From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Wednesday with Will
This year marks the 80th anniversary of Will Rogers' death in a plane crash in Alaska. Huge Hollywood star, razor-sharp pundit, and one of the best things to come from Oklahoma. With the 114th Congress all pinky-swore into office, now seems like a good time to revisit some of his observations:
"This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer."
"Things will get better---despite our efforts to improve them."
"Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what's going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?"
Will Rogers: the Stephen
Colbert of his day.
"If you ever injected truth into politics you'd have no politics."
"A fool and his money are soon elected."
"Politics has got so expensive that it takes lots of money to even get beat with."
Advice to FDR: "And kid Congress and the Senate, don't scold 'em. They are just children that's never grown up. They don't like to be corrected in company. Don't send messages to 'em, send candy."
"Try to live your life so that you wouldn't be afraid to sell the family parrot to the town gossip."
"That's one thing about Republican Presidents. They never went in much for plans. They only had one plan. It says: 'Boys, my head is turned. Just get it while you can.'"
"If all politicians fished instead of spoke publicly, we would be at peace with the world."
"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for."
And given that polls show Jon Stewart is the most trusted newsman in America these days, this is smirk-worthy:
"Everything is changing. People are taking the comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke."
But anyway. Day one of the new congress is over. The sun came up. The oligarchy survives.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, January 7, 2015
Note: C&J is offering free body piercings today from 9am to 6pm. Just stand under the row of icicles hanging off our porch and we'll do the rest. ---Mgt.
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16 Days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the State of the Union Address:
13
Days 'til
National Pie Day:
16
New cars sold in 2014, up a whopping 6%:
16.5 million
Average price of gas in Maine:
$2.35
Minimum number of people in Japan who choked to death on New Year's rice cakes this year:
9
Factor by which having an armed guard at a bank increases the likelihood of a robbery becoming violent:
3x
(Source:
The Week)
Number of times Congressman Louie Gohmert was rescued from a tree by Senator Cory Booker in 2014:
3
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 181 (including 4 Global Turmoils and 1 hippie tree-hugger pope). Soul Protection Factor 14 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: It's a cat cat cat cat world.
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Elizabeth and me. (I'm the one on
the left in the invisibility cloak.)
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CHEERS to warrin' Warren. All progressive eyes (and maybe a smidge of media attention?) will be on today's
AFL-CIO Summit on Raising Wages. In addition to speakers like the Detroit Federation of Teachers' Lakia Wilson and Labor Secretary Thomas Perez, one of our senate standard bearers will deliver another textbook example of how
Democrats should sound on the campaign trail:
As Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who’ll be giving the keynote address, told me in an exclusive interview in advance of the summit, “Things are getting better, yes, but only for some. Families are working harder, but not doing better. And they feel the game is rigged against them---and guess what---it is!”
Said the Detroit Lions after the Dallas game: "Yeah...we know.".
CHEERS to nuclear ambitions of the anti-nuclear kind. Shhh…be vewy vewy quiet. America is hunting for a nuclear deal with Iran. It sounds vewy promising:
The future of Iranian nuclear program?
In another sign of progress, [Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister I Forget Go Google It] told The Associated Press that negotiators at the December round of nuclear talks drew up for the first time a catalog outlining areas of potential accord and differing approaches to remaining disputes.
The diplomats said differences still dominate ahead of the next round of Iran-six power talks on Jan. 15 in Geneva. But they suggested that even agreement to create a to-do list would have been difficult previously because of wide gaps between the sides. … Negotiators hope to reach a rough deal by March and a final agreement by June 30.
Among the provisions being discussed: moving excess uranium out of the country, greater access for inspections, and requiring Iran to turn half of their centrifuges into Tilt-a-Whirls.
Pat's boy is
off to prison.
CHEERS to breaking big rocks into little ones. He had it all: money, power, fame, and the backing of Virginia's powerful evangelical overlords. All the stars were aligned for his ascension to, at minimum, the vice president's mansion, where he could fulfill his life's ambition to become as big a conservative asshole on the federal level as he was on the state level. But it was not to be. Bob McDonnell may have dated God, but he married the devil (and also his wife, which adds a creepy bit of bigamy to the mix), and yesterday he was sentenced to
two years at the Guantanamo Bay gulag for corruption. The judge toyed with the idea of letting him off with community service, but there was one little snag: no community wanted him.
CHEERS to one wacky Whig. Happy 214th Birthday to #13 Millard Fillmore, whose beginnings could scarcely be more humble:
After he left office, Fillmore
played the skipper on
"Gilligan's Island."
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He was born in upstate New York in Cayuga County the second of eight children to such an impoverished family that they could not even afford to feed him. His father apprenticed (indentured servant) him to a cloth maker at age fifteen, so brutal it stopped just short of slavery. Millard Fillmore taught himself to read by stealing books. He finally managed to accumulate thirty dollars to pay the obligation to his master and was free.
During his accidental presidency (thanks to Zachary Taylor becoming the first president to succumb to death by chocolate), he sent Commodore Perry to open trade with Japan. He also postponed a civil war by signing the Compromise of 1850, which added California as a free state but also established a fugitive slave law. On top of all that, Queen Victoria once told him he was the most handsome man she'd ever laid eyes on. Moments later, Fillmore unofficially became the first person to swim the English Channel in under five minutes.
JEERS to blowing your top. This has nothing to do with politics other than it involves needless destruction. With the season known as Globalwarmingisahoax in full swing, snow and ice are falling around the country, some of it on top of cars. Golly, what could possibly go wrong besides this….
Heather Rossignol was driving on the Maine Turnpike in Scarborough on Sunday, headed to the Portland jetport, when a huge slab of ice suddenly flew off another car and smashed into her windshield. “I kind of held my breath and ducked a little bit. I didn’t know what to do,” Rossignol said Monday. Shards of glass sprayed her and the passenger seat as her windshield fractured into an opaque web of cracks as her 7-year-old son, David, watched from the back seat. …
Maine State Police say at least 20 cars were damaged by ice that blew off vehicles that weren’t cleared of the ice-encrusted snow left by Sunday’s storm.
If you live where it gets snowy and icy, you can help create a safer driving environment for everyone by remembering this simple catchphrase: "Car top white? Clear it off 'til it's clean and bright because if the white lands on someone's windshield they will unleash on you and your heirs the flame-shooting wrath of specially-bred saber-toothed flying gerbils so numerous that they will blot out the sun for seventy generations." Bonus tip: write it on your hand so you don’t forget.
"[Sniff!] Jeez, did you fart, John?"
"He who smelt it dealt it, George."
CHEERS to the Republic's Big Moment. On January 7, 1789, the
first U.S. Presidential election was held, but there was no popular vote. Instead, each state's appointees to the Electoral College got to vote twice. The top two vote-getters would become president and veep. They picked the stoic hero George Washington and the cranky curmudgeon John Adams. Their first conversation:
"What do we do now?"
"I dunno, I thought you knew."
"Well, I thought you knew."
"Hey...wanna get drunk and pee in Jefferson's desk?"
"Does the Constitution say we can?"
"It doesn't say we can't."
"Fill 'er up, bartender."
The rest, as they say, is history.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 7, 2005
Another fine reminder
of the Bush legacy.
CHEERS to torturing the dungeonmaster. Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, Dick Durbin and even some Republicans smacked Alberto "I vetted Bernard Kerik and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" Gonzales yesterday. The nominee for Attorney General sheepishly played every card in his "I don't recall" deck, and earned a New York Times rebuke
that's worth a look. So Al, is your position as a Bush Yes-man proof that even people who rise from poverty can turn out to be heartless asses? "I don't believe so, but I'd want to get back to you on that."
[1/7/15 Update: Ten years later, Gonzales is a disgraced nobody who pops up every now and then to defend torture, while convicted felon Kerik is still the beltway media's fill-in "expert" on criticizing protesters of heavy-handed police tactics when his buddy Giuliani is away at a grifter's convention.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to U.S. Mint'y freshness. I'm still holding out hope that 2015 might be the year we finally see a trillion-dollar coin minted. But in the meantime we can definitely look forward to seeing five more "America the Beautiful" state quarters this year. The collection, which celebrates our national parks (or as Republicans call them, "drill here, drill now zones"), continues to weave its spell of numismagic on the nation for a sixth year. Here's a sneak peak at this year's lineup---I think you'll agree they're quarterrrrrific:
Homestead National Monument of America in Nebraska
Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana
Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina
Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware
Saratoga National Historical Park in New York
The first release will be Nebraska's
Homestead National Monument early next month. On the front is a representation of the free land that was given away to help settle the west. On the back is an angry mob of teabaggers protesting socialist government handouts.
Oh, and today is a special holiday created to celebrate old rocks. The Senate will mark the day by passing around an x-ray of James Inhofe's head. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"Having major new Cheers and Jeers every day is clearly impossible for Bill in Portland Maine's monkeys with typewriters to keep up with while maintaining quality."
---Marco Arment
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