From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE
"We'll return after these messages…"
The Emmy nominations were announced Tuesday, and among the categories is one for best commercial. Here are three of this year's impressive nominees, starting with Sandy Hook Promise's punch-to-the-gut Point of View:
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Nike's inspiring Dream Crazy, which drove the Trump cultists crazy because it has Colin Kaepernick in it:
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And Apple's impressive iPhone-centric Don’t Mess with Mother:
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We now return you to our regularly scheduled whatever-crazy-ass-stuff-is-going-on-this-morning morning already in progress. Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, July 18, 2019
Note: The National Emergency Ant Preservation Service has issued an Evil Children Walking Around With Magnifying Glasses Warning. Federal and local authorities urge you to stay in your hill until the threat passes—sometime around September, we guess. Please keep your antennae tuned to the NEAPS for further updates and a variety of light conga classics. Thank you. —Atom
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Robert Mueller's new House testimony date: 6
Days 'til the San Diego Spirits Festival: 8
Percent of registered voters who say they will definitely vote for Trump and his Democratic challenger, respectively, according to ABC News-Washington Post polling: 40%, 41%
Percent of voters who are persuadable: 19%
Decline in overall staffing at national parks since 2005: 20%
Number of high-school girls playing soccer when title IX was passed in 1972: 700
Number of high-school girls playing soccer in 2018: 390,482
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
[I]mmigrant-bashing is such an old American tradition.
Back at the time of the Revolution, many Anglo-Americans worried about the terrible number of Germans engulfing the country. Since then, we've managed to work up a snit over the Irish, the Jews, the Polish, the Swedes, Bolivians, Bavarians, Bosnians, Russians, Italians, Sicilians, a great variety of Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Maltese (sorry you missed that one—the Maltese once overran New York City deli counters), Cubans, Puerto Ricans and so forth.
If you haven't been here long enough to get upset about at least one other group moving in, you must still owe the coyote (as immigrant-smugglers are called). Think of the rich verbal history of ethnic insults—Bohunks, Krauts, Polacks, Micks. […]
Bush was planning to take a stab at resolving the problem, [b]ut the House Republicans had a hissy fit, claimed it was an "amnesty program" and demanded harsher measures, militarization of the border, a big fence. Not gonna work, y'all. Build a 50-foot fence, and they'll build a 51-foot ladder. Hire Halliburton with a no-bid contract to build the fence, and it will hire illegal workers to do it.
---July 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Nappytime...
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CHEERS to the best decision Gerald Ford ever made. Supreme Court Justice John Paul George Ringo Stevens (his actual birth name, and you can look it up), whom Ford appointed in 1975, died Monday of a stroke at 99. In my opinion his greatest act on behalf of our republic's survival was hanging on through the evil Bush years (which started in his 82nd year) after voting in vain to allow the Florida recount to continue:
Stevens' angriest dissent came, without doubt, in 2000, in the case of Bush v. Gore, which effectively ended the presidential race in favor of George W. Bush. "Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election," he wrote, "the identity of the loser is clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as impartial guardian of the rule of law."
Two other dissents were barn burners, too. His 2008 dissent, when a five-justice majority struck down a local ban on handguns, ruling for the first time that there is a constitutional right for individuals to own a gun.
And his 2010 dissent, when the same five-justice majority struck down a century-old ban on corporate spending in candidate elections. Stevens dissent from the bench in that case—Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission—was passionate and long, lasting more than 20 minutes. "Simply put," he said, "corporations are not human beings. In the context of an election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant.
Once Obama was sworn in, Stevens was free to vacate his seat (to Elena Kagan, no slouch herself) and spend the next decade writing books (his latest came out two months ago) and swinging a mean tennis racket. In the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, "He brought to our bench an inimitable blend of kindness, humility, wisdom, and independence." It speaks volumes about the current makeup of the court that I'm not sure if he said that as a good thing or a bad thing.
CHEERS and JEERS to whatever the hell that was all about. So what happened Tuesday night was, House Democrats had this resolution teed up that called out Donald Trump for his off-the-charts racism, but the rules of decorum say you can't call out people for racism on the House floor, even though the parliamentarian said "okay, fine, whatever," so Nancy Pelosi said it, but Republicans got all “Nuh uh! Takesie backsies!” over the calling out of the racist's racism, the parliamentarian did takesie-backsies, and the Speaker got kicked out of her own House and was tossed into the basement jail for saying that bad word, but then everyone took a vote and they let her back in by texting "the key is under the welcome mat," and then, following the parliamentarian's takesie-backsie-backsie, they all voted along party lines on the resolution calling Trump a—[reads from resolution]—"toxic, racist, squeaky-shoed, spray-on-tanned, eczema-encrusted shit-wattle," which Democrats said "Oy-yea,Oy-yea" to and Republicans said "Oy-nay, Oy-nay" to, and it passed, after which the media gave it a full 30 minutes of coverage. And everyone lived happy ever after except the parliamentarian who is making slow but steady progress in rehab. The end.
JEERS to the current chain of command. Seventy-two years ago today, on July 18, 1947, President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, which clearly establishes who takes over if the president dies or is incapacitated. If you ever need to induce vomiting because you or someone else has OD’d on something, just whip this list out and give it a look:
Vice President Mike Pence (But only with Mother's permission)
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (That’d be cool, if extremely frustrating at times.)
President pro tempore of the Senate Chuck Grassley (Dear God. Stay healthy, Nancy.)
Sec. of State Mike Pompeo (“Under my administration, everybody gets a free ticket to The Rapture!”)
Sec. of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin (He’d instantly vault to #1 among most-punchable presidential faces.)
Gary the House Janitor (In fairness, if he can clean up vomit in the school cafeteria, he can probably clean up Washington.)
Sneezy (This would not be good because he'd be dwarfed by world events.)
After that they just start drawing random names out of Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's girdle.
CHEERS to meeting unexpected allies in unexpected places. Well, that was interesting. Last week during the Netroots Nation convention in Philadelphia we did a double-take when we walked past former Fox News reporter Carl Cameron (one of the good ones, in the Shep Smith mold) sitting at a table with his wife, former Fox news videographer Moira Hopkins. Following our prime directive to leave no celebrity un-bothered, we said hi and asked the age-old question, "Sup?" Turns out they've joined a start-up site called Front Page Live, essentially a headline-centric news aggregator designed as a counter-weight to The Drudge Report. Carl will also be producing commentaries, and I’d say he's off to a pretty good start:
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Don’t tell him I told you this, but we also got some inside tidbits on the Kool-Aid drinkers still clutching tyranny's ankles over at Fox News. Like, for instance, did you know that Lou Dobbs arrives an hour before his show so he can have enough time to do his hair, makeup, and formaldehyde? Now you do.
CHEERS to merry meetings. Forty-four years ago this week, an Apollo crew docked with the Soyuz 19 spacecraft in orbit. (Because, if memory serves, Denny's was too crowded.) According to the Texas school board, it was the first time the world's foremost cold warriors hooked up in space for procreative purposes. A floppy-haired Peter Jennings anchored the event on ABC News, inadvertently calling it a “meeting between an American space capsule and a Russian space ‘crapsule’”:
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Yes, those are model spaceships hanging on strings behind him. Ed Wood should’ve sued the network for stealing his idea.
CHEERS to Democrats with the right stuff. Speaking of space, happy 98th birthday to the late John Glenn, one of the most durable human beings who ever lived. Not only was he the first astronaut to orbit the planet, he later became the oldest person in space when he blasted off in the Shuttle Discovery at the age of 77. I don’t plan to have a whole lot etched on my Billystone after I die, but one thing you'll definitely read on it will be, "John Glenn Was My Freakin' Senator." Probably with an exclamation point—more if I can get a volume discount.
CHEERS to swingers' clubs. Even if you don't give a caddie's p'tootey about golf, chances are you'll take the occasional cursory look at the 148th British Open leader board over the next four days. For the first time in nearly seven decades, the par-71 Dunluce Links (named after the 13th-century Dunluce Castle) at Royal Portrush course at the tippy-top of Northern Ireland will host the big event.
The course is rated among the top 100 in the world, and for several reasons: the scenery, the challenge, the history and, most of all, the not having a single inch of it owned by the Trumps.
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Ten years ago in C&J: July 18, 2009
CHEERS to mysteries solved. Sonia Sotomayor is a fan of Perry Mason, but when Senator and Judiciary Committee member Al Franken (also a Mason fan) grilled her on the name of the one case that the famed TV lawyer lost, she drew a blank (and, we would add, so did Franken). Fortunately, as her most trusted volunteer research assistant, I've got the answer:
"The Case of the Deadly Verdict." 10/17/1963. But it wasn't his fault. His client withheld evidence needed to win.
Yeah, yeah...that's what they all say.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to unsolved mysteries solved unmysteriously. For years, the first question I've asked myself when getting out of bed in the morning has been, "Gee, whatever happened to all those landscapes from PBS's The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross?" (Since January 20, 2017, it's been my second question, right after "What great American institution did Trump and his Republican cult break today?") Lo and behold The New York Times, finally making itself useful, went in search of his artworks—three identical triplets starring happy little trees and perky little rocks were produced for each of his 393 shows—and found them in Herndon, Virginia. Sadly, they're not for sale and likely never will be, but at least you'll soon be able to visit some of them at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. When you get eleven minutes of free time today, check out this video exposé that's nearly as zen as Ross himself was:
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Ross died of Lymphoma in 1995 (only 52), and currently rests just outside of Orlando. I sure wish he'd been around last fall so he could've painted his masterpiece: a happy little blue wave.
But have a happy little Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Diver is Awestruck By Huge Jellyfish Encounter in Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool—LOOK
---Good News Network
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