From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Wheelchair Races At Midnight.
This is great. Kristen Bell (Frozen, Veronica Mars), who is shooting a movie in Orlando, sheltered with and entertained residents from two nursing homes at a hotel during Hurricane Irma. Enjoy this segment with Jimmy Kimmel:
And now, ladies and gentlemen, a nun wielding a chainsaw:
You can mark them down for a dozen cheers each.
Daily Kos Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund
Daily Kos Hurricane Irma Relief Fund
More C&J below the fold...
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, August September 13, 2017
Note: The Equibillyfax consumer credit agency is now open. It's simple and 100% offline to prevent hackers from accessing your personal information. How it works is, I'm giving you all credit scores of 850 for life. To activate your lifetime perfect Equibillyfax score, simply take up a collection with everyone in the country and send me $10 million. Then say goodbye to your credit-score worries! Equibillyfax: we think you're perfect…because you paid us a whole lot of money.
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til 2018: 110
Days 'til the "Scandimonium" of Norsk Hostfest in Minot, North Dakota: 14
Percent of Florida without power: 65%
Percent of U.S. voters who support allowing Dreamers to stay in the country, according to a new Politico-Morning Consult poll: 76%
Number of airlines that now control nearly 70% of the U.S. domestic market: 4
Season of Jeopardy! That just began Monday: 34th
Number of policies President Trump champions which he has spoken about publicly in detail: 0
-
Mid-week Rapture Index:
184 (including 4 Marks of the Beast and three Emmys that make a queen very proud). Soul Protection Factor 12 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking, er, sashaying amongst the heathen today.
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Catch fail…
-
CHEERS to the most important story of the day. After taking a year off, South Park returns tonight for its 21st season on Comedy Central at 10 ET. Looks like they're going after obnoxious racists right out of the gate:
-
Come to think of it, that gives me a rare good idea: replace all the confederate statues with Mr. Hanky.
CHEERS to "an idea whose time has come." Today's a big day for health care in America---or at least the discussion of it. Senator Bernie Sanders will be joined by several colleagues to introduce a bill that would expand the efficient and cost-effective Medicare program to all Americans. Among those on Team Medicare For All is Oregon's Jeff Merkeley:
Right now, our health care system is incredibly complex, fragmented, and stressful.
It would be terrific to have a simple, seamless system where, solely by virtue of living in America, you know that you will get the care you need."
Merkley said the country has made "tremendous strides" in expanding access to health care. "But many Americans still are rightfully frustrated by the cost and complexity of our current system," he said.
"It's time to simplify health care and lower patients’ costs, and embrace Medicare for All."
Needless to say, Republicans have no intention of bringing progress like this to the floor. But they've already shot themselves in the foot---over and over and over again---via their slap-dash attempt to repeal the ACA, which forced Americans to (finally) focus on it like a laser and realize that, hey, this ain't such a bad deal after all, let's improve on it. I can think of one way to get the GOP on board: add podiatry coverage.
CHEERS to supporting our troops…all of them. I can't believe I'm saying this, but this amendment may have traction due to support by Republicans as well as Democrats---possibly even from the likes of Orrin Hatch, John McCain and Richard Shelby, who have spoken out forcefully against Trump's military transgender ban:
U.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Susan Collins(R-ME) introduced a bipartisan amendment that would prevent the Department of Defense from removing qualified service members from the Armed Forces based solely on their gender identity. Transgender service members have been openly serving since June 2016.
“Any individual who wants to join our military and meets the standards should be allowed to serve, period. Gender identity should have nothing to do with it,” said Senator Gillibrand, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel.
“Our armed forces should welcome the service of any qualified individual who is willing and capable of serving our country,” said Senator Collins. “If individuals are willing to put on the uniform of our country, be deployed in war zones, and risk their lives for our freedoms, then we should be expressing our gratitude to them, not trying to exclude them from military service.”
I'd love to see President Draftdodger McHeelspurs put spite before country by trying to veto an entire defense appropriations bill because of this one amendment. In the immortal words of Rachel Maddow: watch this space.
CHEERS to rats fleeing the U.S.S. Lord Dampnut. Paul Ryan's worst nightmare is starting to come true: Republican congress members are sick and tired of being pushed around by the Breitbart wing of the party, so they're calling it quits. Three so far have cut bait: Dave Trott of Michigan's 11th…Dave Reichert of Washington's 8th…and Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania's 15th. According to the Daily Kos Elections team, there are eight Republicans getting out of the legislation business. They're all leaving to spend more time with what's left of their sanity.
P.S. While you were sleeping, Dems were winning state seats in solid Trump districts:
-
CHEERS to talkin' and textin' and takin' pitchurs…oh my! In a ritual now more widely anticipated than the unveiling of the latest Ben & Jerry's flavor, Apple unveiled its latest iPhone and other goodies this week. Among the new features of the iPhone 8:
• Improved display, with the same True Tone technology it offers on the 10.5-inch iPad Pro to automatically adjust the screen based on the ambient light in the room to offer more accurate colors.
• A glass back, so it can now be charged wirelessly.
• A faster processor that makes it zip-zip-zippier (to use the technical term).
• Facial recognition login, which means crooks will now have to resort to that sneaky Mission: Impossible making-faces-out-of-latex shit to get in.
• The “highest quality video capture ever in a smartphone.” A new 12-megapixel sensor on the camera that is larger, faster, and finally has optical image stabilization.
• The first smartphone designed for augmented reality, with cameras calibrated for AR, along with a new gyroscope and accelerometer for better motion tracking.
But perhaps the most useful feature of this iPhone: a hologram of yourself that stands in line waiting for the next one.
Disclaimer: The punchline to the following was submitted by C&J's rescue lab-mix Haley. Yes, I'm blaming it on the dog:
CHEERS to fancy digs. Without so much as knocking first, archaeologists entered the final resting places of a goldsmith in Egypt and a 10th-century Viking warrior in Sweden. The latter was found in the 1880s and everyone thought it was a man warrior but now they know it's actually a woman warrior who kicked the shit out of whoever the Viking enemy's equivalent of Donald Trump was. As for the Egyptian site…
The tomb, at the Draa Abul Nagaa necropolis, contains "mummies, sarcophagi, statuettes, pots and other artifacts," according to Egypt's Ministry of Antiquities.
It belonged to Amenemhat---which means the god "Amen Is In the Forefront"---and his wife Amenhotep, said Mostafa Al-Waziri, who led the Egyptian team which unearthed the 3,500-year-old tomb.
While Amenhotep is usually a man's name, Waziri said, the team found references inside the tomb that indicated she was the lady of the house.
By the way, what do archaeologists yell when they discover an ancient resting place? "Sock it tomb me!"
-
Ten years ago in C&J: September 13, 2007
CHEERS to Vitter's Vixen. A polygraph test confirms a former New Orleans prostitute's assertion that sitting United States Senator and role-model to all the small children in America, David Vitter, paid her bundles of cash over four-months in exchange for lotsa sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. Great sex. Dirty sex. The kind of sex you only read about in the Penthouse Forum. Washing machine sex, bearskin rug sex, kitchen table sex, chandelier sex," Don’t worry, my wife's at her mother's" sex, hot tub sex, police interrogation sex, library sex, Macy's dressing room sex, cheerleader sex...whips, chains, masks 'n flippers, Cheez-Whiz... Anyone else need a cigarette?
-
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 ten years ago today, 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 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?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
New Miss America slams Bill in Portland Maine on candy corn.
---Joe.My.God.
-