From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Yuh Huh It Is Too The Video Games
5 minute search of convicted gamers in public database:
Carl Wain played Pac-Man. Life sentence—cannibalism
Alan Miller played Asteroids. Life sentence—destroying homes with laser cannon
Jeremy Coughler played Mr. Do. 6 months—assault with deadly apples
Ernie Bell played Donkey Kong. 10-20 years—jewelry store heists with giant mallet
Alice Conway played Q*Bert. 10-20 years—pushing grandma down steps
Bud Perry played Super Mario Bros. 5-10 years—burglary while high on mushrooms
Angelo Lupica played Frogger. 2 years—pre-meditated freeway pileups
Tom Turner played Berzerk. 45 years—unleashing killer robots on unsuspecting populace
Mike Swayman played The Legend of Zelda. 5 years—illegal cultivation of bomb flowers
Vic Long played Yar's Revenge. Life sentence—Assault with deadly Zorlon Cannon
Will Hollings played E.T. The Game. 3 months—playing E.T. The Game
Carlos Green played Joust. 18 months—inciting killer-ostrich rebellion
Wendy Sutton played Ms. Pac-Man. Probation—shoplifting fruit
Kyle Denton played Sim City. $2 billion fine—toxic waste dump violations
Proof that video games are, in fact, the biggest threats to the safety of American society. Right after not-very-well-regulated militias.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, August 8, 2019
Note: Today is World Cat Day. Here...open your gifs and purr. (And special memorial mew to the late, great pawed pessimist Grumpy Cat.)
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo: 350
Days 'til the Illinois Beer Festival: 11
Number of state governors since reconstruction: 1,577
Number of them who have been black: 3
Time it takes to get to Pluto at the speed of light: 4.5 hours
Number of dispensed prescriptions of the overdose-reversing drug Naloxone at U.S. pharmacies in 2018, up from 271,000 in 2017: 557,000
Time it took Franky Zapata to make the 22-mile trip across the English Channel on his hoverboard: 20 minutes
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
According to a report by the co-directors of Boston University's School of Public Health titled, "New Medicare RX Benefit Means Big Profits for Drug Companies," we have once more failed to sufficiently overestimate what special interest money can do to legislation written by our elected representatives.
According to the report, "An estimated 61.1 percent of the Medicare dollars that will be spent to buy more prescriptions will remain in the hands of drug makers as added profits."
Isn't that nice? Sixty-one percent of what the plan costs will be additional profit for drug companies. Just what we had in mind. Only our fully bought-and-paid-for politicians (in Texas, we rather delicately refer to them as "whored out') could have taken a plan to help seniors and turned it into a plan to help drug companies already making obscene profits. Their estimated increased profits under this bill are $139 billion over eight years.
---November, 2003
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Meet the new honorary New York Met…
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CHEERS to Disinfectant Squad: Judicial Branch Division. The name's Nadler. Jerry Nadler. I walk the hard, rain-swept streets of D.C., keeping my eyes peeled for government scofflaws who try to use the Constitution as a doormat. I can do that—I have a badge. Well, okay, it's not a badge, it's a lapel pin, whatever, it's shiny and official. My point is, I'm following the scent of a real heel—and it smells like a toxic combination of swamp scum, Aqua Velva, and a keg of Schlitz past its sell-by date:
Rep. Jerry Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Hank Johnson,chairman of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, announced Tuesday that they had officially requested records from the National Archives related to now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. […]
[During the confirmation process,] Republicans withheld something like 92% of the documents from Kavanaugh's time in the Bush White House. […]
This is significant now because, as Nadler and Johnson write, "In the coming year, the Supreme Court will again address important matters regarding civil rights, criminal justice, and immigration. The Court may also review certain high-profile cases related to reproductive rights, the separation of powers, and the limits of executive authority—all topics within the jurisdiction of the House Judiciary Committee." Kavanaugh will be in a position to rule on those issues and he is under a cloud.
Me and the men and women of Disinfectant Squad will go through these documents like a hot knife through the last jar of Nutella on the supermarket shelf you've just knocked down a dozen old ladies to snag like Velcro on neck hair. But that's a story for another day.
CHEERS to America's #1 guy in the green shirt. For the last 55 years, I've been on the fence whenever this issue comes up—like it inevitably does during Thanksgiving dinner or at bake sales or while I'm in the confession booth—but today I got my definitive answer. This is America's #1 guy in the green shirt, and you can take that to the bank (and listen for the now-classic line, “You are in direct violation of being a jackass"):
Special shoutout to the shouting lady in the MAGA hat for flawlessly demonstrating Robert's Rules of Order for Proper City Council Meeting Ejections: 1) Stand 2) Shout while waving sign 3) Pull shorts out of butt crack in front of camera 4) Exit gracefully. We should all be so civilized.
JEERS to stupid Republican tricks. Forty-six years ago today, on August 8, 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew called accusations that he took kickbacks as governor of Maryland "damned lies." He maintained his innocence until October 10, when he issued another statement: "Oh, you meant those kickbacks? Why didn't you say so? I quit. Goodbye!" Meanwhile, on this date in 1974, Agnew's boss Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace. Watch him yuk it up as he prepares to deliver his resignation speech.
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They made such a lovely awful couple.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. The chatters over at FiveThirtyEight ask: What's going on with all those House GOP retirements?
Panic.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
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CHEERS to our new lunar overlords. Great job, Israel. Juuuuuuust…great. Thanks to your botched moon mission, which resulted in a crash-landed probe, you've unleashed thousands of tardigrades, aka "water bears," to breed like bunnies, colonize, set up a tyrannical government, create a standing Space Force, and make Earth their slave colony. Because guess what? They…
…can survive in almost any environment.
We already know it's possible for scientists to bring tardigrades back to life after a 30-year deep freeze. As "extremophiles," tardigrades can shut down their metabolism and survive in hostile conditions for long periods.
All kidding aside, there's no danger of rogue laser-wielding water bears to civilization here on Earth. Just as long as Steve Mnuchin does as he's told and packs the trillion-dollar coin in a plain brown wrapper and sends it up in a Falcon-9 without any feds on its tail. Oh, and I'm also supposed to say: this is your final warning. Hugs, everybody! Sincerely, Token Water Bear Human Liaison and Deputy Viceroy Billy.
CHEERS to super suds. Continuing our in-depth discussion of political issues that affect you, me, and our fate as a nation, I'd just like to point out that if we don’t get to the bottom of where the world's best craft beer city is located, making progress on virtually any issue you care to name, from infrastructure to defeating the scourge of video games, will be severely impeded. Thank god CNN is here in the nick of time to save the republic:
Portland, Maine, USA
As the US city with the most breweries per capita, Portland, Maine is at the top of every beer lover's must-visit list. To sample a bunch of Maine beers in one go-round, stop at Novare Res in the Old Port neighborhood. From pioneers like Allagash to new standards like Bissell Brothers, Maine Beer Co., and Liquid Riot, the bar's rotating taps won't disappoint.
Oxbow Blending & Bottling combines the barrel-aging space for the brewery's European inspired beers, like the flagship Farmhouse pale ale, with an airy warehouse-style taproom. In warm weather, grab a cone of Belgian frites from the Duckfat Frites Shop window outside. You'll find an eclectic selection of beers at Foulmouthed Brewing, in a converted auto shop in South Portland. Try the Grawlix IPA with locally grown hops or a salty gose with yuzu kosho alongside your lobster roll.
There are only two other American cities on the list, each deserving of a foam-headed gold star: Asheville, North Carolina, which "barley" edged out Grand Rapids, Michigan for the #2 spot. As for the rest of you lesser brewery towns, I wouldn't take being the yeast among us lightly. It's time to up your game. So hops to it.
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 8, 2009
JEERS to falling off the bungle gym. There seem to be two problems with kids and the state of school phys-ed these days: 1) They're not doing enough, and 2) They're not very graceful at it:
Injuries to American children during physical education classes increased by 150 percent from 1997-2007, a new study finds, a possible drawback to a movement encouraging more vigorous exercise in schools. ... "Children got hurt by running into equipment or having contact with structures or other persons," McKenzie said.
Strangely, there was one category in which teenagers seemed quite adept. They apparently had no problem climbing the rope in gym class. Again and again and again.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to site #1. Be sure to raise a glass to the internet this week. Tuesday was the 28th anniversary of the first web site:
It was British computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee who gave birth to the idea while working at a Swiss physics laboratory in 1989.
The first server was launched publicly, two years later, on August 6, 1991. Sir Tim originally developed the web to meet the demand for information-sharing between physicists in universities and institutes around the world.
Thanks, Tim, for giving Hamsters everywhere a place to dance.
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By late 1993, there were more than 500 known web servers, and the world wide web accounted for 1% of internet traffic. Two decades later, there were an estimated 630 million websites online.
You can see that first web page in all its geeky glory here. Today the United States ranks 20th in terms of overall internet speed and 28th in mobile internet speed, which is pretty embarrassing. But anyway…on behalf of the porn industry, pootie lovers, and all five million widows of Nigerian foreign ministers who desperately want to give you millions of dollars if you'll just give them your bank account number, America would just like to say…
[Buffering…]
[Buffering…]
[Buffering…]
[Buffering…]
...screw you, FCC.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
Tourists to Daily Kos will no longer be able to catch their breath in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool, after Bill in Portland Maine banned people from sitting on the famous monument. Police could be seen blowing whistles to order people up and out of the historic site on Tuesday, an AFP photographer reported.
---Raw Story
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