From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
”I don’t mean to sound sexist, but I think men are just too emotional to be president.”
Just give Samantha Bee the Emmy already:
Any Emmy will do.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, March 9, 2016
Note: Actor releases resume. Filmography at 11.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Summer Olympics in Rio: 150
Days 'til the National Cherry Blossom Festival in DC: 11
Number of people killed by political or religious extremists on U.S. soil since September 11, 2001, according to Harper's Index: 93
Percentage of these deaths attributable to far-right-wing political extremism: 52%
Latest PPP poll numbers for Trump and Kasich in Ohio: 38%-35%
Approval of the KKK in the same PPP poll among Trump voters: 6%
Percent chance that Origami Darth Vader is too cute to rule the galaxy: 100%
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Mid-week Rapture Index:
181 (including 3 beast governments and 1 U.S. Air Force Academy funding voodoo). Soul Protection Factor 12 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day:
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CHEERS to the kindness of friends…and strangers. As you probably heard, Daily Kos's "Pootie Queen" triciawyse died Saturday morning. She and husband Joey were having a tough go of it moneywise, so a GoFundMe was set up yesterday to cover Trish's funeral expenses. The goal was $5,000 and holy cow you guys that was met within five hours! So anything above and beyond that will go towards paying off her considerable medical expenses, and supporting her daughter and granddaughter. To make a donation, go to the GoFundMe page here. If cats had credit cards, GoFundMe’s server would be a smoking heap by now.
CHEERS to democracy in action. Primary battles yesterday in Mississippi & Michigan. As usual the Daily Kos elections crew was on top of the action as it rolled in. On the side of goodness and smarts (aka Team D), Hillary Clinton came out on top in Mississippi, but Michigan was feelin’ the bern, baby. Sanders upset the narrative last night and that means he ain’t goin’ nowhere. I think that's a great thing because a) it keeps pressure on Hillary to avoid straying into triangulation territory and b) it forces the media to (grudgingly) continue covering the Democratic primary contest. Onward!
As for the Republican side, voters chose Donald Trump in Mississippi, Hawaii and Michigan, while God told voters in Idaho to vote for Ted Cruz or else. As always, Marco Rubio's third/fourth-place victory speeches were stirring. (Those Romney robocalls worked out real swell, didn’t they!) The next primary date to circle on your calendar is March 15 aka Super Tuesday II: The Sequel, with a campaign-busload of delegates for Democrats in Florida (246), Illinois (182), Missouri (84), North Carolina (121) and Ohio (159). Coincidentally, if you add those up, it equals the number of shots RNC chair Reince Priebus will knock back next Wednesday when he wakes up and realizes Trump is the nominee.
P.S. Michael Bloomberg announced Monday that he won’t be running as an independent. Your Big Gulps are safe.
CHEERS to stalling for equality. Wow---this reminds me of when Wendy Davis filibustered that Republican abortion bill in the Texas lege. This time it was Democrats in the Missouri state Senate who mounted a record-breaking filibuster late Monday afternoon to prevent a "religious freedom" bill from passing that would enshrine discrimination against same-sex couples by pulling the rug of public-accommodation laws from under them. To put it simply: the constitutionality of marriage equality at the federal level has conservatives circling their wagons around the poor put-upon wedding caterers, photographers and bakers who think "No Gays Allowed" signs on their doors are just as valid today as "No Coloreds Allowed" signs were not so long ago. Chris Reeves led the liveblogging here at Daily Kos, Kerry Eleveld compiled some highlights, and twitter was abuzz with support for the effort, including Gov. Nixon and this fighter:
For their part, Republicans pulled out all their greatest hits: "It's a shield, not a sword!" "But then we'll have to bake cakes for the KKK!" "If I can't tell you're gay by looking at ya, how can you be a protected class?" "Why can't you just go to the baker down the street?" "Marriage has been exactly the same for thousands of years!" And blah blah blah incest. But I will give Repubs credit: they resisted the urge to compare gays to Nazis. I guess they’ll leave that to President Cruz.
CHEERS to the energizer ex-president. Usually when you hear that a 91-year old has stopped treatment for cancer, it means he's on a downhill slide and entering hospice care. But this is Jimmy Carter, and he's no ordinary 91 year-old:
[He] no longer needs treatment for cancer, less than seven months after revealing he had been diagnosed with melanoma that spread to his brain.
Carter, 91, shared the news at one of his regular Sunday School classes at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia. Carter always starts his lessons with a brief update on his recent activities. This week, Carter told the class, he received an MRI lasting more than 2 hours. "And then the doctors determined that I didn't need any more treatment," Carter said in a video posted by WXIA-TV. "So I'm not going to have any more treatment." […]
Carter's treatment plan for the aggressive form of cancer including a round of targeted radiation at several tumors on his brain and doses of an immune-boosting drug every three weeks from August through February. The drug, Keytruda, was approved not long before Carter's announcement and helps his body seek out and destroy cancer cells.
More good news: they've taken him off his meds and put back on his regular diet of peanut brittle and rusty nails.
JEERS to hell on earth. Sure would be nice if the almighty gatekeepers in the penthouse suites of the network media would ask a climate question or two---or three or four---during a Democratic or Republican debate. Because, as Bill McKibben points out, we just briefly fell off yet another cliff:
Thursday, while the nation debated the relative size of Republican genitalia, something truly awful happened.
Across the northern hemisphere, the temperature, if only for a few hours, apparently crossed a line: it was more than two degrees Celsius above “normal” for the first time in recorded history and likely for the first time in the course of human civilization.
That’s important because the governments of the world have set two degrees Celsius as the must-not-cross red line that, theoretically, we’re doing all we can to avoid. […] This bizarre glimpse of the future is only temporary. It will be years, one hopes, before we’re past the two degrees mark on a regular basis. But the future is clearly coming much faster than science had expected.
And, unfortunately, the media's curiosity is coming much slower, too. But do go on about Trump's hand size and Hillary's speaking fees. For the sake of the children, of course.
JEERS to governors throwing stones in glass houses. Important announcement from the Republican candidate constantly being voted Least Likely to Win the Nomination:
Republican presidential candidate Ohio Gov. John Kasich said Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is “spinning around out there around Pluto somewhere,” adding, “People are interested in Pluto, I guess.”
At least that's what we think he said. Hey, John, could you speak up? You’re hard to understand when you’re talking out of Uranus.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 9, 2006
JEERS to the NEW, IMPROVED AMERICA! Thanks to the Republicoward party, here's how the FISA law works now:
Step 1: The president can spy on you for any reason without a warrant for 45 days.
Step 2: After 45 days, the president will request an extension.
Step 3: Republican lapdog Senators will authorize the president to keep spying on you.
Step 4: Repeat steps 1, 2 and 3 until you're safely tucked away in a nursing home where the maximum damage you can inflict on the homeland is drooling on an orderly.
Coming soon is Step 5: Throw the bums out in November and abolish steps 1 through 4.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to great moments in wingnut whapping. Sixty-two 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 nice Wednesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Onlookers get rare glimpse of pregnant sea otter giving birth in Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool
---L.A. Times
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