From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Teabagger Infestation Strikes Maine GOP convention
And even the Orkin man was smart enough to know not to venture inside.
Last Saturday Maine's Republicans got together in Portland to shake their groove thang and...well, god only knows what all they do at their annual convention. (But we can definitely say it was not held at a lesbian bondage strip club---sadly, we don't have any up here, although my permit application is working its way through City Hall.) The big news of the day was the passing of a new party platform, drafted and enthusiastically adopted as a realignment "back to constitutional conservative values" (Read: "back to the '50s as portrayed in '50s TV shows") by the tea party crowd. To me it reads like something a bunch of six-year olds would dream up in their backyard treehouse during summer vacation. (Wisely, they stopped short of "No Girls Allowed.")
Let's take a li'l peek (and you can read more about it in brooklenbadboy's diary and Barb's post). My thoughts are in brackets. Big, manly brackets that cherish the freedoms and liberties that our founding fathers like Ronald Reagan brought forth on this continent in the trunk of a custom-built Hummer with a chassis made out of Bibles:
Reassert the principle that "Freedom of Religion" does not mean "freedom from religion".
[What part of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" do you not understand?]
We recognize the sanctity of life, which includes the unborn.
[But later they say in their platform that "Healthcare is not a right" but a "service." I'm confyoozed. I guess if you're gonna be born you better come out rich.]
Discard political correctness, make public the declaration of war (Jihad), made against the US on 23 Feb 1998, and fight the war against the United States by radical Islam to win.
[And we will only accept their unconditional surrender on the deck of a battleship!]
Espouse and follow the principle: It is immoral to steal the property rightfully earned by one person, and give it to another who has no claim or right to its benefits.
[Translation: Gimme back my lawnmower, Herb!]
[The] government takeover of healthcare is not only unconstitutional, but detrimental to the entire healthcare system. Only market based solutions will solve the problems.
[Yes, the insurance industry has done such a STELLAR job solving the problems. Although, to be fair, they did solve the problem of how to increase profits by finding new and exciting ways to deny coverage to sick people.]
Defeat Cap and Trade, investigate collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth, and prosecute any illegal collusion.
[No comment---pretty much speaks for the whole document.]
Seal the border and protect US citizens along the border and everywhere, as is the prime directive of the Federal Government.
[Yes, but which border, Mr. Spock? Which...border...must...be sealed? Mexico? Canada? So...many...borders and we're just one...small...starship! Lost! In a nebula of...uncertainty and...confusion.]
Cut spending, balance the budget, and institute a plan for paying down debt. Proclaim that generational debt shifting is immoral and unconscionable and will not be tolerated!
[Disclaimer: Except when Republicans are in the majority, in which case such generational debt shifting will be relabeled "freedom investing."]
Restore a vigorous grounding in the history and precepts of liberty, freedom, and the constitution to the educational process. As Thomas Jefferson said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
[Ahem---that pot-smoking liberal hack Jefferson was written out of the history books, remember? You'll need to find a more suitable quote by St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin or Ayn Rand. With sloppiness like this, how can we be expected to take the Maine GOP seriously?]
And then, for their grand finale, a swan dive into a Dixie cup of cuckoo:
Repeal and prohibit any participation in efforts to create a one world government.
[Twitch Twitch]
And that's just a mere whiff of the platform's poo d'pachyderm. According to the Portland Press Herald, at least one Republican in attendance saw the forest for the trees. Delegate Robert Hains calls it "political suicide." And what sayeth Senator Snowe?
"People are angry, and understandably so," she said. "The question is how do you channel that anger to be effective and successful at the polls?"
Easy. Send a copy of your new platform to every household in Maine. It would be enormously effective and successful.
For Democrats.
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Note: The State Department of Corrections called about you yesterday. Apparently you forgot a comma somewhere. They're very upset.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the midterm elections: 175
Days `til the 23rd annual Baltimore Herb Festival: 18
Percent of teens who say they prefer to text their friends rather than call them: 66%
Average number of, respectively, text messages and phone calls the average teen deals with per day: 50, 5
(Source: Pew Research Center)
Number of copies of a cookbook that an Australian publisher destroyed after finding an error in a recipe for tagliatelle that read: "salt and freshly ground black people": 7,000
Date on which China's first state-sponsored gay bar opened: 12/20/09
(Source: Harper’s Index)
Rise in the Dow Industrials yesterday: 404.71 points
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Tuesday Words of Wisdom from the Right-wing Blogosphere:
We ought to just jump the turnstiles at NBA and MLB games and grab the best seats to demonstrate an important point to these pinheads. Jump the turnstyle, shoot the security guards, demand free food and drinks, bring cocaine and pot to sell to anyone in the crowd, including minors. Then get incensed and cry racism and profiling when you are asked to leave.
---Commenter Spaw at the Michelle Malkin blog
All together now: One...two...three... Classy!!!
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Careful what you wish for...
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CHEERS to Elena Kagan. Obama's pick for the Supreme Court is an enigma wrapped in a riddle clad in a sensible lime-green sport coat. Some random thoughts:
>> Senator Arlen Specter voted against her when he was a Republican. He will find every reason to vote for her as a Democrat---or, more specifically, as a Republican-turned-Democrat-pandering-to-get-reelected. Funny how that works, huh.
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>> I say this with all due respect: I believe Elena Kagan will defeat the rest of the court in thumb wrestling.
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>> So far Republicans have opposed her on the grounds that she...say it with me: is too elitist, is too liberal, jeopardizes America's security, wants to take away your guns, hugs trees and spotted owls, hates our men and women in uniform, is a socialist radical and a big ol' lesbian, uses paper instead of plastic, broils instead of fries, looks too French, sounds too butch, eats too many babies, and hates white people. And they're just getting started.
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>> Three women on the bench? Exciting! Six Catholics and three Jews? Boring.
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>> As usual, none of the pre-confirmation theatrics will matter a lick, because we'll never know how she'll rule until she starts ruling.
Let the games begin. At least the jokes will write themselves.
JEERS to three weeks of a'bubblin crude. Hey, I've got good news and bad news about the oil that continues to gush in the Gulf of British Petroleum. First the bad news: no progress, only setbacks, confusion and failure and lots of lying and deception. The good news: giving you the bad news first was a strategic plus because now you're not saying to yourself, like, Okay, so that's the good news, now what's the bad news?, because you already know the bad news so now you can cover it with a warm fluffy blanket of good news and feel better, which is why you should always deliver the bad news first unless you're deliberately trying to make someone feel really bad in which case you---WHAM!---hit 'em with it last. So that's the good news.
JEERS to bad bling. Hey, y'know what? It's been awhile since China got busted for exporting childrens jewelry infused with toxic metals to the United States. That must mean they've cleaned up their act and are making safer consumer products! So I'd just like to say to China: China, I've given you a lot of guff over the years, but now I'd like to say congratulat... Oops:
Federal regulators announced another recall of children's jewelry with high levels of the toxic metal cadmium Monday, also saying they've expanded their investigation in an effort to keep dangerous items off store shelves in the first place.
A spokesman for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission told The Associated Press its inspectors at 10 of the nation's largest ports are now screening children's jewelry---typically imported from China---for cadmium. ...
"Cadmium is toxic if ingested by children and can cause adverse health effects," the agency said in its recall announcement. Medical research shows that cadmium in high levels is a known carcinogen and can harm kidneys and bones.
We'll try this again in a few months. Color me not hopeful.
CHEERS to everything you need to know about corporate America...in one itty bitty sentence.:
An effort in Congress to spend tens of billions of dollars to fix the nation’s aging water systems is facing stiff opposition from soda and bottled water companies, which are major beneficiaries of publicly owned supplies but are fighting a proposal to tax them to pay for the upgrades.
That's goin' up on the fridge.
CHEERS to theories that hold up in the real world. Last year I posited the notion that for every Daily Kos diary that makes the recommended list, an equal and opposite diary will inevitably appear. Submitted for your inspection from yesterday's list:
The Problem With Elena Kagan Is Barack Obama.
Is followed by...
Cenk Uygur is the Problem.
And yet Princeton never calls to grant me a fellowship. Jealous.
JEERS to being given the evil eye. So I've got a year-long subscription to Windows "Live OneCare," which has done a pretty good (but hardly perfect) job protecting my PC from invasions of this and that. When things are fine, it shows me a little green dot at the bottom of my screen. When things are not fine I get a red dot. Yesterday the red dot showed up and told me that my 'puter was "AT RISK." The reason it's "at risk"? Because I only have 30 days left on my subscription and they want me to load their new spyware program now. So even though my PC won’t really be "at risk" for another 29 days, I'll still have the red "at risk" dot starin' at me (it's a beady-eyed mother) until I break down and relent. Just a wild guess: whoever developed the program is a former Bushie who controlled the color-coded terror alert system.
JEERS to reggae denied. Twenty nine years ago today, Bob Marley Died much too young at 36. New evidence is emerging that he, in fact, shot the deputy, not the sheriff. But why quibble? Let's get together and feel alright, anyway. Around, say, 4:20? (Yeah, even you, closet doobiehead Laura.)
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Five years ago in C&J: May 11, 2005
JEERS to choking on your own fumes. The latest Urban Mobility Report says that traffic jams are getting worse, not better. Travel delays in 2003 totaled 3.7 billion hours. Now I know why big SUVs are so popular. For millions of people they're a second home.
Quote worth re-quoting: "If I were Kim Jong Il, I would read the message of Iraq to be: if you don't have nuclear weapons you get invaded, and if you do have nuclear weapons you don't get invaded. Because we didn't invade the Soviet Union and China. So I think we're sending the wrong messages and doing nothing to really prevent a very, very dangerous situation."
---Madeleine Albright on Real Time with Bill Maher (Consider that a CHEER)
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And just one more...
CHEERS to merry meetups. I'm grateful for many things in life. The top 5, in order: my partner, ice cream, municipal drainage systems, the fez, and May 11, 1969. The latter is the day that John Cleese and Graham Chapman met Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, and began plotting their collective assault on British stiff-upperlippyness, which debuted a few months later as Monty Python's Flying Circus. For your viewing pleasure:
The Ministry of Silly Walks
The Dead Parrot Sketch
"Doctor, my brain hurts!"
And...Spam!
Later, in The Meaning of Life, they were positively prescient about the way the financial collapse of '08 would play out. P.S. "Nee!"
Have a nice Tuesday. And remember: only throw bricks out of kindness. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Bill in Portland Maine is so small that unless you are a preteen girl (which you very well might be; most of his fans aren't old enough to drive), you'll have to bend down to greet him.
---Claire Suddath
Time
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