From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Breakfast is served
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman and walking sour apple Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wolfed down some vittles with President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland yesterday morning before storming off to take care of more important business. As of today, the Big Bench has been minus a ninth justice for two months, and by refusing to do the job we're all paying him to do, Grassley plans to extend that streak for at least another seven.
In response, the Ritual Café in Des Moines revamped its menu to mock Grassley:
If you can’t read ‘em all, click here for a larger image of the #DoYourJob Menu. If there’s any justice in the world, Grassley will wake up on November 9th to find out his political career is...wait for it...wait for it...toast.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Note: Today is Wednesday the 13th. It's not unlucky as Friday the 13th, but they're kin so don’t be givin' it no stinkeye. ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the New York primary: 6
Days 'til the Bacon and Beer Classic in New York City: 9
Pounds of ice lost around Greenland every year since 2003, according to NASA scientists: 600 trillion
Number of bomb-sniffing dogs deployed at airports around the country via TSA and local law enforcement, according to The Washington Post: 920
Number of doctors in Maine who certified patients for medical marijuana in 2015, according to The Portland Press Herald: 302
Rank of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming among states with the highest percentage of residents who consult a financial adviser about taxes, according to Parade: #1, #2, #3
Height of the SpaceX first-stage booster rocket that successfully landed on that barge in the Atlantic: 15 stories
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Mid-week Rapture Index:
179 (including 4 famines and 1 balcony of apocalyptic critics). Soul Protection Factor 14 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day:
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JEERS to the non-recovery recovery. They can try to put lipstick on the water-poisoning crisis pig in Flint, Michigan all they want, but the fact remains that…
…the threat of lead contamination remains, researchers said Tuesday.
“There are very positive trends. ... The system is definitely on its path to recovery,” Marc Edwards, the Virginia Tech professor whose work helped bring Flint’s water crisis to light, told reporters. But he said that because recent samples showed that potentially dangerous levels of lead persist, “at present, no one should be drinking unfiltered water in Flint.”
[T]oo many of the homes tested last month still showed lead levels above the federal “action level” of 15 parts per billion. In addition, they said, lead levels throughout Flint’s water system are ‘highly variable.’ “Thus, virtually all homes in Flint must be considered at risk, at the present time, for elevated lead in water,” researchers wrote in a summary of their findings, “unless the homeowner is certain that there is no lead plumbing in the home.”
The guy who allowed the lead poisoning to happen, Governor Rick Snyder, assured Flint residents that he's doing all he can. But the situation is slowly improving anyway.
CHEERS to well-placed outrage. New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton lost one of his former players, Will Smith, to gun violence (apparently a case of road rage) last week, and he's pissed:
Payton even said, "I hate guns," at one point during the interview with USA Today Sports.
The Saints coach described himself as "leaning to the right on some issues," but emphatically stressed that he is not in favor of the current gun laws in the United States, specifically in Louisiana. "I've heard people argue that everybody needs a gun," Payton said. "That's madness. I know there are many kids who grow up in a hunting environment. I get that. But there are places, like England, where even the cops don't have guns."
"It was a large caliber gun. A .45. It was designed back during World War I. And this thing just stops people. … We could go online and get 10 of them and have them shipped to our house tomorrow. I don't believe that was the intention when they allowed for the right for citizens to bear arms."
In the distance the NRA scratched Payton’s name off its Christmas card list and deemed him an enemy combatant.
CHEERS to nerds and geeks in all their glory. Today the White House will be teeming with problem-solving student inventors for the sixth annual science fair…
Over the past five years, the President has invited students to bring their robots, rockets, solar-powered cars, and many other discoveries to the White House, where he has honored these outstanding students the same way we honor the winners of the Super Bowl.
Student’s attending this year’s Science Fair are tackling some of our Nation’s greatest challenges, from combating climate change to uncovering new ways to fight cancer to discovering ways to reach farther beyond our atmosphere as part of the Mars generation.
We look forward to celebrating their ingenuity and entrepreneurship -- not just in this moment, but as we look toward a future where they’ll be the scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and innovators who stand to change the world.
My sole contribution to science was the physics project whereby I flicked pencils into the air so they'd stick into the drop ceiling while Professor Stillwell had her back turned. And to this day I wait by the phone for that call from the Nobel committee.
CHEERS to #3. Happy 273rd birthday to founding father and President Thomas Jefferson. Cormac O'Brien's book Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents sums up the "Sage of Monticello" rather well (although we're quick to do a facepalm over his ownership and treatment of slaves, which was deplorable):
Thomas Jefferson was the walking, talking embodiment of the Enlightenment, a polymath whose list of achievements is as long as it is incredibly varied.
As if penning the Declaration of Independence, sitting as governor of Virginia during the Revolution, and serving as Secretary of State in George Washington's first term weren't enough, he went on to do much more---architecture, linguistics, agriculture, philosophy, music, prose, you name it. While others dabbled, Jefferson mastered.
He left behind a vast collection of essays and correspondence, which reveal a mind of stunning complexity and apparent contradictions. Jefferson was an avowed abolitionist whose fortune relied on a large population of slaves, a forward-thinking humanist whose opinions on minorities such as Native Americans could be truly alarming; a man whose awkwardness around women stood in stark contrast to his legendary romances.
Pay your respects here. Jefferson, by the way, was also "fond of greeting ambassadors in his pajamas---a practice that most of them found appalling." If you ring our doorbell tonight, I'll treat ya to a free reenactment.
WHATEVER to the shrug heard 'round the world. House Speaker Paul Ryan, having absolutely nothing better to do with his time since Republicans decided years ago to stop doing their jobs, aimed his lipless yap at a microphone yesterday and told everybody that no way no how is he going to be the next president of the United States. So now, instead of a fascist radical with kooky ideas and a track record of failure, Republicans will have to settle for one of the two leading nominees: the fascist radical with kooky ideas and a track record of failure, or the fascist radical with kooky ideas and a track record of failure. Unless, of course, a fascist radical with kooky ideas and a track record of failure comes riding in on a white horse. Ooh I'm on pins and needlezzzzzzzzzzzz.
CHEERS to happy endings. 46 years ago today, en route to the moon, Apollo 13 commander Tom Hanks Jim Lovell announced, "Houston, we've got a problem" after an oxygen tank exploded. Through sheer brilliance on the part of NASA's team and the crew, they returned safely four days later. A "successful failure" is what they called that mission. Or as it's also known: "a typical day at Fox News."
P.S. Only three thousand more monthly payments to go and Jim Lovell will have paid for the damage. (They begged him to buy State Farm exploding-oxygen-tank insurance, but did he listen? Noooo...)
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Ten years ago in C&J: April 13, 2006
CHEERS to the fish that ate the intelligent designers. Scientists have uncovered the 375 million year-old missing link between fish and amphibians, thus driving one more reality-based nail in the anti-evolution crowd's intellectual (snort!) coffin. Pass the tartar sauce.
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And just one more…
CHEERS and JEERS to our doggie's diagnosis. Yesterday marked eight weeks since our three-year-old rescue (from Macon, Georgia) lab-mix Haley had surgery to fix her hind left leg from ligament damage…a repeat of the surgery she'd had on her right leg just a year before. So it was off to the vet to get her last set of x-rays, and we're happy to report the bones have fused nicely and she's on her way to a full recovery. Phew!
Now the bad news, and this really feels like a sucker-punch: a biopsy on a small node on Haley's muzzle came back positive for cancer. They call it a Mast Cell Tumor and it'll have to come out. The poor girl will be on prednisone for half a dozen days to try and shrink the target area (about ¾" in diameter), and then she'll go---again---under the knife. This and the above surgeries come on top of the parvovirus she survived as a puppy, and it leaves us wondering why this poor beautiful creature is getting dumped on so much by the gods. Bad gods! No tithing for you! You're playing second-fiddle to St. Vet now.
If all goes well---including the "reconstructive technique" they'll need to replace what they're removing---she'll be cancer-free for the rest of her days. For now she's just happy that the surgeon gave us the green light to return her hidden-away tennis balls to their rightful place: all over the kitchen…and all over the dining room…and all over the living room…and all over the den…and all over the bedroom...and up and down the hallway. Ah, yes---walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night just became a perilous mission again. That’s not a complaimt.
Have a nice humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"We have to live together. What do we want, more laws? How about a little bit more Cheers and Jeers?"
---Gov. John Kasich
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