Hispanic Federation Fund for Puerto Rico Relief Link
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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Top 9 Reasons to Sign Up for Health Insurance at www.healthcare.gov Today
9. You only have nine days left to sign up for coverage starting January 1st.
8. Just like with car insurance in 48 states, health insurance coverage is mandatory. So instead of paying a hefty fine in exchange for nothing, sign up and get a ton of excellent benefits through the ACA.
7. Did I just say excellent benefits? Like no denial for pre-existing conditions? Like keeping dependents on your plan until age 26? Like a bunch of free preventive care services? Like no lifetime caps? Why yes, yes I did.
6. This year, thanks to Lord Dampnut’s meddling with the subsidies, you may be able to get a bronze plan for zero dollars.
5. Your insurance card doubles as a convenient windshield scraper in winter and cooling fan in summer.
4. I can’t tell you what #4 is. You’ll just have to trust me.
3. Because enrolling means you’re, like, a responsible adult and stuff.
2. It’ll piss off “Healthiest Man in America” (just ask him) Donald Trump so much he’ll barely be able to wolf down his two Bic Macs, Two Fillet of Breaded Mystery Fish, extra-large chocolate milkshake, and small Diet Coke.
And the #1 reason, courtesy of Daily Kossack brainwrap (aka Charles Gaba) at ACASignups.net:
Again: 9 days.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Note: Due to the seasonal startup of C&J's 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 the federal government runs out of money: 2
Days 'til the Lawnmower Parade and Holiday Festival in Havana, Florida: 3
Number of Democratic and GOP women, respectively, registered to run in 2018 House races, according to FiveThirtyEight: 291 / 63
Number of Democratic and GOP women, respectively, registered in 2018 Senate races: 25 / 13
Graduation rate in 2016, the highest since standardized reporting began in 2011: 84%
Years since tobacco companies were court-ordered to run TV and newspaper ads---which have only now started running---warning against the “deadly, addictive effects” of their product: 11
New toll to drive the 10 miles of state-owned I-66 between northern Virginia and Washington D.C. during peak morning drive time: $34.50
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 184 (including 3 Israels and 1 fake liberal lesbian dominatrix…who eats brains). Soul Protection Factor 16 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: The eyes have it…
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HUGE CHEERS to hitting the Trump empire where it really hurts. Y’know how the truly great parental units let you open a present the day before Christmas? Well, America’s current honorary father figure, special prosecutor Robert Mueller, let us open one twenty days before Christmas! And it’s even better than a red Ryder BB gun or a Hatchimal…
U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has asked Deutsche Bank for data on accounts held by President Donald Trump and his family, a person close to the matter said on Tuesday.[…]
Germany’s largest bank received a subpoena from Mueller several weeks ago to provide information on certain money and credit transactions, the person said, without giving details, adding key documents had been handed over in the meantime. […]
The German bank is one of the few major lenders that has lent large amounts to Trump in the past decade. A string of bankruptcies at his hotel and casino businesses during the 1990s made most of Wall Street wary of extending him credit. […] In January, Deutsche Bank agreed to pay $630 million in fines for organizing $10 billion in sham trades that could have been used to launder money out of Russia.
My new favorite Christmas carol: Deck the halls with boughs of holly, follow la la la la la la the money.
HUGE JEERS to throwing your sailboat’s rudder over the side as a destroyer is bearing down on you. You already know that the Republican-dominated FCC is on the cusp of handing the internet over to the ISP vultures, who will have free rein to control both content and speed as instructed by their GOP overlords. Now The Chicago Tribune suggests that there may be no watch dogs at all if all the evil stars align:
[FCC chairman Snotclog] Pai said that after repealing the net-neutrality rules, regulation of internet service and broadband privacy would shift from the FCC to another agency. […] Not so, if a court case now in motion blocks the trade commission's ability to do so. […]
The appeals court reheard this case in September, setting aside the earlier ruling,and a decision is pending. If the court again rules against the FTC, that could mean neither the FTC nor the FCC can oversee broadband service from many companies once the FCC's net-neutrality rules go away. The FCC and FTC both declined to comment on what would happen then.
So the FCC is literally going to follow the following three-step plan for regulation of the internet against ISP abuses: Step 1 FCC and FTC both lose ability to regulate the internet. Step 2 ????? Step 3 Regulation!!! But on the bright side, just think of all the books you’ll be able to catch up on during your daily six hours of “freedom buffering.”
CHEERS to signs of life. The more I read about the hardware NASA has catapulted into the heavens, the more it makes my head spin---in a good way. The 40-year-old Voyager 1, for example. It’s now passing through the Outer Sparkle Pony Rim (A real place! Not fake news! Believe me!) some 13 billion miles from earth, and we’re still able to communicate with it and give it orders. The latest:
NASA's far-flung Voyager 1 spacecraft has taken its backup thrusters out of mothballs.
Voyager 1 hadn't used its four "trajectory correction maneuver" (TCM) thrusters since November 1980, during the spacecraft's last planetary flyby---an epic encounter with Saturn. But mission team members fired them up again Nov. 28 to see whether the TCM thrusters were still ready for primetime.
The little engines passed the test with flying colors, NASA officials said.
To put that in terms the average American can understand: NASA just pulled Voyager’s finger.
P.S. Closer to home, NASA’s eye in the sky reveals the intensity of the latest California wildfires:
Sending positive and sopping wet thoughts to our Kossack buds in the area.
CHEERS to entering the civilized world. Well, Hallefrickinlujah! On today's date in 1865---89 years after we officially declared ourselves a nation where "all men are created equal" and 8 months after Lincoln was assassinated---the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was officially ratified, abolishing slavery and pissing off the south. You can view the document here. 152 years later, blacks are least likely to be hired, most likely to be targeted and killed by police, least likely to be in the minority among the prison population and most likely to be targeted for voter disenfranchisement by Republicans. But, on the other hand, how nice to know that blacks can now be oppressed in all those ways as a free people.
CHEERS to outsourcing. As in, I think I’ll outsource the punchline for the IOC banning the doped-up Russians from participating in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games to The Daily Edge while I take a quick nap:
That was refreshing.
CHEERS to reality-based fiction. Star Wars Episode VIII opens in eight days and oh my god I can’t wait to spend the next three months in a theater (left side, row 6, aisle seat---it caters to my butt cheeks since I’ve been going to the same place since 1982), living off of whatever I can scavenge off the floor just to avoid reality. Monday night I ran across an interview with Mark Hamill, who shed some light on the not-official backstory he created for what happened to Luke Skywalker between 1983’s Return of the Jedi and this year’s The Last Jedi. It almost seems like he spends a lot of time reading Kossack and radio host David Waldman’s (aka KagroX) #GunFail series:
“Actors like backstories. They want to know motivation and all those things, and it’s such a blank slate,” says Hamill, who has become so entwined with the character over four decades that he sometimes references himself and Luke interchangeably. […]
“I wrote lots and lots of scenarios,” Hamill says. “I made notes that he fell in love with a woman who was a widow and had this young child. He left the Jedi to raise this young child and marry this woman, and the child got hold of a lightsaber and accidentally killed himself. It’s nothing to do with the story, but when I think about gun violence and you read these tragic stories of kids getting hold of their parents’ guns and killing a sibling or themselves, I mean, I had to go to really dark places to get where Luke needed to be for this story,” the actor says.
Meanwhile, the actor who plays the withered, evil villain Supreme Leader Snoke said he prepped for the role by listening to Wayne LaPierre speeches. His therapist says he may be ready to be released back into society as early as February.
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 6, 2007
CHEERS to Paul Krugman. I haven't commented much on the subprime fiasco, mainly because I'm not a homeowner and the one business course I took in college ended up with me being talked off a ledge by campus security. But the wise man of the New York Times op-ed page summed it up nicely yesterday: "The bottom line is that policy makers left the financial industry free to innovate---and what it did was to innovate itself, and the rest of us, into a big, nasty mess." Another Republican pipe dream goes spiraling down the terlet. [12/6/17 Update: Nine months later, the financial industry blew up the economy. Obama and the Democrats fixed it. Ten years later, Republicans have done everything they can to unfix it so the financial industry can blow up the economy all over again. In the distance, Putin smiles.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to delightfully twisted minds. Today is comedian, first inductee in the Boston Comedy Hall of Fame, Oscar winner (1989 Best Short Live-Action Film for The Appointments of Dennis Jennings) and multiple Grammy and Emmy nominee Steven Wright's 62nd birthday. To describe him beyond the single word "deadpan" is almost futile. The best I can do is “comedy at the speed of three-toed sloth.” But, boy, when his punchlines land, it can be downright mind-bending. Here’s his first national TV gig (1982), and he had the most intimidating audience possible: Johnny Carson…
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Carson was so impressed that he invited Steven back a week later. You can watch more of him here and read more of him (which is just as much fun) here. Oh, and extra points for including a Maine lighthouse (Cape Neddick) on the home page of his website. He always did like us best.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Just Like Home: Space Station Has Same Microbes As Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool
---Space.com
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