From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
DoD butterfingers...again???
WASHINGTON—In what they described as one of the U.S. military's "most serious" security breaches to date, Pentagon officials acknowledged Friday that they could not confirm the whereabouts of a LaCie d2 Quadra external hard drive containing nearly 500 gigabytes of crucial materials, including all their favorite movies and several seasons of Entourage. "It could take months to recover the critical information we have lost," announced Adm. Michael Mullen, adding that the hard drive represents nearly 200 man-hours of confidential downloads. "All we've got left now is Brig. Gen. Nowak's DVD boxed set of The Lord Of The Rings and YouTube." The department's inspector general has vowed a full investigation, and military police have tightened security around other stores of highly sensitive data, including the file cabinet with all the takeout menus.
---The Onion.
I thought it was big of Senator John McCain to loan them his VHS copy of Mamma Mia. But god help 'em if they fail to return it.
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, August 3, 2009
Note: Over on D Street there's a secret society that meets every day to discuss how crazy the C Streeters are. But sources say the hookers there aren’t nearly as choice.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Barack Obama's birthday: 1
Days `til the 28th annual Maine Antiques Festival in Union: 4
Decline in the number of medical school graduates going into pediatrics as they opt for more lucrative specialties: -50%
Average salary of a pediatric physician: $170,000
Average salary of an orthopedic surgeon: $480,000
(Source: The Week)
Number of coup attempts Corazon Aquino beat back when she was President of the Philippines: 7
(Source: USA Today)
Average rainfall for July in Portland, Maine, and the actual rainfall for July, 2009: 3.32", 8.6"
(Source: National Weather Service in Grey, Maine)
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And now..."Pimping Pittsburgh!"
Brought to you by the Netroots Nation Convention August 13-16:
>>The fountain at Point State Park, right at the tip of the golden triangle (downtown Pittsburgh) is fed by a glacial formation and sprays 6,000 gallons per minute.
>> Mr Yuk was created at the Poison Center at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh after research indicated that the skull and crossbones previously used to identify poisons had little meaning to children who equate the symbol with exciting things like pirates and adventure.
>> In 1909 the first baseball stadium, Forbes Field, was built in Pittsburgh, followed soon by similar stadiums in Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, and New York.
>> The first theater in the world devoted to the exhibition of motion pictures was the "Nickelodeon," opened by Harry Davis on Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh.
---From Pittsburgh.about.com
10 days and counting. And Specter's getting nervous.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Yeah, but yer still gonna want a pre-nup.
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CHEERS to today's edition of As the Catheter Turns. Conservative scaremonger Jonah Goldberg shoots blanks at the Democratic health care plan:
Under [Obama's] plan, an official body---staffed with government doctors, actuaries, economists and other experts---will determine which health-care treatments, procedures and remedies are cost-effective and which are not. Then it will decide which ones will get paid for, and which won't. Would a 70-year-old woman be able to get a hip replacement, or would that not be considered a wise allocation of resources? Would a 50-year-old man not be permitted an expensive test his doctor wants if the rules say the cheaper, less thorough one is sufficient? The Democrats call this "cost-controls." But for the patient and the doctor, it's plain old rationing.
And then Paul Krugman lays him low:
[P]rivate markets for health insurance, left to their own devices, work very badly: insurers deny as many claims as possible, and they also try to avoid covering people who are likely to need care. Horror stories are legion: the insurance company that refused to pay for urgently needed cancer surgery because of questions about the patient’s acne treatment; the healthy young woman denied coverage because she briefly saw a psychologist after breaking up with her boyfriend.
And in their efforts to avoid "medical losses," the industry term for paying medical bills, insurers spend much of the money taken in through premiums not on medical treatment, but on "underwriting"---screening out people likely to make insurance claims. In the individual insurance market, where people buy insurance directly rather than getting it through their employers, so much money goes into underwriting and other expenses that only around 70 cents of each premium dollar actually goes to care.
Will Goldberg's insurance company approve his treatment for self-inflicted assholery? Or will they inform him that, sorry, it's a pre-condition since he's been one for too long? Join us tomorrow when Mr. Krugman exclaims, "It kisses the Nobel or it gets the hose," on As the Catheter Turns.
JEERS to retirement deferment. The phenomenon of grandparents competing for the same jobs as their grandkids is well on its way to becoming a traditional American family value:
The numbers are stark. An April survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that 53 percent of American workers have put away less than $25,000 in retirement savings and investments. That figure doesn’t include home equity and the lump sum value of pension plans. Some 20 percent said they had saved less than $1,000.
"There is just absolutely no doubt that this financial gap---between what employees are going to have, at whatever retirement age you pick, and what they’re going to need just to meet basic retirement expenses plus uninsured medical costs---is going to be very, very large," said Jack VanDerhei, research director at the EBRI, a private, nonpartisan research group.
I guess that explains the Department of Labor's new slogan: "The family that cleans fry vats together, sticks together." (That would look lovely on a cross-stitch sampler.)
CHEERS to the legacy of Cory Aquino. But jeers to me for asking myself, upon hearing of her death at 76, "She's not the one with all the shoes, is she?" Hardly, Bill, you idiot. But she left behind some big ones to fill:
In the face of doubts about her ability to govern she swiftly set about dismantling the worst excesses of the Marcos regime. She released political prisoners, reinstated habeas corpus and forced a number of pro-Marcos judges and generals to resign.
Despite her personal popularity, her government faced a series of coup attempts from Marcos loyalists and disgruntled military officers and she decided not to run for a second term in 1992. She remained active in politics and played a major role in the ousting of President Joseph Estrada in 2001 and his replacement by Gloria Arroyo.
Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 (she lost to Elie Wiesel) she subsequently received a number of awards and citations for championing democracy and human rights.
She gets a penthouse suite upstairs for this gem: "I concede that I cannot match Mr. Marcos when it comes to experience. I admit that I have no experience in cheating, stealing, lying or assassinating political opponents." Which explains why Karl Rove never invited her over for tea.
CHEERS to reality-based pioneers. Today is John T. Scopes's 109th birthday. He's the Tennessee high school teacher who was taken to court (the famous Scopes Monkey trial) for teaching evolution in class. His gravestone labels him "A Man of Courage"---the understatement of the century. Anyway, pay your respects here. It'll drive the fundamentalist wackos crazy.
P.S. Speaking of monkey business, here's today's Really Obvious Observation: If you call a black man a "banana-eating jungle monkey," and then you swear you're not a racist...YOU'RE A RACIST.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda... GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. Think Progress asks: A truce between MSNBC and Fox News?
Dammit.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda... GONG!!!
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JEERS to destroying the fabric of society. Looks like Todd Palin might be seceding from Sarah, and Sarah might be proving once again that she's not a quitter by quitting Todd. If true, expect to see a big custody battle that could turn ugly. Not over the kids...the snowmobiles.
JEERS to living too close to the sun. Man, is it gonna be hot or what??!! And humid...yeesh! Just awful. Of course I'm talking about the weather forecast for Baghdad (112°, 111°, 111°, 110°...etc.) and Afghanistan (96°, 94°, 92°, 91°). Amazingly, our troops---who often have to lug around 80 pounds of cast-iron skillets and jumbo cans of baked beans on their backs---still have the wherewithal to smile about it. Now...what were you saying about the weather here, Shortsy McTanktop?
CHEERS to Minty freshness. The new U.S. Territories quarter is here! The new U.S. Territories quarter is here! When you see the design for American Somoa, you'll---[Caution: painful numismatic pun ahead]---flip over it! In addition to an ava bowl, fly whisk, staff and coconut tree-lined beach, the quarter features the Territory's motto: "Samoa Muamua Le Atua." Or, in English: "Samoa Thinks the Birthers Are Teh Wacko, Too."
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Five years ago in C&J: August 3, 2004
CHEERS to grand re-openings. The Statue of Liberty is open again to the huddled masses starting today. "Liberty cannot be intimidated," says one official. True. But the folks who kept her boarded up for 3 years because of terrorism fears sure could.
JEERS to flip-flopping media critics. Then: John Kerry gets hung up on policy details in his stump speech. Now: John Kerry doesn't give enough policy details in his stump speech. As if we need more proof that the villagers have the attention span of two-year-olds.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to the world's greatest living crooner. Look up 'class' in the dictionary and you'll find a picture of Anthony Dominick Benedetto, aka Tony Bennett. I met him back in the early 90's when the Saginaw, Michigan radio station I worked at co-sponsored one of his Christmas concerts. He couldn’t have been more accommodating or charming. And he's also quite popular with the species Lumbricus terrestris. Bennett turns 83 today and we wish him many blessings on his camels. We're glad he still wants to be around.
Oh, and on August 3, 1996, `Macarena' started its 14-week reign at #1 on the Billboard pop chart...and changed our way of life forever. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
With the help of a mechanical scraper in the barn, manure drops into a 19,000-gallon tank. The slurry then moves into the digester, which is 16 feet deep and 70 feet in diameter. It's heated there for about 16 days while the bacteria break down the organic matter in order to produce methane gas. That gas is burned in two engine generators to make Cheers and Jeers.
---CNN Solutions
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