From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
The Week Ahead
Monday A burglary spree hits Maine as every resident of the state attends the Bernie Sanders rally in Portland except burglars.
A new poll finds Democrats, Republicans and Independents in total agreement on something: a constitutional amendment banning Mondays.
Tuesday The House and Senate are both back in session. This used to mean something but I forget what.
All week: more gay marriages!
President Obama welcomes a communist leader---Nguyen Phu Trong of Vietnam---into the White House. Trong will thank the president for his hospitality. Fox News will thank the president for giving it another chance to break its record for saying "Obama" and "communist" in the same sentence.
Today is chocolate day. You know what to do.
Wednesday Commander-in-Chief Obama announces T-minus one week and counting until Operation Jade Helm 15, his plan to invade Texas and make it our 51st state. But it's a secret so don’t tell anybody in Texas.
Alcoa releases its latest earnings report. As usual, their most reliable area of growth is the tinfoil hat sector.
Thursday The House Committee on Foreign Affairs holds a hearing on "Implications of a Nuclear Agreement with Iran." The most worrisome implication to Republicans of the Obama administration's efforts to bring about more peace and stability to the region: that it might work.
Their latest session having ended, the conservative Supreme Court justices get together at Antonin Scalia's place to slap each other on the back, play a few rounds of Pin the Jiggery Pokery on the Gays, and then try bobbing for apple sauce.
Friday A tearful Donald Trump apologizes for his earlier remarks about Mexicans, saying it was rude of him to forget to also label them car thieves, wife beaters and lazy bums. Moments later polls show him as the undisputed front-runner in the GOP primary race.
Today is Don’t Step on a Bee Day. Also known as the most popular holiday among bees.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, July 6, 2015
Note: Now that the July 4th holiday is over, it's time for the annual post-fireworks Counting of Fingers. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and…goat hoof grafted thumb replacement makes ten. Woo hoo!
-
3 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the
New Horizons probe flies by Pluto:
8
Days 'til
Comic-Con San Diego:
3
Number of Democrats and Republicans each on the Maine Government Oversight Committee:
6
Vote by the committee to investigate blackmail charges against Maine Gov. Paul LePage, which could lead to his impeachment and removal from office:
12-0
Length of the ban on taking photos during White House tours that was just lifted:
40 years
Cost of an original 1966 Grateful Dead concert poster from the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco on sale at Sunshine Daydream Hippie Shop in Chicago:
$300
(Source: Tribune News Service)
Total amount now paid by BP to clean up after the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster and compensate economies in five states, five years after they pledged $20 billion to the White House:
$54 billion
(Source: AP)
Women's World Cup soccer final
USA 5 Japan 2
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Now with bonus fawn…
-
CHEERS to the liberal whisperer. Portland, Maine has a fevuh…and the only prescription is more Bernie! Tonight the junior senator and presidential candidate from Vermont visits C&J's hometown. The venue had to be changed last week---from an oversized cocktail lounge for cruise boat tourists to the mighty Civic Center---when the few hundred expected attendees turnout out to be more like a few thousand:
The timing could not be better for Sanders, who has received a flurry of positive press coverage over the past week. Headlines have focused on his meteoric rise in the New Hampshire and Iowa polls, the early success of his grass-roots fundraising campaign, and the fact that he drew an impressive crowd of nearly 10,000 supporters at a Wisconsin rally Wednesday night. … Sanders said his campaign has been gathering momentum as more people become exposed to his messages of equality and defense of the common worker.
“We’re essentially telling American people the truth about what has been going on in our economy,” he said, such as the subjugation of the working class at the hands of the very rich.
If you want to go see Bernie's 7pm barnburner,
you can reserve tickets here. Meanwhile, tonight's Bobby Jindal rally will be held in the phone booth in front of the Motel 6 next to the airport.
CHEERS and JEERS to the blue, white and red. Meaning, blue skies giving the sun carte blanche to turn white people red. It was a picture-perfect Maine holiday/summer-vacation weekend (we hope yours was nice, too), all wrapped up with fireworks that sent the dog scurrying for cover. Well, almost picture-perfect. This happened:
A Calais man was killed Saturday night after placing a fireworks mortar tube atop his head and setting it off, according to Maine State Police. … Police said the bizarre incident occurred at roughly 10 p.m. in a residential backyard on South Street. Devon Staples, 22, was setting off fireworks with some friends when he “placed the fireworks mortar tube on top of his head and set it off,” the investigation found. … Staples had been drinking with friends.
Thus answering the question: what kind of idiot needs to watch those government videos of mannequins getting blown up by fireworks so he won’t blow himself up with fireworks like the mannequins in those government videos?
CHEERS to Flight Sunshine. It was a real nail biter, but after 118 hours in the air, Swiss dude Andre Borschberg finally ended his record-breaking Japan-to-Hawaii flight in a plane running exclusively on solar power:
"Da solar plane! Da solar plane!"
Borschberg called the flight an extraordinary experience, saying it marked historical firsts for aviation and for renewable energy. "Nobody now can say that renewable energies cannot do the impossible," he said. … The plane's ideal flight speed is about 28 mph though that can double during the day when sun's rays are strongest. The carbon-fiber aircraft weighs over 5,000 pounds or about as much as a minivan or mid-sized truck.
Borschberg says he relied on 45 minutes of yoga per day to help him relax through the flight. And to prevent himself from falling asleep, he relied on 45 pre-flight seconds of Lindsay Graham explaining his plans for the world if he gets elected president.
JEERS to party crashers. On July 6, 1854 the Republican Party held its first convention in Jackson, Michigan. Back then, they really did have a good idea:
Conventioneering "under the oaks."
We believe that slavery is a violation of the rights of man---as a man---we vow at whatever expense, and publicly proclaim our determination, to oppose by all the powerful and honorable means in our power, now and henceforth, all attempts, direct and indirect, to extend slavery in this country, or to permit it to extend into any region or locality in which it does not now exist by positive low, or to admit new slave states into the Union.
Today the Republicans' de facto leader is Rush Limbaugh, who got fired from a TV gig for making racist comments, and whose listeners still get the giggles when he plays their favorite song,
Barack the Magic Negro. Official Republican NRA board member and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's BFF Ted Nugent believes our country would've been better off if
the south won the Civil War. And the alive-and-well Republican-affiliated Ku Klux Klan is expecting a few hundred people to show up at the South Carolina State House later this month when they hold a rally to
defend the Confederate flag. Memo to Abe Lincoln: there's a word for old-school Republicans like you in modern-day America: dirty fucking hippies. Here…have a bong hit. You look like you could use one. Besides, it's gotta be Four score and twenty somewhere.
JEERS to the rock-and-a-hard-place election. In poor beleaguered Greece,
voters said "no thanks" to enduring more economic terrorism (aka austerity) by foreigners in the European Union, increasing the likelihood of exiting the EU and ditching the euro for a return to the drachma, which will create its own gyrogantic problems. As usual, Karl Rove stayed up late into the night insisting that the votes would swing the other way once Ohio weighed in.
CHEERS to greenbacks. On July 6, 1785, Congress officially agreed that the unit of U.S. currency would be called the "dollar." Or, as the millions of Americans whose wages have been stagnant for years call it: the "endangered species."
-
Ten years ago in C&J: July 6, 2005
CHEERS to Gerald Ford's legacy. The accident-prone president is officially off the hook after George W. Bush slams into a Scottish police officer and tumbles off his bike yet again. (Third time in four years.) Bush was wearing a helmet at the time. We have no idea why since there's not much up there worth protecting.
CHEERS to a bonny old spot of competition. London nabs the 2012 Olympic Games from under France's nose. Cheer up Jacques; You'll always have Paris.
-
And just one more…
Just for you, 43.
microscopic, lower-case cheers to The Decider. C&J has a rule that says we can never jeer someone on their birthday, no matter how vile or despicable they are. But there is nothing in our bylaws that says we can't alter certain song lyrics. Ahem...
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, George W. Bush, you scum-suckin', torture-luvin', incompetent-crony-hirin', PDB ignorin', oil company bootlickin', Constitution-shreddin', The Pet Goat readin', bogus-war-startin', economy-killin' disaster,
Happy birthday to you.
He's 69 today and barely looks younger than his 91-year-old dad. Enjoy that Social Security, sir. Thanks to our efforts to kill your privatization scheme, it's still there for ya.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Bill in Portland Maine couldn’t be elected dog catcher.
---Donald Trump
-