From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Monday Memo
To: All Patriotic American Patriots
From: The Office of Republican American Patriotism
RE: This Week's List of Things To Hate and/or Be Scared Of
Status: Yellow
Dear Citizen,
The following are the threats to your Homeland community for Dec. 14-18, 2015, as determined by the Republican party:
Bad guys with guns
Good guys with guns who turn out to be bad Muslims with guns
Miniaturized ISIS fighters coming up through your plumbing
Liberals artificially raising sea levels to bolster their phony climate change science
Parents talking to their children positively about gays
Illegals
Gays conspiring with ISIS fighters and illegals to artificially raise sea levels
Vaginas without government-issued activity monitors
Blacks and Hispanics making a note to vote next November
Creeping Marxism
Creeping Hillary Clinton
Suffocation from a Great Pyramid grain avalanche
Shadows that chillingly resemble your own
Planned Parenthood
Solar panels sucking up all of the sun’s energy
Borders without walls
And as always, "President" Barack HUSSEIN Obama and his simultaneous display of unstoppable dictatorial strong-arm tyranny and spineless lead-from-behind weakness.
For specifics on these and other threats that will get us all killed if we don’t deploy a minimum of 100,000 troops to Syria and ten guns in each American household, please tune to Fox News and/or attend your nearest Republican presidential candidate campaign rally. If you see any suspicious activity not having to do with police officers shooting unarmed black citizens or someone burning down a mosque, please report it to the proper authorities and take refuge in your survival bunker until we give the "all white, all Christian, all clear" signal.
Thank you.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, December 14, 2015
Note: Naughty boys and girls get coal. Really naughty boys and girls get a visit from the Judo Chop Fairy. Hai!!!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Star Wars Episode VII: 4!!!
Days 'til the Snow Day Bar Crawl in D.C.: 5
Percent increase in background checks for gun purchases in the U.S. and Maine, respectively, between January and November, according to The Portland Press Herald: 6.3%, 8.9%
Percent of U.S. renters who are over 40, a reflection of "the lasting damage of the housing crash" according to a Harvard University study: 51%
Percent chance that being a grumpy person will shorten your lifespan, according to a new British study in the journal Lancet: 0%
Year during which Volkswagen hatched its scheme to cheat on diesel-vehicle emissions tests, according to AP: 2005
Number of states on Fodor's worldwide Travel 2016 Go List: 2 (Maine, Utah)
Totally Random NFL Score:
New England Patriots 27 Houston Texans 6
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Puppy Pic of the Day:
The dogs of Star Wars
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CHEERS to turning down the heat. Well, that was fun. The U.N. climate-calamity summit in Paris is over, and delegates from 196 nations expended much C02 in the crafting of a kinda-sorta-binding plan that kinda sorta might be kinda sorta good:
Hailed as the first truly global climate deal, committing both rich and poor nations to reining in rising emissions blamed for warming the planet, it sets out a sweeping, long-term goal of eliminating net manmade greenhouse gas output this century.
[…] Most climate activists reacted positively, encouraged by long-term targets that were more ambitious than they expected, while warning it was only the first step of many. "Today we celebrate, tomorrow we have to work," European Climate Commissioner Miguel Arias Canete said.
From the outset, some criticized the deal for setting too low a bar for success. Scientists warned that the envisaged national emissions cuts will not be enough to keep warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius. Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the last major climate deal reached in 1997, the Paris pact will also not be a fully legally binding treaty, something that would almost certainly fail to pass the U.S. Congress.
As always, the proof will be in the pudding. Meaning we'll know the bar was set too low if the earth turns to pudding.
CHEERS to fewer idle hands. We only get one unemployment report each month, but we get the weekly unemployment claims---sit down, this might shock you---weekly. And last week's report was pretty good again:
Claims have now been below the 300,000 threshold, which is normally associated with healthy labor market conditions, for 40 straight weeks. This is the longest since the early 1970s. As the labor market approaches full employment there is probably little room for further declines.
As much as I pre-loathe Democrats for the poison pills they're about to accept in the budget, I'll give President Obama credit for being on duty during a pretty impressive stretch of consistent employment growth and unemployment non-growth. So…yeehaw. (I know that sounded like a weak yeehaw, but trust me: I was tap dancing with sparklers when I said it.)
CHEERS to tough broads. Happy 118th birthday to Maine's own Margaret Chase Smith. She was the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House and Senate, and she reserved some choice not-so-nice words for Senator Joseph McCarthy. And get a load of this from 1950, which would no doubt get her smeared by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News as a traitor today:
"I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny---Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear.
I doubt if the Republican Party could---simply because I don't believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans aren't that desperate for victory.
I don't want to see the Republican Party win that way. While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican Party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican Party and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one party system."
Yeah. They'd be crazy to try that. [CoughHeilDonaldCough].
CHEERS to election fevuh! In France, the fringe right-wing wackos were predicted to win big after pushing the fear and anger buttons in the wake of the Paris ISIL attacks. Happy to say that Marine LePen (think Liz Cheney minus the charm) and her National Front party coughed up nothing more than a stale baguette:
Three polling agencies are projecting that anti-immigrant National Front has been routed in regional election runoffs despite dominating the first-round vote.
Party leader Marine Le Pen and her niece lost their bids to run two French regions in elections Sunday seen as an important test for the anti-immigrant party.
Polling agencies Ipsos, Ifop, TNS-Sofres projected that the opposition conservatives and governing Socialists won control of France’s 13 regions.
We salute your sanity, France. Meanwhile, women were allowed to vote and run in local races (20 won) for the first time in Saudi Arabia, a country where women still can't drive, own a passport, travel abroad or go to college without the consent of a dude, and where none of their decisions will matter because anything they pass can be undone with a wave of the king's hand and/or his all-male cabinet, and where women and men have separate polling places and where the women who were running for office had to give their speeches from behind a partition or have a dude read their speeches for them. Yay, progress!
JEERS to missing 1800 by 18 days. George Washington died on this date in 1799 at age 67. He caught a cold during a horseback ride in the rain, but forensic historians suspect that the real reason he expired was the 300-pound leech doctors attached to him to drain his "tired" blood. I read in the book His Excellency by Joseph Ellis (highly recommended) that the last thing Washington did before he died was check his own pulse. Which probably explains his last words: "Oh, that ain't good."
CHEERS to Alabammy! The "Banjo On My Knee State" celebrates its 196th birthday today. A little-known fact: the state rock is marble. A well-known fact: Judge Roy Moore lost his a long time ago.
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Nine years ago in C&J: December 14, 2006
CHEERS to smacking the spook behind the drapes. The senior senator from Vermont is promising to give Americans just a smidgen of their privacy back:
"We have a duty to repair real damage done to our system of government over the last few years," Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont said in outlining his panel's agenda for the 110th, Democratic-led Congress, which is set to convene on January 4.
"Americans' privacy is a price the Bush administration is willing to pay for the cavalier way it is spawning new databanks. But privacy rights belong to the people, not to the government," Leahy said.
After which a voice came from the flower pot behind him: "Could you speak up a bit? Thanks."
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And just one more…
JEERS to unconditional love---the icky kind. The "radicalized" terrorist who shot up that Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado is behind bars for the rest of his life. But what about the poor gun that the guy forced to take part in the massacre with him? The Onion is glad you asked:
After learning that the gun had been involved in a violent attack that left three dead, National Rifle Association representatives reportedly visited the Colorado Springs Police Department evidence room Monday to check up on the semi-automatic rifle used in [the] Planned Parenthood shooting.
“It’s a little shaken up, but it should be okay—thank God,” said NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, who appeared visibly distressed while kneeling down next to the assault-style rifle and gently placing his hand on the stock. “I’ve just been worried sick since I heard about the incident. It looks like it was dropped pretty hard, and it’s barely got any bullets left, but at least it’s resting safely now. I might just sleep here tonight to keep an eye on it.” LaPierre told reporters that he would do everything he could to help the rifle return home and get back working again soon.
He's got a heart as big as a 100-round banana clip. And just as black.
Have a tolerable Monday. Don’t forget that you only have one more day if you need to sign up for Obamacare in order for coverage to start January 1. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Long past Thanksgiving, burnt sweet potatoes vex Cheers and Jeers
---Yahoo! News
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