From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Oh! More Things I Know:
- The link to OccupyWallSt.org is here. They love company---and freedom pizza!
- Republicans are the party of "No." Democrats are the party of "Know."
- Hey, pharmaceutical companies? You can stop advertising your dick pills. We're well aware of their existence by now.
- I completely sympathize with Rick Perry's inability to articulate Mitt Romney's flip flops. I can't keep 'em straight, either.
- Memo to President Obama: the reason I wear bedroom slippers is because the retractable metal spike in the toe comes in handy against my political enemies.
- If it had turned out that active-duty soldier Stephen Hill was sitting behind the teabaggers who booed him at last week's Republican debate, the first thing they would've done is wet their pants.
- Republican charges of voter fraud committed by Democrats are almost always bogus. Democratic charges of voter fraud committed by Republicans are almost always valid.
- Jon Huntsman can play the Peanuts theme on the piano like a pro. Good news: Truman played piano like a pro, too. Bad news: So did Nixon.
- 100 percent of economists agree that jobs are a fairly reliable cure for high unemployment. We should test their theory.
- Conservatives condemning premarital sex is like the Phillies condemning baseball.
- I did a load of laundry yesterday. All my socks are accounted for but now the dryer's missing.
- Democrats feel your pain. Republicans inflict it.
- Sarah Palin hasn’t written any cheat notes on her hand in months. [Sniff!] She's growing up so fast…
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, September 29, 2011
Note: Just a heads-up that there will be no C&J on Monday, as we will be attending a gallivanting training seminar. Back Tuesday with windburn and a hangover.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the next Republican debate embarrassment (sorry for the redundancy), at Dartmouth College: 12
Days `til the World Food Festival in Des Moines: 8
Percent of Americans who were cool with interracial marriage in, respectively, 1958, 1973 and today: 4%, 29%, 86%
Year during which more than half of Americans started approving of interracial marriages: 1997!!!
(Source: Gallup via The Week)
Number of Americans serving life without parole for crimes they committed while under the age of 14: 73
(Source: Harper's Index)
Percent of Americans who expect to be worth $1 million ten years from now: 21%
Percent of Australians and Brits, respectively, who expect to be worth $1 million ten years from now: 29%, 8%
(Source: AP-CNBC poll)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
You know me, pal---your ol' buddy, governor of Texas and the man with the reelly, reelly good hair. I am writing to tell you what to do in the wake of this here Hurricane Katrina. Numero Uno, you got to send money to Texas. Yup, that is the primero responsibility you got, and since---you don't mind my saying so---you ain't done too good so far, I suggest you listen to me on this, instead of making another dumb mistake, like sending aid to Florida.
Florida may be run by your brother, but he's got dick for hair and his schools are already funded, see? Whereas in Texas, we have generously opened some of our finest air-conditioned sports arenas to these soggy refugees from Louisiana so they can sit and drip on real Astroturf. As your momma, that great Houstonian Barbara Bush, said after visiting the Astrodome, those people are better off now because "they were underprivileged anyway."
---"Letter" to George W. Bush from Rick Perry, September, 2005
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Puppy Pic of the Day (via Kossack blonde moment): "Calling all Muggles…"
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CHEERS to Year 5772. "Shana Tova!!!!!" (I hope to G-d I didn't just swear or insult your mother.) Rosh Hashanah began yesterday at sundown, so let me be the sadly-not-first to say, Sweet Jewish New Year! Even though the C&J household is just run-'o-the-mill Episcopalian/Catholic, we still took a moment to blow a ram's horn outside our neighbor's bedroom window at 3am. We figured, why break with our normal routine just because it's Rosh Hashanah?
CHEERS and JEERS to moolah matters. I admit I don’t know a portfolio thingamabob or a fiduciary whirligig from a hole in the ground, so I rely on headlines to keep me just informed enough on how things are going economically to keep my head from exploding. Here's a few from this week---as usual, there are some green shoots but also plenty of brown weeds:
> Actions to keep Greece afloat lift world markets
> Fair warning, holiday travelers: U.S. flights will cost more this year
> Half of cities forced to cut staff, projects as revenue slips
> Home prices climb in July in most major cities
> Mortgage applications on the rise
> Best Buy planning to hire fewer workers for holidays
> New data shows economy still has a pulse
> Unemployment picture improves in metro areas
> Hard to stomach seeing pro athletes get megamillions for being basically worthless
> Wall Street protest hits week 2
> Europe's bailout fund is too small
> Double your salary---in North Dakota
And then there's this: a new report showing that President Obama's economic package---reviled by Republicans as ineffective, job-killing and blah blah blah---is is kinda awesome cool among economists. Unfortunately, it's being treated by Congress the same way a museum treats a Monet: "Look but don't touch." And no flash photography!
CHEERS to the great troublemakers. Lech Walesa, electrician, founder of the anti-Communist Solidarity Union, President of Poland, and Nobel Peace Prize winner turns 68 today. My memory of his most rebellious time---the late 70s and early 80s---is kinda grainy, but I do remember how I felt back then, living in Germany as I was and occasionally visiting East Berlin---aka Bleakistan---as part of a school or family trip, and feeling the oppressiveness of the Soviet influence over everything. So when I saw what Walesa (whom I swear was Nintendo's inspiration for Mario) was doing, I felt like, Wow, that is one gutsy electrician. Whenever I hear his name, that's still what I think. In his honor, today: no light bulb-changing jokes.
CHEERS to turning on the lavender spigot. The religious conservatives have a good reason to be sweating pious bullets today. It turns out that "the gay" may be contagious, after all. We're poppin' up like weeds, says the Census Bureau:
Increasingly visible, the number of gay Americans telling the U.S. census they're living with same-sex partners nearly doubled in the past decade, to about 650,000 couples. And more than 130,000 recorded partners as husband or wife.
[Ding Dong!] "Are you Phyllis Schlafly? Good. I just breathed on you. Your cellular structure should be realigned by next summer's pride parade. Wear comfortable shoes."
CHEERS (via DarkSyde) to cool science. A researcher in Britain has invented a new form of portable power that's "cheaper, lighter and more efficient" than the conventional kind. behold the jelly battery:
"The polymer gel looks like a solid film, but it actually contains about 70 percent liquid electrolyte," [University of Leeds professor Ian]Ward said in a prepared release. "It's made using the same principles as making a jelly: you add lots of hot water to 'gelatin'---in this case there is a polymer and electrolyte mix---and as it cools it sets to form a solid but flexible mass." … In addition to reducing weight and size, these new batteries could be made at about 10 percent of the cost of creating current batteries, Ward told IT Pro magazine.
Up next for Professor Ward: peanut butter solar panels.
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Five years ago in C&J: September 29, 2006
CHEERS to new discoveries. Another nail in the coffin of the Intelligent Design crowd: a three million year-old female was found recently in Ethiopia:
[T]he little girl has a lower body much like a human, well adapted to walking upright, while the upper body is closer to that of a chimpanzee.
You sure it's not just Ann Coulter on safari?
CHEERS to racism made easy. For those of you who are a bit rusty hurling epithets, the ALL-NEW George Allen Insult Generator makes it so easy that, heck, even a small Tunisian monkey can do it! Here, let me add to the list: If you're mad at the woman who bore ya, call her Macaca! Your dad? Pacaca! An Egyptian sun god? Racaca! A German? Jacaca! Who knew racism could be so much fun!! [9/29/11 Update: They seem to have disabled it. Killjoycacas.]
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And just one more…
JEERS to Black Monday. "Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." Ah, the wise words of Alice on The Brady Bunch....or maybe it was Moe from The Simpsons. Anyway, C&J vowed three years ago that we would never forget what happened that day. Here's our first post-meltdown posting:
HOLY SHIT! to September 29, 2008. I always thought when something stopped at "777" it meant we won something. Yesterday it meant America lost a tidy $1.2 trillion in market value in seven hours. So what to do? For me, it's baby steps. Really, really easy stuff I can do without thinking: 1) Feed cat. 2) Put on socks. 3) Remove cat food from feet. 4) Remove sock from cat's head. Okay, so maybe I'll just sit quietly and grind my teeth for awhile.
I remember feeling actual terror that day and several days after. al Qaeda had nothing to do with it. This time it was Goldman Sachs, AIG, Moody's, Standard & Poor etc., their toxic assets of mass destruction, and a government that deliberately looked the other way. I fear them a thousand times more than I ever feared the cave dwellers. Because George W. Bush was right about one thing: oceans can't protect us---from our own greedy-ass selves.
Meanwhile, as the corporate-owned and funded "tea party" (a term revived, let's not forget, by Rick Santelli, a Wall Street-loving conservative yahoo from Wall Street-loving CNBC) tries to mask its irrational hatred of Barack Obama behind a misguided "concern for fiscal discipline," a gaggle of dirty fucking hippies is, once again, banging on pots and pans and yanking our country's moral compass back to true north---this time from the heart of Wall Street's playground. That hope Obama talks about all the time? It's showing signs of life…right under the bankster's upturned noses. Oh, they're not losing any sleep over it yet. But they're getting a little nervous---because they know it's just the beginning.
Demand a nice Thursday, dammit! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Rand Paul wants Bill in Portland Maine thrown in jail
---The Brad Blog
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