From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Thursday Margaret and Helen blogging
The internet's feistiest 80-somethings (best friends for 60 years and counting) weigh in on the conventions, and Helen's opener may be the most beautiful paragraph I've read this summer:
Margaret, I watched that jackass in Cleveland and lost my voice.
I saw a Presidential nominee paint a picture of an America I don’t know and have never known. I tried to respond but I couldn’t find the words. I watched his wife lie to a reporter saying that she had written every word of her speech. When she hadn’t, I watched the media say it wasn’t her fault. I tried to respond but couldn’t find the words. I listened to children who have known only life’s riches praise a father who had made his riches by cheating others. I tried to respond but I couldn’t find the words. I watched an audience shout down a Senator when he told them to vote their conscience. I tried to respond but I couldn’t find the words. I watched amazed as Trump got more popular rather than less and truly I couldn’t find the words. But last night, I watched a battle-worn President who had been unjustly treated and unfairly maligned rise above it all. I watched Barack Obama, my President, paint a different picture, a beautiful picture of hope, kindness, forgiveness and humility. And now I am going to respond because I have indeed found my words. Screw you, Mr. Trump. You better give your heart to Jesus because your butt is mine and I plan to kick your ass from the bottom floor to the top floor of Trump Tower and then down again. As I live and breathe, you will never be President. Never.
There's much more awesomeness after that. (Hat tip to Sher Watts Spooner for the link.) Margaret's response forced me to resort to my "no, I'm just chopping onions" defense:
Helen, you had better sit down for this. I have news. It’s happened and we’ve both lived to see it. After watching three nights of the Democratic convention, my Howard woke up this morning and told me that he, a dyed in the wool Republican, will be voting for Hillary Clinton in November.
Helen, dear, I have now seen it all and I am planning to wear my Sunday best everyday because i could now drop dead at any given moment. He’s with her. I couldn’t be happier. You should be too. Have some pie. We’ve got this.
Happy Thursday.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, August 4, 2016
Note: Here's a fun activity for you kids at summer camp! Take a blank sheet of paper and fold it in half. On the outside write, "The Big Book of Good Republican Ideas" with Elmer's glue. Then sprinkle glitter on it and let dry. Awesome---you're done. Now go put on your camo for tonight's snipe hunt after you get me a beer.
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Rogue One: A Star Wars Story opens: 133
Days 'til the Illinois Beer Festival: 9
Amount the Clinton campaign raised in July, with an average contribution of $44: $90 million
Amount the Clinton campaign and a pro-HRC super PAC have booked in ad dollars through the fall versus about $1 million booked by Trump entities, according to FiveThirtyEight: $98 million
Number of competitors in Team USA at the 2016 summer Olympics: 555
Number of them who are women, the highest number from any partricipating country in Olympic history according to The Miami Herald: 292
Length of time you can safely leave food out during a picnic, according to WebMD: 2 hours (1 hour if the temp is 90 or above)
-
Women’s Olympic Soccer Update:
Team USA 2 New Zealand 0
-
Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
I raced back to Time magazine's exegesis of Hillary Rodham Clinton's first one hundred days…Lord, why do I abuse myself like this?---and sure enough, there it was:
"A Republican consultant told a network newscaster that his job was to make sure Hillary Clinton is discredited before the 1996 campaign. Each day, anti-Hillary talking points go out to talk-show hosts. The rumor machine is cranking out bogus stories about her face (lifted), her sex life (either non-existent or all too active), and her marriage (a sham). Many of the stories are attributed to the Secret Service in an attempt to give the tales credibility.”
Excuse me, but when did this become common practice? I don’t think I'm naïve…but this is a new one on me. Did the Democrats have someone assigned to discredit Barbara Bush?
---May 1993
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: On this National Assistance Dog Day we say…saaaaaaa-lute!
-
CHEERS and JEERS to that empty-chamber feeling. According to their schedule the House is now officially adjourned until next month. The good news: we don’t have to endure the leadership's posturing and finger-pointing in the service of pretending like it actually wants to get things done. The bad news: knowing that, apart from a town hall or two, our elected representatives---the Republican ones, anyway---will be enjoying surf and sand and yachting adventures in between rounds of dialing-for-dollars, after which they'll return to Washington next month to complain about moochers sinking into chronic laziness because of their unlimited access to vaults full of taxpayer money that keep them living high off the hog with their fancy "refrigerators" and "microwave ovens." This is technically called their "August vacation." But we prefer the more accurate "forty-fourth-month extension of their January 2013 vacation."
CHEERS to tossing the welcome mat in the shredder. Unless the intervention by members of his own party succeeds---Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha right!---Republican nominee for president Donald Trump will be stopping in Portland, Maine this afternoon to hold a sham "town hall" meeting in the auditorium adjacent to City Hall. To mark the occasion, we have two gifts for him: the stink due to a malfunctioning aerator at our East End Water Treatment Plant, and a blistering column from the editorial board at The Portland Press Herald:
[H]is personality flaws cannot be brushed off as inconsequential.
As a candidate, he has proven himself to be astonishingly shallow, dangerously divisive and utterly incurious. As a president, when dealing in the volatile and complex world of diplomacy, or when trying to calm or heal the country in times of crisis, that erratic and unseemly behavior would be disastrous. […]
By almost any measure Trump is unfit for the presidency. He is, in the worst way possible, unlike any one other modern presidential candidate. It is stunning that his candidacy has come this far, and it should go no further.
I agree and will do what I can to keep him from going any further. But if I don’t post here tomorrow night you can assume I got caught siphoning the gas out of his plane on the tarmac at the Portland Jetport. Hey, I tried!
CHEERS to remembering that time when the Republicans were awesome!!! Yup---two years ago this week the House Intelligence Committee released the findings of their Benghazi investigation. And just like Trey Gowdy's "select committee" sideshow, what they found was a whole lotta nothin'…
…there was no deliberate wrongdoing by the Obama administration in the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, said Rep. Mike Thompson of St. Helena, the second-ranking Democrat on the committee. The panel voted Thursday to declassify the report, the result of two years of investigation by the committee. U.S. intelligence agencies will have to approve making the report public. Thompson said the report "confirms that no one was deliberately misled, no military assets were withheld and no stand-down order (to U.S. forces) was given."
As Joan McCarter noted two years ago, Gowdy swore on a stack of Brylcreem that his committee's investigation---quoting here---"would be an objective search for facts, not a partisan attempt to smear Democrats ahead of the 2014 mid-term elections and the 2016 presidential race." And since his lips were moving at the time, naturally he was lying. I think House Democrats oughtta demand a select committee investigation into the select committee's investigation, and conduct it at an appropriate venue: under a circus tent.
CHEERS to blowing this popsicle stand. Whenever the shit gets too deep here on the bluish-brown marble, I head over to NASA's site to see if Newt Gingrich has colonized the moon yet. Sorry to say the answer is no, so we'll just have to spend our nights gazing yonward and dreaming. And to help you figure out what's what up there, here's NASA's Jane Houston Jones with her August preview:
And don’t forget to go outside, think of Neil Armstrong, and wink at the full moon on the 18th. It's the law.
CHEERS to pictures that say a thousand words. Here's the picture---the latest presidential poll from Fox News:
As for the thousand words it's worth? Among Fox viewers it's basically "Shit!" repeated a thousand times.
CHEERS to the forgiver-in-chief. For quite a while there, President Obama was acting all stingy with his powers of clemency. But when he started his initiative last year to knock off all this locking people up for non-violent offenses---dare I say it? Sure, what the hell---the POTUS’s heart must've grown three sizes that day:
President Obama just set the record for the largest number of sentences commuted in one day since "at least 1900," BuzzFeed reports.
On Wednesday, Obama commuted the sentences of 214 prisoners, 67 of whom were serving life sentences and most of whom had been charged with nonviolent drug crimes.
Wednesday's round of commutations bumped Obama's total up to 562, and he is expected to issue more in his remaining months in office. "This is a good day---not just for the 214 individuals who are getting a hard-earned second chance, but for the people at the White House and the Department of Justice and at advocacy organizations across the country who work every day to remedy injustices in our sentencing laws," White House counsel Neil Eggleston told BuzzFeed.
Leggo my Eggleston added that Obama plans many more similar acts before he leaves office. But he also stressed that he needs Congress to pitch in by taking decisive action with unprecedented efficiency and intelligence to revamp our criminal justice system. Witnesses say the rimshot could be heard for miles.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: August 4, 2006
CHEERS to the coming air war. AP says:
Flush with cash, the Senate Democratic campaign organization has reserved more than $25 million worth of television advertising time for the fall, the bulk of it aimed at toppling Republican incumbents in Ohio, Missouri and Pennsylvania.
Additional Democratic targets also include Montana, where Republican Sen. Conrad Burns' bid for a fourth term is in jeopardy, and Tennessee, where Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has announced plans to retire. At the same time, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has reserved time for advertising in New Jersey and Washington, states that Republicans hope to add to their column to offset any losses elsewhere.
I can't remember the last time I saw the words "Democratic campaign organization" and "flush with cash" in the same sentence. Feels tingly.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to the Geezer in Chief. On today's date 55 years ago:
Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy., son, Aug. 4
---Honolulu Advertiser, 1961
Remember during the '08 campaign when the traditional media tried spinning the line that Obama was too young and wet-behind-the-huge-ears to be president? I laughed, knowing that his accomplished POTUSmates in the 40-something club include Teddy Roosevelt, James K. Polk, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton. Besides, a quick check of the highlights of his birth year, 1961, is enough to make your bones feel a bit creaky:
✓ None of the James Bond movies had been released; West Side Story won the Oscar for Best Picture
✓ John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president---Obama is #44
✓ The Dow Jones Industrials reached a high of...734!!!
✓ The Grammy for best Rock & Roll recording: Chubby Checker's Let's Twist Again.
✓ Median price of a new home: $17,200
✓ Harper Lee won a Pulitzer for To Kill A Mockingbird
✓ East Germany replaces its barbed wire barricades with a permanent wall dividing Berlin
✓ Boston Marathon won by a Finn. A Finn!
✓ The Emmy for outstanding news program went to The Huntley-Brinkley Report
✓ Roger Maris hit 61 home runs, breaking Babe Ruth's single-season record
✓ The price of a gallon of gas was 31 cents.
Certain policy and strategy differences aside, I really like the ever-optimistic Obama---especially now that he's operating in Zero F*cks Left to Give territory (labeling Trump "unfit" Tuesday was a nice touch, I thought) regarding the do-nothing Republicans---and I'm ready to be adopted as soon as the First Family submits the paperwork. (What is taking so long???) So Happy 55th Birthday, Mr. President…and many blessings on your Marxist socialist Muslim Jade Helm Benghazi tan-suit-wearing camels named Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright!
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
“If the Republicans and the evangelicals do not get off their posteriors and vote, I think I’m going to head back to the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool and hide out.”
---Duck call manufacturer Phil Robertson
-