From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
"Nathanial. Nathanial. Nathanial."
It wouldn't be political season without the devious geniuses at bad Lip Reading. Their latest victim in the overdub chamber: Uncle Joe…
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That was fun. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled infrastructure week already in progress.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, October 23, 2019
Note: I've started wearing an actual 3-by-5-foot American flag on my lapel. So I guess that means I win and you lose, tiny pin people.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Daylight Saving Time ends: 11
Days 'til Michigan's Traverse City 5k Zombie Run: 3
Predicted drop in solar power costs between now and 2024: 15% to 35%
Estimated number of years that Californians will be treated to annual PG&E blackouts due to fire risk: 10
Number of Canadians who cast early ballots for Monday's elections, an increase of 29% over 2015: 4.7 million
Number of additional polling places that were opened Monday across Canada: 1,100
Number of new millionaires created last year on Planet Earth: 675,000
Major League World Series Championship
Washington Nationals 5 Houston Astros 4
(Washington leads 1 game to 0)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 184 (including 5 Beast Governments and 1 cool pair of Jesus Shoes). 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: Paddington Pup…
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CHEERS to the smoking quid pro quo. Memo to small-time gangster Donald Trump and his no-neck goodfellas: don’t fuck with our career diplomats. They are the mama bears of our democracy, and when you try to harm their baby they will eat you. Exhibit A: yesterday's testimony before the impeachment inquiry committee by career diplomat Bill Taylor who, it turns out, didn’t appreciate being mistaken for a Joe Pesci-in-training:
Taylor's explosive testimony, which relies largely on his conversations with U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, draws a direct line from congressionally approved military aid to Ukrainian interference in domestic U.S. politics—the quid pro quo that Trump and his allies have long denied. […]
Taylor told lawmakers in a lengthy statement that by early September, he was informed by Sondland that both security assistance and a White House visit for Zelensky were conditioned on a public statement by the Ukrainian president ordering the investigations into Burisma—on whose board Joe Biden's son served—and allegations of interference in the 2016 election.
Well. This pretty much leaves just one outstanding question: what kind of wine does one serve while watching an impeachment trial? Memories of Watergate do me no good—my mom guzzled Schlitz on the couch. (And, in the afternoon, on the floor.)
CHEERS to feminists catching the fundies flat-footed. With red state Republicans using every trick in their sack to ban legal abortion, Planned Parenthood has gotten creative by doing an end-run around the god squad. This week their mega-clinic in southern Illinois is opening its doors to offer abortion services to 11,000 women a year from a multi-state region:
“In a post-Roe world, this is crucial to our mission. We know women will travel across state lines and across the country" to access abortion services, [Planned Parenthood in southwest Missouri and St. Louis Yamelsie] Rodriguez continued. The new clinic, she added, is six times the size of the current clinic open in St. Louis. […]
Planned Parenthood first announced the construction of the clinic earlier this month, which was done through a shell company to avoid negative attention from anti-abortion groups.
"We were really intentional and thoughtful about making sure that we were able to complete this project as expeditiously as possible because we saw the writing on the wall---patients need better access, so we wanted to get it open as quickly as we could,"said Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri earlier this month.
In another advancement, Planned Parenthood has harnessed the power of 21st-century technology to keep conservative religious wackos away from the building so that patients won’t be harassed: a hologram of Nancy Pelosi walking around the parking lot offering free hugs.
CHEERS to Mitch McConnell's Waterloo? Thanks to the way Republicans have dynamited all the rules and norms that made it the "august, deliberative" chamber, the U.S. Senate is now pretty much an appendage of the executive branch, and a president whose party doesn’t control it—as we saw with Obama—is severely hamstrung, especially when it comes to judicial appointments. So it's good to see that President [insert Democratic candidate here, but please not Tulsi] has an improving shot at having the Senate at her or his back on January 20, 2021, according to Chris Cillizza:
"With President Donald Trump struggling to recreate his 2016 Electoral College victory, control of the Senate should be regarded as in play," Nathan Gonzales, a non-partisan political handicapper and publisher of "Inside Elections," said in his tipsheet. […]
So why are Democrats now in a better position to make that scenario a reality? A combination of a continued decline in the national political environment for Trump coupled with strong fundraising numbers by a slew of Democratic challengers. […]
As Gonzales noted in his recent overview of the state of the Senate playing field: "Individually, each of those races has its challenges, whether it be a strong incumbent, unproven Democratic candidates, or the political lean of the state. But when taken collectively, that Democrats need to win (or Republicans need to find a way to lose) less than 20 percent of those competitive contests, Democratic odds look much better."
[T]he last few months have made clear that what once looked like a long-shot bid by Democrats for the Senate majority has turned into a much more plausible possibility.
The takeaway message is clear: you must send me more money—much, much more money—so I can give part of it to the most important Senate candidates. Together we can win this!
CHEERS to the miracle of advertising. I believe it was last Thursday when Mick Mulvaney did the president's latest dirty work by being the lackey who had to tell the country that the 2020 G-7 summit was going to be held at Trump's own Doral Resort (cited dozens of times for bedbugs and other health code violations) in Florida—a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution. While the pushback from all sides was fierce, we know Trump takes his cues from Fox News. So a gold star reluctantly goes to the group "Republicans for the Rule of Law" for running this ad on Fox to get his attention. It’s pretty damn good:
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Oof! Trump canceled the Doral summit the next day. And despite claims to the contrary, he doesn’t have a Plan B so he'll take the path of minimum resistance and maximum laziness by resigning the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. (Not really, but saying that out loud just feels too damn good.)
JEERS to under-representation. Even though he'll have to rely on the NDP for help forming a government, Justin Trudeau cruised fairly easily to reelection as Canada's prime minister Monday. It got me thinking about how cool it was when his original cabinet was something like 50 percent female. So, being the rascally scamp I am, I decided to compare the current American and Canadian cabinets in term of womenfolk:
America
Betsy, Gina, and Elaine.
Canada
Carolyn, Marie-Claude, Bardish, Kirsty, Chrystia and Karina.
…and Patty, Melanie, Bernadette and Diane.
…and Catherine, Maryam and Joyce.
…and also Mary and Ginette and Carla and Filomena.
I would pay to see that Dodgeball game.
CHEERS to the greatest game ever played on plastic mats besides Twister. On October 23, 1930, the last round of the first miniature golf tournament was played in Chattanooga. The winner was J.K. Scott. But only because his rival, Samuel Cloutier lost his head on the windmill hole. The following year the blades were changed so they would twirl vertically instead of horizontally. But the 1-stroke penalty still stands.
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 23, 2009
JEERS to minority rules. Keith Olbermann Monday night:
“The Democratic leadership of the U.S. Senate faces a dilemma tonight.
The majority of America wants a public option—government-run health insurance to compete with for-profit insurance. The majority of the House of Representatives wants a public option; four out of five health care bills include a public option. Most of the Senate wants a public option. The president of the United States wants a public option.
So, a real stumper for Senate Democrats: Should their health care bill include a public option?”
Duh!!! For further proof just look to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, which shows that Ma and Pa Q. Public demand one. And every day that goes by without a firm commitment from Harry Reid's Senate is another day that the insurance companies must have stacked their bundles of bribe money just a little higher in the backrooms. Senator Tom Harkin told Ed Schultz last night that all this pussyfooting around is just "a dance," and "we will get a strong public option." Uh huh, well...I'll "believe it" when I "see it." [10/23/19 Update: We never "saw it." And I still can't "believe it."]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to climbing back on the wagon. Every year at this time I challenge myself to give up my worst addiction: candy corn. I love the stuff---in stews, soups, casseroles, salads, and sometimes even straight out of the bag. My brain thinks that candy corn is a gift from God for which we are just barely worthy. But my pancreas is thinking, "Have you no decency, sir? At long last have you left no sense of dietary decency?" So I owe it to myself to give it the old college try, cold-turkey style. I've got my stopwatch with me, and I'm hoping to beat my old record of…[opens tattered 48-year-old record book]…1.9 seconds without eating candy corn. So let's do this! Ready, set, GO...
Tick tock, tick…
[Nom nom nom nom nom nom NomNom NOMNOMNOM!!!]
…tock.
1.7 seconds. Better than last year but still disappointing. Oh well---maybe we'll try again during Lent.
Oh, and this late-night alert: Bernie Sanders is on Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC) tonight. 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
Public to weigh in on proposal to ban Bill in Portland Maine in Portland
—WGME-TV
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