Welcome to another edition of Cheers and Jeers.  You didn’t think the site going through changes would keep us away, did you?  Huh?  Did you?

Cheers this week to the Economic Stimulus Package that was signed into law by President Obama in Denver yesterday.  It may not be perfect, but it is a step in the right direction, and most certainly not too little, too late.  Receiving wide bipartisan support everywhere but the United States Congress, the stimulus package will begin the work of pulling us out of the Bush Recession.  Like the term?  Start using it.

Another Cheers to the Phi Mu Alpha Modern Music Concert, which raised $307.00 for Lakeview Middle School’s band and strings program, which receives as its annual budget a whopping $550.00.  This will go toward increasing their number of instruments, their music library (which consists of 16 pieces), and numerous other purchases that the teacher would have to buy herself, or the students would have to do without, due to a budgetary cut by the SC State Legislature.  And in relation to that…

Jeers to the SC Public Education system.  Who ever thought that the arts were something expendable?  Only in a paradoxical society like ours where the rights and sanctity of the individual are championed could we have such a low value placed on creativity and artwork in our public school system.  What, did you think that only learning a particular skill could take kids out of their situation, sometimes one that places them in an abysmal schooling program, and make for them (rather, allow them to make for themselves) something better than Fate ever had planned for them?  It is our responsibility as a society to foster and support the arts from the very youngest level of education, not to treat Arts Education like a leisure activity, the first thing to be cut when the budget falls short.  Cheers to the teachers that endure, putting their students’ best interests at heart, but Jeers to those who see the arts as irrelevant and those who would re-elect them.

Cheers today to Peanut Butter, because I’m still eating it.

Cheers go out to Michael Phelps, who won’t be prosecuted by the Columbia Sheriff’s department for pictures of him taking a bong hit at a party.  I mean, really, was he ever going to be prosecuted in the first place?  Of course not; this was just a way for South Carolina to get itself in the news again as an ass-backwards state which cares more about “family values” than it does any sense of right or wrong.  Here’s to the propaganda stunt going down in flames, and Phelps being off the hook.

[Have you ever noticed that we almost always have more to cheer about than to jeer about?  It's a wonderful world.]

And, of course, at the end of every episode, we give you the new cuteness.  Tune in next week, same time, same station.

What are you Cheering and Jeering about this week?