Chao, Cuba
A few Polaroids from the trip that plumb wore out the word “historic.”
Obama’s speech is a master template (transcript here via David Michigan) for reaching out to, and building bridges with, adversaries. And Trump wants to build walls? Amateur.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Note: To remember the name of President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, just picture the elephant man wearing ruby slippers. That's how you build a Mega Memory!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Scripps National Spelling Bee: 63
Days 'til Phins 11th Gumbo Festival in Jacksonville, Florida: 8
Percent of votes received in the Democrats Abroad primary for Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, respectively, resulting in 9 delegates for Bernie and 4 for Hillary: 69%-31%
Percent of Americans who believe Republicans are refusing to hold confirmation hearings for Judge Merrick Garland because of petty politics, according to a Monmouth University poll: 77%
Percent of Republicans who agree that the stonewalling is pure politics: 62%
Date on which Carnival Cruise Lines will start round trip excursions between Miami and Havana: 5/1/16
Percent of Americans who wait until the week before April 15 to file their taxes, according to USA Today: 20%
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Mid-week Rapture Index:
182 (including 3 Satanisms and many Mormons saving America by voting for Ted Cruz). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day:
Happy National Puppy Day!
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CHEERS to a wild night in the wild wild west. Another win for America's democracy yesterday with hot (especially in Arizona!) voter-on-voter action in a handful of primary states. The envelopes, please:
Utah went for Sanders and Cruz
Idaho went for Sanders (the GOP crowned Cruz two weeks ago)
Arizona went for Clinton and Drumpf
There wasn't much delegate blood drawn last night, so nobody bowed out and everybody's pushing on. The next battlegrounds for Hillary and Bernie are Hawaii, Alaska and Washington state on Saturday. The Daily Kos Elections Team will be live-blogging the results from their basements. Or from Honolulu if they can blowtorch their way into Kos's cash vault by Friday.
JEERS to more mayhem. Exactly as we knew they eventually would, terrorist criminals set off more bombs yesterday---this time in Brussels, killing dozens and injuring hundreds. And we pull the checklist out of the drawer:
1. Tend to the victims, assess the situation.
2. Worldwide condemnation for the terrorists, universal support and love for the afflicted country.
3. Clean up, rebuild, track down the criminals, grieve for the victims.
4. Refuse to be terrorized, get on with life.
5. The terrorists lose.
It's a good list to keep handy. We will certainly need it again.
JEERS to meddling meddlers. On the LGBT-punching front, North Carolina's finest Republican lawmakers have decided that it's worth their time and $42,000 a day to stick their noses in a local community's business and roll back civil rights by convening…
…a special legislative session Wednesday to deal with Charlotte’s controversial LGBT ordinance.
“We aim to repeal this ordinance before it goes into effect to provide for the privacy and protection of the women and children of our state,” [Lt. Gov. Dan] Forest and House Speaker Tim Moore. Lawmakers are expected to block the Charlotte ordinance, which takes effect April 1.
The Charlotte ordinance, passed last month by City Council, would extend protections for the LGBT community. The most contentious provision would allow transgender people to use either a men’s or women’s bathroom, depending on the gender with which they identify.
Thanks to their quick thinking, North Carolina's pricks will remain where they belong: on the Republican side of the legislature.
CHEERS signin' significant stuff. Six years ago today, one letter at a time, President Barack Obama signed his name to the Affordable Care Act, making it the law of the land and fulfilling a promise he coincidentally made nine years ago this week:
[W]e recognize that every four years we hear somebody’s got a health care plan.
Every four years, somebody trots out a white paper---they post it on the web. But the question we have to challenge ourselves: Do we have the political will and the sense of urgency to actually get it done? I want to be held accountable for getting it done.
I will judge my first term as president based on the fact on whether we have delivered the kind of health care that every American deserves and that our system can afford.
Today the White House is declaring victory, but, man, that poor law's been so battered and bruised over the last six years that you hope to god it has a gold Obamacare plan. In the big picture, the number Americans without insurance has dropped to "a historic low of about 9 percent with room to go lower." Republicans, who claim they want to repeal it “root and branch,” have presented nothing but hot air as a replacement. And speaking as an individual who got insurance through the healthcare.gov exchange (because our governor is a teabagger and will never create a state exchange…or expand Medicaid for that matter), it's working fine for me judging by my two most-important metrics: I'm still alive, and in June I'm breaking ground on my new summer cottage made out of tongue depressers.
JEERS to Dictator Dick. Journalist Dan Baum has an article in Harper's on why he believes drugs should be legalized in this country. Among those he cites is the late Nixon advisor and guy-who-served-time-for-Watergate John Ehrlichman. Before he died, he dropped this little bombshell to Baum on the reason Nixon started the "war on drugs." Spoiler alert: it had nothing to do with drugs:
“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect.
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people.
You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
We shoulda known. Their lips were moving.
P.S. This week the U.S. Supreme Court refused to make Colorado hit the brakes on its marijuana industry. Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it...Dick.
CHEERS to Schisms!!! Rush Limbaugh is so yesterday. The new radio talker who rules the conservative roost is a guy named Mark Levin, whose voice makes him sound like the lovechild of a gnu with sinusitis and a weedwhacker. Drown-the-government type…conspiracy nut…Obama is the anti-Christ, etc. Seems ol' Mark isn’t too fond of Donald Trump, and is willing to escalate the ongoing Republican (hardly-)civil war via his Conservative Review web site. Among those on CR's "blackball" list: Ben Carson, Jan Brewer, Chris Christie, Maine Gov. Paul LePage(!!!), Florida Gov. Rick Scott, Sen. Jeff Sessions, and Sarah Palin. They're all too crazy for Mr. Crazy. And I hope you're having as much fun watching this as I am.
CHEERS to Sergeant Rubberbutt. On March 23, 1944 RAF Sgt. Nickolas Alkemade survived a jump over Germany from his Lancaster bomber from 18,000 feet without a parachute. Other than some cuts and a twisted knee, he was fine. Of course, it helped that he landed on Sergeant Schultz in the middle of a strudel binge.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 23, 2006
JEERS to that pesky Axis of Evil. North Korea says they might just lob a nuke down our throat one of these days. Thank god we invaded the country with all the WMDs, huh? Good call, Dubya.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to C&J Nursery Rhyme Time. This is our first edition of C&J Nursery Rhyme Time---I'm so excited and I hope you are, too! Here we go:
Twinkle twinkle little star,
How I wonder what your post-explosion "shock breakout"---which lasts only twenty minutes so it's really hard to capture on video---looks like from the Keplar space telescope up there so far.
Up above the world so high,
Like a great orange Daily Kos Bernie-Hillary fight with pie.
Twinkle twinkle little star,
Let's just cut to the chase and show us the damn explosion already, I have a pedicure at 9:30...
I think it's fairly obvious at this point that this will be the last edition of C&J Nursery Rhyme Time. Make sure you save this one, though---one day it will be considered a rare and valuable collectible on eBay.
Have a nice Wednesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"Let's be honest---Bill in Portland Maine is a loser."
---Elizabeth Warren
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