From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE
Goooooood…...mornin’.
Jus’ gonna leave this here. You look like you could use it:
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Dan Savage says Randy should totally host the next Tony Awards. Well, duh.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, December 6, 2018
Note: Due to the seasonal startup of C&J's eggnog fracking operation, you may experience mild earthquakes through December 25th. Plus eggnog will likely start oozing from your taps like lava on a Hawaiian hillside. We assure you it's all perfectly safe to drink until you hear otherwise from an authorized emergency room stomach-pumping attendant as you’re waking up. Thank you for your understanding, and bottoms up! Our shit’s better than the Baldwin Sisters’, ayuh! ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til ACA enrollment ends in most states: 9
Days 'til the Lawnmower Parade and Holiday Festival in Havana, Florida: 2
Number of the top 4 largest Dow Industrial point drops in history that have occurred under President Trump: 4
Number of White House staffers who were cited for violating the Hatch Act for tweeting out Make America Great Again or MAGA: 6
Number of people arrested in the Paris gas tax riots: 412
Distance of the Bennu asteroid, which the OSIRIS-REx probe just reached, from earth: 76 million miles
Amount the Christmas tree farm industry will spend this year asking you to "Keep It Real.": $1 million
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment, with special bonus note:
Woo-hoo! It's official! Janice Engel's labor of love, Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins, is officially premiering at Sundance. Via Deadline: "Molly Ivins was six feet of flame-haired Texas trouble, a prescient political journalist, best-selling author and Bill of Rights warrior. She took no prisoners, leaving both sides of the aisle laughing and craving more of her razor-sharp wit. It’s time to Raise Hell like Molly! World Premiere.” We'll post reviews as they come in. And now, this week's Molly Moment:
Fellow procrastinators of the world, unite! Now is the time to begin thinking about Christmas shopping.
We still have a few days left, so there's no rush for those who have been known to do it all on Christmas morning at the Jiffy Mart (everyone appreciates a nice can of WD-40).
For those who consider it wussy to begin shopping before the 24th, here's the annual Christmas book list -- the best one-stop shopping in town, items to suit all ages and personalities.
We prefer, of course, to shop at independent bookstores, but if a chain store is all that's available, it will do. Though there are no guarantees on the quality of the Christmas help: I once heard a woman ask for "The Odyssey" by Homer, to which the high-school honey hired for the holidays replied, "Uh, Homer Who?"
---December, 2005
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Vanessa "can also sniff out bad boyfriends…"
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CHEERS and JEERS to saying farewell to #41 of the 45. Yeah---I voted for Reagan-Bush in 1984, back when I was an obnoxious college-age WASP. I was too scared and naïve to come out of the closet back then, but as soon as it was clear just how fully they intended to turn their backs on the gay community as the AIDS epidemic exploded, I quietly turned mine on them and became a life-long Democrat. Simple as that.
There is no doubt in my mind that George Herbert Walker Bush was "New England Nice"---even a great guy to have a beer with. Yeah, he did sign the Americans with Disabilities Act. Yeah, he did a noble thing with his Thousand Points of Light initiative. Yeah, he did perform above and beyond the call of service in the Navy during World War II. Yeah, he did raise taxes when it was obvious they needed to be raised. Yeah, he did have the smarts (and handshake deals with his allies) to kick Saddam back to Iraq and then get our troops the hell out. Yeah, he did give us exemplary Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Yeah, he played his cards right during the fall of the USSR. Yeah, he ripped up his NRA card into a thousand points of paper because even back in 1995 he recognized what a dick Wayne LaPierre was and where the group was headed. Yeah, he voted for Hillary over Donald. Fine, fine, fine.
But he was also made of cold-hearted political stuff, tending to the well-being of certain segments of society as he blew Nixon and Reagan's dog whistle to let the racists (sigh…Republicans do love their racists) know he was in their corner, while protecting the scumbags involved in illegally selling weaponry to Iran to just as illegally funnel money to the right-wing Contra rebels. He was against the freaking Civil Rights Act of 1964. He escalated the misguided and racist (that word again) "war on drugs." Need we mention the disaster that is Clarence Thomas? Good god. And that Willie Horton ad? Double good god. And his eldest son? There aren't enough "good gods" in the world.
Yesterday, under the rafters of the National Cathedral, the political elites and their fawning media followers got together to say farewell to America-loving, broccoli-hating George Herbert Walker Bush---a president of mixed repute---gone at 94. His final words: "Dana Carvey survives."
P.S. The Grammy nominations will be announced Friday morning instead of yesterday morning due to the Bush dying thing. Message: they care.
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CHEERS to entering the civilized world. Well, Hallefrickinlujah! On today's date in 1865---89 years after we officially declared ourselves a nation where "all men are created equal" and 8 months after Lincoln was assassinated---the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was officially ratified, abolishing slavery and pissing off the south. You can view the document here. 153 years later, blacks are least likely to be hired, most likely to be targeted and killed by police and “stand your grounders” for doing nothing even remotely illegal, least likely to be in the minority among the prison population and most likely to be targeted for voter disenfranchisement by Republicans. But, on the other hand, how nice to know that blacks can now be oppressed in all those ways as a free people.
CHEERS to the end of a very bad era. Volkswagen has drawn a line in the sand and deemed 2026 the last year that they'll make vehicles with internal-combustion engines:
A spokesman confirmed [that Strategy Chief Michael] Jost's remarks meant that VW, Europe and China's best selling passenger car brand, will focus on electric cars instead.
VW will continue to adapt its petrol and diesel engined cars to meet environmental standards during the lifetime of those vehicles, but the German carmaker is now committed to radical steps to stop global warming, Jost said.
As a way to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord, Volkswagen has changed its car development benchmarks to include the target of radically cutting levels of carbon dioxide pollution in production as well, Jost said.
I have the perfect slogan for when they finally make the switch from gas to electric: Shhhhhhvergnugen.
JEERS to living in an easy-bake-oven world. Speaking of carbon dioxide, the global warming myth continues:
The world hit another carbon dioxide emissions milestone in 2018, with an estimated 2.7 percent increase in emissions since last year, according to a report published Wednesday in Environmental Research Letters, a scientific journal. This follows an increase of 1.6 percent in 2017 from 2016.
The Global Carbon Project, an organization that produced the report, estimates that global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel sources will hit a record high of more than 37 billion tons this year.
Just two years ago, there was cause for cautious optimism. From 2014 to 2016, world emissions seemed to be stabilizing.
"We thought, perhaps hoped, emissions had peaked a few years ago," Rob Jackson, a professor at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences and leader of the Global Carbon Project, said in a news release."After two years of renewed growth, that was wishful thinking." … According to NASA, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are the highestthey've been in 2 to 3 million years. For the past 800,000 years, CO2 levels have stayed near or below 280 parts per million. Just in the last 150 years,levels have jumped 45 percent due mainly to the burning of fossil fuels.
"Obviously greenhouse gas emissions are doing the liberals' bidding by shilling for Big Wind and Big Solar," said James Inhofe from behind the snow fort in his walk-in freezer.
JEERS to fascism in dairy country. Yup, they did it. Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature just spent an entire night making sure that incoming Democratic Governor Tony Evers will be forced against his will to act as a Republican lackey:
The Republican-controlled Wisconsin Legislature has approved a sweeping package of bills weakening the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general. […]
The measures would limit the governor's ability to promulgate administrative rules, which enact laws and give lawmakers the power to control appointees to the state economic development agency's board. The measures would also require the attorney general to get legislative approval to withdraw from lawsuits. That move is designed to block Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers from allowing the incoming attorney general, Democrat Josh Kaul, to withdraw Wisconsin from a multistate lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act.
The measures also restrict early in-person voting to two weeks before an election.
Sweet people, huh. And of course Scott Walker is gonna sign it as one final f*ck you to the state that he never really liked much, anyway. (Nothing personal---just fascist-level business.) Let's hope the courts are wise enough to untwist this mess and teach the sour Goops about the limits of sour grapes.
CHEERS to new discoveries. Twenty-two years this week---ah, those golden Clinton years---during its Pathfinder mission NASA sent a six-wheeled rover called Sojourner to roam the surface of a weird, awkwardly-shaped planet and gather rocks. Moments after landing, the space agency got a call from Newt Gingrich asking them to please come get it off his head.
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 6, 2008
CHEERS to Pine Tree State roots. Oh, about our new Ambassador to the U.N., Susan "Not Condi" Rice. Turns out she's practically my sister:
Rice, a foreign policy expert who worked in the Clinton administration and advised Obama during his campaign, is the daughter of Lois Dickson Rice, a noteworthy Maine native who grew up in a prominent Portland family. Susan Rice often visits Maine, where the family has a summer home in Lincolnville. She was in Portland in January, when she was keynote speaker at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast Celebration. ...
In appointing Rice to be his envoy to the United Nations, Obama elevated the post to a Cabinet position. He has called Rice a close and trusted adviser who knows the global challenges faced by the United States.
Once again I feel an obligation---driven by patriotism---to invoke the Palin Principle of expertise by osmosis: Ms. Rice has Maine ties + I have Maine ties = I am now a member of Obama's cabinet. I prefer a corner suite but I'll settle for a cubicle in the Oval Office. [12/6/18 Update: Moments after our mad-cow-infected senator Susan Collins voted against all women everywhere by voting for Brett Kavanaugh’s elevation to the Supreme Court, Ambassador Rice said she would seriously look into challenging her in 2020. She could pull it off, I think. But fair warning: if nominated, I will run.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to delightfully twisted minds. Today is comedian, first inductee in the Boston Comedy Hall of Fame, Oscar winner (1989 Best Short Live-Action Film for The Appointments of Dennis Jennings) and multiple Grammy and Emmy nominee Steven Wright's 63rd birthday. To describe him beyond the single word "deadpan" is almost futile. The best I can do is “comedy at the speed of three-toed sloth.” But, boy, when his punchlines land, it can be downright mind-bending. Here’s his first national TV gig (1982), and he had the most intimidating audience possible: Johnny Carson…
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Carson was so impressed that he invited Steven back a week later. You can watch more of him here and read more of him (which is just as much fun) here. Oh, and extra points for including a Maine lighthouse (Cape Neddick) on the home page of his website. He always did like us best.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
Jeff Sessions says he's not eager to get back into the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool
---Mediaite
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