From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Wednesday + Haiku = Wedhaineskuday! (Look it up.)
Bardarbunga, dude
Iceland lava fountains dance
Next time: chocolate
It threatens us all
Oceans cannot protect us
ISIS? No. Tan Suit
Cantor lands on feet
Ch'ching! Cushy boutique gig
One-percent fluffing
Rand Paul spots DREAMers
Poof! Gone in a cloud of dust
Talk to the burger
Mom sips on cocktail
Bless this sunny happy morn!
School bus pulls away
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, September 3, 2014
LAST CALL! New England Kossack Meetup Alert
This Saturday, September 6th, Brillig and Mik are hosting our fall Kossack potluck meetup. They're in the north-of-Boston area, and for details check out nhox42's post here. For more info and to RSVP, email him at nhox42 [at] gmail.com. So far we expect to have a group of 15 there. We hope you can make it sweet sixteen.
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2 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til primary elections in NY, DE, NH, MA and RI:
6
Days 'til Maine's
Eastport Pirate Festival:
2
Portion of military families who rely on food banks and meal service programs in order to have enough to eat:
1/4
(Source:
USA Today)
Amount generated last year from a little-known Obamacare tax on the salaries of top health insurance executives:
$72 million
(
brainwrap)
Percent of American workers who say they're happy at
their job:
14%
(Source:
The Kansas City Star)
Time it takes a gecko to run 20 body lengths:
1 second
Number of people who have had lifetime contracts with NBC:
2 (Bob Hope, Don Pardo)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 188 (including 5 nuclear nations and 1 Big Gay Society-destroying Sledgehammer). Soul Protection Factor 16 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Lemonade stand = Woozle training for wounded vet
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With a hailstorm of political ads
ramping up, this will be the most
often used button in September.
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CHEERS to September! Congress minus Eric Cantor straggles back to work after five weeks off. (I guess that threat of imminent invasion by ISIS wasn't so imminent after all, or they would've returned sooner to deal with it instead of just showboating on the Sunday morning gabfests.) The kids are back in school. 9/11 turns thirteen and the evildoers have long been brought to justice except for the old #2 guy but the best he can do these days is fry-vat changer at the Kabul McDonald's. Heavy New York drama wraps up the primary season next week. Shoppers jam stores looking for the perfect Autumnal Equinox, Rosh Hashanah and Mexican Independence Day gifts. ("Another tie? You shouldn’t have.") New England gets insanely beautiful as summer turns to fall. Hurricanes may become petty and vindictive, but Republicans say they're prepared to build alligator-infested moats around them. And I feel confident enough to make the following prediction: after days of heated debate, the House votes along party lines to pass a constitutional amendment banning tan suits on Democratic presidents. For the good of the republic, of course.
CHEERS to General Barack "Blood 'n Guts" Obama. Last night the president strapped on Jetpack One and zipped off to the Baltics---specifically Estonia, which I guess you'd call "a Baltic"---where he plans to cast a steely-eyed gaze from Vladimir Putin's back yard and maybe hock a few freedom loogies. Here are highlights of today's visit:
Estonia is here somewhere.
> Bilateral meeting with President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia.
> Bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Taavi Roives of Estonia.
> Meeting with President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia, President Andris Berzins of Latvia, and President Dalia Grybauskaite of Lithuania.
> Speech at the Nordea Concert Hall.
Then it's off to England, where he'll continue to undo the damage caused by Mitt Romney at the 2012 Olympics. Good luck with that.
Stupid-ass sign. American
voters are squeaky clean.
CHEERS to the integrity of the American voter. Republicans can shout
"VOTER FRAUD!" all they want. But they'll just keep running into that pesky brick wall
called reality:
So far, I’ve found about 31 different incidents (some of which involve multiple ballots) since 2000, anywhere in the country. … To put this in perspective, the 31 incidents below come in the context of general, primary, special, and municipal elections from 2000 through 2014. In general and primary elections alone, more than 1 billion ballots were cast in that period.
But in Republican Land, the only way to preserve the integrity of our voting system that works like a well-oiled machine that was among the first well-oiled machines to be inducted into the Well-oiled Machine Hall of Fame is to throw sand in the gears. Great. I think they're well-deserving of a new slogan: "The NEW Republican Party: We're Here to Not Help."
CHEERS to the happiest ending...evuh! On September 3, 1783, our War of Independence ended when a treaty was signed by Great Britain and the United States:
Actual writing instruments
used to sign the Paris Treaty.
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It was signed in Paris by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay. Under the terms of the treaty, Britain recognized the independent nation of the United States of America. Britain agreed to remove all of its troops from the new nation. The treaty also set new borders for the United States, including all land from the Great Lakes on the north to Florida on the south, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. ... The United States also agreed not to persecute loyalists still in America and allow those that left America to return.
Afterward, the founding fathers got together in a circle, held hands, and
recited the Pledge of Allegiance. And then Jesus rode in on a dinosaur with news he had just finished digging the Grand Canyon. The things you learn on Conservapedia...
JEERS to hot-headed disasters. You've no doubt heard about the entity with a big chasm for a mouth that's got people angry and upset. Dirty, unpredictable, destructive and smelly. Spewing foul, toxic pollution day after day. Makes a terrible noise that scares the bejesus out of normal people. Viewed by many with all the morbid fascination of a car crash or a train wreck. But enough about Ted Nugent, have you heard about the Iceland volcano? Helluva thing.
[Insert political metaphor here]
CHEERS to pigskin fever. With NFL concussion season a little over 24 hours from getting underway, it's worth noting that on this date in 1895, the first professional football game was played. The Latrobe (PA) YMCA defeated the Jeannette Athletic Club 12-0. Scandal erupted when halftime entertainer John Phillip Sousa---in the first documented "wardrobe malfunction"---reached down and "accidentally" tore off a piece of a piccolo player's stocking to reveal an exposed ankle. Thank god she was wearing a "fibula medallion" or there woulda been a riot.
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Five years ago in C&J: September 3, 2009
JEERS to the "other war." Remember Afghanistan? The country we invaded in 2002 to kick out the Taliban and al Qaeda? The one that seemed worth fighting, but got put on the back burner because of Iraq and it went to hell in a poppyseed-filled handbasket? Yeah, that Afghanistan. Here's the latest on that: Death, destruction, corruption, an insurgent enemy that's mastering the game of Whack-A-Mole, and American generals who want to double down and keep the VA hospitals busy. But at least the daytime highs are now only in the 80s. So don't take those ribbon magnets off your cars just yet, America---we still need you to do your patriotic duty by giving a few seconds of cursory thought to our unwinnable war every few days or so! Together we can DO IT! [9/3/14 Update: Five years later, still there. Join us in 2019 for our next update.]
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And just one more…
JEERS to weapons of search engine destruction. This is what happens when we let sharks just swim willy-nilly in the oceans that God gave humans for yachting and washing our clothes in. Google says it's been wrapping its trans-Pacific cables in Kevlar so sharks won't bite 'em:
If a shark ever masters a
laser, Google is screwed.
[S]harks have long been a fiber cable's foe: In 1987, The New York Times wrote that sharks showed "an inexplicable taste" for the cables, which were new at the time. Earlier this week, Google announced it would be teaming up with five Asian telecom companies to fund a $300 million underwater cable network connecting the U.S. to Japan to ensure a super-fast connection for broadband and mobile content.
And in related news, Democrats in Congress have hired Google to wrap their ankles with Kevlar to protect themselves from Republicans.
Have a nice Wednesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
The whole Cheers and Jeers franchise began as a social experiment. They wanted to see what would happen if people from radically different socio-economic backgrounds, of various ages and of distinctly different race and sexual orientation were denied access to any outside influences and thrown together in a kiddie pool for an extended period. I will tell you what happens. PURE HELL. ABSOLUTE TORTURE. MAYHEM.
---Leslie Jordan
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