From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
"It's A Festivus Miracle!"
Today is Festivus. In accordance with tradition, I submit my 2010 Airing of Grievances. The following have disappointed me over the past year:
>> The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the new one-stop laundromat for cowardly rich people who want to buy elections with unlimited donations but without revealing their identities.
>> Joe Lieberman, for making me kinda sorta not dislike him completely anymore. Gaaaahhhh!!!!
>> Pragmatic purists who pretend to be purist pragmatists, purist pragmatists who pretend to be pragmatic purists, and pie that pretends to be cake.
>> The traditional media, for another year of quoting politicians, "experts" and spokespeople without asking the fundamental question: "Are they speaking the truth, or am I being played for a sucker?" Too many times the answer is: Like a Charms Blow Pop.
>> Whoever felt it was necessary to take from us this year: Elizabeth Edwards, Leslie Nielsen, Harvey Pekar, Jack Murtha, Tony Curtis, Wilma Mankiller, Richard Holbrooke, Dennis Hopper, Howard Zinn, Lena Horne, Don Meredith and Dorothy Height.
>> John McCain, who officially completed his transition from amusingly crotchety old coot to vicious out-to-lunch fringe-dweller.
>> Teabaggers, whose proposed solutions to various problems are on par with a doctor proposing to perform brain surgery with a crowbar.
>> The government, for not treating 9.8 percent (read: 17 percent actual) unemployment as a major crisis that is not being solved by the private sector.
>> Bankers who will do absolutely anything, legal or not, to kick people out of their homes.
>> Anyone who claims dinosaurs transported biblical characters over the river and through the woods to Grandma's house five thousand years ago.
>> People who think a snowstorm is proof that the earth's climate isn't getting warmer or more unstable.
>> People who park too damn close to our driveway.
>> People who interrupt when you're in the middle of a sentence because they think they know what you're going to say. Even if they're right, I always tell 'em they're totally wrong. ("There's a s..." "Steamroller headed right for me?" "No. Sale at Sears." [Squish!])
>> God, for not coming down here and straightening out this mess of a planet. I think she's dating another universe.
To them I say...
"I HAVE A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH YOU PEOPLE!"
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, December 23, 2010
Note: Here's our posting schedule for the rest of the week and beyond:
Tomorrow evening: Join us at our usual Friday time for our traditional A Very Special C&J Christmas Eve Bean Supper and Nudeblogging.
Monday: No C&J, as we will still be cleaning up from A Very Special C&J Christmas Eve Bean Supper and Nudeblogging ("Whose socks are these? Anyone?")
Tuesday-Friday: A Look Back at 2010: The Laughs, the Tears, the Beers, the Fears, the Smears, the Profiteers, the Electioneers, the Mountaineers, the Racketeers, the Bandoleers, the Puppeteers, the Musketeers, the Chandeliers, the Mutineers, and the story of the Day I Discovered the Online Rhyming Dictionary
...in color!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Memorial Day: 158
Days `til the Windless Kite Festival in the Long Beach School gymnasium: 23
U.S. population in, respectively, 2000 and 2010: 281,421,906 / 308,745,538
(Source: Census Bureau via Atrios)
Percent increase in Maine's population over the last 10 years: 4.2%
Percent of U.S. adults who think parents are mostly responsible for deficiencies in our educational system: 68%
Percent of moms and dads, respectively, who believe the above is true: 72% / 61%
(Source: AP-Stanford University poll)
Percent chance that December 23 is one of the three deadliest days for pedestrians: 100%
(Source: Parade)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Holiday cheers to everyone from the Americans in Iraq, the Iraqis, and the people who had to eat bugs on reality shows this year.
And a Merry Christmas to all, including people who have white Christmas trees decorated entirely with purple balls. Merry Christmas to the Red states and the Blue states, to the R's and D's, and to all the troops stationed in Afghanistan, including the French troops there – Mais oui, Christmas, y'all.
---December, 2004
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Evolution takes an unexpected turn...
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CHEERS to a Big Fuckin' Day! After a tumultuous year of gridlock and frustration, yesterday we got a helluva payoff. It started at 9:15 with the signing of the DADT bill and, to coin a phrase, the hits just kept on comin'. The START arms control treaty was ratified. (Yay! Soon we'll only have the capacity to blow up five solar systems instead of eight!) The 9/11 responders got their supplemental medical care (with a generous assist from Jon Stewart and Shepard Smith). A food safety bill got the green light. Dan Choi got his West Point ring back from Senate Majority Ninja Harry Reid. Senate Democrats pledged to at least partially de-fang the filibuster. Obama held a news conference to remind us again how truly great it is to have a president who speaks in complete sentences. And the cherry on the cake: hapless Alaska tea party loser Joe Miller had a very bad day, thanks to the state Supreme Court. Literally, I kid you not, as all these seismic events poured into my brain, old information from, like, the 1970s started gushing out my ears like a busted blowout preventer spewing pea soup. (Which, by the way, answers the question: what's the fastest way to clear out a crowded coffee shop in downtown Portland, Maine on a Wednesday afternoon?) Having moved all that heaven and earth, up next is a much-needed break. I don’t know who needs it more...them or us.
JEERS to getting sabotaged from within. Sorry to break it to ya, O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck & Co. As much as you want to blame those crazy liberals for killing CHRISTmas, the stone-cold truth is that it was an inside job---as in, inside your own little Bible bubble. From 2004:
While President Bush was re-elected last month in an election victory many attributed to an outpouring of support by evangelical Christians impressed with his candid outspokenness about his faith, some Americans notice the White House website lacks even a single mention of Jesus, whose birth is celebrated by hundreds of millions worldwide Dec. 25. [...] Among the website's many photographs of secular decorations is a shot of a creche, or Nativity, displayed in the East Room, but the baby Jesus is virtually invisible.
And from 2005:
The official season's greetings card being sent out by the White House on behalf of the president and first lady is stirring up controversy. CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante reports that the reason is because the card never uses the word "Christmas," in deference to other holidays celebrated at this time of year, such as Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Year's Day. [...]
"It's a Christmas card," says William Donohue, president of The Catholic League. "What's wrong with the president of the United States, who's a practicing Christian, from saying 'Merry Christmas' in his Christmas card?" [...] "The president of the United States, we thought, is one of us," Donohue says.
To paraphrase the late Ted Kennedy: "The non-issue goes on, the gasbags endure, the faux-outrage still lives, and the silliness shall never die."
JEERS to holiday travel. Ugh:
AAA said 92.3 million people are expected to travel 50 miles or more from home during that stretch, the group said on Wednesday. ...Most travelers will drive to their destinations. AAA projected that almost 2.8 million people will travel by air, which is up by 2.8 percent from the same period last year.
If you're braving the highways and/or airways, we wish you safe travels. And remember, kids: 999 Bottles of Beer on the Wall is your Mommy and Daddy's most favorite song. Sing it all the way to Grandma's house so they'll know how much you really love them!
JEERS to trying to have it both ways. Sarah Palin, who left the governorship of Alaska mid-way through her first term so she could fulfill her dream of becoming a Snooki-level celebrity, is mad. Mad mad mad. Specifically, mad at Wikileaks founder Orange Julius Assange, whom she calls (via Twitter, of course) "treasonous." But yesterday she got an opinion column on Iran published in USA Today, and guess what evidence she cites in the very first paragraph? Good guess:
Arab leaders in the region rightly fear a nuclear-armed Iran. We suspected this before, but now we know for sure because of leaked diplomatic cables. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia "frequently exhorted the U.S. to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program," according to these communications.
Wikileaks! So Sarah Palin is now relying on information provided by a traitor (a treasonous traitor, no less!) to build her foundation for a serious discussion on a major foreign-policy issue. That's funny as hell---the having a serious discussion on a major foreign-policy part, I mean. But palling around with a traitor? Tsk tsk.
CHEERS to the great tales. On this date in 1823, The Night Before Christmas---which was originally called Account of a Visit From St. Nicholas---was published for the first time in the Troy Sentinel. (See it here.) It's been updated a few times since then. The newest version is a bit shorter than the original:
Twas the night before Christmas
and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring
because the bank had illegally foreclosed on the owner behind his back while he was out of town, and not only changed the locks but also carted away all his shit so now he has nothing and by nothing I mean no furniture, no dishes, no clothes, no computer...
Not even a mouse.
And I heard him exclaim as he uncorked a fifth of scotch and drove out of sight:
"Fuckersh---you'll be hearing from my attorneysh before it'sh night!"
But, uh, you might want to stick with the original version around the grandkids.
CHEERS to Dr. Bill. Here's the latest from the land of lab coats and clipboards: Echinacea doesn’t seem to help if you have a cold. But taking sugar pills from a bottle marked "Placebo"---as wild as that sounds--seems to help if you have irritable bowel syndrome. Thanks for visiting Dr. Bill for all your health needs. That'll be three chickens, please.
CHEERS to great breakthroughs. On December 23, 1947, John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain and William Shockley invented the transistor in New Jersey (and later won the Nobel Prize in physics for their feat). It originally was a relatively big old thing, but today they're as small as a molecule. To put that in perspective, it's the equivilent of all the good Republican ideas for dealing with the recession, climate change and healthcare reform combined. Except bigger.
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Five years ago in C&J: December 23, 2005
JEERS to deserting your bases. Johnny Damon is leaving the Boston Red Sox to don the prison stripes of the New York Yankees. Price for the extraction of his soul: $52 million. Tch...like that buys anything anymore.
JEERS to agreeing with psycho wackjobs. Saddam Hussein made sense at his trial yesterday: "The White House are liars!" he said. Indeed it are. Heh heh. Indeeeed it are. Mmm hmm. Now shut up and hang yourself already.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to the Great Pale Yellow Goddess. How cool is it that Digby is on our team? WAY cool, that's how cool. She is one of the sharpest, most observant bloggers you'll find on the lefty tubes, and when you combine that with her Molly Ivins-like wit it's easy to see why "What Digby said..." has become an often-used blogosphere catchphrase. She's in the middle of her annual fundraiser now so she can keep chasing after the bad guys. If you feel so inclined to send a little holiday cheer in her direction, here's the linky dinky. (The donation buttons and snail mail address are on the upper left side of her page.) You won’t get much in return, though...except the equivilent of a Ph.D.
Have a nice Thursday. And Fox News: you stay classy now, hear? Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"Eating Bill in Portland Maine is a form of sophisticated cannibalism."
---Sen. Arlen Specter
12/21/10
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