From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Do You Want C&J for Another Year?
Yeah, it's that time again. Billy needs fresh booties so he can continue wading through the ideological slop and painting funny faces on the turds that drop in our lap every day from all across the political port-o-potty spectrum. (Sorry...you aren't eating breakfast, are you?)
[Rattle Rattle] That's mah tin cup.
For those of you who are new'ish here: three years ago my boss called from his yacht in Florida and informed me that my services writing commercials for products that didn’t kill most people were no longer needed. I posted a "Ta Ta for Now" update, the Daily Kos community swarmed, took up a collection and, in Kos's words, "bought my soul."
C&J originally began in 2003 as a way to keep my sanity during Bush's reign of error. He could hijack my civil liberties, waste my tax dollars, keep me unsafe from terrorist attacks, torture in my name, start a war based on the excuse "the dog ate our weapons inspectors," and try to write discrimination against me into the Constitution, but I'll be godammed if he was gonna steal my ability to openly mock his and his cronies' shit-for-brains lunacy. With the arrival of Barack Obama on the scene I figured things would calm down and I could pad off to greener pastures. HA! The teabaggers and Ben Nelson put the kibosh on that right quick.
So, thanks to your ongoing generosity, I've become a patriotic self-employment-tax revenue stream for Uncle Sam, and darned if I don’t feel like a better American for keeping the halls of the U.S. Treasury illuminated with ominously-flickery neon lights reminiscent of a Saw movie. Glad to help.
Now our third Kossack-funded year has ended and I'd like to justify my continued employment here by publishing the following 2,229-point accomplishments list in the hopes that you will consider throwing some spare change and/or credit default swaps my way for a fourth. Fair warning, this is very long, especially the part where I talked Nelson Mandela off a ledge:
[Note: Senator Tom Coburn has placed an anonymous hold on the release of the C&J accomplishments list until further notice.]
Wow!!! In addition to all that (I didn’t mention the 16 cats I rescued from trees, but there's that, too), I took zero sick days this year, and only one mental health day to recover from the cancellation of As the World Turns. Plus we co-sponsored Netroots for the Troops, raised money for Netroots Nation, served as a welcome hut for new Kossacks getting their feet wet, and continued mocking the people who put greed and stupidity and lust and power and dishonesty above country.
If you're in the mood to keep C&J going for another year, I'd be honored to slip a fresh diaper on my head and fresh ink ribbons in my 50 monkeys' typewriters.
Three years ago Kos set up PayPal accounts for both one-time donations and recurring monthly donations. (If you're already a monthly subscriber through PayPal and you want to continue, you don’t have to do anything.) I'm keeping my overall goal the same ($50k). The recurring monthly subscriptions are hugely helpful for minimizing the total needed during this "pledge week," so we're looking to raise $25k. Here's the linkies:
One time contribution: click here.
$5 monthly contribution: click here
$10 monthly contribution: click here
$20 monthly contribution: click here
To send a check via snail mail, the address is: Bill Harnsberger, 16 Pitt Street, Portland, ME, 04103.
I'll give you fundraising progress reports daily. Hopefully we can hit the goal by Friday and I'll stop pestering you for an entire year. (Another promise I kept last year.) But...only donate if you're able to do so without having to sell the Bentley.
In all seriousness: Thank you, thank you, thank you for supporting my writing. And if it doesn’t work out this time, I'll refund your money and in all likelihood go back to saturating the airwaves in all 50 states with ads for sex pills, colon cleansers, Kabbalah strings, gold-plated dog poop (Yay! My own Goldline franchise!) and fine recalled Fisher-Price products I got for pennies-on-the-dollar just in time for the holidays.
Think about it. Meanwhile, Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Note: As a precaution, C&J is elevating its terror threat level from "Lunch date with Sharon Angle" to "China would like to cash in its U.S. Treasury bonds now, please." Action steps: buy a canned good and check the seams on your escape dinghy. ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Thanksgiving in Canada: 6
Days `til the Woolly Worm Festival in Banner Elk, North Carolina: 11
Average percent of personal income that Americans paid in taxes last year: 17%
The last year during which Americans paid so little in taxes: 1971
(Source: Harper's Index)
Number of registered voters in Maine: 977,025
Percent of registered Maine voters who are, respectively, Republicans, Democrats, and not affiliated with any party: 26%, 33%, 36%
(Source: The Portland Press Herald)
Percent of U.S. coral that's located around the northwestern Hawaiian Islands: 69%
New England Patriots 41 Miami Dolphins 14
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Tuesday Words of Wisdom from the Right-wing Blogosphere:
All of us have been aware that the republican Senate leadership is NOT conservative nor does it care what the voters think except during their own re-elections.
We take the house, we make in-roads in the senate and we remove these scum bags as they come up for re-election. THAT is our only recourse. In the mean time we keep pounding these Republican Senators who are ignoring the people and constantly keep our voices buzzing in their ears until they figure it out or we get rid of them.
Not being an overly violent guy myself I’d love to pop Cornyn in the nose myself but I’ll settle with moving him to the unemployment line come his turn.
---Commenter MDugas at RedState
All together now: One...two...three... Wheeeee!!!
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Saved!
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JEERS to the worst opening line in the history of this election season (or maybe any election season since Splorp became King of the one-celled amoebas 20 billion years ago). Christine O'Donnell, sensing that only a hail-Mary pass will do in the closing days, opens her latest ad with a line that's like an SNL sketch in a can: "I am not a witch!" But that's not all! She give the satirists even more fodder by claiming: "I'm you!" Oh, I see: Christine O'Donnell is a gay dude who's a flaming liberal. Fetch the smelling salts---when the teabaggers hear the news they're gonna start dropping like flies.
CHEERS to Dr. Doright. And the Nobel prize winner in medicine is....
...a man whose work led to the first test tube baby, an achievement that helped bring 4 million infants into the world and raised challenging new questions about human reproduction. Robert Edwards of Britain, now an 85-year-old professor emeritus at the University of Cambridge, lived to see the far-reaching ramifications of his hugely controversial early research.
The biggest challenge of producing a test tube baby? Getting the little test tube penis into the little test tube vagina.
CHEERS to sacrificing for the common good. On October 5, 1947, Harry Truman became the first president to use TV to address the nation. He requested that Americans not eat beef on Tuesdays, poultry on Thursdays, and a slice of bread each day to save on feed grains as a way of helping folks starving in Europe in the wake of World War II. If President Obama tried that today, he'd be accused by the crybaby wing of the GOP of being a Food Nazi trying to starve Grandma of protein and fiber in order to appease whiny foreigners and give an unfair advantage to the arugula growers lobby. I don’t know what's scarier: that I'm such an accurate predictor...or that they're such easy predictees.
CHEERS to capping the gusher. Hello, abstinence-only education? This is reality calling. I'm so sorry to say this, but...you're fired:
A wide-ranging study of Americans’ sexual behavior, based on the largest nationally representative survey since 1992, finds that condom use is becoming the norm for sexually active teenagers.
Indeed, they are more responsible than adults about using condoms, the researchers report in a study coming out on Monday. A vast majority of sexually active 14- to 17-year-olds---80 percent of boys and 69 percent of girls---said they had used a condom the last time they had intercourse, compared with well under half of adults involved in casual liaisons.
That sound you hear is the share price of purity rings.com sinking like a, um, stone.
CHEERS to Quayle hunting. On October 5, 1988, Democrat Lloyd Bentsen opened a can of whupass on Dan "Potatoe" Quayle during their vice-presidential debate. (Watch it here). It was one of the great zingers in campaign lore, and today no network shows a highlights reel without it. Meanwhile, Quayle's son is apparently running for office in Arizona on a platform of, "Vote for me or you'll wake up and find a horse head under your sheets---ain't dat right, dollface?" (Run, lady, run!) Y'know, that's something Democrats get no credit for: the simple act of not being creepy.
JEERS to the reason why Goodhair's in the crosshairs. I don’t think I've ever seen a newspaper print a huge finger-waggin' editorial above the fold and the masthead before. But that's what Texas's Tyler Morning Telegraph did Sunday. Their target: the debate- and interview-averse Governor Rick Perry (who, by the way, cites the Telegraph as his favorite paper):
We are facing what’s rumored to be the largest budget deficit and crisis in the history of our state---informed estimates of the budget shortfall range from $18 billion to $20 billion. Newspaper readers, whether Republicans, Democrats or Independents---deserve to hear your solutions to the staggering problems we will be facing as the legislative session begins.
Instead, we’re confronted with an unacceptable and undeserved silence.
His course is clear: He needs to speak up, come clean, prove he's a soulless faux-cowboy with nothing to offer Texans but more pain and hardship, get beat by Bill White, and retreat to a secluded cabin in the panhandle. Then his silence will be acceptable and deserved. And the yellow roses will bloom again.
CHEERS to "Elegant Arthur." Happy 181st birthday to #21 Chester Alan Arthur. He was one of the "accidental" presidents who made it to the Oval Office via the death of his boss (in this case, the assassinated James Garfield). To say he wasn't much of a go-getter would be an understatement:
No one could ever accuse Chester Arthur of working too hard. After all, Gilded Age fops didn’t have much use for long hours or dedication. As one administration official put it, "President Arthur never did today what he could put off until tomorrow." Arthur was always far too preoccupied with his nightly multi-course feed fests to bother with actually doing stuff.
---From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien
In fairness, it was revealed after he died (just 8 months after leaving office) that he suffered from energy-robbing Bright's Disease, which he kept secret. Click here to pay your respects...and then try and convince us that Captain Kangaroo wasn't his love child.
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Five years ago in C&J: October 5, 2005
JEERS to minor misunderestimastandings. At yesterday's press conference, President Bush said there were 80...no, wait, make that 30...battalions of Iraqi military ready to rumble against the evildoers. But General George Casey said earlier that the number of functional battalions was...um...one. We're sure the general regrets contradicting the steel-trap-minded president...unless he'd like to see the interior walls of Leavenworth for a few decades.
JEERS to the wrong words at the wrong time. Wall Street was humming along yesterday, until some lamebrain at the Federal Reserve in Dallas opened his big fat mouth, yammering on and on and on about inflation and interest rates. Result: the Dow plummeted 94 points. Next time, pal, just talk about your kid's soccer game.
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And just one more...
JEERS to the Unicorn Chaser. Poor, poor David Broder of The Washington Post. I understand he's the "Dean of the D.C. Press Corps" (whatever the hell that means---does he get to take a switch to the other pundits when they misbehave?). But when he pines for fellowship and comity in the House, he could not sound more out of touch with reality. That was never so true than yesterday, when he wrapped innocent little cherub John Boehner in swaddling clothes and growled at Democrats to play nice with him:
I’d like to see Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leaders take Boehner up on the challenge he has raised, not try to demean it. He said, for example, that rather than stifling debate through the manipulation of rules, "we should open things up and let the battle of ideas help break down the scar tissue between the parties. . . . Let's let legislators legislate again." ... Boehner was a serious legislator...
[I'll pause so you can clean up whatever you just snorted through your nose and onto your keyboard.]
...for five years at the start of this decade as chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, before he became a floor leader for his party. His diagnosis of the problems in Congress offers a starting point for a cure. Let's hope the Democrats respond.
Got that? If the "Party of No" takes the House---or even if they don't!---then the party they said "No" to for the past four years should let bygones be bygones and graciously submit to their agenda. The party that derogatively calls the president a Muslim, a Marxist, a Socialist, and a Killer-of-Grandmas---the party whose members say so much batshit-crazy stuff that they keep progressive watchdog sites running 24/7 documenting all their wankery---should be granted equal status with the party that has actually gotten lots of good legislation passed in spite of lockstep GOP obstruction that Democrats never practiced to the same extent??? Please, Santa: all I want for Christmas is a park bench for this clueless codger...and a bottomless bag of pigeon feed so he'll never have to leave it.
Have a nice Tuesday. Think spring already! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
President of the United States Loves Cheers and Jeers
---Fox News
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