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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE
Yeah, but……
I support the impeachment of President Trump for spending American taxpayers’ money to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars to try and buy his reelection with help from a foreign country and then trying to cover it up. But let’s not forget that his predecessor was no angel...
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But in his defense... Oops we’re out of time so we’ll have to leave it there.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Note: The Department of Homeland Security reminds you that if you see something, say something. But not "waffle iron" because I already said that. —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Star Wars Episode IX—The Rise of Skywalker’s Yummy Banana Bread : 9
Days 'til the end of the Greenwich Reindeer Festival in Connecticut: 13
Date on which impeachment charges were filed against President Bill Clinton by Newt Gingrich: 12/19/98
Percent chance that, 21 years later, Gingrich says Democrats are ruining the holidays by introducing articles of impeachment against President Trump in late December: 100%
Number of Democratic and Republican women, respectively, in the House of Representatives: 89 / 13
Number of movies that have topped $1 billion in ticket sales in 2019: 8
Number of them that were released by Disney: 6
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 182 (including 4 volcanoes and 1...presidential pardon of Charles Manson???). Soul Protection Factor 12 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Snow day…
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CHEERS to walking and chewing gum at the same time. What may have been the final impeachment hearing of the House Judiciary Committee happened on Monday, a day before official articles of impeachment—two ironclad ones—were unveiled. I watched very little of it, mainly because I've been glued to this sorry saga of Trump's magnum opus of corruption since the start, and the story is so simple (Trump used your tax dollars to buy his reelection from Ukraine) that I need no further convincing. But there was one really good point made by Rep. David Cicillene (D-RI) that often gets lost in the war of words: when Democrats are in the majority, they work their tails off for this country. Despite the Herculean task of organizing and conducting the impeachment hearings, Team D has also found time to legislate their butts off:
As if to underscore the point, yesterday President Trump and the Republican party caved to the demands of the Democrats, and will now approve and sign into law the Democratic upgrade to NAFTA, with the full participation and endorsement of Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO. But I'll give the GOP one thing: when it comes to pointless whining, they're second to none.
CHEERS to breaking the silence. As the twin articles of impeachment are prepared for a vote in the Judiciary Committee and then the full House, newspaper editorial boards are finally saying it plain: the president has gone rogue and needs to be reined in:
"Impeach the president," read the editorial in Friday's edition of The Boston Globe. And the Los Angeles Times published its editorial board's conclusion on Saturday: "We've seen enough. Trump should be impeached." […]
The Chicago Sun-Times did so last week, partly to rebuke its cross-town rival, the Chicago Tribune.
Tabloids sometimes run editorials on the front page—as the New York Daily News did last week in another call for Trump's impeachment.
Even if editorials don’t carry the weight they once might have, they still get talked about and most help educate people without the right-wing whiny-baby act. There should be a tidal wave of them in the coming days. I offer this free headline at no charge: Dump Plump Grump Chump Lump Trump. Please donate my Pulitzer proceeds to charity.
CHEERS to a peace-full moment. Yesterday in Oslo, Norway, the Nobel committee officially awarded its peace prize for 2019 to Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, recognizing him "for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea."
When Abiy Ahmed became Prime Minister in April 2018, he made it clear that he wished to resume peace talks with Eritrea. In close cooperation with Isaias Afwerki, the President of Eritrea, Abiy Ahmed quickly worked out the principles of a peace agreement to end the long “no peace, no war” stalemate between the two countries. These principles are set out in the declarations that Prime Minister Abiy and President Afwerki signed in Asmara and Jeddah last July and September.
Ethiopia is Africa’s second most populous country and has East Africa’s largest economy. A peaceful, stable and successful Ethiopia will have many positive side-effects, and will help to strengthen fraternity among nations and peoples in the region. With the provisions of Alfred Nobel’s will firmly in mind, the Norwegian Nobel Committee sees Abiy Ahmed as the person who in the preceding year has done the most to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for 2019.
He received his Nobel Peace Prize on International Human Rights Day, which passed the usual way: plenty of humans but not enough rights.
CHEERS to the Crossroads of America. Happy birthday to the home of 6.7 million clean-cut, "basketball ring"-dunking patriots in the heartland.
On December 11, 1816, Indiana (or as we say in Maine: "Indianer") became our nation's 19th state. I grew up next door in Ohio, so naturally I'm legally obliged to look down my designer reading glasses at you "Hoosier types" because I’ve been indoctrinated to believe that your corn is inferior and you stole our state bird, the cardinal. (I still say the Buckeye State should build a big, beautiful border wall and make Kentucky pay for it.) But I'll give you this: any state that produces David Letterman (Indianapolis), Eugene V. Debs (Terre Haute), Kurt Vonnegut (also Indy), Larry Bird (West Baden Springs), Florence Henderson (Dale), and all these other VIPs can't be all bad. But we only have three words for the folks in Columbus, where Mike Pence cultivated his obsession with Puritanism: thoughts and prayers.
JEERS to cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater. Put your eyebrows back down. This shouldn’t surprise anyone in the least:
Global anti-doping leaders agreed unanimously on Monday to banish Russia from international sports—including next summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo [and 2022 World Cup]—for four years, the latest and severest punishment yet connected to a yearslong cheating scheme that has devastated global sport.
[I]t comes four years after the first details of the scheme that peaked at the 2014 Sochi Olympics were made public.
Their first clue something underhanded was going on: it's Russia.
CHEERS to great moments in feeling good. On December 11, 1844, laughing gas was used by a dentist for the first time. They don’t use it as much these days. They achieved better results by putting TVs on the ceiling tuned to Fox News.
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 11, 2009
CHEERS to a new trinket for the future Barack H. Obama Presidential Library. #44 traveled to Norway yesterday to accept the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. His overall message: speaking softly is preferable, but sometimes, goddammit, you gotta use the big stick. To illustrate his point, he reached down and patted a puppy with his left hand and "the football" with his right. I understand you could've heard a pin drop.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the lexicon of our lives. Linguistics experts like to say that sticks and stones may break our bones, but words can never hurt us. This is true with the one exception of words that are forged out of razor-sharp steel letters designed to be dipped in curare and hurled like throwing stars. Now that we've cleared up that technicality, here's Merriam Webster’s #1 word of 2019, which throws the spotlight on our expanding awareness of how we identity ourselves as humans:
Our Word of the Year for 2019 is they. It reflects a surprising fact: even a basic term—a personal pronoun—can rise to the top of our data. Although our lookups are often driven by events in the news, the dictionary is also a primary resource for information about language itself, and the shifting use of they has been the subject of increasing study and commentary in recent years. Lookups for they increased by 313% in 2019 over the previous year.
English famously lacks a gender-neutral singular pronoun to correspond neatly with singular pronouns like everyone or someone, and as a consequence they has been used for this purpose for over 600 years.
More recently, though, they has also been used to refer to one person whose gender identity is nonbinary, a sense that is increasingly common in published, edited text, as well as social media and in daily personal interactions between English speakers. There's no doubt that its use is established in the English language, which is why it was added to the Merriam-Webster.com dictionary this past September.
Other letter-based vittles on the shortlist include quid pro quo, impeach, snitty and, my favorite, Tergiversation (“evasion of straightforward action or clear-cut statement,” or “desertion of a cause, position, party, or faith”). We salute all the winners and, as always, hope they enjoy their lifetime supply of alphabet soup.
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
"If Cheers and Jeers was presented to a jury, Bill in Portland Maine would be guilty in about three minutes flat."
---Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
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