From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
You Make the Call: Ugly October Hurricane or Ugly October Election Battle?
> Grave predictions of doom
> Promise of brighter days ahead
> Gobs of mud and slime flung long distances through the air
> Off-the-charts bluster, the worst coming from the right side
> Donations urgently solicited
> Non-stop, ear-splitting noise
> Talking heads on cable TV dissecting every detail
> BIG URGENT THEME MUSIC!
> TV viewers watch in shock and horror
> Fight to maintain power
> Segment of the population refuses to budge
> Drives people to drink
> Multiple debates over the direction in which things are headed
> Estimated cost: Billions
> When it's over everyone says "Thank God!!!"
To find the answer, beat your head against a wall until it comes to you. That worked for me, anyway.
Resources to help hurricane victims:
Center for International Disaster Information
ShelterBox
UNICEF
United Way
Humane Society
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, October 12, 2016
Note: Due to a mix-up in the C&J food chemistry lab, today's beef stroganoff tastes like black licorice slathered in windshield washer fluid. On the bright side, today in the C&J cafeteria all beef stroganoff is 50% off.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til 2017: 80
Days 'til the Philadelphia Cheesesteak Festival: 3
Percent of Asian Americans who favor Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, respectively, according to a new National Asian American Survey: 59%, 16%
Percent of sitting GOP U.S. governors and members of the House and Senate who don’t support Donald Trump, according to USA Today: 25%
Average kindergarten vaccination opt-out rate nationally: 1.6%
2015-16 vaccination opt-out rate in Oregon, Idaho and Vermont, the states with the highest rates: 6%, 5.8%, 5.5%
Size of the bottled water industry by 2020, according to The Guardian: $280 billion
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Mid-week Rapture Index:
188 (including 3 occults and 1 duck call vendor with a direct hotline to Satan). 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: Yes.
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CHEERS to the mocking power of laughter. While Al Gore was stumping with Hillary Clinton in Florida yesterday (climate change and the dangers of not turning out to vote were the biggest items on the agenda---see Joan’s liveblogging here), President Obama strapped on Jetpack One and blasted off for North Carolina (aka the "Weird Bathroom Obsession State"). Thoroughly enjoying his role as no-more-fucks-to-give-giver-in-chief, he took on the kooky alt-right yesterday, including the purple-veined bumpkins who call him a demon:
Meanwhile, in a wholly expected reversal of fortune, the president's approval numbers are inching ever upward as Americans realize that, yeah, he’s a pretty cool president. In the Gallup three-day tracking poll, a whopping 55 percent of Americans told the pollster that they like the job he's doing. But I'm sure the devil made 'em do it.
JEERS to The Big Fat Mouth Show. Autumn was unfolding so nicely here in Maine…and then Governor Paul LePage had to open his mouth again. Now our placidity has once again turned to embarrassment, and our faces are as red as the turning leaves. Governor LePage, you see, thinks America needs to be less small-d democratic and more Big-C Crackdown-ish:
Gov. Paul LePage said Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump may be needed to show “authoritarian power” in the U.S. and suggested the U.S. Constitution had been “broken” under President Barack Obama. […]
An authoritarian government, which LePage is apparently pondering, “concentrates power in the hands of a leader or a small elite that is not constitutionally responsible to the body of the people,” as defined by the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
“Authoritarian leaders often exercise power arbitrarily and without regard to existing bodies of law, and they usually cannot be replaced by citizens choosing freely among various competitors in elections.”
LePage added that he understood there was confusion about his comments, and promised to provide more details at the next Nurnberg rally.
JEERS to kids without a conscience. Eighteen years ago today, 21 year-old student Matt Shepard died after being severely beaten and tied to a fence outside of Laramie 5 days earlier by two aimless thugs with shit for brains. Matt was politically aware and we have no doubt he would have been all over social media. A note from the Foundation his mom and dad founded is here. Meanwhile, the knuckledragger wing of Republican party issued its annual helpful reminder today: "Please don't kill the gays---it leaves us with fewer people to feel superior over."
CHEERS to the number crunchers. The Nobel Prize for economics was awarded this week to Harvard professor Oliver Hart and Bent Holmström of MIT for their work with contracts:
Holmström's work outlined how contracts structure incentives---like pay, bonuses, or promotions---to encourage people to do the most productive work possible, while acknowledging the imperfect knowledge and information anyone providing those incentives will inevitably have, and how outcomes can sometimes be hard to measure. […]
Hart's work, on the other hand, explains why companies behave the way they do and fits that into economics' broader theoretical frameworks.
For instance, Hart did breakthrough work on how "incomplete contracts" shape economic outcomes. The basic idea is that in some situations contracts simply cannot account for all possible outcomes, or precisely describe the service that will be delivered in all its particulars. In those situations, Hart's work shows, the most important thing to get right in contracts is laying out who gets to make what decisions, and the rules for how to resolve unforeseen disputes.
While the news was greeted enthusiastically by the business world, Donald Trump noted that there still hasn’t been a Nobel Prize awarded for the miracle of trickle-down Reaganomics, leading "many people I'm hearing" to suspect that the Nobel committee has been rigged by Crooked Hillary, Sidney Blumenthal and George Soros, and prompting a call for a total and complete ban on Swedes entering the country “until we figure out what's going on.” He added that an exception would be made for Swedish supermodels, whom he would personally vet on his private jet. And in other news, Donald Trump's favorability among women currently stands at Kellyanne Conway.
CHEERS to G-d's Amazing 25-Hour Miracle Diet. The Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur started last night at sundown (which in Maine is, like, 6 O'clock now) and continues through today. According to C&J's go-to guide, Torah Tots…
Yom Kippur is a Shabbat...no work can be performed on Yom Kippur.
It is well-known that you are supposed to refrain from eating and drinking (even water) on Yom Kippur. It is a complete, 25+ hour fast beginning before sunset on the evening before Yom Kippur and ending after nightfall on the day of Yom Kippur. The Talmud also specifies additional restrictions: washing and bathing, anointing one's body (with cosmetics, perfumes, etc.), marital relations and wearing leather shoes.
The holiday is a somber one during which Jews confess their sins and seek forgiveness over the course of a day. That's why I'm not Jewish---I'd barely get started before the closing buzzer went off.
CHEERS to great performances. On October 12, 1960, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev went ballistic at the United Nations, took off his shoe and pounded it on his desk. Two words: bug...dead.
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 12, 2006
JEERS to John McCain. The Republican maverick dwarf pony said yesterday that the crisis with North Korea is the product of what happened 10 years ago on Clinton's watch. Then he praised Herbert Hoover for winning World War II and Franklin Pierce for freeing the slaves. Get well soon, Senator. Get well soon.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to great moments in online ventriloquism. The folks at Bad Lip Reading threw all the craziness they could think of at their riff on the first presidential debate. And it’s a testament to the sheer nuttiness of the actual event that this comes off as...almost normal:
FYI: Debate #3 happens one week from today in Las Vegas. This timely reminder has been brought to you by your friendly neighborhood liquor distributor and/or weed dealer.
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:
Daily Kos laughs when Bill in Portland Maine calls himself a ‘gentleman.’ It may well have been out of sheer disbelief.
---Zack Ford, Think Progress
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