From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Drunk Donald Trump
The latest edition, with bonus Democratic socialist plaid shirt guy:
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He’s in charge of our emergency hurricane operations. God help us. Again.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, September 12, 2018
Big Long Note: It's surgery day!!! In a few hours I'll be hoisted on a Roman shield and carried into the OR at Mercy Hospital by a team of medical school residents moonlighting as male strippers. I'll change into my formal leopard-print gown (faux leopard print, let's be clear---I ain't no sadistic Trump spawn), and lead the ceremonial Installation of the Epidural. Then a priest will bless my surgical team, all the instruments, the giant OR lights, the floor tiles, the cotton balls, and the machine that goes Ping!...and another priest will come in and bless the priest who just did all the blessing. (Catholic hospitals don’t mess around.)
This will be followed by the traditional counting backwards from ten…nine…eigh…zzzzzzzzzz and then my surgeon will perform two-to-four hours of chainsaw juggling to remove an Everlasting Gobstopper-size ball of cancer from my stomach, all while keeping a dozen plates spinning on poles. Then they'll close me up by cross-stitching a replica of Portland Head Lighthouse across the wound. After that, it's anybody's guess, but we'll post updates via our Facebook page and Twitter feed. We hope to be back in the kiddie pool soon, and I'm bringing you all a special gift: a bedpan-themed snow globe from the Mercy Hospital gift shop
Oh, and please pardon our cheers and jeers punchlines below---we're of a bit of a one-track mind this morning. ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Halloween: 49
Days 'til the "Scandimonium" of Norsk Hostfest in Minot, North Dakota: 14
Percent of independent voters who believe that a President who breaks the law or obstructs an investigation should be indicted while in office, according to a PPP poll: 71%
Gallons of jet fuel that spilled into the St. Mary's River in Decatur, Indiana: 8,000
Number of wind chimes in the newly-unveiled “Tower of Voices” memorial to the victims of Flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, PA on September 11, 2001, one for each victim: 40
Season numbers that Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! began this week: 36 / 35
Date on which my evil twin came out of the shadows and wrote a GBCW diary: 9/12/13
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Hurricane Florence Flooding Forecast Map
More details from The Weather Channel
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 182 (including 5 Tribulation Temples and 1 asshole grifter selling false hope). 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: The dog doctor will see me now...
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CHEERS to starting the day with a double dose of optimism. This is just a nice quote I came across yesterday---via Joe.My.God.---from Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin, who is helping energize the LGBT community to make the midterm blue wave more of a Republican mega-swirlie. This is good:
“I have never seen in my career the kind of grassroots energy and activism like we see today.
I really do believe if you fast forward two years, four years, five years, we will look back at this moment and see it as one of the great awakenings of our democracy.Marginalized communities all across this country are turning out in massive numbers for a host of reasons, but at the forefront of that is who Donald Trump is, and what Donald Trump is doing to our communities.
I have never seen more coordination and more collaboration across social justice movements to stand up to fight back and to turn resistance.”
And on top of that collaboration: the fact that, just as election season is kicking into high gear, Trump's approval has tanked in no less than eight new polls. (Average approval rating: a disastrous 38%.) I don’t believe for a second this guarantees anything (see: gerrymandering,voter suppression, traditionally low Democratic turnout in midterms). But when you have a movement of Republicans urging their own to vote for Democrats, something's up. Speaking of which, I hope my surgeon knows which end of the scalpel is up! Ha ha ha!!!
CHEERS to the big battle in the little state. Just a wild guess, but it probably doesn’t improve turnout when you have your state primary elections on a Wednesday. But I can't really blame Rhode Island for being a little schlumpnutty, what with Connecticut and Massachusetts boxing 'em in and pervy Long Island staring up its tuchus. It looks like the governor's race is the primary election to watch tonight, according to FiveThirty Eight:
More Rhode Islanders [46%] disapprove of Democrat Gina Raimondo than approve of her [44%], and it’s made the governor vulnerable from both the left and the right.
From the left, we have former Secretary of State Matt Brown: a one-time phenom who disappeared from politics after a disastrous 2006 Senate run, now shooting for a comeback 12 years later. He’s doing it by embracing the progressive playbook and hammering Raimondo, a centrist Democrat who made her name on pension reform, as a “Republican in disguise.”
[If] Raimondo survives the primary, she’ll face a tough challenge in the general from the GOP. Its likely nominee (and probably the strongest candidate it could put forth) is Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, who came within 4 points of beating Raimondo in 2014.
Whoever you're rooting for, Rhode Islanders, I hope the candidate doesn’t have to look at you with sad expression tonight and say, "Sorry, I lost my election." Just like I hope my doctor doesn't have to look at me after surgery and say the same thing about her wristwatch! Ha ha ha!!!
CHEERS to the apple falling far from the tree---thank god. You may have heard about Florida teen Seth Owen, who was kicked out of the house by his parents because he's gay (his dad found out when he snooped into his phone) and refused to give in to either forced conversion therapy or a church that spent its Sundays labeling him a sinner. Being on his own---he spent the summer couch surfing---jeopardized his funding for a college education at Georgetown University, so a teacher launched an online fundraiser that quickly netted over $140,000. Yesterday he was a guest on Ellen to explain what he's doing with the extra money, plus the bonus donation one of the show's sponsors kicked in. As you can see, he’s literally someone to look up to...
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I think he’s got a bright future ahead of him. And speaking of donations, I finally filled out an "advanced directive" yesterday in anticipation of today's surgery, and I decided to donate my organs. My heart, pancreas and kidneys will go to whoever needs them immediately, and my liver will be enshrined in the Bacardi Hall of Fame. Ha ha ha!!!
JEERS to the human snot rag. Lest we forget, eight years ago today Newton Leroy Gingrich put on a display of the class and charm that makes him one of America's most admired leaders since, oh, the First of Never. See if you can detect the subtle undertones in his pronouncement...
"What if [President Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?" Gingrich asks.
"That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."
"This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president," Gingrich tells us.
Fearless prediction: tomorrow when I’m under the knife, my surgical team will take one look inside and say, “That’s ugly. But not as ugly as Newt Gingrich!” Ha ha ha!!!
CHEERS to that sneaky feeling we're not alone. The universe is turning out to be as noisy as a sports bar. Thanks to incredibly precise listening devices using advanced tin horn technology, radio signals are rolling our way faster than the lies rolling off Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ tongue during a press gaggle. So far the only thing we know for sure after deciphering these signals is that Orgsplort's "Igblot Mau Blook" has been #1 on Myyyyyyyyzk's Top 40 Countdown for 20 consecutive gigaseconds:
Scientists have used artificial intelligence to uncover 72 previously undiscovered fast radio bursts (FRBs)—mysterious space signals that travel billions of light years through space and flash for just a fraction of a second—the alien-hunting Breakthrough Listen project has reported.
Nobody knows the origin of these elusive, quick-fire signals, but researchers have speculated that some of them come from neutron stars sitting near black holes, interstellar clouds or nebulas. Some even think they might be a sign of alien life. Most FRBs are only detected once, but one---FRB 121102---has bleeped again and again.
Researchers with Breakthrough Listen—a program supported by scientists like the late Stephen Hawking—used the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to probe the repeating FRB back in August 2017. Vishal Gajjar, of UC Berkeley, and his team initially found 21 bursts from a galaxy three billion years away in data gathered over a five-hour period.
You know who else is poised to receive a non-stop stream of communication bursts? The nursing station at the end of my call button. Ha ha ha!!!
CHEERS to the ultimate spin machine. Don’t forget to hug your hard drive---this week marks the the 62nd birthday of the IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control), the first computer to ship with a hard drive:
The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-oxide-coated disks--each of them a pizza-size 24 inches--was 5 megabytes. That's not quite enough to hold two MP3 copies ofElvis Presley's "Hound Dog."
"It was about the size of two large refrigerators, about as tall as a person stands, and though it used vacuum tubes, it was always running," recalls Jim Porter, who worked at Crown Zellerbach in San Francisco in the mid-'50s and would proudly take people to the basement to see what he claims was the very first unit delivered by IBM."It really turned the tide [in the Information Age]," he says.
Here’s the original promotional film for it. “Another business service of tomorrow made possible today by IBM...”
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You know what’ll be a really “hard drive” during my stay in the hospital? Rounding those corners at 35mph during the gurney races! Ha ha ha!!!
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 12, 2008
JEERS to liars in lipstick. Republican veep nominee Sarah Palin gave her first media interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson, who defied expectations and actually challenged her. (Think Progress has a summary of her biggest gaffes on national security here.) Prediction: the McCain campaign will cancel the vice presidential debate due to a "scheduling conflict." If they're smart.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the last Lone Star State governor who had more than two brain cells to rub together. Former governor Ann Richards---whose reelection campaign was thwarted in part by Karl Rove's smear tactics ("I'm not saying she's a lesbian, but…")---died twelve years ago tomorrow, dammit. Age 73. She mulled her epitaph back in '95:
"I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone.'"
As her headstone shows, she got her wish. (Although it must be said that her record on the death penalty, while not nearly as sadistic or prolific as her successors', is the worst of the few blots on her record.) Molly Ivins and Richards became close friends---you can read Molly's tribute here. In January, 1995 she wrote this after Richards lost to George W. Whatsizface:
Richards said in a farewell interview with the press corps that if she'd known she was going to be a one-term governor, she would have "raised more hell."
I wish she had.
But these are relatively minor quibbles with what is, overall, a distinguished record.
My political memory of Texas goes back to Allan Shivers, and I know that in that time we have not had a governor who worked nearly as hard as Ann Richards. Who was nearly as gracious as Richards. Who made more good appointments than Richards. Who set a higher standard of honesty than Richards. [...]
What our notoriously weak governors actually do is set a tone for the state. So let it be recorded that for four brief shining years, Ann Richards gave the joint some class. Good on ya, Annie.
Today Annie's daughter, Cecile Richards, is creating her own distinguished---and let's toss in heroic---legacy on the front lines in the fight for women's abortion rights, most recently as president of Planned Parenthood. A chip off the old block.
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
In further proof that Cheers and Jeers is stranger than outer space, scientists have discovered what they believe to be three new species of snailfish nearly 25,000 feet below the kiddie pool's surface. The translucent, scaleless creatures look like ghosts that accidentally entered our world through some kind of rift in the space-time continuum.
---Gizmodo
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