From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
ENTER… The Republican House of Horror!!!
Welcome, human biological units, to the dwelling where all your fears become reality, and your greatest nightmares come to life…
SEE! Cackling Carly's Invisible Baby Parts Harvesting Video, which she'll describe to you in all its gory detail with shadow puppets. The only way to escape is to send her into an approval ratings death spiral by pushing her into the Chasm of Overreach.
SEE! Crazy Christie's Quiet Car, where the New Jersey governor chases you around an Amtrak train with a bloodberry smoothie in his hand shouting "Seriously?!! SERIOUSLY?!!!" and tries to slap a FedEx sticker on your forehead so he can track you down in your nightmares. Bwoo ha ha! Bwoo ha ha!
CROSS! The Bridge to Austerity, which gets more rickety the further you go as the foundations of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid crumble beneath your feet and you find yourself hanging by a thread.
Reince Priebus greets you at the
entrance to the House of Horror.
SEE! The terrifying Popeye's Organization Robbery, where you try to survive a stickup after Ben Carson points at you and tells the gunman you're the one with the keys to the cash register.
SEE! The Mausoleum of Music Manglers, where your ears will bleed and you'll beg for mercy as you find yourself surrounded by Mike Huckabee, Ted Nugent and Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis crooning a cacophonous chorus of Cat Scratch Fever.
HEAR! The creepy stillness in the Grotto of No Comment. Ask the giant floating Trump head for specifics about his grand ideas on taxes, immigration, health care, education, climate change, minority rights or the economy and be met with an eerie silence that will chill your very soul. But don't get too distracted, because Mad Marco Rubio may enter unexpectedly and knock you over as he moans and groans about how being in the Senate sucks.
SEE! Paul Ryan's Fortress of Futility, where he scrawls nonsensical sayings on the wall of his padded cell and mumbles incoherently just minutes after becoming Spooker of the House.
ENTER! The Memory Hole, where Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich, George Pataki and Jim Gilmore cry out their names, begging you to remember that they're still running for president as they crawl over one another in a vain attempt to break out of the pack. Moments later, you'll have no recollection whatsoever of this part of the Republican House of Horror.
Upon your exit, a Trump supporter will drag you across the ground and through the giant wall entrance while shouting racial epithets at you. If you don’t make it out alive, Jeb Bush will keep you safe from that point forward.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Note: Full moon tonight. Arrrooooooo!!!
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11 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til election day 2015:
7
Days 'til the
Kalamazoo Craft Beer Festival:
11
Number of the top 10 towns where Mainers spend the most on lottery tickets that are located in Maine's poorest county:
6
Percent increase in lottery sales for every one percent rise in unemployment:
10%
(Source:
The Maine Sunday Telegram)
Amount being spent on Halloween candy this year:
$2.1 billion
(Source:
Parade)
Number of views of the new Star Wars VII trailer during the first 24 hours after it was released:
128 million
(Source: Lucasfilm)
Years I've been hanging around at Daily Kos as of today:
12
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Tuesday Words of Wisdom from the Right-wing Blogosphere:
The bleeding hearts at Fox Nation bid Boehner b'bye…
Happy Boehner's going, but
no fans of Ryan, either.
Just go already, cry baby
---jdp07
demoRats are losing a loyal friend.
---amerisad
Don't forget to stop by Nancy's office for one last kiss and a tryst, before you go.
---grandpa1950
All together now: 1…2…3…
Classy!
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Stella takes a dive…
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CHEERS to Congress inaction in action. The Ted Cruz wing of the Republican party---i.e. the assholes who prefer burning everything down to doing what's best for the country---may be in the process of getting kicked to the curb. A budget agreement was hammered out last night, and it would appear that the big battle to the death is now just a routine day at the Must-Pass Corral:
Going down, Ted?
If this agreement becomes a reality, it will represent a major victory both for President Obama and Congressional Democrats. For years, Republicans have been living in a fantasy world where they believed that if they created a big enough crisis, President Obama would cave. However, when Obama vetoed the [Defense Authorization Act] last week, he forced Republicans to blink.
A two-year budget agreement that raises the debt ceiling would end the crisis politics in DC, and give President Obama one of the biggest wins of his presidency. The deal isn’t done yet, but if it happens it will be the ultimate Republican cave.
And then the legislative branch can breathe a deep sigh, take a chill pill, and get back into their comfortable and familiar routine. I believe the technical term is "gridlock."
CHEERS to upsetting the apple cart. Game changer!!! There's a new Republican leading in the polls in Iowa. Dr. Ben Carson has overtaken Donald Trump "across the board." The significance of this shift cannot be understated. If Carson goes on to win the Iowa caucus, it's just a hop, skip and a jump to the White House. And if you don't believe me, just ask Presidents Dole, Huckabee and Santorum.
JEERS to the vast nanny-state conspiracy. First they came for our cigarettes. Then they came for our guns. Then they came for our Bibles. Now the giant underground tyranny star chamber is coming after our BLTs:
But what'll we wrap
our shrimp in now?
Processed meat like bacon, salami, and sausage can increase the risk of developing cancer, and should be placed in the same category as other well-known carcinogens like cigarettes and asbestos, according to an influential panel of international scientists. The 22-person International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a panel that advises the World Health Organization, reached that conclusion after reviewing hundreds of scientific studies.
Why, I've eaten a pound of bacon every day for the last 51 years and it hasn't affec
CHEERS to busting "state's rights" in the chops. On October 27, 1787, the first of the Federalist Papers was released under the name "Publius" (later revealed to be Alexander Hamilton). The goal: to make the case that "the insufficiency of the present confederation" required a new constitution that would mean "nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world." Hamilton, along with co-authors Madison and John Jay, knew they'd have critics, and this snip shows that they'd be dealing with their own version of the "Get a brain, moran" crowd:
The essays that put meat
on the Declaration of
Independence's bones.
[W]e have already sufficient indications that it will happen in this as in all former cases of great national discussion. A torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.
But I'll say this for the original teabaggers of yore: at least they could wear tri-corn hats without looking like idiots.
CHEERS to the pop culture POTUS. On Friday President Obama spoke at the DNC's Women's Leadership Forum, and rightly pointed out---for the umpteenth time---that "Republican politicians are so down on America. I mean, they are gloomy." And then, whipping out his rhetorical claws, he played the Grumpy Cat card:
Totally unfair comparison, said the Republicans in a statement sent from their litterbox.
CHEERS to the ol' bull moose. Happy Birthday to Teddy Roosevelt, who turns 157 today. #26 has a few words from the Great Beyond for Christie, Carson, Jeb! and the rest who are making a mockery of his party:
I'm a little teapot.
"I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head."
"Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe."
"Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement."
And for Donald Trump: "Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering." Ouch. Pay your respects
here. (But do it softly...I hear he carries a big stick.)
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 27, 2005
WHAAA??? to the headline of the day: MIERS WITHDRAWS SUPREME COURT NOMINATION. Aww...and Harriett was the coolest nominee ever! At C&J, we feel like we just lost our favorite babysitter. And now we're gonna get some wingnut who makes us do our homework and sends us to bed at 8. So unfair. [10/27/15 Update: We got Alito instead. Told ya.]
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And just one more…
I bet I know who
she's rootin' for.
CHEERS to balls and strikes. The Major League World Series starts tonight---the New York Mets vs. the Kansas City Royals. You can read about
why the Mets will win, unless you prefer Kansas City, in which case you can read about
why the Royals will win. Me, I look at these things literally. You got the Royals on the one hand---people with swords and scepters and maybe a catapult or two, but usually their hands are too soft to deal with mechanical things. Then you've got the Mets, who were named after the Metropolitan Opera and can cause the hearts of their enemies to burst when they hit a high C. But…the Mets might feel obligated to obey the Royals when they're given a command like, "
Begone, you feral beasts!" But if I was a Met, I'd do the bursting heart trick anyway. I want that ring! So put me down for New York to win it 4 games to 2. And then pass me a dog and a beer.
Have a nice Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
“Cheers and Jeers is a joke. Elect Bill in Portland Maine if you want that.”
---Jeb Bush
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