From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Oh! More Things I Know:
> The message voters sent during the midterm elections was clear: we have had enough of those gosh darned Democrats and their gosh darned recovery!
> Among weird presidential campaigns, the one where the leading Republican nominee has to pretend his ex-president big brother doesn't exist is going to rank up there as…well, pretty weird.
> So far in the new year I've been really good at writing 2014 instead of 2014.
Another thing I know: this Charlie Hebdo tribute
by French artist Lucille Clerc rocks.
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> A thought that brings me comfort in these dark times is Michele Bachmann is no longer on the Intelligence Committee. Or in Congress.
> During his first term, Maine Governor Paul LePage ran on tax cuts for the rich and welfare cuts for the poor. He got both. Now he plans to enact an exciting new agenda for his second term: tax cuts for the rich and welfare cuts for the poor.
> If you're going to straddle both lanes, driver, you should remove the "COEXIST" sticker from your bumper.
> Democrats obstruct Republican policy ideas because facts show they don't work. Republicans obstruct Democratic policy ideas because facts show they do.
> For six years in a row, Vice President Joe Biden has completely failed to blow the cover of a CIA operative or unload a couple barrels of birdshot into a lawyer's face.
> The #1 phrase of 2015 will be, as usual: "I swear this is not from The Onion."
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, January 8, 2015
Note: The annual C&J flagpole-tasting competition starts this afternoon at 1pm in front of City Hall. If you show up and there's no one there, please start without us and we'll, uh, catch up. ---Mgt., which is totally not snickering
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23 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til you can start filing your 2014 tax returns:
12
Days 'til the
Gasparilla Pirate Festival in Tampa:
23
Amount by which the world's 400 richest people increased their net worth in 2014:
$92 billion
(Source: Bloomberg News)
Increase in exports of prepared/preserved lobsters from Maine between 2007 and 2013:
3,012%
(Source:
The Portland Press Herald)
Average reduction in sleep time per night among 4th and 7th graders who keep a smartphone in their bedroom:
21 minutes
(Source: LA Times)
Length of time air passengers had to wait on Etihad Airways flight 183 in Abu Dhabi before it took off for San Francisco:
12 hours
Total length of the trip, including the delays:
28 hours
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Good grief, the tree's not down yet, the bills aren't due and the diet doesn't start until the bowl games are over, so what's with the unseemly haste? Not even time to take a deep breath here in 2004, and already we're like the white rabbit---behind, breathless and late.
Among the items that got buried in the holiday rush were three court of appeals decisions that go against the delusions of grandeur of the Bush team. No, the president alone cannot detain U.S. citizens as "enemy combatants"; no, the "enemy combatants" we have held for three years at Guantanamo cannot be denied the right to seek court review of the legality of their detention; and no, the statute criminalizing undefined "material support" to designated "terrorist organizations" is not constitutional.
---January, 2004
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Puppy Bowl 2015 lineup!!!
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CHEERS to a granny you don’t mess around with. As the keynote speaker at the AFL-CIO's Raise the Wage Summit, Senator Elizabeth Warren gave Team Reagan a swift kick in the shins:
"Trickle down,
schmickle down!"
"When all the varnish is removed, trickle-down just means helping the biggest corporations and the richest people in this country, and claiming that those big corporations and rich people could be counted to create an economy that would work for everyone else." […]
"The trickle-down experiment that began in the Reagan years failed America's middle class," Warren said. "Sure, the rich are doing great. Giant corporations are doing great. Lobbyists are doing great. But we need an economy where everyone else who works hard gets a shot at doing great!"
If I were Hillary, I'd be taking notes.
JEERS to the reason why intelligent beings from other solar systems never visit ours. I admit I'm not super-familiar with the French satirical magazine whose artists, writers and editors were
massacred yesterday in Paris. (See artist tributes
here.) So to put the tragedy into perspective I can understand, I thought of what it would've been like if a trio of religious wackos went into the offices of
Mad magazine and blew away my heroes Don Martin, Dave Berg, William Gaines, Jack Davis, Sergio Aragones, Al Jaffee, Mort Drucker, Al Feldstein and a few of the other geniuses who worked there. Suddenly shit gets real. And so now the drill: the shock slowly wears off, police nab the suspects, life returns to the new normal and then…sometime somewhere it all happens again and again and again. And
that's the reason why intelligent beings from other solar systems never visit ours.
CHEERS to lifting all boats. On January 8, 1964, President Lyndon Johnson---his greatness not yet destroyed by the Vietnam escalation---declared an "unconditional war on poverty in America" (at the 13:30 mark):
Fifty-one years later, Republicans like Senator Marco Rubio would like us to cut and run. Apparently it hasn't resulted in enough no-bid contracts for oil companies or the military-industrial complex. And that's no fun at all.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. They opened that time capsule in Boston this week. As they removed the items packed inside by Sam Adams and Paul Revere in 1795, executive director of the Massachusetts Archives Michael Comeau asked: "How cool is that?"
Very!
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
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JEERS to the 114th Congress. Day two has come and gone. Let's see, how can I put this so you'll get a sense of what Republicans are doing with their newfound powers? Try this: think of everything in your life that you hold dear, and then picture someone throwing it all in the path of a steamroller. Like that. But with tax cuts.
"So they loaded up the truck and they
moved to Beverly. Hills, that is."
JEERS to the energizer dictator. On this date in 1959, Fidel Castro claimed total victory of his takeover in Cuba by strutting down the streets of Havana puffin' a cigar in his shiny despot boots. For 56 years and a decades-long U.S. embargo, Castro outlasted ten frustrated American presidents before the eleventh figured out that this was getting ridiculous, so he met Fidel's now-in-charge brother Raul in a bar with the Pope and Canada as chaperones, and they
agreed to stop the spitting match. If anyone's interested: the pope drinks Bud Light. You have to wonder if the devil makes him do it.
CHEERS to humble beginnings. On January 8,1790, President Washington delivered the first, and deliberately bland, State of the Union address (here's ye olde transcript). Today he'd shock the teabaggers out of their knee socks:
"Uniformity in the currency, weights, and measures of the United States is an object of great importance, and will, I am persuaded, be duly attended to."
That's right---the father of our country wanted to take your currency, weights and measures and
redistribute their uniformity to everyone else. Hippie.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 8, 2005
JEERS to George Bush: unintentional stand-up comedian. Yesterday C&J discovered the Top 10 Bushisms of 2004. This is the guy we elected to a second term:
Peas in a slimy pod.
"Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat."
"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
And here's a sneak preview of his first whopper of 2005: "...and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the happy meeting of X and Y chromosomes. Today is National Male Watcher's Day. Seriously…it's a thing. Far be it from me to deny you the simple pleasure of viewing the male form in all its glory, so ogle away:
Don't say I never did anything for ya. Like, say, give you nightmares.
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:
In a Marvel Universe with cool-sounding superheroers like Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, and Captain America, Paul Rudd's Lang asks Douglas' Pym of the Bill-in-Portland-Maine-Man moniker, "One question: Is it too late to change the name?"
---Rolling Stone
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