From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Oh! More Things I Know:
The steady drip…drip…drip of Democrats announcing they'll vote "Yes!" on the Iran nuclear agreement is working better from a P.R. standpoint than the Republican strategy of shouting "No!" all at once.
Jeb Bush's shoulders are always slumping, and I'm afraid that's a dealbreaker for me.
Also what I know is astronaut Scott Kelly
takes amazing pics from the ISS. Earth
looks like the freakin' Death Star.
Stephen Colbert returns to late-night TV in 12 days.
One thing I haven't had to worry about this summer is getting stung by a bee. But that's been replaced by a new worry: no bees.
Hiring Josie Duffy to write for Daily Kos increased the brain power on the front page by---[Clackityclackityclack…Ding!]---622%.
Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson once got into trouble by keeping his government messenger pigeons on a private window ledge.
Judging by the paths they take, Pacific hurricanes appear to have a drinking problem.
There's a petition going around to try and get Jon Stewart to moderate a presidential debate. I'm still holding out for Judge Judy.
The #1 song on iTunes now is called Can't Feel My Face. It's a ballad about what happens when someone with a functioning brain accidentally watches Fox News for more than five minutes.
My god says Ted Cruz won't be president. Ted Cruz's god says he will. I can't wait to see how this ends.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, August 27, 2015
Note: C&J Withdrawal Alert! This column will not appear next Monday, as we will be getting kicked out of the internet by Donald Trump. Back Tuesday morning through the secret door underneath the kiddie pool. Oh, and a flash flood warning has just been issued for Tuesday morning throughout the greater Daily Kos area. ---Mgt.
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8 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til
Hunger Games: MockingJay-Part 2:
85
Days 'til the
Camden Windjammer Festival:
8
Number of open VA disability claims that were/are over four months old in 2013 and today, respectively:
611,000 / 98,500
(Source: AP)
Number of members of the armed forces who will be affected when the ban on transgender servicemembers goes away next May:
12,000
(Source: FiveThirtyEight)
Scott Walker's drop in PPP's New Hampshire primary poll between April and August:
24% to 7%
Percent of Millennials who have a bachelor's degree or higher, making them the highest-educated U.S. generation ever:
34%
Portion of the U.S. population who will be millennials in 2020:
1-in-3
(Source:
Parade)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Bush administration officials are in full blame-shifting mode: First, they announced repeatedly they don't want to "play the blame game." Then, they start blaming everybody else.
According to The New York Times, Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett, White House communications director, began a campaign this weekend to blame local and state officials. The "woefully inadequate response [after Katrina struck]," said "sources close to the White House," was the fault of "bureaucratic obstacles from state and local officials."
The bottom line is they're playing the race card. As many of you have noted, it IS a racial issue that poor people suffer most in any natural or economic disaster. Because Katrina hit the Deep South, a great many of the poor people affected are black, especially in New Orleans — both hit hardest and majority black to begin with.
---September 2005
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Road dog…
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Kentucky clerk Kim Davis
lost her appeal yesterday.
JEERS to drama queens for Christ. Casey Davis is a county clerk in Kentucky, and he's making news this week because he says the Supreme Court has no authority over Kentucky (or God's!) law and he's willing to
die preventing gay marriage. That's not gonna happen, because yesterday a federal court shot down that other homophobic clerk's attempt to
wriggle out of doing her taxpayer-funded job issuing marriage licenses equally. So he needs to either get with the program or take a walk. But I'll throw you a bone, Casey. I don’t mean to betray "my people," but if you want to exact holy retribution on the gay horde for getting hitched, you don’t have to give your life. Just crash a same-sex wedding while wearing stripes with plaids. I guarantee you every gay person there will die a little on the inside. And that's about the best you're gonna do, pal.
CHEERS to the Arm-Twister-in-Chief. Happy 107th birthday to #36, Lyndon Baines Johnson. What a schizophrenic presidency---stellar marks for civil rights and the Great Society programs, but total fail for the quagmire in Southeast Asia. In fact, his tumultuous time at the top overshadows his dozen years in the Senate, where his personality and leadership style were encapsulated at the 1958 Gridiron Dinner by fellow Senator John Kennedy:
The good side of LBJ's presidency.
"I dreamed about 1960 myself the other night and I told [Sens.] Stuart Symington and Lyndon Johnson about it in the cloakroom yesterday. I told them how the Lord came into my bedroom, anointed my head, and said, 'John Kennedy, I hereby appoint you President of the United States.' Stuart Symington said, 'That's strange, Jack, because I too had a similar dream last night in which the Lord anointed me and declared me, Stuart Symington, President of the United States and Outer Space.' Lyndon Johnson said, 'That's very interesting, gentlemen, because I too had a similar dream last night and I don't remember anointing either of you.'"
---From One-Night Stands with American History by Richard Shenkman and Kurt Reiger
As his press secretary George Reedy wrote: "Of all his qualities...the most important was that he knew how to make our form of government work. That is an art that has been lost since his passing and we are suffering heavily as a result." Sadly, I also don’t think we'll see another president excel like LBJ did at the art of ordering Haggar slacks from the Oval Office
with extra room "down where your nuts hang." Time marches on.
CHEERS to today's edition of Oh Look, Maude, It's Donald Trump's Face In A Tub Of Butter! "Oh look, Maude, it's Donald trump's face in a tub of butter…"
This has been today's edition of Oh Look, Maude, It's Donald Trump's Face In A Tub Of Butter.
CHEERS to the universe's version of the Slip 'n Slide. Stephen Hawking, man, yer blowin' mah mahnd:
Just be careful where you land.
All is not lost if you fall into a black hole---you could simply pop up in another universe, according to Stephen Hawking. … In a public lecture in Stockholm, Sweden, Prof Hawking said: “If you feel you are in a black hole, don’t give up. There’s a way out.” He said he had discovered a mechanism “by which information is returned out of the black hole. … The existence of alternative histories with black holes suggests this might be possible. The hole would need to be large and if it was rotating it might have a passage to another universe. But you couldn’t come back to our universe."
I guess that explains what happened to Ted Cruz's sanity. And, boy, do I feel sorry for whatever universe it ended up in.
JEERS to the Liar-in-Chief. Fond memories: thirteen years ago, on August 27, 2002, George W. Bush had Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan-of-Swing over to his Crawford Ranch for a little brush-clearin', jerky chompin' and Iraq discussin':
"Who can make the sun rise
and sprinkle it with dew? The
Bandy Man! HehHehHeh."
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The meeting, however, failed to change Saudi Arabia's strong opposition to a military attack. "There is no country in the world that I know of that supports military action against Iraq at this time," Adel Al-Jubeir, a foreign policy adviser to the Saudi kingdom, told CNN. […] "If the objective is to dismantle the weapons of mass destruction program, we could probably do that without going to war," Al-Jubeir said. "Why not use that option? Why do people want to risk the lives of tens of thousands of American men and women in uniform for an objective that can be achieved through negotiations?"
Oh, let’s see: to get our hands on cheap oil, to feed the military-industrial complex, to scare Americans into re-electing the macho Republicans, to bully the world, to get revenge on Saddam for "tryin' to kill mah daddy," and to act out G.I. Joe fantasies aboard an aircraft carrier under a "Mission Accomplished" banner. Other than that, I got nothin'.
A fool looking for an errand.
CHEERS to delusions of grandeur. Maine's near-universally disliked governor Paul LePage said again that he's thinking about following up his two embarrassment-filled terms (if he doesn't get impeached first) with a run against
Senator Angus King in 2018. The only question is: will Angus destroy him 80-20, or will LePage run a perfect campaign and go down in flames by only 75-25. Place your bets!
CHEERS to bubblin' crude. Oil, that is. Black gold...Titusville tea. My, how time flies when you're polluting the planet. 156 years ago today, in 1859, "Colonel" Edwin Drake's newfangled drilling technique (ramming a pipe in the ground so the hole wouldn't clog) paid off when his employee, "Uncle Billy" Smith, struck oil 69 feet down in a spot near Titusville, Pennsylvania. And a few years later solar and wind power completely replaced it as the world's primary energy source and everyone lived happily ever after with tons of sex, booze, fistfuls of thousand-dollar bills, universal health care and.... [POOF!!!] Well, that was a fun dream while it lasted.
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 27, 2005
CHEERS to one less pesky religion to deal with. The Vatican wants to officially ban gay men from the priesthood. They'll be out of business in a week.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to Medicine Thursday. As you probably heard, a new drug---Addyi---was approved by the FDA this month. It's erroneously being called "female Viagra," but because that falsehood sprinted halfway around the world before the truth could get its shoes on, female Viagra it shall forever erroneously be. Big Pharma---specifically Sprout Pharmaceuticals---will undoubtedly start, and never stop, airing commercials for it soon, complete with a pleasant-sounding voice rattling off all the side effects at a breakneck pace. Since that list is still being compiled, feel free to use this one from Pure Drivel by Steve Martin as a placeholder:
NO! NO! It is NOT female Viagra!
Side Effects: This drug may cause joint pain, nausea, headache, or shortness of breath. You may also experience muscle aches, rapid heartbeat or ringing in the ears ... Projectile vomiting is common in 30 percent of users---sorry: 50 percent. If you undergo disorienting nausea accompanied by migraine with audible raspy breath, double the dosage. Leg cramps are to be expected; up to one knee-buckler per day is allowable. Bowel movements may become frequent, in fact every ten minutes. If bowel movements become greater than twelve per hour, consult your doctor, or in fact any doctor, or anyone who will speak to you ... If your hair begins to smell like burning tires, move away from any buildings or populated areas and apply tincture of iodine to the head until you no longer hear what could be considered a "countdown" ... Do not operate heavy machinery, especially if you feel qualified for a desk job; that's good advice anytime. May cause famine and pustules ... This drug may cause visions of the Virgin Mary to appear in treetops. If this happens, open a souvenir shop. There may be an overwhelming impulse to shout out during Catholic mass, "I'm gonna wop you wid da ugly stick!" You may feel a powerful sense of impending doom. This is because you are about to die ... Do not use this product if you are uneasy with lockjaw. Do not be near a ringing telephone that works at 900MHz, or you will be very dead, very fast ... Do not be concerned if you arouse a few ticks from the Geiger counter ... WARNING: This drug may shorten your intestines by 21 feet ... While taking this drug you might want to wear something lucky ... You may experience "lumpy back" syndrome, but we are actively seeking a cure. Twenty minutes after taking the pills, you will experience an insatiable craving to take another dose. AVOID THIS WITH ALL YOUR POWER. It is advisable to have a friend handcuff you to a large kitchen appliance, ESPECIALLY ONE THAT WILL NOT FIT THROUGH THE DOORWAY TO WHERE THE PILLS ARE. You should also be out of reach of any weaponlike utensil with which you could threaten friends or family, who should also be briefed to not give you the pills, no matter how much you sweet-talk them.
Have an intensely pleasurable Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"In faith, I put my hand about three inches above Bill in Portland Maine's head, and he shot up until his head touched my hand! You should have seen his face! In fact, you should have seen the faces of the people who witnessed the miracle! It was stunning! People were laughing and crying all at once!”
---Faith healer Cindy Jacobs
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