From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Media Advisory
Here are today's campaign events by the Republican candidates for president:
Sen. Rand Paul will cut up a Donald Trump mannequin with a chainsaw, throw the pieces into a woodchipper, and set the pile of Trump dust on fire with a flamethrower.
Sen. Lindsey Graham will follow Rand Paul's lead by destroying his own Trump mannequin, except he'll do it with a golf club, meat cleaver and lighter fluid.
Gov. Rick Perry, currently under felony indictment, will continue his six-day soliloquy lamenting that Donald Trump is creating an unfavorable impression of the Republican party.
Sen. Marco Rubio will drink several bottles of water to prove, if nothing else, that he's more hydrated than Donald Trump.
Gov. Scott Walker will claim that Ronald Reagan's ghost visited him in a dream and told him that "Donald Trump is not the solution…Donald Trump is the problem."
Gov. Chris Christie will criticize Donald Trump for being a bully and Carly Fiorina will criticize him for being a poor CEO.
Dr. Ben Carson will release a statement calling Donald Trump worse than slavery.
Gov. Mike Huckabee will compare Donald Trump to the holocaust while serving grits and gravy with Ted Nugent.
Gov. John Kasich will give his stump speeches while swinging from a tire swing because---hint hint---guess what kind of state Donald Trump's not from. Go ahead...guess!
Gov. George Pataki will mow YOU SUCK into Donald Trump's lawn.
Gov. Bobby Jindal and Sen. Rick Santorum will toilet-paper Trump Tower after dark.
Sen. Ted Cruz will continue auditioning to be Donald Trump's running mate.
Gov. Jeb Bush will spend another day waiting for Donald Trump to implode, and spend another night going to bed disappointed.
Donald Trump will spend the day being Donald Trump.
For further information, contact RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, who currently is curled up in the fetal position under his bed.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Note: Rock beats scissors. Scissors beats paper. Paper beats rock. And all three beat Donald Trump in the general.
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9 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til
National Lighthouse Day:
9
Days 'til the
Door County Classic and Wooden Boat Festival in Sturgeon Bay:
9
The last year that the Chinese stock market dropped as much as it did Monday:
2007
(Source: Reuters)
Increase in tourism to Cuba during the first five months of 2015:
15%
Hotel rooms in all of Cuba:
60,000
(Source: NPR)
Percent of Americans who do and don't want, respectively, the Iran nuclear agreement to go through:
54%, 39%
(Source: PPP poll)
Average number of "posts, comments, likes and shares related to users discussing lost phones" on Facebook per month:
51 million
(Source: Facebook)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 180 (including 4 gogs and 1 Texas UFO Cube). Soul Protection Factor 36 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Experiment in gravity
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CHEERS to arriving back in the land of, according to some, his birth. After charming the people of Kenya and Ethiopia and giving their leaders a lot to think about, President Obama concluded his historic trip to sub-Saharan Africa yesterday. As usual, the Obama Diary has a great photopalooza here. Among the serious business:
"Lucy! I'm hooome! Heh."
President Obama convened a meeting with the leaders of several East African nations and the African Union on Monday in an effort to address the worsening situation in South Sudan, even as he met with Ethiopia’s prime minister to discuss how to strengthen human rights and democratic institutions here.
With no resolution in sight for the ongoing conflict in South Sudan, Obama brought together top officials from Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Sudan and the A.U. to chart out a strategy in the event that the latest round of peace talks fail.
On the lighter side, the president got to see
the skeleton of "Lucy," the 3.2 million-year-old ancestor of modern-day humans. Or as the head of the creationist museum calls her, "Jesus' favorite agent down at the local Hertz Rent-A-Dinosaur."
CHEERS to spinny things that turn the lights on. The fossil fuel industry is down with a bad case of the sadz this week after hearing this news from snarky Tina Casey at Cleantechnica.com :
Coming soon to a
Rhode Island near you!
Offshore wind energy has been off to a slow start in the US, a primary obstacle being the confluence of entrenched fossil energy and powerful political influence up and down the Atlantic coast. And yet, despite all odds, the tiny state of Rhode Island somehow slipped under the radar. This past winter, workers down in Louisiana began stealthily assembling the main components for a new wind farm, and just this month they snuck out in the dead of night to plant a 400-ton steel foundation jacket on the floor of the ocean, three miles off the coast of Block Island. Bam!
Deepwater organized a press event yesterday to celebrate this new milestone in US offshore wind energy. … One down and four to go.
When all five turbines are complete, the wind will generate enough juice to power up 17,000 homes. In the meantime, to get the ceremonial turbine whirling, politicians stood in front of it Monday and gave a speech.
CHEERS to Balloongate. Ha ha ha…we can laugh about it now, right? Eleven years ago today, on July 29, 2004, the exclamation point that was supposed to cap John Kerry's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston turned into an expletive-filled question mark when producer Don Mischer, not realizing his voice was going over the air, yelled:
"Jesus! We need more balloons. I want all balloons to go, goddammit. I want more balloons. What's happening to the balloons? We need more balloons. What the fuck are you guys doing up there??!!"
Astonishingly, the republic survives.
CHEERS to great moments in stinkola. A rare "corpse flower" named Trudy bloomed over the weekend at the University of California's Botanical Garden in Berkeley. There's a method to its malodorousness:
The corpse flower in full bloom.
The “Corpse Flower” is not actually a single flower but an inflorescence (a stalk of many flowers). The flowers are a mixture of tiny male and female flowers held out of sight at the base of the central phallus-like structure surrounded by a pleated skirt-like covering that is bright green on the outside and deep maroon inside when opened. The female flowers mature before the male (pollen producing) flowers which avoids self-pollination.
Ever since this plant was first discovered in Sumatra, Indonesia in 1878 by Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari, it has excited world-wide attention due to its massive size, fascinating appearance and habit of producing a foul odor resembling rotten flesh (to attract insects that pollinate it).
Or to put it another way, it's like the CPAC convention of the botanical world.
Now people like first openly-gay scout Pascal
Tessier can go on to be scout leaders.
CHEERS to equality in uniform. Finally! A year after lifting the ban on openly-gay youth among their ranks, the Boy Scouts of America has
voted overwhelmingly to allow openly-gay do-gooders to be part of the leadership structure in the BSA. Most troops have no problem with the change---in fact many are welcoming it. (My partner Michael and I are Eagle Scouts, and we honestly never thought we'd see the day.) There are, of course, the far-right types---the Mormon Church in particular is
not happy---who are bracing for their kids to come home from jamborees in black leather chaps and/or draped in feather boas. But Scouts across the country are living up to the Scout Motto, "Be Prepared," and are ready and willing to help the bigots cross the decades.
CHEERS to the first ringy dingy. A hundred and one years ago, on July 29, 1914, transcontinental telephone service began when someone in New York called someone in San Francisco. The conversation ended with the successful sale of a couple hundred bucks worth of term life insurance, a Thighmaster, and a donation to Woodrow Wilson's reelection campaign. Smooth sales rep.
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Ten years ago in C&J: July 29, 2005
JEERS to misplaced priorities. What's more important to the knuckledragger wing of the Republican party than providing support for our national defense? Why, pandering to the NRA, of course! The Goopers put off passing a defense bill until fall so they could instead pass a bill shielding gunmakers from liability lawsuits. Shoot me now.
CHEERS to Lance Armstrong. If he goes into politics, Think Progress has reason to believe he might be leaning toward the Democratic side. The good guys always do. [7/28/15 Update: All that cheating to win? Oh, he's definitely a Republican.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the hockeymom-turned-hepcat. My, how time flies when you're griftin' your way to irrelevance. Last Sunday marked six years since Sarah Palin officially stopped governin' in Alaska, having resigned after half a term because "only dead fish go with the flow" (a lie, but whatever). After giving her farewell speech, she padded off to pursue her new passion of putting money before public service, but not before beat poet William Shatner put her tweets into the proper context on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien:
That was truly a crazy and surreal moment in time. Conan O'Brien actually hosted the Tonight Show???
Have a nice Wednesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
The color of a kiddie pool can tell us much about the biological status. Cheers and Jeers' is classed as an unproductive (ultra-oligotrophic) kiddie pool because it produces very little floating or attached algae under undisturbed conditions.
---Budapest Report
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