From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Oh! More Things I Know:
>> The past decade was the warmest on record, a fact which climate change deniers may feel free to suck on at their leisure.
>> Congressional Republicans are huddling behind closed doors to decide who gets to shout down President Obama during his State of the Union speech next week. Their main criteria: who needs his or her campaign coffers filled the most by jubilant fist-pumping teabaggers, and who has the sweetest vibrato.
>> The problem isn't that Democratic bloggers are too angry. The problem is that Democratic leaders aren’t angry enough.
>> The media says that I'm supposed to be "reeling" from Coakley's loss. Does anyone have the instruction manual for that? I seem to have forgotten how to... [Whooooaaaa!!! Wheeeeee!!!] Wait, never mind, I got it. Sticky clutch.
>> If reincarnation really happens, I want to come back as a Washington, D.C. pigeon with superior divebombing skills and overactive bowels. I have some scores to settle.
>> Tiny note of optimism: John McCain is not President of the United States.
>> I'm pre-emptively withdrawing my name from consideration for anything, based on a nagging feeling that I'm about to do something really sordid.
>> Sometimes I wake up from a dream and then quickly return to it in disguise so I can find out what the people there are saying about me behind my back.
>> Democrats should make Frank Luntz an offer he can’t refuse. Love him or hate him, his talking points work.
>> That ten Republican members of the Texas Board of Education wield so much clout in determining the content of our nation's high school history textbooks should be illegal.
>> The day after Scott Brown won the election, stocks plunged 122 points in a financial death spiral during which Wall Street executives had to be talked down off ledges by rapid-response mental health specialists. Gee, didn’t see that comin'.
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, January 21, 2010
Note: Okay, everyone, we're switching to Plan B. Three...Two...One... Muskrats on heads!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver: 22
Days `til the Immersed in Ink tattoo and Arts Festival in Orlando: 8
Ratio of Katie Couric's salary to the total operating expenses of NPR's 17 foreign bureaus: 3:2
(Source: Harper's Index)
Percent of husbands whose wives had incomes higher than their own in 1970: 4%
Percent who made less than the missus in 2007: 22%
(Source: Pew Research)
Number of death sentences handed down in the U.S. in 2009: 106
Number of states considering abolishing the death penalty, in addition to the 15 that already do: 11
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
I played basketball all over East Texas. We used to play in a town called Bed. It was a big joke, going to play in Bed. And let me tell you, the East Texas women are some of the meanest women on the face of the earth. We used to play in these small towns; the guards were almost invariably named after flowers---there would be Lily, Rose and Violet. The forwards were always jewels---Ruby, Pearl and Opal. But it was East Texas, so everybody had two names, you know, like Ruby Jo or Pearl Ann. And they always wore pink plastic curlers in their hair during games so they'd look good at the dance afterwards. Meanest women I ever met.
---From a 1993 speech at Smith College, as featured in Molly Ivins: A Rebel Life by Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Animal House
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CHEERS to the road ahead. I've done a lot of thinking over the past 36 hours about the future of healthcare reform. Fact is---and no one among the Very Serious People in Washington wants to acknowledge this because it's an inconvenient truth---we only had a functional majority in the Senate of 54 votes, and with Scott Brown we now have 53. So with all the opinions flying back and forth, here's what I'm thinking this morning: Aaaaaagghhhhh!!!!! Fortunately, Washington Post writer (and Tiger Beat pinup idol if I had any say in the matter) Ezra Klein is thinking more clearly than I am, and offers a ray of optimism:
[S]taffers who attended today's meeting of Senate Democrats said they were comforted that the moderates in the room wanted to see the House pass the Senate bill rather than give up on health care altogether. They also said there's a recognition that passing nothing at all is electorally unthinkable.
Consonant with that, Senator Kent Conrad, chairman of the Budget Committee, said he's open to using the reconciliation process to modify the bill, a key admission if the House is going to pass the Senate legislation.
Kent Conrad: Healthcare Hero. I'll believe it when I see it.
CHEERS to living up to your name. Holy cow, have you seen pictures of the USNS Comfort hospital ship that's now docked off the coast of Haiti? Uh.....Big boat:
Capacity and services:
o Intensive care wards: 80 beds
o Recovery wards: 20 beds
o Intermediate care wards: 280 beds
o Light care wards: 120 beds
o Limited care wards: 500 beds
o Total Patient Capacity: 1000 beds
o Operating Rooms: 12
o Radiological services
o Main laboratory plus satellite lab
o Morgue
o Four distilling plants to make drinking water from sea water (300,000 gallons per day)
o Flight deck can handle world's largest military helicopters
And, we hear, square dancing on Saturday night in the ship's grange hall. With the extent of the casualties, Haiti could use a dozen more like it. But it's a huge help all the same. Meanwhile the situation continues to be off-the-charts awful on land, so let's keep the momentum going. Because you...are teh awesome.
CHEERS to comeuppance. On January 21, 1997, House Speaker Newt Gingrich was reprimanded and fined by members of both parties (shocking, I know) for violating House rules and misleading congressional investigators looking into his possible misuse of tax-exempt donations for political purposes. For the first time ever, the House voted (395-28) to discipline its leader for ethical misconduct. It was a sad day for America, knowing that a politician had acted irresponsibly. But we muddled through it. (My daiquiri hangover lasted for a week. Damn, that was a helluva block party.)
JEERS to another silly flameout. More Democratic Backdown'ism for your enjoyment: the highly-qualified nominee for TSA chief withdrew his name because Republicans said "Boo!". How pathetic. So now the White House will submit another name...and the Republicans will immediately attack him or her and put another hold on the nomination (added to the other bazillion holds they've got going on now) until that person withdraws for having poorly-manicured cuticles or some such nonsense. The only upside to this crapola is the fact that it's made me so mad I need to go calm down with a massive and soothing piece of carrot cake. Maybe two. (I'm really riled.)
WOW to chutzpah on the high seas. The bizarre story goes like this: Somalian pirates hijack a Greek oil tanker. Another gang of pirates comes along and tries to hijack the hijacked tanker. (You with me so far?) Gun battle ensues. Original pirates call the cops. Cops arrive and chase off the hijackers' hijackers. Original hijackers make off with $5.5 million in ransom money in broad daylight. In the distance, a dog barks. The End. (The audiobook version, read by Anthony Hopkins, is available in the C&J gift shop. Makes a great gift!)
JEERS to looking through a lens, dogmatically. A military contractor has been caught etching Bible verse numbers on its rifle sights. The manufacturer says that, in the scope of things (Ha Ha!) it's no big deal. Others beg to differ:
Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, says the biblically inscribed sights could give the Taliban and other enemy forces a propaganda tool: that American troops are Christian crusaders invading Muslim countries. "I don't have to wonder for a nanosecond how the American public would react if citations from the Koran were being inscribed onto these U.S. armed forces gun sights instead of New Testament citations," Weinstein said.
It's all silliness, is all it is---a subtle way to demonstrate how your Christian wee-wee is bigger than those of religiously inferior Jews and Muslims and Wiccans and Hindus and nonbelievers and etcetera etcetera. And what'll we be putting Bible verses on next...dog tags, mess hall trays, footlockers? Tell ya what, Trijicon. You want to put something on a gun sight that'll motivate all the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, regardless of their religious affiliation? Try this: "2011: Home."
CHEERS to Grandpa the Green Slayer. Fellow Ohioan and "Golden Bear" Jack Nicklaus turns 70 today. He won 73 PGA tournaments and a record 18 majors during his career, never coming within a mile of a steroid. Tiger Woods's goal in life, he says, is to beat Jack's record, and indeed he still may pull it off. But in the character department, well...no contest there. So happy birthday, Jack. You're an increasingly rare bird: a likable country club Republican with class.
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Five years ago in C&J: January 21, 2005
JEERS to Bush's blather. In his inaugural bullshit speech, the president says our relations with "every ruler and every nation" will now be based on how they treat their people. Hear that, Saudi Arabia and Sudan? You guys are so...um...exempted.
CHEERS to hitting the nail on the head. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen IDs the crux of the gay rights battle: "...it is important for social conservatives to insist that homosexuality is a choice---a casual one, at that---and not something determined at birth or shortly thereafter. That valuable piece of ignorance justifies homophobia since, in America, you can no longer hate what someone is, only what they have become. The element of choice is as essential as it is fictitious." The good news: All works of fiction eventually end. [1/21/10 Update: The "choice" argument is pretty much dead, even among conservatives, but that hasn’t stopped them from digging up lots of fresh bullshit. Like freakin' sharks, they are...]
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And just one more...
JEERS to not-so-special deliveries. Oh, hey, here's something fun to read about as you're wolfin' down your corn flakes. A funeral home in New Mexico handled the body of an elderly woman killed in a car crash, and among the "personal effects" they packed in a bag and returned to her surviving family were her jewelry, her clothing and, to their horror...her brain. Can you imagine??? They later buried it with the woman. I'm wondering if they shouldn't have given it instead to whoever packed the bag. Sounds like he could use one. And on that happy note...
Have a nice Thursday. Dress snugly...but not too snugly. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"I looked up and I saw this light; it wasn’t a normal light, it was different. It was luminescent. And it grew. I kept looking at it like, ‘What is that?’ Then it grew large and I went into it. I went into this tunnel, and I came into Cheers and Jeers. Bill in Portland Maine held me, he called me by name, and he told me, ‘Mary Jo, you can’t stay.’"
---Mary Jo Rapini
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