From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Row Row Row Your Boat
America didn’t just lose an hour of sleep yesterday. I'm here to break the news that we also lost Rush Limbaugh. In keeping with the promise he made on March 8, 2010…
"If [Obamacare] passes and it's five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented, I am leaving the country. I'll go to Costa Rica."
…the king of modern-day conservatism climbed into a rowboat and left for good.
The humble craft of
an overrated bloviator.
I know some people say he
chickened out by immediately claiming he didn't really mean it. But the thing is, everyone knows Rush is a rock of certainty, who says what he means and means what he says. He don’t chicken out on nothin', and certainly not his vow to chicken out on challenging the tyranny of affordable private-sector health insurance by fleeing the country.
So we wish the King of the Dittoheads well in his new digs. We look forward to his expat broadcasts from that distant and exotic land, and we salute him for putting his love of temper tantrums over his love of country.
UPDATE 8:17am I've been informed by our spotters that Limbaugh has already fled back to the U.S. from Costa Rica. Turns out his heart couldn’t take living in a country with universal health care. [Sigh] Well, phooey.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, March 9, 2015
Note: If you're boycotting C&J on religious grounds, why are you reading this?
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12 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til spring:
11
Days 'til the 135th
Bok Kai Parade in Marysville, California:
12
Number of the top 31 banks that passed recession-withstanding "stress tests" last week by the Federal Reserve:
31
Hypothetical unemployment rate and percent drop in stock market value, respectively, the Fed uses when testing banks' ability to withstand another crash:
10%, 60%
(Source: AP)
Percent chance that New England is the region of that country that least approves of parents spanking their kids:
100%
Percent chance that the South is the region of that country that most approves of parents spanking their kids:
100%
(Source: National Opinion Research Center)
Number of homeless people in Tokyo and New York City, respectively, for every 10,000 residents:
1, 67
(Source: Harper's Index)
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Tuna becomes a published Chiweenie…
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CHEERS to southern hospitality. What a difference half a century makes. The only Billy clubs on display Saturday in Selma were the clubs made up of members named Billy (my chapter was there in spirit) who attended the 50th anniversary commemoration of "Bloody Sunday." It was a beautiful day, the Edmund Pettus Bridge backdrop was by turns a symbol of the worst and best of the civil rights movement, Congressman and '65 March leader John Lewis spoke and tweeted his experience, and President Obama knocked his State of the Civil Rights Movement speech out of the park...
Apparently, the rousing Selma speeches by John Boehner and Mitch McConnell calling for an immediate strengthening of voting-rights laws haven't been uploaded to you Tube yet. I'll keep refreshing my screen every five seconds until they are, because I bet they're great.
JEERS to weekend boom-booms. I'm so glad that the brightest minds in the freght-train industry came up with those new, safer oil cars. Because they're working out swell:
Nobody could have predicted...
A Canadian National Railway Co. train carrying crude oil derailed near the northern Ontario community of Gogama, with multiple cars on fire and some leaking oil into a waterway, the company said Saturday. … It said the tank cars were the newer Casualty Prevention Circular 1232 model, which are widely regarded as better-protected against damage than older types.
A team of humans in hardhats was immediately dispatched, and railroad officials say efforts to point and make frowny faces at the scene were mostly successful. Amnesia crews are now working 24/7 to prevent lingering memories of the derailment from seeping into the public's neural pathways. And you never read this.
CHEERS to reaching your destination. After taking a few wrong exits and stopping over a thousand times to grab a snack and pee, NASA's outer-space Winnebago Dawn finally finished its 8-year trip and proved that American exceptionalism is still a thing:
Exxon-Mobil plans to begin
drilling there in six weeks.
In addition to being the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet, Dawn also has the distinction of being the first mission to orbit two extraterrestrial targets. From 2011 to 2012, the spacecraft explored the giant asteroid Vesta, delivering new insights and thousands of images from that distant world. Ceres and Vesta are the two most massive residents of our solar system’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. […]
"We feel exhilarated," said Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). "We have much to do over the next year and a half, but we are now on station with ample reserves, and a robust plan to obtain our science objectives."
One of the mysteries Dawn will help NASA solve is just what the hell those strange spots are on Cerus's surface. Scientists believe they could be evidence of water or ice. My guess: Cerus is an innocent victim of the anti-vaccination movement.
Damn, you, Disney Land and your magical teleportation ride!!!
Turn this
ahead, too.
CHEERS and
JEERS to Daylight Saving time. Lovin' it because it's still light out at 6 O'clock! Hatin' it because, now that it's dark at wake-up time again, I get paranoid about oversleeping, so this is my regular post-DST sleep cycle:
Zzzzzz...[Jolt awake, check the time]…Zzzzzz…[Jolt awake, check the time]… Zzzzzz…[Jolt awake, check the time]… Zzzzzz…[Jolt awake, check the time]… Zzzzzz…[Jolt awake, check the time]…
It's like being an audience member at a Bobby Jindal speech.
My Obama waving
watch is still the best.
CHEERS to going the full Dick Tracy. Speaking of time, if you're thinking about getting an Apple Watch, CEO Tim Cook is expected to
fill in more details about it today. According to an unnamed iSource, the device will take pictures, shoot video, order takeout, show you how to get somewhere, Skype, monitor your pulse, play your favorite music, coordinate your social calendar, update your social media, show movies, jump-start your car, alert you to nearby Orcs by glowing blue, translate languages, make julienne fries (okay, okay, I'm joking about that), light candles and track your finances. If sales go well, I hear the next version will actually tell you the time.
JEERS to bailing out idiots in office. Kansas' Sam Brownback will easily go down as one of the worst governors ever, having promised a budget of rainbows and unicorns, but delivering deficits (and corresponding cuts to vital services) as far as the eye can see. So guess what Captain Desperate is doing to prevent a total financial meltdown? Of course…he's running to the Democratic party for help:
Brownback may oblige. But only to save his ass.
Gov. Sam Brownback (R) and the Republican-controlled legislature in Kansas is inching ever so slowly toward expanding Medicaid under Obamacare. If Kansas did expand Medicaid, it would be the latest in a list of deep-red states—including Arkansas, Utah, and Indiana---to actually take federal dollars through Obamacare, despite having conservative legislatures and fire-breathing, anti-ACA Republican governors. …
Brownback, who had previously expressed strong opposition to Obamacare, signaled Wednesday he wasn't totally opposed to a Medicaid expansion. "I haven’t said we’ll take it. I haven’t said we wouldn’t," Brownback said according the Lawrence Journal-World.
That state doesn’t have two nickels to rub together. Of
course he'll eventually take the Medicaid expansion. And, of course, when it turns out to be a big success…also the credit.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 9, 2005
CHEERS to happy returns. Members of Maine's 133rd Engineer battalion have arrived back home after their tour of duty in Iraq. The wives' first words: "Welcome back---the snow shovel's in the shed."
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And just one more…
CHEERS to great moments in wingnut whapping. Sixty-one years ago today, on March 9, 1954, Edward R. Murrow took Ann Coulter's pin-up idol, Senator Joseph McCarthy, to the cleaners over his Communist witch hunt. His fab-o wrapup could serve as a middle-finger salute to McCarthy's successor, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas:
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men---not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular."
Senator McCarthy, of course, was the ideological jerk who thought he could bully and bluster his way to power and glory. As opposed to Senator Cruz, the ideological jerk who thinks he can bully and bluster his was to power and glory. They're totally different. McCarthy had better hair.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
The number one place where it is felt that the average human can avoid being a zombie dinner is the kiddie pool in Cheers and Jeers.
---eCanadaNow
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