From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
C&J Blogathon Day 2: I Love My Haters
First off, thank you to everyone who made a donation---via the one-time option or the monthly subscriptions---to keep C&J a morning (and Friday afternoon/evening) fixture here on the greatest blog in Blogger Land. I'm especially grateful to George Soros, who took time out from his honeymoon (third time's the charm!) to contribute his usual fifty cents and a pack of gum. It all adds up, folks. It all adds up.
A brief confession: over the past year I don’t seem to have pissed off the righty bloggers as much as usual. Part of the reason, I guess, is that I've persuaded so many of my former adversaries to join Team Democrat (or at least Team Independent) that the pool of Billy seethers is much smaller. Another reason, I'm guessing: a bunch of 'em died from old age. Still, I do get taken out to the woodshed every now and again, particularly by one of the most respected conservative minds at the hugely-influential site called Newsbusters. When he gets hold of my ankle and drags me over to his corner of the world, his conservascholars dutifully pile on:
Uh oh. Even the
koala's bored.
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• The Kos is so far left they couldn't find the middle with a GPS…
• … Or, their rears with close approach radar, a guide dog and both hands!
• Whatever that dude is smoking, it must be one powerful hallucinogenic.
• I'm from Portland, Maine and Bill from Portland makes me an angry bruin.
Eh. Not bad, but clearly I'm not bringing out their A-venom. I promise to try harder! If you'd like to help me drive the far-right crazier with jokes a three-year-old understands but they don't, please consider supporting C&J during our begathon blogathon:
One time contribution: click here.
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To send a donation via snail mail, the address is: Bill Harnsberger, 16 Pitt Street, Portland, ME, 04103.
Thanks for pitching in. Together you can help save C&J. And together we can take back an extra 50 seats in the House, 20 seats in the Senate, and a boatload of governorships. And, yeah, I
am smokin' a little something as I write this. It's called a freedom doobie, and I lit it up with a little thing called liberty and justice for all.
No, wait, scratch that. It says Bic.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Note: Due to the sequester, autumn has been shortened to 22 days and 5 hours. Per the House-Senate compromise, the remainder will be filled with a cardboard sky accompanied by a continuous loop of Anita Bryant records. ---U.S. Climate Center
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4 days!!!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the end of Atlantic hurricane season:
67
Days 'til the
Maine Lakes Brew Fest in Casco:
4
Estimate hit to the nation's GDP if a government shutdown runs 3-4 weeks:
1.4 percentage points
(Source: Mark Zandi of Moody's via CNN Money)
Number of the new iPhone models sold over the weekend:
9 million
(Source: CBS Marketwatch)
Rank of Franklin, Massachusetts, Bergenfied, New Jersey and Greenwich, Connecticut among the safest U.S. towns with over 25,000 people:
#1, #2, #3
(Source: Neighborhood Scout via MSNBC)
Age of
Vernett Bader, who cut her housemate with a kitchen knife because he kept playing Eagles songs:
54
Date on which Mississippi became the last state to legalize brewing beer at home:
7/1/2013
(Source: Harper's Index)
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Tuesday Words of Wisdom from the Right-wing Blogosphere:
The Citizens Grand Jury of Ocala, Florida successfully convicted Obama on September 18, 2013. Larry Klayman is calling for all Americans to descend upon Washington, D.C. and force Obama to surrender to citizens of the state of Florida and the United States of America for his crimes.
---Commenter dskcer at World Net Daily
All together now: 1…2…3…
Classy!
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Warning---results from the 2013 Groom Expo in Hershey, PA, are not for the faint of heart…
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Last year's U.N.
silly champ.
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CHEERS to world peace...or a semi-close approximation thereof. If it's autumn in New York, that means it's
General Assembly time! All the leaders of the universe are assembled at the United Nations this week in an annual contest to see which one can be the biggest public nuisance. But this year it might be a little more complicated, seeing as Mahmud Ahmoutofoffice and Hugo Chavez are definite no-shows. (President Obama may actually do a meet 'n greet with the new Iran guy over coffee and freedom biscuits.) I doubt it'll be last year's winner, Benjamin Netanyahu, who famously drew a red line on a cartoon bomb straight out of Wile E. Coyote's Acme catalog. He did himself no favors with that stunt. But when all is said and done, a gay old time will be had by all (yes, even you, Russia). At the end of the session, the General Assembly will honor the memory of Muammar Gadaffi with a moment of silence lasting zero seconds.
SCHNAPPS UND STRUDEL to The Merkelator. Oh, those Germans. So efficient with their elections, starting with the fact that they hold 'em on a weekend. I never hear of German politicians suppressing the vote or making it more difficult, do you? Veeeeeddy interesting. Anyway, here's what happened:
Merkel ran on a platform
of stay-the-course and beer.
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Chancellor Angela Merkel won a stunning victory in Germany's elections, but she still faces the delicate work of forming a coalition government. She and top party officials were meeting Monday to talk strategy about reaching out to the center-left rivals they need to form a government. Merkel looks likely to end up leading either a "grand coalition" government with the center-left Social Democrats of defeated challenger Peer Steinbrueck---reviving the alliance that ran Germany in her first term---or, less likely, with the environmentalist Greens.
"We have two possibilities: the Social Democrats or the Greens," Volker Kauder, the leader of her party's parliamentary group, told ARD public Television.
Wow. She has
two choices for creating a functional, efficient government. Or it's known over here: two more than we do.
JEERS to non-specificity. The idea was noble but flawed: on September 24, 1789, Congress passed the Judiciary Act that provided for an Attorney General and a Supreme Court. Oh, where we'd be today if they hadn't forgotten to add the crucial adjective: "competent."
CHEERS to the final countdown. The Obamacare exchanges go into effect one week from today. I'll be one of the millions looking at the exchanges in anticipation of getting covered for the first time in five years. If this is typical of the experience, I say ya-frickin'-hoo…
True Fact: Obamacare also
covers paranoia management..
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Dean Dodson, an uninsured computer repairman in Baltimore, was excited to learn the cost of his health insurance under Obamacare. … "Oh man, I'm elated, it's like they took something off my shoulders, you know?" he says.
Dodson estimates he will pay around $285 a month, and at that price, he says, he can't wait to sign up. "I can afford that---I mean, that's wonderful, man," he says, with relief in his voice. "I mean, I'm 59 years old. Sooner or later, something is going to happen to me. In Maryland, Dodson will get to choose from among six different insurance companies---typical for most states nationwide. Most companies also offer multiple policies, ranked in price from bronze, being the cheapest, up through silver, gold and platinum, the most expensive.
Sounds simple enough: if it's this easy to get decent health insurance for a decent price, the Republican obstructionists are gonna suffer heart palpitations and severe gastric distress. Both, incidentally, covered under Obamacare.
JEERS to the evil that people do. So here's what we know about the terrorist attack on that mall in Kenya: using a warped religious view as a convenient playbook, a bunch of terrorists (linked to the ubiquitous al Qaeda, naturally) attacked a mall, killing 60+ people and injuring three times that many. Nothing was achieved but death and destruction. And high above the earth the aliens passed by, praying to Overlord Arbsla3rg that their cloaking devices wouldn’t crap out before they reached the next galaxy.
CHEERS to the Environment President. On this date in 1906, Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill designating Devils Tower---that kewl rock formation in Wyoming---as the country's first National Monument. Some people call it America's national nipple:
The natural gas companies call it fracking paradise.
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Five years ago in C&J: September 24, 2008
JEERS to bringing a knife to a gunfight. Ed Rollins, a former Reagan guy and also former Huckabee guy, writes this elitist hackery at CNN.com as if he were Patrick frickin' Henry:
"Sen. Joe Biden, said rich Americans should be patriotic and pay more taxes. A more idiotic statement has never been uttered!"
Oh, Ed, you silly goose---someone a little more business-savvy than you begs to differ:
"The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent."
And who uttered that idiotic statement? Warren Buffett. Which I guess now makes the most idiotic statement ever uttered, "A more idiotic statement has never been uttered!" Idiot.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the day the Straight Talk Express jumped the tracks. If today isn’t a national holiday, it darn well should be. Because what happened on Seoptember 24, 2008 has become the stuff of legend on the American political absurdity calendar. That was the day when John McCain proved he couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time when he "suspended" his campaign so he could ride to Washington on a white stallion and save the planet from economic collapse. He, of course, accomplished nothing except making a token appearance at the White House for PR purposes---a display of pandering that was dismissed as a poorly-conceived stunt. But that quickly faded into the background when, with Keith Olbermann sitting beside him as a witness to political history in the making, David Letterman delivered the coup de grâce after catching McCain chit-chatting on the CBS Evening News set with Katie Couric: "Hey John, I got a question! Ya need a ride to the airport?"
Today Barack Obama is in the Oval Office, and McCain is just another obstructionist who knows he'll always have gold-plated government health care, a generous pension, and an open invitation to appear on any of the Sunday morning shows whenever he feels like it. As always: excellent news in Maverick Land.
Have a nice Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"Most Americans these days are simply ignoring Bill in Portland Maine. And they should,"
---Fmr. Sen. Judd Gregg
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