From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Headlines You Won't Read Today:
> Sen. Rand Paul invited to speak at Attribution Society dinner
> Speaker Boehner collapses from exhaustion
Best I can tell, this headline
says "Help! Jane! Stop
this crazy thing!!!"
> Surge in middle class prosperity
> Secular war on Christmas takes toll on something
> Weather outlook for 2014: quiet, pleasant
> 60 Minutes "correction" for botched Benghazi story deemed sufficient
> Libertarians announce workable policy agenda for U.S.
> Senator Elizabeth Warren has brain fart
> Tea party goes 24 hrs without claiming something is being shoved down their throats
> Oil company devises quick, effective way to clean up after spills
> Deaths from medical marijuana outnumber those from prescription painkillers
> Republican industrialist hops locomotive, goes Galt
> Nutritious food now less expensive than junk food
> Gun owners wake up to find firearms replaced with Obama bobblehead
> LGBT rights movement grinds to a halt
And one you definitely won't read:
Governor Cuccinelli signs mandatory transvaginal-ultrasound roadside checkpoints bill into law.
Thank God and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Note: Today is 11/12/13. If what happens on this date matches what I've been prophetizing since 1965, we're all gonna be really sick of giant face-eating gerbils by 11/13/13.
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18 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the next full moon:
5
Days 'til the Women Artists of Kauai
5th Annual Holiday Fine Art Festival:
18
Percent of financial exploitation cases that involve a family member getting ripped off by another family member:
72%
National cost among the elderly:
$3 billion
(Source:
The Maine Sunday Telegram)
Percent of all adults and 18-29 year-old adults, respectively, who say that same-sex marriage will have a negative effect on society:
39%, 22%
(Source: Gallup poll via
USA Today)
Number of gun-toting goons with time on their hands and shit for brains who
threatened a meeting of a group called "Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America" outside a Dallas restaurant:
40
Highest position in 1970 on the Billboard Top 40 chart for the song "Rubber Duckie":
#16
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Tuesday Words of Wisdom from the Right-wing Blogosphere:
Obama is caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and chocolate all over his face.
Well, that's what you get when you 'fiddle with the Oreo middle'.
Well, half-chocolate.....
---A comment thread at the "admin monitored" Michelle Malkin blog
All together now: 1…2…3…
Classy!
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Puppy Pic of the Day: In my old stomping grounds, a tail-wagging ending.
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CHEERS to a rational decision. Just as "ex-left-handedness" therapy is ludicrous on its face (and hand), so too is "ex-gay" therapy. So kudos to federal Judge Freda Wolfson for upholding New Jersey's ban on therapists who think you can "pray away the gay":
Judge Freda Wolfson
"Ex-gay therapy," sometimes called reparative therapy by its proponents, has been condemned by every major medical and psychological organization in the country as harmful and dangerous. "There has been no scientifically adequate research that therapy aimed at changing sexual orientation (sometimes called reparative or conversion therapy) is safe or effective," notes the American Psychological Association.
"This law protects youth from practices that have been rejected by all leading medical and mental health professional organizations," said NCLR's legal director Shannon Minter, who also represented Garden State Equality in its successful bid to intervene as defendants alongside the state's attorney general.
Happily, ex-bigot therapy will continue, as it actually has a decent track record.
JEERS to a poora mea culpa. Wow. 60 Minutes made the barest of apologies for botching its Benghazi story. If you blinked Sunday, you missed it. Lara Logan speaks in a whispery voice that makes you wonder if there's a baby sleeping in the next room. When she's done with her less-than-two-minute performance, you half expect her to put her fingers in her dimples and say, "Poo Poo Pee Doo." Meanwhile, the security contractor who did the lying ("I was there in the compound!" No, you weren't.) is getting his book yanked off the shelves by the publisher, which is asking stores to send 'em back. Or, at minimum, move the book to the fantasy section.
JEERS to ex-president weirdness. President George W. Bush is slated to speak at a gathering of people who are trying to influence Jews in America to do…something something something…so that the Rapture (why the hell do we capitalize that?) will arrive as ASAP as possible:
"Ahm jus' readin' what's on
the teleprompter. HehHehHeh."
Next week, former President George W. Bush is scheduled to keynote a fundraiser in Irving, Texas, for the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute, a group that trains people in the United States, Israel, and around the world to convince Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah. The organization's goal: to "restore" Israel and the Jews and bring about about the second coming of Christ. […]
With the funds it collects, [Rabbi Marty] Waldman said, MJBI trains "people to preach the good news of the Messiah to the Jewish people." That's important, Waldman noted, because when there are "enough" Jewish people who call Jesus their savior, "some sort of a trigger will go off in heaven, and our father in heaven will say, 'Okay, son, it's time to get your bride.'"
Either that or we'll wake up to read the news: "Cheney shoots lord in face on quail hunt."
JEERS to the new guy at the top of the bottom of the heap. Hey, let's give a cold C&J welcome to the new #1 Taliban leader in Pakistan: Maulana Fazlullah! (Which, coincidentally, is what I sound like when I'm in a bar ordering my fifth fuzzy navel.) He's "short with hippo teeth," enjoys long walks in the mountains and lopping off the heads of anyone who makes fun of his height or his teeth. He recently got promoted from the dreaded #2 slot when the former #1 got droned to #0, and his favorite hobby appears to be acting like an asshole:
I think Whatsizface
lives under here.
Fazlullah was an inspired choice, by the Taliban’s warped standards. He is young and ruthless, and has taken responsibility for a panoply of barbaric acts over the years: floggings, suicide bombings, even the attempted assassination of Malala Yousafzai, a teen-age girl who survived gunshots to the head and neck, and who has become an even more driven advocate for girls’ education. … But what distinguishes Fazlullah from his predecessors is his evangelism. He is as much a rebel and a crusader---bent on imposing his harsh interpretation of sharia on others---as he is a terrorist.
Fazlullah is thrilled to be the new #1. Not so thrilled: the poor sap who got promoted to #2.
CHEERS to a whale of a whale tail tale. I had never heard of this before yesterday. Perhaps you, too, had never heard of this before. So let us hear of it together: on November 12, 1970, the Oregon Highway Division, which apparently controls what goes on down at the shoreline, too, thought they could get rid of a rotting beached whale by "vaporizing it" with dynamite into ready-made snacks for the local wildlife to feast on. This is the play-by-play of the "exploding whale incident":
I'm glad we heard about this together. Hope you didn’t mind me using you as human shield.
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Five years ago in C&J: November 12, 2008
JEERS to coddling the creep. Y'know, whatever the bare minimum threshold is for party loyalty---even assuming the most lax standard---Joe Lieberman hasn't come within five miles of it recently. So the bare minimum the Democratic senate caucus can do next week to punish his neo-sleazycon behavior is revoke his chairmanship of the Homeland Security committee, for which he hasn’t done a damn thing anyway. And given how Senate Democrats frequently trip over themselves to be "civil," I'm guessing the bare minimum is too much to expect. On the bright side, if Lieberman ever goes on a multi-state bank-robbing spree, he MAY be censured. [11/12/13 Update: They didn't, he did, it was, he didn't and they didn't. But now he sits around the house in his underwear all day chairing the Doritos and Mountain Dew committee. Sorry, Hadassah, we're not taking him back.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to playthings of our lives. Lost in all the hubbub over the election and plagiarism and shitty CBS journalism headline stealers is the biggest story of the month. I'm speaking, of course, about the 2013 inductees into the National Toy Hall of Fame. The first winner, we're proud to say, is C&J's mascot, Kevin the Socialist Duckstick, aka the vivacious yet humble rubber duck:
Kos at Netroots Nation 2013
crushing the life out of Kevin.
Rubber toys first appeared in the late 1800s, when manufacturers made use of Charles Goodyear’s process for rendering rubber into malleable material. The first rubber ducks didn’t even float: they were cast solid and intended as chew toys. By the 1940s, rubber ducks developed into the iconic floating yellow figure with bright orange bill we recognize today. For many decades, most duck figures have been made of vinyl, but we still call them rubber ducks.
I was going to accept the award on Kevin's behalf, but there's no cash prize attached to it so screw that. (Nothing personal, you understand, just greed.) And the second inductee is the
game of Chess:
"I do not consider chess a toy,
Doctor. That would not be logical."
Chess is one of the world’s oldest games. Its roots lie in an ancient Indian war game called chaturanga, in which pawns represent different types of fighting men that spread through Asia and eventually migrated to Europe. In 625, an Indian literary reference to chaturanga stated that “only from the astapada (gaming board) can one learn how to draw up a chaturanga (army).” The version of chess we play today is almost identical to the game as it was played in England during the Renaissance.
Congrats to both. Y'know, there's an old saying: Whoever dies with the most toys wins. I think that's wrong. I say, whoever plays with their toys the most before they die wins. So I think today I'll whip out my trusty Legos and spend a few hours building some gerrymandered districts.
Have a nice Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Humans speak many languages, but we may be united in our confusion. A new study examined languages from around the world and discovered what they say could be a universal word while reading Cheers and Jeers: "Huh?"
---LA Times Science
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