger over the country's refusal to support the U.S. position on Iraq.' —CNN (3/12/03) We know where [the WMDs] are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat." —Donald Rumsfeld (3/30/03 — WMDs were never found anywhere) [T]he antiwar crowd is still spinning a doomsday scenario. But it's getting harder and harder to take seriously the claim that freeing Iraq will make it harder to win the war on terrorism. Indeed, there's plenty of evidence to the contrary. [...] Who said war never solved anything? —Brendan Miniter, The Wall Street Journal (4/8/03, now scrubbed from the site) "The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals." —Charles Krauthammer (4/19/03) Ted Koppel: [Y]ou’re not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is going to be done for $1.7 billion? Andrew Natsios [Agency for International Development]: Well, in terms of the American taxpayer's contribution, I do. This is it for the U.S. —Nightline (4/23/03 at 2:30 mark) 4,516 American service personnel lost their lives during the war, with another 32,000 wounded. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who died. But please: do continue telling us why the Bush II administration’s image deserves to be rehabilitated. I’m all ears. And lest we forget, our current Idiot-in-Chief—now mulling his own Iraq Wars against Greenland, Panama, and Canada—was rah-rah on Iraq, too, until it all went south and he started lying to try and cover for his terrible judgment.
P.S. Minimum amount of time that U.S. taxpayers will be paying costs associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an AP analysis: at least 100 years. Only 78 years to go. Yay us.
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Note: From the DOGE news desk—Elon Musk found picking his nose with three fingers. And this just in: they weren’t his fingers. No details or footage coming up on Eyewitness News at noon. You’re welcome.
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By the Numbers:
3 days!!!
Days 'til Earth Day: 34
Days 'til the Vermont Maple Open House Weekend at 110 sugarhouses throughout the state: 3
Increase in retail sales during February, below expectations: 0.2%
Minimum number of people killed by the outbreak of tornadoes in the Midwest: 40
Drop in symptoms of depression among transgender adults who had gender-affirming hormone therapy, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association: 15%
Percent chance that Chuck Schumer postponed his dumb book tour because everybody's pissed at him: 100%
Number of Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency employees who are being reinstated after a judge ruled their firings by DOGE unconstitutional: 130
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 181 (including 5 Marks of the Beast and 1 child's experiment that, sadly, killed Grandma next door). Soul Protection Factor 12 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: "Hi, kids!" "Hi, Dad!"
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CHEERS to overdue homecomings. Well, that was quite an ordeal…the kind of tale that you pass down orally from generation to generation as you're gathered around the campfire in front of your cave and stare up at the stars, wondering what it's all about. That's certainly the case with astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore who, not unlike the passengers and crew who ended up on Gilligan's Island, spent way more time in space than they'd planned: a week turned into nine months. But where there's a "Wil" (or, in this case, two) there's a way, and NASA brought them back safely yesterday despite having to use a spacecraft owned by the same walking vial of Ketamine who owns the company that makes all them exploding Teslas:
Despite the attention their extraordinary circumstances have garnered, Williams and Wilmore were not “stranded” in space. Both have repeatedly challenged that characterization, maintaining that they have enjoyed their extended time living and working in low-Earth orbit. How cool that the various launch teams sign their names next to the mission logos around the hatch. “Every day is interesting because we’re up in space and it’s a lot of fun,” Williams said in a news briefing earlier this month, but added that the waiting and uncertainty was likely hard for family members on the ground.
Williams and Wilmore will now enter the record books as the first American astronauts to leave their home as a functioning democracy and return to a dystopian nightmare. Just spit-balling here, but I doubt they'll be putting that achievement on their eventual tombstones.
JEERS to the dwindling god squad. The big play for the MAGA cult is to turn the United States into a hellscape in which non-worship of their hypocritical and twisted "Christian" tenets will get you a one-way boxcar trip to a gulag in northern Alaska. (And if you're among the first to go, you'll actually get to help build your gulag.) Yes—Christian nationalism is at the top of the Trump agenda. Just one little snag:
A new study from the American Worldview Inventory 2025, led by George Barna and the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, highlights a significant transformation in Americans’ beliefs about God. And Americans are starting to notice. The research shows that despite two-thirds of Americans identifying as Christians, only 4% adhere to a biblical worldview, with most embracing a mix of spiritual perspectives — a phenomenon known as Syncretism. [...] Notably, nearly 30% now identify as agnostic, atheist, or indifferent toward supernatural powers — an increase from just 8% three decades ago. [...] While 59% of Americans recognize Jesus Christ as a spiritual authority, only 34% say they worship the God of the Bible. … and more than 5 million admit to worshipping Satan.
In other words, we ain’t buyin’ what they’re sellin’. Thank god for miracles.
CHEERS to cutting and running. 83 years ago this week, in 1942, General Douglas MacArthur pulled out of the Philippines during World War II so his forces could live to fight the Japanese another day. His words made history: "I shall return." Not so historic were the words that followed: "Accelerator's on the right, Corporal! Go Go Go!!!"
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to the Very Seriousest of the Very Serious People. As mentioned at the top, the Iraq War, was launched 22 years ago today. We quoted some of the dumbshits and their dumbass predictions, but this one has a special place in internet Hell. This is Tom Friedman's rationalization for why inflicting pain and punishment on Iraq was teh awesome. Literally, he told the Middle East: "Suck on this"...
x YouTube Video
“What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, "Which part of this sentence don't you understand?" You don't think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna to let it grow? Well Suck. On. This. Okay? That, Charlie, was what this war was about. We could've hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.”
On the one hand, what a typical American know-it-all bully jerk, so symptomatic of the media’s fawning cheerleading during those early days. On the other hand, if someone's going to present himself as an expert on sucking, I can think of few people more qualified than Tom Friedman.
CHEERS to March Madness! The NCAA basketball tournament started last night. (The men get a day's head start on account of their inferiority as a species. Women's tip-off is tonight.) You can see the official brackets for the women here and the men here. I finally completed mine last night, and I'm optimistic about my choices:
{The winners of the first round} {The winners of the next round} {The winners of the next next round} {The winner of the semi-finals} {The winner of the finals}
If I win all the marbles, I promise to have a professional skim the algae and cigarette butts out of the C&J kiddie pool—a good thing to do once a decade. As for how the tournament works: 68 teams are whittled down to 1. Or as it's also known: Tesla’s current approval rating.
P.S. America’s major league baseball season opener happened yesterday in freaking Japan??! And Trump did nothing as our national pastime was RIGED and STOLLEN by foreigners trying to DESTROY OUR CounTRy?!! IMPEAch AND INpRiSON NOW!!!
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 19, 2015
OY VEY to cartoon bomb man. Well, kids, it looks like we're going to have that racist neocon Bibi Netanyahu to kick around for the foreseeable future. Israeli voters decided to peg the needle to the far right and give him some more time as prime minister. Here in the U.S., Republicans have a mixed reaction to the news. On the one hand, they can claim that Bibi's recent speech to a joint session of Congress worked like a charm. On the other hand, they're bummed that now he can't be their 2016 nominee for president. (There there…Putin may still be interested.)
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And just one more…
CHEERS to Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars Star Wars!!!!
Sorry. Reflex. Happens whenever a new official trailer comes out. This is the new one for the second season of the absolutely terrific Andor coming to Disney Plus, with expected scenes featuring Darth Vader, the Emperor, and my favorite villain from Rogue One, Ben Mendelsohn’s Imperial baddie Orson Krennic. The latest preview:
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May the Force be with it in—[checks watch]—34 days.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial "We're going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants, to the Americans who fired researchers for demanding scientific freedom: 'Give us back the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool. We gave it to you as a gift, but apparently you despise it. So it will be just fine here at home.' " —European Parliament member Raphaël Glucksmann
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[END]
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