From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Things I Learned From Republicans in September
Extra learny this month:
Same-sex couples getting married is the same as gassing the Jews at Auschwitz. (Bryan Fischer, speaking for the American Family Association)
If you work hard, you won’t have time to get hooked on drugs and that will solve all our drug-problem woes. (Rand Paul)
Muslims can't be president. (Ben Carson)
Charles Darwin came up with his theory of evolution at the behest of Satan. (Carson again)
America should get back in the torture business. (Carly Fiorina)
Diversity sucks. (Rick Santorum)
The discovery of water on Mars was faked by NASA. (Rush Limbaugh)
It's acceptable to walk into a classroom of seven- and eight-year-olds and coldly ask them, "Do you know what a nuclear weapon is? Do you know that there are schools that train children your age to be suicide bombers?" (Arizona Congressman Matt Salmon)
Immigrants need to speak American. (Secretary of Energy Sarah Palin)
The Dred Scott decision is still the law of the land, so slavery is still on the books. (Mike Huckabee)
To appeal to Latinos, just leave 'em a little tip when you check out of your hotel. (Gov. John Kasich)
The issuance of secular marriage licences to same-sex couples is leading America into the very pit of Hell. (Kim Davis's lawyer Mat Staver)
Congratulations. You may now add a sparkle pony sticker to your diploma.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Note: If you don’t walk 50,000 steps today, you will have let America down. Oh, hey, we saw that dirty look, so for that you can just make it 100,000 steps, you America hater. Have a great day! ---Your friendly online Fitbit coach
-
10 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Daylight Saving Time ends:
32
Days 'til
Atlanta Pride:
10
Percent of the public that's paying attention to the primary election season, a bit higher than average:
27%
(Source: Pew Research)
Average number of water main breaks in Portland, Maine every year:
90
(Source:
The Portland Press Herald)
Estimated cost to maintain and upgrade the nation's drinking water infrastructure over the next 20 years:
$1 trillion
(Source: EPA)
Percent of people living in Turkey, Israel and the U.S., respectively, who say they're “very concerned” about ISIS:
33%, 44%, 68%
(Source: Harper's Index)
-
Mid-week Rapture Index: 181 (including 4 droughts and 1 rather familiar Third Eagle of the Apocalypse). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: You'll likey Loki…
-
CHEERS to Warren the Wordsmith. Just as she created a party-wide template for talking intelligently---without talking down---about income inequality, so too has Senator Elizabeth Warren created a party-wide template for talking about the Black Lives Matter movement. It's a speech, delivered Sunday in Boston, that anyone who doesn't quite get the uncompromising and fiercely-urgent nature of BLM should absorb into their DNA:
More like her, please.
"Economic justice is not---and has never been---sufficient to ensure racial justice. Owning a home won’t stop someone from burning a cross on the front lawn. Admission to a school won’t prevent a beating on the sidewalk outside," Warren declared. "The tools of oppression were woven together, and the civil rights struggle was fought against that oppression wherever it was found---against violence, against the denial of voting rights and against economic injustice."
"Senator Warren's speech clearly and powerfully calls into question America's commitment to black lives by highlighting the role that structural racism has played and continues to play with regard to housing discrimination and voting rights," said DeRay Mckesson, a prominent activist who said he hopes to meet with Warren to further discuss racial injustice. "And Warren, better than any political leader I've yet heard, understands the protests as a matter of life or death---that the American dream has been sustained by an intentional violence and that the uprisings have been the result of years of lived trauma."
The next Netroots Nation convention is in St. Louis, which is hollering distance from Ferguson, Missouri. I hope she plans to be there…with this speech in her hand.
JEERS to the attack of the million-email army. Prepare yourself---today is the last day of the quarter and political candidates from every nook and cranny of the nookandcrannysphere are going to be turning you upside down and shaking you until some change falls out of your pockets. You will get many from each candidate, each with an increasingly-urgent subject line:
Oh god, not another one.
Hey---only one day left to hit our goal!
Help!---only hours left to hit our goal!
We're down to seconds now!
My campaign manager is having chest pains. Give now!
Now I'M having chest pains! Fork it over!
If I lose this race it's your fault for not giving!
Puddle of tears. It's all over. Unless…!
I will stick your head in a vise, I swear!
Sorry about that last subject line. But dammit, we need your donation!
Bags packed. Headed for ice floe. All is lost.
Followed by tomorrow's headline:
WE DID IT! THANK YOU! WE'RE GONNA WIN THIS THING! (Yeah, I'll cry---I love happy endings.)
P.S. There's one candidate to whom I am absolutely, positively donating today: card-carrying Kossack Donna Edwards for Senate. Care to join me?
CHEERS to Act III. September is on the cusp of getting disappeared, and that means the 2015 Atlantic hurricane season is two-thirds over. So far it's been much more lambish than lionish (to borrow a phrase from March) and---knock on wood---it'll stay that way. Here's the latest suitable-for-framing snapshot by the NOAA that shows rainmaker Joaquin causing some mischief, but not enough to require boarding up any windows at this point:
Only two months to go. Be merciful, oh all-powerful gays, feminists and pagans.
CHEERS to great inventions. On September 30, 1846, William Morton---a Boston dentist---used ether as an anesthesia for the first time. It worked really well. But he had even better success the next day when he used it on the patient.
CHEERS to re-setting the table. Every fall, state Democratic parties host their annual Jefferson-Jackson dinners, and most people have thought for awhile now that it was time to rename the event for people besides slave owners (and, in Jackson's case, a sadistic whack job---that's the Republicans' turf now). Here in Maine they've decided to call it the Perkins-Mitchell Dinner in honor of former Senate Majority leader George Mitchell and FDR's Labor Secretary Frances Perkins:
Perkins with FDR in 1943.
“We couldn’t be more proud to honor the legacies of Frances Perkins and Senator George Mitchell at our fall gathering,” said Phil Bartlett, Chair of the Maine Democratic Party. “Perkins and Mitchell are the standard-bearers of the values we represent today. Perkins was a pioneer who fought for workers’ rights and economic opportunity for all, while Mitchell carved his niche as a peacemaker and dedicated public servant to the people of Maine. We look forward to celebrating their thoughtful leadership and unique contributions to our state and Party.”
Now that they've settled on a better name for the dinner, maybe now they can work on the next item on the list: better coleslaw. Ha Ha Ha!!!
Soon to be disappeared by Russia.
JEERS to lying liars: Pootie-poot edition. Sunday night on
60 Minutes, Vladimir Putin was asked about his nasty crackdown on the LGBT community in Russia, including turning a blind eye to attacks by roving gangs of skinheads. Putin
denied it all, saying Russia's one big happy live-and-let-live utopia. And in other news, the live-and-let-live utopia of Russia is now calling in law enforcement to round up---this is true---
Apple's gay emojis. Once herded onto a CD-ROM, they'll be sent to a computer in Siberia and sentenced to twenty years of hard-drive labor.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: September 30, 2005
MEGA CHEERS to the fall of Tom DeLay. I will never, EVER, get a buzz like the one I got when I read the news of his indictment. I tasted colors. I heard flavors. I saw sounds. I floated. And I don't remember this part, but there's a $500 fine on my dining room table for "...riding a burro naked down Forest Avenue while yelling `Take that, beeotch!'" It's weird because normally I don't say anything during my commute.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to my next pilgrimage. My partner Michael ("Common Sense Mainer" here) went to Kohl's over the weekend, and brought back fresh evidence that The Empire is indeed on the cusp of striking back this December:
Look there on the floor---it's a freakin' KYLO REN LIGHTSABER!!! While he was there, my sweetie got me one of the new-fangled
Episode VII stormtroopers. It's very cool. But I had to duct-tape its mouth right away. Fucking Dittohead.
Have a nice Wednesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Does Commie Pope Francis Heart Bill in Portland Maine? Bad Commie Pope!
---Wonkette
-