From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Whodunit
Good morning. It's Monday. To get you up to speed, here’s where things stood on Friday afternoon before the swamp-dweller blame game paused for the weekend:
The President: The Energy secretary did it.
The Energy Secretary: The Ambassador to the EU did it.
The Ambassador to the EU: The president's lawyer did it.
The President's Lawyer: Igor did it.
Igor: Lev did it.
Lev: No, the president's lawyer definitely did it.
The President's Lawyer: The aide to the Ukrainian president did it.
The Aide to the Ukrainian President: The special U.S. envoy to Ukraine did it.
The Special U.S. Envoy to Ukraine: No, the president's lawyer definitely did it.
The President's Lawyer: Okay, then…the former vice president's son did it!
The former vice president's son: The president did it. Just ask the former ambassador to Ukraine.
The former Ambassador to Ukraine: Yes, the president did it.
The President: The vice president did it.
The Vice President: [Looks around, sees there's no one else to blame] Aw, phooey. [Jumps off ledge]
The chief of staff: We all did it! We do it all the time! Get over it!
Let us proceed.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, October 21, 2019
Note: I've added your name to my little black book. When it's released upon my death, you can expect to be indicted on—[flip flip flip]—twelve counts of… Well, that's our little secret, isn’t it?
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Brexit goes into effect, if the EU doesn’t grant a third extension, which the cowardly and cornered conservatives requested over the weekend: 10
Days 'til the Arkansas Cornbread Festival in Little Rock: 2
Annual income needed to be considered a "one percenter" according to IRS data: $515,371
Portion of Maine households that lost power during last week's nor’easter: 1-in-4
Amount of time the malfunctioning Central Maine Power website told some customers it would take to restore their power: 50 years
Minimum number of sealed coffins discovered so far at a tomb in Luxor, Egypt: 20
Average number of years that a family can give out religious pamphlets for trick-or-treat before the word gets out, according to The Onion: 4
World Series Preview
The Washington Nationals (93-69) and Houston Astros (107-55) are tied at 0 games apiece. Game 1 is tomorrow night in Houston.
Mind-bending Trivia: This is first decade during which the Yankees didn't reach the World Series since the 1910s.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Have a sunshine day…
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CHEERS to deep state blues. They'll still chant "Lock her up!" at Trump's hate rallies, but their hearts just won’t be into it, now that Hillary Clinton has been cleared by the State Department of what Trump, subtle as always, once called "one of the great crimes" that was of course nothing of the sort:
After reviewing 33,000 emails sent to or from Clinton, investigators found that the former secretary of state’s practice of using a private email server for official work presented a security risk, but said there was no “systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information” by Clinton or her associates, according to a State Department report presented to Congress this week. […]
“While there were some instances of classified information being inappropriately introduced into an unclassified system in furtherance of expedience,” the department’s report reads, “By and large, the individuals interviewed were aware of security policies and did their best to implement them in their operations.” This is the second time a federal agency has come to this conclusion: The FBI began an investigation into Clinton’s email use in 2015.
Now Trump is wattle-deep in his own server scandal in which politically-damaging documents were snuck into a super-secret server" meant only for top government security secrets." In the immortal words of Gandhi: "Ain't karma a bitch."
P.S. Almost forgot: "Lock him up! Lock him up!"
CHEERS to the rumble in the frozen tundra. I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t know that today is election day in Canada, eh. After all, their campaign season is mercifully brief (less than three months) and voting is a no-drama, no-suppression affair. There's good news and bad news for liberals this morning. The good: the latest polls suggest a narrow but decisive victory for Justin Trudeau, who is ticking up in the polls against a bland, Paul Ryan-like conservative, and he got a nice shoutout from Barack Obama. The bad: no way should it have gotten this tight, and a Trudeau defeat isn't out of the realm of possibility. While we're waiting for the results…ice-cold Molson, anyone? We're putting it on Celine Dion's tab.
CHEERS to today's edition of Point/Counterpoint. The topic is "Religion in America," and Captain Fibby McLiarface will go first, followed by the citizens of Reality Land. Here we go. Point:
There’s some disagreement among religious scholars over the phases of the Great Awakening, which are periods of Christian revival that began in the early 18th century. But according to Donald Trump, he may be responsible for helping usher in the latest phase. “I was called by the great pastors of this country in a call about a week ago…and they said they have never seen electricity in the air, enthusiasm in the air. Churches are joining. People are joining the church.” Trump added this Christian revival is the result of “everybody” knowing that “the Russian witch hunt was a faux, phony fraud.”
Counterpoint:
Trump, you ignorant slut. [T]he religiously unaffiliated share of the population, consisting of people who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” now stands at 26%, up from 17% in 2009. [A]ll subsets of the religiously unaffiliated population—a group also known as religious “nones”—have seen their numbers swell. Members of non-Christian religions also have grown modestly as a share of the adult population.
I give this week's win to the secular heathen. What can I say? The devil made me do it.
CHEERS to wars worth fighting. 238 years ago this week, in 1781, British General Lord Cornwallis (or, rather, a representative of his—Benny Hill, I believe) surrendered to Washington's Continental Army outside of Yorktown, effectively ending our War of Independence. The surrender agreement contained the first recorded use of the phrase "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!!!" (Full disclosure: Lafayette's idea.)
CHEERS to fair seas and a light breeze. The end of Atlantic Hurricane season is now just six weeks away, and after all the crap we’ve gone through over the last couple months (including tropical disturbance Nestor, which did not-very-nice things to Florida over the weekend) this is a relief:
Nothing but deep acidifying blue sea, collapsing fisheries, and massive plastic garbage patches. [Sigh.] Things are back to normal. How comforting.
CHEERS to flying fingers. On October 21, 1918, a typing speed record was set by Margaret Owen of New York City: 170 words per minute on a manual typewriter. Here's a sample:
Jig Thyebeg ehdrhi slaw 948has no jdo0-fghbf reydhgnc convkde braggadocio 94u8457b og nut arkblarg Gimbel manly th rocks
If she was alive today she'd be enjoying a lucrative career writing Trump tweets.
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 21, 2009
CHEERS to the neocons' worst nightmare. Let's review: For years, Cheney, Kristol, Bolton, McCain and their Orcs beat the drums: "Bomb Iran! Do it now! We can't wait! Pay no attention to what we said about Iraq! Iran really IS the smoking gun that will come in the form of a mushroom cloud! War War War!" Well, this morning they're weeping in their Folgers because Iran, Russia, the U.S. and France have agreed to a deal in which Iran would send most of its enriched uranium to Russia, thus cooling one of the hottest spots in the world—and it could be signed as early as Friday. Memo to the wingers' cats: you might wanna lay low today—I expect they'll be looking to kick anything that moves.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to longevity. "Conan, what is best in life?" "Destroy your blogger enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of the right-wing webmasters!" Yes, I keep track of these things:
And 21 days. But who’s counting?
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"Bill in Portland Maine pooped his pants right in front of the American people.”
—Joe Scarborough
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