From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE
We Interrupt This broadcast…
This new TV ad, released Monday by pro-Clinton outfit Priorities USA Action, is running in North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Nevada and Iowa. I like it---it's a nice complement to a similar ad showing kids' reactions to the outrageous stuff Trump has said over the course of his campaign. This one shows the collateral damage Trump inflicts on adults---like the disabled, veterans and women---by shooting his mouth off. Excellent production values. Howard Dean calls it "devastating." Take a look:
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There's also one released yesterday by the same group called Pledge, starring kids.
I kinda feel bad for Team D’s opposition researchers. All that good intel waiting in the wings, but Trump keeps providing fresh fodder for us on a daily basis and in broad daylight. What a weird year.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Obama-recommended Louisiana Flood Relief Donation Site
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, August 24, 2016
Note: Today's special in the C&J cafeteria is Play-Doh casserole with Elmer's paste pudding. If you're on Weight watchers, that counts as 100 Yummy Points.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the launch of NASA's OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft, which will gather a sample of the Bennu asteroid and return to earth with it in 2023: 15
Days 'til the Camden Windjammer Festival: 8
Percent of the National Association for Business Economics membership who want Hillary Clinton to be president: 55%
Percent of the association that supports Gary Johnson and Donald Trump, respectively: 15%, 14%
Favorability of coffee among Mormons and non-Mormons in Utah, according to PPP: 78%, 17%
Percent favorability of independent presidential candidate and Utahan Evan McMullin in Utah, according to the same poll: 17%
Estimated number of Gawker posts from its founding in 2002 until the wrath of Peter Thiel shut it down Monday: 202,370
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Mid-week Rapture Index:
187 (including 5 plagues and 1 earth-destroying polar flip that will occur 26 days ago). Soul Protection Factor 8 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Action Jackson
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CHEERS to the comforter-in-chief. President Obama flew down to flood-ravaged Louisiana yesterday, bringing sighs of relief to those most emotionally wrecked by the disaster: the teary-eyed media freaking out over the timing of his visit. ("The optics! The optics!") Then he got down to more serious business:
“Sometimes when these kinds of things happen, it can seem too much to bear, but what I want the people of Louisiana to know is that you’re not alone in this, even after the TV cameras leave,” he said.
“I was just speaking to a young woman whose husband died shortly after the birth of her second child, and she was talking about how her daughter was trying to gather all the keepsakes that she had in her bedroom [that] reminded her of her father,” Obama said. “And that gives you some sense that this is not just about property damage. This is about people’s roots.” […]
Obama hugged residents. “How y’all doing?” he repeated. “I know it’s tough now,” he added, and said, “I wish I was coming in better times.” When one person said the water rose to four feet, Obama said, “that’s why you gotta listen when they tell you to get out.”
Donald Trump visited last week, and the media acted like he’d “won” something for being “first.” But to put the difference between Obama's trip and Trump's in perspective: Obama brought FEMA. Trump brought Play-Doh.
CHEERS to the designator-in-chief. Word came down yesterday that a very rich lady---the founder of Burt's Bees, which I think makes lip balm for bees belonging to Burt---officially donated a tract of Maine land in anticipation of President Obama doing something BIG here:
Roxanne Quimby’s foundation transferred more than 87,500 acres in the Katahdin region to the federal government on Tuesday in a critical step toward creation of a national monument in Maine’s North Woods.
The Penobscot County Registry of Deeds posted the land transfers from the Quimby family’s nonprofit organization, Elliotsville Plantation Inc., on its website Tuesday morning. There has been widespread speculation that President Barack Obama could announce a new national monument in the Katahdin region to help mark the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service this Thursday.
I love this for two big reasons. 1) I've never lived in a state when a president has designated a national monument in it, and I bet it's totally cool, with brass bands and bunting and important speeches by people in top hats, and 2) Our idiot governor really HATES the idea, and he's wrong about everything. So designate away, Mr. President. Oh, and don’t forget to include the 87,000 acre-long water slide.
JEERS to really shitty ways to ruin an otherwise lovely summer evening. On this date in 1814, British forces attacked Washington, DC during the War of...um...1812. The president and members of Congress fled while the First Lady, armed with nothing but a butcher knife and her patriotism, rescued artwork and leftover mutton before the redcoats torched the White House. The 8/24 Commission Report later said President Madison should have heeded the PDB titled: "King George III Determined to Strike In US." Curse you, 20-20 hindsight.
CHEERS to coming clean. The media are feasting on the news that more Hillary Clinton emails have come to light. Andy Borowitz reports that she's trying to get out ahead of the critics:
Hoping to quell the controversy over e-mails missing from her private account, the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday released twenty thousand spam e-mails she received from Old Navy. […]
But if the former Secretary of State thought that she could end the controversy swirling around her e-mail account by releasing the Old Navy spam, she may have miscalculated. Representative Trey Gowdy, the Republican chairman of the House Benghazi select committee, questioned why Clinton would let twenty thousand spam e-mails from Old Navy accumulate rather than simply unsubscribe. “It doesn’t pass the smell test,” he said.
But does anyone care that Colin Powell did the same thing with Bed, Bath and Beyond? Nooooooo…..
CHEERS to plumbing the depths. Something so fascinating about shipwrecks. Maybe it's the eeriness…or the amazing way nature slowly dissolves them even as it turns them into habitats for sea critters…or maybe just astonishment at finding such a tiny needle in such a huge H2Ostack. I dunno. But somewhere outside San Francisco they just met a sunken American aircraft carrier---The Independence---up close and personal:
The vessel operated in the central and western Pacific between November 1943 and August 1945; torpedoes from Japanese aircraft demanded a stint away for repairs from January to July 1944 in San Francisco.
The Independence was later one of more than 90 vessels assembled as a target fleet for the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb testsin 1946. The ship was placed within a half mile (800 meters) of ground zero for the first test there and, while damaged by shock waves, heat and radiation, the veteran ship did not sink. The highly radioactive Independence and dozens of other ships from the tests were then taken to Pearl Harbor and San Francisco for decontamination studies. […]
The Independence was amazingly intact, NOAA researchers said. "There have been some changes to it since it went to the bottom 65 years ago, but what we have been seeing very closely resembles the ship she was before she went underwater," Delgado said.
See more cool pics here. The environment down there is described as cold, unforgiving, and full of weird and hostile creatures stumbling around in the dark. In other words, the Trump rally of the sea.
CHEERS to the Spud Stud. On August 24, 1853, chef George Crum made the first potato chips---originally called Saratoga Chips---after a fussy customer (Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt) complained that his potatoes weren't sliced thin enough. So the chef sliced 'em thinner-than-thin out of frustration and the rest, as they say, is BBQ, Salt & Vinegar, Ruffled, Kettle-cooked, sometimes-even-packed-in-tennis-ball-canisters history.
Here in the BiPM household, I'm not sure we've ever actually thrown out an old bag of chips. When one gets down to about an inch of crumbs, we just go buy a new bag and leave the old one in the cupboard, making a "mental note" to "finish off that old bag before starting in on the new one." Never happens. And now we have chip bags dating back to the Nixon years gathering dust and lord-knows-what else. The potato DNA is probably congealing into a super potato brain that will fashion a crude body out of the potato bags and begin a rampage that flattens several cities before it's finally brought down by a giant glop of French onion dip dropped from a helicopter. And when that day comes, I trust someone will update George Crum's Wikipedia page accordingly.
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 24, 2006
JEERS to John McCain. His solution for winning in Iraq: throw more troops into the blender. I'm sure all the young Republicans he commands will leap at the chance...to dive under their blankies.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the essence of the Great Orange Satan. Kossack Red Bean hasn’t posted or commented around these parts in a few years. (Come back! We forgive you! For whatever you did! As long as it wasn’t murder!) But I ran across something funny that the "hyper-sensitive liberal" wrote in C&J ten years ago that still seems relevant to this wonderfully messy community and our relationship to our benevolent overlord in Berkeley. Enjoy anew:
Cheers to Kos. He says "Jump" and we say "But when you think about it, what is "jumping?"
And some of us say "Jump?!! Are you nuts? Somersault.”
And some others of us say "I jumped already, where have you been?"
And others: "No jumping until after the primary."
And "That's awfully close to the DLC position."
Or "I jumped once and then I saw a Green Party member jump and after that I decided, fuck jumping."
And some of us say "A little jumping is OK."
And others say "If you give the "j" the Spanish pronunciation then the word jump sounds sort of dirty, heh, heh."
And "back in the sixties we didn't just jump we leaped."
And "I'll jump as long as long as I know when I land I'm landing on Ken Mehlman's head."
And "They've been jumping in France for six years already, what is taking us so long?"
And...
And…still true!
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Police officers and a resident first reported in June that a snake, perhaps as long as 10 feet, was slithering its way through the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool and had been spotted feasting on candy corn. Those sightings set off a flurry of would-be snake spotters looking for the reptile dubbed “Wessie.”
---The Portland Press Herald
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