From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Intermission
Holy mackerel---2013 is halfway over. The second quarter ended yesterday, and that means it's C&J number-crunching time. Every few months we post the results of some recent C&J polls (no relation to PPP polls commissioned by Kos) to give you a snapshot of what Kossacks think about…y'know…stuff. The total number of votes each poll received is in parentheses:
• 70 percent of you are not confident that the Senate and House will pass an immigration-reform bill that progressives will see as reasonable and fair. (3,806)
• 69 percent of you personally know someone who actually thinks global warming/climate change is a hoax. (4,401)
• 51 percent of you mostly use a desktop computer to access Daily Kos, while 33 percent use a laptop, 10 percent a tablet and 3 percent their smartphones. (5,122)
True fact: Simba votes
"Ook" in every C&J poll.
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• 44 percent say you're as concerned as the tea partiers are about the secret United Nations plot to forcibly take possession of our nation's golf courses and turn them into gigantic French perfume boutiques. 43% of you aren't. (2,761---and I'm sensing a sincerity gap in this particular poll.)
• 95 percent are creeped out by how much time the Republican party's leadership and punditry spend warning of an impending outbreak of people having sex with animals. (3,234)
• 86 percent believe that 13 years is too long to make undocumented immigrants wait to become U.S. citizens. (4,575)
• 75 percent are not confident that meaningful changes will be made to the military justice structure so that the epidemic of sexual assault can be effectively dealt with. (3,515)
• 88 percent approve of President Obama's choice of Susan Rice to be National Security Advisor. (3,913)
• 51 percent believe that relations will improve between the U.S. and Iran with the election of Hassan Rouhani as Iran's new president. 32 percent say it won't. (3,822)
As always, thanks for participating in our C&J polls. And please: use your super-human brain power responsibly. For good, not evil. Except, of course, on
National Use Your Super-Human Brain Power For Evil Day.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, July 1, 2013
Note: I wish Jesus would quit his weeping over gay marriage already. Our basement is flooded with tears and we lost our Shawn Cassidy LPs. Thankfully we saved the O'Jays.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Halloween: 122
Days 'til the Moxie Festival in Lisbon Falls, Maine: 11
Rank of Montana and North Dakota among states with the most bars per capita: #1, #2
Rank of Virginia and New Hampshire among states with the fewest number of bars per capita: #1, #2
(Source: Census Bureau)
Miles between the sun and the Voyager space probe's current location: 11 billion
Current Voyager speed: 38,000 mph
Points you'd get in Scrabble for "Ophiuchus," the constellation toward which Voyager is headed: 24
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Puppy Pic of the Day: "Just what I need…competition."
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Also in July: you're gonna
need a bigger boat.
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CHEERS to July! America turns 237 (but, thanks to a recent facelift and boob job, we don’t look a day over 234), Canada turns 146 and Mick Jagger turns 70. It's also National Baked Beans Month and National Ice Cream Month, and on the 11th we'll be celebrating something called
Feest van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap (Translation: "The takeover of the planet by horny gerbils wearing chaps"). Twinkies make their delicious and artery-clogging return. Sadly, it'll be the first anniversary of the July 20, 1969 moon landing that will happen minus one of Apollo 11's crew---if you see the near-full moon that day, remember to wink at Neil Armstrong. New Lone Ranger and Wolverine movies come out. And the only thing we can all truly count on this month: a whole lotta bakin' goin' on and I ain't talkin' about pies although those, too. Okay, last one in the pool's a rotten egg---
"Cannonball!!!"
WAH to the losingest losers of Loserdom. It was a nice surprise Friday evening when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling that marriages in California could resume forthwith. It was a nice gesture for pride weekend. But, of course, it was immediately followed by right-wing outrage and an emergency whine asking the Supreme Court to reverse it. According to SCOTUSblog:
S.F. City Hall
in pride lights.
As a formal matter, the Ninth Circuit did not put the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Proposition 8 case into effect prematurely. … Although the court of appeals had previously stated that they stay would remain in effect until the Supreme Court’s ruling was final, it presumably can change its mind.
The Supreme Court responded to the killjoys yesterday:
"Goeth poundeth sandeth." I admire their legal elegance.
CHEERS to the bloody turning point. 150 years ago today, on July 1, 1863 the Battle of Gettysburg began, marking the high-water mark of the Confederacy. (For the record, Maine won the war, although we love to hate to brag about it, because it's true but we're modest.) In a show of magnanimity---because, hey, what's a little treason between friends---I bought the South a gift today, on account of I thought it was fitting for the occasion. It's a Robert E. Lee cuckoo clock:
Instead of a cuckoo, a cannon goes off every hour. Or as the cat calls it: the reason I'm in therapy.
CHEERS to lurching toward democracy, one person millions of people at a time. Spoke the twitter box yesterday:
BBC:"The number of people protesting today is the largest number in a political event in the history of mankind. Keep impressing .. Egypt."
When Muhammad Morsi was inaugurated one year ago, I thought Egypt was about to head into a freefall of radical Islamic extremism. It's heartening to see that there are lots of citzens there
who believe otherwise and are willing to push back. It reminds me of what happened when they took
Arrested Development off the air and were forced by screaming mobs to bring it back. Except in English and with a slightly smaller risk of arrest, torture and death.
Thanks for
Shatner, Canada!
CHEERS to our favorite constitutional monarchy! Happy birthday, Canada! As America prepares to celebrate the violent upheaval and protracted war with Britain that led to our independence, our neighbors to the north are commemorating the cool, calm, and civilized "union of the British North America provinces in a federation under the name of Canada July 1st." Awesome
whoooooo!!! We luv ya Canada. (Disclaimer: But not your tar sands, which you are free to keep. In fact, we insist, and we're keeping William Shatner hostage until you agree.) Have fun, but don't get too crazy, eh---you could tear a rotator cuff politely waving at your neighbors.
JEERS to a hunka hunka burnin' Vegas. The record-setting heat in the southwest is so awful that it briefly distracted George Will from writing his latest column warning about the dangers of global cooling. The only thing that can help the situation at this point is the presence of something so ice-cold that it radiates a frozen aura and brings a chill to the region just by existing in the middle of it. Unfortunately, the National Weather Service says Ann Coulter isn't returning their calls.
JEERS to a Supreme waste. Twenty-two years ago today, George "41" Bush nominated porn-obsessed, sexual-harassing federal appeals court judge Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. During his tenure he has contributed virtually nothing except a reliable hard-right vote and lots of Federalist Society infrastructure building behind the scenes at SCOTUS. But at least he never speaks. Thank God for small miracles.
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Five years ago in C&J: July 1, 2008
CHEERS to home sweet homes. One of the hardest things about being an elitist Democrat---as you well know---is trying to juggle the 20+ homes we all own. It just gets overwhelming sometimes. So it must be nice to be a Republican like John McCain. After all, as this Google Earth tour shows, he and Cindy are such ordinary and average Americans that they only have to keep track of ten to thirteen houses. I hear one of 'em even has a leaky faucet. Suffer the poor maverick.
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And just one more…
It's aliiiive!!!
CHEERS to spinnin' wheels goin' round---with Bass Boost! Over the weekend I was cleaning the house and I came across my old Sony Walkman, which hasn't seen the light of day in probably 15 years. Just for the hell of it I popped in a couple AA batteries and the least-dusty cassette I could find (TDK was always better than Memorex but not as good as Maxell, for the record) to see what would happen. It worked just fine and what a kick to hear that wonderful hiss, flutter and wow. But what's even more amazing is, I was cleaning the house.
The week begins. Let's make this one real quiet, shall we? Thursday night Fireworks excepted, of course. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"The concept of Cheers and Jeers addiction is very provocative and rightly so. Unlike drugs of abuse, C & J is necessary for survival."
---Dr. David Ludwig
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