From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Ebola Hysteria: Maine Edition
Sorry, rest of the United states. This is going to be hard to top for sheer nuttery:
A teacher at Strong Elementary School was placed on a 21-day paid leave of absence after parents told the school board they were concerned that she might have been exposed to Ebola during a trip to Dallas.
She was there for a conference. An education conference. In a city of 1.25 million and ten miles away from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
“At this time, we have no information to suggest that this staff member has been in contact with anyone who has been exposed to Ebola,” the district wrote in a statement... “However, the district and the staff member understand the parents’ concerns. Therefore, after several discussions with the staff member, out of an abundance of caution, this staff member has been placed on a paid leave of absence for up to 21 days.”
An example of the parental concern:
“The bottom line is that there is risk.
Are we more capable of handling this than Africa? Sure, but why walk around blind and jam people into hot spots we can’t control? It all comes down to personal responsibility.”
Yes. The teacher was jammed into Dallas, that boiling cauldron of ebola. They literally had to use a toilet plunger to pack her into that writhing zombieland of infected humanity. And now she's free to spend three weeks of paid bonus vacation walking around anywhere she wants in Maine spreading her maybebola to everyone she meets. But at least she won't do it in that school.
But there is one plus to all this: it'll give Teapublican Governor Paul LePage a second chance to focus on "the bigger issue right now," which is of course "whether or not this individual had the proper papers.” Can't be too careful these days.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, October 20, 2014
Note: Pay no attention to the man in the potted plant wearing the hazmat suit. It's just C&J's designated NSA tracker Bart playing it safe. ---Mgt.
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5 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the midterm elections:
15
Days 'til the
Mountain Makins Festival in Morristown, Tennessee:
5
Minimum number of commercial drivers who died on the job in 2013, many to trucker fatigue:
700
(Source: Bloomberg News)
Drop in gas prices since April, an annual savings to the average American of $500:
50 cents
(Source: Federal Highway Administration)
Unemployment claims last week, a 14-year low:
264,000
Increase in construction of apartment buildings this year:
22.7%
Number of federal counts that White House intruder-with-a-knife Omar Gonzalez is facing:
5
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NEW! Your Monday Robin Williams Moment
I remember when the economy was working and there was a budget surplus. Yeah! "Where's Clinton?" We impeached him. "Fuck! For what?" A blowjob. "Wow! Who did he blow? Putin?"
Politicians are a lot like diapers. They should be changed frequently, and for the same reasons.
All those old senators going: "The confederate flag is just the symbol of states' rights." Yeah, and the swastika is just a good luck charm.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: World's smallest….
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CHEERS to the growing Crist fan club. I know newspaper endorsements are a relic of the past, but people still do talk about 'em. Yesterday The Miami Herald endorsed the guy who didn't act like moron at last Wednesday night's debate. A couple highlights that caught the paper's fancy:
The wind beneath Crist's wings.
▪ Mr. Scott is just fine with the dangerous Stand Your Ground law, and appointed a task force to examine the issue and give him the result he wanted---Nope, this law doesn’t need tweaking at all. Mr. Crist, however, realizes that it needs to be fixed before more people use it to commit homicide and walk away without punishment.
▪ Mr. Crist favors accepting $51 billion from the federal government to expand Medicaid to give some 1 million Floridians medical coverage. Mr. Scott was against it, then for it, but never lifted a finger to get the Republican-led Legislature to approve it.
Mr. Crist’s record on the issues, his record as a moderate---even as a Republican---and his undoubted devotion to the state of Florida give him a clear edge.
Not to be outdone, Rick Scott announced he'd been endorsed by
Creepy Human-Snake Hybrid Weekly.
CHEERS to giving the red planet a haircut. Yesterday the comet known as "Siding Spring" came within a galactic whisker (87,000 miles) of Mars.
If you're a troll visiting C&J from World Net Daily I'll translate that for you in terms you can understand:
COMET KNOWN AS "SIGN FROM GOD" DEMONSTRATES WHAT WILL STRIKE EARTH IF CONFIRMED ANTI-CHRIST BARACK OBAMA ISN'T IMPEACHED!!!
If you see a lot of steam in the air today, that'll be the thinkin' fumes caused by believers trying to figure out if they should build an ark or a bunker.
JEERS to the Supreme Voter Suppressors. Republicans in Texas got a special gift over the weekend from SCOTUS's conservative wing: the gift of a revival of the poll tax for the 2014 elections in 15 days. How special. Ruth Bader Ginsburg minced no words in her dissent:
Yeehaw! The good times is
back in Texas! [Pew! Pew!]
"The greatest threat to public confidence in elections in this case is the prospect of enforcing a purposefully discriminatory law, one that likely imposes an unconstitutional poll tax and risks denying the right to vote to hundreds of thousands of eligible voters. …
Senate Bill 14 may prevent more than 600,000 registered Texas voters (about 4.5% of all registered voters) from voting in person for lack of compliant identification. A sharply disproportionate percentage of those voters are African-American or Hispanic."
Justices Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Kennedy responded to Ginsburg's dissent by sleeping very soundly that night.
CHEERS to 86 decent years---and 4 that really sucked. Herbert Hoover got some company recently in the form of a certain George W. Bush, who now joins him on the short list of worst presidents ever. But Hoover was quite the humanitarian before his disastrous (and, boy howdy, do we mean disastrous!) one term as president...and he was quite the competent humanitarian for 30 years after. But his time ran out when he kicked the bucket on this date in 1964 at the age of 90. Oh, and speaking of speaking of #31 and #43 in the same breath, there actually was someone who roamed the planet named George W. Hoover. Poor devil.
CHEERS to the Big Blue Wave. When he was asked last year about the naughty-or-niceness of gay people, Pope Francis asked the immortal question: "Who am I to judge?" Over the weekend the Vatican's tea party wing, via a synod vote, gave its official answer: "We are!!!" So gays remain "intrinsically disordered" in the eyes of that small gaggle of men in lacy bloomers. But here in the U.S., gay marriage continues it's 50 State March to the Altar. Here's the latest Wikipedia map:
The map could change dramatically (again!) this week if marriage-equality comes to Wyoming on Thursday as expected and the 6th Circuit Court gets off its duff and issues a ruling affecting Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. Meanwhile we
also learned over the weekend that the Elvis Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas says it has no intention of performing hunka-hunka burnin' ceremonies for gay couples. They're concerned it would tarnish the sanctity of marriage.
CHEERS to the Birthday Bab. Today is Birth of the Bab day, honoring the founder of the Babi religion, forerunner to Baha'u'llah and the Baha'i faith. According to tradition, no work is to be done on this day. Great...now they tell me, after I've spent the last hour tying my work yakskins on.
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Five years ago in C&J: October 20, 2009
CHEERS to galactic gridlock. The universe just got a little more crowded, thanks to the 32 additional planets that astronomers have found:
Of the 32 planets spotted, this one
has the most potential for human life.
Several of the discovered planets are in multiple-planet systems. The planets have orbital periods of anywhere from five Earth days to several thousand days (Earth's orbit is 365 days).
The survey also showed that, as models have predicted, solar-type stars have plenty of low-mass planets — an intriguing finding in the search for other potential Earths out there. The HARPS data suggest that at least 40 percent of solar-type stars have these smaller planets.
To give you an idea of how far away they are, Sarah Palin can only see about a dozen of 'em from her house.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to loading the holiday catapults. Saturday my partner Michael came home from the store with boxes of greeting cards for December. Continuing our decade-long crusade to keep Fox News paranoid about a left-wing conspiracy to "destroy" Christmas via a "war," our cards feature the usual Sharia-Atheist-Secular-Hippie-Socialist-Tyrant greeting:
Fox News hates Christmas.
Some say that the birth of Christ
Is the tale that should be told.
The swaddled kid in a bed of straw
And wise men bearing gold.
But I think the joy I truly feel---
What really makes me smiley---
Is saying "Happy Holidays"
Just to piss off Bill O'Reilly.
On the front of it is a painting of a loofah sitting under a sprig of mistletoe.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"Governor Crist has asked to have Bill in Portland Maine underneath the podium. The rules of the debate that I was shown by the Scott campaign say that there should be no Bill. Somehow Bill is there. And for that reason, ladies and gentlemen, I am being told that Governor Scott will not join us for this debate."
---Eliott Rodriguez, CBS4
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