GoFundMe Wildfire Relief for Paradise Information via Belinda Ridgewood
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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
An Open Letter to America
Dear America,
Hi! I just wanted to say, before the holiday hustle and bustle reaches its fever pitch, that I'm really proud of you. Want to know why?
It took some years and a lot of patience (not to mention patients), but it's finally sunk in. Now you get it: just as Democrats brought you the 40-hour workweek and the weekend and Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security and civil rights and workers rights and voter rights and the green energy revolution…now you know that Democrats also brought you the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Among your main reasons for voting so many Democrats into elected office November 6th, health care was way up there on the list---the #1 issue for most people---and rightly so. And since you've had a chance to kick the tires of the ACA for a few years, you now know that…
DEMOCRATS brought you federal protections that guarantee insurance companies can’t engage in pre-existing condition abuse. You remember how awful those vultures used to be? No more, thanks to Team D.
DEMOCRATS made sure the insurance companies can't shut off the spigot to your health care just because their bean counters think you've had enough.
DEMOCRATS made sure preventive, aka “essential” services like checkups and colonoscopies are included in your monthly premium at no extra cost.
DEMOCRATS brought you the right to keep your kids on your health insurance policy until they're 26.
DEMOCRATS made sure every state has the ability to expand Medicaid, giving the poorest residents affordable access to health insurance, many for the first time in their lives. And, big surprise, the majority of states expanding it did so because of 1) Democrat-led state governments or 2) voters---you beautiful people!---forcing obstructionist Republican-led governments to do it by approving referendums at the ballot box.
Number of Republican politicians who voted for all these (and countless other) life-saving ACA provisions we now know you love and will fight for? Zero. Instead, you watched as they voted dozens of times---the Republican-led House and Senate both---to repeal every benefit, every protection, every shred of your safety net. And then, when you, America, got your first chance to do so, you voted them out by the dozens, including the proud architect of the GOP repeal movement: Tom “One-Man Death Panel” MacArthur.
So, yeah, it took you a little while, but you finally got it: Democrats and ONLY Democrats designed the ACA to make health insurance and the care you get better, more comprehensive, less complicated, certainly less abusive, and for most more affordable. It's also designed to be constantly improved and expanded. There are flaws that can be easily fixed. But only Democrats will do that, and that's why even more Republicans have to be voted out in 2020. They will never be in your corner when it comes to your right to health care. Not this self-absorbed bunch.
Which reminds me: the 2019 ACA enrollment is now open and lasts through December 15th, and I'll just leave the link to Healthcare.gov here in case you need it. It used to be twice as long, but Donald Trump---who promised to make signing up much easier---slashed the enrollment period in half and also wiped out the budget for promotion and the "navigators" who help people through the process if they need it. He's also up for reelection in 2020.
In conclusion: you people, you're the best. You really are. You did a great thing 13 days ago. Now keep fighting for better health care like your life depends on it, because as you now know, it kinda does. Happy Thanksgiving.
Sincerely, Bill in Portland Maine
Person of Somewhat Favorable Repute
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, November 19, 2018
Note: Here's the schedule for the rest of the week. After I post this, I'll be dragged kicking and screaming up the hill by a team of work ferrets to get my fourth chemo infusion at Mercy Hospital. So that wipes us out through tomorrow. Assuming I bounce back with help from Big Pharma's counter-meds, we'll be back Wednesday, post A Very Special C&J Family Dysfunction Awareness Day edition on Thursday, and a Friday evening C&J as usual. If you'll be indisposed after today, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving and HEY LOOK OVER THERE!!! [Grabs wishbone] [Snap!] Ha! I got the long end! (I wish for Donald Trump's nose to fall off during the next State of the Union.) Gobble gobble, yo. ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Mars probe InSight lands on the red planet: 7
Days 'til the Boston Tuba War on Christmas Concert at Faneuil Hall: 5
Number of lies Trump told on November 5, the day before the midterm elections: 74
Average number of false claims Trump has told every day during his presidency: 4.4
National Rifle Association revenue decline last year, prompting the pro-death organization to stop providing water coolers and free coffee to employees: $35 million
Number of fake accounts Facebook removed between April and September of this year, and yes, that's billion with a b: 1.6 billion
Number of turkeys who will slay their captors this week and escape on motorcycles: 2
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Puppy Pic of the Day: How they become true wiener dogs...
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CHEERS to short work weeks. Only three days for most Americans this week---hopefully you're among them. Then it's turkey, gravy, spuds and a whole lotta nothin' else. Except, of course, our usual 16 hours of daily blogging. ("Pass the stuffing, dear. And the screen shammy...")
CHEERS to being bored with all the winning...NOT! More midterm-election shoes dropped on top of House Republicans over the weekend. Gil Cisneros officially defeated Young Kim in California's 39th district, located in Orange County. That's either the 36th or 37th (I've lost count) red-to-blue flip. And this also became official: as of January, "Putin's Favorite Congressman" Dana Rohrabacher---another Orange County rep---will finally, mercifully be an ex-congressman, thanks to a 53-47 drubbing by Harley Rouda. Thus the impregnable "Fortress Nixon-Reagan" will undergo a bit of a change in less than two months:
Oh, yes. Much better.
CHEERS to a real champ. It is not sour grapes, nor conspiracy-theory mongering, to suggest that the governor's election in Georgia was an out-and-out legally-approved theft. Not only did the head burglar, Brian Kemp, strip voting rights by the crap-ton as Secretary of State before the campaign even got rolling, he was also a walking conflict of interest by simultaneously being the actual GOP candidate for governor. Democratic challenger Stacey Abrams, having none of this nicey-nicey crap, bowed out Friday with righteous and well-placed anger, but not before announcing legal action against the state for "gross mismanagement" of the election. Her concession speech---11 minutes you should definitely carve out some time to watch---is a textbook lesson in pushing back at this kind of GOP bullshit. You can watch it here. I can guarantee you this with 90 percent certainty: Stacey will be Georgia's first black and first female governor. And I can guarantee you this with a full 100: revenge is a dish best served cold. (And with a side of grits.)
P.S. In the immortal words of Yoda, “There is another...” On December 4th a Democratic phoenix may rise from the ashes of Kemp’s scorched-earth voter-suppression campaign in the form of a Big-D secretary of State:
Karma, fail us not.
JEERS to short-sightedness across the pond. I have felt a disturbance in the Force, as if millions of C&J readers were crying out: “Hey Billeh! ‘Sup with Brexit lately?” Excellent question. As it turns out, the Great Britainese are discovering a little more and more every day that, no matter how you slice Prime Minister of Silly Walks Theresa May's half-baked slab of steak and xenophobia pudding, it's still going to choke anyone who swallows it:
What May has done with her two years of office is worthy of her earlier political career. She has presented her country with a deal for which there is no constituency.
For Tory Brexit supporters it does not go far enough; for Remainers in both parties it is objectionable on its face. But on all sides there is widespread agreement that if approved the deal would put Britain in the worst position imaginable. It would leave the United Kingdom in a kind of limbo, beholden to European laws and facing significant financial obligations to a body in whose deliberations it would no longer have any say. It would be exchanging membership in a supposed confederacy of nations for vassalage.
The mess has blown up so spectacularly that, according to Business Insider, the moment May's plan was unveiled, "the odds of a second referendum on Brexit rose sharply." Which would mean conservatives will have needlessly wasted tens of billions of pounds and wreaked unnecessary havoc across the kingdom while accomplishing absolutely nothing. Or as our conservatives over here call it: a day ending in 'y'.
CHEERS to the Class of 2018. An alleged human being named Donald Trump doled out the first round of Presidential Medals of Cheeseburger Freedom Friday. The awards are given out for "An especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors." In other words, they're medals the president gives out to whoever the hell he wants for whatever reason he wants anytime he wants and what are you going to do about it, punk? So I don't get too bent out of shape over 'em. This year's batch (the technical term is "pod") includes:
» Left-handed Boston Red Sox pitcher Babe Ruth
» Pistol-packing Nixon deputy Elvis Presley (who couldn't make it but joined in from the Kalamazoo Burger King via Skype)
» Miriam Adelson, who, unlike her gelatinous husband who creates gambling addicts for a living, actually chose an honorable profession (medicine), and put it to good use philanthropically. Total suck-up move on Trump's part? Yup. But she is accomplished (if politically off the rails).
» Sen. Orrin Hatch, for his fierce defense of the dietary supplement industry, for which he will always be known as "The Great Protector of the Horny Goat Weed"
» Jiggery-pokery pioneer and anti-apple-sauce activist Antonin Scalia
» Former Dallas quarterback Roger Staubach
» Retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justice and former NFL player Alan Page
Each honoree gets the medal, a ribbon, a tie clip, and a Voltron-3000 Throbbing Orb of Omnipotence. We trust they'll use their power wisely.
P.S. Of course Trump whiffed on one of the most famous phrases in world history:
Trump fondly recalls how when he saw Elvis in Vegas, an announcer said, "Elvis has left the house." (The famous saying was actually "Elvis has left the building.")
But, to be fair, Trump and The King have some things in common: shitty diets, rabid fans, and meeting their maker while pinching a loaf on their golden throne. (Oops. Spoiler alert1)
CHEERS to President Blinkandyoullmisshim. Happy birthday to "#20"
James Garfield, born 187 years ago today in a log cabin---the last president to have that distinction. He was also a Civil War veteran (for the side that put down the traitors of the south), and one of only 15 commanders-in-chief to not preside during a war. Also on his resume: canal boat laborer, janitor, school teacher, and U.S. congressman.
He only got to enjoy his status as the first left-handed Commander-in-Chief for 200 days before he died of lead poisoning from an assassin's bullet that doctors could never find. He might've actually been a decent president, who knows? But I do know this: shaaaame on him and running mate Chester Arthur for using $400,000 in campaign money to bribe Indiana voters with two-dollar bills. Why, that could've eroded the public's trust in politicians!
JEERS to The Wacky Adventures of Cadet Bone Spurs. That caravan of tired, poor huddled masses yearning to breathe free has started arriving at the border---Tijuana, to be precise. And our six-star commander-in-chief is on 'em like white on KKK robe. Brilliant tactician that he is, he's throwing thousands of U.S. troops into the fight at the border...nowhere near Tijuana:
When Trump's bloated carcass finally reaches the hereafter,General Patton is gonna slap the shit out of him.
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Ten years ago in C&J: November 19, 2008
CHEERS to a small gathering of friends in an intimate setting. Barack Obama's inauguration is expected to draw 4,000,000 (yes, that's billion with an m) people. The Park Service assured organizers that they'd be ready for the unprecedented crush of people by setting up at least ten Port-O-Potties.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to words that resonate even louder in the Age of our Uberdotardfuhrer. On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the Pennsylvania battlefield. I read these words every year and their simple elegance makes me appreciate them more each time. What a distillation of the American experiment, and what a road map for slogging our way through the worst leadership vacuum perhaps ever:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But,in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us --that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
If you want an even more condensed version, here's the corporate-approved PowerPoint Presentation of the speech. (The “next” button is in the lower right-hand corner). A century and a half later we still haven't perished. But Lincoln would no doubt be alarmed at the rabid wave of Republican dotardism that followed our current president when he brought his thuggish brand of disgrace to Gettysburg during his 2016 campaign, and to the entire nation on January 20th, 2017. In fact, I can imagine Honest Abe’s one-word tweet now: ”Sad.”
Oh, and don’t forget that today is Have A Bad Day Day. If you violate the spirit of the occasion by having a good day, that would be very bad, which would actually make your good day a bad day. Good for you! (In a bad way. Which is good! But that’s bad. Good! Good bad!) Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
Check Out John Williams' New Score for Bill in Portland Maine's Cheers and Jeers Kiddie Pool
---Gizmodo
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