From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
"Good Morning from @Space_Station!"
Astronaut Scott Kelly is 194 days into his Year In Space at the International Space Station. When he returns, doctors will run batteries of tests on him and his earthbound twin brother, astronaut Mark Kelly, to gauge the long-term effects of living in space. One of the side benefits of Kelly's extended stay is the constant stream of pics he posts on his twitter feed. Here are a few to momentarily take your mind off the crapola going on down here in the muck:
The Northern Lights over Alaska with a planetary exclamation
mark! Good Morning from @Space_Station!
Color palette of the Spanish coast is an appealing morning
view. Good Morning from @Space_Station!
Good Morning San Francisco and the BayArea!
Morning, Scott! Hope you enjoy the scrambled eggs we catapulted your way last night. They should be arriving in 3...2...1...
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Note: The Department of Corrections called about you yesterday. Apparently you misplaced a semicolon. Probably a good idea to lay low at the safe house for a while.
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10 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Canadian Thanksgiving:
5
Days 'til Maine's
York Harvestfest:
10
Current per-gallon price of gas:
$2.25
(Source: Gasbuddy)
Average outside-network ATM fee banks now charge, up 21% in five years:
$4.52
(Source: bankrate.com survey)
Reduction in the loss of cargo ships since 2005:
50%
Pairs of shoes the world's largest container ship---
MSC Oscar---can carry:
117 million
(Source:
The Portland Press Herald)
Amount that Princess Leia's bikini worn in
Jabba the Hutt's palace fetched
at auction:
$96,000
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 184 (including 5 volcanoes and 1 pair of apocalyptic black underwear). Soul Protection Factor 8 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Update on Kumbali and Kago
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CHEERS to two sides with the same perspective. It's getting difficult to find anyone anywhere who doesn’t consider Kevin McCarthy a blithering idiot for revealing that the Benghazi hearings are nothing but an exercise in political warfare against Hillary Clinton. "Sensible" conservative Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker says it's all over:
"Derp."
McCarthy has since tried to cram the bad genie back into the bottle, but the damage has been done and can’t be undone. Essentially, he had handed Clinton the keys to her prison cell. Held hostage these past three years by a series of Republican interrogators about the September 2012 attack in Libya that killed our ambassador and three others, she has been liberated.
At the very least, any previous suspicions that Republicans were just out to get Clinton have cleared the bar of reasonable doubt.
And what do you do when your opponent finds itself trapped like a rat? You pour it on:
From now on they should call it the House Select Committee Hearings on the House Select Committee Hearing's Waterloo.
CHEERS to the eggheads who walk among us. More hot scientist-on-scientist Nobel Prize action yesterday, this time from the physicists' playpen:
Mind...blown.
The prize was awarded to Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald, the Nobel Committee said Tuesday, "for the discovery of neutrino oscillations, which shows that neutrinos have mass." Kajita works at the University of Tokyo, in Kashiwa, Japan. McDonald works at Queen's University, in Kingston, Canada.
The Nobel Committee said the discovery---arcane to nonscientists---has changed our understanding of matter, and may yet change our view of the universe.
Democrats reacted reflexively to the news by Googling "neutrinos" to learn more about them. Republicans reacted reflexively to the news by calling climate change a hoax.
Also bowing out of 2016,
cuz she's sooooo busy.
JEERS to the end of the road. Four years ago Sarah Palin made it official, publicly announcing that she was choosing the life of a hand-note huckster over one of public service---so there would be
no mama grizzly moving into the White House on January 20, 2013 (much to the relief of the janitorial staff). Palin said she turned to the Lord to help guide her decision, but bowed out when His machine kept picking up. I guess she forgot about that little footnote in
Genesis: "And on the 8th day, God installed Caller ID."
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. The Week magazine asks: What would the 2016 race look like without Donald Trump?
Orangeless.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
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JEERS to Reason #23,422 why people hate politicians. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has a message for his colleagues over federal relief money for the flooded parts of his state:
"Let's just get through this thing, and whatever it costs, it costs."
Of course, Lindsey. And we'll be happy to fork it over…just as soon as you submit your list of cuts in federal dollars coming into South Carolina to offset the relief money. (And no rounding up to the nearest dollar, you dirty tax-and-spend Marxist hippie.)
P.S. And now an actual liberal counterpoint: Give Lindsey his money. On the one hand, his constituents need it even though their senior senator is an asshole for nixing Sandy relief in someone else's back yard but demanding a blank check (whatever it costs!) for Joaquin relief in his own. On the other hand, see the previous hand.
CHEERS to the best pucking sport in the world. Hey everybody, the NHL hockey season starts tonight! I'm so giddy I just know I'll be knocking strangers' teeth out all day.
Artist's sketch of the game.
JEERS to Groundhog Day: Gridiron Edition. Speaking of sports, on October 7, 1916, Georgia Tech Engineers scored a touchdown against the Cumberland University (Tennessee) Bulldogs. Then they scored another. And another. And another. And another. And another. By the time they were done the scoreboard read
222-0---the most lopsided game in college football history. When asked by their coach why they didn't execute any of the plays they'd spent three months practicing, the Cumberland players responded: "You didn't say please." It's always the little things.
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 7, 2005
JEERS to President Cuckoo Bananas. George "Jerky Jaw" Bush---crying "Wolf!" for the 84 billionth time in another "major policy address" that was as substantial as Harriett Miers' legal record---says we must continue fighting in Iraq because it has become the world's central breeding ground for terrorists. In other words, by invading that country, we've turned it into pre-9/11 Afghanistan. (That was the plan...right?)
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And just one more…
CHEERS to living saints. Let's hear it for Bishop Desmond Tutu! The Nobel Peace Prize winner and all-around amazing human being turns 84 today. He's still recovering from what sounds like a nasty infection, and we wish him a speedy recovery. A few reasons why we love him:
"I say somewhat facetiously, 'I’m so glad I’m not God.' Can you imagine being God and looking at Syria and saying: 'These are my children. Look at what they’re doing to each other.'”
Happy birthday!
"I've been married for 56 years and Leah has been very good at keeping my head the right size. Once I was driving and when I looked at her she looked slightly more complacent and self-satisfied than usual. When I wondered why, she showed me this bumper sticker that said: Any woman who wants to be equal to a man has no ambition."
"Be nice to the whites. They need you to rediscover their humanity."
"Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are."
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."
"If there's one lesson I've learnt later in life that I wish I knew when I was 25, it is that people are fundamentally good. It probably would have made me less judgmental of others, especially my opponents."
"I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, `Now is that political or social?' He said, `I feed you.'"
Or, as translated by America's right-wing religious grifter class: "Blah blah blah..."
Have a nice Wednesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Bill in Portland Maine Could Win A Nobel Prize For His Work To Calm Bernie Supporters And Accommodate Hillary Supporters
---Think Progress
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