From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Oh! More Things I Know:
> The Netroots Nation convention starts in 105 days.
> Republicans can never come up with a Plan B to Obamacare because they can never get past the part where they have to call it "Plan B."
> I demand a refund of all the tax dollars spent in my name on torture. Or Bush and Cheney in prison. I'm flexible.
> If you pull Sheldon Adelson's finger, his head lights up and a pile of quarters falls out of his ass.
> Tennessee Senator Bob Corker's self-described "one thousand percent accurate" February promise that Chattanooga would get a new VW assembly line if workers voted against formation of a union was one thousand percent bullshit.
Advertisement
Strong shirtless leadership
Draft Putin 2016! Sign the petition!
Paid for by the Republican National Committee
> I'm learning a lot from watching Cosmos and #1 is I really want Neil deGrassi Tyson's spaceship.
> Republicans will have to pry my Obamacare from my cold dead hands, which won't get cold or dead for a long time thanks to Obamacare.
> One pizza place I never order from is the one across the street that the fire department keeps getting called to.
> The Family Research Grifter Council. Focus on the Family Griftee. The American Family Grifter Association. Americans Grifters for Prosperity. The Heritage Grifter Foundation. There, that looks better. I'm a stickler for accuracy.
> Ted Cruz still hasn't renounced his socialist Canadian citizenship.
Shameful, really. Has he no sense of decency, at long last?
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, April 3, 2014
Note: C&J's designated NSA tracker Bart reminds you to speak strongly and clearly when you engage in conversation, and proof-read your written electronic communications carefully to remove ambiguities. Together, we can make a difference, he says through the lamp on my desk. ---Mgt.
-
Fiftee for daze!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Passover:
12
Days 'til the
National Spelling Bee:
54
Amount in taxes that Caterpillar, Inc. has legally dodged over the last decade by shifting profits to a swiss company it set up:
$2.4 billion
Percent chance that Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said Caterpillar deserves an award for such creative tax dodging:
100%
(Source: AP)
Portion of American LGBT adults who "experienced a time in the last year where they did not have enough money to feed themselves
or their family," compared with 16 percent of all Americans:
29%
(Source: Williams Institute study)
Year-over-year increase in auto sales in March:
5.7%
Year that Peeps were introduced nationally:
1958
-
Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
The shame for journalism is that it has always been so easy to expose those few "scientific" voices claiming there is nothing to global warming. When the money for "scientific research" on such a subject comes from oil companies, skepticism is required.
Instead, many "journalists" let the bullies on the right cow us with the "liberal media" nonsense and reported there was "a debate" over global warming. There was no debate. The only question is how fast it's happening. And the answer that keeps coming up is "faster than we thought. And still faster."
---April, 2006
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Puppies…stuffed animals…nappytime...resistance is futile…
-
"Splendid decision!"
CHEERS to a vigorou$ defen$e of free $peech. In a decision being called "Citizens United II," yesterday
the Supreme Court ruled that, while caps on donations to political candidates can stand, there's no total cap that needs to be observed anymore. That means I can finally---
finally---donate the maximum to every Democratic candidate running this fall. I figure the total will come to around ten million dollars, and I couldn't be happier to support my party's nominees as an average ordinary citizen with an equal voice in the political process. All I need now is a list of names, their campaign-donation web pages…and ten million dollars.
JEERS to déjà vu all over again. And once more, the world looks at the United States and wonders what the hell is wrong with us. There have now been so many mass shootings between our shores that now we're starting to repeat locations:
2009 Fort Hood vigil. There
will be another one in 2014.
Fort Hood officials confirm there has been a shooting at Army post, and that there have been injuries. … U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin and chairman of House Homeland Security Committee, said numerous sources have told him that four people are dead in the Fort Hood shooting, including the shooter, reports our Christy Hoppe. … Fort Hood is the scene of the deadliest attack on a U.S. military installation in history. In 2009, Maj. Nidal Hissan killed 13 people and wounded 32.
Time to edit the signs at our border crossings again: "This country has gone
SEVEN ZERO months without a senseless multiple-homicide gun massacre. Sure wish the Founding Fathers had gone with "keep and bear pea shooters" in that fucking Second Amendment. (Yeah, trolls, you can quote me on that as long as you add a little extended-middle-finger icon at the end.)
P.S. Our track record on gun violence is so bizarre that the British press creates "interactive graphics" tracking our mass shootings. What a freakin' embarrassment.
CHEERS to deliverin' the goods. On April 3, 1948, Harry Truman signed The Marshall Plan, which gave $5 billion (and, later, another $7 billion) in aid to sixteen European countries so they could rebuild in the wake of World War II. The result:
"Ink's dry. Let's go save Europe."
Marshall Plan aid allowed the nations of Western Europe to relax austerity measures and rationing, reducing discontent and bringing political stability.
The communist influence on Western Europe was greatly reduced, and throughout the region communist parties faded in popularity in the years after the Marshall Plan
Today Europe is rebuilding in the wake of
World War III: Bankster Edition by imposing austerity measures and rationing, increasing discontent and bringing political instability. That's what I love most about history: the learning from it part.
JEERS to divine digs. The Catholic Archbishop of Atlanta dreamt up, planned, approved, and oversaw the construction of, and move into, an opulent $2.2 million mansion. It was the life, I tell ya. The life! And then Pope Fraaaaaancis went all humility on the world's ass, so now Wilton Gregory is facing the wrath of his flock. And he's all like, "It was an accident! Honest! The devil made me do it!" Archbishop Gregory now says he's real sorry about acting more like a Roman emperor than a humble caregiver to the poor and downtrodden. He plans to take immediate action to make all this disappear. Starting with a $2.2 million 30-foot-high wall.
JEERS to another edition of Thanks For Not Posting A Link To That, Bill! From Pittsburgh's Action News 4:
A 21-year-old man is recovering after getting a chainsaw lodged in his neck during a tree-trimming accident. … Valentine told Pittsburgh's Action News 4 the chainsaw "just kicked out" on him while he was working. "I shut the saw off and then I saw blood and was just like, 'Oh my gosh,'" he said.
This has been another edition of
Thanks For Not Posting A Link To That, Bill!
CHEERS to Java Jim. On this date in 1829, James Carrington of Connecticut created the first coffee mill, a towering structure where an army of starving orphans were forced to grind the beans by beating them with rocks 16 hours a day while chained to chairs in hot, cramped, windowless rooms. No, wait, sorry, that was Newt Gingrich's idea. Carrington patented a wooden box with a crank on top and a little drawer at the bottom. Or, as Gingrich calls it: "No fun at all."
-
Five years ago in C&J: April 3, 2009
Five years and two slot changes
later, Ed is still gettin' down to work.
-
CHEERS to the new arrival. The suits at MSNBC may have called off their search for a 10pm host (apparently the Countdown reruns rake in a lot of dough), but they've shaken things up in the 6 O'clock slot. Last night Keith Olbermann broke the news that radio powerhouse Ed Schultz will replace David Shuster
starting Monday. It'll be refreshing having a host---and a scrappy one at that---who proudly says he's pro-union and doesn't shrink from the word "liberal." We hope that, like Rachel Maddow, he'll bring on some fresh faces to spar with rather than the same old talking heads. But the name
The Ed Show sounds too generic. My suggestion, with a hat tip
to Hogan's Heroes:
"Schuuuuultz!!!"
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to customer service par excellence. Got this important message in my inbox, and I think this applies to everybody so I'm copying and pasting it here so you can benefit from it, too:
From Mail Team?
Yay! I got mail!
Hi User,
Up d a t e!
We noticed a lo-gin attempt to your Yahoo account (temps for you) from an unrecognized device on Mon Mar 31, 2014 6:14 PM WAT from Mexico.
Was this you? If so, you need to pass Yahoo second sign-in verification or sign in from your regularly used device.
If this wasn't you, please follow the links below to keep your Yahoo account safe:
Click Here
Sincerely,
Yahoo! Member Services.
The link's url is "igkgf.bugs3." I can't wait to click on it after lunch and make my account secure again. Ahhh…this is gonna be a great day, I can just feel it.
Have a nice Thursday. It's Jane Goodall's 80th birthday so go bananas! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
The Library of Congress has added another 25 works to its National Recording Registry, a list of tunes that range from 1890s street singer George Washington Johnson’s “The Laughing Song” to the Everly Brothers’ “Cathy’s Clown” to Bill in Portland Maine's "Belching the Alphabet."
---Variety.
-