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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
[Blat Blat!!! Ahoooo-gah!!!]
>>> !!!! ATTENTION REPUBLICANS !!!! <<<
The National Waffler Service has issued a Mitt Romney Base Abandonment Watch in the following areas: immigration…
Waffler Service watcher watches for wafflers
Mel Martinez, the former Florida Republican senator and chairman of the Republican Party, told ThinkProgress on Tuesday that Romney will almost certainly reverse course and take a more “sensible view” on immigration. He argued that Romney’s “self-deportation” policy was simply a product of the bruising Republican primary. When asked if Romney would stick to it if elected, Martinez was frank: “I really, really don’t.”
And
abortion…
Mitt Romney’s oldest sister, Jane, said Wednesday a federal ban on abortion is “never going to happen” on her brother’s watch if he is elected president. “He’s not going to be touching any of that,” Jane Romney told the National Journal...
A Mitt Romney Base Abandonment Watch means that conditions are favorable for the Republican candidate for president to betray his conservative base by treating them like idiots with no memory of the "severely conservative" promises he made during the primary season. Should an actual base abandonment occur, the appropriate warning will be issued. Republicans who feel a sense of despair, disappointment, and/or outrage that Mitt Romney is the GOP nominee for president should understand that these feelings are normal and will never go away.
As of 7:00am EST, Base Abandonment Watches have been cancelled in the areas of pot legalization and support for Obamacare, as sunshine returns to the far-right fringe in both of those regions.
Republicans are urged to stay tuned to the National Waffler Service for updates, instructions, and links to the nearest online "Chris Christie Me Me Me Me Me in 2016" support shelter.
Now back to your regularly-scheduled blogging.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Note: When Daylight Saving Time ends in November, Paul Ryan will only have to turn his clocks back 45 minutes. Film at 11.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the new season of South Park and Modern Family: 14
Days 'til the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival in Tunbridge: 17
Number of troops who have died in Afghanistan this year: 250
Union membership in the private sector in 1980 and 2011, respectively: 20%, 6.7%
(Source: Bloomberg BNA)
Graduation rate at Jeb Bush's K12, Inc. online schools (the company is now under investigation by the Florida Dept. of Education) in 24 states: 49%
Graduation rate at public schools in those states: 79%
(Source: The Maine Sunday Telegram)
Winning bid for Elvis Presley's Bible at auction: $94,000
(Source: NBC News)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 184 (including 4 Civil Rights and 1 case of extreme subtlety). Soul Protection Factor 18 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Seamus has friends, you know…
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CHEERS to our new handheld overlord. The iPhone 5 makes its real-world debut today. So when you feel the ground shake, it won’t be due to fracking this time:
The new iPhone 5
Some assembly required
Chief economist Michael Feroli believes sales of the smartphone could potentially add as much as half a percentage point to annualized gross domestic product growth in the fourth quarter. Roughly 8 million iPhone 5s will be sold over the period, even as sales of previous-generation iPhones stay steady, according to the report. In October 2011, when the last iPhone debuted, sales “significantly outperformed expectations,” Feroli wrote. The iPhone 5 launch “is expected to be much larger.”
And for good reason. It slices! It dices! It makes julienne fries at the touch of a button! Turn it upside down and it becomes an all-in-one tire inflator and grout remover! Place a pork roast in the chamber and then
"set it...and forget it!!" Twist on the rotor attachment and turn it into your own personal Commuter Copter! Pull the handle and out comes perfectly chilled champagne! And somewhere on it I think there's a phone. How quaint.
JEERS to the dud in the desert. Bad news if you were planning to go to the birther gala event with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Pat Boone and a slate of ninnies who each claim that they have proof the president wasn't born here: it was aborted because so few tickets had sold. But at least the faithful took it well:
“The REASON the EVENT by Sheriff Joe & his Cold Case POSSE was CANCELLED is because the Sheriff & others are TOO DUMB to SEE the MURDERS Barack Obama had his Security Adviser John Brennan commit on Obama’s Gay Lovers in Chicago,” the visitor wrote.
Apparently the birther motto is: "A CAPS LOCK is a terrible thing to waste."
The Netroots Nation
Auctioneers want YOU!
CHEERS to big bidness. The
Netroots Nation Fall Online Auction starts one week from today, and if you have some items you can part with, the more the merrier,
says BCO gal. Just write up a brief description of your item(s), with photos if possible, and
click here to submit it. Proceeds go toward helping offset the costs of the 2013 Netroots Nation convention in San Jose next June. C&J has some cool stuff we'll be putting up for bid, including talking Keith Olbermann bobbleheads. Please note that if you win Barbie's Dream Car Elevator, it requires 2,000 AA batteries (not included) and Cadillacs are sold separately.
JEERS to throwing stones in glass houses. Republican columnist Kathleen Parker haz a sad---she's upset that MSNBC is too gosh-darn liberal for a news network:
Kathleen Parker tut-tuts a certain
cable news network for excessive
political activism. Fox? Guess again.
No one pretends anymore that MSNBC is an objective observer to the news. Obviously, the decision was made to be aggressively progressive. With the exception of “Morning Joe,” where Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski co-host a roundtable of commentators, politicos and actors who dispense praise and criticism equally to Democrats and Republicans, the cable network’s other political shows are unapologetically pro-Democratic, pro-Obama.
Yeah, well, at least there
is an exception. Name one three-hour block of time on Fox News that's hosted by a liberal. Oh, that's right---there isn’t one. Then this:
The blending of news and opinion isn’t new, but activism posing as journalism is a cancer on the body politic. While some viewers may be savvy enough to understand the difference and choose their medicine accordingly, many are not.
Who was it that served as the media launchpad for the tea party movement? Who organized rallies and whipped up the crowd during its dawn-to-dusk coverage? On whose payroll was Glenn Beck when he organized his big rally at the Lincoln Memorial a couple years back? Oh, yeah---Fox! Tell ya what: when Kathleen Parker can produce an MSNBC "activism" highlight reel that's even one-tenth as long as Fox's, she can complain about it all she wants. Until then, her river of "wah" is just…a lame stream.
CHEERS to boldly going where no one has gone before (except for the invisible people in Clint Eastwood's head). The spacecraft Voyager 1, which was launched 35 years ago, is breaking up with us and leaving us for another solar system. The split is amicable: we get to keep the photo album and it gets to keep the 8-track player.
Made Harding look like a genius.
JEERS to finding the needle in the haystack…and throwing it back into the haystack. On the 11th anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001, tongues were wagging over a column in
The New York Times by
Vanity Fair contributing editor Kurt Eichenwald, in which he describes still-classifed documents that show that the administration of President George W. Bush is guilty of
"significantly more negligence" than we thought in the way his gang handled intelligence before the attacks. That will surprise no one on this blog, of course. But it does allow us to revist some of the most famous words ever written by the great
Molly Ivins seven years ago this month: "Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention." (Um...Democrats excepted, right? said Julian Castro.)
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Five years ago in C&J: September 12, 2007
CHEERS to walking the walk. Some troops in Iraq have made the best suggestion we've heard in a long time. Instead of cushy Green Zone tours, they suggest we make our politicians embed themselves in the field to get the true feel of what it's like to be smack dab in the middle of a quagmire. That sound you hear is Joe Lieberman canceling all his future flights to Iraq.
CHEERS to Vitter's Vixen. A polygraph test confirms a former New Orleans prostitute's assertion that sitting United States Senator and role-model to all the small children in America, David Vitter, paid her bundles of cash over four-months in exchange for lotsa sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. Great sex. Dirty sex. The kind of sex you only read about in the Penthouse Forums. Washing machine sex, bearskin rug sex, kitchen table sex, chandelier sex, "Don’t worry, my wife's at her mother's" sex, hot tub sex, police interrogation sex, library sex, Macy's dressing room sex, cheerleader sex...whips, chains, masks 'n flippers, Cheez-Whiz... What a perv he is to force me to imagine all that.
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And just one more…
Why does the caged fan beep?
Sounds like a question for Maya Angelou.
JEERS to a noisy wind. We have a "tower fan" sitting in our living room---it's basically a narrow vertical rectangle instead of the usual square-shaped box fan or circular oscillating fan. It works really well, but there's something that's been bugging me about it: when you turn it on it beeps. Not a little beep, a loud cantankerous "BEEEEP!" But why? Why would someone design a fan that beeps when you turn it on and off? I thought maybe it was for the sight-impaired so they could hear it. But wouldn’t they just feel the breeze and know that the fan is on? It makes no sense. Then I figured out that every time I turn it on or off, my partner Michael says, "What the hall's that
beeping? It's driving me nuts!" So there you go: it's a combination fan and spouse agitator. How rude. How insensitive. I think I'll get one for the den.
Have a nice Wednesday. Maintain a healthy sense of perspective. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Asked For Specific Tax Loopholes Romney Will Close, Adviser Says ‘Cheers and Jeers’
---Think Progress
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