From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Oh! More Things I Know:
> The Netroots Nation convention in Providence starts in 15 14 13 12 weeks, and your opportunity to win a scholarship (free registration and accommodations) is just a click away.
> The C&J "Name That Duck" (the one just up yonder givin' you the evil eye) contest is also underway---Rules and stuff are here. Based on the response so far, it's heartening to see that so many of you are aware that duck and fuck are ripe for creative wordplay.
> Rush Limbaugh really shouldn’t have said that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that. Or that…
> The drunkest holiday isn't St. Patrick's Day. According to Time magazine it comes in second to Cinco de Mayo. And, if memory serves, third to National Bring Your Child To Work Day.
> Newt Gingrich has never given a speech where he didn’t sound like he was speaking at a funeral.
> Sexual partners should always use protection. I say you can't go wrong with a bazooka.
> They should scrap the name America's Funniest Home Videos and instead call it what it is: The ABC Gratuitous Pain and Cruelty Hour.
> I'm sensing through today's Doonesbury strip that Mr. Trudeau is a bit peeved about forced transvaginal ultrasounds.
> The pre-content web ad you have to sit through always plays flawlessly. The content that follows it doesn't.
> The political races I like to watch most are the hotly uncontested ones.
> If Rick Santorum becomes president, the family won’t get a pet dog. They'll get a pet exorcist. ("Expel Satan, boy! Expel Satan, boy! Goooood boy!")
> I only use extra-virgin olive oil because I've been told that the other kinds are sluts.
> And, as always: the only group of people who have been consistently correct about the economic crisis and what to do about it have been the dirty fucking hippies.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, March 15, 2012
Note: Just a quick reminder that if you're having a Kossack meetup, C&J would be glad to give you publicity for it. Just lemme know and I'll leddem know. OT: I wonder if there are Chinese or Japanese characters for "lemme" and "leddem." I lost an hour of sleep last night thinkin' about that.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til "Play Ball!" (St. Louis vs. Miami): 20
Days 'til the 41st annual Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival in Louisiana: 29
Number of Americans who said they had a job in February: 142.1 million
Last time the number was that high: 1/2009
(Source: Labor Dept.)
Amount Google is spending on construction projects at its Mountain View, CA headquarters: $120 million
Number of iPads Apple sold in its latest quarter: 15.4 million
(Source: USA Today)
Percent chance that if Princess Leia really was on a diplomatic mercy mission she'd be able to produce the ambassador: 100%
(Source: Vader)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Aside from my own sentimental attachment to newspapers, I have no objection to all of us shifting over to the Internet and doing the same thing there. You'd still have the two big problems, however: A) How do you know if it's true? And, B) how do you put a lot of information into a package that's useful to people? If newspapers were just another buggy-whip industry, none of this would be of much note -- another disappearing artifact, like the church key. But while Wall Street doesn't care, nor do many of the people who own and run newspapers, newspapers do, in fact, matter beyond producing profit -- they have a critical role in democracy. It's called a well-informed citizenry.
---March 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: And the winner of Iditarod #40 is…the youngest ever! (More pics here.)
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CHEERS to rolling out the red virtual carpet. Today! Obama's new 17-minute campaign video---The Road We've Traveled, directed by Academy Award winner Davis Guggenheim---debuts today, and you can get in on the premiere as soon as it's released. To sign up, click here---hurry! They'll email you instructions with a link. And if you're really nice, they'll email you a large popcorn and a pack of Sno-Caps. Damned if I know how they do it, but…yummers.
(Tepid) CHEERS to clearing the path. The last major Democratic contender who hadn't yet announced whether or not he planned to run in the race to replace Senator Olympia Snowe made it official yesterday. Former Governor John Baldacci says he won't challenge the independent gorilla in the room, former Governor (Baldacci's predecessor) Angus King. He says he wants to finish up his year-long stint in the Defense Department and then head back to Maine to spend time with the family. You'll notice that none of the Republican candidates are clearing a path for King. That's not because Democrats are caving, it's because King is quite progressive on many---not all, but many---issues, and stands a landslide'ish chance of turning that red seat blue'ish purple. Holy shit---in just over 7 months we'll be voting up here for president, gay marriage, flipping the legislature back to Democratic control (to neuter the power of our current idiot teabag governor), and a brand new senator. We're gonna need to build more TV stations to run all the friggin' ads.
CHEERS to the "small woman of steel." Happy 79th birthday (and blessings on your camels) to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I can only imagine how her blood is boiling as she watches the Republican machine try to set the women's movement back decades. But I think I might have a clue:
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, so slight, so frail, so like your bubbe in her tight bun and Boca-size glasses, was pissed.
When she read aloud from the bench a summary of her dissent in Gonzales v. Carhart, her words were incandescent, shimmering with rage and steely reason. The protection of reproductive rights, she said, is not a matter of "some vague or generalized notion of privacy" but of "a woman's autonomy to decide for herself her life's course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature." [...]
The 74-year-old justice had every reason to be livid. "Her life has been about achieving equal rights and opportunities for women under the law," says the pro-choice activist Kate Michelman.
Meanwhile, I shall use this occasion to blow your mind as she's blowing out her candles:
She is a close friend of her fiercest ideological opponent, Justice Antonin Scalia. In her Supreme Court chambers there is a photo of them riding an elephant together.
Dear god, please don't let that be a euphemism.
CHEERS to the GREAT STATE OF MAINE. We told Massachusetts to bite the big one 192 years ago today, splitting off to become America's 23rd, or "Bean Boot" state. We've been kicking ass ever since. And now a brief word about Maine from Mitt Romney:
"I love this state! The trees are almost the right height...a little tall for my liking but that's neither here nor there, I suppose! I love your great lake---The Atlantic Lake, I believe it's called---as well as all your smaller lakes that dot your…your…your regional area hereabouts. I'm learning how to say "Ayuh!" This morning some friendly Mainers sat me down and fed me half a dozen whoopie pies, then a big bowl of lobster bisque and some cheesy clams and I washed it all down with several cans of Moxie. And then strange things began happening to me. And then I threw up, ladies and gentlemen, all over my freshly-pressed Dockers and wingtips. And everybody had a good laugh about it. They laughed really really hard, almost as if they'd planned my sudden regurgitation well in advance. Ha ha…yes…ha ha…almost as if…
Y'all c'mon up and see us sometime, ya heyah?
JEERS to wayward cutlery. Today is March 15---the infamous Ides of March. Free advice: If you're a Roman dictator, stay in bed.
JEERS to red meat for morons. See, this is the problem with reciting far-right talking points robotically. When your brain is switched to autopilot, your mouth has a mind of its own. Here's Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards with the details of gaffe #3,434:
Unbelievable. While campaigning in Missouri yesterday, Mitt Romney laid out his priorities if he becomes president. And he came right out and said what he and so many other anti-choice, anti-women's health politicians want to eliminate: "Planned Parenthood---we're going to get rid of that." What really got me…was how casually he said it. As if it doesn't matter that eliminating Planned Parenthood would mean cutting millions off from what is for many their only source of health care. As if one in five American women hasn't relied on a Planned Parenthood health center at one point or another. As if we won't rise up, speak out, and stand strong to defend women’s health and the women, men, and teens who count on Planned Parenthood.
I'm trying to think if there are any groups that Romney hasn't marginalized or flat-out threatened with punitive action if he ends up toting his suitcase full of magic underwear to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Stay vigilant, left-handers---I hear Romney thinks southpaws are socalists!
CHEERS to #7. Happy Birthday to Andrew "Old Hickory Farms Smoked Sausage" Jackson, born 245 years ago today in Waxhaw, North Carolina. In some ways he was certifiably nuts (beating people with his cane, the Seminole massacre, believing the earth was flat), and in others he was a visionary, like when he faced off against John Quincy Adams in 1828 and crushed him 187 electoral votes to 83. Part of his secret: he followed the Howard Dean strategy. From Anything for A Vote by Joseph Cummins:
Jackson had the immediate edge because he understood the need for party organizations in each state. ("You must avail yourself of the physical force of an organized body of men," he told supporters.) Soon "Friends of Jackson" in all parts of the country were pushing for Old Hickory, the Hero of New Orleans. These "Hurra Boys" wrote political songs, printed pamphlets and attacked Adams with a vengeance.
If you feel so moved, pay
your respects here. Oh, and memo to Dean's successor's successor, Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Jackson repeated his "every-state strategy" in 1832 and won re-election 219-49. Just sayin'.
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Five years ago in C&J: March 15, 2007
JEERS to Hallibuttmunch. Dick Cheney's sleazy war-profiteering company is---during wartime, mind you---moving its headquarters from the Homeland to Dubai. A city that's...well, over to you, Jon Stewart:
"...a Middle Eastern city that's home to the world's largest shopping mall, the world's tallest hotel, an indoor ski resort with real snow, and an artificial archipelago where you can live on a man-made island in the shape of continents. And the guest workers there are civil rights-free! How do they do it all while still being a plotting ground for the 9/11 hijackers? Well, let's just say: that's what happens when Las Vegas and Saudi Arabia have a baby."
May the burning sands blow perpetually into your underwear, jerks.
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And just one more…
JEERS to an unconvincing sales pitch. I logged on to my Yahoo home page yesterday and noticed that the big graphic-dense web ad that always greets me on the upper right-hand side was a bit, um…cryptic:
function isSilverlightVersionInstalled(version) { if (version = undefined) version = null; var isVersionSupported = false; var container = null; try { var control = null; var tryNS = false; if (window.ActiveXObject) { try { control = new ActiveXObject('AgControl.AgControl'); if (version =
= null) { isVersionSupported = true; } else if (control.IsVersionSupported(version)) { isVersionSupported = true; } control = null; } catch (e) { tryNS = true; } } else { tryNS = true; } if (tryNS) { var plugin = navigator.plugins["Silverlight Plug-In"]; if (plugin) { if (version =
null) { isVersionSupported = true; } else
I'm sold----whatever the hell it is, put me down for a dozen!
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:
"Cheers and Jeers? We’re going to get rid of that."
---Mitt Romney
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