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I’m gonna miss President Obama when he leaves office. And I’m going to miss someone whose been very close to him for the last eight years almost as much: White House photographer Pete Souza. The images and moments he captures and posts at whitehouse.gov are always cool and often friggin’ amazing. A few recent ones:
Obama greets the Tennessee State University Marching Band after a reception for the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. So distant! So aloof! So bored with the job!
Obama hugs a home owner while viewing her flood-damaged home in Baton Rouge last month. He’s been called on to be comforter-in-chief more than any president I can remember.
State Counsellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi gives skritches to Bo and Sunny at the White House Sept. 14th. Pretty amazing considering she spent 15 years under house arrest.
We now return you to our regularly-scheduled mayhem. Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Note: Whistle while you work, Hitler is a jerk, Mussolini broke his weenie and now it doesn't work. That story, plus the Bayside neighborhood gets a new skate park and a chilly weekend ahead, tonight on Newscenter.
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By the Numbers:
10 days!!!
Days 'til we turn our clocks back an hour: 39
Days 'til the National Apple Harvest Festival in Biglerville, Pennsylvania: 10
Current polling match-up in Maine between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, according to the latest Portland Press Herald poll: 40%-36%
Rank of health care among the top concerns for Americans in this election, according to a new AP-NORC poll: #1
Scientific underestimation of the pounds of ice being lost in Greenland per year, which is still considered a "small" amount, according to AP: 40 trillion
Number of Empire State Buildings 40-trillion pounds equals: 50,000
Amount paid at auction for Truman Capote's ashes, which had been in the possession of Joanne Carson (Johnny Carson's ex-wife): $45,000
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Mid-week Rapture Index:
188 (including 5 gogs and 1 annual Pat Robertson warning that Halloween is Satan worship). Soul Protection Factor 8 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day:
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CHEERS to a delaying the final gavel drop. The Netroots Nation annual auction has been accepting bids for a week now. And thanks to the dust-up in New York Monday night, the organizers are extending it to a week and one day:
We know what you were doing Monday night. That’s why we're giving you more time to bid on unique items in our annual auction. The Netroots Nation Community Auction is now extended until Wednesday, September 28th! You have one more day to bid on items like:
• Suites at the Netroots Nation convention hotel in Atlanta
Seriously, who DOESN’T need a purple uterus fedora donated by Lizz Winstead???
• Autographed memorabilia from Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and others
• Official 2016 White House Easter eggs
• Time at a vacation home in San Jose del Cabo, Mexico
• Congressman John Lewis's award-winning "March" graphic novel trilogy
• A personal one-hour media training session with Joel Silberman
• Four tickets to a Washington Nationals game
• Food, books, art and services that can take your organizing to the next level
The auction closes TONIGHT at 10 pm Eastern. Make sure you get in on the action!
Click here and place your bids. Please note that the item listed as "One OSHA violation of your choice" has been removed as it is itself an OSHA violation and therefore cancels itself out. Stupid rules.
JEERS to the dick in the dock. All eyes are on Alabama today, as the state's deplorable Supreme Court Chief Justice fights for his judicial life. Justice Roy Moore will walk his sorry ass into a hearing room and explain why he shouldn't be removed from the bench for actively telling state judges to ignore the Supreme Court's Obergefell ruling and refuse to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. But this wouldn't be the first time:
The first time Moore lost the chief justice job was in 2003 when he refused to follow a federal court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state Supreme Court building. […]
Throw the bum out!
During the pendency of Obergefell, the Alabama Supreme Court had ordered probate judges not to issue same-sex marriage licenses even though a federal judge in Alabama had already ruled it constitutional.
The [Judicial Inquiry Commission], however, states in the charges that Moore's Jan. 6 order was "contrary to clear and determined law about which there is no confusion or unsettled question." But by issuing that order Moore "flagrantly disregarded a fundamental constitutional right guaranteed in all states, as declared by the United States (Supreme) Court in Obergefell."
Not that Moore really cares about his judicial legacy at this point. He's angling to be the state's next governor, and he knows that getting the ax would probably clinch the deal in accordance with Newton's lesser-known Law of Anti-Gravity: conservative assholes fall upward.
CHEERS to getting away from it all. Yesterday technology's boy wonder Elon Musk unveiled his plan to send people to Mars. Sounds pretty nifty:
At a conference in Mexico today (Sept. 27), the SpaceX founder and CEO unveiled the company's Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), which will combine the most powerful rocket ever built with a spaceship designed to carry at least 100 people to the Red Planet per flight.
Check out the view!
"It'll be, like, really fun to go," Musk said. "You'll have a great time." The powerful Raptor [engines] will allow the ship to make the trip in as little as 80 days initially, depending on exactly where Earth and Mars are at the time, Musk said. That's a pretty quick trip; it takes six to nine months for spacecraft to reach the Red Planet using currently available technology. And Musk said he eventually thinks the ITS ship will be able to cut the travel time to just 30 days or so.
The spaceships will have "movie theaters, lecture halls, and a restaurant." But you'll have to wait 50-100 years before Mars tourism is a reality. That explains the three seating options Musk plans to make available: first-class, coach, and "shelf space for suspended-animation head in jar." Sign me up!
Cornwallis knew it was game over when Washington’s aircraft carrier arrived.
CHEERS to the beginning of the end. On September 28, 1781, during the War of Independence, American troops backed by the French fleet Ronald Reagan riding a trained dolphin while brandishing a bazooka [Revision courtesy of TX Dept. of Ed. textbook approval committee], began their siege of Yorktown, Virginia. The British, trapped like rats in their stupid bright red uniforms, were forced to surrender, thus securing our freedom as an independent nation. Moral of the story: only fools go to war on a peninsula without jetpacks.
JEERS to dollars and nonsense. Meanwhile, in the fetid-yet-well-buffed halls of Congress, Republicans continue to futz around with really important stuff, like fighting the zika virus, helping flood victims in Louisiana, and getting some damn new pipes installed in lead-poisoned Flint, Michigan. Democrats are being their usual dogged selves to try and break the logjam, but with the GOP determined to leave the Flint funding out of the current budget resolution, things are getting tense as the clock ticks down to Friday's deadline:
Senate Democrats on Tuesday blocked a Republican bill to fund the government and battle Zika because it did not include money for Flint, Michigan, to address the city's drinking water crisis.
Almost a whole year since Snyder’s fuckup.
The action comes three days before Friday's midnight deadline when agencies are set to run out of money and left congressional leaders searching for a compromise bill that could get enough votes to pass and head off an election season government shutdown. [...]
"There's no excuse for leaving the people of Flint, Michigan, behind. If they're helping Louisiana, they have to help Flint," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said.
"Democrats are going to oppose this bill because it pits victims of one crisis against victims of another and unfairly offers a cold shoulder to those in Flint while providing aid to other Americans," [Sen. Chuck] Schumer said.
This is the same kind of thing the Republicans did to Team D all the time when we held the majority, so Mitch McConnell is getting a taste of his own bitter flopsweat. (Yeah, I looked it up---turtles do sweat.)
CHEERS to the people's duffer. I didn’t really start watching professional golf on the teevee until the early 80s, and that was long after Arnold Palmer was past his prime. But he still played on the senior tour and in the Masters. (The purse size back when he won the green jacket four times: $20,000. Today it's $1.8 million.) It was always cool seeing the legend in action, particularly the way he'd always cock his head as he watched the flight of the ball. If there was ever a "The Greatest" in golf, it was him. And off the course, he was a straight-shooting (pardon the pun) businessman, Coast Guardsman, philanthropist, licensed pilot, and genteel "country club" Republican. Some highlights of the legacy he leaves behind:
Palmer died Sunday at 87. And let that be a lesson to you, kids: smoking can kill ya.
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 28, 2006
JEERS to the number of walking wounded. The Veterans Health Administration says more than 1-in-3 Iraq/Afghanistan war veterans seeking treatment show signs of stress-related mental disorders. That's ten times the number reported just 18 months ago. The VHA is seeking $300 million more for 2007 in order to treat them. We hear Don Rumsfeld was so upset that yesterday he nearly gave up a point in a squash game.
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And just one more…
JEERS to the attack of the million-email army. Gird your loins---Friday is the last day of the quarter and political candidates from every nook and cranny of the nookandcrannysphere are going to be turning you upside down and shaking you until some change falls out of your pockets. You will get many from each candidate, each with an increasingly-urgent subject line. As a public service, C&J offers you a preview of what you can expect if you don’t have your spam filter set to "nukular":
Hey! Only two days left to hit our goal!
Oh no! Only one day left to hit our goal!
Gahhhh!!!
Help! Only hours left to hit our goal!
We're down to seconds now!
My campaign manager is having chest pains. Give now!
Now I'M having chest pains! Fork it over!
If I lose this race it's your fault for not giving!
Puddle of tears! It's all over! Unless…
I will club a baby seal if you don’t give NOW, you stingy bastard!!!
Sorry about that last subject line. But dammit, we need your donation!
Bags packed! Headed for ice floe! All is lost!
Followed by Saturday's headline: WE DID IT! THANK YOU! WE'RE GONNA WIN THIS THING! (Yeah, I'll cry---I love happy endings.)
Have a nice Wednesday. 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 turned in the worst---and I mean worst---Cheers and Jeers in modern times. It was so bad that in a normal year, it would disqualify him from getting anywhere near the kiddie pool."
---Howard Fineman
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