From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Fox News and White Supremacist Wackos: in Perfect Harmony
Nice (non-comedy) work by The Daily Show, comparing Fox News’s drumbeat of anti-immigrant rhetoric with that of the El Paso terrorist’s right-wing manifesto:
-
What’s that term, again? Oh, yeah—I believe they call it aiding and abetting.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Note: If you need a penny take a penny. 😃 If you have a penny, leave a penny. 😃 If you have a penny and you take a penny, rot in hell, you thief without conscience, you aren’t worth the pain of the mother that bore ya, now get out of my store before I call the proper authorities. 🔥 Everyone else, have a nice day. 😃
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til autumn: 40
Days 'til the Blackberry Arts Festival in Coos Bay, Oregon: 10
Percent of registered voters who support and oppose, respectively, requiring individuals to get a license before buying a gun, according to a new Quinnipiac poll: 77%, 19%
Percent of Republican women who support a ban on assault weapons, according to a Morning Consult poll: 64%
Increase in the federal budget deficit since this time last year: 27%
Percent chance that Walmart is going through hell trying to maintain their "everyday low" prices, thanks to Trump's tariffs: 100%
Factor by which the newly-discovered Holm 15A black hole is larger than our sun: 40 billion to 1
-
Mid-week Rapture Index: 185 (including 5 Financial Unrests and a huge catalog of spell-casting, DNA-changing country music). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Bullied teen rescues six-legged puppy. Happiness ensues.
-
CHEERS to doing something. As friends and family in El Paso and Dayton continue grieving after the terrorist attacks of two weekends ago, Democrats—and only Democrats—are champing at the bit to pass tough gun control laws that will reduce our country's atrocious, unconscionable body count. One of them, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, is wasting no time. He wants gun owners to chip in to cover the costs of mishaps from their deadly obsession—via liability insurance—which cost the lives of two kids from his city during the Gilroy attack three weekends ago:
According to Liccardo's proposal, the insurance would cover "accidental discharge of the gun, and for the intentional acts of third parties who steal, borrow, or otherwise acquire the gun." It would not cover "liability of the policyholder for his or her own intentional conduct." […]
Firearm owners unable to purchase liability insurance will be able to pay a fee instead. "With this measure, we won't suddenly end gun violence. But we're going to stop paying for it," said Liccardo.
Liccardo [also] proposed a gun and ammunition sales tax to fund gun safety classes, violence prevention programs, and additional victim assistance services for survivors of gun violence. … Liccardo compares his approach to drivers having car insurance and imposing taxes on tobacco products. "These successful public health models inspire a similar 'harm reduction' approach for firearms," he added.
For what it's worth, I have an additional idea that would help boost accountability among the enablers when some idiot goes psycho with a gun: any elected official whose reaction to a shooting is limited to "thoughts and prayers" has to toss a thousand bucks in the STFU Jar.
CHEERS to America's favorite safety net. On today's date in 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt gave us one less thing to fear by signing the Social Security Act into law, saying:
"We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age. […]
The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness."
Today a substantial portion of the Republican base loves to criticize Social Security as the brainchild of a dirty effing socialist hippie. But they sure do love getting their socialist hippie checks in the mail. And they sure love to complain that their socialist hippie checks ain't big enough. And they sure love to leap to its defense by telling their own party to “keep your government hands off my Social[-ist] Security.” Yes, when it comes to money, Republicans are all about the love. Dirty effing fiscal hippies.
CHEERS to telling the whole story. After being ignored for most of our existence as a country, the LGBT community's influence in American history is---in Illinois, at least---going to be taught in schools as required by a new law:
Illinois'governor signed a law that will require LGBTQ history to be taught in schools starting next year.
A 2015 survey cited by the office of State Sen. Heather Steans (D-Chicago)showed nearly 70 percent of LGBTQ students in Illinois have been verbally harassed due to their sexual orientation. Steans was the sponsor of the bill.
“It is my hope that teaching students about the valuable contributions LGBTQ individuals have made throughout history will create a safer environment with fewer incidents of harassment,” Steans said. “LGBTQ children and teenagers will also be able to look to new role models who share life experiences with them.”
A modest request to the history textbook authors: please spell my name right.
- - -
Paid Message from People's Republic of China
Greeting time, America! There is nothing to see in Hong Kong but thrilling skies and scenery of beauty and calm! All is play time and happiness. Hong Kong is for lovers. No need to click on this American propaganda link that tells lies about citizen uprisings. Instead of foul stench of fake news we give you joy joy fun time video to make rainbows and snickers in your mind.
No way! So cute!!! Repeat: all is well on Hong Kong, especially the airport. President Xi is loved like hip Daddy-O cool guy. We are done here as there is no more to say about this glorious happy day on the entire planet especially Hong Kong. Bye!
End Paid Message from People's Republic of China
- - -
JEERS to America's #1 Defeatocrat. I love pulling this steaming turd out of the time machine every year. Twenty-five years ago this brilliant—and I mean that sincerely—comment was made and then greeted with sweets and flowers by the speaker's party members and corporate admirers. It's worth revisiting, if only to illustrate that Republicans will kick their own well-thought-out positions to the curb in an instant if it means more power and/or money for them:
“Once you got to Iraq and took it over---took down Saddam Hussein's government---then what are you going to put in its place?
That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west. Part of it---eastern Iraq---the Iranians would like to claim; they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.
It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.”
Guess who said it? Dwight Eisenhower? Richard Nixon? Colin Powell? Nope. It was Dick Cheney…in 1994. Unfortunately, Dick stopped listening to Dick. Bad, Dick, bad.
CHEERS to C&J Kiddie Pool Theater. My latest production is titled Moscow Mitch's Summer Road Trip: A Play in One Act, and I've chosen you to be my preview audience. Take your seats as we dim the lights, and…
CURTAIN UP
Dad "Mitch," his wife "Elaine," and three kids are in a car facing front of stage. Behind them footage of the highway on which they're driving is projected on a screen. Dad is in the driver’s seat, hands on the wheel at 10 and 2.
Dad: Hey, family, isn’t this, I say, isn’t this a fun summer road trip?
Kids yelling simultaneously: "Dad! Can we turn off at the next exit? We all gotta pee really, really bad." "Yeah, Dad, we gotta pee!" "Like, really bad!" “It’s been five hours, Dad!” "Let us go pee, daddy! Let us go pee!" "I can't hold it much longer, Daddy!" “Pee! Pee! Pee! We gotta pee!”
Dad: "I'll consider it."
Moments later footage behind car shows Dad zooming past the next exit.
CURTAIN DOWN
Please fill out your comment cards as you exit the theater. And leave the Tony Award in the usual spot—out back on the patio behind the milk bottles.
-
15 years ago in C&J: August 14, 2004
CHEERS to truth in ratings. C&J notices that ‘Alien vs. Predator' is rated PG-13 for "Violence, Language, Horror Images, Slime and Gore." So then...shouldn't the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads have a parental advisory disclaimer?
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to the whitest guy ever to be "born a poor black child." Happy birthday to Steve Martin, who was a spry 30 when I first heard his stand-up act (via long-play LP, no less, but later I went high-tech with long-play cassettes) at age 12 and laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe, and who today is an elder statesman of comedy at 74. He's had almost too many reinventions of his career to list, but we'll try: magician…Emmy-winning TV sketch-show writer…Grammy-winning stand-up comedian...one-hit wonder (King Tut)…15-time SNL host…world-class art collector...honorary Oscar winner for his boatload of box office hits…best-selling author…Tony-nominated musical (Bright Star)…and a match made in banjo-picking, Grammy-nominated heaven with the Steep Canyon Rangers (with an assist here from Bill Hader and Cecily Strong):
-
By my count, that’s ten careers rolled into one. I’ll have to double-check, but I think that means we all just earned ourselves a free arrow-through-the-head.
Have a wild and crazy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today’s Shameless C&J Testimonial
Pete Buttigieg will be the first 2020 presidential candidate to visit the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool
—The Bangor Daily News
-