Cheers & Jeers Fundraiser: Day 3
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Snail mail, the address is: Bill Harnsberger
16 Pitt Street, Portland, ME, 04103.
Thank you!
From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
More Bills That Democrats in the Senate Could Try to Pass
The sands in the hourglass for the upper chamber's lame duck session are rapidly dwindling. We didn't get the Keystone pipeline passed, but doggone it that doesn't mean we can't vote on more bills that make as much sense as that one. I mean, if the Keystone vote was the key to Mary Landrieu's re-election victory, just imagine how big we could win if we took action on some more Senate bills in the same spirit as Keystone. Like, just a few off the top of my head:
• Repeal Obamacare (Duh!)
• Cut Social Security
• Turn Medicare into a voucher system
To beat Republicans, just
be more like Republicans!
• Anything benefiting children = Gone
• Shift all green energy funding to projects that fight global cooling
• Eliminate the Department of Education, Commerce and…um…the other
• Outlaw abortion in all cases and confer legal personhood status on blastocysts
• Put the NRA in charge of all school security
• Eliminate taxes on anyone making more than $1 million per year
• Restore "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell"
• Make all students pay for their college education up front to teach them the value
of studying within their means
• Expand oil and gas drilling in all of our national parks and restrict public access so they don’t get in the way of the job creators
I urge the lame-duck Senate to act without delay by putting all of these into a single omnibus bill and passing it via unanimous consent. That way we'll get all the credit for it and win the 2016 elections from the top of the ticket to the bottom. Let's go, Harry---victory is within our grasp.
Oh, and Senator Landrieu? Tough break. You wuz robbed.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Note: President Obama and Speaker Boehner settle their differences once and for all in epic girder-swinging battle atop half-finished skyscraper. Highlights, plus Chet on sports and Maggie's Turkey Day forecast tonight on News Center at 11.
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10 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til
The Hunger Games: Meatloaf and Cabbage Part I:
2
Days 'til the
Syracuse Wine and Chocolate Festival:
10
Percent of adults shut out of the Medicaid expansion who live in Florida, Georgia, and Texas:
80%
(Source: Bloomberg)
Percent of New York City payphones that will
be converted to wi-fi hot spots starting next year:
100%
Number of countries among the world's 21 wealthiest who guarantee paid parental leave, the lone
holdout being the United States:
20
(Source: Harper's Index)
Number of Cuban doctors and nurses who went to Sierra Leone to help fight the
ebola outbreak:
63 / 102
Amount the world will spend on snacks this year:
$374 billion
(Source: Nielsen Research)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 182 (including 5 Gogs and 1 reminder to get yourself a Rapture Hatch). Soul Protection Factor 12 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: And the ASPCA Dog of the Year is…..
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JEERS to Old Man Winter showing up before the turkey's even in the oven. If memory serves, the white stuff falling from the sky is God's dandruff:
Buffalo yesterday.
Several feet of lake-effect snow paralyzed the Buffalo area Tuesday, forcing state troopers on snowmobiles to deliver blankets to stranded motorists on the New York State Thruway on a wintry day when temperatures fell to freezing or below in all 50 states. In a region accustomed to highway-choking snowstorms, this one is being called one of the worst in memory. […] In New Hampshire and elsewhere, icy roads led to accidents. Lake-effect storms in Michigan produced gale-force winds and as much as 18 inches of snow,
and canceled several flights at the Grand Rapids airport.
Naturally, the "global cooling" screechers have turned their amps up to 11. Exhibit A: conservative cartoonist Glenn McCoy, whose latest is like a pied piper for attracting
ignorant commenters. Why do teabaggers leave their snow shovels out all year long? Because in their world they never stop getting snowed.
CHEERS to dodging an aquifer-killing bullet. Yesterday Senate Democrats gave aid and comfort to the enemy (Senate Republicans) by providing nearly enough votes to reach the 60-vote threshold and authorize construction of the Keystone What-The-Hell-Are-You-Thinking Pipeline. The 60th vote that everyone thought could've taken it over the edge belonged to Maine's "Mustache of Independence," Angus King:
Much obliged, Angus.
“Congress is not---nor should it be---in the business of legislating the approval or disapproval of a construction project,” King said in a statement. “And while I am frustrated that the president has refused to make a decision on the future of the pipeline, I don’t believe that short-circuiting the process to circumvent his administration is in the best interest of the American people. … Glen Brand, director of the Maine chapter of the Sierra Club, praised King’s decision to vote against the Senate bill. “By saying ‘no’ to Keystone and dirty tar sands oil, Senator King is demonstrating much-needed leadership on climate [change] and environmental protection,” Brand said Tuesday afternoon.
Lots of Republican, conservaDem and beltway frowny faces today. We should all pitch in and send 'em some boom to corral their tears.
JEERS to today's less-than comforting words. Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, on his leadership role in arming the Ferguson area to the teeth in anticipation of the grand jury's decision in the murder of Michael Brown:
Huffington Post: Does the buck ultimately stop with you when it comes to how any protests are policed?
Gov. Jay Nixon: Uhneeuh…we're…um...y'know…it uh…it uh…y'know…our goal here is is to…is to…is to…y'know keep the peace and allow folks' voices to…uh…uh, to be heard. Um…and in that balance…um…I'm attempting…y'know, I am using the resources we have to marshal to be predictable…uh, for both those pillars…I, I, I don't want more…I, I, I, just will have to say I don’t spend a tremendous amount of time personalizing this vis a vis me, I'm trying to make sure that, uh, that we move forward in a predictable, peaceful manner that plans for all contingencies that might occur…um, so the people of a disparate group of opinions and actions can be heard while at the same time the property and persons…person…persons of people in the St. Louis region are protected. So, uh, uh, uh…I…I prefer not to be a commentator on it."
Worst. Harry. Truman. Ever.
[We are Anonymous.
We have replaced
Garfield with this cat.]
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CHEERS to President Blinkandyoullmisshim. Happy birthday to "#20"
James Garfield, born 184 years ago today in a log cabin---the last president to have that distinction. He only got to enjoy his status as the first left-handed Commander-in-Chief for 200 days before he died of lead poisoning from an assassin's bullet that doctors could never find. He might've actually been a decent president, who knows? But I do know this:
shaaaame on him and running mate Chester Arthur for using $400,000 in campaign money to bribe Indiana voters with two-dollar bills. Why, that could've eroded the public's trust in politicians.
CHEERS to the next impeachable offense. When Fox News gets tired of Grubergate, it looks like they've got their next scandal teed up: President Obama's failure---deliberate, no doubt---to stop the Russian satellite killer! There's widespread concern over the mysterious "Object 2014-28E" launched recently. Intelligence officials are worried that it could disrupt their ability to get answers on important questions related to national security. Teenagers are worried because it could disrupt their ability to get answers on important questions related to, "Hey, whatcha doin'?"
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Five years ago in C&J: November 19, 2009
CHEERS to a bouncing baby bill! The tones were hushed in the Capitol last night as Harry Reid brought out the infant healthcare reform bill wrapped in a swaddling hospital gown and gently laid it in a bed of cotton balls, where it cooed and gurgled and coiled its tiny fingers around its---my goodness!---rather robust (if opt-outable) public option. And no sign of Stupak syndrome, says Senator Kirsten Gillibrand:
"While this bill is not perfect, the anti-choice measure that was included in the House bill is not contained in the Senate bill. The House's Stupak amendment would have resulted in grave risk to women and girls, particularly to low-income women. Denying a full range of reproductive services is not only discriminatory, but also dangerous, and puts the lives of women and girls at risk.
Now comes the hard part: raising it to adulthood without dropping it on its head. Which is easier said than done. They don't call it the "Butterfingers Chamber" for nothin'.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to off-the-charts eloquence. On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the Pennsylvania battlefield. I read these words every year and their simple elegance makes me appreciate them more each time:
Only confirmed photo
of Lincoln at Gettysburg.
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Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
If only today's politicians could be that brilliantly brief. But if you still don’t have time to read it all, here's the Dilbert-approved
Power Point Presentation of the speech. A century and a half later we still haven't perished, but Lincoln would no doubt be mighty pissed at the new rabid wave of secession talk flying around just because we have a black president who wants Americans to have jobs and health care. Forget about cloning a wooly mammoth---we need to work on a new this guy.
Oh, and today is "Have A Bad Day Day." We hope you fail at it. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"Block Bill in Portland Maine. Let him show himself again to be the petulant man-child Americans have started recognizing."
---Erick Erickson
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