From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
The Week Ahead
Monday As federal agencies across the country begin recovering from the Trump shutdown, hospitals across the country begin recovering from a weekend surge of Democratic victory dance-related injuries. Meanwhile, Trump spends the day in his…CAVE!!! Ha Ha that'll never get old.
Today is Data Privacy Day. Or as hackers call it: "Yeah, Good Luck With That” Day.
Tuesday Donald “Cave Man” (Ha Ha, I told you it never gets old) Trump doesn’t get to deliver his beloved State of the Union address on this, the original date of Speaker Pelosi’s invitation. He’s been a very bad boy, you see, and won’t get his cameras until he finishes eating all his crow.
All week: Robert Mueller continues connecting these.
Today is Freethinkers Day, which celebrates those who believe that truth should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism, rather than authority, tradition, or religion. Noted freethinkers include Thomas Paine, Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and anyone who has ever shouted in agony, “The Fox News, it burns!!!”
Wednesday The gross domestic product report is released. As usual, "leftover Trump steaks" tops the list.
Today is Dick Cheney's birthday. He turns 666. Again.
Thursday With all Democrats except Joe Manchin dissenting, Senate Republicans pass the 2019 Trust Us, We're Totally Not Taking Candy From Babies Act. Its primary goal: to take candy from babies. Susan Collins expresses grave concern before voting “Yea!” so loud her uvula spends a week in traction.
Friday The latest consumer sentiment index is released. America's sentiment registers an uptick from "itchy" to "rutabagas." (It's a weird index.)
Among the new movies opening today: a thriller starring Rene Russo, John Malkovich and Jake Gyllenhaal. It’s called Velvet Buzzsaw. There you go, Trump. Netflix just handed you your new nickname for Nancy Pelosi.
And all week: Congressman Devin Nunes remains an unapologetic Putin boot licker. But you probably already knew that.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold…
POLL UPDATE: As noted by our smarter-then-me readers, Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax is based on assets, not income. C&J regrets the error and has agreed to pay a 560% “dummy tax” on our accumulated candy corn assets.
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, January 28, 2019
Note: Today is one of those every-other-Mondays we've come to dread---it's Chemo Monday in the BiPM household. In a couple hours our bloodstream will be suckin' down a quart of Big Pharma's finest as we continue pushing back against Big Cancer's nastiest. So, posting-wise, no C&J tomorrow, we'll do our best to show up Wednesday morning, and definitely deliver our little political bundle of joy on Thursday and Friday. While we're experiencing our cold sweats and hallucinations of a Lindsey Graham presidency, please visit the Abbreviated Pundit Roundups, Election Team Roundups, and Good News diaries to satisfy your brain’s nutritional needs. Thanks for your patience. —Mgt
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By the Numbers:
5 days!!!
Days 'til Halftime Wardrobe Malfunction Day: 6
Days ‘til the Madison Winter Festival in Wisconsin: 5
Approximate percent of U.S. tax filers who get refunds, which this year will likely be delayed due to the Trump Shutdown: 75%
Expected GDP in Greece this year, according to the IMF, as growth and employment prospects finally brighten there: 2.4%
Amount in sales that Massachusetts marijuana shops have ch’chinged since they opened there two months ago, according to the Cannabis Control Commission: $24 million
Rank of Maine among states with the worst drivers in the country, up 6 notches from last year according to insurance site Quotewizard.com: #1
Estimated number of dreams you'll have this year, according to some web site: 1,460
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Summer preview…
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CHEERS to the final countdown. Last call—if you're in the greater New England area on Saturday, February 2nd---just five days from today---please join us at our next Daily Kos meetup starting at noon. The place: The home of some darn tasty vittles and drinky, the Farm Bar And Grille at 57 State Street in Kittery, Maine (our southern-most town before you enter the den of sin and depravity known as New Hampshire). We'll chat, we'll break bread, we'll celebrate our midterm election and anti-shutdown victories, and, with the Patriots about to win their 500th Super Bowl, we'll seek new adjectives to describe the nirvanic feeling of running our hands through Tom Brady's hair. To RSVP or get more info, email our intrepid organizer "nhox42" at nhox42[at] yahoo.com. And if you're flying in from out west………wait for it………..boy are your arms gonna be tired!
JEERS to gimmetarianism at the boarding gate. Trump's shutdown stunt ended Friday not with a bang but with a whimper, as boiling rage among Senate Republicans quickly dissolved what had been 34 previous days of unity. And from the mouth of one of their own comes an admission that their sudden call (read: screaming match at Mitch McConnell and Mike Pence) to open the government wasn't entirely made out of compassion for the peasants:
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) said that her colleagues didn’t care about the shutdown of the federal government except for when they were going through airport security, the Washington Post reported Saturday.
Sen. Murkowski, seen here holding the zero fucks her party gives about furloughed federal workers.
In a feature about how the GOP was reeling from fallout over the shutdown, Murkowski said that she knew the shutdown was going to be a disaster from the start. […]
Murkowski told reporters that other Republicans “never really felt the urgency” to end the shutdown “except perhaps when they were going through airport security. It was stunning to me,” Murkowski said.
I suggest the airlines create a new, very special seating location for these out-of-touch Republicans from now on: the right wing.
JEERS to our EZ-bake planet. We knew that the first eleven months of 2018 were mighty toasty. Now we have December’s numbers, and we can officially say that, in many parts of the world, the entire year was one for the sweaty record books:
[T]he data show that 2018 stacks up as one of the warmest years since the Civil War era, according to researchers from Berkeley Earth. Just three years were warmer: 2016 is first, followed by 2015 and 2017, according to NOAA.
Last year, global temperatures were 1.16 degrees Celsius, or 2.09 degrees Fahrenheit above the average temperature of the late 19th century, from 1850-1900, researchers at Berkeley Earth found. … Europe experienced its warmest May to October ever, causing drought in many areas. Notably, 2018 is the warmest year on record for ocean heat content, a sharp increase from 2017. […]
Many countries saw their warmest year ever, since modern record-keeping began. … Antarctica and the Arctic experienced significant warming, which has consequences for sea-level rise as land ice melts.
To put all that in perspective, the planet is now nearly as overheated as Kellyanne Conway’s brain gets when she’s confronted with a fact.
JEERS to premature descents. On January 28, 1986---good lord, 33 years ago---the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven crew members, including civilian teacher Christa McAuliffe. I'm guessing that if you were more than toddler-age, you remember exactly where you were when you heard about it. I was in the Otterbein College (Westerville, Ohio) campus center at 11:38am, and can still conjure up the queasy feeling that set in when I realized what had happened. A stunned crowd of students and faculty stood around the big-screen TV. (And lest we forget, President Reagan delayed his State of the Union in the wake of the tragedy.) To show the outrageous depths to which the GOP's recent shutdown stunt sunk, this year’s official NASA commemoration ceremony had to be postponed. If I might make a modest suggestion as to what the agency should launch into space next? Trump.
CHEERS to happy headlines. The giddiness among the reality-based community here in Maine is palpable these days. Our new Democratic governor Janet Mills promised to get off to a quick start, and she ain't kidding. Her predecessor, the bloated blowhard mini-Trump Paul LePage, basically stopped our state in its tracks for eight years, and we have a lot of ground to make up. Here are some of the recent headlines that show Mills (aka "Governor Janet" and yes,pundits, she's very likable) is up to the task:
» Mills continues to chip away aggressively at LePage’s legacy
» Medicaid expansion moving as fast as possible according to Governor Mills
Governor Mills, seen here wearing her “lucky Talisman” necklace that people are talking about...and buying.
» Clean-energy agenda sees power surge in Augusta
» Governor Mills Makes Fighting Opioid Deaths A Priority In Maine—Finally
» Mills reverses LePage push for Medicaid work requirements
» Mills says state must be ‘backstop’ against federal efforts to restrict abortion
» Mills to release senior housing bonds that LePage blocked since 2015
» Mills backs bill to have state guarantee loans to unpaid federal employees
A bonus in the wake of the inauguration of Maine's first woman governor: over half of her cabinet will be women. Sorry, rest of the country, you can’t have her. She’s ours.
CHEERS to the first ringy-dingy. On January 28, 1878, the commercial telephone switchboard made its national debut in New Haven, Connecticut. The first customers were Amanda Hugginkiss, I.P. Freely and Seymour Butz. We hear the first operator lasted a whole five minutes.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 28, 2009
CHEERS to reaching out. No doubt Obama got a more cordial reaction from the Muslim world than he did from Congress yesterday when he gave his first official interview to Arabaya Television:
"My job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world, that the language we use has to be a language of respect. I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries," the president told Al Arabiya. "My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect."
The judges' scores: 7.2, 7.6, 8.0, 6.4, 6.4, 7.0. Not real impressive until you consider: that's up from Bush's across-the-board zeros.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to meteorology run amok. Because C&J aims to be a full-service information provider, here's the latest totally boring and predictable weather outlook for the workweek:
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Hooray…no meteors or Martian invasions. We might actually be able to work on our tans.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
When a columnist began a question on Friday by calling Bill in Portland Maine a “very complicated” person, Pelosi interrupted. “No,” she said. “I think he’s very simple.”
---Slate
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