"Let’s Light This Candle"
This afternoon (4:33ET unless weather dictates otherwise), for the first time since the last Space Shuttle flew in 2011, two of NASA's finest—Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley—will lift off from Cape Canaveral in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and resume America's manned space program from American soil. Their destination: the International Space Station…
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Among the astronauts greeting them up yonder: Chris Cassidy, current ISS commander from York, Maine.
Continued...
Here’s a vid to help you get to know Col. Hurley and Col. Behnken better:
Loathe as I am these days to say anything nice about Russia, I gotta hand it to 'em: over the last nine years of providing Soyuz service to and from the ISS, their space agency Roscosmos took good care of our crews. So spasiba for that.
If you need me today I'll be in survival bunker D clutching my lucky John Glenn bobblehead and holding my breath.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Note: Our sincerest apologies for not warning the Daily Kos community in advance that we were changing from jeans to shorts yesterday morning. Those of you who suffered retina burn as a result of viewing our blindingly-white birdlegs without proper protection can submit a claim to C&J's legal department. We'll get riiiiight on it. —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of Pride Month: 5
Percent of Americans surveyed by the Kaiser Family Foundation who think Trump is wrong to stumble around life wearing no mask: 72%
Percent of registered voters polled by Quinnipiac University who believe it will be safe to open schools in the fall: 40%
Percent of Republicans in the same poll who say they’re happy with the way things are in America right now: 67%
Percent of registered voters polled by Fox News who support vote-by-mail in the general election: 63%
Price of a barrel of oil, down from $60 at the start of the year: $33
Year the Hertz car rental company, which just filed for bankruptcy protection, was founded: 1918
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 186 (including 5 instances of rampant immorality and a division of Martians with laser beams landing on the front porch of the White House). Soul Protection Factor 16 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: results of this year's Sacramento Republic Puppy Cup…
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CHEERS to going big. As the House of Representatives, with its Democratic majority, takes the lead in getting things done for our country, Mitch McConnell's Senate continues churning out judicial confirmations and not much else. But that hasn’t stopped Democrats in the upper chamber from continually reminding Moscow Mitch that he's guilty of dereliction of duty:
During the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal initiative established a series of government programs and agencies that put thousands of Americans back to work, building large-scale infrastructure and conservation projects. On Thursday, Senate Democrats proposed a similar program designed to employ those who have lost their jobs because of the coronavirus pandemic, which this week numbered more than 38 million people.
The Jobs to Fight COVID-19 Act of 2020, introduced by Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, would give states and localities$100 billion in grants to hire and train newly unemployed workers to perform pandemic response work, including contact tracing, surveillance, mitigation and cleaning services. … Senators who co-sponsored the measure included Democrats Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota,Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island,Kamala Harris of California and Cory Booker of New Jersey.
It's smart. It's sensible. It's necessary. It's doable. It's affordable. It's humane. And naturally it's dead.
CHEERS to unintended (but happy) consequences. Just as our current semi-lockdown situation has resulted in a cleaner environment, so too is it cleaning up a particularly nasty corner of the criminal world: the drug cartels. Turns out their activities are more noticeable now, and the feds are seizing their cash hand over dirty fist…
“Their activities are a lot more apparent than they were three months ago,” said Bill Bodner, special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Los Angeles field office.
Bodner said California’s stay-at-home order has made it more difficult for traffickers to launder money and move around the city unseen. “When there’s less hay in the haystack, it’s easier to find the needle,” he added. … DEA agents operating on the East Coast have seen similar success.
So dirty money is easier to track during a pandemic, huh? No wonder the Trump boys are sweating so much.
CHEERS things that go zippity-doo-dah for $800, Alex. Hold on to your bonnets and Stetsons, kids. The internet is about to get downright warp speedish:
University researchers have developed and recorded the fastest internet data speed in the world from a single optical chip, holding the capacity to download 1,000 high-definition movies in a split second, according to new research revealed Friday. […]
Normally,demonstrations with these kinds of results are only attainable within a laboratory, but the researchers in this study achieved these ultra-fast speeds using existing communications infrastructure that allowed them to efficiently load-test the network.
I'll be able to tell you more about it just as soon as my laptop stops buffering. Stop back around 4.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to scaly survivors. An alligator born in Mississippi who spent his early life at the Berlin Zoo before spending the rest of it at the Moscow Zoo has died at the age of 84, about 40 years later than average. That would be newsworthy enough. But this alligator, named Saturn, may have been buds with a certain—[checks notes]—Adolf Hitler until the allies went Thhpppt! Thhhpppt! Right in der Fuhrer's face:
Saturn...was shipped to the Berlin Zoo from which he disappeared on November 23, 1943, in the aftermath of an Allied air bombing campaign on Berlin.
Two-and-a-half years later in June 1946, an almost mature Saturn was discovered and captured by British occupation forces. Custody of the alligator was transferred to the allied Soviet troops in post-WWII Berlin who then sent him on to Moscow where he would live the next 74 years.
It was in Moscow that the intriguing rumor started that Saturn was a part of a pet menagerie that belonged to Adolf Hitler.
No one's entirely sure if the rumor's true that Saturn was indeed part of the Nazi dictator’s hand-picked animal fiefdom. But there's one intriguing clue: his cage had to be reinforced a dozen times because he kept escaping to invade Poland.
CHEERS to masking tape. It was invented on this date In 1930. It has a-million-and-one uses, but to shut up a Republican blowhard only duct tape will do.
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 27, 2010
CHEERS to the noble end of an illustrious career. The Space Shuttle Atlantis is due to land at the Kennedy Space Center any old time now. (By the time you read this it might have touched down already, especially if you're reading this in 2097.) It'll then be towed to a Florida retirement community where, with its stretchy pants up to its nipples, it will meet and fall in love with a widowed B-52, and enjoy a life of croquet, pilates, golf and travel. Fair warning kids: if it ever asks you to pull its wing right after dinner, make sure you're wearing something fireproof.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to your iconic images of the day. Four years ago, while most of us were sleeping, President Obama was doing something in Japan that no sitting post-WWII president had done before: visiting the city where the world's first atomic weapon—one of ours—was used to horrific effect:
Wrote Obama in the Peace Memorial Museum visitors’ book, next to which he left two paper cranes he'd made: “We have known the agony of war. Let us now find the courage, together, to spread peace and pursue a world without nuclear weapons." Yes. That would be a good start.
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
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was completely unfazed when Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool splashing began during the middle of a live television interview on Monday.
—Mediaite
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