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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Thy Mouth Runneth Amok
I love the end of the year. It's a time when we can't help but collectively start wrapping up the events of the previous twelve months in neat little boxes: Best, Worst, Top, Bottom, The Meaning of it All, and yadda yadda. Personally, I'm a fan of quotes, and Yale associate librarian Fred Shapiro has released his 12th annual Top 10 list. Some of his picks, which “are famous or revealing of the spirit of the times---not necessarily eloquent or admirable”:
"Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts."
---Kellyanne Conway on Meet the Press
"Alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods."
---Chuck Todd’s response
"I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job. I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off."
---Donald Trump, as reported by the N.Y. Times, explaining the firing of FBI Director James Comey to visiting Russian officials
"With respect to any women who have made allegations on the record, Mr. Weinstein believes that all of these relationships were consensual."
---Sallie Hofmeister, spokeswoman for Harvey Weinstein
"Make our planet great again."
---French president Emmanuel Macron, on the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. His MOPGA program now puts U.S. climate scientists on France’s payroll to continue their work for as long as Trump remains president.
Among Shapiro’s runners-up for this year, according to an interview he gave with NPR:
“I will refer back to Senator Enzi and the school he is talking about in Wyoming. I think probably there, I would imagine there is probably a gun in a school to protect from potential grizzlies.”
---Betsy DeVos, on why guns have a place in schools, during her confirmation hearings
“I have to tell you, it's an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew health care could be so complicated."
---Trump the Dotard
Personally, my favorite 2017 quote is by anyone who says out loud: “Thank god this fucking year is almost over.”
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Note: As of this morning you may now officially start walking in a winter wonderland. Wear sturdy shoes, always pass slower walkers on the left, and watch out for Parson Brown and his flying elbows. ---Dept. of Public Safety
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: 26
Days 'til the San Antonio Coffee Festival: 17
Minimum number of dead from the Amtrak train derailment in Washington state: 3
Percent of Americans who prefer Democrats and Republicans, respectively, to control Congress, according to a new Wall Street Journal poll: 50%, 39%
Percent of Trump’s nominees for science-related positions who don’t have a masters or doctorate in a science-related field, according to AP: 60%
Number of U.S. senators who are in their 80s: 8
Weekend worldwide haul for Star Wars: The Last Jedi: $450 million
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 187 (including 4 satanisms and 10 cursed items from your house that are inviting in demons). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Well that’s taking it a bit literally…
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CHEERS to the Great Richmond Earthquake of Twenty Seventeen. Virginia’s political pillars shook yesterday as the greatest “Why Your Vote Matters” story of the last hundred years played out in the House of Delegates. After Democrats clobbered their opponents last month, Republican control of the lower chamber was down to a single recount. Yesterday that recount was completed. The Democrat won. By one vote:
Shelly Simonds beat three-term incumbent Republican Del. David Yancey in the 94th District in Newport News, 11,608 to 11,607, in a dramatic hours-long recount that ended only after the precinct ballots were exhausted and provisional ballots were examined.
The recounted votes still must be certified by a court on Wednesday, although officials said they expected that no ballots would be challenged. Simonds, a school board member, had initially appeared to lose November's election by just 10 votes. […]
The Republicans' commanding 66-34 majority in the House plummeted to a 51-49 edge. It's now split 50-50 with Simonds' apparent win.
For you decimal hounds, that one vote equals 0.00430756 percent of the votes cast. Trump said we’d get bored with all the winning. I beg to differ.
JEERS to GOP self-immolation. Well, they did it. By the slimmest of majorities, Republicans robbed the middle class in broad daylight yesterday, hauling out their legislative bulldozers to shift a massive amount of wealth up to the top 1 percent:
The Joint Committee on Taxation, the official Congressional scorekeeper, estimates every income group would receive an average tax cut next year. But the JCT also found taxes would go up for lower incomes over time, in part because fewer eligible taxpayers would choose to receive health care subsidies through the ACA.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, which did not factor in the health care changes, estimated that 80 percent of taxpayers would see a tax cut in 2018 and 4.8 percent see a tax increase, with many low-income households seeing little change either way. But the portion of taxpayers facing a tax increase would rise to 53.4 percent in 2027, when the bill's temporary tax breaks expire.
Also: with the repeal of the ACA mandate, a minimum of 13 million people---I will be among them---will see their health insurance premiums become too expensive to afford. Plus I think they just opened the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, and god knows what else is stuck in that thing. So here we are---the evil deed is done. Republicans did what Republicans do. And in 320 days---November 6, mark it down---Democrats and independents will go to the polls in near-presidential-year numbers and deliver a shellacking to the party that thought fucking their constituents in the wallet was a neat idea. So that’s what we focus on. And since I have no idea how to end this, I give you dancing Jedi cat:
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P.S. The House has to vote again today because they fucked up yesterday. So what else is new?
CHEERS to legal eagles vs. legal arthritic buzzards with slow brains. The fake right-wing “freakout” over independent counsel Robert Mueller’s legal acquisition of Trump transition-team emails was so badly staged that it may just earn Fox a 2017 Golden Raspberry nomination for worst performance by a fake news network. Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall reminds us again that one team has the upper hand in this Russiagate investigation, and it ain’t Trump’s:
Behind the new faux controversy over Mueller getting Trump transition emails is a key and probably too little discussed aspect of the Russia story: Mueller’s team has some of the most accomplished and aggressive prosecutors and legal minds of their generation. They’re facing off against a team of has-beens, 3rd or 4th rate lawyers and in some cases simple incompetents. Why? Because Trump values sycophancy above competence and because none of the top lawyers were willing to work for him. […]
[T]he Trump team appears to have been caught totally off guard by developments they likely should have had at least some inkling of. They’re upset because they didn’t do their homework on the legal status of those emails. … I suspect they now fear (no doubt rightly) that Trump officials lied during their interviews with the Special Counsel’s office and the investigators already had the emails that proved they were lying. That’s a real sinking feeling for everyone involved.
Now available in the C&J gift shop: anchors suitable for throwing at floundering Republicans. (Now with free gift wrapping through Friday.)
CHEERS and JEERS to dashing through the airspace corridors in a 10 20 35 45-dollars-per-bag sardine can. Good news: holiday traffic is expected to be up this year, meaning more of us are in a traveling mood. Bad news: if you're out in it, it's gonna suck tailpipe:
AAA forecasts 107.3 million Americans will take to planes, trains, automobiles and other modes of transportation during the year-end holiday period from Saturday, Dec. 23 through Monday, Jan. 1. This will be the highest year-end travel volume on record.
Automobiles: The majority of travelers---97.4 million---will hit the road (a 3 percent year-over-year increase).
Planes: 6.4 million people will travel by air, a 4.1 percent increase and the fourth year of consecutive air travel volume increases.
Trains, Buses, Rails and Cruise Ships: Travel across these sectors will increase by 2.2 percent to 3.6 million.
Based on historical and recent travel trends, INRIX expects drivers will experience the greatest amount of congestion before the holiday week---on Wednesday, Dec. 20 and Thursday, Dec. 21---in the late afternoon as commuters leave work early and mix with holiday travelers.
AAA also predicts that the number of people not traveling this year will equal the number of people being silently loathed by the number of people who are.
CHEERS??? To our new alien overlords. Over the weekend we learned that former Senator Harry Reid pushed to get funding for a super-secret “Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program” that would track and catalog UFOs that were trying to fly in and either steal all our precious bodily fluids or open a musical production of Alien in Branson, Missouri (with, naturally, an eye on Broadway). Now some footage has come out showing Navy planes intercepting a flying saucer that’s totally for reals. Seriously, this should make us all either a little bit giddy or a little bit nervous:
Instead of following the usual script with us taking them to our leader, I think we should instead have them take our leader to their leader. And while he’s gone we can figure out what the title of their holy book, “To Serve Man,” means.
CHEERS to territorial irony. On this date 214 years ago, the Louisiana Purchase was completed (though the formal transfer happened 10 days later) in a New Orleans ceremony with representatives of Napoleon's administration. Basically what happened was...
Napoleon's plans to re-establish France in the New World were unraveling.
The French army sent to suppress a rebellion by slaves and free blacks in the sugar-rich colony of Saint Domingue (present-day Haiti) had been decimated by yellow fever, and a new war with Britain seemed inevitable. France's minister of finance, François de Barbé-Marbois, who had always doubted Louisiana's worth, counseled Napoleon that Louisiana would be less valuable without Saint Domingue and, in the event of war, the territory would likely be taken by the British from Canada.
France could not afford to send forces to occupy the entire Mississippi Valley, so why not abandon the idea of empire in America and sell the territory to the United States?
Why not, indeed. The land mass encompasses parts of Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Wyoming, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Nebraska. Imagine that---all "red" states who owe their existence to the kindness of…France. Sacre bleu, pard'ner!
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 20, 2007
JEERS to not-so-comforting words. George W. Bush says there's no need to worry about the economy. "Everything's fine, just fine. Nothing to see here. Move along---keep shopping!" Mr.Life Savings...meet Mr. Mattress.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to wacko wassailers. In the interest of peace and unity during this festive time of year, I’ve personally asked Tony Perkins and the staff at the Family Research Council to lead us in a rousing rendition of Deck the Halls. Happily they accepted. And a' one and a' two...
"Deck the halls with boughs of holly
Fa la la la la la la la la
Tis the season to be jolly
Fa la la la la la la la la
Don we now our.…
Our…
Our…
Oh, very funny. Ha ha ha..."
[ker-SLAM!]
Rats. They left without taking their coal.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Hey, let’s make fun of Bill in Portland Maine’s bad face! The genetic lottery, he did not win it!
---Wonkette
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