From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
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Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moresville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHT NOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, August 19, 2010
Note: Just a heads-up that there will be no C&J Monday, August 23 or Monday, August 30, as we will be in the process of doing stuff directly related to other stuff. But the next two Tuesday-through-Fridays we'll be all over this place like white on a tea party rally. ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Labor Day: 18
Days `til the 20th annual Cotati Accordion Festival in California: 2
Target rate of high-school smokers under the government's Healthy People 2010 initiative: 16%
Actual rate of high schoolers who smoke in 2010: 20%
(Source: Time)
Percent of voters who say jobs trump trimming the federal deficit: 64%
(Source: Quinnipiac poll)
Original estimate of the number of patients who would frequent Maine's new medical marijuana dispensaries, and the cost of an ounce of pot: 500 / $50
Current estimate: 1,500 / $250-$400
(Source: Portland Press Herald)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Should you be suffering a fear shortage despite the administration's best efforts, consider the paralyzing news of the defeat of Joe Lieberman. According to none other than our very own Veep Dick Cheney, Lieberman's defeat helps the terrorists. Yes! How can this be, you ask? Well, you know Joe Lieberman has been supporting Bush's war in Iraq, and we are at war with Iraq because Saddam Hussein was allied to al-Qaida and had weapons of mass destruction, see? He wasn't? He didn't? Gee, maybe that's why the Democrats were upset with Lieberman!
Lieberman's unhappy fall in electoral battle touched off a volcano of drivel in the media. Some of it should be written off as the incurable Establishment tendency to defend its own. People who have known Joe Lieberman for 18 years are naturally predisposed in his favor---always happens. On the other hand, what a bunch of codswallop from people who should know better. They're behaving as though no one had a right to challenge Lieberman, whereas given his record, I can't think of anyone who deserved challenge more.
---August 15, 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Freaky...I was lured to walk with peanut butter on a spoon, too. Just last week, in fact.
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CHEERS to little disclaimers. You may have noticed a bit of irrational exuberance in our intro this morning. Indeed, we understand that there are still 50,000 troops stationed in Iraq (as "advisors" and "trainers," although they're just as combat-ready as any of the soldiers who left, and will undoubtedly see some before they leave next year). Yes, Iraq is still an enigma wrapped in a powderkeg. Yes, four-out-of-five Americans still can't find Iraq on a map. Yes, yes, yes, we know all the reasons why our optimism deserves to be more muted. But we also know that a lot of soldiers are coming home to their families, and that August 18, 2010 will stand out in the history books (yes, maybe even the ones approved by the Texas School Board) as a rare "good day." So, for 24 hours, I'm switching off the cynicism and skepticism. I'm gonna go around town giving everyone a Times Square liplock. I'm gonna run around throwing confetti. When I run out of confetti I'll throw toilet paper. When I run out of toilet paper I'll throw furniture. And then...well, I may need a little help hurling the manhole covers. But tomorrow we turn back into a cranky old pumpkin counting down the days 'til the rest of our troops leave Iraq and that other place. But for today: Wheeeee!
CHEERS to timely reminders. The New York Times gently suggests that we should pull ourselves away from the Lower Manhattan mosque non-brouhaha, the Blagojeverdict, and the midterms for a moment, and focus on a little hot spot called Pakistan that's turning into the world's eighth ocean:
The magnitude of Pakistan’s current tragedy is almost more than the mind can take in. A fifth of the country flooded by torrential monsoon rains. Fifteen million to 20 million people driven from their homes or otherwise affected. Six million in need of emergency assistance, such as food and clean water. Millions of acres of the country’s best cropland underwater. Livestock drowned. Medical clinics destroyed. Cholera threatening the survivors. ...
The world, especially the United States, must not blow this one. We worry it already could be doing that. The United Nations has called for $460 million in donations for immediate relief. So far, less than half of that has been committed. The United Nations says that the money is urgently needed to supply food, clean water, tents or shelter materials, basic household goods, emergency health care and livestock feed. More delay means even more devastation. ... Looming ahead is the enormous challenge of rebuilding Pakistan’s shattered bridges, roads, structures and agricultural and economic base. For now, the humanitarian needs are paramount.
Here's the link for the Red Cross and the link for ShelterBox and they'd be mighty grateful for your donation, no matter how big or small. As for the Pakistani government, I think have a foolproof plan that'll get 'em all the money and assistance they need, and they can do it in one easy step: change their name to Goldman Sachs.
CHEERS to people with the bestest first name on the planet. Happy Birthday to the first "Rapscallion President" (if you don’t count Benjamin Harrison and his fondness for egging carriages from the White House roof), Bill Clinton. #42 turns a boyish---for ex-presidents, anyway---64 today. But don’t expect him to make it to his party on time. From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien:
On his inauguration day, Bill Clinton was twenty-seven minutes late for his customary courtesy call on the Bushes. It was a sign of things to come. He once kept Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist waiting forty-five minutes and even showed up late for his formal greeting of the king of Spain.
I guess maybe that explains why his cake still only has 63 candles on it.
CHEERS to heading down the right track. Gol'durnit, that President Obama is so disappointing! He's so disappointing! He's so...oh, wait, never mind. Today he's okay:
Soon, Americans might find themselves rocketing along ribbons of rails at 200 mph in sleek, painted passenger cars---never stopping until they arrive at destinations awake and refreshed. The [$8 billion] federal funding served as a down payment to develop the groundwork for 13 new high-speed rail corridors in the United States, including an Orlando-Tampa route.
"High-speed rail in America is long overdue and President Obama understands we can't build the economy of the future on the transportation networks of the past," said Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo. Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, these new dollars represent a historic investment in the country's transportation infrastructure.
Every time I push him away he pulls me right back in!
JEERS to activist judges. On August 19, 1692, four innocent men and a woman were hanged on Gallows Hill for "practicing witchcraft" in Salem, Massachusetts. To this day Dick Cheney is outraged by what happened back then. He doesn’t think they were waterboarded nearly long enough.
JEERS to the charge of the looney brigade. Oh, lookie! Congressman Barney Frank has a "Democratic" primary opponent---namely, the Lyndon LaRouche supporter who called Obamacare a "Nazi policy" at a town hall meeting last year, prompting Frank to ask which planet she spent most of her time on. And true to form, Rachel Brown is acting like she lives in an oxygen-deprived environment:
Workers for the Brown campaign for the 4th Congressional District seat currently held by Barney Frank, D-Newton, have been seen throughout Newton and Brookline with images of President Barack Obama doctored to give him an Adolf Hitler-style mustache. ...
"It’s a malapropism to display the president’s picture in such a disrespectful way when he was democratically elected by the people of the United States," [Mike] Grenoble said. "I don’t think that any elected official deserves that kind of contempt and symbolism that is offensive to all Jewish and non-Jewish people. If there is one thing I hate, it is ignorance."
Meanwhile, a group has has been formed to oppose Brown and her tactics. I believe they've registered under the name Everyone.
JEERS to things that leave us blubbering unintelligible babble and wondering if, as Bill Maher says, We The People "are too stupid to be governed." Results of a new Time magazine poll:
>> 24% mistakenly believe that President Obama is himself a Muslim with just 47% of respondents believing that he is a Christian.
>> 28% percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.
>> Nearly one third of the responders thought that adherents of Islam should be barred from running for President
Bllubbbbbubbbbblububb!!!
CHEERS to the first frequent flyer. Today is Orville Wright's 139th birthday. He was the one at the controls in 1903 during the first heavier-than-air, machine-powered flight. The trip was uncomfortable, expensive, delayed for hours, and the only free snacks were the ones he brought on board himself. Thanks to advances in technology, today's passengers enjoy air travel that's uncomfortable, expensive, delayed for hours, and the only free snacks we get are the ones we bring ourselves. But...we can get up and go pee.
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Five years ago in C&J: August 19, 2005
CHEERS to good eats. Laura Bush just hired the first female White House head chef: Cristeta Comerford. In light of the way Bush's second term is going, they only had to ask the candidates one question: "How many different ways can you cook crow?"
CHEERS to close proximity (via Boing Boing). At Kings College in London, researchers announced that they've isolated bacteria that act like Swiffers against bad breath and stinky feet. And we hear they make Republicans disappear altogether.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to perspective. The annual Beloit College Mindset List is generating the usual gasps and titters as it reflects on how the mental cards are stacked in the collective mind of the Class of 2014. Some newsy-type observations:
American companies have always done business in Vietnam.
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Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.
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Food has always been irradiated.
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There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church.
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The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.
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The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court.
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They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.
And for future reference, the first class whose students will have lived through none of the Bush nightmare will be the class of 2031. Lucky ducks.
Have a nice Thursday. Gather...your...armies. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
French officials are now threatening Bill in Portland Maine with $48 fines for walking around without his shirt on.
---Jonathan Turley
8/17/10.
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