From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Oh! More Things I Know:
> One difference between liberals and conservatives is, liberals correct their mistakes to reflect reality while conservatives correct their reality to reflect their mistakes.
> The next government program I wanna see is Cash for Renters. That'd be swell. Just stuff a few Franklins in my mailbox, Geithner, and we'll call it good.
> You know what I have a lot more respect for since the Oilpocalypse began? Pounds of pressure per square inch.
> When you hear a pundit lament that "Washington is sooooo polarized," it really means, "Republicans are being obstructionist assholes."
> Look, I know we're all really excited about installing millions of windmills that'll generate power, but let's not lose sight of why we're installing them in the first place: to grind grain.
> Kossack "grog" is funny: "Jeers to the humidity. When I was done [with my run], I could have wrapped myself in paper towels and absorbed myself to death."
> My octopus picked the Netherlands. Idiot.
> During the upcoming holiday season, the top-selling toy will be Barbie's Gulf Coast Oil-slick Observation Dream Blimp.
> By poo-pooing an extension of unemployment benefits while calling for more tax cuts for the rich, Republicans on Capitol Hill are acting as a de facto death panel, ruling unanimously in favor of killing the stability and solvency of countless poor and middle-class American families. Look up "heartless bastards" in the dictionary...
> Harry Reid accusing President Obama of not being forceful enough with Republicans is like a birther accusing a climate-change denier of being too "out there."
> The most amazing thing to me about the human body is that we don't shred our tongues when we chew food.
> I get occasional hate mail in which right-wingers call me a faggot. I always respond by thanking them for at least getting something right.
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Note: Nearly 40 people so far are signed up to attend the C&J Netroots Nation Meet, Great 'n Eat Party one week from today in Vegas. It starts at 6:30PT at the Rio Hotel; Michael and I (and, hopefully others who can't be there in person) will be there in spirit via the miracle of liveblogging on Daily Kos. If you haven't RSVP'd yet, Click here for all the details. I'll pay for your meal and drinks if you can provide non-photoshopped photographic proof that you attended wearing nothing but Spandex.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the end of this fracking year: 170
Days `til the Ohio State Fair: 14
Number of gulf oil rigs and federal oil rig inspectors in 1985: 400 / 55
Number of gulf oil rigs and federal oil rig inspectors now: 4,000 / 62
(Source: Washington Post via The Week)
Number of airliners that sat on runways for over three hours in, respectively, May of 2009 and May of 2010: 34 / 5
Amount per passenger that airlines are fined for stranding them on the tarmac for three hours or more, according to a new federal law: $27,500
(Source: USA Today)
Date on which the last Chrysler PT Cruiser rolled off the assembly line after ten years of production: 7/9/10
Major League All-Star Game: NL 3 AL 1
(First National League win since 1996)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 170 (including 5 Arms Proliferations and 1 fair warning). Soul Protection Factor 30 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Hey, I have a great idea!!! Let's stop setting puppies on fire!!! Awesome suggestion, Billy, we love it!
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CHEERS to comforting words. With the votes of Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Scott Brown in the bag (pardon me if I don’t award them Medals of Freedom, given their overall pattern of cowering to the teabaggers), it looks like a financial regulation bill will pass the Senate. One of the more prominent features is the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and Elizabeth Warren [swoon!] will likely be put in charge of it. She recently sat down with the staff of The Boston Globe and, while she still has some reservations about the size of the teeth in the overall bill, she sounds pretty jazzed about the agency:
"The new agency has teeth and a lot of independence, with enough rule-writing and enforcement authority to begin to fix a broken consumer credit market. It isn’t perfect, and the auto dealer exception is outrageous. But I kept waiting for an incoming missile that would mean the bank lobbyists had made good on their vow to kill the agency---and that never happened. ...
The new law guarantees the agency meaningful autonomy. It has a protected funding stream, an independent director appointed by the President, and strong rule-writing authority. The agency also has the power to enforce rules against the big banks and, for the first time, against the non-bank originators of mortgages and other credit products that have done so much harm."
The latest "best-we-can-get-under-the-circumstances" bill could be a done deal by the end of the week. Which, coincidentally, is the same time it'll take for Wall Street to rejigger their navigational equipment and start flying their corporate jets through the loopholes.
CHEERS to cautious optimism. Meanwhile, down in the Gulf of BP, the undersea robots are swarming around the new apparatus designed to, if not stop the gusher entirely, at least contain most of the oil. For the next day or so, engineers will be testing the new ceiling cat sealing cap through a process called integrity testing. They would've started sooner but they tried it on Tony Hayward first and he melted all their sensors.
P.S. Remember how Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal tried to convince us all that sand barriers were just the thing to keep the oil from the marshes there, and how the president was preventing him from saving the world? Well, as any five year-old who's ever built a sand castle at the beach could've told him, water beats the shit out of sand. And Plan B, governor, would be...?
JEERS to whiplash. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says "We are not going to have the viewpoints of a few hold up the law of the land." Yeah!!! And in other news, Senator Jim DeMint's viewpoints hold up the laws of the land. Film at 11.
CHEERS to getting mad as hell and not taking it anymore. Sacre Bleu! Today is Bastille Day, commemorating the important lesson the French learned 221 years ago, but which we Americans still haven't: it is better for the government to fear the people than it is for the people to fear the government. Thus they get a couple months of vacation, shorter work hours, universal health care, and a fresh beret every three months. Today you'll find me propping a ladder up on our neighbor's bedroom windowsill, storming in, grabbing a pair of their underwear and sending it up the ol' flagpole. Because we refuse to break our daily routine just because it's some French holiday.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda... GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. USA Today asks: Maine has a new "Beer Trail" organized by the state's Brewers' Guild, which takes you to many microbreweries ([W]ho knew Maine was a brewski capital?)
Braaaaaaaaap!!!
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda... GONG!!!
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CHEERS to weak tea(bagger). Congressional candidate Rick Barber to General Washington: "General, I lost my runoff election for Congress here in Alabama to a plain old milquetoast Republican, dealing a major blow to the hopes of world domination for the tea party. What do I do now?" General Washington to Rick Barber: "Gather...your...yard signs."
JEERS to scaredy cats. Here's a bit of proof demonstrating that it isn’t just our current Congress that's a card or two short of a full deck. On July 14, 1798, Congress passed the Sedition Act, which made it illegal to say bad stuff about the government. From Joseph Cummins' book, Anything for a Vote:
People weren't even safe in the neighborhood bar---A New Jersey tavern patron was arrested and fined for drunkenly noting that the president had, to put it indelicately, a big ass.
The penalty for sedition was "...a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years." If that were the case today, so many of us would be considered seditionistas that we'd be having the Netroots Nation convention behind bars. As opposed to where we usually have it: in bars. But just to be sure the law was indeed rescinded in 1802, I'll now conduct my usual test: "THE PRESIDENT HAS A FAT ASS!" And now...we wait.
WHOOPS! to rockin' the boat---literally. Country Club Republican George Bush Senior, still goin' strong at 86, was out cruising round about Kennebunk-way in Fidelity IV when he found himself in the middle of a persistent fog, got swept away from his charted course, ran aground, and slunk away, leaving the crisis to be resolved by others. Heh. Welcome to your eldest son's world, sir.
CHEERS to the Tooter-in-Chief. Nixon pardon or no Nixon pardon, every year that goes by makes Leslie Lynch King, Jr., aka Gerald Ford, look like a bleeding-heart liberal compared to the GOP goons wandering in the wilderness now. Today is the late cover-boy model and U.S. president's 97th birthday. If for nothing else, we salute him for this (from Cormac O'Brien's book, Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents):
Lyndon Johnson once claimed that Gerald Ford was too dumb `to walk and fart at the same time.' Perhaps. But Ford could definitely fart while standing still, which he apparently did with alarming frequency and abandon. According to his Secret Service detail, the president would loudly let one loose and then always attempt to put the blame on one of them with indignant remarks like, "Jesus, did you do that? Show a little class."
Pay your respects here. Or at least wave from a distance.
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Five years ago in C&J: July 14, 2005
JEERS to the crybaby brigade. Washington Times article says NBC, CBS and ABC are just being too gosh darn negative in their coverage of the president's second term. Perhaps it's because he hasn't done one positive thing to benefit the country?? Just a crazy theory. Like evolution.
JEERS to The Republican Association of Two-faced Slugs (RATS). This is disgusting. Look at how underfunding is affecting America's VA hospitals. That's compassionate conservatism for ya: take two 'fuck yous' and don't bother calling us in the morning because we have other priorities. Oh...and don't forget to fork over your co-pay.
P.S. This just in: Now Bush wants to kick thousands of veterans out of VA nursing homes. But I'm sure they'll all be welcome to stay at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Y'know...just until they die of neglect.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to minty freshness. The second release in the "America the Beautiful" state quarters program is out, and it honors the beauticiousness of Wyoming. I look at the design on the back in two ways: first, as a lovely rendering of the Old Faithful geyser and a bison chewing its cud. (Um, bison do chew their cud, right? I know cows do and I know I do, so I assume everyone does.) And second, since Wyoming is, for worse or worse, the "Dick Cheney State," I also see it as a damning reminder of his drill-at-all-costs reign of error via a depiction of the Deepwater Horizon well in full spew mode, with a bison standing in a puddle of crude. To whoever designed it: nicely done.
Have a nice Wednesday. And farewell to George Steinbrenner. What Seinfeld did with his larger-than-life persona was a beautiful thing. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Are you wearing a leather catsuit as we speak?
No, but I am wearing Bill in Portland Maine's leopard dressing gown. How's that? I couldn't resist telling that.
---Olivia Newton-John
Time
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