From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Little Gay Billy's BIG Gay NewsaPalooza!!!
- Yet another poll shows a majority of Americans support marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples:
Fifty-three percent of the 1,000 adults surveyed believe the government should give legal recognition to marriages between couples of the same sex, about the same as last year, according to the nationwide telephone poll by The Associated Press and the National Constitution Center. Forty-four percent were opposed. […] Support for legal recognition of same-sex marriage has shifted in recent years, from a narrow majority opposed in 2009 to narrow majority support now.
Last time I checked, a 53-44 split isn't considered "narrow." Not in this country, anyway.
- Quote of the day from Dirty Harry on gay marriage bans:
"These people who are making a big deal about gay marriage? I don’t give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We’re making a big deal out of things we shouldn’t be making a deal out of. Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want."
---Clint Eastwood
Hear that, North Carolina haters? You kinda, um, suck.
- Initiatives to pass marriage equality are in the works in Maine and Washington. Here are links to WhyMarriageMattersMaine.com and EqualRightsWashington.org to get up to date.
- The Democratic National Committee has a new member among its upper-echelon gaggle of muckety mucks: Babs Casbar Siperstein, the first transgender person to sit on the executive committee. Woo hoo!
- Bishop Walter Righter walked out onto the longest of limbs in 1990 by ordaining a non-celibate gay man as a deacon, smashing a long-held taboo and accelerating the movement toward equality in organized religion. Righter has died at 89. Leaders like him and New Hampshire-based Bishop Gene Robinsion make me happy to have been raised an Episcopalian.
- Days 'til the official end of 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell': 5
- Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and the ACLU are joining forces to take a Missouri school district to court because it allows online access to anti-gay sites, but not GLBT-friendly ones. And to answer the question that's on everyone's mind: Yes, district officials say the kiddies are still free to Google Santorum all the livelong day.
- Oh Noes!!!!! Herman Cain's campaign has a gay staff member! Memo to the Republican rabble: Guess what? They all do. Deal with it.
- Goddess Jane Lynch hosts the Emmys Sunday. Love her in Glee, but for my money the characters she plays in Christopher Guest's mockumentaries, like A Mighty Wind, are perfection.
- For me 365gay.com has always been an indispensable source of GLBT news and commentary. They're going bye-bye Sept. 30th. How freakin' inconvenient.
- Anderson Cooper's guns…locked and loaded, baby!
Cheers and Jeers fetches the smelling salts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, September 15, 2011
Note: Just a heads-up: I think today's the day self-employment taxes are due. Or as I call it: National Pound of Flesh Day.
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta: 15
Days `til the 32nd World Series of Barbeque in Kansas City, MO: 14
Percent of workers who expected to retire after age 65 back in 1995: 14%
Percent of workers who expect to retire after age 65 now: 33%
(Source: USA Today)
Number of cases of polio in the U.S. in 1952: 57,879
Number of cases by 2002, 47 years after the polio vaccine was introduced: 0
(Source: Time)
Number of structurally-deficient bridges in John Boehner's district: 95
(Source: MSNBC)
-
Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
The ever-hilarious Republican platform---still endorsing such golden oldies as withdrawing from the United Nations and abolishing no-fault divorce, bilingual education and the Department of Education---was the subject of the only serious fight at the [Texas state GOP] convention. […]
The incumbent party chair Susan Weddington is theoretically of the Christian right, but many of them consider her a "a sell-out." (In one of the more surreal moments at the convention, a black minister brought in to give the invocation accidentally wound up thanking the Lord for Sarah Weddington, not Susan. Sarah is the lawyer who successfully argued Roe vs. Wade before the Supreme Court.)
---June, 2002
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: When the alarm clock fails to go off…
-
CHEERS to big bid'ness. The Netroots Nation Fall Online Auction is underway, and the bidders are going craaaazy! To check out the goods and get in on the action, click here. There are a couple bags of custom-made C&J M&Ms (CMs & JMs?), courtesy of Kossack 'Simple,' and lots of other stuff to drool and fawn over. So far I'm leading the bids for the Roman gladiator lessons and "8 Hours Behind the Wheel of a Steamroller," but losing out on the Lee Press-On Gerbils. How 'bout you?
CHEERS and JEERS to staying on message…and not. President Obama Thursday in Congress: "Pass this jobs bill!" Friday in Virginia: "Pass this jobs bill!" Monday in the Rose Garden: "Pass this jobs bill!" Tuesday in Ohio: "Pass this jobs bill!" Yesterday in North Carolina: "Pass this jobs bill!" Bold…smart...decisive…consistent. Gold star for him. But here's what I'm hearing from the Democrats in Congress:
"Um…erm…we should consider passing this mixture of tax incentives and, um, infrastructure projects…erm, uh…or the parts of the bill that might perhaps garner the bipartisan support necessary to ensure the American people are fairly and accurately represented in light of the….Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…….
Rome…meet flint, steel, and lighter fluid.
CHEERS to leaders who lived LARGE. Happy 154th birthday to William Howard Taft. At 325 pounds, the 27th President (who later served as Chief Justice) was also our, um, "biggest boned." It's believed that his weight contributed to the fact that he was habitually sleepy. From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien:
William Taft had an alarming habit of dozing off at the drop of a hat. And nothing was so important that it couldn’t be slept through---including cabinet meetings, funerals (he was in the front row of one when a catnap came over him), and campaign engagements. He once slept through a campaign motorcade in New York City---his open car cruised the streets, the great man snoring for all the city to see.
Pay your respects here. And I doubt the old man would complain if you tossed him a bucket 'o ribs.
JEERS to conclusions even Michele Bachmann could figure out. So the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement huddled together and compiled a report about the BP oil disaster. And you'll never guess who they claim was mostly responsible for the BP oil disaster! Seriously, you wouldn’t be able to deduce in a million years who the main culprit was in the BP oil disaster. Well, if you're willing to read on beyoind this SPOILER ALERT warning, I'll reveal who was behind the worst oil spill in world history, aka the BP oil disaster. Turns out it was…BP!!! Damn---I bet a bundle that they were gonna pin it on the pelicans. And I'll never hear the end of it from my bookie.
JEERS to foot-through-the-teevee moments. Last night I ventured over to CNN during Anderson Cooper 360, and caught a "news brief" during a commercial break. The anchor spent about 15 seconds on the BP oil spill report (did you hear it was caused by BP?), and then moved on to inform the world that a woman on a TV show called Real Housewives of D.C. wasn't kidnapped like her husband feared. And this anchor is blabbering on and on, and I'm like, "This is NEWS???" Then she finally takes a breath and, just as I think she's moving on to another story, says (I am not making this up): "And then things got really interesting!" RIP, flatscreen.
CHEERS to 29 years of Newsy McNuggets. On September 15, 1982, USA Today was published for the first time. Critics called it "The Nation's Comic Book" and the winner of the "Pulitzer Prize for Best Investigative Paragraph." It can be really good (their Super Bowl Ad Meter rocks, their Life section is great) and it can be really bad (like this awful analysis on personal taxes). I remember when it first came out because my mom went gaga over it and the thing became ubiquitous around the house. Today I only buy it on Fridays to peruse during lunch at the Chinese buffet and as a time-killer while waiting at airports, but I don’t go a day without glancing at their web site. Mainly because that's about all it takes to read it.
-
Five years ago in C&J: September 15, 2006
CHEERS to Colin Powell. The general who squandered his credibility as Bush's Secretary of State says Congress should scrap his former boss's desire to nix a part of the Geneva Convention banning torture. His message is unambiguous:
"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk."
I'm surprised I didn't see a headline this morning that read, "Powell wakes to find horse head in bed."
JEERS to eating your greens. Health officials issued warning last night: DO NOT eat spinach from a bag because it could kill you. Details are still sketchy, but the CIA is confident that a few more hours of waterboarding will produce a full confession from Popeye.
-
And just one more…
JEERS to a classic case of SNAFU. The Australian Navy has purchased a shiny new torpedo system, but what Admiral Sydney Operahouse apparently didn't know was that the top-secret instruction manual is written only in French and Italian. Hiring top-secret translators will cost at least another $100,000 on top of the $700 million they paid for the system itself. I ain't no expert, but I can tell you how to do it based on my observations of Republicans when they torpedo things in this country: "Ready…Fire…Aim."
Have a nice Thursday. Stay classy. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"Bill in Portland Maine had an unusually large-sized head, though this was not uncommon for a baby in the Midwest. The craniums in our part of the country were designed to leave a little extra room for the brain to grow in case one day we found ourselves exposed to something we didn't understand, like a foreign language, or a salad."
---Michael Moore
Here Comes Trouble
-