From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Oh! More Things I Know:
That President Obama has been on twitter for three days and hasn't posted a single funny cat pic shows he's not taking his twitter account seriously.
Bad news: the deadline to do something to stop man-made climate change is 2:30 this afternoon. Good news: that's Pacific time, so the rest of us back east have a little wiggle room.
Another thing I know: the
grin is real even if the shirt isn't.
People always give me funny looks when I assert my religious freedom by stoning an adulterer.
The gays did not cause that oil disaster in California. This one's totally on the feminists and pagans.
The Republican attempt to rebrand itself is going poorly. Experts are baffled as to why the creepy gynecologist Uncle Sam and the guy in the squirrel costume stalking Hillary Clinton didn’t win America's hearts and minds.
Texas right-wingers were so distracted by the invasion of the U.S. military that didn't happen, that they totally missed the invasion by biker gangs that did.
No sentence will ever be started with, "As the great Bobby Jindal once said…"
President Obama should give Ted Nugent a medal of Freedom. Just to fuck with what's left of his mind.
Franken--Klobuchar--Baldwin--Feingold. That'll make a kickass upper-midwest senatorial quartet.
The worst presidential campaign slogan so far is Lindsey Graham's "The World is Falling Apart."
Surprise! The smart Bush is Marvin.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, May 21, 2015
Note: C&J will be closed for the Memorial Day holiday. We'll return Tuesday to show off our new American eagle tattoo made entirely out of lawn dart wounds.
-
9 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Stephen Colbert takes the helm at
The Late Show:
110
Days 'til the 56th annual
Artichoke Food and Wine Festival in Castroville, California:
9
Number of times that Republican state attorneys general jointly filed lawsuits against the Clinton and Obama Administrations, respectively:
5 / 68
(Source:
Harper's Index)
Increase in housing starts in April:
20.2%
Number of temporary Highway Trust Fund spending authorization extensions in the last six years:
12
Percent drop in the number of video-rental stores and photo-processing shops, respectively, in the last 15 years:
85%, 94%
(Source: Bloomberg)
Age of the solitaire game on the Windows operating system as of this year:
25
(Source: FiveThirtyEight)
-
Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Much as I hate to interrupt what is apparently a deeply felt triumphalism on the American right, now that it's over, does anyone see any reason for our having invaded Iraq?
I realize that's what we all kept trying to figure out before the invasion, but don't you think it should at least be visible in hindsight? Good thing we won the war, because the peace sure looks like a quagmire. […]
I hate to be picky, picky, picky, but there are still no weapons of mass destruction. In fact, we've apparently even stopped looking for them. Since Iraq never had anything to do with Al Qaeda or Sept. 11---despite American public opinion on this issue---it was certainly no surprise to see Al Qaeda back again, with strikes in both Saudi Arabia and Morocco. Bush's announcement that we had broken up the organization seems to have been a trifle premature. […]
Since I am in the happy position of having predicted a short, easy war and the peace from hell, I think I'm looking like a genius prognosticator about now.
---May, 2003
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Maybe it's just me, but I think it's about time we let humans sniff their own giant kidney stones, too. Sign the petition!!!
-
CHEERS to anticipation. Hooray! Only one more day 'til the start of the Memorial Day Weekend and then it'll be July 4th and then back-to-school and then the off-year elections and then Thanksgiving and then Christmas 'n Hanukkah 'n Festivus and then "Happy New Year 2016!" and then fucking winter and then spring and then only one more day 'til the start of the Memorial Day weekend. Oh, the joy of having been around the block a few times.
JEERS to boom time. The usual 70s-era cleanup operations are underway off the California coast to deal with another disaster that the oil industry always tells us "won’t happen again" while they're cleaning up from the previous disaster. Today the Pacific is home to 105,000 (revised up from 22,000) unwanted gallons of black gold:
Here we go again.
The rupture on an 11-mile-long underground pipe, part of a larger oil transport network centered in Kern County, was first reported about noon Tuesday after a woman at Refugio State Beach in Goleta smelled the crude’s noxious fumes. … The cause of the break in the pipeline had not yet been determined, officials said. They were still trying to assess the environmental damage, which sent oil onto area beaches.
The pipeline, built in 1991 and designed to carry about 150,000 barrels of oil per day, is owned by Houston-based Plains All American Pipeline, which said in a statement that it shut down the pipeline about 3 p.m.
Of course, the big concern is what this will do to the wildlife in that area. So, using their cutting-edge technology, the fine folks at Plains All American (
Yeehaw!!!) Pipeline took immediate steps by posting flyers on telephone poles urging marine life to steer clear of the oil spill.
JEERS to two all-beef(-flavored) patties special sauce lettuce cheese pickles onions and a trip to the pokey in handcuffs. I worked in fast food a while back. It's a greasy, nasty, hectic job in which you spend your eight hours dealing with people you'd like to strangle. So good on the fast-food workers who put themselves in the thick of it yesterday as McDonald's annual shareholder meeting looms. From Fight For $15 email:
Yesterday's protests.
Marching behind a giant banner that read, “McDonald’s: $15 and Union Rights, Not Food Stamps,” 5,000 cooks and cashiers massed at the company’s corporate headquarters Wednesday to kick off the largest-ever protest to hit the burger giant’s annual shareholder meeting.
On the eve of the annual meeting, they marched to the headquarters chanting, “We Work, We Sweat, Put $15 in Our Check,” and were joined by ministers and faith leaders from across the country, who led a service calling on McDonald’s to do the right thing by paying workers $15 and respecting their right to join together in a union. McDonald’s, which has barred reporters from the annual meeting for the second consecutive year, shut the building in anticipation of the protest and removed Golden Arches flags from the property.
More action is expected today when the shareholders meeting actually gets underway. And that reminds me: if someone here could remind my partner Michael to add "Fastest Quarter Pounder Flipper in New England Two Summers in a Row---'84, '85") to my tombstone when I kick off from the cumulative effects of eating McDonald's food, that'd be great. Tell the engraver to supersize it.
CHEERS to broads at the ballot box. Ninety-seven years ago today, in 1918, the House of Representatives passed the amendment that gave women voting rights. Some of the white-hairs at the Country Club are still fuming in their scotch.
CHEERS to the wisdom of the guys in lab coats. Tis commencement season, and celebrity speakers are fanning out to fill the younguns' heads with a final shot of Stuff To Know before they head off to new adventures. The Class of '15 at Rutgers got Bill Nye to say a few words, none of which were minced:
Left students at Rutgers
with a lot to think about.
After explaining the massive global population increase which affected the environment, the "Science Guy" told graduates they need to do what they can to ameliorate climate change, whether by technological advances or---more quickly---legislative movements. Nye said graduates need to vote for politicians and measures that will help the environment. "Class of 2015, you have to vote!" Nye said. "For those of you who don't want to participate---who don't want to vote, would you please just shut up, so the rest of us can get things done?" […]
His final point was that even though each human is just "a speck on a speck orbiting a speck in the middle of deep spacey specklessness," we are important, thanks to our brains and imagination. "I have a brain, albeit only this big … And I can imagine all of this. That is wonderful. That is remarkable. That is venerable---worthy of respect!"
The one thing the kiddos are having trouble imagining at the moment: the day they finally pay off their student loans.
The only surviving photo of the
1832 Democratic convention.
CHEERS to partying parties. On this date in 1832,
the first Democratic National Convention got under way in Baltimore. The top issues were Andrew Jackson's contempt for the Second Bank of the United States and the business of voting on a running mate. (Martin Van Buren got the nod in a blowout.) And there was this curious
factoid:
[T]he Summary of the Proceedings notes that a delegation was sent to ask Charles Carroll of Carrollton to attend. At that moment in time, he was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Carroll declined, citing ill health. (He died later that year.)
Jackson and Van Buren went on to crush Henry Clay and John Sergeant in the general, due mostly to their campaign slogan: "Don't Make Andrew Mad. You Don't Want to See Andrew When He's Mad."
-
Ten years ago in C&J: May 21, 2005
JEERS to Bush family values. Guess who's coming to dinner at the White House? A porn star. Says Mary Carey: "I'm especially looking forward to meeting Karl Rove. Smart men like him are so sexy. I know that he's against gay marriage, but I think I can convince him that a little girl-on-girl action now and then isn't so bad!" Oh, to be a fly in that soup.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to the junior senator from Minnesota. Happy Birthday to Al Franken, who turns 64 today. Is anyone surprised that he's a hard-working, smart-as-a-whip, solidly progressive United States Senator? Yeah, me neither---and, oh, how that still makes Bill O'Reilly seethe. As Al succinctly wrote in his classic bestseller, LIES and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them…
Unlike his GOP colleagues, Al
Franken is funny on purpose.
Yes, I am a liberal, and I'm proud of it. It's a term we need to reclaim. Because I believe that most Americans are liberals just like me. Most Americans believe in helping people. And most Americans believe that the government has a role to play---to create opportunity, to protect the environment, to provide for the common good. ...
While it might not seem like I'm changing the tone when I accuse my friends on the right of being liars, my hope is that, if we keep calling them on their calculated dishonesty, their dishonesty will lose its effectiveness. Then O'Reilly and company will have to resort to Plan B: name-calling. Which, I think, will expose them for what they are. Stupid bastards.
Franken, the only sitting senator who can
draw a map of the USA from memory (Republicans are still trying to get the shape of the earth right), didn't try to hog the national spotlight during his first term. I hope that changes a bit more now that his landslide reelection is behind him. For now, you can see his commitment to upgrading Indian schools, improving rail safety, opposing the TPP "fast-track" nonsense, and a buffet of liberal issues at his
Senate office and
Facebook pages. (Bonus points for leading the charge to keep a free and open internet!) Happy birthday, Al. Blessings on your camels and Hugs to Frannie.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Here’s A Reminder That Bill in Portland Maine From “Cheers and Jeers” Didn’t Know How To Sit In A F*cking Kiddie Pool
---Buzzfeed
-