From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Harry Reid dines out:
"Oh, waiter! Um...Waiter, I am powerless to eat this meal."
"What is it now?"
"Well, y'know how I said I needed the broccoli spears facing a certain way and the fish had to be a certain temperature and the gravy had to be a certain consistency and the butter had to be medium-soft?"
"Yes. You've sent your meal back six times already. I'm quite familiar with your order."
"Well, it's lovely, but it needs to be on a different-colored plate. Let's try chartreuse, shall we? Let's try that."
Harry Reid gets a green light:
"Golly, I am powerless to proceed. It looks green, I'm confident it could be green, but I'm also detecting a hint of red. Yes, I believe the filament inside the red light is still slightly illuminated and I couldn’t possibly proceed until I was assured that it was completely extinguished before I step on the gas. We'll have to get a ladder and check."
[Honk!!! Beep!!! Honk!!!]
"Your horns are not helpful in this situation. I'm powerless."
Harry Reid takes yes for an answer:
'Look, I want to believe you said yes. I know you've repeated it several times and it certainly sounds like yes. But I am powerless to accept it as yes because of all the possible meanings that may exist for it. 'Yes' could mean something obscene in a different language and I would be reticent to accept that definition in this particular circumstance. So until I'm able to open a congressional investigation into all the subtleties of the word in question, I shall have to suspend any action until such time that I'm convinced that your yes means my yes. I request that you keep this ice cream truck idling here for the next twelve to eighteen months because I really do want those sprinkles, and I want to believe that you, in fact, have indicated that you are able to provide them."
Next week: Harry Reid explains why he is powerless to accept the results of a coin toss.
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Note: I've added your name to my little black book. When it's released upon my death, you can expect to be indicted on---[flip flip flip]---16 counts of...well, that's our little secret, isn’t it?
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Hillary Clinton's 62nd birthday: 5
Days `til the Run Dawg Run Festival in New Gloucester, Maine: 3
President Obama's favorable rating in Maine: 58% (down from 68% in April)
Percent of Mainers who support a government option in healthcare reform: 57%
(Source: October Pan Atlantic poll)
Average drop in Americans' 2009 private-sector weekly wages through September: -1.4% (making $616 a week, on average)
Percent of Americans surveyed who believe people having cell phone conversations in public are rude: 51%
Percent who don't: 37%
(Source: USA Today)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 165 (including 4 Israels and 1 close shave). 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: Oh boy...it's that time of year, ain't it?
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CHEERS to the neocons' worst nightmare (via DemfromCT). Let's review: For years, Cheney, Kristol, Bolton, McCain and their Orcs beat the drums: "Bomb Iran! Do it now! We can't wait! Pay no attention to what we said about Iraq! Iran really IS the smoking gun that will come in the form of a mushroom cloud! War War War!" Well, this morning they're weeping in their Folgers because Iran, Russia, the U.S. and France have agreed to a deal in which Iran would send most of its enriched uranium to Russia, thus cooling one of the hottest spots in the world---and it could be signed as early as Friday. Memo to the wingers' cats: you might wanna lay low today---I expect they'll be looking to kick anything that moves.
CHEERS to hobnobbin' with His Holiness. Last week Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson came to St. Luke's Cathedral in Portland to speak about marriage equality---and Maine Referendum Question 1---from a religious perspective. He packed the place with nearly a thousand people. In many ways Bishop Robinson is our modern-day Harvey Milk, fearlessly wading into hostile territory to break down doors and expand the sphere of equality for GLBT people. If I had a tenth of his courage, smarts and joie de vivre, I'd be thrilled. Here are some random notes I took, one of which is actually breaking news'ish:
"I was traveling in Tennessee and I saw a bumper sticker that I'll never forget. It said: "HOMOSEXUAL: Every Good Southern Family Has One"
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"Twenty years ago, most people would honestly say, 'I don’t know anyone gay.' Today everybody knows somebody who's gay. So when this issue [of GLBT equality] comes up in someone's mind, a face now comes to mind."
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"Isn’t it hysterical that the more fundamentalist you are, the more likely you are to rely on the King James Bible? King James was gay as a goose!"
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BREAKING! For folks (like me) who are a little miffed that the president seems to be dragging his feet on repealing Don’t Ask, Don't Tell and other gay issues, take heart, says Robinson: "I was in the White House two weeks ago, and I can tell you that they have a timeline for all these things. And I don’t mean in eight years, I mean soon."
He added that: "It is important that you also lean on your congressmembers, so they can create and push the legislation that the president is eager to sign."
Afterward he gave me what is now one of my most prized possessions: his autograph. Or, as I'm calling it: my permission slip to cut through the Heavenly rope line.
JEERS to minority rules. Keith Olbermann Monday night:
The Democratic leadership of the U.S. Senate faces a dilemma tonight. The majority of America wants a public option---government-run health insurance to compete with for-profit insurance. The majority of the House of Representatives wants a public option; four out of five health care bills include a public option. Most of the Senate wants a public option. The president of the United States wants a public option. So, a real stumper for Senate Democrats: Should their health care bill include a public option?
Duh!!! For further proof just look to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, which shows that Ma and Pa Q. Public demand one. And every day that goes by without a firm commitment from Harry Reid's Senate is another day that the insurance companies must have stacked their bundles of bribe money just a little higher in the backrooms. Senator Tom Harkin told Ed Schultz last night that all this pussyfooting around is just "a dance," and "we will get a strong public option." Uh huh, well...I'll "believe it" when I "see it."
CHEERS to flying fingers. On October 21, 1918, a typing speed record was set by Margaret Owen of New York City: 170 words per minute on a manual typewriter. Here's a sample:
Jig Thyebeg ehdrhi slaw 948has no jdo0-fghbf reydhgnc convkde braggadocio 94u8457b og nut arkblarg Gimbel manly thwabe rocks
If she was alive today, she'd be Sarah Palin's ghostwriter.
CHEERS to sounding the alarm. AHHH--OOOH--GAH!!! Hey teabaggers! Consider this a Priority 1 Alert! Your tax dollars are being wasted! I repeat: Your tax dollars are being wasted! Please organize a rally on the mall to voice your outrage:
Even when executions are not carried out, the death penalty costs US states hundreds of millions of dollars a year, depleting budgets in the midst of economic crisis, a study released Tuesday found.
"It is doubtful in today's economic climate that any legislature would introduce the death penalty if faced with the reality that each execution would cost taxpayers 25 million dollars, or that the state might spend more than 100 million dollars over several years and produce few or no executions," argued Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center and the report's author.
Hundreds of millions of dollars---wasted! Get on it, guys!
Dear BiPM: Thanks but no thanks. This isn’t the kind of government waste we fight against. But if you ever find out anything on Acorn or Obama's socialist czars, call us and we'll shove a camera in their face. Hugs, the Fraternal Order of Teabaggers.
CHEERS to the return of the barenekkid Bard. So we've been having this mini crisis here in Portland over a loosely-organized group called Naked Shakespeare, which reads sonnets and soliloquies as people enjoy wine and cheese at the...um...aptly named "Wine Bar and Restaurant" down by the waterfront. They were forced to cease and desist by the thugs (he said lovingly) at City Hall because they need an entertainment license, but there's a rule that says you can't give entertainment licenses to a venue if it's within 100 feet of another venue with an entertainment license (so complicated!!!). Which is really eff'd up because it's not like they're getting paid or anything---it's really, really informal. So they've been hanging in bureaucratic limbo for months, but fortunately this play has a happy ending:
The City Council voted 8-1 Monday night to exempt the Wine Bar & Restaurant on Wharf Street from a city regulation that prohibits two bars within 100 feet of each other from having entertainment licenses. ... The production is called "Naked Shakespeare" because the actors don't use props or costumes.
The lone dissenter: Councilman Iago.
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Five years ago in C&J: October 21, 2004
CHEERS to 1.7 million reasons to vote for John Kerry. That's the number of veterans---veterans!---with no health care or access to government hospitals, according to a new study. "We're sending men and women off to war and yet the people who fought previous wars can't get the basic things they need to go on with their lives afterward," says Harvard's Dr. David Himmelstein. Dick Cheney responds, saying that if we all add another "Support the Troops" magnet to our Hummers the problem will fix itself. Thoughtful!
JEERS to cut-and-run cowards. BwockBwockBwock! Bill O'Reilly scraps interviews promoting his children's book because he may actually be the kind of creep you want to keep the kiddies far away from. Here's lesson #1 from our upcoming book, "Cheers and Jeers for Tots": If someone pulls up, winks, and offers you falafel, run...run like the wind!
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And just one more...
CHEERS to going green before going green was cool. You know the type. Environmentally-conscious citizens who are regulars at city council meetings and in statehouse hallways, often driving elected officials crazy with their non-stop energy. They come armed with sometimes wacky-sounding (read: Big) ideas, scads of documentation, and sheer perseverance. They're in every state raising a necessary ruckus. They demand to be heard, and the really tenacious ones succeed in making their home turf a better place. And sometimes...sometimes...they achieve legendary status. Here in Maine we lost an environmentalist legend last week when Sherwood Libby died:
"I think he was a bit of a visionary before his time. He saw what we could lose," said Bonnie Titcomb Lewis, a former state senator and now director of advancement for the Mitchell Institute in Portland. "Sherwood was just a pit bull for the good of the environment." [...]
Libby helped establish the Allagash Wilderness Waterway and the Land Use Regulation Commission, which regulates land use in the North Woods. In the 1970s, he served as a member of the land use commission and chairman of a state task force that devised shoreland zoning regulations to protect waterways.
Closer to his home, Libby helped create and then served on the Saco River Corridor Commission, a group that oversees shoreland activities in communities all along the waterway. He helped preserve a 1,200-acre game preserve on the Little Ossipee and the 1,400-acre Sawyer's Mountain Highlands. [...]
"He pushed and pushed and pushed," said Bob Cummings, a former longtime environmental reporter for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. "Probably, he did more in the early years to successfully promote environmental regulation ... than perhaps any other single person."
And never got paid a dime for it. Sherwood Libby was 76, and left his corner of the world a better place than when he found it. We should all be so fortunate.
Have a lovely Wednesday. Enjoy this comforting thought: Republicans are in tatters. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Cheers and Jeers isn't just bad. It's un-American.
---Jacob Weisberg
Newsweek
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