From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Spreading the Word
Riddle me this, Batman: what’s orange, deranged, and dedicated to preventing as many of his royal subjects from having health insurance as possible? Yes…it’s Lord Dampnut. And among the many items on his “destroy the ACA” to-do list is burying the dates for the next enrollment period on the health exchanges. So a gold star goes to two Obama administration vets for stepping up to thwart his evil scheme by rolling out a national get-out-the-word campaign:
“There needs to be an effort to basically try to fill in as many of the gaps as we can from what the administration is not doing,” said Lori Lodes, co-founder of Get America Covered. “We have a clear sense of what they’re not going to be doing, and it’s a lot.” […]
As director of communications at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services under Obama, Lodes oversaw the public information and communications campaigns during previous open enrollment periods. … Her co-founder, Joshua Peck, was chief marketing officer for HealthCare.gov and was responsible for online engagement campaigns, Lodes said. [...]
The Department of Health and Humans Services has...barred regional federal officials from participating in local sign-up efforts. Additionally, the administration halved the length of the open enrollment period, which will be just six weeks this year, and will take HealthCare.gov offline for as much as 12 hours every Sunday during that month-and-a-half.
In other words, they’re going to be total fuckwads about it. So our job, since we’re Democrats and we give a shit about keeping people alive and healthy, is to be twice as, um, fuckwadish right back by plastering the date everywhere we can. Like this:
You can learn more about Get America Covered here. They’re still ramping up, and we’ll keep you up to date as they fan out and help compensate for Heckuva Job Brawny aka fucking moron and his tiny-fingered orcs in the White House.
Meanwhile Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, October 5, 2017
Note: Just a heads-up that there will be no C&J on Monday as we'll be on our annual cottage-closing pilgrimage up north. Back Tuesday smelling like mothballs and ready to fire the opening salvos in the War on Christmas.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Festivus: 79
Days 'til the Woolly Worm Festival in Banner Elk, North Carolina: 16
Average age of a mass shooter since 1982, according to Newsweek (the Vegas gun freak was 64): 35
Percent of mass shootings and overall murders, respectively, that are committed by men: 98%, 90%
Number of Yahoo users who were actually affected by that 2013 hack the company originally said only affected 1 billion people: 3 billion
Percent of the fossil fuel industry that would be unprofitable without state and federal subsidies: 50%
Estimated number of craft breweries in the U.S., up 19% from last year: 5,560
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
It seems to me what we are looking at was put best by noted journalist Billy Don Moyers, formerly of Marshall, Texas, who was home last week and observed that the Republican right came to Washington to start a revolution and stayed to run a racket.
It has become a game of ideological flim-flam, a scam in which all manner of distracting hoo-hah---abortion, judicial activism, even "the war on terra"---is used to obscure the fact that the government has been taken over by people who are using it to make money for themselves and their friends. […]
Rep. Roy Blunt, the man Republicans chose to temporarily replace DeLay while he's under indictment, tried to alter a Homeland Security bill in 2003 with a last-minute provision to benefit the cigarette company Philip Morris. Philip Morris had not only contributed heavily to Blunt's campaign, it also employed both Blunt's girlfriend and his son. DeLay gets indicted, and the Republicans replace him with another DeLay.
---October 2005
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Training for the derby…
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CHEERS to lending a helping hand. As America held its collective breath yesterday hoping that America’s first paper-towel-hurler-in-chief wouldn’t embarrass the nation as he visited the wounded victims and families of those killed in the Las Vegas massacre (thankfully he resisted the urge to toss boxes of ammo at the assembled grievers), Republicans continued refusing to even consider having a discussion about tightening gun ownership laws. Since nature abhors a vacuum, Australia stepped in to offer some useful advice:
Speaking to Australia’s Channel 9 TV station on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said the country would be more than happy to lend its expertise in this area to the U.S.
“What Australia can do is share our experience after the mass killing in Port Arthur back in the late 1990s,when 35 people were killed by a lone gunman,” said Bishop, per The Washington Post. “You will recall that [then-Prime Minister] John Howard then introduced national gun laws, which banned automatic and semiautomatic weapons and included a national buyback scheme. We have had this experience. We acted with a legislative response.” […]
Between 1995 and 2006, gun-related homicides and suicides dropped by 59 percent and 65 percent respectively, according to a 2010 study.
Last May Trump praised Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for having “better health care than we do" right before attending a White House “kegs ‘n cackling” party to celebrate the House’s gutting of the American health care system. So color me skeptical that Australia’s offer will fall on anything but deaf ears. In fact, this morning I fully expect to see a Trump tweet calling Australia a “fake continent.” Heckuva job, electoral college.
CHEERS to fireworks at dawn. Woo-hoo!!! This is incredible!!! We thought this day would never come!!!
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Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito finally uttered sounds out of his mouth hole that made sense: “Gerrymandering is distasteful.” Saaaaa…lute!
CHEERS to cool science. The Nobel Prize-a-palooza continued yesterday with the chemistry medallions (which are a bit tougher than veal medallions, but still tasty). As usual, they went to…wait for it…NERDS!!
[Three researchers] developed a technique called cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), which simplifies the process for looking at the machinery of life.
The process makes it possible for life's molecular building blocks to be captured mid-movement and allowed scientists to visualise processes that had never before been seen. […]
[Nobel] Committee chair Sara Snogerup Linse explained: "Soon, there are no more secrets, now, we can see the intricate details of the biomolecules in every corner of our cells and every drop of our body fluids. "We can understand how they are built and how they act and how they work together in large communities. We are facing a revolution in biochemistry."
And, of course, it goes without saying that they're going to get us all killed. As for the rest of the week, the coveted Peace Prize gets awarded tomorrow, but not before today's medal for Outstanding Blogger with Candy Corn Addiction is announced. I'm really excited about my prospects. I totally aced the swimsuit portion.
CHEERS to Quayle hunting. It was twenty-nine years ago today, in 1988, when Democrat Lloyd Bentsen---Michael Dukakis's running mate---opened a can of whupass on Dan Quayle during their debate:
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It was one of the great zingers in campaign lore, and today it's a staple of debate-highlight montages. Four years later, of course, came the famous potato"e" gaffe, thus proving Quayle wasn't a very smart vice president. But he was a terrific warm-up act for George W. Bush.
CHEERS to previews of hilarious coming attractions. Every now and then a conservative outfit lays a turd in my inbox, and I have to scrape it up and send it to my spam folder. This one gave me a case of the chuckles, though, so how could I not share…
What: Press conference announcing the official launch of a recall effort against Governor Jerry Brown.
When: Saturday, October 7th, 2017 at 12pm.
Where: Ronald Reagan State Building, 300 S Spring St, Los Angeles, CA 90013.
Make California Great PAC will be hosting a press conference on the upcoming Jerry Brown recall petition. Press are invited to attend and interview with our proponents who will be officially signing to recall the Governor Jerry Brown. Below is the official grounds for the recall.
The grounds for the recall are as follows: [Blah blah blah reasons]
Make California Great PAC is a grassroots organization dedicated to freedom of speech, conservative values, and an America First vision in California.
Yeah, well, good luck with that. Jerry cleaned up the mess left behind by Ahnuld, is fighting the Trump administration tooth & nail to the entire country’s delight, currently enjoys a nearly-sixty-percent approval rating, and (sadly) only has one year left on his second term. But, hey, have fun gathering those signatures for your fundraising database. You know what it says in the right-wing version of the King James Bible: God bless the grifters.
CHEERS to sacrificing for the common good. On today's date in 1947, Harry Truman became the first president to use TV to address the nation:
Truman requested that Americans not eat beef on Tuesdays, poultry on Thursdays, and a slice of bread each day to save on feed grains as a way of helping folks starving in Europe in the wake of World War II. If a Democrat tried that today, he or she would be accused by Republicans of being a Food Nazi trying to starve Grandma of protein and fiber in order to appease whiny foreigners and give an unfair advantage to the hop shoots growers lobby. I don’t know what's scarier: that I'm such an accurate predictor...or that they're such easy predictees.
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 5, 2007
JEERS to Jesus's pawns. One of Ain’t It Cool News’s readers has a thoughtful review of the most disturbing flick of the year, Jesus Camp, about kids who get brainwashed by the fundamentalist wacko crowd:
Everyone in America is guaranteed a CHOICE to believe whatever they want to believe...and these children have been denied that choice.
Their rights were violated before they even knew what rights were. They've been turned into robots. They've been turned into pawns for a greater religious and political movement.
Don't think that the scene where the kids are goaded into worshiping a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush is anything but worship. Oh sure, they call it "blessing" him, but it's idol worship---which, the last time I checked, was a direct violation of the Ten Commandments.
I swear these people eat bowls of mercury soup for lunch every day.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to 150 seconds with Bam-Bam. It’s only a couple minutes long. There’s nothing particularly profound. Just an announcement of the first Obama Foundation summit happening at the end of the month. But it’s a little reminder of how a real president looks and sounds when he focuses not on “me,” but “we.” Wow, what a concept…
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The Obama Foundation’s mission: “to empower and inspire people to change the world.” If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like to suggest starting with that big D.C. building with the freshly-renovated dome on it. Yes, that would be D-lightful.
Oh, and a reminder: full moon tonight. Git yer butt outside, look up, think of Neil Armstrong, and give it a wink. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"Stupid." "Unprecedented.""Shocking." "Completely lacking." "Deserves to be shamed." Those were just some of the phrases members of the House Digital Blogger and Fee-Fee Protection subcommittee flung at Bill in Portland Maine’s Cheers and Jeers.
---USA Today
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