From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE
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Attention billionaires!
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Let the socialist, entitlement-obsessed Easter Bunny re-distribute his silly eggs among the moocher class. With the Onepercenter Bunny in your corner, you'll be saying: "Hippity Hoppity ka-ching ka-ching ka-ching I just bought out the entire egg industry and got Congress to repeal all the egg industry safety laws!"
To contact the Onepercenter Bunny, just make an outrageous statement that gets splashed across the media about how billionaires in America are the real victims of oppression. We'll be in touch.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, April 17, 2014
Note: Yes! There will be a Daily Kos/C&J "eat 'n greet" meetup at the Netroots Nation convention in Detroit. The date is Wednesday, July 16 and we'd love to see you there. If you're planning on attending, please send an email to Navajo by clicking on this link, so we can get a head count started. We'll send out details as the event shapes up. We hope to see you there!
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By the Numbers:
7 days!!!
Days 'til the
White House Easter Egg Roll:
4
Days 'til the
Mid West Music Festival in Winona, Minnesota:
7
Favorability among Mainers of Maine Teapublican Gov. Paul LePage:
45%
Favorability of LePage's Democratic challenger, Rep. Mike Michaud:
56%
(Source:
Pan-Atlantic-SMS poll of 400 likely voters)
Current overall inflation rate for 2014, half a point lower than the Federal Reserve's target:
1.5%
Number of paintings Bob Ross painted on his PBS show:
381
Percent of them that featured at least two "happy trees":
85%
(Source:
FiveThirtyEight)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Never let it never be said our president does not provide laughs, even as we wobble on the rim of war in the Middle East. Look what a good time Vladimir Putin had with him. Bush, responding to questions from the international press corps on his conversation with Putin the previous evening, said, "I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq, where there is a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country, you know, would hope that Russia would do the same thing."
Putin, with a fairly straight face, replied, "We certainly would not like to have the same kind of democracy they have in Iraq, I'll tell you that quite honestly." Don't you hate it when the international press corps laughs at what a stoop Bush is? Bush, who fancies himself something of a fast-reply artist, said, "Just wait." Heh, heh.
---July, 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Another day, another puppy rescued from a storm pipe…
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CHEERS to order in the court: Here We Go Again edition. More sunlight will be splashed on the lame arguments against marriage equality today. We're looking forward to the 10th Circuit's marriage-equality hearing (Bishop v. Smith) before a three-judge panel in Oklafreakinhoma. Says the Human Rights Campaign:
And Arkansas!
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[T]he lawsuit [is] challenging Oklahoma’s ban on marriage rights for same-sex couples. The same three-judge panel that heard argument in Utah’s Kitchen v. Herbert last week will hear the Oklahoma case. Bishop was filed on behalf of two lesbian couples seeking equal protection in the state. U.S. District Judge Terence Kern determined in January that Oklahoma's voter-approved ban on marriages for same-sex couples violated the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause.
The same day, a U.S. District Judge in Arkansas will hear a challenge to that state’s marriage law in the case Wright v. Arkansas.
In terms of the timing for gay couples in those states who want to tie the knot: too soon to send out the invitations, but not too soon to register at Bed, Bath & Beyond.
CHEERS and JEERS to naval gazing. Attention evildoers of the world: a brand-new Zumwalt-class DDG-1000-Hut-Hut destroyer was christened just up the road over the weekend. It's still sitting up here, which means this would be a really bad time for you to think about invading Maine:
Looks like a cross between
a Civil War ironclad and a
James Bond villain's evil boat.
The Zumwalt-class DDG-1000 ship is the largest destroyer ever built for the Navy, at 15,000 tons based on the weight of the water it displaces. The more traditional destroyers built at BIW are about 500 feet long and have a displacement weight of 8,300 tons. …
The Zumwalt will have the missile systems featured on all guided-missile destroyers. It will also have two high-volume, 155 mm “advanced gun systems” capable of shooting GPS-guided ammunition at targets more than 60 miles away.
The cost to you, dear taxpayer: $3.3 billion. But lest you think there was no fiscal discipline involved, consider this: they drew the line at gyroscope-controlled cupholders.
CHEERS to sweet marital bliss. According to researchers at Ohio State University (who swear they weren't wearing beer hats at the time), a candy bar can "stave off spousal anger." They say the key is throwing it hard enough to knock 'em out before their hands reach your throat.
JEERS to today's edition of "Oh, CNN, What Happened to You?" Caught by a viewer who was apparently so naughty that his punishment was to watch CNN:
Tomorrow: Don Lemon on the sudden and "freaky" disappearance of the
Hindenburg.
CHEERS to horse power. You know what officially turns 50 today? The original pony car, the Ford Mustang:
As a stunt, Ford chopped up a
Mustang and reassembled it at
the top of the Empire State Bldg.
Making its debut at the New York World’s Fair, the first Ford Mustang proved to be one of the industry’s biggest hits ever, quickly requiring the automaker to fire up three assembly plants---two more than planned---to meet soaring demand. Interest was so intense, then-Ford President Lee Iacocca and Mustang landed on the covers of both Time and Newsweek, a unique coup.
Yet, the Mustang almost didn’t happen. The car was rushed to market only after another major Ford product program collapsed. … Ford’s designers and engineers worked feverishly to pull the project together in barely two years, about half the time it normally took to develop a new car from the ground up. But the first production models were already in dealer showrooms in time for the World’s Fair debut April 17, 1964.
Happy anniversary, Mustang fans. But don’t get cocky and challenge my Metro bus to a game of chicken. The driver dangles the losers' hood ornaments from his mirror.
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Five years ago in C&J: April 17, 2009
JEERS to burying the evidence. Four shocking Bush administration torture memos were released yesterday by the Obama administration. A bigger bombshell could not have been dropped, and yet in today's USA Today the story appears on page A6, and in the Portland Press Herald it shows up on page A9. (I'm curious to know where your local paper placed the story.) You'd be rather hard-pressed to find a link at the major news sites. And most people have greeted the story (if they've read about it at all) with a yawn. Mommy, what's wrong with us? [4/17/14 Update: Coming soon---the Senate investigation report on the Bush/Cheney-authorized CIA torture program. We hear it's so explosive it may actually make page A3 or A4 this time.]
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And just one more…
Fact: Atrios can only be
seen in infrared light.
(No one knows why.)
CHEERS to the Baby Blue Cherub. Everybody stop by and say "Heh indeedy" to Atrios (aka millstone-around-Philadelphia's-neck Duncan Black) on this, the
twelfth anniversary of
his Eschaton blog. Few dirty fucking hippies can reduce the traditional media and punditry's wankery to one or two lines of droll snark like this communist peacenik can. He was especially ahead of the curve on the economic meltdown and the Iraq debacle, and he's been going after the austeritymongers with both rhetorical barrels. And besides that, his is a classic, no-nonsense blog that looks the same as it did a dozen years ago---and he better not change it or there'll be riots in the street. By the way, this was
the moment on April 17, 2002 when he flicked the lights on for the first time:
Is this thing on?
22:13 0 Comments
Wow. Blogging past his bedtime. Tsk tsk.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
“Lord, fill Bill in Portland Maine's mouth with worthwhile stuff, and nudge him when he's said enough.” [Laughter.] The Almighty is nudging him."
---President Obama
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