From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Monday Margaret and Helen Blogging
The blogosphere's feistiest octogenarians have a few post-Charlottesville words for Lord Dampnut. Helen Philpot writes…
No, Mr. President. There were not many sides in Charlottesville. There were just two. Right and wrong. There were white supremacists on one side and Americans who believe all people are created equal on the other side. There were hate groups and there were Americans who oppose hate. There were neo-Nazis and… Do we really have to go beyond that? Isn’t that what we call a non-starter? There were Nazis you stupid piece of shit and still that wasn’t clear enough for you? Really? You couldn’t even get this one right? On one side there were Nazis and on the other there were no Nazis, and you still came down on the wrong side? […]
Everyone wants to claim that we need to get back to the issues that Trump ran on. We are quick to say that the majority of Trump voters were voting because of the economy. Well pardon my French but in this case the bullshit is both walking and talking. This is exactly the issue he ran on. He kicked off his campaign accusing immigrants from Mexico as being rapists and murderers. The Republican Party owns this. If you are a Republican today, you condone this.
Hillary Clinton called them a basket of deplorables. I prefer to call them a confederacy of dunces. My heart goes out to Charlottesville and to this great country of ours as we suffer this fool of a man who was too stupid to know he was too stupid to be President. I mean it. Really.
Read the whole piece, including Margaret's coup de grâce, here. God only knows what we're in for this week. Hold onto your butts.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, August 21, 2017
Note: Tell me again, Daddy, why the Klan dropped the Democrats like a hot potato and started humping the Republicans' leg. It's my favorite story!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the solar eclipse that will completely block the sun over Maine: 2,424
Days 'til Maine's Blue Hill Fair: 10
Percent of Americans who believe Trump can lead the country through an international crisis, according to a Marist poll: 19%
Tons of ice by which Greenland shrank last year, according to NOAA: 341 billion
Percent chance that Maine Gov. Paul LePage said last week that taking down confederate monuments is equal to taking down monuments to the 9/11 attacks: 100%
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CHEERS to premature nighty-night time. I can only imagine how stoked Kossack grog is today, seeing as he's got a fully-booked B&B located right in the "blackout zone" of today's solar eclipse. (Here in Maine we'll have to make do with 59% coverage, starting around 1:30.) From what I understand, those in the bullseye will see a fast-motion sunset, followed by a "dead of night" effect that will actually let you see the stars---and how freaky is that! Then roosters will start crowing right before the accelerated sunrise, and everybody gets treated to a second breakfast. For those of you who are new to eclipsing, C&J has this exclusive helpful preview:
For a brief moment, you'll know the phenomenon her neighbors have to deal with anytime Ann Coulter steps outside the house.
P.S. Think of the critters...
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CHEERS to lending a helping hand. Such a lonely sight---only a couple dozen neo-Nazis and other assorted white supremacists managed to straggle into a gazebo (a Nazibo?) for their "big" rally on Saturday in Boston. They looked like they could use some company, so 40-thousand area residents turned out to provide them with an opposing sea of humanity as a backdrop for their little strudel-and-hate picnic:
True fact: Massachusetts is known as "The Bay State." As in, keep your hate out of our state, bay-otch!
CHEERS to a light at the end of the tunnel? Needless to say, last week was a trying one for America. What started with a violent Nazi/KKK protest in a small Virginia town ended with a nationwide realization that the guy leading our country is as unhinged as all of us libturds said he was. But this might be a positive sign: the guy who ghost-wrote Trump’s book The Art of the Deal (which to this day Trump probably hasn’t even read) says our nutso president may be very close to resigning. Among the omens that indicate the vultures are circling his bloated orange carcass: cratering poll numbers, condemnation from his own party, a Mueller investigation whose "circle is closing at blinding speed," fatigue/boredom, and perhaps the biggest telltale sign, a Mike Pence erection that has lasted for way longer than four hours.
JEERS to the Drama Queen of the Week. It’s Monday, we’ve barely woken up, and already we've got our winner. Ladies and gentleman, I give you recently-fired Trump senior strategist Steve Bannon:
“I feel jacked up,” he says. “Now I’m free. I’ve got my hands back on my weapons. Someone said, ‘it’s Bannon the Barbarian.’ I am definitely going to crush the opposition. There’s no doubt. I built a fucking machine at Breitbart. And now I’m about to go back, knowing what I know, and we’re about to rev that machine up. And rev it up we will do.”
Bannon can act as nonchalant as he wants, but you just know he's gonna miss humming 'Ride of the Valkyries' while taking off in Marine One.
CHEERS to securing macadamia nuts for the Homeland. Fifty-eight years ago, on August 21, 1959, President Eisenhower---whose moderate views would prompt teabagger comparisons to Hitler if he was around today, which would be weird considering he defeated Hitler---signed an executive order proclaiming Hawaii as America's 50th state, unwittingly setting the stage for a secret plot by scalawags to, three years later, import a Kenyan-born baby in swaddling clothes to take over the Executive Branch in 2009 and kill all our old people with death panels. (That happened, right?) Even though Cokie Roberts may tut-tut you for being too much of a "foreign, exotic place," Hawaii, C&J luvs ya just the way you are. Tonight we celebrate with some tiny bubbles in the wine, and later maybe a few more in the tub.
CHEERS to a pleasant discussion---if by pleasant you mean, "Don’t you guys ever shut up???" On August 21, 1858, the first of the famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas took place. They were going toe-to-toe in a battle for a U.S. senate seat:
It was dry and dusty, between 10,000 and 12,000 people were in attendance when the debate began at 2:00 p.m. There were no seats or bleachers. Douglas charged Lincoln with trying to "abolitionize" the Whig and Democratic Parties. He also charged Lincoln had been present when a very radical "abolitionist" type platform had been written by the Republican Party in 1854.
Douglas accused Lincoln of taking the side of the common enemy in the Mexican War.
In other words, Douglas accused Lincoln of appeasing the enemy and palling around with terrorists. Gee, where have I heard that before?
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 21, 2007
JEERS to lying liars, part 3,438. Karl Rove on Sunday's Meet the Press: "[Y]ou look at the compassion agenda...this president has been able to offer a bold and optimistic agenda and get it done." Reporter Robert Pear in yesterday's New York Times: "The Bush administration, continuing its fight to stop states from expanding the popular Children’s Health Insurance Program, has adopted new standards that would make it much more difficult for New York, California and others to extend coverage to children in middle-income families." Feel the love.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the birthday pootie. Eight years ago today, Michael and I visited our local shelter to adopt a feline fuzzball, and chose the one that bit our ankles the least. We named her "Fantom" because she has a black mask across her face and loves to skulk around in the basement. Fantom is a petite calico with stubby legs. We think she might have been a rancher during her early days because she walks around bowlegged. She's pretty much in the middle of the Sociability Scale: says hello half the time, says goodbye half the time.
Fantom's days are filled with typical cativities: eat, barf, sleep, drink out of the faucet, barf some more, have stare-downs with squirrels, teach our dog Haley who's boss, de-wing flies, purr when skritched, fill out petitions to impeach Trump, and turn down any food not topped with beluga caviar. She's a cat schooled in the mysterious arts of "tai kitteh," and today we prostrate ourselves at the altar of Fancy Feast and wish Fantom a Happy Barfday. Did I mention she barfs a lot? She barfs a lot.
Oh, and Trump will be taking up valuable airtime tonight to announce a troop escalation in Afghanistan. Gee, what could go wrong? Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Man plants a tree in the Cheers and Jeers every day---37 years later, the world is amazed by the result
---Newsner
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