From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Hunter & Nelson: Joyride!
Today is Nelson Mandela's 94th birthday and the late Hunter S. Thompson's 75th birthday. I'd have paid good money to see them careening down the highway, top down in a cloud of dust on their way to Vegas, waxing philosophical on life and the human condition. (Actual quotes)
Nelson: During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
Hunter: America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.
[Honk Hoooooooonk!!!]
Nelson: Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that a son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.
Yeah. That would be a helluva joyride.
Hunter: The only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic.
[Skreeeeetch!!!]
Nelson: I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.
Hunter: Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak Arabic, love music and never forget you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors.
[Blam! Blam!]
Nelson: A leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realizing that all along they are being directed from behind.”
Hunter: All political power comes from the barrel of either guns, p*ssy, or opium pipes, and people seem to like it that way.
[Swerrrrrrrve!!!]
Nelson: Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.
Hunter: It's a strange world. Some people get rich and others eat shit and die.
[Sputtersputter...psssssss......]
Happy birthday, guys.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, July 18, 2012
Note: I want to make this absolutely clear, so there's no ambiguity: mud.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the opening of The Dark Knight Rises, which clocks in at a bladder-busting 2 hours and 45 minutes and currently has an 87% "Fresh" rating on the TomatoMeter: 2
Days 'til the Newport Jazz Festival: 16
Percent of Maine women and men, respectively, who believe that President Obama is better on women's issues like workplace equality, health care and reproductive rights: 64%, 53%
Percent of Maine women and men, respectively, who believe Mitt Romney is better on women's issues: 20%, 29%
(Source: Critical Insights poll for the Portland Press Herald)
Time at which the Mars probe "Curiosity" is scheduled to land on August 5: 10:31pm ET
Rank of Finland, Norway and Iceland among the world's top coffee-slurping countries: #1, #2 #3
(Source: Time)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 180 (including 3 False Christs and 1 False Statesman). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: The Phelps entourage
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"We're advancing
the narrative!"
CHEERS to feeling pic'y, pic'y pic'y. As you may have noticed, after eight and a half years relying on nothing but the printed word to entertain you, C&J has finally taken a creative leap by adding some visual stimulation. For that we thank the elves working behind the scenes at Daily Kos, who have
made photo embedding as easy as picking your nose. Now, I'm a newbie at this, so it'll take me a bit to figure out how to incorporate visuals into C&J. My criteria will be very strict: 1) Does it advance the narrative? 2) Does it avoid breaking Markos's beloved blog? And/or 3) Does it have animated creatures doing zany things? I look forward to stretching the boundaries of this column through---[
Jazz Hands!!!]---the magic of visual media, and I hope you enjoy the results. So, uh, anyone know of any good public domain porn sites?
CHEERS to friendly turf for settin' down roots. Oh, we hate to brag…but we will! Portland, Maine came in third (following Boston and Burlington) on Parenting magazine's list of America's best cities for raising a family:
It noted the community's support of small businesses and local produce, and the city's relative proximity to Acadia National Park as other assets. … "Portland is earning a well-deserved national reputation as the place in America to live, start a business and raise a family," said Mayor Michael Brennan, in a press release from the city.
Portland would've been in the top spot if some asshole blogger who yells at kids to get off his lawn hadn't tanked the neighborliness category.
I should He should be ashamed!
JEERS to tying your morals in knots. So, to recap: openly-gay young people can join the military and dutifully co-exist in tents with straight servicemembers as they pledge to defend America to the death, but openly-gay young people are still forbidden from joining the Boy Scouts and co-existing dutifully in tents with straight Scouts as they pledge to capture the flag and learn how to cook a can of Dinty Moore beef stew without keeling over from the Sterno vapors. But y'know what? Fuck the national BSA leadership---they lost this war long ago. Because just as gays were serving in every branch of the military before that ban was lifted last year, so too are gays active in the Scouts right now, from newbie Tenderfoots to Eagles with Gold Palms and the Ancient Order of the Blistered Hiker's Foot. So we'll be patient for a bit longer while the leadership looks up the word "decency" in the dictionary. But when the time comes, we won’t hestitate to overthrow the regime with our most effective weapon: a battalion Ninja Girl Scouts and their thin-mint throwing stars.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. The Obama campaign's new TV ad asks: What is Mitt Romney hiding?
Everything.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
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JEERS to credit-card conservatives. More proof that you should never trust Republicans with either war or money. The loss of life and limb during the Iraq debacle---which, let's not forget, had nothing to do with our nation's security---was bad enough. But the amount of borrowed money Congress threw at the damn thing without accountability is unforgivable:
After years of following the paper trail of $51 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars provided to rebuild a broken Iraq, the U.S. government can say with certainty that too much was wasted. But it can't say how much. In what it called its final audit report, the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Funds on Friday spelled out a range of accounting weaknesses that put "billions of American taxpayer dollars at risk of waste and misappropriation" in the largest reconstruction project of its kind in U.S. history. "The precise amount lost to fraud and waste can never be known," the report said.
Meanwhile, war profiteer "Five Deferrments Dick" Cheney slithered up to Capitol Hill yesterday to lecture lawmakers about
responsible government spending. His new heart waited outside on a park bench wearing sunglasses, a straw hat and a very embarrassed look on its face.
See how much Obama hates America?
(NASA/Bill Ingalls)
CHEERS to Democrats with the right stuff. Happy 91st Birthday to John Glenn, one of the most durable human beings who ever lived. Not only was the first astronaut to orbit the planet, he later became the oldest person in space when he blasted off in the Shuttle
Discovery at the age of
freakin' 77! A couple months ago, according to Rush Limbaugh, he was awarded the Medal of Communism by pothead President Saul Alinsky, Jr., seen at right strangling the American hero with it. To commemorate Senator Glenn's birthday, they'll be
servin' up cake and ice cream at his boyhood home in New Concord, Ohio. My kingdom for a teleporter.
P.S. {{{{{Annie}}}}}
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Five years ago in C&J: July 18, 2007
JEERS to dashed hopes. Tuesday we read about an amendment---offered by our freshman Senators---that would've created a modern-day Truman Commission to investigate waste, fraud and abuse among military contractors. Thanks to the Republican obstructionists, the commission remains---for now---just a gleam in Jim Webb's eye. But yesterday we saw an encouraging sign: Halliburton executives buying Pepcid AC by the case. [7/18/12 Update: See the story above on how, five years later, "The precise amount lost to fraud and waste can never be known." Wall, meet Billy's head.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the chain of command. Sixty five years ago today, in 1947, President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, which clearly establishes who takes over if the president, god forbid, dies or is incapacitated. Let's see:
President Tim Geithner
Vice President Biden (He'd treat the office as a BFD!)
Speaker of the House John Boehner [Stunned, horrified silence]
President pro tempore of the Senate Daniel Inouye (Everybody gets lei'd in the Oval Office!)
Sec. of State Hillary Clinton (Bubba would make a fine First Husband…with proper supervision.)
Sec. of the Treasury Timothy Geithner [More stunned, horrified silence]
Bert the House Janitor (He'd clean up the town.)
Sneezy (He'd be dwarfed by world events.)
After that they just start drawing names out of Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's girdle.
Have a nice Wednesday. (And thank your lucky stars I don't feel cruel enough to post a pic of Virginia Foxx's girdle.) Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
“What Elizabeth Warren and Obama want you to believe is that Cheers and Jeers is the center of everything."
---Rush Limbaugh
7/16/12
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