From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
I feel pretty and witty and...oh, what's the word?
Pearls of wisdom and wankery as we head into the last weekend of Pride Month 2016:
“I was born of heterosexual parents. I was taught by heterosexual teachers in a fiercely heterosexual society. Television ads and newspaper ads [were] fiercely heterosexual. A society that puts down homosexuality. And why am I a homosexual if I’m affected by role models? I should have been a heterosexual. And no offense meant, but if teachers are going to affect you as role models, there’d be a lot of nuns running around the streets today.”
---Harvey Milk
“There remains much work to do to extend the promise of our country to every American, but because of the acts of courage of the millions who came out and spoke out to demand justice and of those who quietly toiled and pushed for progress, our Nation has made great strides in recognizing what these brave individuals long knew to be true in their hearts---that love is love and that no person should be judged by anything but the content of their character.”
---President Obama, in his final LGBT Pride Month proclamation
"We need to say with one voice that transgender people are valued. They are loved and they are us. I'm running for president to stand up for the fundamental rights of LGBT Americans. That's a promise from one HRC to another."
---Hillary Clinton, annual Human Rights Campaign meeting
"To all those lawmakers out there who are so obsessed with who is using what bathroom and what 'plumbing' they got 'downtown,' news flash: you're the weirdos."
---Stephen Colbert
"We are clearly called in the Bible to adhere to our civil authorities, but that conflicts with a requirement to adhere to God’s rules. When those two come in conflict, God’s rules always win."
---Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) claiming the Supreme Court ruling on marriage was invalid. Last week he said he was so broken up over the Orlando LGBT massacre that he owed it to Florida to break his promise to leave the Senate. You buyin’ that?
“WE adopt this Resolution before God that He pass us by in His Coming Wrath and not destroy our County as He did Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighboring cities.”
---Commissioners of Blount County, Tennessee, asking God to spare them when He destroys the rest of America over gay marriage
"Gay Marriage isn't special rights, it's equal rights. Special rights are for political churches that don't pay taxes."
---John Fugelsang
“We seek not 'special rights and privileges' as you term them, but precise equality of rights and privileges in what is our America as much as it is your America as non-gay Americans."
---Late LGBT civil rights pioneer Frank Kameny
Possibly you've heard the Jewish in-joke that sums up the meaning of all Jewish holidays? "They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat." My Pride version? “They wish we were invisible. We're not. Let's dance.”
---Joe Jervis, JoeMyGod blog
What a month.
Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, June 24, 2016
Note: Tonight C&J is staging a sit-in from the kiddie pool. Or as we'll soon be calling it: pruning for freedom. ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Canada Day: 7
Days 'til the St. Louis Fair: 8
Amount by which Americans will spend less on health care than expected between 2014 and 2019, thanks in big part to Obamacare, according to the Urban Institute: $2.6 trillion
Percent of Hillary Clinton's and Donald trump's campaign tweets that contain an exclamation point, according to FiveThirtyEight: 7%, 60%!!!
Days since Antonin Scalia kicked the bucket: 132
Expected high in Death Valley this weekend: 117F
Percent chance that Hillary Clinton and Sen. Elizabeth Warren will campaign together in Cincinnati on Monday: 100%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Today was Take Your Dog To Work Day and this office apparently took it very seriously...
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JEERS to shouting “PU!” to the EU. This morning I opened up the business section in my dead-tree edition of The Portland Press Herald and read this happy headline they printed last night at deadline time: "Stocks jump as concerns over Brexit vote ease." They should've stopped the presses, because when I opened my laptop this morning---kaboom!---I saw that retirement accounts all over the world were taking a hit because stocks plunged as concerns over the Brexit vote were exploding. By a 52-48 margin, the anti-immigrant isolationists in Britain voted to leave the European Union and go it alone on the world economic stage. The European Union's response: don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya…
Article 50
This is a clause in the Lisbon Treaty that sets out the legal process for a country notifiying the European Union it intends withdraw.
Once notification is given, negotiations must be concluded within two years, with any extension requiring the agreement of all EU members.
During the process, the UK remains a member of the EU, but if talks are not concluded after two years, and no extension is granted, Britain reverts to world trade organisation terms, requiring tariffs to be imposed.
For those who voted to stay in the EU, we feel your pain. We understand what it's like to have a bunch of ignoramuses choose self-destruction over the alternative. But if it makes you feel any better, consider this: you still have universal health care. We still have Louie Gohmert.
CHEERS to the Wise Latina. Happy birthday (and blessings on your camels) to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who turns 62 tomorrow. She'll mark her seventh year on the bench in August, and I think she's done a fine job so far, and this term will be especially notable for her steam-out-the-ears dissent in Utah v. Strieff. She's not John Roberts, who promised to be an impartial "umpire" but now walks every pro-business batter who shows up at the plate; or Clarence Thomas, the porn-addicted serial tax dodger with the foam-statue-of-liberty-crown-wearing tea party Stepford wife who's a walking conflict of interest; or Samuel Alito, the State of the Union mumble-grumbler who builds do-it-yourself underground star chambers in his spare time. So, in honor of your birthday, Your Honor, we got you the best present we could think of: a summer off from sitting next to those weirdos starting next Tuesday.
JEERS to God's apathetic foot soldiers. The order was unequivocal from The Almighty: "I command thee to drop everything, race to Washington, D.C., and take part in the most important march of your lifetime. Nothing less than the sanctity of marriage is on the line. Disobey me and ye shall feel my wrathiness!!!" And so it shall come to pass tomorrow when the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) gathers to rail against settled law that 99.99 percent of the country has moved on from:
This year's March for Marriage is the first since the US Supreme Court illegitimately redefined marriage last year, tossing aside both legal precedent and the votes of fifty million Americans and countless legislators in order to impose their own values on the nation.
Not only will we protest that illegitimate and anti-constitutional decision, but we'll protest the efforts of President Obama to redefine gender as he pushes the gender ideology of LGBT extremists. And we will call on Congress to enact critical legal protections for Americans who continue to believe in the truth of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
NOM has an aggressive plan to fight back against the Supreme Court's profoundly unjust and unprincipled decision, and we look forward to leading a group of committed supporters at this year's March for Marriage.
As you can see above, the last time NOM tried this attendance was a bit thin, and that'll likely be the case this year too, seeing as they're competing with an 11am showing of Finding Dory and Free Doughnut Day down at the titty bar. Ironically, the crowd will be so small that in the event of rain they'll literally be able to hold it in a closet.
CHEERS to space: the final frontier of the C&J kiddie pool. Scientists in turtlenecks and lab coats say they're learning more about the water content---as in, oceans---on a couple celestial bodies in our neighborhood. Pluto is one of them, but its suspected water is way the hell below the frozen surface. A better location for a C&J franchise may be the moon orbiting Saturn called Enceladus. It has a warm water ocean, and apparently it's easier to get to than they thought:
[U]nlike Pluto, new evidence seems to indicate that Enceladus may have a much thinner ice shell than once believed.
The research, also published in Geophysical Research Letters, suggests that the crust at the south pole of Enceladus may be as little as 3 km (1.86 mi) deep.
That would also make drilling under the ice shell a more distinct possibility for a future space probe, or to have an orbiter penetrate the ice shell with radar to find out more of what's going on down below.
Previous measurements of the ice shell, which placed it as much, much thicker, didn't line up with gravitational data collected by the Cassini probe.
In fact, that moon has such a thin skin that they've created a special name for it: the Trump Layer.
CHEERS to the 19th century comeback kid. Grover Cleveland ran this crazy republic from 1885 to 1889, sat on the sidelines for four years after losing to Benjamin Harrison, and then bounced back to wrangle the White House for another term in 1892, making him both #22 and #24 in the history books. And check this out: while Lincoln has to make do with the $5 bill and Washington only gets the buck, Cleveland gets the friggin' grand…
Anyway, he shuffled off his mortal coil 108 years ago today and so far he hasn't bounced back from that. But as a wise zombie once said: "Never say die."
CHEERS to home vegetation. If you need to head inside to beat the heat, here are a few odds and ends that might show up on your TV this weekend, starting tonight with Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow sifting through the Brexit wreckage. Then, on HBO's Real Time, Bill Maher yucks it up with Paul Begala, Larry Wilmore, Michael Steele, Betsy Woodruff and climate-change activist Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh. New DVD releases include the Michael Shannon sci-fi flick Midnight Special and Terence Malick's Knight of Cups. There's no more hockey or basketball for now, so it's “all about that base”...ball, that is! Ha Ha Ha Ha! The MLB lineup is here. Sunday night's going to be full of gnashing teeth and clashing armor with the premiere of Shark Week (Discovery) and the season finale of Game of Thrones (HBO). Spoiler alert: the sharks eat everybody and then quit the European Union. And John Oliver puts a cork in the weekend on HBO’s Last Week Tonight, and I expect he’ll be breathing fire over the Brexit vote.
And here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA); Trump adviser Paul Manafort; presidential historian Doris Kearns-Goodwin (Team of Rivals).
This Week: Senate majority turtle Mitch McConnell (R-KY); former Obama adviser Stephanie Cutter; Michael Eric Dyson; Anyone-But-Trump dude Alex Castellanos weeps for his party...into his diapers cuz he’s a little baby man baby!!!
Face the Nation: Little Marco; Brexit post mortem with Mark Zandi of Moody's Analytics, Time Magazine's Rana Foroohar, the Economist's David Rennie, and David Ignatius of the Washington Post; fresh battleground poll numbers.
CNN's State of the Union: Bernie!!! Plus Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D).
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook. Future Vice President Newt Gingri...[Snort! Chortle!]…ch.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: June 24, 2006
HOO-AH! to the Pull-My-Finger Division. Holy crap on a Christmas Holiday tree! How desperate is Donald Rumsfeld for new recruits? So desperate that the Army has raised its enlistment age to 42. I can see it now: "Hang on ya damn insurgents...I gotta switch to my reading glasses so I can reload my gun. Make yerself useful and go mow the grass or somethin'. Maybe do yer homework for once..." Ah, I get it now---we're going to win the war by badgering them to death.
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And just one more…
JEERS to the grifter class. If you're wondering what's become of the tree from which apple Rand Paul didn't fall far from, get a look at Ron Paul, internet banner ad star:
If you have an interest, you can watch him read his doomsday prophesies (poorly) off a teleprompter as he hawks subscriptions to a really exciting newsletter that tells you when the financial bombs are gonna fall. But if you look into the company's disclosure statement, Ron Paul's superhuman predictions seem less remarkable when you run into this disclaimer: "A very important warning: we make mistakes. The first thing to know about our business (Stansberry Research) is that we are NOT money managers, brokers, or fiduciaries of any kind.” Hey, that's good to know. ("Hello, Hammacher Schlemmer? Cancel my doomsday bunker.")
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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