Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Note: Due to the Patriots' Day holiday, Monday garbage pickup in Maine and Massachusetts will actually be happening last Saturday. A message from your friends at the Department of Untimely Reminders.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the next deadline set by the House Ways and Means Committee for turning over Trump's tax returns: 7
Days 'til the Nihon Matsuri Japan Festival in Salt Lake City: 11
Percent of Americans who believe Trump doesn’t think the rule of law applies to him, according to a CNN poll: 56%
Percent of Americans who trust Democrats more on education than the Trump administration, according to a Georgetown University poll: 59%
Minimum number of times Fox News mentioned Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in the last six weeks: 3,000
Years of tax returns that presidential candidate Kamala Harris has released: 15
Number of years Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin could spend in prison if he doesn’t turn over Trump's tax returns to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal: 5
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NEW Tuesday feature! "Packin' for Philadelphia!"
Brought to you by the 2019 Netroots Nation Convention in Philadelphia, July 11-13. Shazam! was the #1 movie in America for the second week in a row, and guess what? It takes place in Philadelphia!!! Among the famous sites you'll see in it is the LOVE sculpture created by Robert Indiana, who spent many years on Vinalhaven Island here in Maine, and died there a year ago. Here's a bit about his most famous work (the original prototype sits in Indianapolis), which took ten years to complete…
MoMA historian Deborah Wye describes Indiana's image as "full of erotic, religious, autobiographical, and political underpinnings" that make it "both accessible and complex in meaning.
Megan Wilde offered more detail about the autobiographical origins in an article for Mental Floss magazine, "[T]he word love was connected to [the artist's] childhood experiences attending a Christian Science church, where the only decoration was the wall inscription "God is Love."
The colors were an homage to his father, who worked at a Phillips 66 gas station during the Depression."
She quotes Robert Indiana as describing the original colors as "the red and green of that sign against the blue Hoosier sky."
The LOVE sculpture is located in Love Park, about a block away from the convention center. I hope it'll fit in my carry-on satchel. I don’t trust airport baggage handlers.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: The Twitter feed for the Buttigiegs’ buttidawgs…
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CHEERS to comforting words from the President of the United States. I don’t recognize heads of the executive branch who still run a criminal enterprise on the side, so today this president speaks for me in the aftershock of yesterday’s Notre Dame fire:
My family took a trip (piled in our Opel station wagon—we were the Griswolds before the Griswolds were the Griswolds) to Paris in 1977 when we lived in Germany. This is the only pic I could find yesterday, and I’m pleased as punch a fine Château Mouton Rothschild Pauillac that the twin towers were saved, meaning this little guy is still on gargoyle duty this morning:
Nothing can replace what was lost (although we understand the artworks and other treasures in storage were saved, and the fire chief said last night that "the structure of Notre-Dame is saved and preserved in its entirety"). But if it’s one thing the human race is pretty good at by now, it’s rebuilding. And so they shall.
CHEERS to the fighter from Newark. Senator Cory Booker's been "informally" running for president since February, but he made it official over the weekend. Let's check out his vitals:
Senator Cory Booker
Hails from: Newark, New Jersey
Age on inauguration day 2021: 50
Primary campaign theme: "We Can't Wait"
Education: BA and Masters degrees from Stanford (one year apart); attended Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship; JD from Yale.
Official website: CoryBooker.com
Strengths: Third-most-liberal voting record in the Senate; improved life for residents of Newark as hands-on mayor, especially in the area of affordable housing (doubling the number of units); honored by the Brady Center for his work to reduce gun violence; co-sponsored ENDA and criminal justice reform legislation; member of the "Hell No" caucus to thwart Trump's nominees; favors federal legalization of marijuana; big thumbs-up from Jimmy Carter.
Weaknesses: Too cozy with big-money Wall Streeters? Famously appeared on Meet the Press and labeled as "nauseating" Democratic criticism of Mitt Romney's gleeful embrace of vulture capitalism at Bain Capital.
Dog-in-distress rescue ability, based on latest reviews from Woozle Yelp: 10/10
He joins Kamala, Pete, Tim, Wayne,Elizabeth, Beto, Bernie, Tulsi, Julian, John, Andrew, Kirsten, Eric, Jay, Marianne, Amy, and John #2 in their quest to be the Democrat who has the honor of chasing the Trump crime syndicate out of Washington. Even though his campaign hasn't quite leapt to life yet, one thing is certain: he's definitely the most qualified Cory in the field.
JEERS to lying liars. Bill Barr, the guy in charge of protecting President Trump from laws, promised that the Mueller Report would be released in the middle of April. Yesterday was THE literal middle of April…and no Mueller Report. Apparently it's coming out on Thursday. So, filling the space in which we intended to put the juiciest, most damning tidbits, please welcome the Guinea pig world's Laurel and Hardy in The Cucumber Sketch:
We’re sure AG Barr regrets the inconvenience. Just as we’re sure his boss doesn’t cheat at golf.
CHEERS to masters of the quill and the inquisitive mind. The Pulitzer Prizes were announced yesterday. You can see the whole list here. Daily Kos was thrilled to see that one of the finalists in the cartooning category was none other than Kossack Ken Fisher, aka Ruben Bolling of Tom the Dancing Bug fame. And thin-skinned Donald Trump is not going to like some of the journalism winners:
Explanatory Reporting: David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner of The New York Times for an exhaustive 18-month investigation of President Donald Trump’s finances that debunked his claims of self-made wealth and revealed a business empire riddled with tax dodges.
National Reporting: The staff of The Wall Street Journal, for uncovering President Trump’s secret payoffs to two women during his campaign who claimed to have had affairs with him, and the web of supporters who facilitated the transactions, triggering criminal inquiries and calls for impeachment.
Public Service: The South Florida Sun Sentinel For exposing failings by school and law enforcement officials before and after the deadly shooting rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Breaking News: The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, for immersive, compassionate coverage of the massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue that captured the anguish and resilience of a community thrust into grief.
International: Maggie Michael, Maad al-Zikri, and Nariman El-Mofty from AP for a revelatory year-long series detailing the atrocities of the war in Yemen, including theft of food aid, deployment of child soldiers and torture of prisoners.
Aretha Franklin got a special citation "for her indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades." And the top prize in fiction went to The Overstory by Richard Powers. He barely edged out Replacement for Obamacare by Mick Mulvaney and I Will Build the Most Beautiful Wall and Make Mexico Pay For It I Can Tell You That by Donald Trump. C&J got recognition, too—our restraining order was renewed for another 6 months. Aww...we blush.
CHEERS to boogeying in your Buster Browns. Yesterday was Patriot's Day, a commemoration of the skirmishes at Lexington and Concord, and the big holiday tradition here in New England, besides the re-floofing of the tri-corn hats, was the running of the 123rd Boston Marathon. This year went mostly according to plan. Kenyan colonialist and central planner of the Deep State Barack Obama’s mind-control powers paid off in the men's division (and almost in the women’s), moving us one step closer to total socialist domination:
Lawrence Cherono of Kenya won the men's 2019 Boston Marathon in his debut, with a time of 2:07:59 on a day that started off with rainy conditions similar to last year but eventually turned humid as the race went on. […]
Scott Fauble was the first American to cross the finish line in the men's race, finishing in seventh with a time of 2:09:10.
Ethiopia's Worknesh Degefa, debuting in her first women's Boston Marathon, ran a blistering early pace and then held off a chasing Edna Kiplagat of Kenya to win the women's race with a time of 2:23:30 in just her fourth marathon.
As usual, the winner of the jetpack division, clocking in at a record 2.58 seconds—was Geeky McNerd from MIT, who is expected to make a full recovery from a nasty case of windburn.
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Ten years ago in C&J: April 16, 2009
CHEERS to quik 'n EZ solutions. Hey, everybody, I read yesterday that we can eliminate the effects of global warming in one simple step! All we need to do it is get a commitment from everyone on the planet and their governments to cut emissions by 70 percent by the end of the century. And since the chance of that happening is the same as John Boehner selling his golf clubs on eBay, we'll stick with Plan B: wait for that benevolent aliens from Orklork to arrive and save us with their giant CO2-filtering supergills. I hope they get here before the Thrangbolians eat us.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to going all Sprucey Goosey on the world. Howard Hughes, eat yer heart out. It's not often that a new aircraft breaks a record for its sheer size, but that was the case over the weekend when a flight crew downed a case of Thunderbird Wine, popped a stick of Beeman's in their mouth, and took the "Stratolaunch"—with its 385-foot wingspan and 50-foot-high tail—for a spin around the heavens. It flew for a couple hours at 17,000 feet (maximum speed: 189 mph), and then landed safely to much applause and more Thunderbird Wine. Check it out:
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The aircraft is designed to take an assortment of rockets, manned space vehicles, and other assorted pointy-headed projectiles up to an altitude of 35,000 feet and then let 'em loose into the cold, black emptiness of space. Thus explaining my GoFundMe page devoted to the goal of “giving Stephen Miller the ride of his life.” (Please don’t tell him. He thinks we’re buying him a merry-go-round that spins to the strains of Deutschland Uber Alles.)
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
"Perhaps it was when Bill in Portland Maine chased a pig baby changeling in a diaper that it fully hit me. I couldn't help but wonder: What on earth am I watching? The insanity was almost incomprehensible, though it's par for the course in the world of Cheers and Jeers."
---Katie Walsh, The Chicago Tribune
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