From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE
Pardon the interruption…
But I thought you might like to know who won the internet this week:
Benjamin Button, eat yer heart out.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, August 20, 2015
Note: The president of Shell requests that you please stop drilling for oil in his back yard, as this may result in a major spill that would affect property values in his neighborhood and also create a big mess that will take forever to clean up, if it ever really gets completely cleaned up at all. Plus the health hazards and the stink---Ick! Thanks. ---Mgt.
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9 days!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Festivus:
126
Days 'til the
Imagine Festival in Atlanta:
9
The last time construction of single-family houses was as high as it was (up 12.8%) last month:
12/07
(Source: Commerce Dept.)
Target decrease by 2025 in methane output (vs. 2012 levels) from oil and gas drilling that President Obama set Tuesday:
40%
Ratio of law-enforcement officials to treatment experts at a drug summit set for Aug. 26 by Maine tea party Gov. Paul LePage:
3-1
(Source:
The Portland Press Herald)
Percent of high-speed police chases that end in crashes:
30%
(Source:
The Week)
Year the spitball was banned from major league baseball:
1934
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
The people of Texas should be gearing up to pitch a fit come January. They want us to pay for more prisons. MORE prisons. We just finished the biggest prison-spending spree in history. Starting in 1991, we spent billions to more than double the number of beds in the system. They promised us that we wouldn't have to build another prison for at least a generation. And now they want more.
And there's one other point. This. Is. Not. Working.
The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that Texas has more of its people imprisoned than any other state---163,190. That's more than California, which has 13 million more people than Texas does.
---August 1998
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Look away, look away….
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CHEERS to #39. Former President and 5-digit UID Kossack Jimmy Carter, who resumed his activities (including his decades-long stint as a Sunday school teacher in Plains) following last week's cancer announcement, will give an update on his condition today at the Carter Center. The word last week was that the cancer was spreading, so I'm not expecting to hear of any miracles today. On the other hand, he's got the best doctors at Emory managing things, so maybe there will be some hopeful words. In the meantime, use your mind power to send him some Great Orange Mojo. It won’t hurt, and if it helps I think we'll all be a shoe-in for the next Nobel Prize in Medicine.
CHEERS to do-gooders of yore. As part of his 'War on Poverty,' President Lyndon Johnson---who would be as revered as Lincoln or FDR today if he hadn't ramped up that fucking war---signed the Economic Opportunity Act 51 years ago today. It included funds for vocational training, establishment of a domestic version of the Peace Corps, and community action programs. Or, as modern-day Republicans call them: Bleh, Feh and Ick.
JEERS to the reason why they call this Hurricane Season. It's still a tropical storm, but "Danny" is churning its way across the Atlantic and may end up as a hurricane today or tomorrow. Here's the latest map with the "Cone of Swirliness" from the NHS's Danny page :
Authorities in the Caribbean say they'll take steps to make sure people are secure and safe. Right after they take steps to make sure all the billionaires' offshore accounts are secure and safe.
Happy birthday, George!
CHEERS to statesmen who make us proud to be part of Club Democrat. True fact: state law requires every Mainer to either say "Happy birthday" to former Maine senator
George Mitchell, who turns 82 today, or be banished to a life of misery in New Hampshire. So: Happy Birthday Mr. Former Senate Majority Leader! After spending 14 years in the Senate, he brokered peace in Northern Ireland, headed up an investigation of steroid use in baseball, tried his best to thread the Middle East peace needle, helped Penn State get through their post-Jerry Sandusky period, and a couple years ago year helped resolve issues relating to the working conditions in Bangladesh's problem-plagued garment industry. Last week Markos Moulitsas asked Mitchell if he'd broker peace between the pie-fighting Team Hillary and Team Bernie on Daily Kos. The response: "Dammit, man, I'm a negotiator not a miracle worker."
CHEERS to the smartest guys in the room. Speaking of George Mitchell, last night he marked the last day of his 81st year by attending a forum here in Portland with Senator Angus King (I-ME) about the looming up-down vote on a nuclear agreement with Iran. It was a chance for the two of them to say to the rest of Congress: we are very smart, we know what we're talking about, and this deal is all about peace and love, baby. Peace and love…
Instead of saying "Aye," Angus
King votes by saying "Ayuh!"
King said…the alternatives---up to and including war---are far worse. While he was critical of President Obama’s assertion that the choice was to either accept the deal or prepare for war, he said conflict was a real possibility. […]
Mitchell said the president’s critics “tend to compare the deal to a perfect accord” when a perfect deal wasn’t possible. He also addressed critics who note that Israel, a longtime ally of the U.S., opposes the deal.
“It’s our national self interest that should dictate our decision,” he said. “We should decide – taking all of our commitments to our friends in account – is this the best thing for the United States of America? If that standard is applied, a fairly objective conclusion is inescapable: This agreement is in our national interest.”
You can
watch it here. And this is a nice bonus: this week the pro-agreement coalition grew by four senators: Sheldon Whitehouse and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Joe Donnelly of Indiana. Looking good.
CHEERS to #23. Happy birthday to Benjamin Harrison, born on August 20, 1833 in North Bend, Ohio. As president from 1889 to 1893, he was the filling in the Grover Cleveland sandwich. And what a party animal! From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien:
The iceman presideth.
[I]n person the staunchly Presbyterian president was a virtual corpse. Chilly, frigid, frosty---words like these were routinely used to describe the unpleasant experience of meeting privately with the man. ... Senator Thomas Platt was the one who coined the moniker "White House Iceberg." As Platt explained, "Inside the Executive Mansion, in his reception of those who solicited official appointments, [Harrison] was as glacial as a Siberian stripped of his furs. During and after an interview, if one could secure it, one felt even in torrid weather like pulling on his winter flannels, galoshes, overcoat, mittens and earflaps." Even Harrison's handshake was a flop, likened to "a wilted petunia."
So basically Mitch McConnell minus the charm.
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 20, 2005
CHEERS to the queens of the hill. New SUSA poll of all 100 U.S. Senators has Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins ranked #1 and #2, with 77% and 74% approval ratings. Democrats dominate 10 of the top 15 slots, while Rick Santorum brings up the rear (huhuhuh) with 5 other Republican bottom-dwellers. But what's up with Barbara Boxer's 49% approval? I want a recount. [8/20/15 Update: Half a dozen years later, Snowe fled the Senate because the tea party takeover had made her equal parts sad and irrelevant. Susan Collins embraced the obstructionists and is enjoying her current state of blissful irrelevance. By the way, #3 on the list at 71% approval: Senator Barack Obama.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the saviors of our sanity. It's August---the "slow" month---and the presidential primary season is already a non-stop onslaught of nuts behaving badly. So thank god the Bad Lip Reading guys are swinging back into action by doing what they do best:
When asked what they thought about the video, the GOP base responded that they didn't realize Republicans had already had their second debate, but they were very impressed with how well the candidates had sharpened their arguments since the first one.
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:
“It used to be that psychologists would tell people how to come out of Cheers and Jeers. Now they tell them how to stay in it and be happy."
---Pat Robertson
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