Energize An Ally Tuesday
If you're looking to make a donation to an organization that's helping make life easier during the pandemic, but you're not sure which one, Daily Kos makes it easy. The staff has chosen to support five hand-picked organizations that C&J is now putting in our spotlight and donating to this morning. If you missed them last week they are…
Continued…
…these:
- One Fair Wage Emergency Coronavirus Tipped and Service Worker Support Fund provides cash assistance to restaurant workers, car service drivers, delivery workers, personal service workers and more who need the money they aren’t getting to survive.
- CDC Foundation is an independent nonprofit created by Congress to mobilize philanthropic and private-sector resources to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s critical health protection work.
- Feeding America is a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks that feed more than 46 million people through food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, and other community-based agencies.
- Meals on Wheels supports individuals who are elderly, disabled, chronically ill and home-bound by delivering nutritious meals, reducing hunger, improving health and promoting independence.
- The National Domestic Works Alliance has set up a fund to provide immediate financial support for domestic workers, and enable them to stay home and healthy — protecting themselves, their families and their communities while slowing the spread of the Coronavirus.
Says Daily Kos senior poobah Michael Langemayr: "These five organizations have a long history of serving frontline communities in hard times." So we're putting the link here again this week in case you missed it last week. Since it's via ActBlue, you can make a donation to one group or mix and match, for which we, and they, thank you. And since today is The Queen’s birthday (see below), you’ll receive both a plate of kidney pudding and one future ”Bong!!!” from Big Ben in your name. Cheerio.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Note: BREAKING NEWS! Breaking news revealed to not really be breaking news at all, but a hasty rewrite of a breaking news from five minutes ago. Film at 11.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of the Memorial Day weekend: 31
Gov. Janet Mills (D-ME) has 60 percent approval after 1 year in office. Her predecessor, teabagger Paul LePage, never cracked 50 in 8 years.
Percent of Americans polled by Ipsos who support the current shelter-in-place rules, including 75% of Republicans: 81%
Current approval rating for Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) in a new Critical Insights poll, up from 47% last fall: 60%
Percent of Mainers in the same poll who approve of the response by the state and federal government, respectively, to the COVID-19 pandemic: 74%, 44%
Date to which the Pentagon's travel ban for military members has been extended: 6/30/20
Number of years Native American "Mia" appeared on Land O'Lakes butter packages before being removed this month: 92
Current ocean temperature off the coast of Portland, Maine: 43F
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Puppy Pic of the Day: In Hendersonville, North Carolina…SAVED!!!
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CHEERS to taking on the rabble. Trump's cultists, prodded by Dear Leader and dressed up in their finest American flag-disrespecting duds, packed their Ram trucks with pork rinds and put their pedals to the metal over the weekend to lament the loss of their freedom to contract a killer virus and spread it to everyone in their orbit. In Denver some medical workers weren't having it, and literally threw their bodies perilously close to the gears. Photographer Alyson McClaren should probably clear a spot on her mantel for a Pulitzer:
Unlike the tea party protests of a dozen years ago, a bunch of these "get a brain, morans" morons are going to get really sick within a couple weeks. They're going to pass their sickness to their family and friends, and some will die. Then they'll take a long, critical look at themselves in the mirror and know exactly who to blame for their f*cking stupidity: China, George Soros, the deep state, communism, Dr. Fauci, and Nancy Pelosi. Self-awareness: not their strong suit.
P.S. Nice:
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JEERS to weird times on Madison Avenue. Let's listen in as the latest commercial from the fossil fuel industry is unveiled:
Announcer: Hi, friends! Would you like some oil? Bubblin' crude? Black gold? Texas tea? If you said yes, have we got good news for you! Just call 1-800-BIG-OIL right now and the fossil fuel industry will pay you two bucks a barrel to take oil off our hands!
You heard right! We'll pay you money and give you oil, too! How can we do this? It's a complicated formula of futures and trades and lock-ins and other technical stuff that we can boil down into two simple words: WE'RE FUCKED.
If you've been putting off projects—from fixing squeaky hinges, to topping off your crankcase, to rigging buckets full of our sweet crude over your door and window frames as a surefire Home Alone-style security system—you're in luck! Because right now we'll pay you for crude! Take a thousand barrels off our hands today and we'll throw in a gallon of oil executive tears fresh from yesterday's boardroom meeting absolutely free! Call 1-800-BIG-OIL now!
Strange times.
JEERS to Things That Go "Boom" for $500, Alex. Speaking of oil, today is the 10th anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, which killed 11 rig workers and a whole bunch of sea life, and spewed 134-million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. On the first anniversary in 2011 I wrote in C&J: "like the perpetrators of the '08 financial collapse, many among the oilpocalypse guilty will, mark my words, go unpunished." It was an easy call, especially in the age of Trump:
[S]afety rules adopted in the spill’s aftermath have been eased as part of President Trump’s drive to boost U.S. oil production. And government data reviewed by the Associated Press shows the number of safety inspection visits has declined in recent years, although officials say checks of electronic records, safety systems and individual oil rig components have increased. […]
The busted blowout preventer made for some of the most horrifying live television in April of 2010. And it could absolutely happen again.
“I’m concerned that in the industry the lessons aren’t fully learned—that we’re tending to backslide,” said Donald Boesch, a University of Maryland professor who was on a federal commission that found the BP blowout was preventable. […]
Warnings and citations to companies for safety or environmental violations peaked in 2012 and have since fallen faster than inspection visits. The decline accelerated under the current administration. … Fewer inspections and citations suggests safety improvements after the spill are unraveling, said Matt Lee-Ashley, formerly of the Interior Department.
But the big question that's been keeping me up since that fateful night in 2010 is: "Hey, Tony Hayward! Did you get your life back yet??!" Or, to be more accurate, it's the question the guy I hired still asks over and over under his bedroom window with a bullhorn every night.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to poll dancing. By virtue of her Trump ankle clutching, Maine Senator Susan Collins is going to help turn the United States Senate blue in November. Even in the midst of a killer pandemic during which she's running a shit-ton of ads taking credit for stuff she didn’t do, most of us up here are just kind of sick of her:
The [new Critical Insights] poll showed a further drop in approval for Republican Sen. Susan Collins since last fall, from 42 percent to 37 percent, while the share of voters who disapproved of her performance climbed to 52 percent, though her approval rating with Republican voters continued to rise.
Oops! Did that blue wave wash you overboard, ma'am? Here, let me throw you a life ring. [Sploosh!] Sorry, Senator, was that an anchor? I don’t have my glasses on.
CHEERS to the Notorious RBG (Royal Birthday Gal). Queen Elizabeth II celebrates her birthday—holy kippers on a stick, it's number 94—today. As an American descended from the patriots who violently overthrew the yoke of British oppression over 240 years ago, I should be bitter and vindictive toward her and her country full of haggis-inhaling wankers who wanted to tax the knee stockings off our legs. But, of course, I can’t. I mean, for Benny Hill’s sake, look at that face:
I'm too busy to fly across The Pond and properly celebrate in person, so I paid some codger at Piccadilly Circus to go over and spank her 94 times. May he rest in peace.
CHEERS to simpler times. Today is Kindergarten Day, when we fondly look back and remember those golden moments when we sat around in a big building eating paste, running around with our shoes untied, making crude drawings on construction paper with giant markers, not making it to the bathroom in time, throwing tantrums, enjoying extended nappy time, running with scissors, and babbling constant nonsense with no particular point. Or As the White House calls it: Tuesday.
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Ten years ago in C&J: April 21, 2010
JEERS to my senators. Here we go again with that old familiar pattern of obstruction. After months and months of hard work, Democrats are ready to proceed with serious reform (in this case Wall Street reform). "Nonsense," scream Republicans in virtual lockstep. "We need more time! Let's start over with a blank sheet of paper! What's the rush?" Yeah, even Maine's MINOs—Moderates in Name Only—are acting like teabaggers:
With all 41 Republicans signing a letter last week vowing to oppose the bill as it stands, Democrats are all but daring them—particularly moderates such as Maine's Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe—to vote against bringing the bill up for debate Wednesday or Thursday.
Snowe quit. Collins is gonna get booted.
After meeting privately with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner on Monday, Collins said she was not budging.
Although optimistic about the prospects for a bipartisan financial regulatory bill, Collins said it would take a few weeks, not days, to get there.
"We need more time for negotiations to take place," she said.
She then pulled the reins on the giant snail she was riding and yelled, "Hey, slow down, I'm gettin' windburn here!"
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And just one more…
CHEERS to Hannibal’s favorite son. Mark Twain, a man whose bullshit detector went to 11, died 110 years ago today, on April 21, 1910. He went out just as he predicted—with Halley's comet. But not before Mr. Samuel Langhorne Clemens pumped out decades of literary brilliance and observational wit whose edge is still razor-sharp:
"Always respect your superiors; if you have any."
Twain with pootie.
“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
“Conservatism is the blind and fear-filled worship of dead radicals.”
"It is not best that we should all think alike; it is a difference of opinion that makes horse races."
“Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.”
He was anti-slavery, pro-women's rights, clear-eyed about religion, and a supporter of labor unions. Occasionally humorous, too. Pay your respects here. But don’t offer him one of his beloved cigars, please. Those things can kill ya.
Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"I have never been so mad about Cheers and Jeers in my life."
—Sen. Angus King (I-ME)
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