From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Oh! More Things I Know:
» Election day is 26 days away for Democrats and 27 for Republicans. (Ha ha ha, never gets old.)
» Michigan Governor Rick Snyder was sincere when he said he'd do everything he could to fix the water poisoning situation he caused in Flint. Unfortunately, everything he can do amounts to rearranging the pencils in his office coffee cup and hiring caterers to throw lavish birthday parties for his wife. But he’s doing those really well.
» When Democrats lose a round they reassess the situation and learn from their mistakes. When Republicans lose a round they scream, pound the table, cry victim, make up even crazier shit and claim victory.
» Mike Pence says America is "in deep trouble right now." If by deep trouble you mean low gas prices, low unemployment, high stock market, healthier economy than most of the world, more ethnic diversity, thriving space program, millions more with health insurance, fatter paychecks and no foreign terrorist attacks on U.S. soil during the Obama years then, yeah, we're in some deep shit.
» 106 daily newspapers have endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. Zero daily U.S. newspapers have endorsed Donald Trump. The What's Aleppo Gazette has endorsed Gary Johnson.
» Daily Kos Radio is mandatory listening during election season. Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is mandatory reading.
» Bob Dylan just won a Nobel Prize.
» Maine Governor Paul LePage doesn’t really want Trump to be a dictator. He just wants him to be dictator-ish.
» I'm close to implementing a new business model that will crush Jeff Bezos. It's like Amazon.com except everything you buy comes wrapped in bacon.
» If you trace Donald Trump's steps during the second debate, it forms the perfect outline of a pentagram.
» No one complains about FEMA incompetence under Craig Fugate's leadership.
» Bill O'Reilly's next book will be an exciting page-turner about his unwavering support for former boss and serial sexual predator Roger Ailes: Killing My Credibility.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, October 13, 2016
Note: There’s a new trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story coming out this morning. May the Force be with it. May my heart meds be with me.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Thanksgiving: 42
Days 'til the Baltimore Craft Beer Festival: 9
Number of GOP senators who opposed the candidacy of Barry Goldwater in 1964, according to the Rachel Maddow Show: 5
Number of GOP senators who oppose the candidacy of Donald trump in 2016: 16
President Obama's approval rating in the latest three-day Gallup tracking poll: 54%
Percent chance that Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 phone is being discontinued altogether because they couldn’t figure out how to keep them from catching fire: 100%
Rank of Yemen, Pakistan and Syria among countries with the biggest gap between men and women in education, health, political power and economic opportunity, according to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap report: #1, #2, #3
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
I do not think Kerry people are smarter than Bush people, so why are they better-informed? Maybe a small percentage of ideological right wingers don't believe anything the Establishment media say, but I don't think this is a matter of not believing what they hear, but of not hearing what's factual.
The great triumph of the political right in this country has been the creation of a network of alternative media. There are people who listen to Rush Limbaugh for more hours every day than the Branch Davidians listened to David Koresh. Watch Fox News, read The Washington Times---hey, that's what the Bush administration does, according to its own words.
But it's not just the right wing media purveying lies---they are quoting the administration. These misimpressions come directly from the Bush administration, still, over and over.
---October 2004
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Near my old stomping grounds in central Ohio, gunshot survivor Lillith gets a set of wheels…
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CHEERS to BillyFact: Fact Checker. Donald Trump claims that "We are living through the greatest jobs theft in the history of the world." Except, of course, we're not. Unemployment is at a low 5 percent, weekly unemployment claims are on the lowest streak since 1970, and this from Reuters:
[D]etails of the Labor Department's monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report published on Wednesday continued to point to a solid jobs market, with a steady rise in the number of people voluntarily quitting their jobs and declining layoffs.
With the bulk of the labor market slack largely absorbed and the economy's recovery from the 2007-09 recession aging, the slowdown in payrolls growth is normal. Fed Chair Janet Yellen has said the economy needs to create about 100,000 jobs a month to keep up with population growth. […]
"Nearly two-thirds of job separations are people voluntarily quitting rather than getting laid off or fired. That's a good indicator that workers are confident they will find new jobs," said Kolko.
So we rate Donald Trump's claim PANTS ON FIRE. However, the claim that we're living through the greatest brain cell theft from Republican heads in the history of the world? TRUE TRUE TRUE.
CHEERS to central (ballot) casting. Early voting started in Ohio yesterday, and polling-place activity appeared to be brisk, especially with women and people of color turning out to cast their middle fingers in Trump's direction. Maine's first day of early voting was Tuesday, and it sounds like voter apathy won’t be a problem this year:
Tuesday was the first day of early voting – known officially in Maine as in-person absentee voting---and clerks from across the state were reporting brisk turnouts. […]
A harried Kathy Jones, Portland’s clerk, said the turnout was strong and heavier than the early balloting in the 2012 presidential election, when President Obama won re-election over Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
Lisa Goodwin, Bangor’s city clerk, said “absentee voting is brisk, both in person and those requesting a ballot to be mailed to them.” Clerks in Old Town and Lisbon also reported heavy absentee voting. […] Nationally, about 30 percent of all votes cast in the presidential elections of 2012 and 2008 were cast early, a sharp increase from 22 percent in 2004.
Normally I wait until election day, but I think I'm going to do the deed early this year. I want to have that vote banked in case I get eaten by a clown.
CHEERS to previews of coming attractions. The topics for the third and final presidential debate were announced yesterday. Chris Wallace, host of Fox News's Fox Republican Talking Points Sunday, will moderate the October 19 showdown in Las Vegas. Here's what will be on the agenda:
1) Debt and
entitlements
2) Immigration
3) Economy
4) Supreme Court
5) Foreign hot spots
6) Fitness to be president
Or, as Donald Trump reads it: 1) Lock her up, she's the devil 2) Sidney Blumenthal orchestrated the Benghazi attacks 3) Crooked Hillary's emails 4) Bill Clinton's a rapist 5) America's such a shithole 6) ISIS and the Mexicans are going to kill you in your sleep. So basically, Reagan's sunny optimism…if you slathered it in gasoline, set it on fire, put it through a woodchipper and took a crap on it.
CHEERS to naval gazing. 241 years ago today, before we'd even declared our independence, the Continental Congress said, "Sure, why not?" (or, more accurately: "Sureth, why noteth?") to arming two ships with cannons. Little did they know that they had just formed the United States Navy:
The Continental Navy grew into an important force.
Within a few days, Congress established a Naval Committee charged with equipping a fleet. This committee directed the purchasing, outfitting, manning, and operations of the first ships of the new navy, drafted subsequent naval legislation, and prepared rules and regulations to govern the Continental Navy's conduct and internal administration. …
Over the course of the War of Independence, the Continental Navy sent to sea more than fifty armed vessels of various types. The navy's squadrons and cruisers seized enemy supplies and carried correspondence and diplomats to Europe, returning with needed munitions.
Their first official slogan is still in use today: "Beat Army."
CHEERS to the boomerang effect. Poor North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory has a case of the sadz. He signs one of America's most discriminatory anti-LGBT bills into law, and all of a sudden he's getting discriminated against! No fair…
"I’ve had at least five this week tell me that. Good friends. Very good friends. ‘Pat, I love ya. I love ya man, we’ll be friends for life. We just can’t support you.”
McCrory’s comments to the Family Research Council in Raleigh were published by Buzzfeed, which obtained a recording of the 46-minute talk.
“My wife, for example, in Charlotte---she primarily stays in Charlotte,” he said. “She’s been disinvited to charity events. Basically, they call her up and say, ‘You better not come. You better not come. My wife and I…we’re being shunned for a political disagreement, a values disagreement.”
It's like some elites are being treated as second-class citizens by their peers just because of who they irrationally despise so much that they're willing to codify their venom into law. Well, if it's any help, I say that all privileged haters deserve equal access to masked balls, cocktail weenies and silent auctions. Please lobby your congressperson to change this, people. If the aristocracy loses hope, why, whatever shall we do?
JEERS to celebrity (non-)power. On October 13, 1957, entertainment titans Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra introduced a new car on national TV. The hour-long special was a big ratings hit. Unfortunately, the car they were hawking was the Trump campaign of the auto world, the Ford Edsel…
And just like the Trump campaign, not even God could sell that thing.
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10 Years Ago in C&J---October 13, 2006:
JEERS to pigs who claim to speak for God. I had to transcribe this story by Author David Rakoff from The Daily Show last week. Remember: Robert Knight is head of the Culture and Family Institute:
"So I called up this guy named Robert Knight, [who] is the founder of the Culture and Family Institute. They always have such innocuous names---it's like, `Oh, the Basket of Puppies Foundation!' The Culture and Family Institute is an offshoot of Concerned Women For America. ... So we're talking, and finally I say, `Okay, you know that HIV is [also] transmitted by good old fashioned, red-blooded hetero[sexual] married sex?' And he says---into my telephone, knowing that he's being recorded---’Yeah, but not as much. I mean, the vagina can take a lot of punishment.'”
I bet that just cracks `em up in Knight's Sunday school class. [10/13/16 Update: Just in case anyone needed proof that Republicans have been hypocritical sexist pigs a lot longer than just the 2016 election cycle.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to a new member of the family. Woo-hoo! Our men and women with telescopes have discovered another dwarf planet in our solar system. Say hello to the li'l tyke via Scientific American:
The dwarf planet, called 2014 UZ224, measures about 330 miles across and is located about 8.5 billion miles from the sun, NPR reported today (Oct. 11).
For comparison, Pluto's largest moon, Charon, is about 750 miles in diameter, and reaches a maximum distance of about 4.5 billion miles from the sun. A year on 2014 UZ224 (the time it takes the dwarf planet to orbit the sun) is about 1,100 Earth years. One Pluto year, for c is about 248 Earth years.
Nice to meet ya, UZ224. I hope we can break bread one of these days. But for now we suggest you maintain your orbit and stay as far away from the third planet from the sun as you can. We're having a moment.
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:
The Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool’s already fraught with danger, the last thing you need while swimming is Bill in Portland Maine deciding it wants to leap out of the water a few feet from where you’re treading water. But that’s exactly what happened to Australian photographer Beau Pilgrim, who fortunately got the whole thing on video.
---Gizmodo
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