From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
A few politicky bits from our neck-o-the-woods to go with your Cheerios
You can expect our Teapublican governor to ignore this news:
Nearly 60 percent of
Mainers surveyed agree.
About 35,000 more Mainers have gained coverage by signing up for health benefits through the Affordable Care Act, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday. The percentage of Maine’s 1.3 million people who didn’t have health insurance dropped 2.8 percentage points, from 16.1 percent in 2013---before people could enroll in Affordable Care Act coverage---to 13.3 percent midway through 2014, according to Gallup.
Maine's Democrat-controlled legislature was totally thumbs-up to expanding Medicaid, but Governor Paul LePage vetoed it and the Republicans conspired to uphold the veto. So…..
“It’s both a good and bad story here in Maine,” said Mitchell Stein, a Cumberland-based independent health policy analyst. “We did better than a lot of states that did not expand Medicaid, but easily could have had another 3 to 4 percentage point decrease if we had expanded Medicaid.”
In the five months I've been a paying Obamacare customer I haven't gotten sick once, so I'm lovin' it.
Next: the latest poll (pdf) of the Maine governor's race is also a good news, bad news story---more good than bad. Democrat Mike Michaud (official campaign site here) maintains his small but consistent lead over LePage: 42.6 to 41.4 percent. But independent candidate Eliot Cutler, who established high name recognition after running four years ago and nearly winning with 36 percent of the vote (LePage squeaked by with 39) is floundering at under 13 percent. The poll also reveals huge support for raising the minimum wage and expanding Medicaid, both of which Michaud supports and LePage does not. Here's Mike's first TV ad, which went up this week:
A longer version is here.
And Democratic senate candidate Shenna Bellows (official campaign site here) is finishing up her 350-mile walk across Maine:
Shenna Bellows in Bangor during
her 350-mile trek. Yes, that's the
giant statue of Paul Bunyan.
“I tell people I’m walking because we need to restore grassroots in our politics, I’m walking to stand up for real people not big money in our elections,” Bellows said. … Bellows and those backing her touted her support for a federal minimum wage increase, as well as her support for increasing Social Security payments for seniors and the disabled by removing the caps on what the most wealthy Americans pay into the system. She made a point of noting [Susan] Collins has voted against increasing the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 per hour as proposed by President Obama.
Collins, who broke her two-term promise one term ago and hopped on the Benghazi-hysteria bandwagon last year, is unfortunately formidable as usual (in part because she keeps our state's military-industrial complex fat and happy). Regardless of the outcome, Shenna is establishing her name and bona fides as a smart, scrappy liberal with optimism to spare. She's a rising star, you watch.
And in case I didn't say it yet, our governor's a big meathead jerk. Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, August 7, 2014
Note: BREAKING! Wingnut town hall meeting attendees swamp local ERs with finger-wagging injuries. Film at 11.
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Starts tomorrow!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til 2015 open enrollment for
ACA health insurance starts:
100
Days 'til the
Ribs RnB Music Festival (warning: auto-play video) in Detroit:
1
Maximum amount of gluten a food product can contain under new labeling laws in order to be considered "gluten-free":
20 parts per million
Percent chance that Saddam Hussein's tomb has been damaged in the fighting around Tikrit:
100%
(Source: AP)
Percent chance that freight railroad company Norfolk Southern tried to prevent the press from getting hold of documents showing it runs two crude-oil trains every night over Amtrak's northeast corridor in Delaware and Maryland:
100%
(Source: McClatchy News)
Years the Mars rover
Curiosity has been on the reddish planet as of this week:
2
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
The Reagan administration is genuinely funny, honest it is. From the time we whipped Grenada in a fair fight to the day the old boy dropped off the wreath at Bitburg, this administration has been nothing but laughs. James Watt! Killer trees! Ketchup as a vegetable! Reagan cures the deficit! This is great stuff. You can't make up stuff this good.
---March, 1986
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Puppy Pic of the Day: When I'm playing with our dog outside, I hear this exact same music. But darned if I know where it comes from. Sure is perky, though.
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CHEERS to signing your name o.n.e.l.e.t.t.e.r.a.t.a.t.i.m.e. Big day today at Virginia's Fort Belvoir as President Obama signs the $17 billion VA reform bill, which provides critical funding and roadblock-busting measures so the enormous backlogs can be dealt with faster. The money will be a nice little kitty for new VA Secretary Bob McDonald to work with as he tackles the beast, although the amount should've been plenty higher. Let's hope it does some good. "Support the troops" should be a reality, not a bumper sticker.
CHEERS to Star Trek: First Contact---like, fer realz!!! Holy schnitzel on a stick, European Space Agency, take a bow you magnificent nerd bastards:
Are we sure that's a comet? I
got a bad feeling about this.
The European Space Agency's Rosetta probe made its historic rendezvous with a comet on Wednesday after a 10-year, 4 billion-mile journey.
"We're at the comet! Yeah!" spacecraft operations manager Sylvain Lodiot yelled when confirmation of the crucial engine burn was received at ESA's Mission Control in Darmstadt, Germany. Rosetta thus became the first spacecraft to hang out with a comet. Earlier missions, including ESA's Giotto and NASA's Stardust, have gotten close to comets before---but they didn't stay.
So somewhere up there is a sophisticated product of competence, skill, vision and intelligence running circles around a giant rock. Or as we call it down here: A Democrat debating a Republican.
Not LBJ's finest moment.
JEERS to America the Gullible. Fool us once: On August 7, 1964, Congress passed the
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Johnson a big fat stick to wield while dealing with reported North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces. It was all crap---the attacks never happened but we bought it anyway. Fool us twice: four decades later George W. Bush did virtually the same thing by ginning up bullshit documents and other phony evidence to concoct a bogus case for invading Iraq, but we (well, not
we we but
they we) bought it anyway. Lesson learned: our wars need to come with a stronger refund policy.
CHEERS to six for the Sixth. Yesterday in Cincinnati three members of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals---one normal judge and two potential conservative headaches---listened to arguments for and against marriage-equality. I like Chris Johnson's reading of the tea leaves at The Washington Blade:
Where wedding caterers were
praying hardest yesterday.
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The three-hour arguments were historic because they marked the first time a court heard over the course of one day challenges to marriage bans in four states. The Sixth Circuit heard six lawsuits challenging laws in each of the states within its jurisdiction: Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky.
Based on their line of questioning, two judges---U.S. Circuit Judge Martha Craig Daughtry and U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton---seemed prepared to rule against bans on same-sex marriage. The remaining judge, U.S. Circuit Judge Deborah Cook, was relatively quiet, but appeared poised to rule in favor of the laws. Similar to other federal appeals courts, the panel seems headed to make a 2-1 decision in favor of marriage equality.
This was supposed to be the court where same-sex marriage advocates were going to finally go splat into a brick wall of right-wing judicial activism, but yesterday it seemed more like one made out of Nerf. Still, we'll let the champagne chill a bit longer.
CHEERS to honoring our casualties. On August 7, 1782, George Washington created the Purple Heart, a decoration to bestow honor on soldiers wounded during their service to our country. The recipient, said Washington, "has given of his blood in the defense of his homeland and shall forever be revered by his fellow countrymen." It only took Republicans 222 years to dishonor, tarnish and abuse it at the 2004 Republican convention as a way to mock John Kerry's own Purple Hearts:
Kerry is now our globe-trotting Secretary of State, the most distinguished member of the president's cabinet. The people who wore those Purple Heart band-aids are now walking billboards for Absorbine Jr and Life Alert bracelets. Karma. Ouch.
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Five years ago in C&J: August 7, 2009
JEERS to pricks on parade. Here we go, kids---the birther/dittohead//teabagger/Beck wing of the Republican base (i.e. 90 percent of the party's membership) is already disrupting town hall meetings sponsored by congresscritters who have gone home for the August recess. According to these inconsiderate loudmouths, the source of their anger can be summed up in two words: "We lost and we're mad that this country's going to hell and there's all these colored folk running around telling us what to do and goddammit we want things back the way they wuz!!!" And in other news, the birther/dittohead/teabagger/Beck wing of the Republican base can't count.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to that lovable liberal Garrison Keillor. And happy 72nd birthday to the iconic American humorist and host of A Prairie Home Companion. In addition to his genius stage/radio show, he's written his share of columns for various publications, and this riff on Sarah Palin and her ignorant minions is hysterical:
We the people are fond of hustlers and slick operators and the reverend with the diamond-studded Rolex and Sarah Palin slipping into Nashville and collecting a hundred grand for a 40-minute speech of no distinction whatsoever (“I’m so proud to be an American. Happy birthday, Ronald Reagan”) to a roomful of happy tea partiers. You didn’t have to pore over it line by line to know that no work went into it: It was butterscotch pudding made from a box, add hot water and stir. […]
Miss Sarah knows where the cameras are, and she has pizzazz, and the tea partiers whooped and yelled for her standard Republican stump speech, which is like paying $750 for a hotel room and finding no clean towels and a lot of dead cockroaches and then circling Excellent Excellent Excellent on the customer questionnaire.
His 40th season at Lake Wobegon kicks off in St. Paul on
September 20th. Sponsored once again by the fine folks down at Bebopareebop rhubarb pie:
Have a good-looking, above average Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"People who are willing to admit they are more narcissistic than Bill in Portland Maine probably actually are more narcissistic."
---Professor Brad Bushman, OSU
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