From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Okay, You’ve Been So Good This Week
You’ve earned this…
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Amazingly, there’s more useful information packed in that parody than in the real thing. Wait, did I say amazingly? I meant not surprisingly.
Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, August 24, 2018
Note: Good news: we survived our endoscopy/colonoscopy yesterday. Bad news: the prep was annoying, especially having to limit my favorite foods like Elmer's Paste and charbroiled armadillo spleens. Good news: no trace of a return of the colon cancer. Bad news: [sigh] I probably have stomach cancer. Good news: my surgeon, oncologist and gastroenterologist are three of the smartest, most accomplished women ever born. Bad news: here we go again.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til autumn: 26
Days 'til Maine’s Camden Windjammer Festival: 7
Number of documented cases of measles in Europe during the first half of 2018 (including 37 deaths), up from 5,273 in all of 2016: 41,000
Number of calls, totaling 5 minutes, that disgraced former EPA head Scott Pruitt made with his $43,000 soundproof telephone booth: 1
Estimated number of plaintiffs who may be taking part in a class-action lawsuit against scam pyramid-scheme outfit Herbalife, which may end up costing the company $1 billion: 100,000
Age of James Knott, who pioneered the modern-day, plastic-coated "Aquamesh" lobster trap, when he died last week: 88
Rank of vanilla, mint chocolate chip, and cookies & cream among most popular ice cream flavors: #1, #2, #3
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Your Thursday Friday Molly Ivins Moment (since we weren't here yesterday to give you your Molly fix):
Money, money, money is the motif of the "New Activist" federal judges, but they have also been busy, busy limiting congressional authority and individual rights.
As People for the American Way notes, federal appellate courts -- effectively the court of last resort for most Americans -- are working on: questioning the constitutionality of the Endangered Species Act, overturning the National Labor Relations Board rulings against anti-union discrimination and other unfair labor practices by employers, allowing the Bush administration to keep secret the records of the Cheney energy task force and rewriting by court order a state law on First Amendment activity.
Other Bush appellate judges have ruled to deny protection to workers who file claims of race and disability discrimination, made it harder to protect the environment, and issued other decisions that will affect our lives and liberties for decades. Activist judges, indeed.
---August 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Displaced…
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CHEERS to victory in Voter Land. Republicans will stop at nothing to prevent minority voters from having smooth, easy access to the ballot box. They know their party is shrinking, thanks to a combination of dying old white people, more minority people, and increasing revulsion at the party’s single-minded pandering to a bizarre constituency of rich people, dumb people, and Russians. So this bit of pushback down in Randolph County, Georgia (a state where a fantastically-qualified and popular black woman---Stacey Abrams---is poised to become the next governor) is great news:
A Georgia county’s board of elections on Friday voted down a proposal to shutter seven of its nine polling sites over concerns that doing so would disenfranchise the area’s majority-black population.
The proposal was originally made by independent elections consultant Michael Malone, who was hired to help the rural county save costs. It drew national criticism given the likely challenges it would impose on the county’s mostly black voters, who would need to travel long distances to get to the polls on Election Day.Several civil rights groups threatened to sue if the changes were approved.
The county was unable to produce documents supporting its claims that the polling sites were inaccessible to disabled people, and Malone was fired Thursday, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Hey, Republicans in Congress! Let's ride this wave of civic do-gooderism and pass a new, stronger Voting Rights Act including automatic registration, mandatory paper trails, stricter penalties for voter suppression, stronger safeguards against foreign intervention, and easier access to polling places. (Still waiting for the punchline? Actually that was the punchline.)
JEERS to Sessions' Charge. With Lord Dampnut firing a fusillade of broadsides from behind the walls of his Twitter account to the cheers of his brainstem-severed base, Attorney General Jeff Sessions rallied his beleaguered self and ran uphill across a half-mile-long field in a daring daylight raid on Trump's defensive positions behind a split-rail fence. Before retreating to the shade of a sycamore tree to quench his thirst with a pitcher of lemonade, he managed to bayonet the commander-in-chief right in one of his bone spurs:
"While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations. I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action. However, no nation has a more talented, more dedicated group of law enforcement investigators and prosecutors than the United States," Sessions said in a statement.
I am proud to serve with them and proud of the work we have done in successfully advancing the rule of law."
And down in the Land of Dixie they say, Jeff Sessions' heart grew…well, okay, it grew zero sizes that day because he's still a racist dickhead who was the first senator to climb aboard the Traitormobile. But, hey…nice nut ya found there, sight-impaired squirrely.
CHEERS to letting them broads in the booth. The C&J household will be donning its pussyhats Sunday, Women's Equality Day, which celebrates the August 26, 1920 certification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution giving women the right to vote. Time magazine posted an article last year reminding us of the crazy pre-1920 fact that women could run in elections despite not being allowed to cast a ballot in them. Thousands of women (from no fewer than 16 different parties) did, in fact, run according to the Her Hat Was in the Ring database, and the very first appears to have been a---wait for it---Mainer!
[W]hen Olive Rose was elected Register of Deeds by Lincoln County in Maine in 1853, she became not only the first woman elected in the state, but the scholars believe she may have also been the first woman elected in the United States. In one town, Warren, she got 73 votes, while her opponent received only four. Her listing in the database includes a rather prescient announcement of her feat in a local newspaper article:
"Men may laugh and jeer and fume, as much as they please about this matter of 'woman's rights;' they cannot escape the issue. As sure as the indomitable barons of England wrung Magna Carta from King John at Runnymede, so will the women of the 19th century extort from the 'lords of creation,' (who have held them in servile dependency from the beginning of the world) something like an equal share of political and social rights. Whether the doctrine of 'woman's rights' is in the judgment of the present generation consonant with the 'eternal fitness of things' or not, it is nevertheless designed to gain ground, and ultimately to prevail."
Keep your eye on the election results as they roll in on November 6th. I think you're gonna see some off-the-charts gaining and prevailing.
P.S. Nobody said it better:
“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union ... men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.”
---Susan B. Anthony
CHEERS to tattered coattails. Remember that rich Republican prick Foster Friess, who famously said when he was stumping for---Snort!---Rick Santorum for president in 2012 that women could affordably avoid getting pregnant by using "Bayer aspirin for contraceptives---the gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly"? Well, ol' Foster thought he was just the kind of guy Wyoming needed to be its next governor. Along with the Christian-right grifter cabal (including Santorum), he secured the 100% endorsement of both Donald Trump and even Don Jr., who sent this Nazi-whistle tweet out:
Get it? Get it? "Storm to the front"? Storm….Front? Ach du lieber, das ist some super clever propaganda there, Dr.Goebbels mit ze horsey teeth. Anyway, voters told Friess he'd be their governor over their dead bodies, and crushed him in Tuesday's primary. We hear he's still in a lot of pain. I have a solution, Foster old buddy, and it's not that costly: stick a Bayer aspirin between your nuts.
JEERS to really shitty ways to ruin an otherwise lovely summer evening. On this date in 1814, British forces attacked Washington, DC during the War of...um...1812. The president and members of Congress fled while the First Lady, armed with nothing but a butcher knife and her patriotism, rescued artwork and leftover mutton before the redcoats torched the White House. The 8/24 Commission Report later said President Madison should have heeded the PDB titled: "King George III Determined to Strike In US." Curse you, 20-20 hindsight.
CHEERS to home vegetation. I can tell you right now that I am not a happy TV watcher at the moment---those g*ddamn New England Patriots are playing the Carolina Panthers in some pre-season fake non-game game, preempting my Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! Now I have nothing to watch between 7 and 8 except my DVR'd episodes of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! At least Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow are expected to show up as scheduled at 8 and 9, before Bill Maher talks with former CIA director John Brennan, Never-trumper Rick Wilson, journalist David Corn, Recode Editor-at-Large Kara Swisher and Director of the UC Berkeley Food Labor Research Center Saru Jayaraman on HBO's Real Time. The marquee home video release this week is the better-than-the-first-one Deadpool 2. The baseball schedule is here. Which reminds me---oops, I'm losing my balance and, oh no, I slipped and dropped this here:
I'm so clumsy! Also: tomorrow night at 10 on ABC, 20/20 has a look back at the miraculous rescue of those Thai soccer kids and their coach from that flooded cave. And with John Oliver taking a two-week break from HBO's Last Week Tonight, Sasha Baron Cohen steps in on Showtime with a new episode of Republican idiot shaming on Who Is America?
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: TBA
This Week: TBA
Face the Nation: Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ); George Washington University constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley.
CNN's State of the Union: Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ); Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI); former Obama adviser Karine Jean-Pierre.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Oooh! What a bold choice to book disgraced has-been Trumpbot Corey Lewandowski as their marquee guest. Chris Wallace would've been better off interviewing a gacked-up hairball.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 24, 2008
CHEERS to "The Greatest" news. Guess who's coming to our little soiree in Denver? No, not Carrot Top, but you're close. From last night's Countdown:
Keith Olbermann: I understand you learned something about John McCain losing a big name, in effect, to Barack Obama...
Howard Fineman: Well, I think it‘s interesting symbolism. Muhammad Ali, who‘s a worldwide figure, [who] respects and who knows McCain and who never takes part in politics---very, very rarely, I think he‘s only been to one convention---has decided, and he called and said to the Obama staff, "I want to come to this convention because it‘s going to be a historic night on that night in Invesco Field where you give your acceptance speech in front of 70,000 people, on the night of Martin Luther King‘s anniversary. I want to be there."
Well, Mr. Ali, this is highly irregular. But...oh, alright. We'll try and fit you in the overflow room.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the "Lion of the Senate." As time goes on, fewer and fewer of us 'Muricans will remember that Ted Kennedy owned that title for much of his 47-year career there. So I'll keep bringing it up, especially on his birthday and also on tomorrow's date---the eight-year anniversary of his passing from brain cancer at 77. With a little assist from President Obama, who said at Ted's funeral:
"The world will long remember their son Edward as the heir to a weighty legacy; a champion for those who had none; the soul of the Democratic Party; and the lion of the United States Senate---a man who graces nearly 1,000 laws, and who penned more than 300 laws himself."
To mark the occasion, a couple snips of vintage Ted:
On the Iraq war: "There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud."
On health care reform: "This is the cause of my life---new hope that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American---North, South, East, West, young, old---will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege."
And one of my favorite pics, from 2009 when Ted was one of Barack Obama’s biggest supporters. The grizzled veteran passing on wisdom to the newbie…
Obamacare is now in full effect, and I imagine that card-carrying 5-digit UID Kossack Ted would be pleased over the numbers, but also impatient to improve it and furious at Republicans for trying to gut with such heartless ferocity. For the first 45 years of my life Ted Kennedy was always in Washington, "voice bellowing through the Senate chamber, face reddened, fist pounding the podium, a veritable force of nature" (Obama's words again). He was both a battering ram and a master of jiu jitsu. (Watch him tear into Donald Rumsfeld here.) And also a guy you'd never turn down having a beer with. Even though I'm not from Massachusetts, he still felt like "my" senator. His "vim ahnd vigah" are sorely missed. Cheers, Ted. And say hi to your brothers---they were pretty good, too.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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