Hispanic Federation Fund for Puerto Rico Relief Link
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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
My New Year’s Resolutions (the top tier, anyway)
» I shall change my meditation mantra from “Ooohm” to “Noooovember siiiixth.”
» I shall train a platoon of squirrels to parachute into the White House and chew through the blue wire in Trump’s “football” so he can’t start a nuclear war. Or…wait, is it the blue wire or the green wire?
» I shall be twice as gobsmacked by whatever genius missions NASA carries out this year.
» I shall help TSA screeners by wearing nothing but my patriotism while traveling.
» I shall use The Force to make Sarah Huckabee-Sanders end random sentences during her press briefings with “Buggity boo!”
» I shall finally relent to the ravages of age and allow Boy Scouts to help me cross the street.
» I shall write more letters to the editor and communicate with my elected representatives more. Adding: I shall use asterisks in place of the “u” when dropping f-bombs.
» I shall peacefully resolve Daily Kos pie fights with my superior negotiating and arbitration skills. Just as soon as we resolve our 15-year pie fight on the shape of the negotiating table.
» I shall remind myself daily that whatever horrible things Republicans do, Democrats can eventually undo.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Note: Massive blizzard hitting the east coast today. If you’re in the strike zone of the “bomb cyclone,” please follow the proper safety procedure: make sure your neighborhood squirrels have plenty of cashews, blankets and propane first, then stock up on your own emergency needs. The cashews are really especially important. Thank you.
---The definitely HUMAN manager and not a bunch of squirrels standing on top of each other in a raincoat trying to look like a human manager
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Peculiar People Day: 6
Days 'til the Florida Manatee Festival in Crystal River: 9
Percent chance that the lunatic who killed one deputy and wounded four others in Denver was a fan of Breitbart News and other neo-Nazi outfits: 100%
Pounds of trash the average American and the average Mainer, respectively, throws out every year, according to the EPA’s latest report: 1,606 / 1,140
Amount by which Mainers increased our food composting between 2014 and 2015: 68%
Percent of Americans who say they make new years resolutions: 44%
Final regular season record of the New England Patriots: 13-3
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Oh boy! Starting the year off briskly, lending it such tone already, such cachet, such je ne sais quoi---those Republicans are so special, aren't they? Their first move, first rat out of the trap, top priority: lower ethics standards. Yessiree, this 2005 is going to be quite a year.
Let's put that to a vote. Many problems before us---Iraq, a Social Security "crisis," a real health care crisis, world terrorism, our international reputation possibly at its lowest ever ... who is in favor of lowering ethics standards first? Who thinks ethics standards in Washington are too high? […]
Now, I'm not going to conclude that Fascism Is Upon Us just because we have an administration that not only can't find the Constitution but apparently doesn't know there is one. Too early in the year for that. Long way to go. Got to save your indignation. But it is unpleasantly reminiscent of Watergate, isn't it? That's what we're looking at here, folks---not just constitutional deafness, but moral turp as well. All we need is one bag job and an alert night security man.
---January 2005
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Puppy Pic of the Day: The three stages of curiosity…
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CHEERS to the civil war of 2018. The Republican hive of scum and villainy got a good kick yesterday, as details from Michael Wolff’s new book (Fire and Fury) about life in the Trump White House exploded across every social media platform and then some. This is going to leave marks, bruises, craters, and maybe even Robert Mueller’s shoe prints on a few notable backsides:
Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president’s son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”, according to an explosive new book seen by the Guardian.
Bannon, speaking to author Michael Wolff, warned that the investigation into alleged collusion with the Kremlin will focus on money laundering and predicted: “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.” […]
“You realise where this is going,” he is quoted as saying. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner.”
Which brings us to today’s pro stock tip: move every dime you have into any publicly-traded company that sells popcorn. And tell your broker you’re soon gonna need a bigger vault.
CHEERS to the number “2.” Look at that spindly little digit, sittin’ there all lonely and pathetic. That’s what the Republican majority in the Senate has gotten whittled down to, thanks to yesterday’s swearing in of Democrat Doug Jones, the civil rights attorney who stepped over the body of faceplant victim Roy Moore and crossed the finish line to win the seat formerly occupied by Jeff Sessions:
Vice President Joe Biden, a longtime friend of Jones, escorted him.
Jones told reporters on Wednesday that he "loves" that Biden was joining him for the ceremony.
"The fact that he's been here for a long time. He's been here many years himself so it's going to be a special day," said Jones.
Jones later said that it "feels great" to be a Senator and that he was "very honored, humbled to be here."
Also yesterday, former Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith took the oath, replacing Al Franken (who assures us we haven’t heard the last of him). She plans to run in a special election in November for the remainder of Franken’s term, and her GOP challenger may be the Bible-thumping, corn dog-sucking conservative anti-vaxxer wife of a closeted homosexual. And this is why I sometimes come close to accepting Jesus Christ as my lord and savior: I love his sense of humor.
CHEERS to the---[yawn]---demon weed. With a record number of Americans giving recreational pot use the thumbs-up (it’s well over 60 percent now according to Gallup), and with supplies so plentiful that everyone was using it anyway, it’s not much of a surprise that California’s new pot law went into effect Monday with more of a shrug than a “Huhhhuhhhhuhuh.” Like here in Maine, which legalized it last year, it’s more of a nuts and bolts thing: how the industry is going to operate, how it’s going to be taxed and regulated, where shops can open and where they can’t, and penalties for using it like an idiot. Click here for the basics:
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Have fun chillin’ out. But be smart about it and don’t give Jeff Sessions a reason to come barging in like a Keebler elf in a china shop. Fastest buzzkill known to man.
CHEERS to 84,904 square miles of madcap fun. Happy 121st Birthday to Utah---aka the "Beehive State"---which entered the union on January 4th, 1896. The state animal is the Rocky Mountain Elk. The stategem is topaz. The state bird is, oddly, the California Sea Gull. And the state fossil is, of course, Orrin Hatch.
JEERS to stupid old Republicans. One of the reasons we were so happy to ring in the new year up here was because 2018 will be the last year that Maine’s governor, Paul LePage, will be stinking up the state house with his obnoxious brand of ignorance, cruelty, racism, sexism, homophobia, promotion of violence, and outright paranoia. Thanks to a third-party spoiler, our otherwise glorious state was subjected to eight years during which we just wanted to dive under the covers out of embarrassment. Behold the latest “Haw Haw, I Got Her Good” moment from Governor Anklebiter:
A high school student who wrote to Gov. Paul LePage because she was concerned about the loss of net neutrality received a handwritten response from the governor last week in which he told her to “pick up a book and read!” […]
[Hope] Osgood’s first impression was that his comment was snarky. “I’m only 16 years old, I’ve only talked to so many people,” she said. “I just thought it was rude. I didn’t know how to react to that. I’m a kid.”
“With books, there’s a certain limitation,” she said. “With the old books, I don’t want to say that’s wrong, but it’s not updated information. In my generation, we don’t pay attention to books. Our access is at our fingertips on our technology.”
Osgood showed the letter to her grandfather, Rick Osgood, a LePage supporter who didn’t like the tone of the governor’s response. … “I think it’s mighty rude,” he said.
370 days and counting. Not that we’re counting.
JEERS to expectations vs. reality. For years I’ve been faithfully sending money every month to a Nigerian prince I met by email who promised me that one day I would be rewarded with---oh, let’s see---a judgeship, a mansion, a Porsche, an honorary doctorate, a stake in a diamond mine (sensibly sourced, he assured me), pallets of his mom’s cash, and as much candy corn as I can stuff in my pockets. And I’m guessing that you, too, have your own Nigerian prince through a similar arrangement. Well, I just want to let you know that he may not be quite what you expect, because the Slidell, Louisiana police just gave me a good look at mine:
I was expecting more medals. They must be at the cleaners. With his crown.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 4, 2008
CHEERS and JEERS to the bottom line. All this Iowa caucus hoo-ha was a combination of staged media events, wild speculation,the framing of a perfectly lovely state as a bunch of backwoods yokels sitting in greasy diners watching their beards grow, and results based on a whopping ten percent of voters picking the Democrat (Obama) and five percent choosing the Republican (H’yuckabee). But it all went smoothly and peaceably and now Americans are actually paying attention. Well, at least until American Idol starts back up.
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And just one more…
CHEERS and JEERS to the speech spankers. Right on schedule, Lake Superior State University's annual "banished word list" popped up on the scene to give the cable news anchors a "kicker" story over which to hone their phony-chuckling skills. Sure, we're happy to see terms like "Let me ask you this," "drill down" and "onboarding/offboarding" on the list. But C&J---thin-skinned as we are---will never shake the bitterness that infused our lives on that dark day in 2005 when they went off the linguistic deep end:
BLOG – and its variations,including blogger, blogged, blogging, blogosphere. Many who nominated it were unsure of the meaning. Sounds like something your mother would slap you for saying.
"Sounds like a Viking’s drink that’s better than grog, or a technique to kill a frog." Teri Vaughn, Anaheim, Calif.
"Maybe it’s something that would be stuck in my toilet." – Adrian Whittaker, Dundalk, Ontario.
"I think the words ‘journal’ and ‘diary’ need to come back." – T. J. Allen, Shreveport, La.
So, for the thirteenth year in a row (and until they apologize for being such meanies), C&J humbly keeps these four words on its own banished list: Lake Superior State University.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Twitter Briefly Blocked Sheriff David Clarke After He Called for Media to ‘TASTE BILL IN PORTLAND MAINE’S KIDDIE POOL WATER’
---Mediaite
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