From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
A Brief Climate Change Debate
The conventional energy companies and climate-change deniers:
"You can trust me.
I'm a lab coat."
Pay no attention to the melting ice caps. Pay no attention to the earthquakes centered around fracking sites. Pay no attention to the islands in the Pacific that are disappearing under water. Pay no attention to the fact that "Derecho" has entered our lexicon. Pay no attention to the one-eyed shrimp in the Gulf. Pay no attention to the weirding of the ocean currents or the drought affecting nearly two-thirds of the United States. Pay no attention to the fact that our drilling capabilities are advancing daily but our cleanup methods haven't advanced in 40 years. Pay no attention to rapidly disappearing species around the world. And definitely pay no attention to the carbon emissions from the tarsands---why, they're simply freedom vapors!
Trust us. We're running millions of dollars in soothing ads each and every day on every TV network in existence featuring a cast of attractive, folksy people---PEOPLE JUST LIKE YOU---in hardhats and lab coats swishing around liquid in beakers and explaining to actors portraying tree hugging hippies that We've Got Everything Under Control. You have nothing to worry about, so…Smile!
And now a rebuttal:
Sen. Bernie Sanders is part of the
DKos Climate Change SOS blogathon
Running through Friday, Daily Kos presents a unique interactive dialogue on a range of issues related to climate change: issues such as the disproportionate impact climate change has on women and the role of gender; GHGs and clean energy; the rights, wisdom and challenges of indigenous peoples; food security, education and health; new models of sustainable economies,; and community resilience in the face of climate change and peak oil.
Our panel of experts---climate scientists and economists, researchers and academics and writers---come from many different locations and time zones around the world. Everyone has been notified that all postings remain open for ongoing conversation throughout the week and encouraged to check in regularly at the Climate Change SOS Blogathon Group.
Watch for the
Climate Change SOS Blogathon posts this week and find out what the whitewashers in the penthouse suites at Big Energy and their lapdogs in government don’t want you to know. It's an amazing lineup of contributors. You might even say they're…very cool.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Note: Here's the New England Kossack meetup schedule for the next couple months. The next one is Saturday, September 15th (12-3pm) hosted by Clytemnestra at Bangkok Cafe in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Details are here. RSVP via here via kosmail. And there's one on Saturday, October 13th (1-4) hosted by Common Sense Mainer and Me at Margarita's in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. To RSVP, email Michael at cuckolds04103 [at] gmail.com.
For all the meetups in all the gin joints in all the states in all the world, peek in on Navajo's New Day post. When we swarm, the tea party trembles.
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By the Numbers:
Weeks 'til the general election: 11
Days 'til the Gourmet Mac & Cheese Festival in Paso Robles, California: 4
Percent of the lower 48 states that the Drought of 2012 covers: 62%
Chance of 2012 being the warmest U.S. year on record, even if the rest of the year's temperatures are average: 2-in-3
(Source: USA Today)
Percent of Californians who do and do not, respectively, support Obamacare: 54%, 37%
(Source: Field Poll poll via DemfromCT)
Amount the sleep industry is expected to make this year in pills, beds, sleep coaches, etc.: $32 billion
(Source: The Week)
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Tuesday Words of Wisdom from the Right-wing Blogosphere:
What a fucking moron. Can't believe you are still spewing this cult shit. Get a life you fucking moronic bigoted hypocrite. I can't believe I waste time here telling you how stupid you are Did that change your heart/mind Crack? Because thats exactly what you sound like - a rabid little bitch on the verge of a complete breakdown.
---Commenter "Fenh" to commenter "Crack Em" at the Ann Althouse blog
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You sold your souls - and your country - for the very thing I told you, from the beginning, to beware: What it could do to YOU.. Now fuck off, you fucking zombie, I - for one - aim to keep[ my brain,,...
---Commenter "Crack Em" to commenter "Fenh" at the Ann Althouse blog
All together now: 1…2…3…
Wingnut pie fight!!!
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Seventeen
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This is either Rep. Paul Ryan
or Rep. Todd Akin. Crazies
all look the same to me.
CHEERS to clone wars. Howard Fineman delivered a perfect line on
Hardball yesterday: "Todd Akin is the Paul Ryan of Missouri." Indeed---they are ideological soulmates. And
that's why the Republican campaign machine is currently at Defcon 1 on the Freakout scale. They know that America is about to find out that
Akin's views on "legitimate rape" and abortion are Ryan's views, too. Hell, I knew conservatives were incoherent on a lot of things, but this is the first time I've heard that they think rapist sperm is like Mr. Phelps' tape recorder on
Mission Impossible---it self-destructs in five seconds.
Really??? Congressman Akin has until 5pm today to bow out of the race. If he stays, I'm layin' down money that his first campaign ad will sound
something like this:
"I'm not a pig.
I'm nothing you've heard.
…I'm you."
[
Sigh] A political junkie can dream.
P.S. President Obama on the issue: "Rape is rape." That's how you take a stand, Mitt. Look into it.
"Use the force, King Kamehameha!"
CHEERS to securing macadamia nuts for the Homeland. Fifty-three years ago, on August 21, 1959, President Eisenhower---whose moderate views would prompt teabagger comparisons to Hitler if he was around today, which would be weird considering he defeated Hitler---signed an executive order proclaiming Hawaii as America's 50th state, unwittingly setting the stage for a secret plot by scalawags to, three years later, import a Kenyan-born baby in swaddling clothes to take over the Executive Branch in 2009 and kill all our old people with death panels. Even though Cokie Roberts may tut-tut you for being too much of a
"foreign, exotic place," Hawaii, C&J luvs ya just the way you are. Tonight we celebrate by making some tiny bubbles in the tub.
CHEERS to loud speakers. Once the stripper-watchin', rape legitimizin', skinny dippin', voter-suppressin' GOP weirdos have had their unserious convention in Tampa (slogan: "Can't. Sorry. Oops."), Democrats will gather in Charlotte to plan a sensible course toward victory in November and building a stronger country beyond. The guest roster already includes Bill Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and Jimmy Carter. Here are some more that have been announced:
California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper
Senator John Kerry
Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick
Former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland
(rahm emanuel)
And the first Hispanic President of the United States, Julian Castro.
The National Anthem, by the way, will be sung by
I-Love-You Dog accompanied by
Keyboard Cat. Youth vote, meet the inside of the bag.
CHEERS to Phyllis Diller. When I first saw her she became that daffy old lady on the TV from the 70s who always made me laugh, and right up until she died at 95 she remained that daffy old lady on TV from the 70s who always made me laugh. (Here she is roasting Ronald Reagan.) But she was first and foremost a true old-school stand-up phenomenon who worked her tail off (and she was "The Gloved One" way before Michael Jackson):
The Phyllis Diller of comedy
“Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.”
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"My cooking is so bad that my kids thought Thanksgiving was in memory of Pearl Harbor."
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“I've buried a lot of my laundry in the back yard.”
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“We spend the first 12 months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next 12 months teaching them to sit down and shut up.”
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"If you ever see three New Yorkers get into a cab without an argument, a bank has just been robbed."
Her legacy will be easy to remember: Phyllis Diller was the Phyllis Diller of comedy.
CHEERS to a pleasant discussion---if by pleasant you mean, "Don’t you guys ever shut up???" On August 21, 1858, the first of the famous debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas took place. They were going toe-to-toe in a battle for a U.S. senate seat:
It was dry and dusty, between 10,000 and 12,000 people were in attendance when the debate began at 2:00 p.m. There were no seats or bleachers. Douglas charged Lincoln with trying to "abolitionize" the Whig and Democratic Parties. He also charged Lincoln had been present when a very radical "abolitionist" type platform had been written by the Republican Party in 1854. Douglas accused Lincoln of taking the side of the common enemy in the Mexican War.
In other words, Douglas accused Lincoln of appeasing the enemy and palling around with terrorists. Gee, where have I heard that before?
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Five years ago in C&J: August 21, 2007
CHEERS to sweet numbness. Holy mackerel...sales of prescription painkillers have skyrocketed:
More than 200,000 pounds of codeine, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and meperidine were purchased at retail stores during the most recent year represented in the data. That total is enough to give more than 300 milligrams of painkillers to every person in the country. Oxycodone, the chemical used in OxyContin, is responsible for most of the increase. Oxycodone use jumped nearly six-fold between 1997 and 2005.
Also skyrocketing: sales of ACME shoe weights to keep people from floating off and getting tangled in power lines.
JEERS to vegetables of mass distraction. A Pennsylvania woman is selling a slice of eggplant on eBay because she claims that the seeds in the middle of it spelled out the word "GOD". Not mentioned in the media coverage is that subsequent slices formed the words "ARE" "YOU" "PEOPLE" "GULLIBLE."
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And just one more...
CHEERS to Super Barney! Hey, have you noticed an eerie silence coming from congressmembers' town hall meetings, which only a few years ago were rancorous occasions during which teabaggers set new world records for spittle slinging as they called Democrats every name in the book? Me, too. So let's liven up the joint a bit with a moment from late August of '09, when Congressman Barney Frank gave a Nazi-card player something to cry in her strudel about when she framed health insurance reform this way:
Barney 1 Protester 0
Woman holding photo of Obama with a Hitler mustache: Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy, as Obama has expressly supported this policy? Why are you supporting it?
Barney Frank: When you ask me that question, I am going to revert to my ethnic heritage and answer your question with a question: On what planet do you spend most of your time? [...] As you stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis, my answer to you is, as I said before, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.
Jon Stewart's answer to Frank's question: "Apparently a planet where a mixed-race president and a gay Jew qualify as Nazis." I'm gonna miss ol' Barney when he leaves the House in January, but I'm glad he plans to stay in the media spotlight on a regular basis. He could dress up in tights and a cape and become
Captain Pushback! Although, picturing that in my mind as I did just now, perhaps a suit and tie will suffice.
Have a legitimate Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"Bill in Portland Maine Is Kind Of Everybody's Dream Older Brother"
---Fox Reporter James Rosen
8/20/12
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