From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Rhetorical Candles on the Birthday Cake
Pearls of wisdom and piles of horse dung from various political types born in May:
"Economic growth without social progress lets the great majority of people remain in poverty, while a privileged few reap the benefits of rising abundance."
---President John F. Kennedy
"I’m not a scientist, man."
---Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)
"The foundation of a strong economy and job creation begins with providing every child in America with the best possible education, including students with disabilities."
---Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO)
Daily Kos turns 13 next Tuesday.
"Women deserve a Congress that responds to their needs---not wages war against them."
---Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
"I'm like David Duke without the baggage."
---Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)
"The U.S. cannot force Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds to make peace or to act for the common good. They have been in conflict for 1,400 years."
---Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR)
I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night's light - but hey, that would be going into sexual details.
---Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC)
"I remember when I first came to Washington. For the first six months you wonder how the hell you ever got here. For the next six months you wonder how the hell the rest of them ever got here."
---President Harry S. Truman
"My dad always told me to stand up to bullies, and Bill O'Reilly is kind of a bully. He's the kind of kid who hits other kids on the playground, and when you hit him he runs to the teacher and says, 'Teacher, sue him!'"
---Sen. Al Franken (D-MN)
"I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”
---Fmr. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)
“It takes no compromising to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no survey to remove repressions.”
---Late SF Supervisor Harvey Milk
Happy birthday to one and all, even the creeps. And a safe holiday to the rest of ya. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, May 22, 2015
Note: C&J will not appear on Monday. Back Tuesday with a brand new canvas L.L. Bean beer hat. (Oh, and despite the holiday, Monday trash pickup in Portland will happen normally. Remember that the governor goes in the non-recycle bin.) ---Mgt.
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13 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Festivus:
215
Days 'til the
Omaha Beer Fest in Nebraska:
13
Amount that Tennessee grifter James T. Reynolds and his no-good family raised via $20 donations for their so-called cancer charities, most of which they spent on their own lavish lifestyle:
$187 million
(Source: the FTC, which busted them)
Rank of Atlanta, Chicago and Washington D.C. among cities where mosquitoes appear to bite the most:
#1, #2, #3
(Source: Orkin study)
Date of the first Memorial Day:
5/30/1868
Length of the I-35 corridor that would be designated a "pollinator habitat right of way" and provide food that dwindling monarch butterflies need during their migration from Mexico to the northern U.S. and back:
1,500 miles
(Source: FiveThirtyEight)
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Puppy Pic of the Day: C&J's rescue lab-mix Haley underwent knee surgery in late February, and to help improve the healing process she's undergoing occasional "cold laser" therapy, during which she needs to wear goggles. From Wednesday's session:
I think for Christmas we're going to get her a scarf and a motorcycle.
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CHEERS to multitasking. As our endorphins go wild over the prospect that our first warm-weather holiday weekend is upon us, the editors at The Stamford Advocate remind us of the why and wherefore:
As he declared May 30, 1868 as a day to honor fallen comrades, Gen. John A. Logan wrote that we must "let no vandalism of avarice or neglect, no ravages of time, testify to the present or to the coming generations that we have forgotten, as a people, the cost of free and undivided republic." […]
Those who framed the intention of Memorial Day understood that we need a reminder, a bookmark in our lives, to pause and to remember. … During this Memorial Day weekend, we need to thank those who are not around to hear it. Don't let this holiday to remember become a forgotten day.
And while you're at it, take a few extra moments to reflect on Dwight Eisenhower's words: "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." Me, too. Minus the living it part, but I'll take his word for it.
CHEERS to Reince Priebus's worst nightmare. Oh, those heady years after years after years when more Americans identified themselves as conservatives than liberals on social issues. I hope the GOP dinosaur machine remembers them fondly, because…well, take a look at the latest Gallup graph:
All tied up for the
first time since 1999. Extra bonus: the percent of Americans who identify as conservative on economic issues is also at an all-time low. So, yeah, keep flappin' your gums, GOP, about evil gays and slutty women and scary brown people; keep portraying people living in poverty as deadbeats and moochers; keep calling people concerned about climate change shrill alarmists. It's a great campaign strategy. For us.
JEERS to another fine mess. Have you seen the footage of residents swooping in to clean up the California beaches because no Actual authorities had shown up yet? Then, possibly worse, did you see the actual professional cleanup crews out on the beaches using the most modern technology they have at their disposal---plastic bags??? And then there's this:
Local residents cleaning the beach
while waiting for the oil people to show up.
It turns out that the Plains All American Pipeline, responsible for the most dramatic oil spill to hit the Santa Barbara coast in this century, is the only pipeline in all of Santa Barbara County operating outside the regulatory oversight of county energy planners and safety officers. “We’re flying blind,” said County Energy Division czar Kevin Drude. That’s because Plains All American took Santa Barbara County to court more than 20 years ago to restrict the county’s regulatory oversight. It won. The consequences of that victory appear to be bearing bitter fruit.
The future is predictable: Plains All American Pipeline cleanup crews will continue running around in their white hazmat suits looking like the henchmen of a James Bond villain with their plastic bags looking busy. Their supervisors will point at things and make frowny faces while their PR flacks talk about how they're working on making cleanups like this even more efficient in the future with technology that they never seem to be able to describe and which never seems to get built. But hey...if you're looking for some free oil, come on down!
CHEERS to the original texter. On Sunday's date in 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse transmitted the first telegraph message: "What hath God wrought." On the upside: the telegraph went on to become an indispensable communications device that wowed the world. On the downside: no camera, no apps, and it took six months to play one screen of Candy Crush.
Thousands of Ex-Pats are flying
home to Ireland to vote YES.
CHEERS to marching down the aisle on the Emerald Isle. Ha Ha Ha---those wacky Irish don’t know that on this planet you're supposed to vote on Tuesday, not Friday. Boy---someone really goofed on
that! But incompetent election calendar-readers aside, the Irish people will hopefully be smart enough cookies to
approve marriage rights for same-sex couple there by a decent margin:
Turnout in the first national referendum to legalise same-sex marriage and on the age of candidates for the presidency has been reported at more than 40 per cent in many urban areas by teatime. Ireland is the first country in the world where the electorate is voting on whether to legalise gay marriage, and in Dublin overall turnout is expected to hit 60 per cent by the end of polling, similar to the turnout for the divorce referendum in 1995 and well above turnouts for the Seanad referendum last year which were below 40 per cent.
But, dammit, we're going to have to wait for the results because they won’t start counting the votes until tomorrow morning. Yes---they're going to leave the gay Chads hanging.
And every evening at 6: Star Trek!
CHEERS to home vegetation. As for weekend TV, the biggest---well, let's say the
loudest---event on tap is the
Indy 500 on Sunday. My money's on the 1971 Karmann Ghia. New
DVD releases include
American Sniper and season 2 of John Boehner's favorite series,
Orange is the New Black. Schedules for sports events not having to do with driving around in circles:
major league baseball is here,
NBA playoffs are here and
Stanley Cup playoffs are here. The National Memorial Day Concert airs Sunday night on PBS. Other than that it's slim pickings: Bill Maher and John Oliver are off, and SNL is done for the season. But we can still offer up a
Game of Thrones SPOILER ALERT: the high council's intelligence agency votes to continue the bulk collection of the peasants' messenger pigeons. Mainly because they're so tasty.
And here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Dunno. Chuck Todd's still taking his nap.
McCain shows off his new
assault weapon to CBS Sunday.
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Face the Nation: All war and nothing but war. This weekend it's Bob Schieffer's turn to babysit John McCain while Cindy goes shopping. The guy who thought Sarah Palin was an excellent choice to be one heartbeat away from the presidency will rant and fume about Obama's policy toward ISIS while Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) of the House Intelligence Committee, David Rohde of Reuters and former WaPo Baghdad bureau chief Rajiv Chandrasekaran offer fact-based analysis; and looking back at the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War with reporters Laura palmer Peter Arnett and UPI photographer David Hume Kennerly.
This Week: Ohio Governor John Kasich; roundtable with Donna Brazile, Bill Kristol (one of the Iraq war's biggest liar-cheerleaders who should've been banished to an ice floe long ago, but is still greeted inside the beltway with sweets and flowers); Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and S.E. Cupp.
CNN's State of the Union: They haven't released their guest roster yet, so we'll just assume CNN plans to air highlights of Osama bin Laden's porn collection.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: It's a white white white white world as Chris Wallace (white) welcomes Mike Huckabee (white), John Bolton (white), and a roundtable with Brit Hume (white), Susan Page (white), Bob Woodward (white) and George Will (white).
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 22, 2005
CHEERS to literally supporting the troops. Chuck O'Brien went from creating fake cadavers on `CSI' to creating life-like prosthetics for injured vets of the Iraq war. Sure beats the hell out of a yellow car magnet.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the "Mayor of Castro Street." Today is the 85th birthday of the late San Francisco District Supervisor and gay rights (aka civil rights) pioneer Harvey Milk. Not coincidentally, today is also the fifth annual Harvey Milk Day:
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Milk served 11 months in office and was responsible for passing a stringent gay rights ordinance for the city. On November 27, 1978, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated by Dan White, another city supervisor who had recently resigned but wanted his job back. Milk's election was made possible by and was a key component of a shift in San Francisco politics. The assassinations and the ensuing events were the result of continuing ideological conflicts in the city.
Despite his short career in politics, Milk became an icon in San Francisco and "a martyr for gay rights", according to University of San Francisco professor Peter Novak. In 2002, Milk was called "the most famous and most significantly open LGBT official ever elected in the United States". Anne Kronenberg, his final campaign manager, wrote of him: "What set Harvey apart from you or me was that he was a visionary. He imagined a righteous world inside his head and then he set about to create it for real, for all of us."
He was a talented politician---smart, witty, eloquent, tireless, eager to learn from his early mistakes, but not without his flaws and personal demons. He understood well the power of grassroots campaigning and consensus-building. Harvey's now-famous core message of hope is as relevant as ever, and it's one of the reasons he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009:
"It’s about the us’s out there. Not only gays, but the Blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us’s.
Without hope, the us’s give up. I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. So you, and you, and you…you gotta give em’ hope.”
And favorable court rulings ain't bad, either.
Have a great holiday weekend. Oh, and also happy birthday to Daily Kos Contributing Editor Greg Dworkin (aka DemFromCT) and Director of Community Building Neeta Lind (aka Navajo)---who turn hffrfrrrhrr years old today---and many blessings on your camels. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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