From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Monday Morning Vonnegut Blogging
Kurt Vonnegut died nine years ago today at 84. A good time to remind ourselves why he was…well…Kurt Vonnegut:
True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.
Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum.
Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?
Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.
Let us devote to unselfishness the frenzy we once gave gold and underpants.
The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.
Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.
It’s perfectly ordinary to be a socialist. It’s perfectly normal to be in favor of fire departments.
And my favorite, which remains my personal motto:
I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
One can only imagine what the he would've thought of the right-wing's "religious freedom" freakout in the wake of last year's Supreme Court marriage decision, including in his home state of Indiana. But he did say this: "Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith. I consider the capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile." I would add: especially when it's the cherry-picked kind.
Shellfish, anyone?
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, April 11, 2016
Note: We're sorry, but we don’t believe you're qualified to be a note reader. Nah, just kidding. Of course you are. We'll issue a statement of regret to the press as soon as the wording is approved in committee.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til taxes are due in every state but Maine and Massachusetts, which get an extra day (Patriots Day next Monday) tacked on to the extra day everyone already gets because Friday the 15th is Emancipation Day: 7
Days 'til the Sweetwater 420 Fest in Atlanta: 11
Date by which the DEA plans to announce whether or not its taking marijuana off the list of Schedule 1 drugs---which also includes heroin and cocaine---where it's been since 1970: 6/30/16
Percent chance that "There's a big neon sign saying the U.S. is open to tax cheats," according to John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network: 100%
Number of miles Secretary of State John Kerry has traveled, a new record for a SecState: 1.06 million
Amount yesterday's reduction in the price of a first-class stamp (49 to 47 cents) will cost the USPS this year: $2 billion
The last time there was a drop in the price of a stamp: 1919
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NEW! Meet Me in St. Louis
Brought to you by the 2016 Netroots Nation Convention in St. Louis, July 14-17. You could go 'round and 'round about where the best shopping is in St. Louis, but the Delmar Loop seems like a decent place to start. It reportedly got its name when two landowners on either side of Morgan Street combined the names of the states they came from: Delaware and Maryland...
The Loop offers six blocks of exhilarating one-of-a-kind shops, restaurants, art galleries, live music, café culture, and the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
The Delmar Loop got its name over a century ago from streetcars that came west and “looped around” before connecting to other areas. That movement and momentum continues today, as The Loop expands with exciting new growth and development that has made it a destination.
The American Planning Association calls it "One of the 10 Great Streets in America." I believe it’s #4 after Bourbon, Baker and Sesame.
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Puppy Pic of the Day. Click for seven seconds of woozle sass...
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CHEERS to sticking the landing. Nice to start out the week on a happy note: SpaceX made history Friday by launching a Dragon cargo pod destined for the Space Station and saving the reusable stage-1 rocket booster by landing on a tiny barge called "Of Course I Still Love you" in the Atlantic Ocean. Take a look:
It's a big win for the new private-public space industry partnership, and an even bigger win for the motivational-metaphor workplace poster industry.
CHEERS to another notch on the 2016 primary-season belt. The Wyoming caucus was held Saturday night, and the winner is, by a margin of 56% to 44%: Bernie!!! Unfortunately for him, the state's 14 pledged delegates will be divided evenly between his campaign and Hillary Clinton’s---seven each. I guess when Wyoming says it’s the Equality State, they ain’t kiddin’.
JEERS to Christian values---Republican hypocrite edition. It was just a matter of time---details on the longest-serving GOP Speaker of the House's pedophile past have come to light, and it appears that Dennis Hastert abused at least five boys during his high school coaching days. That's sick enough, but there's this added detail provided by comedian Andy Richter, a student at the school where Hastert worked:
One of the victims, identified in court documents as "Individual D," told prosecutors that Hastert "put a 'Lazyboy'-type chair in direct view of the shower stalls in the locker room where he sat while the boys showered."
Richter, a sidekick on Conan O'Brien's TV show on TBS, said in a series of posts on Twitter that he remembers the chair. "I went to Yorkville HS '80-'84 & I remember this chair. Purportedly 'to keep boys from fighting,'" Richter posted.
In response to this latest bombshell, his old House colleagues are shunning him, the town of Yorkville is condemning him, and old pedophile priests are kicking themselves for not thinking of it first.
CHEERS to landmark legislation. One week after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., President Johnson signed a companion bill into law 47 years ago today called the Civil Rights Act of 1968, aka the Fair Housing Act. The following housing issues became no-no's:
1) Refusal to sell or rent a dwelling to any person because of his race, color, religion or national origin.
2) Discrimination against a person in the terms, conditions or privilege of the sale or rental of a dwelling.
3) Advertising the sale or rental of a dwelling indicating preference of discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin.
The law was expanded in 1988 to include disability and family status, and again in 1993 to prohibit the throwing of lawn darts at the Re/Max blimp.
JEERS to morale busters. Yet another dick move from Maine's governor. As with all teabaggers, Paul LePage hates large cities and slams them every chance he gets. This sounds like yet another gratuitous middle finger to the Portland region by playing the fear card:
A day after Gov. Paul LePage set off a wave of speculation and concern by saying a company in southern Maine soon will cut 900 jobs, his staff refused to provide specifics and his own Department of Labor wasn’t aware of any employer planning a mass layoff.
“There’s a big company that hasn’t come out yet, I happen to know about it and I’m sworn to secrecy until they make a public announcement, but we’re talking 900 jobs,” LePage said Wednesday evening at a town hall meeting in Orono, according to MPBN. “In the most prosperous part of the state---down south.”
On Thursday, officials from local economic development agencies, municipalities and the Department of Labor said they didn’t know anything about it.
Nice guy, huh? A competent governor would hold off until he could reveal more specifics and then he'd say he was fighting tooth and nail to keep those jobs. But no---our governor chuckles and says tough shit, you elitist prosperers from “down south,” you'll just have to spend an undetermined number of sleepless nights waiting for the hammer to drop. And once again we are reminded that Dante didn’t create enough circles of hell.
CHEERS to the revenge of the Brits. The 2016 wearer of the Green Technicolor Dreamcoat was decided at the Masters golf tournament yesterday. Danny Willett (28) of Sheffield, England won all the marbles. Our condolences to second-place finishers Jordan Spieth and Lee Westwood, who limp away from Augusta with only $1.08 million. Some days it's all you can do to pay the rent.
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Ten years ago in C&J: April 11, 2006
CHEERS to making your presence known. Yesterday hundreds of thousands of people participated in more immigration reform demonstrations. (Dean's statement about them is here.) For the record, my family emigrated here illegally from Switzerland. Tunneling under the Atlantic with spoons was a bitch.
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And just one more…
CHEERS and JEERS to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Friday night the latest inductees were officially given their secret decoder rings:
N.W.A. entered the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Friday, with the groundbreaking quintet that reflected the rough streets of Los Angeles in a style known as gangster rap defiantly refuting those who suggested rappers didn't belong in the institution.
They joined the rock hall in a ceremony at Brooklyn's Barclays Center with 1970s-era rock acts Cheap Trick, Chicago, Deep Purple and Steve Miller.
Rock 'n' roll is not just a musical style but a spirit that connects people, be they bluesmen or punk rockers, Ice Cube said. "Rock 'n' roll is not conforming to the people who came before you but creating your own path in music and in life," he said. "That is rock 'n' roll and that is us." … HBO is filming Friday's show and will air highlights on April 30.
Congrats to them all. But, once again, C&J must object---as we have every year since inductions began in 1986---to the continued snub of musical supernova Shaun Cassidy, who made the world safe for slightly-askew painter's caps. It's becoming increasingly difficult to tamp down the bitterness. In fact, I feel another petition coming on.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"It is important that we have Bill in Portland Maine on the Supreme Court."
---Justice Sonia Sotomayor
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