From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Thursday Margaret and Helen Blogging
Helen Philpot---one half of the scrappiest 80-something dynamic duo on the internets---is facing a challenge shared by many normal, rational people who are following this election. What do you call a horrifying candidate after you've exhausted all the horrifying words already? A snip:
All the worst words seem to fit but the whole of Donald Trump is just greater than the sum of all those words. Clearly the man is not right in the head. He is fundamentally flawed---Big League. But a word to describe him escapes me.
We now know that he humiliated a 19-year-old girl because she didn’t conform to his definition of beauty. No positive encouragement when she gained weight---public humiliation was Trump’s choice for corrective action. One woman out of billions was crowned Miss Universe that year and Donald still found a way to criticize her looks. This man is a misogynist, yes, but that one word falls way short when you consider he also made fun of a disabled person and attacked the grieving parents of a soldier killed in battle only to then accept someone else’s Purple Heart and joke how easy it was to get. I didn’t make any of this up, honey. This man is a…
I still can’t find the word. […]
Donald thinks he won the debate and he is now stating that Hillary Clinton is stuck in the past. This from a man who wants to roll back civil rights, remove reproductive rights, reverse environmental protections, and decrease the minimum wage. Bless his heart but that man is a…
Damn it. What is the word?
I guess Trump is simply TRUMP. He is just too foul for words. I mean it. Really.
Margaret comes up with a different word. Click here to read the whole thing.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, October 6, 2016
Note: Just a heads-up that there will be no C&J on Monday as we'll be on more cottage-closing duties up north. Back Tuesday smelling like mothballs and ready to fire the opening salvos in the War on Christmas.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Halloween: 25
Days 'til the Woolly Worm Festival in Banner Elk, North Carolina: 9
Percent of the time that Politifact rated Tim Kaine "true" or "mostly true" during its debate-night fact checking: 79%
Percent of the time Mike Pence's claims were "true" or "mostly true": 31%
Percent of registered voters who believe Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, respectively, are prepared for the job of president: 63%, 36%
Percent of likely voters who plan to vote for Tammy Duckworth (D) and Sen. Mark Kirk (R) in the U.S. senate contest in Illinois, according to a Southern Illinois U. Carbondale poll: 48%, 34%
Percent of worldwide carbon emissions the countries that have ratified the Paris climate accord represent: 52.11%
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
It seems to me what we are looking at was put best by noted journalist Billy Don Moyers, formerly of Marshall, Texas, who was home last week and observed that the Republican right came to Washington to start a revolution and stayed to run a racket.
It has become a game of ideological flim-flam, a scam in which all manner of distracting hoo-hah -- abortion, judicial activism, even "the war on terra"---is used to obscure the fact that the government has been taken over by people who are using it to make money for themselves and their friends. […]
Rep. Roy Blunt, the man Republicans chose to temporarily replace DeLay while he's under indictment, tried to alter a Homeland Security bill in 2003 with a last-minute provision to benefit the cigarette company Philip Morris. Philip Morris had not only contributed heavily to Blunt's campaign, it also employed both Blunt's girlfriend and his son. DeLay gets indicted, and the Republicans replace him with another DeLay.
---October 2005
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Follow the leader…
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CHEERS to Bill in Portland Maine: flip-flopper. When the debate was all over Tuesday night, I thought it was a virtual tie---Pence on style and cool, Kaine on facts and aggression (if clumsy aggression at times). But today I gotta give the victory to Kaine, for two reasons. 1) Pence had a hidden agenda that didn’t become fully-apparent until it was over: his virtual divorce from Donald Trump. It was as if his boss wasn’t even on the ticket, and the chatter yesterday was almost as deafening on that as it was on 2) the lies. You don’t know just how stupid you’re gonna look with side-by-side comparisons until they actually start getting churned out. This is from the Clinton campaign’s rapid-response team:
So Kaine’s gotta get the credit for aggressively poking a stick in the hive to reveal the crazy goods being hawked by the Trump campaign, then standing back while the turncoat running mate who sees the water pooling around his feet on the poop deck of his sinking ship calls dibs on the nearest life ring before the chickens come home to roost. By the way, this cheer has been brought to you by Acme Mixed Metaphors, Inc.
JEERS to the not-helpers. Cat-4 Hurricane Matthew is a ball of rage rivaling even then most rabid Trump rally. It crushed Haiti. It's crushing the Bahamas. Florida's next (if you're down there and have teleportation technology, I'll be happy to come down and board up some windows) followed by Georgia and the Carolinas and then it's gonna hang a sharp right and head out to sea, sparing most of the Atlantic seaboard. There are some unmistakable characteristics you'll see when a hurricane forms: the swirlie pattern, the eye, the howling winds, the battering rains, and the god freaks:
Andrew Bieszad, a contributor to Shoebat.com, the website run by anti-gay extremists Walid and Theodore Shoebat, has some thoughts about Hurricane Matthew, which is expected to strike the East Coast of the United States in the coming days:
“Hurricane Matthew Is The Wrath Of God Poured Out On The Cities Of Orlando And Savannah For Supporting The Evil Sodomites.”
God is sending this hurricane, Bieszad states, as “a sign of His anger” against America for tolerating homosexuality and to thwart a gay pride festival scheduled to take place in Orlando this weekend.
“You want to stop not this hurricane, but future catastrophes?” he asks. “Then stop sinning, especially with sodomy.”
There's one other characteristic of a hurricane I forgot to mention. It's the one you see when the danger has passed and happiness returns: a rainbow---also known as the LGBT pride symbol. Explain that, asshole.
CHEERS to cool science. The Nobel Prize-a-palooza continued yesterday with the chemistry medallions (which are a bit tougher than veal medallions, but still tasty). As usual, they went to…wait for it…NERDS!!
Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir Fraser Stoddart and Bernard Feringa will share the 8m kronor (£727,000) prize for the design and synthesis of machines on a molecular scale.
The machines conceived by today's laureates are a thousand times thinner than a strand of hair. They could slip inside the human body to deliver drugs from within - for instance, applying pharmaceuticals directly to cancer cells.
This field of nanotechnology could also yield applications in the design of smart materials.
The prize recognises their success in linking molecules together to design everything from motors to a car and muscles on a tiny scale.
"They have mastered motion control at the molecular scale," said Olof Ramström, from the Nobel Committee.
And, of course, they're going to get us all killed. As for the rest of the week, the coveted Peace Prize gets awarded tomorrow, but not before today's medal for Outstanding Blogger with Candy Corn Addiction is announced. I'm really excited about my prospects. I totally aced the swimsuit portion.
CHEERS to Great Moments Republican gaffery (and this was a biggun'). On September 6, 1976, President Gerald Ford claimed during a debate with Jimmy Carter that there was "no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe." The GOP let 72 hours pass before correcting themselves, giving Carter time to drop the hammer. Today, of course, Republicans don’t even bother to correct anything. They just get Fox News to stick a "(D)" next to the offender's name and send in the clowns from Breitbart.com to concoct a new story. Heh, corrections. Really...how quaint.
JEERS to whiny hypocrites. Remember how the right-wingers in Congress threw their bodies over the FCC's net neutrality grenade to protect the giant vulture telcos from having to treat the internet like an equal-access utility? They lied their asses off about it, and thankfully they lost. Now they're freaking out again over internet oversight, which officially decoupled itself from the federal government Saturday. Leading the charge against the move is you-know-who:
“President Obama intends to give increased control of the Internet to authoritarian regimes like China, Russia, and Iran,” [Sen. Ted] Cruz said in a statement this week, after he tried and failed to add legislation to a congressional funding measure. “Like Jimmy Carter gave away the Panama Canal, Obama is giving away the Internet.”
What a drama queen. Not only does the planning for this transition go back to the Bush years, but Cruz and his Henny Penny allies might be interested to know that among those in favor of the move are the tech companies they were so in love with during the net neutrality battle:
Most major technology and telecommunications companies have endorsed the transition.
They say that fears of other nations taking control of the Internet are overblown. "There is absolutely no way that this is going to imperil freedoms. There is absolutely no way that this is going to allow Russia or Iran or anybody to take control of the Internet. This has nothing to do with that," said Matthew Shears, director of Global Internet Policy for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based advocacy group supported in part by the tech industry.
Funny how the teabaggers hate big government. Right up until the moment they don't.
JEERS to C&J getting an F. We had one school assignment yesterday: remember to commemorate UNESCO's annual World Teachers Day. As usual, we forgot. Also as usual, we blamed it on the dog. Also as usual, we'll be spending the day outside clapping erasers.
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 6, 2006
CHEERS to imbibing. A major study shows no link between drinking alcohol and prostate cancer. In fact, it may actually help men avoid the most aggressive kind. But one special interest group is extremely upset by the news: men's livers.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to #3. 2016 is certainly going to be a test of how much newspaper endorsements help (or don't help) secure a nominee's election to the presidency. So far, according to mighty Wikipedia, Hillary Clinton has 23 major daily newspaper endorsements---including many that have traditionally green-lighted the Republican---while Donald Trump is still scrounging for his first. But Hillary is also shutting out the human-pumpkinhead-left-out-on-the-front-steps-too-long in magazine endorsements. Yesterday The Atlantic ("a high-quality review organ with a moderate worldview") gave a thumbs-up to a presidential candidate for only the third time since its founding in 1857. Hillary Clinton now joins Abraham Lincoln and LBJ among their picks:
Hillary Rodham Clinton has more than earned, through her service to the country as first lady, as a senator from New York, and as secretary of state, the right to be taken seriously as a White House contender.
She has flaws (some legitimately troubling, some exaggerated by her opponents), but she is among the most prepared candidates ever to seek the presidency. We are confident that she understands the role of the United States in the world; we have no doubt that she will apply herself assiduously to the problems confronting this country; and she has demonstrated an aptitude for analysis and hard work.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, has no record of public service and no qualifications for public office. His affect is that of an infomercial huckster; he traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself. He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read.
"He appears not to read." How fucking sad is that---sometimes I wonder if he's not Sarah Palin in a Trump suit punking us all. Anyway, my main point is, it might be a good idea to wear a helmet and strap on some body armor today. When the deplorables see Hillary and Lincoln in the same endorsement, their heads are gonna be ping-ponging all over the place.
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:
"Trump loves dictators. He's got sort of a personal Mount Rushmore: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Moammar Gadhafi, and Bill in Portland Maine."
---Tim Kaine
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