From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Oh! More Things I Know:
Maine state senator Gus Grumpypants has withdrawn his Indiana-style "religious freedom" bill, so now our state is going to have to contend with religious discrimination continuing to not happen here.
Regardless of who wins in 2016, Chief Justice John Roberts says he still plans to mess up the oath of office out of respect for precedent.
Rebranding!
Reince Priebus's re-branding of the Republican party is going swimmingly. And by swimmingly I mean the kind of swimming where you can't swim so you drown.
As of yesterday, Portland Maine has a ban on disposable polystyrene cups and take-out containers. Most people support the new law, but everyone agrees it's gonna take us awhile to get used to the new pewter ones.
What Howard Dean says to his neighbors when spring arrives in Burlington: "YOU have the flower and YOU have the flower and YOU have the flower!!!"
It's amazing that we now live in a time when the millionaires are getting all pissy and jealous because their political candidates are paying too much attention to the billionaires.
One more thing I've crossed off my bucket list: watch an espresso machine get launched into space. Next on my list: Watch a mailman land a gyrocopter on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol. Help escort Dick Cheney to prison.
Nobody has been able to give me a good reason why Democrats didn’t confirm Loretta Lynch last December when they still held the majority and knew full well that Republicans were going to obstruct their hineys off when they took over.
People are all excited about the new season of "Game of Thrones" on HBO. I'm more partial to "Game of Throw Rugs" on Bravo.
And one thing John Fugelsang knows:
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, April 16, 2015
Note: C&J's designated NSA tracker Bart says you've all been doing such a fine job of speaking clearly and loudly near the potted plants that as a reward he won’t monitor what you're saying this morning between 9 and 9:30. To be clear, that's between 9am and 9am and 30 seconds. Thank you for your patriotism! ---Mgt.
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16 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of the Memorial Day weekend:
36
Days 'til
Free Comic Book Day:
16
Number of prescriptions that were filled in 2014, a record:
4.3 billion
Increase in prescription drug spending last year, the highest since 2001:
13%
(Source: IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics)
Percent of Indiana voters who say that businesses should not be allowed to turn away a customer based on sexual orientation or gender identity:
85%
(Source: Greenberg Quinlan Research)
Number of needle exchanges in Maine last year, up 238% since 2010:
564,847
(Source:
The Portland Press Herald)
Number of Olive Garden restaurants that will have 7" tablets on each table so diners can order drinks and appetizers, split bills and play games:
845
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Let me suggest a new way of faking authenticity. When Texas legislators are tripped up in a lie, they traditionally reply, "You caught me speedin'."
Lyndon B. Johnson, the master Texas pol, was even more blunt. An opponent once rose in the Senate and said to him, "You S.O.B, you promised me you would vote 'No' on that bill, and you just voted 'Yes.'"
"Well," explained Lyndon, "I lied."
Enough said.
---April, 2000
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Puppy Pic of the Day: How the One Percent celebrated tax day.
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CHEERS to making a joyful noise as opposed to making another depressing cheeseburger. What started as a small revolt among fast food employees in 2012 (with a hat tip to the Occupy movement that got the ball rolling) for higher wages and better representation reached epic proportions yesterday as strikes and rallies took place around the world, including in over 200 U.S. cities. Over at Time, Rana Foroohar says the wave is long overdue:
In California, Robert
Reich lent his support.
It’s always been amazing to me that in a country where 42% of the population makes roughly $15 per hour, that more people weren’t already holding bullhorns, and I don’t mean just low-income workers. There’s something fundamentally off about the fact that corporate profits are at record highs in large part because labor’s share is so low, yet when low-income workers have to then apply for federal benefits, the true cost of those profits gets pushed back not to companies, but onto taxpayers, at a time when state debt levels are at record highs. Talk about an imbalanced economic model. …
Politicians are going to have to grapple with this in the election cycle, because as the latest round of wage protests makes clear, the issue isn’t going away anytime soon.
Republicans, who want to squish wages and the social safety net almost as much as they want to squish unions, say they want to make this election about terrorists with funny accents attacking ordinary Americans and threatening their very existence. In other words, they want to make this election about Republican ideas.
CHEERS to…wait, you'll want to prepare yourself for this…maybe have a seat….and put a nitroglycerin tablet under your tongue…take several deep breaths...and do several minutes of meditation…are you ready?...okay here goes, don’t say I didn't warn you…to CONGRESS!!! They apparently just concluded a once-a-millennium ritual called Getting Something Done…
Lookie! I passed a bill
and then I made poopies!
[A] hostage has been permanently released by the Republicans. The "doc fix" has been voted on something like 17 times since 2003, and in the past several years has been one of those must-pass bills (must-pass because Medicare doctors kept threatening to stop taking Medicare patients if they were hit with the big payment cuts the old formula kicked in) that Republicans used in their various brinksmanship games. That's gone, and the annual and sometimes bi-annual freak-out that physicians' groups and senior groups have had to go through is now over. Also good is two years of Children's Health Insurance Program funding granted rather painlessly…
To celebrate the occasion, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell will spend a few minutes in the parking lot awkwardly trying and failing to spike a football. And I've got a thousand bucks for anyone who emails me the raw video.
On second glance...
was that James Bond?
JEERS to the least-protected place in America. Forget about our missile defense shield to detect a Russian nuke strike…we can't even detect
a mailman in a gyrocopter careening wildly through the air and landing on the lawn in front of the U.S. Capitol, followed by the capitol police standing around pointing at the machine and shrugging. When asked why nothing was done to bring down the tiny craft sooner, a Homeland Security spokesman said that, due to budget cuts, they don’t bring their fly swatters out of storage until May.
JEERS to disrespecting the one whut brung ya to the dance. Fox News is now openly wondering if we should bring back literacy tests during elections so that we don’t have a bunch of dense, ignorant, fact-averse truthiness trolls voting on the critical issues and candidates of the day. Which brings up a serious question: why does Fox want to prevent its viewers from voting?
CHEERS to the wisdom of the sages. Here's the latest breaking election news from Chris Cilizza at The Washington Post. This is just hard to believe:
The GOP needs a new one of these.
The Republican professional political class increasingly views Gov. Chris Christie…as its best---and maybe only---hope to win back the White House in 2016.
Here’s how one plugged-in Republican consultant responded by e-mail when asked how we should rank the current 2016 field: “Christie is in the [#1] slot now and forevermore---he’s the successful model for our party (from a political perspective) and his governing success is exactly what our country needs from a fiscal perspective. He can compete in about 40 of 50 states. Who else can do that and run as a conservative? No one.”
Here's the disclaimer: Cilizza wrote that in November of 2013---17 months ago. Now, with 17 months before the election, Chris Christie still plans to run but
no one is saying he's the best (let alone the "only") hope among all the candidates. Point being: things can change real quick in politics. Other point being: boy, do "plugged-in" Republican consultants suck.
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Ten years ago in C&J: April 16, 2005
JEERS to stiffing the troops. Democrats wanted to add $2 billion to an $80 billion emergency supplemental wartime appropriations bill. The intended recipient: cash-strapped VA hospitals dealing with an influx of Iraq war veterans with horrific injuries. The money was voted down by every Republican senator except Arlen Specter (gold star for you, sir). But thank god the bill still contains money for the new Washington D.C. baseball stadium. Ahhh...GOP priorities.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to font-page news. If a campaign can't have fun with social media criticism, I say to hell with it. So I was happy to see that when freelance designer Rick Wolff turned the Clinton campaign's "H with a red arrow" font into an entire alphabet, the Clinton campaign ran with it:
The font is Hillvetica. What the campaign did by embracing it is Hill-jitsu. And punking the critics like that is Hillarious.
Have a letter-perfect Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Fox & Friends Outraged That World History Students Are Learning About Cheers and Jeers
---Media Matters
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