From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Maine Governor's Race: The Choices
Democrat Mike Michaud: Expand Medicaid to cover 70,000 Mainers
Independent Eliot Cutler: Expand Medicaid to cover 70,000 Mainers
Tea Party Republican Paul LePage: Get sick on your own dime, moochers
Michaud: Increase the minimum wage
Cutler: Increase the minimum wage
LePage: Stay poor, suckers
Michaud: Supports public education
Cutler: Supports public education
LePage: Schools = profit centers for private business
Michaud: Supports clean energy
Cutler: Supports clean energy
LePage: Supports offshore oil rigs and piping in tar sands from Canada
Michaud: Thinks before he speaks
Cutler: Thinks before he speaks
LePage: Thinks of the most offensive thing possible before he speaks
Michaud: Now endorsed by Senator Angus King
Cutler: No longer endorsed by Senator Angus King
LePage: The reason Senator Angus King does half a dozen facepalms every day
The Writing on the Wall:
The Big Dawg likes Mike!
Michaud: 40% in the polls
Cutler: 15% in the polls
LePage: 40% in the polls
C'mon Cutler supporters. Your guy reiterated this week---and I quote---"If you don't think I can win on Election Day, then you have my blessing to vote for someone else." Help us end the tea party experiment here---we deserve better. Pull the lever for Mike. It'll be a blessing for Maine.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, October 30, 2014
Note: Vote!
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9 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the midterm elections:
5
Days 'til the
2014 Mountain Running Film Festival in Missoula, Montana:
9
Share of Americans who own their own homes:
64.4%
Years since home ownership was this low:
19
(Source: Census Bureau)
Current minimum value of Facebook:
$200 billion
Number of electric/hybrid cars sold in the U.S. last year, up 83 percent from 2012:
97,563
(Source: Ward's AutoInfoBank)
Major League World Series Game 7
San Francisco Giants 3 Kansas City Royals 2---and San Francisco wins the Series!
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
What I like about the new radical, right-wing Republican takeover of this country is how easily they blow past all our defenses against deja-vu, they-all-do-it cynicism.
There you are — thinking you're way too old and have been around this block too many times to suddenly up and evince moral outrage over a little callousness here or a dollop of favoritism there. Suddenly, you find yourself whomperjawed, outraged, stupefied with disbelief. A Girl Scout again, after all these years. It's enough to make me believe in that nutty fundamentalist theory about "secondary virginity," which claims you can become a virgin again even if you're not a virgin. I swan to goodness, these folks can indeed produce miracles.
---October, 2003
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Puppy Pic of the Day Magic words: "I'm parched…"
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2010: Obama promoting the ACA in Portland,
Maine. He also stumped here in 2007.
CHEERS to POTUS in motion. President Obama straps on
Jetpack One and
blasts off for our fair little hamlet by the sea today. He'll campaign here in Portland for Democrat Mike Michaud, with the added appearance of beloved former Senator George Mitchell. Afterward they'll take the secret tunnel ten blocks to my basement star chamber, where we'll plot the future of humanity while drinkin' hard whiskey and playing 11-Dimensional Uno. (Spoiler Alert: the drinkin' part turns out to be a really bad idea, according to the owner of the steamroller rental place tomorrow morning.)
CHEERS to gravity defiance. A day after a rocket bound for the International Space Station loaded with supplies sputtered and crashed, NASA successfully launched an Atlas rocket from Cape Canaveral:
Hey! No smoking on the launch pad!
A 19-story Atlas 5 rocket launched the new GPS satellite into orbit Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 1:21 p.m. EDT (1721 GMT), in a flawless 50th flight for the unmanned Atlas 5 rocket family.
The $245 million Boeing-built satellite, dubbed GPS 2F-8, will join the Air Force's Global Positioning Satellite network, which was originally built as tool for the U.S. military but is now used also by civilians around the world to map their locations.
Said the GPS lady shortly after takeoff: "Take the…second star…to your right…then go…straight ahead until you reach…morning."
RUH ROH to being a big-boy economy again. Apparently we've recovered enough from the Great Recession that happened on George W. Bush's watch to stand on our own two feet again:
The BiPM household's
Federal Reserve Bank.
The Federal Reserve announced the end of its bond-buying program Wednesday, marking the close of a six-year effort to stimulate the economy. …
The Fed's announcement was overall positive, says Dan Greenhaus, chief strategist at market research firm BTIG in New York. "It's in response to the Fed acknowledging the improvement in the economy, the improvement in the labor market and the diminished risks on the inflation side of things," says Greenhaus.
They say the Fed's move is "akin to taking the training wheels off of a child's bike." Wait, I'm confused…we're supposed to take those
off?
CHEERS to #2. And happy 279th birthday to John Adams, born October 30, 1735. A few toasts from his colleagues:
[Gasp!] Tan suit!!!
"He's actually insane!"
---Sec. of War James McHenry
"Sometimes absolutely mad!"
---Ben Franklin
"He is vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the motives which govern men."
---Thomas Jefferson
Okay, well, that was fun. Pay
your respects here. But watch your words---he still thinks the Alien and Sedition Acts are in effect.
JEERS to weird science. Hard not to click on a story that mentions reindeer poop, so here we are. Scientists used some of the aforementioned poop from a 700-year-old Canadian reindeer to isolate and bring to life two ancient viruses. Gee, thanks, guys. But I think I speak for everyone here when I say we have our hands full with the ones we already got.
CHEERS to theatre of the mind. 76 years ago today, on October 30, 1938, Orson Welles' The War of the Worlds aired on CBS radio. By using fake news reports with deadpan seriousness, the broadcast caused a panic among listeners who thought the reports of a Martian invasion were true. To this day it's Dick Cheney's favorite bedtime story.
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Five years ago in C&J: October 30, 2009
JEERS to thinking too small. Apparently there's going to be a question on Colorado's ballot next year that would ask voters to
recognize eggs as people:
This new version would move the legal definition of a person further back into the reproductive cycle, granting cells the full spectrum of citizen rights. Opposition groups, including Colorado genetic and fertilization researchers, say the law would have spiraling consequences, that it would put women at risk and freeze current work in medicine and reproduction.
That sound you hear is the director of the Census Bureau jumping out a window.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to a galaxy not so far away. I'm just warning you now. There's only 14 months until Star Wars Episode VII: Han Solo's Gout Strikes Back. And I'm gonna be getting a little excited around here about it because 90 percent of my brain cells have Property of Lucasfilm Ltd. written on them. So, for your amusement: this is an artist named Thomas Dagg, and here's a sample of how he envisions life on earth if we were actually part of the Star Wars universe. I call this pic, "The Police Department Welcomes You to Ferguson, Missouri!"
See the whole amazing collection
by clicking here. But no fair clicking with your mouse---use The Force, young Jedi. Obi Wan says it is strong with you.
Have a Jar Jar Binks-free Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"Bill in Portland Maine is not a magician with a magic wand."
---Pope Francis
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