From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Oh! More Things I Know
<> When one of the dendrites in a House Freedom Caucus member's brain goes out the whole string goes out.
<> During the Trump years, I'm putting all my investments in the soon-to-be-booming environmental disaster cleanup sector.
<> Eight years later, the guy who compiled multiple books of embarrassing, language-mangling, gaffe-filled "Bushisms" didn’t even make it to page two of his book of Obamaisms.
<> It's the emoluments, stupid.
<> Our war in Afghanistan is now in its 15th year. I have no idea who we're fighting anymore.
<> Santa is going to leave copies of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Running A Federal Agency" under all Trump nominees' trees. Plus the coal.
<> Poor Van Jones. He got CNNized.
<> "What do we want?" "To pay more for everything through isolationism!" "When do we want it?" "Um, er, well, let's not be too hasty..."
<> The guy who invented General Tso's chicken lived to be 98. So did the inventor of the Big Mac. I'm going to double my consumption of both and live to be 196.
<> Today's Trump survival tip: have some of your optimism cryogenically frozen for at least the next 4 years. Sign an extension clause for 8, just in case.
<> I sold my precious pocket watch so I could afford to buy my partner Michael a set of hair brushes. But unbeknownst to me he sold his precious hair so he could afford to buy me a watch fob. He laughed and said at least we've got each other. I threw a chair across the room and declared Christmas ruined.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, December 8, 2016
Note: Due to the ramp-up of C&J's new eggnog fracking operation, you may experience mild earthquakes through December 25th. Plus eggnog will likely start oozing from your taps like lava on a Hawaiian hillside. We assure you it's all perfectly safe to drink until you hear otherwise from an authorized emergency room stomach-pumping attendant when you wake up. Thank you for your understanding, and bottoms up! ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til spring: 102
Days `til the Schooner Wharf Bar & Galley Lighted Boat Parade (“Deck the Hulls!") in Key West: 2
Percent of overweight Americans who admitted they were overweight in 1990 and 2016, according to the CDC: 48%, 36%
Estimated year when the obesity rate in America is expected to plateau at 42% of the population: 2050
Service companies index for November from the Institute for Supply Management, the highest level since October 2015: 57.2
Estimated number of anti-LGBT bills expected to be introduced in the Texas legislature during the next session, according to Freedom for All Americans: 50
Number of the four calling birds that no longer have a land line: 3
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
It is both peculiar and chilling to find oneself discussing the problem of American torture. I have considered support of basic human rights and dignity so much a part of our national identity that this feels as strange as though I'd suddenly become Chinese or found Fidel Castro in the refrigerator.
One's first response to the report by the International Red Cross about torture at our prison at Guantanamo is denial. "I don't want to think about it; I don't want to hear about it; we're the good guys, they're the bad guys; shut up. And besides, they attacked us first."
But our country has opposed torture since its founding. One of our founding principles is that cruel and unusual punishment is both illegal and wrong. Every year, our State Department issues a report grading other countries on their support for or violations of human rights.
---December, 2004
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Puppy Pic of the Day: The cover-up is worse than the crime---Fido edition
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CHEERS to A Timely and Necessary Musical Interlude. Thirty-six years ago today, on December 8, 1980, John Lennon was gunned down by some moron. I was 16 and getting ready for school when I heard the news that day (oh boy), and it's hard to fathom that I'm now more than ten years older than he was---40---when he was killed. Lennon believed that all you need is love, give peace a chance and war is over if you want it. And this, too…
Today there will be commemorations of John Lennon's life and activism. Pay no attention to the war industry and the NRA rolling their eyes. They’re assholes.
JEERS to NAFTA. On December 8, 1993 the North American Free Trade Agreement was signed into law by President Clinton. It eliminates virtually all tariffs and trade restrictions between the U.S., Canada and Mexico. To celebrate, officials will commemorate its 23rd anniversary by visiting U.S. manufacturing plants all across the country. And that country, of course, would be Mexico.
CHEERS to snapping some Polaroids in our galactic back yard. The Cassini spacecraft has started sending back images as it dips through the rings of Saturn on the way to its final swan dive into the planet. Wanna see one, huh huh huh do ya, do ya? Okay then. This pic from last Saturday "shows part of the giant, hexagon-shaped jet stream around the planet's north pole. Each side of the hexagon is about as wide as Earth. A circular storm lies at the center, at the pole."
I don’t know what kind of health care system they have there, but they really should get that thing looked at.
JEERS to the wrong person for the job. There is no primal scream loud enough to express the sheer awfulness of Donald Trump's staffing picks. It's like he's making a special point to nominate the most extreme people that Democrats have ever labeled (correctly and backed with tons of evidence) "nutcases." Take, for example, his just-announced choice to head the EPA:
President-elect Donald J. Trump has selected [climate-change denier] Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general and a close ally of the fossil fuel industry, to run the Environmental Protection Agency, a transition official said, signaling Mr. Trump’s determination to dismantle President Obama’s efforts to counter climate change.
Mr. Pruitt, a Republican, has been a key architect of the legal battle against Mr. Obama’s climate change policies, actions that fit with the president-elect’s comments during the campaign. Mr. Trump has criticized the established science of human-caused global warming as a hoax, vowed to “cancel” the Paris accord committing nearly every nation to taking action to fight climate change, and attacked Mr. Obama’s signature global warming policy, the Clean Power Plan, as a “war on coal.”
Pruitt's first official act will be hanging a new motto above the EPA's door. Instead of "To protect human health and the environment," it'll be changed to: "Fracking-related earthquakes for everybody!"
CHEERS to humility in uniform. Watching the native Americans at the Standing Rock Sioux reservation get assaulted with water cannons and attack dogs and rubber bullets was so infuriating. (They don’t want a stinking oil pipeline fouling up their land, so build the damn thing around it, you richer-than-god fossil fuel monsters.) But it was pretty amazing seeing a couple thousand veterans head to North Dakota to join the protest, and even more amazing when they arrived and immediately made it clear they were also there to atone for what previous generations of U.S. military had done in the name of the government. This part of the ceremony is a must-see:
The Obama administration finally halted work on the pipeline, offering him a chance to live up to the Native American name bestowed upon him in 2008: "One Who Helps People Throughout the Land." His successor will in all likelihood resort to all kinds of nastiness to force the pipeline through the Sioux land. It'll earn Trump his own special native name: "Destroys with Tiny Hands."
CHEERS to today's exciting edition of Ya THINK??? Fake news nearly got people killed over the weekend as a 28-year-old moron with an assault rifle and an appetite for fake news fired shots inside a pizza joint as part of an "operation" to rescue "Hillary Clinton's child sex slaves" being kept in the basement. The New York Times spoke with him, and here's a snip from their report:
What did he think when he discovered there were no children at the pizzeria?
“The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent,” he said.
This has been today's exciting edition of Ya THINK???
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 8, 2006
CHEERS to an inconvenient truth (for Republicans). Soon-to-be Senate Environmental Committee chair Barbara Boxer says the days of tailpipe politics are over. This is great:
In an unusual move, she also made a plea to employees of the Environmental Protection Agency to contact her with their concerns, saying that many government scientists have found their opinions overruled by political appointees at the top of the agency, including in the recent decision on new standards for particulate matter.
The hardest part will be getting them to shut up. [12/8/16 Update: Barbara Boxer gave her farewell speech yesterday, concluding 34 years of service to the country in the House and Senate. We’re going to miss her. At the same time, we know her Democratic successor, Kamala Harris, will carry on the fight with the same kind of energy and toughness. As I always say: when dealing with the opposition, aim for the shins.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to our 50-pound furry bundle of joy. More proof of how tempus fugits no matter how hard we fire our retro-fugit boosters: C&J's lab-mix rescue woozle Haley is four years old today.
We're not sure what she's mixed with, exactly, but we are sure of one thing: she's had a rough life. In order of appearance: parvovirus, a stressful journey from Macon, Georgia to Maine with fourteen brothers and sisters, a sinus infection that relentlessly clogged her nostrils, ligament surgery on her back right leg that required a total resetting of her tibia at a different angle, a repeat of the procedure on her left leg a year later, cancer surgery on her muzzle (benign, thank god), an abscessed tooth pulled, and stitches to repair a running-too-fast-in-the-woods tree-branch puncture wound that came a few millimeters from her heart.
Through it all she's been a real trooper. She remains one of the happiest and smartest dogs we've ever had the privilege of being owned by, SBDs and all. So everyone enjoy the free kibble casserole in the C&J cafeteria today. Happy birthday, Haley, and many blessings on your squeaky camel toys.
Also: thoughts going out from Maine to hospitalized fellow Buckeye John Glenn---or as I was proud to call him for many years: my senator. Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today’s Shameless C&J Testimonial:
“I'm not entirely sure, but I think the Pope just told Bill in Portland Maine to eat shit.”
---Charles Pierce, Esquire
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