From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Dear Generation Parkland...
I'm glad you're stepping up to vote in record numbers. I'm thrilled to see you getting in the faces of the adults who have jeopardized your future by wrecking the health of the planet. I admire your courage in taking on the NRA, which wants you to live in fear for the rest of your lives so that you'll buy the killing machines sold by their clients, the gun makers. Your anger and in-the-politicians'-face activism are as inspiring as they are well-targeted.
I hate to pile more heavy stuff in your backpacks, but I promise this isn’t something you need to upend your lives over…it's just a timely reminder to keep an ear to the ground for signs of activity from the warmongers in positions of power who get their jollies from sending men and women not much older than you into other countries to kill people and blow shit up.
Sixteen years ago today, when many of you were still just a gleam in Mom and Dad's eyes, we were lied into a war: the Iraq War, which took place in one smallish country yet lasted twice as long as World War II. This is the kind of crap our "leaders" were spewing to whip us into a frenzy over Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction"---nukes and "significant quantities of uranium" and germy bombs, oh my!---that they knew he didn't have. They stirred up the same toxic brew that the NRA does to sell guns and Trump is now using to sell his border crisis hoax: fearmongering and bullshit like this:
"Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof---the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
---President George W. Bush
"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly [Saddam Hussein] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
---NSA Condoleezza Rice, echoing her boss's Big Lie
"My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."
---Sec. of State Colin Powell's disgraceful U.N. Speech
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."
---Vice President Dick Cheney
"The area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
---Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, master of circular gibberish
That’s just a tiny sample. It was all garbage. And they all got away with it, despite the loss of over 4,400 American troops, another 32,000 wounded, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties. Oh, and we'll still be paying off the trillions of dollars it cost beyond your lifetime and even your own kids' lifetimes. For this, no architect of that war went to prison. No one got rapped on the knuckles. No time-outs. No nothin'. Today all of them continue to live cushy lives in mansions nestled behind guarded security gates.
Your consciences have been awakened by the same kind of coordinated lies put out by the fossil fuel industry, the gun industry, and virtually the entire Republican party. Now that you've become adept at detecting them, keep an ear open for the war hawks. (One of them, John Bolton, is now Trump's national security adviser.) Because what happened on March 19, 2003 must never happen again. And you can help ensure it doesn't. But lord knows they’ll try.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, March 19, 2019
Note: Oh, great. When you add up the digits in today's date---3 + 19 + 19---they add up to 41, a prime number. Do yourself a favor: steer clear of Euclid's cubicle today or he'll talk your ear off about how he deserves a promotion because his goddamn "theorem" saved the company $4,000 in office supplies last year. F*cking suckup.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til spring: 1!!!
Days ‘til the Maine Flower Show in Portland: 8
Percent of voters who say they're less likely to vote for Trump in 2020 because he broke his promise to not cut Medicare, according to a new PPP poll: 50%
Percent of 18-34 year-olds who think climate change will have a significant negative effect on the world in their lifetime, according to a Quinnipiac poll: 65%
Amount teacher Jennifer Kay Toy is suing actresses Lori Laughlin and Felicity Huffman for because of their role in the college admissions scandal: $500 billion
Odds of randomly picking a perfect NCAA bracket, according to some web site: 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808
Percent chance that the NCAA is still a horrible organization that puts profits above students: 100%
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NEW Tuesday feature! "Packin' for Philadelphia!"
Brought to you by the 2019 Netroots Nation Convention, July 11-13. According to Conde Naste (Not to be confused with former Secretary of State Nasty Condi), there are 11 museums in Philadelphia that you must see or else the city will throw you in jail. (So the legend I just made up five seconds ago goes.) Among them:
Museum of the American Revolution [D]on’t expect the same, tired narrative you were taught in elementary school—this museum takes a different track entirely. Exhibits are honest and raw, eschewing the overwrought, often whitewashed version of events to highlight the overlooked perspectives of Native Americans, African Americans, and women.
Museum of Art The museum is a Philadelphia icon, immortalized in pop culture thanks to Rocky and his famous run up the stairs. … A comprehensive 225,000-work-strong collection of everything from a Japanese teahouse and Chinese palace hall to Renaissance masterpieces, plus works by Manet, Monet, and Degas. Van Gogh’s famed Sunflowers is on display here, as is Cézanne's The Large Bathers.
Powel House Home to Elizabeth Willing Powel and her husband, Samuel, the Powel House played host to a number of Independence-era influencers, including Benjamin Franklin, the Marquis de Lafayette, and George and Martha Washington. … Correspondence between George Washington and Elizabeth Powel is a highlight, as is the blue-and-white china---the same used at Mount Vernon---gifted from Martha to Elizabeth.
Needless to say, if you visit the Powel House you hafta leave your bull outside.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: "Find a job you enjoy doing and yadda yadda yadda…"
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JEERS to the bottom-scraper-in-chief. Bumpety Bump Bump Bump. The S.S. Trump, already taking on water from a storm of House hearings, broken promises, and even bipartisan pushback against his border crisis hoax, hasn’t even hit the worst of the criminal-investigation icebergs yet, making his dismal 41.6% aggregate approval rating (in 26 months he's never come close to 50%) a real anchor around his neck. And his "everyone has betrayed me!!!" weekend twitter meltdown from his baby fuhrer bunker shows his focus is exclusively on his base. But even before that happened, Chris Wallace at Fox News did something that Trump apparently hasn't. It's called "the math":
Fox News host Chris Wallace told colleague Shepard Smith on Friday that there’s no way Donald Trump can win a second term with just his base---and the president doesn’t seem to care about anyone else now. […]
“You can’t do it,” Wallace responded, “because there’s just not enough votes in the base. … So he’s going to have to expand his base.”
Expand his base, huh? Could that mean "the softer side of Trump" just around the cor…….. Sorry, but my fingers were laughing so hard I couldn’t finish the sentence.
CHEERS to making it all official-like. Over the weekend, another humanoid life form formally entered the Democratic 2020 primary. Let's check out her vitals:
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
Hails from: New York
Age on inauguration day 2021: 54
Primary campaign theme: "Brave Wins."
Official website: KirstenGillibrand.com
Education fun fact: While enrolled at Dartmouth, she spent time studying in both Beijing and Taiwan.
Strengths: Experienced legislator. Has moved left over time. Supporter of Medicare-for-All (since 2006), reining in the ICE goon squad, and tough gun-control laws. Wants new moms and dads to have 12 weeks of paid family leave. Won’t accept PAC money. Supports the Green New Deal.
Weaknesses: Some resentment over how she handled the Sen. Al Franken scandal that led to his resignation. Lingering concern over her more conservative positions as a congresswoman.
Baby-kissing ability, based on latest reviews on Toddler Yelp: 9.2/10
And the Pièce de résistance: her first official campaign rally will be held this weekend in front of Trump Tower in New York. Word to the wise: watch out for falling hot lead from above. Especially if you see Eric poking his head out the window wearing a Viking helmet.
CHEERS to avian homecomings. Another sign of impending SPRING! Once they make the pathetically-easy glide between the gaping steel slats of Trump's low-I.Q. border fence, a flock of feathered friends will float into California to flabbergast their fawning followers:
A lot of flittery, in-the-sky visitors have been prompting we ground-dwelling humans to look up in recent days, with the Painted Lady [butterfly] migration making headlines.
But March 19, around San Juan Capistrano, is all about a small bird with strong and storied ties to the village.
For March 19 is St. Joseph's Day, when the swallows return to Mission San Juan Capistrano and the surrounding area, according to legend. There's a parade on March 23, the largest non-motorized parade in the U.S., it is said, but you can celebrate the swallows on Tuesday, March 19, 2019 at a party filled with tradition, music, and, fingers crossed, a few swallows-sweet sightings.
A few years back the swallows were showing up in smaller numbers, so the experts started luring them with artificial bird calls and pre-built nests. Due to the success of those tactics, they're adding extra enticements this year: free cable and turndown service that includes leaving a foil-wrapped insect on their pillow.
CHEERS to doing what they say can't be done. Over the weekend, Trump's chief-of-staff Mick Mulvaney went on Face the Nation and threw down a Herculean challenge:
“I don’t think anybody can say that the president is anti-Muslim.”
Whoo. Okay, here we go. [Rolls up sleeves] [Takes deep breath] [Focus like a laser as I muster every ounce of mental strength in my body] "THE...PRESIDENT...IS...ANTI-MUSLIM." [Exhales] Talk amongst yerselves. I'm spent.
CHEERS to hoop dreams. The 2019 NCAA college basketball tournament starts today. The greedy bastard adults who have perverted this thing into a giant ATM deserve all the scorn anyone cares to heap on them and their scam operation. But the students who play their hearts out and make it look easy deserve all the cheers in the world. The women’s bracket is here and the men’s is here. How it works is, over a period of time, the teams are whittled down from 68 to one. For a pre-tourney demonstration of what that looks like, see Trump's White House senior staff over the last 26 months.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 19, 2009
CHEERS to unintentional hilarity. There's a marriage equality bill that'll be making its way through the Maine legislature this year (it already has an amazing 60 co-sponsors---the normal number for any bill is 10), and the reality-challenged letter-writers are coming out of the woodwork with their oddball reasons for killing it. This was published yesterday in the Portland Press Herald, but it might as well have come from The Onion:
Gays have the same right to marry as I do. They just don't like the choices. Why should the rest of us compromise on the definition of marriage simply because some people don't like the selection of spouses available to them?
Yes, you see, that's the problem: gay people are simply too fussy over the selection of available mates. That's why, for a limited time, all you homos can save an additional 25 percent on any specially marked heterosexual singles on display over at the Brides & Grooms Discount Warehouse. Free quiche and cabernet, too!
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the Splat! Heard Round the World. One of the more inspiring events in the wake of the Friday massacre of 51 Muslims in New Zealand (by a white supremacist terrorist on a mission to carry out the Trump Doctrine) was the egging of an Australian senator---their iteration of our Rep. Steve King---who blamed the attacks on Muslim immigration. Teenager Will Connolly got close enough to Sen. Fraser Anning (who is likely serving out his last term, if enraged voters have any say about it) to reach over and nail him with a well-placed ovum, a moment captured on video that resulted in spontaneous applause from around the globe. A GoFundeMe page was set up for the kid's legal bills, but Connolly says he'll donate the money to the victims of the mosque shootings. And that was more than enough to elevate him to superhero status:
Four words: Sign him up, Marvel!
Have a tolerable Tuesday. And if you’re a fan of Sen. Kamala Harris, she’s on with Jimmy Kimmel tonight. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
Trump Threatens Cheers and Jeers With Federal Investigation For Making Fun of Him
---Mediaite
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