Hispanic Federation Fund for Puerto Rico Relief Link
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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Monday Margaret and Helen Blogging
The blogosphere’s feistiest octogenarians have a fresh thing or two to say about Lord Dampnut’s latest bout of malignant narcissism and race-baiting:
I swear this president is so stupid, he couldn’t find his ass if both hands were in his back pockets.
Lord help me, but I’ve taken a knee and I don’t want to get up. Maybe I can’t get up. I’m not sure which. Three and a half million American citizens are in crisis in Puerto Rico, North Korea is threatening Armageddon, Russia used Facebook to influence our elections, Nazis are running over young women, Congress wants to take healthcare away from poor people… and our president has nothing better to do except name calling to get a cheer at his Klan rally.
As the widow of a veteran, I have no issue with any player taking a knee to protest during the national anthem. He has every bit as much right to do that as Donald Trump had to say that McCain wasn’t a war hero because he had been captured. Protecting that right is what my husband and McCain fought for. And all those Trump supporters calling for a football boycott lost their moral high ground when they put that man in the Oval Office. […]
You know what’s really disrespectful to the American Flag and the men and women who fought to defend it? The Confederate flag. I mean it. Really.
Read the whole thing here. Then saddle up for a busy week ahead. (Not you, Tom Price---you can continue sitting around in your underwear wondering how it all went so wrong.)
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, October 2, 2017
Note: Donald Trump is a horrible human being. Film at 11. And 12. And 1. And 2. And 3. And 4. And 5. And 6. And 7. And 8. And 9. And 10. And…oh lookie, here we are back at 11.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the U.S. senate election in Alabama (Doug Jones vs. Roy Moore): 71
Days 'til the Bridgeville Apple Scrapple Festival in Delaware: 11
Number of senior advisers or cabinet members who quit or were fired by this time in the Obama and Trump administrations, respectively, according to MSNBC: 5 / 19
Percent of Republicans who support either citizenship or legalization for undocumented immigrants, according to a Quinnipiac poll: 59%
Current estimated number of Rhohinga who have fled to Bangladesh due to atrocities against them in Myanmar: 502,000
Number of aquatic species that have turned up on the west coast after traveling 4,800 miles across the Pacific on flotsam and jetsam from the 2011 tsunami: 289
Number of senior citizens in the workplace in 2000 and today, respectively, according to The Washington Post: 4 million / 9 million
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Warm spot…FOUND!!!
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CHEERS to October. Busy month ahead! Fall kicks into high gear for leaf-peepers, cider-lovers, and, for a lucky few, ski-slope schussers. Republicans will try to lie and cheat their way into a giant tax giveaway for the rich. (To the barricades, #Resistance!) Pink ribbons proliferate for breast cancer awareness month. Plus:
Barack and Michelle Obama celebrate their 25th anniversary tomorrow. Full moon’s on the 5th. Advocates for the right to keep and bare arms---lots and lots of arms---will celebrate World Octopus Day on the 8th. NEW STAR WARS EPISODE VIII TRAILER ON THE 9th!!! It's LGBT History Month and the 11th is Coming Out Day…plus it's also “ex-gay awareness month” during which we all reflect on how there aren't actually any ex-gays to be aware of; we re-open the "Columbus was a hero/Columbus was a genocidal maniac" debate. United Nations Day is the 24th. Daylight Saving Time for European Union countries ends on the 29th. And if you don’t have your Halloween costume done yet, you officially have permission to enter panic mode. This year I'm dressing up as the scariest thing I can think of: Dr. Tom Price holding a scalpel in one hand and a red balloon in the other.
JEERS to the at-war-with-everyone president. Over the weekend Lord Dampnut told his Secretary of State not to bother working back channels to ease tensions with North Korea because---wink wink---“we'll do what has to be done!” But that was nothing compared to what he said about the victims of hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, calling them moochers and their largest city’s mayor, who has literally waded through sewage-infested waters to check on her citizens, an “ingrate.” He fucked this relief effort up, and now he’s complaining---while on yet another long weekend golf vacation, mind you---that people are being mean to him. Matt Yglesias at Vox writes:
The substantive problem that Trump---and America---is now facing is that you can’t go back in time and do the preparatory work that should have been done. You can’t pre-position satellite phones, schedule timely visits from top administration officials, or quickly dispatch ships and helicopters once you’re starting with an eight-day lag. The best you can do is admit you were too slow and throw everything you’ve got at it.
But admitting wrongdoing isn’t part of Trump’s playbook. Defensiveness and counterpunching is. […]
We’re witnessing the Trump administration at peak performance and it’s appalling.
Bigly.
CHEERS to the bench warmers (or 4 out of 9 of them, anyway). The Supreme Court dons its robes today for a new term. In addition to cases on sports betting and cell phone privacy, the conservative members are licking their chops at the chance to crush unions, ban Muslim immigrants, and hand Republicans the keys to the gerrymandered kingdom for generations. Oh, and of course also placate the Jesus freaks:
That’s the issue in one of the most hotly watched cases this term, which involves a Colorado baker of wedding cakes. Advocates for religious conservatives want the court to break new ground and rule that business owners whose work is “expressive” have a free speech right to refuse to comply with civil rights laws, at least those which protect same-sex couples.
Jack Phillips, the baker, turned away two men who asked for a wedding cake, and he was charged with violating the state’s civil rights law. […] The Trump administration supports Phillips and urged the court to carve out a“narrow” exemption to gay rights laws that would allow photographers, florists,musicians and others whose work is “expressive” to refuse to participate in a same-sex marriage.
This will be the first full session for seat-stealer Neil Gorsuch, the smug, ultra-conservative, pre-programmed clone of Antonin Scalia. If my sources are correct, he’s so eager to make a good impression that he spent 30 minutes a day last summer practicing his "argle bargles" and "jiggery pokerys" in front of a mirror.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. Over at twitter Mikel Jollett asks: Remember when this white lady (Kim Davis) "protested" at work and conservatives called her a hero?
Yes.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
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CHEERS to the skinny brown guy with the funny name. No, not Barack Obama. India's favorite son, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi would've been 148 today. He pretty much wrote the book on non-violent dissent which, closer to home, was adapted to great effect by Martin Luther King, Jr., among others. In honor of his day, some timeless Gandhi wisdom:
"Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment."
"Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man"
"The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
And this one, which seems especially relevant in light of the current Republican war on American democracy:
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it---always."
Good advice. Hell, it’s what got me through the Bush years.
CHEERS to portraits in contrast. Fifty years ago today, on Oct. 2nd, 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the newest member of the Supreme Court---the first African-American elevated to the nation's highest bench. He once said:
"Today's Constitution is a realistic document of freedom only because of several corrective amendments. Those amendments speak to a sense of decency and fairness that I and other Blacks cherish."
Fifty years later there's another African-American on the bench named Clarence Thomas. He once said, "How did this pubic hair get on my Coke can?" Potato Puhtato.
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11 years ago in C&J: October 2, 2006
JEERS to the sultans of sleaze. Republican congressman Mark Foley, leader of the powerful House Irony Committee, said, "We track library books better than we do sexual predators" while attending a signing of the Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006. Now he's gone into hiding after getting caught measuring cups of flour for cake recipes penis sizes with underage congressional pages online. He blames the bottle. We blames the Foley.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to people who don’t suck. Every Friday our C&J poll asks, "Who won the week?" It has become such an extraordinary weekly polling event that Gallup, Pew, Rasmussen, Quinnipiac and PPP have all named commodes in their washrooms after it. The WWTW poll is a little reminder that all is not lost on the third planet from the sun---the occasional saint does indeed occasionally walk among us. The gold chalice winners for the third quarter of 2017 (the resistors of Trumpcare in all its odious forms dominated this quarter) are ready to take a collective bow. The envelopes, please…
July 7 NPR, for tweeting out the entire Declaration of Independence and driving right-wingers crazy because they thought it was an attack on Trump
July 14 Jo Becker, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman of the New York Times, for breaking the Donald Trump Jr. email scandal.
July 21 The beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act as Republican infighting and incompetence scuttle Trumpcare 2.0
July 28 The 48 Democratic and 3 Republican senators who voted against "skinny Trumpcare" (including Mazie Hirono (D-HI) while suffering from stage-4 kidney cancer)
August 4 Ashley Parker, Carol D. Leonnig, Philip Rucker and Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post for reporting that Trump dictated the false & misleading press release explaining why his son met with the Russians in 2016
August 11 None (Netroots Nation)
August 18 “All of the above”---Various Charlottesville-related good-deed-doers
August 25 The 40,000 people who marched in Boston against the neo-Nazis and other white supremacists who staged a rally there
September 1 The rescue, medical and relief personnel and volunteers who went to work in the wake of hurricane Harvey
September 8 Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, for getting Trump to side with them on a short-term budget and debt ceiling bill, leaving Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell "visibly stunned"
September 15 The relief and emergency personnel & volunteers in the wake of hurricane Irma
September 22 Everyone hounding their senators about the disastrous Trumpcare 3.0 bill, including Jimmy Kimmel for calling Bill Cassidy a bald-faced liar
September 29 Democrats in the Senate and The Resistance who stopped Trumpcare 3.0 before it even got to the floor
Who will bring home the gold in the fourth quarter? If I had to predict, I'd say probably not Donald Trump, ISIS or Congress. Stay tuned!
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
“I laugh when I see Bill in Portland Maine say 'Hollywood elite.' Hollywood elite? I don’t have a kiddie pool in Cheers and Jeers. Bill in Portland Maine has a kiddie pool in Cheers and Jeers! Fuck you!"
---George Clooney
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