From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Oh! More Things I Know:
> I, too, have a Swiss account. I keep a c-note stashed in a cuckoo clock.
> Maine's governor, Paul LePage, now admits he made a mistake when he referred to the IRS as "the new Gestapo" during his radio address last Saturday. He meant to say "the new Waffen SS." He regrets the error.
> If John McCain was president and the economy was the way it is now, Republicans would be boasting that John McCain deserves reelection because he saved us from a depression and besides "You don't change horses in midstream!"
> According to conservative logic, the more money the rich have, the more there is to trickle down to the rest of us. But the more money that trickles down to the rest of us, the less money the rich will have. So for trickle-down economics to work optimally, the rich should get all the money and then just keep it.
> I can't wait to see the right-wingers freak out when scientists discover that the "God particle" is totally gay.
> My first thought after CNN's unreliable sources botched the Supreme Court's Obamacare ruling was, "Well, that's gonna be a fun edition of 'Reliable Sources' on CNN next Sunday."
> Conservatives pre-July 4th: "Obama killed all our freedoms!" Conservatives on July 4th: "This is a moment to reflect on the endless bounty of freedoms we cherish and enjoy in this country every single day!" Conservatives post-July 4th: "Obama killed all our freedoms!"
> It seems a little unfair that the Wimbledon men's champion gets a big shiny gold trophy while the Wimbledon women's champion gets a silver hors d' oeuvres tray.
> Number of Obama bumper stickers I've seen in Maine lately: lots. Number of Romney bumper stickers I've seen in Maine lately: none. Fearless prediction: I'll be able to count on one hand the number of Romney bumper stickers I see between now and November.
> If the other side is going to actively suppress Democratic votes, then here's a voter law I'd like to see: you can only vote if you swear that the earth is more than 6,000 years old.
> Jon Huntsman isn’t going to the GOP convention? Well then, dammit, neither am I.
I mean it.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, July 12, 2012
Note: yyyyyyyyyyYYYYYYyyyy (web wave in progress)
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the general election: 116
Days 'til the 35th annual Prince Lot Hula Festival at Moanalua Gardens, Hawaii: 9
Current price tag of Boston's Big Dig project, including interest: $24.3 billion
Estimated year in which it will be paid for: 2038
(Source: AP)
Job openings in May, the second-highest month in four years: 3.6 million
(Source: Labor Dept.)
Number of inmates in federal prison for drug convictions, per 100,000 U.S. adults, in 1987 and 2011, respectively: 6.8 / 38.7
(Source: Harper's Index)
Average number of times someone checks their smartphone every day: 34
(Source: Details)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
"We" are not in the greedhead class. "We" are not the CEOs who increased their pay from 85 times what the average worker made in 1990 to 531 times what the average worker made in 2000. Over half of us still have no stake at all in the stock market, so be careful with your "everybody." And many of "us" who do have a stake in the stock market are not day-traders or people who know dog about NASDAQ or any damn thing about the New Economy---which someone, not "us," kept claiming was a perpetual motion machine. "We" wound up in the stock market only because "we" were encouraged to put our savings into these 401Ks, and that's all "we" know about any of it. Take your "we" and shove it.
---July, 2002
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Puppy Jenga
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CHEERS to a bit more time. No guarantee that it's going to last long, but yesterday Mississippi was prevented from sliding completely back to the bad old days:
A federal judge on Wednesday extended a temporary restraining order blocking Mississippi from enforcing a new state law that tightens requirements on abortion clinics, saying he wanted time to review how the law will be applied. The new law, which took effect on July 1, has threatened to close the state's last abortion clinic and make Mississippi the only U.S. state without such a facility. Mississippi…already has some of the country's strictest abortion laws and one of the lowest abortion rates. It also has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the United States---more than 60 percent above the national average in 2010.
Lovely. Anyway, the ruling was expected to go the other way, so…rah. For now.
JEERS to the tin-eared Congress. Yesterday saw an eventful session in the House of Representatives. Republicans under John Boehner voted to strip 3.1 million Americans under the age of 26 of their health insurance. They voted to restore pre-existing-condition and lifetime-cap policies to countless millions more of all ages. They voted to restore the "doughnut hole" in the Medicare prescription drug program, forcing seniors to pay a lot more for their meds. In short, they voted to let insurance companies walk all over their customers again, and deny some 30+ million Americans the opportunity to get health insurance. And then, moments after they'd repealed Obamacare (again), they got down to more important business:
Rep. Ander Crenshaw (R-FL): "I've been asked to report the results of a competition that took place on Monday at the Columbia Country Club. The competition is called the Congressional Challenge Cup. It's an event where a team of golfers from the Democratic side of the House play a team of golfers from the Republican side of the House. And I wanted to report to the House that this year's winner of the Congressional Cup is the Republican team!"
[Hip Hip Hooray!!!!!]
So the takeaway message here is: President Obama is an out-of-touch elitist who lives in a bubble. Film at 11.
CHEERS to a man who knew his way around a one-room cabin in the woods. Happy birthday to Henry David Thoreau, born 195 years ago on July 12, 1817. He told the world to "Simplify! Simplify!" And his writings on civil disobedience (the peaceful kind, not that right-wing "Second Amendment Remedies" crap) influenced many, including Martin Luther King, Jr., who wrote in his autobiography:
I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, these are outgrowths of Thoreau's insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.
By the way, if you're looking to buy the perfect housewarming gift for a
Walden lover, trust me: you can't go wrong with a Thoreau rug.
CHEERS to at least showing up. Eh, I'll give Mitt Romney credit for enduring a few slings and arrows when he read a speech off a teleprompter(!) to an audience at the NAACP yesterday. He praised the introductory organ music as if he'd never heard it before. He deliberately incited boos for his base's amusement by pledging to repeal Obamacare. He said he understands the concerns of the African-American community better than Barack Obama. And…um…I forget the rest. Just like everybody else has by now.
JEERS to a really silly way to go. 208 years ago today, Treasury Secretary, Founding Father and Boy Wonder Alexander Hamilton died after getting knocked off in a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey, directly across from Manhattan. Today we don’t have duels anymore because they're a highly uncouth and uncivilized way to settle disagreements. (But don’t say that too loud or the teabaggers might get ideas. Tree of liberty…blood of tyrants…yadda yadda…)
P.S. I still believe this Hamilton/Burr-themed milk commercial contains one of the all-time best set-ups for a joke. Bwahvo.
CHEERS and JEERS to good news/bad news. Good news first: OxyContin is no longer the most-abused drug in America because the manufacturer made it crush-proof. Bad news: it's been replaced among addicts by another painkiller called Opana. And as a special bonus, here's the really bad news:
"It's almost like a game of Whac-A-Mole. You get a handle on OxyContin; they switch to Opana," said Jeffrey Reynolds, executive director of the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence in Mineola, N.Y. "My guess is it will be something new tomorrow." As a new, harder-to-abuse Opana formulation replaces the old formula, police and addiction experts expect heroin to fill that void.
Here in Maine it seems like the most dangerous profession is no longer fisherman but drug store employee, seeing as we surpassed last year's robbery-for-painkillers record last month. And with prescription drugs responsible for more overdose deaths than heroin and cocaine, it's clear what the government must do: double jail sentences for pot smokers. A message must be sent.
CHEERS to pleasant distractions. 52 years ago today, the first Etch-A-Sketch went on sale in the U.S.. The erasable drawing toy got its start in France, where it was called the "Telecran." Then the British got hold of it and called it the "Doodlemaster Magic Screen." And today in America the Obama campaign calls it something else: "the bestest gift in the whole wide world!"
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Five years ago in C&J: July 12, 2007
CHEERS to Bonddad. While the mainstream experts have been soft-pedaling the housing bust for months, our favorite number cruncher has been correctly documenting the harsh reality. Yesterday even the big dogs couldn't make lemonade out of the crumbling bricks and mortar:
The National Association of Realtors trimmed its sales forecast for the fifth straight month and also widened its predicted drop in existing home values. Existing home sales should hit a pace of 6.11 million units this year, down from the 6.18 million units the group predicted last month. The national median sales price for an existing home---half cost more, half, less---should ease 1.4% to $218,800 this year. Last month the trade group said prices should slip 1.3%.
Come 2008 we might be ready to call our local real estate agent and purchase an abode for ourselves. I hope she can break a twenty.
JEERS to the American Taliban. You would think that the first morning invocation by a Hindu chaplain in the United States Senate would be a time for celebration of our nation's religious diversity. You would be wrong. A pod of right-wing Christians---aka the Republican base---just had to barge in, bare their tooth, and prove their bottom-of-the-barrel pedigree. I don’t know who's in charge of the morning prayers down there, but may I suggest the following lineup for next week: A Buddhist, a Muslim, A Wiccan, A Jew, and a Taoist. And stay on that schedule until Christ's crowd learns the meaning of Love Thy Neighbor, Asshole. How come us agnostics always have to play the parental role in these things?
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And just one more…
HA HA!!! to worthless predictions that become more worthless by the year. According to this highly-influential right-wing journalist, you and I are stranded in the virtual desert and Daily Kos is just a mirage:
IS THE DAILY KOS ABOUT TO IMPLODE?
July 12, 2006
It appears that the post-Yearly Kos month from hell is continuing for Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the proprietor of the Internet's premier liberal blog Daily Kos. After receiving some extremely negative press from major publications such as The New York Times, The New Republic and Newsweek immediately following his seemingly successful bloggers' convention in Las Vegas, Kos is now faced with an even greater challenge: dissension within his ranks.
Such internal squabbling comes at the same time that many prominent Democrats seem to be privately expressing concern about the direction the "netroots"---the self-described Internet grassroots movement of liberal bloggers and their loyal followers---are taking the Party. This seemingly inconvenient planetary alignment is not only threatening the long-term viability of this crusade, but also is putting Kos in an uncomfortable position just as his notoriety is skyrocketing.
Six years, six bigger-and-better Netroots Nation conventions, and dozens of election victories both big and small later, "The" Daily Kos continues to not implode. We're on great terms with a large number of Democratic lawmakers, candidates, and movers and shakers inside the progressive universe. We're up to over 400,000 registered Kossacks. Hell, we've even got hippies like Tom Tomorrow and Mark Fiore posting here, fer cryin' out loud. Sure, our pie fights are the stuff of legend. But imploding? Please. The Great Orange Satan lives, breathes and throbs. And our prime directive remains the same: make Bill O'Reilly cry.
Have an implosion-free Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"You can't even count the number of things Obama has done to act like Bill in Portland Maine."
---Lars Larson
7/10/12
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