From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
C&J Theater: A Play in One Act
Up Curtain
[Scene: Pennsylvania Avenue on a bright, sunny day]
A mother and her child stand at the curb, waving as a procession crosses from stage LEFT to stage RIGHT as follows:
[Jeeps equipped with rear-mounted machine guns]
[A squad of mine-sweeping APCs]
[A platoon of Marching sharpshooters]
[Humvees armed with surface to air missile launchers]
[Stryker armored personnel carriers]
[Howitzers towed by M939 5-ton trucks]
[A squadron of F-16s fly overhead: the child giggles as the wind in their wake musses her hair and tickles her nose]
[Mobile Army Surgical Unit vehicles]
[M1 Abrams tanks: the child covers her ears with giddy glee as they pass]
[Second platoon of marching sharpshooters]
Child: Mommy, Mommy! Pwesident Twump's gweat big military pawade is the best thing I’ve evuh seen in my whoooole life!!!
Mother (chuckling): No, dear. That's just Scott Pruitt on his way to lunch.
Down curtain
Just toss my Tony onto the pile with all the other ones behind the tool shed.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, April 12, 2018
Note: We’re proud to say that the C&J kiddie pool has never been raided by the federal government. Well, except for that one time they raided our fridge and ended up in the hospital with botulism. The raids stopped after that.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of the Memorial Day weekend: 43
Days 'til Zehnder’s 24th annual Ragtime Festival in Frankenmuth, Michigan: 6
Expected year when the annual deficit will soar above $1 trillion, thanks to the handiwork of the GOP deficit hawks, according to the CBO: 2020
Expected amount that will be piled onto the overall debt thanks to the Republican daylight robbery of the middle class posing as a middle-class tax cut: $2 trillion
Student enrollment at for-profit colleges in 2017, down 69,000 from 2016, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center: 901,000
Percent of Catholics who say they’ve been to church once in the past week, down from the 75% who said they had back in 1955, according to Gallup: 39%
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
In one totally berserker speech, House Speaker Newt Gingrich actually claimed poor people were "coaching" their children to "act crazy" so they could obtain "crazy money" and then beating the children if they didn’t get it. There is no evidence whatever for this insane charge. Try to get a three-year-old to fake cerebral palsy sometime.
Gingrich actually implied that Congress was justified in cutting SSI [Supplemental Security Income] as a way of ending child abuse. The sheer hideousness of the insult to the poor families who care so devotedly for their handicapped children is beyond my ability to describe. Gingrich would rather dump them into state hospitals---where their lives are often without any joy, and, incidentally, cost us a lot more money---than pay their own families a pittance to care for them.
---September, 1998
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Wiener dog walk!!!
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CHEERS to #40. No, not Ronald Reagan. Paul Ryan, who becomes House member#40 to announce he’s fleeing the scene of his crimes---the daylight robbery of the middle class and tact approval of Russia’s hijacking of the 2016 election---to spend more time with whatever hedge fund outfit hires him to turn around and go back and lobby congressmen in the House. He’ll continue to perfunctorily warm his seat and collect a paycheck until January, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi will call in every Merry Maids van within a hundred miles to clean up the mess and try to get rid of the stink. But in all seriousness, he’ll be missed. By no one.
P.S. And Congressman Dennis Ross (R-FL) becomes rat #41 to flee the sinking ship. Y’know, I’m starting to sense a pattern here.
JEERS to Germany's great shame. Today is International Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day. The internationally recognized date for the solemn occasion was set in 1951. It corresponds to the 27th day of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar and marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In Hebrew, Holocaust Remembrance Day is called Yom Hashoah. We'll mark the occasion as we always do---by not joking about it.
JEERS to opening a can of whupass that would end very badly for the can openers. On April 12, 1861, after seven states and the territory of Arizona seceded from the Union (six other states would follow), Confederate troops fired cannons at Fort Sumter and started the Civil War, a conflict that would kill or maim over a million people. And for what cause? So that the South could continue owning human beings for slave labor. Literally any other cause would have been more worthwhile, but no…they had to go with slavery.
Which brings us to today’s boring correction. Over the weekend I thought I’d take a peek at the Daughters of the Confederacy web site, and see how they’re justifying their existence these days. They’re the outfit that was deemed wholesome and proper enough (daughters---who doesn’t love daughters?) to be the conduit for erecting hundreds and hundreds of pro-confederacy statues throughout the south, some of which have been pulled down recently. In response to that, and also the rise of confederate flag-waving racists in the wake of Trump’s election, they issued a statement that sounds perfectly reasonable, except for a huge piece of whitewashing that they use to justify keeping their lights on:
The United Daughters of the Confederacy totally denounces any individual or group that promotes racial divisiveness or white supremacy. And we call on these people to cease using Confederate symbols for their abhorrent and reprehensible purposes.
We are saddened that some people find anything connected with the Confederacy to be offensive. Our Confederate ancestors were and are Americans.
Bzzt!!! Wrong! One more time, and I’ll say it slow so they can understand: “Our” confederate ancestors said “f*ck you” to the United States of America, formed their own country, and, in a textbook definition of treason, started a four-year-long war 157 years ago today during which their goal was to defeat the Americans, destroy America, and turn us all (except the black people, who would remain slaves) into---say it with me---definitely-not-American Confederates. If they had any decency, they’d scrap everything on their site and replace it with two words: WE’RE SORRY. I’m not holding my breath.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. Evan Hurst at Wonkette asks: Wait, Trump LIED His Spray-Tanned Nuts Off About James Comey? How Could That BEEEEE?
Dumbfuckery.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
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JEERS to idle hands. Let’s check in with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and see all the cases director Mick Mulvaney is taking on to protect consumers from waste, fraud and abuse:
Golly, I hope he doesn’t break a nail.
JEERS to cerebral hemorrhages. They suck. Franklin Roosevelt died of one 73 years ago today down in Warm Springs, Georgia. His private Secretary Grace Tully recounts what happened here. A snip:
The shock was unexpected and the actuality of the event was outside belief.
Without a word or a glance toward the others present, I walked into the bedroom, leaned over and kissed the President lightly on the forehead. Then I walked out on the porch and stood wordless and tearless. In my heart were prayers and, finally, in my mind came thoughts, a flood of them drawn from seventeen years of acquaintance, close association and reverent admiration. Through them, one recurred constantly---that the Boss had always shunned emotionalism and that I must, for the immediate present at least, behave in his pattern.
I did, for a matter of hours.
While FDR's generation got a rendezvous with destiny, ours got a rendezvous with a fuckup named Dubya and, eight years later, another fuckup named Trump, and we'll be paying for it the rest of our lives---thanks a lot, fate. Now comb your hair and go pay your respects. As always, regards to Eleanor.
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Ten years ago in C&J: April 12, 2008
JEERS to White Knuckle Airlines. Due to a failure of the government agency in charge of enforcing airline safety inspections to actually, y'know, enforce airline safety inspections, thousands of flights have been cancelled until further notice. Starting today, those passengers will be taken to their destination by airline employees pulling rickshaws. Scuba gear will be provided for international travelers. Thank you and have a nice day.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to U.S. Mint-y freshness. Hooray! The second of the 2018 "America the Beautiful" state quarter series has seen the light of day. The latest in the collection, which celebrates our national parks (or as Republicans call them, "drill here, drill now zones"), pays tribute to the great state of Wisconsin. It was sculpted by Ranata Gordon, and depicts “depicts the sea caves at Devils Island with the lighthouse in the background and a kayaker paddling in the foreground.” It got a rousing welcome party yesterday in Red Cliff. Here’s a look at its creation…
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The new state quarter is a lot like badger Paul Ryan’s legacy as he prepares to flee the House: thin, lightweight, and practically worthless.
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:
Once again, Cheers and Jeers tops the list of the 12 "dirtiest" kiddie pools, according to the Environmental Working Group.
---CNN
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