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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
The Week Ahead
Monday Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Tim Geithner triple-tagteam a senior Chinese delegation during the start of the third joint meeting of the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue. The dialogue is temporarily reduced to awkward pantomime when they find out all their interpreters are inoperative because they went to a bar for lunch and got schnockered.
House Speaker John Boehner goes to the Economic Club of New York to talk for an hour. He'll start off by promoting all the great accomplishments he's made on jobs, the economy and energy policy. To fill the remaining 59 minutes, he'll make balloon animals.
Tuesday The President flies to El Paso to take the lead on overhauling America's immigration policy. It'll be the inaugural voyage of his new aircraft, Jetpack One.
Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law chairman Al Franken conducts a hearing on the issue of privacy as it relates to smartphones. You can follow the testimony of Apple Software Technology VP Bud Tribble on your iPhone. But not as well as he can follow you on his.
Wednesday The East Room becomes Poetry Central as President Obama and the First Lady host prominent poets and hundreds of students at the White House. To everyone's relief, the man from Nantucket fails to make an appearance.
The most-tweeted message of the day: "Is it Friday yet?"
Thursday The Labor Department announces jobless claims for the week. As usual, the most common claim is, "I'm jobless for the week. Again."
The president speaks at the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast. To warm up the crowd he'll crack a few yolks.
Friday 2011's only Friday the 13th occurs. A new sign of bad luck is added to crossing paths with a black cat, walking under a ladder and breaking a mirror: hiring a Pakistani courier.
The University of Michigan's May consumer sentiment report comes out. Economists express optimism as the mood climbs from "feh" to "meh."
"Treasure trove of information" officially replaces "Winning!" as the most obnoxiously-overused phrase of the year.
It's dawn.
Saddle up.
We ride.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, May 9, 2011
Note: Breaking this morning: Osama bin Laden is still dead. Highlights, plus cuddly kittens and results of the Marzipan sculpture finals, tonight on Eyewitness Action Team News Watch Center at 11.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Keith Olbermann's new version of Countdown starts on Current TV: 42
Days `til the Baltimore Herb Festival: 19
Estimated worldwide sales of billboard space, posters and other "out of home" advertising this year: $26.4 billion (up 8%)
(Source: The Economist via The Week)
Average compensation for a Navy SEAL: $54,000
(Source: ABC News)
Current estimate of the number of dead and missing in northern Japan: 25,000
Number evacuated from the area around the Fukushima plant: 80,000
(Source: Los Angeles Times)
Expected year during which the world population will reach 10 billion: 2100
(Source: Balloon Juice)
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"Meet Me in Minnesota!"
Brought to you by the Netroots Nation '11 convention in Minneapolis June 16-19. If you love nature, here's a quiet spot for ya:
The Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary, the oldest public wildflower garden in the United States, is a part of the Minneapolis Parks System and is owned and managed by the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board. The Garden, located within the boundaries of Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a 15 acre site maintained as a naturalistic setting of woodland, wetland, oak savanna and prairie environments, with encircling unimproved pathways and a staffed rustic shelter where educational materials and guidebooks can be found.
This year's Netroots Nation Day of Service will send volunteers to the sanctuary on Sunday, June 19th for "lunch, a tour and time spent getting dirty removing invasive species that are threatening the local ecosystem." Click here for details. A loaded bazooka will be provided to whoever gets tasked with taking out the 20-foot-tall people-eating Venus flytrap.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: While Rick Santorum frets and frowns about man-dog humping, a Navy SEAL and his pooch set a record for man-dog jumping.
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CHEERS to shining a spotlight on the king rat. A bunch of fascinating details are emerging about life in Osama bin Laden's post-9/11 world: He was more in command and control than we thought. He didn't cart around a dialysis machine---in fact, he doesn’t appear to have had bad kidneys at all, just evil ones. He dyed his white beard black for his videos so the chicks would still dig him. Oh, and he also wanted to disrupt America's passenger rail system. He ditched the idea when he found out Republicans were doing a good enough job of that already.
JEERS to bullies in high places. Another Republican governor's poll ratings have gone down the tubes. Maine Governor Paul LePage, formerly the mayor of a tiny Maine town and manager of a salvage company, is not liked here according to a new survey of Mainers. Behold the carnage:
- Overall performance Approval: 21%
- Belief that the national attention he's drawn has been bad for Maine: 70%
- Percent who believe Gov. LePage made a wise choice to remove a labor-themed mural from the Dept. of Labor lobby: 20%
- Drop in support among voters who cast their ballot for LePage in November: 11%
- Percent who believe LePage has moved Maine forward instead of backward: 17%
Compared to other newbie teabag Republican governors (Walker, Snyder, Scott) who have seen their popularity plunge due to radical overreaching, LePage's numbers suck because he's been clumsy, mouthy and constantly in damage-control mode. In fact, four months in, he's barely made it out of the starting gate. Guess that explains why he's getting a continuous stream of offers to buy him lunch these days. From Democrats
JEERS to sweating the small stuff. Hey, let's check in and see how things are going in Egypt, where the people overthrew the despotic Mubarek regime in favor of peace, harmony, and get-along'ness. I'm guessing that they're all putting their noses to the grindstone and coming to a consensus on the issues that really matter---like the economy, health care, and Egypt's bold new place in the civilized world. You can almost feel the Egyptmentum. Yeah…almost:
Officials of the Interior Ministry said at least six Christians and at least six Muslims died and more than 220 people were wounded, including 65 who were struck by bullets. … Like many recent episodes of Muslim-Christian violence here, the strife began over rumors of an interfaith marriage.
Just goes to show how tentative the first baby steps of democracy are. Over there, marriage rumors are fanned by gunfire. Over here, marriage rumors are fanned by Extra, Us and TMZ.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. Minnesota State Senator Steve Simon asks: "How many more gay people does God have to create before we ask ourselves whether or not God actually wants them around?”
Zip.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
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JEERS to water, water everywhere. How intense is the mighty Mississippi this morning? Bring on the analogy generator:
"This water that we're seeing coming by is moving 2 million cubic feet per second," said Corps of Engineers Col. Vernie Reichling of the situation on Sunday outside Memphis. "To use an analogy, in one second that water would fill up a football field 44 feet deep." …
The crisis stems in large part from a deluge of rainfall over the past month further up the Mississippi River. Reichling said that, over one two-week stretch, there was about 600% more precipitation than usual. This contributed to a bulge, or crest, of especially high fast-moving water that has made its way downriver.
One thing, at least, working in your favor down there: dry weather. Meanwhile, to help ease pressure, the Army Corps of Engineers says it had to take control of some banks upriver and puncture them because they weren't failing. Now there's a switch.
CHEERS to the charge of the daft brigade. For shits and giggles, I signed up to get emails from some outfit of political masochists called "Draft Trump." Considering the futility of their mission, they sure are busy little bees. Here's a snip from their latest bulletin:
Nick McLaughlin, the decorated Iraq War veteran who chairs the organization formed to draft New York businessman Donald J. Trump to seek the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination named Denison Smith and Charles "Chuck" Kozak as Co-Finance Chairmen of the grassroots effort. … "With the help of Denny Smith and Chuck Kozak we hope to fund a cutting edge internet based campaign to recruit Trump supporters in the Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina and Florida to urge Trump to run and join his official campaign when Trump becomes a candidate," said McLaughlin.
Despite the non-stop publicity he's gotten the last several weeks, the Draft Trump movement's Facebook page has only managed to scrape up 891 "likes." I bring this up because today begins the one-week-or-less countdown toward definitively finding out whether or not we get Trump to kick around as an official Republican candidate. NBC announces the fate of Celebrity Apprentice on the 16th, but we'll probably know before then. Five words for Mr. Smith and Mr. Kozak: "Don’t quite your day job."
JEERS to HELLO URGENT MESSAGE KIND MADAM PLEASE RLPY V&i*GR#A HOT SEXY LOVER NEED ASSISTANCE!! Oh joy---this month marks the 33rd anniversary of spam. Here's how it started back in 1978:
The pesky marketing ploy, an ad for the latest computer models, was delivered to about 600 people's inboxes over a network of government and university computers.
Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for the American computer company Digital Equipment Corporation, wanted to get the word out about the company's upcoming open houses in Los Angeles and San Mateo, Calif. The events would be showcasing the company's latest computers, and Thuerk was hoping to drum up interest in the new technology. With about 600 people on the invite list---most of them computer scientists---Thuerk decided to email them all at once instead of writing to each person individually.
Today 85 percent of all email traffic is spam. And once in awhile one of the originators gets caught and tossed in the joint. If there's any justice, he's crammed in a cell with a bunch of chatty Nigerian "finance ministers" and their "widows."
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Five years ago in C&J: May 9, 2006
CHEERS to leaving one child behind: the president. As these amazing charts show, Bush's predecessors have left him in an embarrassing cloud of dust. Says poll analyst Charles Franklin:
I was frankly shocked at the above results. [...] We have simply never seen a president this unpopular going into a midterm election.
Not included in those pretty pictures is a fresh steaming turd: 31% approval in the new Gallup poll. (And don't try to blame it on Barney.)
JEERS to uncivil discourse. Sunday on The Chris Matthews Show, Tweety---without a moment's hesitation---called Al Sharpton a "mental case." I'd say it takes one to know one, but that would be quite the insult to Sharpton.
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And just one more…
JEERS to juvenile thoughts expressed juveniliciously. I apologize for the following, especially to the Muppets. But if I don’t get this out of my system I'm going to have a meltdown. So, a'one and a'two…
Abbottabad!
(Do doo be do-do)
Abbottabad!
(Do do-do do!)
Abbottabad!
(Doo doooo de do do, de doo doo, de doo doo, de do do doodle do do do do do!)
There. Crossed off mah bucket list!
And with the dawning of this day, we complete our first week without Osama Whatsisnuts. Happy Monday! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"I know you all love Bill in Portland Maine, right? Me too!”
---Michelle Obama
5/4/11
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