From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Today's Boring Corrections
• In a bizarre smear campaign against a former buddy and classmate, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie claims that George Washington Bridge closer-downer David Wildstein is not to be trusted because his social studies teacher said he was a "deceptive" snotty bastard in high school. Besides the fact that going after someone for something that happened when he'd barely started growing hair under his pits is creepy in its own right, the Christie camp's accusation is just a puff of smoke. Besides, everybody knows that if you want to learn how to be a deceptive snotty bastard, you gotta learn from the master: Chris Christie.
• Family Research Council president Tony Perkins takes to the airwaves to denounce a Disney show called Good Luck Charlie because it has the audacity to feature a lesbian couple as parents. Perkins scours every second of that immoral episode and concludes his tirade with: "Good luck, Charlie. Without a dad, he'll need it.” Oh, Zing!!! Except Charlie is a girl, and the lesbians aren't her moms but a friend's moms. Oh well. As long as the generous donations to stop this kind of filth keep rolling in to the offices at the Family Research Council, what's a little inaccuracy (or two) among grifters?
• Conservative pundits and certain idiots with bullhorns in the traditional media claim that the Congressional Budget Office---the only group of people who work under a hermetically-sealed Cone of Honesty---says that the Affordable Care Act will raise the unemployment rate by throwing millions of people out of work. No, it doesn't say that. It actually says the Affordable Care Act will lower the unemployment rate while giving people more flexibility in making employment decisions. Like, say, never having to worry that you'll sink to such slimy depths that you have no choice but to take employment as a conservative pundit.
• Congressman and failed vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan (among other Republican reps and probably a senator or two) insists on live TV that President Obama's use of executive orders means he is acting "lawless." Well suck on this, numbskulls:
Executive orders by president.
We're sure they don't regret the errors, but will nevertheless receive a lengthy and tear-stained letter of apology from Phil Griffin at MSNBC.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, February 6, 2014
Note: I once met a man named Oscar who was married to Emmy and they had a son named Tony who liked to spend time with his Grammy. Ironically, they were all a bunch of losers.
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8 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til daylight saving time kicks in:
31
Days 'til the
Cripple Creek Ice Sculpting Festival in Colorado:
8
Percent by which the CBO estimates that Obaacare premiums will be lower than expected:
15%
(Source: John Harwood, CNBC)
GM's male CEO salary in 2013:
$9,000,000
GM's female CEO salary in 2014:
$4,400,000
(Source: Think Progress)
Percent chance that the idiotic bill to heap more sanctions on Iran during implementation of a delicate nuclear agreement with that country is dead in the Senate:
99.9%
(Source:
Maddow Blog)
Age of baseball great Hank Aaron as of yesterday:
80
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
You must admit, this is the most curious political phenomenon of our lifetimes: After five years of investigation by Kenneth Starr, one solid year of media frenzy, and three months of impeachment proceedings, President Clinton's job approval rating is 72 percent, and Republicans now rank below Larry Flynt in public esteem. And their response to all this is: "More! More!" Kind of hard to know what to say to them.
---January, 1999
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Synchronized yawning
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JEERS to living down to your reputation. The Winter Olympics get underway in Sochi, Russia today. If the country's "anti-gay propaganda" laws, terrorist threats or last-minute dog massacre haven't doused your enthusiasm for the venue, the tweets from journalists about the hotel conditions just might. Like this one:
Despite the icky nature of these particular games, we shouldn't lose sight of the principles behind them: fellowship, athletic prowess, world unity, and burying Russia in the medal count.
CHEERS to secular intervention. The U.N. to the Vatican: "Heyyy! How's about you remove the pedophile priests you still got running around?" The Vatican to the U.N.: "Heyyy! We'll get back to ya on that." The U.N. to the Vatican: "Heyyy! Before or after the First of Never?" The Vatican to the U.N.: "Heyyy! We'll get back to ya on that, too." Maddening as their foot dragging is, you have to admit they're following the example of their savior, Jesus. After all, the Bible clearly documents his famous last words: "Heyyy! I'll get back to ya."
CHEERS to CVS. Insisting that "cigarettes have no place in a setting where health care is being delivered,” the huge pharmacy chain will no longer sell tobacco products:
Cigarettes VamooSe!!!
CVS’s decision is a big blow to already-struggling tobacco companies. Cigarette sales have been falling nationally, and are largely propped up by retail sales. Rates of smoking are also decreasing, from a high of 42 percent of Americans in the 1960s to just 21 percent of Americans today. But the negative health effects of smoking remain immutable. Smoking has killed over 20 million Americans in the last 50 years.
The decision to remove tobacco now means CVS no longer sells anything that can kill people except for junk food, beer & wine, Drano, Miracle Blades, canes, and pharmaceutical drugs.
The minutemen whipped these
at the redcoats' heads as they
fled from Concord back to Boston.
Most historians view it as the
birth of guerrilla warfare.
CHEERS to Massachusetts. The "Thank God Mitt's Outta Here" commonwealth officially became the sixth member of our illustrious union on February 6, 1788. And I'd like to remind the right-wing knuckledraggers who bash the state for being a den of anything-goes liberalism that a) the Salem witch trials were conducted by ultra-conservatives, b) the freedoms you guys have to speak your evolution-denyin' minds are largely the result of a bunch of Massachusetts types who shed their blood to make it possible, c) the state has the lowest divorce rate in the country, d) it's the home of Romneycare, the genesis of Obamacare, and e) it's also the home of
Necco Wafers, making it the cradle of all that is wholesome and civilized. But we'll concede that Bay Staters---whom I never refer to as "Massholes" to their face unless I'm drunk and wielding a crowbar---do act like fundies in one respect: they drive like they're all late to Second Coming.
P.S. The 2014 World Series-winning Red Sox exhibition games start in 14 days. Yah huh!
CHEERS to takin' a big fat flaky dump. I always say that if you're gonna have winter ya might as well have snow on the ground. I should probably say that a little more quietly, though, because Mother Nature granted my request yesterday with a big 'ol winter storm in the northeast, including a fluffy foot of snow here in Portland. Thank god our emergency vittles (Bacardi, Oreos) held out, as did the emergency batteries we so desperately rely on to keep our emergency Xbox going. Up in Augusta, our tea party governor, Paul LePage, sprang into action and issued his usual emergency bulletin urging drivers to stay off the roads and careen down the sidewalks instead. Have I mentioned in the last 24 hours that we're replacing him in November?
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Five years ago in C&J: February 6, 2009
CHEERS to speedy recoveries. Progressives got a punch to the gut yesterday when we learned that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent surgery for eff'ing pancreatic cancer. Normally the prognosis would be dire, but perhaps not in her case:
Justice Ginsburg
The reason for the optimism is that the tumor found in the center of Ginsburg's pancreas was only about 1 centimeter in length, according to a statement from Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City, where surgeons performed the operation to remove it this morning.' A tumor of this size is about as small as is detectable by CT scan, said Dr. Paul Lin, a surgical oncologist specializing in pancreatic cancer at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C. "She is much more fortunate than most patients who come in because of symptoms from their cancer," he said.
We read today that she intends to be back on the job in a few weeks. Good---no one kicks Scalia in the shins better than she does. [2/6/14 Update: Five years later, she's still on the bench, doing pushups every morning, and taking aim at Scalia's shins. Tough broad.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the Gipper. Happy 103rd birthday, Ronald Reagan. He made some classic movies, including Kings Row, Knute Rockne: All American, The Killers (the 1964 version, in which he plays a mean sumbitch), and Santa Fe Trail. Oh, and this:
Other than that, I have no recollection of him. Well, except the tax-raising, deficit-ballooning, race-baiting, illegal-arms-trading, AIDS-ignoring and bowing-to-foreign-leaders part.
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"I'm only too willing to admit my historical science is based on Cheers and Jeers."
---Ken Ham
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