This is a mediocre weekday post from the great state of Maine.
Now Playing
The Sundance Film Festival just wrapped up for another year, and I took my usual toodle over to their web site to check out the documentaries that are hoping to pick up nationwide distributors. As usual, it's an embarrassment of celluloid riches. Here are a handful that embrace issues we talk about here at Daily Kos all the time:
Us Kids After a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School claims 17 lives, a number of students rally themselves around the tragedy as an opportunity to speak out against the national gun-violence epidemic. Director Kim A. Snyder (Newtown) carefully chronicles 18 pivotal months in the development of the March For Our Lives movement through a deeply personal lens. With extended access to the young activists not only on stage but in their homes and among their friends, Us Kids allows us to see them through one another’s eyes—as “normal-ass kids” bravely dealing with the weight of their traumas.
Continued...
The Fight Seven days after President Trump’s inauguration, the country’s airports and courthouses were clogged with protesters fighting to protect immigrants facing deportation due to the administration’s “Muslim ban” policy. It was to be the opening salvo of a relentless attack on civil liberties—and a tsunami of lawsuits waged against the Trump administration. What must it be like to be an ACLU lawyer in this day and age? Directors Elyse Steinberg, Josh Kriegman, and Eli Despres capture the rollercoaster ride of the thrill and defeat in these deeply human battles. The Fight celebrates the unsung heroes who fiercely work to protect our freedoms. Winner of the Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking.
The Dissident Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi was critical of his beloved Saudi Arabia and of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s policies. On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul and never came out. With exclusive access to the Turkish government’s evidence; to Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz; and to Khashoggi’s close friend and fellow Saudi insurgent, Omar Abdulaziz, Academy Award–winning filmmaker Bryan Fogelunearths hidden secrets in this real-life international thriller that will continue to rock the world long after the headlines have faded away. The Dissident is an intimate portrait of a man who sacrificed everything for freedom of speech.
You can check out the full slate of U.S. Documentaries here, World Documentaries here, and special Premiere Documentaries here. They'll keep us busy for awhile until the ultimate documentary, Godzilla vs. Kong, comes out in November.
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Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, February 5, 2020
Programming Note: Good morning and welcome to the ALL-NEW Cheers and Jeers format. You may have noticed that, over the last couple of weeks, the poobahs in the Daily Kos management cubicle have been reducing the quantity of above-the-fold verbiage. So starting today, you’ll notice that our traditional C&J “opener” continues down here in the underground portion of our humble, Pulitzer-snubbed abode. All the mediocrity you’ve come to expect will still be spat out in a factually-dubious, typo-riddin, deadline-induced panic for your personal edu-tainment. We’re just taking a little off the top. Or as my barber calls it: “the usual.” —Bill in Portland Maine, Blogging Elder
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til summer Olympics in Tokyo: 170
Days 'til the Winter Carnival in Bridgton, Maine: 10
Percent of high school students who identify as transgender, according to CDC data: 2%
Number of South Korean films that have been Oscar-nominated for Best Picture: 1 (Parasite, in 2020)
Number of minutes the cold virus lasts on skin: 5
Percent of likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire who support Sanders, Biden, and Warren in the new Suffolk U.-Boston Globe-WBZ poll: 24%, 18%, 13%
Percent chance that the Nike Vaporfly shoe has been approved for use at the 2020 Olympics, finally ending our national nightmare of uncertainty: 100%
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 184 (including 5 plagues and 1 good old-fashioned looming asteroid apocalypse). Soul Protection Factor 4 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Gravity testing one two three…
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CHEERS to calamity in corn country. Now that the technical bugs have been worked out, and the fisticuffs have been broken up in the parking lot, we finally have results from the Hawkeye State. If you're searching in vain for the appropriate words to express your reaction, this may help, courtesy of C&J's fully-staffed This May Help Department:
[Hooray!] [Dammit!] [Meh.] My candidate [won] [lost] the Iowa caucuses Monday night, and I am so [thrilled] [pissed] [zen] about it I could [kiss a wookie] [chew through drywall] [go back to bed].
Even though the deciding factor was [turnout] [turnout] [turnout], you can’t ignore the impact of [visiting all 99 counties] [appearing to enjoy wolfing down greasy diner food five times a day] [promising to award the Iowa State Fair butter cow a Medal of Freedom from the Oval office] in the final tally.
As usual, the media was of [big help] [little help] [no help] in the run-up to the caucus, and the [most] [least] insightful lesson I learned from their [polling] [Sunday morning network TV pundit panel] [chicken-innards reading] was ["Whoever’s ahead will be in the lead"] ["The candidates are playing to win"] ["This is still excellent news for John McCain"].
But one thing we can all agree on: that caucus app [sucks] [blows].
Next stop: the New Hampshire primary. I [can’t wait] [can wait] [need another drink].
For what it’s worth, that was my reaction, too.
JEERS to much ado about nothing. His pants didn’t fall around his ankles and he maintained a pulse during it, but otherwise President Trump’s third State of the Union speech was basically a great big…um…well, let me call out some of our best friends to sum up how the dotard’s ramblefest resonated in our household last night:
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I was impressed, though, that he made it through the whole thing without tossing any rolls of paper towel, throwing any kids in cages, or pausing to send a derogatory tweet. I figure he must’ve been chewing that special gum that reduces one’s cravings to act like a mean, narcissistic jerk in public: Dickorette.
P.S. After all his theatrics, Pelosi gets the grand finale...
She shreds for the republic.
JEERS to the sham heard 'round the world. With a final bang of his gavel, today Chief Justice John Roberts will bring the impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump to a close after Senate Republicans confirm with their votes-to-acquit that the phrase "It's OK If You're A Republican" might as well be enshrined into the Constitution. Trump got caught, red-handed, coercing a foreign government to help him win the 2020 election, literally contributing to the deaths of an untold number of Ukrainian soldiers as he held up military aid until President Zelensky agreed to do his dirty deeds—deeds which never transpired because Trump got caught, thanks to a courageous whistleblower whom Republicans are now trying to get assassinated. History will remember the trial as a sham—no witnesses, no documents, and open admissions by the likes of Sen. Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski that of course Trump's guilty, but so what? And now—of course—Trump is planning something something something TBA against his "enemies list":
Republicans briefed on Trump’s thinking believe that the president is out for revenge against his adversaries.
“It’s payback time,” a prominent Republican told me last week. “He has an enemies list that is growing by the day,” another source said. Names that came up in my conversations with Republicans included Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Mitt Romney, and John Bolton. “Trump’s playbook is simple: go after people who crossed him during impeachment.”
One tiny detail: he's barely gonna have time to summon Ivanka to put his socks on before another scandal drops on his head…and another…and another. Bolton…Parnas…SDNY…his rape trial…his taxes...god knows what else will pop up. Oh, he’s met the enemy alright. And it’s him.
CHEERS to the Illinois governor who took on the Kansas general. Happy 120th birthday to Adlai Stevenson II. He lost to Dwight Eisenhower in both 1952 and 1956. (Then again, I think God herself would have, too.) But as U.N. Ambassador he pleasantly surprised the Kennedy administration by giving the Russians hell during the Cuban missile crisis. And he sure understood Republicans:
"A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation. "
"I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them."
And I love this:
“We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.
We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of man, half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.”
In other words: nice knowin' ya.
CHEERS to blowing this popsicle stand. Speaking of being passengers on a little space ship: every time you go outside on a clear night you’re doing yourself a grave disservice if you don’t look up and nearly choke on your cough drop as you realize that the universe up there is pretty damn spectacular. The elves at NASA are also aware of this, so they always let us in on the big celestial events for the month. Here’s a look at February’s skywatching tips, including Mars and the moon gettin’ it on with some raw, uncensored occultation:
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By the way, I hate to burst his bubble, but I can tell you exactly how Orion the hunter manages to look so svelte up there year after year: Spanx.
JEERS to cancer. 69-year-old cigar chomper Rush Limbaugh has it. Advanced-stage lung cancer caught up to him and his big, conspiracy-theory-spouting mouth:
During a discussion with a caller to “The Rush Limbaugh Show” back in April 2015, Limbaugh denied second-hand smoke was a danger and said it takes 50 years for smokers to get cancer. … “That is a myth. That has been disproven at the World Health Organization and the report was suppressed,” Limbaugh claimed. “There is no fatality whatsoever. There’s no even major sickness component associated with secondhand smoke. It may irritate you, and you may not like it, but it will not make you sick, and it will not kill you.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 2,500,000 nonsmokers have died from health problems caused by exposure to secondhand smoke since 1964.
Honest to god I wouldn’t wish cancer on anyone. So I’m bummed. For 30 years I was hoping that Limbaugh would eventually get killed by his ratings.
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Ten years ago in C&J: February 5, 2010
JEERS to Obama's budget. Not necessarily because of the numbers in it or the size and scope (it's beeeeeg), but because now Republicans will spend the next ten months waving it around, banging it on lecterns, wheeling it around on carts, stacking it up in piles, bitching about the number of pages ("If it can't be wrote on a cocktail napkin, it can't be wrote at all," they'll say), screaming about socialism, and making other obnoxious obstructionist noises they never made when Bush released his massive budgets. But at least they're consistent. They flip-flop on everything.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to a profession full of highs and lows. Happy Weatherpersons' Day! After shoveling four feet of snow off the Wikipedia page, I see that it "recognizes individuals in the fields of meteorology, weather forecasting and broadcast meteorology, as well as volunteer storm spotters and observers. It is observed on the birthday of John Jeffries, one of the United States' first weather observers who took daily measurements starting in 1774." Yes, it took our best scientific minds over 200 years to build our modern forecasting tools, and You Tube mere minutes to assemble the outtakes. Enjoy…
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Forecasters predict National Weatherpersons' Day will blow over within the next 16 hours, followed by an 80 percent chance of lingering National Weatherpersons' Day hangovers. Mostly among weatherpersons.
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
“Does Bill in Portland Maine have a lot of trouble answering questions generally in life or just when he comes into the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool?”
—Judge Raymond Clevenger III
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