From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Move Over, Rubber Ducky. Make Room for the Loon
When I saw this in my inbox from the Biodiversity Research Institute, I knew I couldn’t pass it up…
You can help loon conservation by sponsoring a loon from one of seven states including: Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Louisiana, Minnesota, Wyoming, and Montana.
When you Sponsor a Loon, you help support BRI's efforts to band and monitor this iconic symbol of wildness. BRI has captured and color-marked over 5,000 loons in 27 states and provinces.
Daily Kos has no loons.
So we're adopting one.
Guess what, gang? We're adopting a C&J loon! Because if there's one thing we don’t have enough of in the kiddie pool, it's feathers and loon poop.
I'll take care of the adoption fee and you can take care of the fun stuff: deciding which state to adopt it from and, more important, its name. We'll take care of the first part today. Go vote in the poll and tell us if the C&J loon should be a Mainer, Masshole, Gopher Stater, Big Skyer, Empire Stater, Yellowstoner or a…um…Pelican Stater. All for a good cause:
The mission of Biodiversity Research Institute is to assess emerging threats to wildlife and ecosystems through collaborative research, and to use scientific findings to advance environmental awareness and inform decision makers. BRI's Center for Loon Conservation offers an essential resource for local and global communities concerned with loon preservation. Our research studies encompass a variety of ecological stressors: chemical toxins; habitat loss in breeding and wintering grounds and along migratory routes; and avian diseases.
Vote now, and then we'll figure out a name that's good and looney. I know a certain wing of our political spectrum that might provide a deep pool of candidates.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Note: Anybody want to be Secretary of Defense? Final auditions are today from 1-3pm in the White House Blue Room. (Just walk in when the Secret Service is on their beer break.) Must be good with patriotic rhetoric, bad with troop estimates, and own your own flubber cannon. Tap dancing skills a plus. Serious offers only. If no one stands out, we'll just hire another boring stuffed shirt. Good luck!
-
10 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the liftoff of the
Orion spacecraft:
1
Days 'til the
Candy Cane Train arrives at the Bath, Maine train station:
10
Expected increase in 2014 holiday seasonal hiring at U.S. shopping centers:
7.4%
(Source: Int'l Council of Shopping Centers)
Percent of Americans with HIV who don’t have the disease under control:
70%
(Source: CDC)
Current net favorability rating of Congress:
-65
Current favorability rating of Darth Vader:
+28
(Source:
Washington Post)
Israeli approval of Benjamin Netanyahu in November:
38%
(Source: Haaretz poll)
-
Mid-week Rapture Index: 184 (including 5 Moral Standards and at least 1 congregation seeking a new way to die faster). Soul Protection Factor 14 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Irresistible photobooth-style adoption pics by photographer Guinnevere Shuster at the Humane Society of Utah.
-
CHEERS to the toughest broad on the bench. Just minutes after having the equivalent of the Keystone pipeline inserted into her chest, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg polished off 50 one-arm pushups, lifted a Buick to save a child pinned underneath it, tackled a shoplifter and then showed up for work five minutes early and asked the most intelligent and pointed questions in the room. I'll say it again: Breyer's the frail one. Somebody swaddle that guy in bubble wrap.
JEERS to more fiddling while earth burns. In Lima, Peru, the climate summit is seeking a new pact that calls for immediate action to politely ask the world's mega-polluter nations if they will kindly consider taking action at some point in the future:
Well, the Mormons do have Kolob.
The biggest challenge for the U.N.-sponsored talks is dividing responsibilities between rich Western countries and emerging economies such as China and India. The poorest and most vulnerable nations also need help to develop their economies without aggravating global warming, and to adapt to climate changes that are already causing more violent weather, prolonged droughts and intense flooding.
The negotiators in Lima are focusing on a draft agreement that can be refined before the Paris meeting a year from now.
Argh. You know it's tough for the world to break free of Big Oil's influence when even the climate summit's draft has to be refined.
CHEERS to the Land Of Lincoln and Obama. Happy Birthday, Illinois---196 years old today! The name means "Tribe of superior men." Deadbeat dad and former crazy congressman Joe Walsh is also from Illinois. So is Donald Rumsfeld. So is the Catholic bishop who conducted an exorcism last year after the governor signed a marriage-equality bill into law. Oh well...every village has its idiots.
JEERS to Bill O'Reilly: Mind Reader Unextraordinaire. Some members of the St. Louis Rams made a gesture of solidarity with the Ferguson protesters Sunday by walking on the field with their hands up, and it made all the papers. It was a powerful moment that required no additional commentary. But Fox News's Frank Burns, Bill O'Reilly,
couldn't resist:
"Quite frankly, I don't think they're smart enough to know what they're doing," O'Reilly said. "I don't. I absolutely don't think they're smart enough to know what they're doing."
Well, I’ll give him this. He got the "I don’t think" part right.
CHEERS to crossing the finish line with nary a scratch. Southerners and East Coasters rejoice! As of last Sunday your 2014 Atlantic hurricane season is officially over. And they say this year was…
Hurricane Arthur was a bit of a bruiser.
…a relatively quiet season as was predicted. Still, the season afforded NOAA scientists with opportunities to produce new forecast products, showcase successful modeling advancements, and conduct research to benefit future forecasts.
“A combination of atmospheric conditions acted to suppress the Atlantic hurricane season, including very strong vertical wind shear, combined with increased atmospheric stability, stronger sinking motion and drier air across the tropical Atlantic,” said Gerry Bell, Ph.D., lead hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center. “Also, the West African monsoon was near- to below average, making it more difficult for African easterly waves to develop.”
Meanwhile, the eastern North Pacific hurricane season met or exceeded expectations with 20 named storms---the busiest since 1992. Of those, 14 became hurricanes and eight were major hurricanes.
Their 2015 hurricane season forecast comes out next May. Other than blizzards, ice storms, tornadoes, nor'easters, mudslides, droughts and Republicans controlling Congress, we're all clear!
CHEERS to seeing stuff up close. On this date in 1621, Galileo perfected his new invention. He called it the telescope. The following day the lady next door perfected her new invention. She called it window blinds.
-
Five years ago in C&J: December 3, 2009
JEERS to the Worst Villager in the World. Pat Buchanan is still a welcome guest on MSNBC (Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough love him, although Rachel Maddow has wisely backed away from "Uncle Pat") and PBS, even though he out-crazies most of the Fox Opinion Channel crowd. This comment on climate change from Sunday's McLaughlin Group should've elicited gales of laughter. Sadly, it didn't:
What a waste of a
perfectly good pie.
"For 10 years, the earth has been cooling. 1998 or so was the hottest year. The polar-bear population is doing fine. Antarctica is growing. The ice cap is growing. The Arctic ice cap has stopped shrinking. You take a look around the United States; you're having record cold trends. And you've got this tremendous real problem in the American economy as opposed to this mythical problem of global warming. ...
And I think, as I say, Al Gore's moment has passed. This whole thing was a bit of a hoax designed to transfer power from individuals and wealth to governments and from governments to transnational-international corporations, global institutions. And that time has come and it has gone."
If a ten year-old child wrote a report for a fifth-grade science class using the above words, he or she would get an F-minus and the kid's parents would be brought in for a little chat with the teacher. But when Pat Buchanan says it, he gets rebooked as a guest on a nationally-syndicated TV show---and a "liberal" national cable news network---that purports to educate viewers on current events. Bottom line: I'm a shrill blogger and I should sit down and be quiet.
[12/3/14 Update: Pat finally got booted from MSNBC nearly three years ago for his white supremacist views. PBS and McLaughlin still love him. And I'm still shrill.]
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to Dark Side Friday. If you missed the squee-worthy first official trailer for Star Wars Episode VII, you can see it here. (Turn your speakers up to 11.) But that teaser's already soooo five days ago. This is the one you gotta see now…from a Lego set far, far away:
Oh what the hell, now's as good a time as any to start the clock: 380 days 'til the movie arrives in theatres. Or 379 days 'til the movie arrives on bootleg carts in Beijing.
Have a nice Wednesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"The development of artificial Bill in Portland Maine could spell the end of the human race."
---Prof. Stephen Hawking
-