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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Oh! More Things I Know:
The Netroots Nation convention starts four weeks from today in San Jose.
The recent tornado outbreak reminds me once again that it's nice to be able to hear "I'm from FEMA and I'm here to help" without cringing.
The spellchecker on my new laptop didn't recognize "Stephanopoulos" and wanted to replace it with "Postmenopausal." I said sure, why not.
If I was Terry McAuliffe, I'd send Virginia Republicans a gift basket with a thank-you card for nominating that crazy guy for Lieutenant Governor.
Another thing I know: this
guy turns 72 tomorrow.
I would never join a tea party. I would, however, join a whiskey rebellion.
The Maine Department of Tourism reminds you that for the 257,000,034th day in a row, no freakishly-large man-eating Burmese pythons have been spotted on the loose in our state.
I'd like to see Obama and Biden trade places on January 20, 2014 and then switch back on January 20, 2015. Mostly because it'd be a chance to drive the right completely over the edge by a third Obama inauguration.
We are ruled by rectangular pieces of green linen-based paper with numbers and dead people's faces on them. No wonder the space people never visit.
Our 6 month-old puppy played the Rach 3 on her squeaky toy last night and then collapsed on the floor in a heap of emotional exhaustion.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, May 23, 2013
Note: Due to the sequester, Cheers and Jeers is being slashed by 40% next week and will not appear Monday or Tuesday. But in a gesture of goodwill, Republicans have authorized it to be published Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I expect you all to write a nice thank-you note to Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader McConnell over the weekend. With little hearts over the i's.
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Whizzing by earth May 31.
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the next
asteroid hurtles towards earth, requiring the military to use its secret laser cannon to vaporize it:
8
Days 'til the
Southern Maine Pride parade in Portland:
23
Amount Yahoo! Paid David Karp for Tumblr Monday:
$1.1 billion
Age of David Karp:
26
Amount Apple avoided paying in taxes last year, thanks to loopholes and offshore havens:
$44 billion
(Source: L.A. Times)
Estimated ratio of cicadas to people at the height of their coming out this summer:
600 to 1
(Source: Time)
Current temperature of the ocean off the coast of southern Maine:
51
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Family Circle magazine started the cookie fight by distributing the chocolate chip cookie recipes of both Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton and asking people to vote on them. ... Hillary Clinton, who is under orders from her husband's handlers' not to say anything controversial or even substantive, has taken on the cookie project with characteristic zeal and intensity. This woman now knows enough about the making and distribution of chocolate chip cookies to become the next Famous Amos. If Clinton loses in November, she can make her cookie business into a Fortune 500 corporation.
---July, 1992
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Morning stretchies...
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CHEERS to previews of special deliveries. Just a heads-up to keep an eye out next Tuesday for the big Netroots for the Troops fundraiser. This is the group that assembles care packages at the Netroots Nation convention for deliery to our troops in remote areas of Afghanistan. (Yeah, we're still over there and will be through next year. I guess my sternly-worded letter didn't reach the President. So it goes.) As Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth wrote last year:
Happy recipients with their care packages
sent from last year's NFTT event.
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Netroots for the Troops is a great way for everyday Americans to make a difference and do our small part to contribute to the effort to serve the men and women who serve us on a daily basis. … Organizations like Netroots for the Troops help us pool our resources to support our military men and women. Thank you for taking the time to contribute to their efforts.
Next month in San Jose the NFTT volunteers will be packaging and shipping care packages overseas, but first they need our community's financial support. So please keep your eyes peeled next week and rec the fundaiser diaries up. Or, if you feel like donating a little something now,
here's the NFTT site. I believe donors will be entered in a raffle to win a surplus World War II battleship. Sweet.
Update: Sorry, I heard wrong. It's a tin of World War II spam.
CHEERS to anticipation. Hooray! Only one more day 'til the start of the Memorial Day Weekend and then Ed Markey will be elected to the Senate and then it'll be July 4th and then back-to-school and then Thanksgiving and then Christmas 'n Hanukkah 'n Festivus and then "Happy New Year 2014!" and then fucking winter and then spring and then only one more day 'til the start of the Memorial Day weekend. Oh, the joy of having been around the block a few times.
JEERS to my-shit-don't-stink journalism. First we have Jon Karl at ABC News commit journalistic malpractice with the Benghazi emails. Now we have Fox news reporter James Rosen, who was tracked by the Justice Department. (Our usual disclaimer applies: this should be investigated and let the chips fall where they may, even if it ends up being Obama's sock drawer.) Why am I not surprised that the sloppiest news network would hire a sloppy journalist? Via Jack Shafer at Reuters:
The network for journalists who
don't mind doing journalism poorly.
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[Rosen] would have been less conspicuous had he walked into the State Department wearing a sandwich board lettered with his intentions to obtain classified information and then blasted an air horn to further alert authorities to his business. For example, one data point investigators used to connect Rosen with his alleged source, Kim, was the visitor’s badge the reporter wore when calling on the State Department offices. According to security records, Rosen and his source left the building within one minute of each other and then returned only several minutes apart inside the half-hour. A few hours later that day (June 11, 2009), Rosen’s secret-busting story was published.
Even teenagers practice better tradecraft than this when deceiving parents.
Shafer later apologized for insulting teenagers.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. Kossack legendmn asks: Is there nothing Mainers won't make out of lobster?
No.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
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JEERS to more weather woes. Not meaning to be Debbie Downer or anything, but Atlantic hurricane season starts in nine days. Forecasters at Accuweather, who seem to be fairly accurate about these things, say we'll likely have to deal with 16 tropical storms, with 8 hurricanes and three landfalls between June and November. And in other news, Pat Robertson's latest conversation with God about the gays, feminists and pagans reveals that we can expect 1-3 meteors, 6-8 frog showers and another season of Celebrity Apprentice. Oh, the humanity.
CHEERS to the end of the road. On May 23, 1934, bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde were caught in a police ambush as they tried to escape in a Ford Fordor Deluxe Sedan near Bienville Parish, Louisiana. Over 130 bullets were pumped into the car, turning it into a piece of metal Swiss cheese:
Figures...one day after the warranty expired.
CHEERS and JEERS to the Boy Scouts of America. If my calendar is correct, I believe today is the day they're voting for the right of openly-gay kids to join the Scouts and then, once they've learned all the important life lessons scouting teaches---kindness, friendliness, cheerfulness, humility, love-thy-neighor-as-thyselfiness---and survival skills they need to earn their Eagle badge, be summarily kicked out of the Scouts as an adult for being a suspected pedophile. Today is also the day the Boy Scouts are introducing their new merit badge: Logic Twisting.
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Five years ago in C&J: May 23, 2008
RIP
JEERS to kicking New England when it's down. Today we're feeling as blue as our six northeastern states. It's bad enough that our beloved senior senator from Massachusetts has a malignant brain tumor. This morning we also learned that---please, it's better if you sit down to hear this---they've stopped making Crown Pilot crackers, which have accompanied steaming bowls of clam and seafood chowder since 17-fricking-92. Forget about Karl Rove, Congressman Conyers---subpoena Nabisco!
CHEERS to a good game badly played. If you look at the Obama/McCain contest like a chess match, King John just lost both his loopy bishops. Yesterday Pastor John Hagee reneged on his endorsement after McCain fired him. And Pastor Rod Parsley got the axe, too. But the maverick says there are no hard feelings, and he hopes that their army of followers will stick around to play an important role in his campaign: pawns.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to holding their crystal balls to the fire. I think it's important to check up on prediction makers, just to make sure that you and I are getting enough bang for our prognostication buck. Last year at this time, professional astrologers from 30 countries staked their reputations on the answers to some big questions:
Meanwhile, I predicted Ted
Cruz would be an asshole in
the Senate. I SO nailed it.
Will President Obama win re-election? Will the world end on Dec. 21, as some say the Mayan calendar predicts? Will the economy ever improve? If you ask the 1,500 astrologers contemplating planetary alignments this week in New Orleans, the answers are yes, no and yes.
So how did it turn out? Well, the economy did improve a bit. But the world did not end on December 21. It ended when Obama won re-election on November 6th, according to the Tea Party calendar. Oh well…two outta three ain't bad.
Have a bold, zesty, nacho-cheese-flavored Thursday! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Pope Francis’ fascination with the devil took on remarkable new twists Tuesday, with a well-known exorcist insisting Francis helped “liberate” a Mexican man possessed by Bill in Portland Maine despite the Vatican’s insistence that no such papal exorcism took place.
---Associated Press
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