From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
In Which I Hold A Mirror Up To Your Brain
The third quarter of 2013 has officially been squished like a junebug, and that means it's C&J number-crunching time. Every few months we post the results of some past C&J polls (no relation to the PPP polls commissioned by Kos) to give you a snapshot of our collective neural activity which, if we could bottle it, would probably violate several federal, state and local bottling laws. These are from July through September, and the total number of votes each poll received is in parentheses:
• 59 percent of you expected that Muhammad Morsi would not stay in power in Egypt despite the protest movement against him. 29 percent thought he would. (3,756)
• 92 percent support the movement to restore and update the Glass-Steagall Act to help prevent "Too Big to Fail" from happening again. (4,956)
• Of the Obama appointees confirmed in July, 52 percent of you said you'd be watching Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head Richard Cordray the closest. EPA administrator Gina McCarthy came in second at 24 percent. (2,976)
Simba voted to replace
Boehner with a banana.
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• 83 percent believe that if Republicans successfully shut down the government over Obamacare, it'll be good for Democrats in the 2014 midterm elections (4,806); 97 percent believe that Republicans are freaking out over the Affordable Care Act's implementation because "they fear it's going to be a success." (4,067)
• On August 1, you said that Wisconsin's Scott Walker was the worst governor in America (27%), followed by Texas' Rick Perry (22%) and Florida's Rick Scott (12%). (5,191)
• 77 percent think NBC should "take extra steps to point out and condemn Russia's anti-human-rights laws during their coverage of the winter Olympic Games in Sochi" (3,340); 88 percent think the International Olympic Committee is acting too timidly in response to those laws. (3,161)
• 81 percent thought the 35-year sentence handed down to Pfc. Bradley, now Chelsea, Manning was too harsh. (4,650)
• 40 percent of you are "excited" about the ACA exchanges going online, while 51 percent are "cautiously optimistic." (4,225)
• 73 percent give oil and gas companies an 'F' grade for their performance in cleaning up after well/pipeline disasters. (3,505)
As always, thanks for participating in our C&J polls. Every time you push that little Vote button, an angel gets an oatmeal-raisin cookie, and ain't that just the
sweetest thing.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, September 30, 2013
Note: For your convenience, today's C&J has been pre-moistened.
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The Little Red Lighthouse
is Jeffrey's Hook in NYC.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the ACA exchanges go live:
1!!!
Days 'til the 21st annual
Little Red Lighthouse Festival under the George Washington Bridge:
12
Number of people the government expects to sign up during the first year the Affordable Care Act exchanges are live:
7 million
Number of languages in which the government's ACA helpline (1-800-318-2596) is available 24 hours a day:
150
(Source:
The Maine Sunday Telegram)
Number of new HIV cases in 2001:
3.4 million
Number of new HIV cases last year:
2.3 million
(Source: U.N. HIV Progress Report)
Total U.S. household net worth in late 2008 and today, respectively:
$57.2 trillion / $74.8 trillion
(Source: Federal Reserve)
Totally Random NFL Score
New England Patriots 30 Atlanta Falcons 23
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Puppy Pic of the Day: For Apollo, things are looking up…
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CHEERS to Cruz control. For those of you who are sick of that too-clever-for-his-own-good meathead senator, please enjoy this Ted-free moment, courtesy of Cheers and Jeers and something called a "google":
You're welcome.
JEERS to homegrown extremism. You don’t need to detonate bombs or fly planes into buildings to terrorize a nation for the sake of ideological purity. In this country, D.C. Republicans are acting like terrorists as they scare the piss out of We The People with their blind willingness to tear our economy down if they don’t get Obamacare to go away. It used to be heresy to suggest something like that. But when Portland's prim and proper newspaper the Maine Sunday Telegram frames it that way, it gives you pause:
The terrorists' cave.
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The Affordable Care Act was a major issue in the last election, and had the Republicans won the White House and a majority of the Senate, it would probably have been repealed by now. But that's not what happened.
Now they are holding the economy hostage while they try to achieve through undemocratic means what they failed to do with the ballot. They should not be allowed to win. The U.S. government should not negotiate with terrorists, even when the terrorists are in the U.S. government.
There's only one place where the tea party caucus deserves to show their faces these days: tacked to the wall in your local post office.
CHEERS to the Mustache of Independence. Anyone who thought Maine Republican Senator Olympia Snowe's replacement, independent Angus King, would be a mealy-mouthed, get-along-at-all-costs thorn in the left's side will be heartened to read that he's pissed at one particular side for the crap they're pulling. Doesn't take much to guess which side (hint: it rhymes with "Me scrub, lick can"):
Don't let the grin fool
ya. He's mighty pissed.
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[T]here is a pernicious inner logic to what these characters are doing. They hate government. They don’t want government to work. They don’t believe government can or should work. Crashing the economy, crashing the government, is a kind of weird success and it’s very hard to reach agreement with people who don’t share a kind of basic appreciation of the institution. This is dangerous. We’ve never been here before.
And what of our other senator, Republican Susan Collins? She tiptoed into the maelstrom yesterday,
saying, "I disagree with the strategy of linking Obamacare with the continuing functioning of government---a strategy that cannot possibly work." Meanwhile, our two Congresscritters, Pingree and Michaud, are both reliable Democrats. So this morning our bumper sticker slogan up here reads: MAINE IS SANE. (Disclaimer: Governor not included.)
CHEERS to passing gas. On September 30, 1846, William Morton---a Boston dentist---used ether as an anesthetic for the first time. Amazingly, he had better luck the next day when he used it on the patient.
JEERS to sore winners. A day after his historic "pleasant phone chat" with President Obama, new Iranian President Hassan Rouhani flew back to his country and immediately found himself on the receiving end of an airborne shoe. Said Rouhani after the incident: "I had no idea John McCain could throw that far."
JEERS to the ultimate sentence. On September 30, 1630 the first execution in the New Land happened when pilgrim John Billington was hanged in Plymouth, Massachusetts. In celebration of the event, all state offices will be closed today in Texas.
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Six years ago in C&J: September 30, 2007
My favorite part is singing
Islamofascism Week carols.
JEERS to the yellow-pant-stain wing of the Republican party. Mark it on your calendar, kids: October 22 is the start of
Islamofascist Awareness Week!! Ann Coulter will be there, along with Sean Hannity, Rick Santorum (yeah, he's still around) and
so much more! It's an opportunity for a bunch of narrow-minded, absolutist, trigger-happy, control-freak religious conservatives bent on world domination to protest the shameful behavior of a bunch of narrow-minded, absolutist, trigger-happy, control-freak religious conservatives bent on world domination. You bring the beer, they supply the crazy.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to knowing when to hold your fire. I read something particularly odious by National Review columnist and "Liberal Fascism" author Jonah Goldberg over the weekend, and I was planning on calling him out and proving my intellectual superiority as I picked his column clean without breaking a liberal fascist sweat. When I went to look it up online, though, I was sorry to read that the Goldberg family dog Cosmo ("How many dogs can boast to having both chased wild caribou in the Canadian Rockies and to having peed in Christopher Hitchens’s home?") just died. So it can wait. Instead I'll go skritch my woozle for the thousandth time today instead. (Thanks for skimping on the canine lifespan, God. Ya big jerk.)
Have a tolerable Monday. Sorry, but I won’t be able to publish another column until "next month" ha ha ha ha. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"In all of my 35-40 years of public life in Wyoming, I've never been called one particularly offensive name---and that is, Bill in Portland Maine."
---Alan Simpson
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