From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Monday Margaret and Helen Blogging
The blogosphere's feistiest octogenarians react to the illegitimate (emoluments, anyone?) president-elect's abuse of his 140-character bully pulpit following the Golden Globes:
Margaret, I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself and rejoin the world again. I figured enough time had passed since the election and surely Trump had finally made that pivot and started acting like a President. So I tuned in to CNN and…
Nope.
Now, I’m not sure if Meryl Streep is overrated. I mean she’s no Scott Baio, I’ll give you that. But that’s really not the point, is it? The point is that the man-child about to become our next President couldn’t come up with a better retort than that?
“Meryl Streep is one of the most overrated actresses…” as a comeback has about as much intellectual maturity as “I know you are, but what am I?” And he couldn’t even do it in 140 characters. It took him 16 minutes and 417 characters to write the literary equivalent of “I’m made of rubber and you’re made of glue.” Good Lord, he can’t even use an ellipsis correctly. Honestly, ten monkeys banging on ten typewriters could have come up with a better response in less time. […]
But it’s really not about Streep being overrated as an actress or Trump being outperformed by a group of typing chimpanzees. It’s about the fact that Trump actually did mock a disabled person. It’s about the fact that disrespect really does invite disrespect, and violence really does incite violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others we all really do lose.
Or, in the words of today's holiday VIP, MLK: “When we speak of loving those who oppose us we speak of a love which is expressed in the Greek word Agape. Agape means nothing sentimental or affectionate; it means understanding, redeeming goodwill for all men, an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.” Trump should give that a whirl.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, January 16, 2017
Note: Stupid thermostat---I turn it up to 99 and the temperature in the apartment can barely reach 92. Landlord's about to get an earful.
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Women's March on Washington: 5
Days `til the 34th annual Lowcountry Oyster Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, starring 80,000 pounds of shucked oysters: 13
Number of Obama's 21 cabinet positions filled by women or people of color, according to The New York Times: 14
Number of Trump's cabinet positions that, if confirmed, will be filled by women or people of color, all of them in lower-level slots: 5
Percent chance that the last president to be so stingy in nominating women and people of color was Ronald Reagan: 100%
Length of George Washington's 1793 inaugural address, the shortest ever: 135 words
Year during which women were included in an inaugural parade for the first time: 1917
Totally Random NFL Score
New England Patriots 34 Houston Texans 16
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Puppies love puppy talk. Adult dogs, not so much.
-
CHEERS to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Once again we're thankful, and rather awestruck, by what he accomplished for black America---and, simultaneously, all of America---in his way-too-short life. He was flawed, as all humans are. But he had that stubborn 'ol dream. And come hell or high water (or fire hoses or guns or nightsticks or jail time or whatever else the bigots could throw at the movement) he refused to shut up and sit down, or match violence with violence:
“Let us build bridges, not walls.”
"Non-violence is a powerful and just weapon which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals."
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom."
"A man can't ride your back unless it's bent."
“Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”
King and I co-existed on the Blue Planet for two-and-a-half years. Oops…there I go boasting again. Oh, and remember: there's no mail today, which also means no bills today and if you’re self-employed you don’t have to send in your estimated quarterly taxes until tomorrow. Thank you for that too, Reverend.
CHEERS to a good-trouble kind of weekend. As president Obama enjoys his last week at the tiller of the Good Ship USA (the World Series-winning Chicago Cubs will pay a visit to the White House today), the anti-Trumpism resistance movement is coming off of a remarkable weekend of proud protest and pointed pushback. A quick summary:
>> Civil rights icon John Lewis questioned the legitimacy of Trump's election, citing Russian hackers and other skullduggery (coughComeycough). Trump fired back with all the tact of a mean drunk, insulting Lewis's Atlanta district as "crime-infested" and "horrible," and calling Lewis himself "all talk, no action." In response, Americans cleaned out Amazon.com and brick-and-mortar bookstore inventories of Lewis's books. D'oh!
>> Ethics lawyers who represented George W. Bush and Barack Obama reiterated that Trump will, in fact, not be a legitimate president when he takes the oath of office because he'll be in immediate violation of the emoluments (profiting off of money or gifts from foreign governments while in office) clause. But Congress will sort it all out at their usual pace---the speed of pitch drop.
>> Peaceful protests broke out across the country, sending a unified message to Republicans who are in the process of dismantling the Affordable Care Act and/or suppression speech and press rights. Here's a Polaroid from Michigan…
>> Over 20 members of congress announced they’re boycotting the inauguration. That number will grow, given that we still have five more days of Trump insult-tweets.
>> Jennifer Holliday and Andrea Bocelli canceled plans to perform at the inauguration, leaving the current roster at: Rockettes who need the paycheck, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir members who haven't already bailed, an admittedly-talented runner-up from a TV variety show, a Springsteen cover band, and Congressman Jason Chaffetz on a leash performing all the tricks Donald Trump taught him last month---beg, roll over and pee on the bed.
Meanwhile on the other side of the spectrum---aka the world of right-wing boycotts---there's this: the neo-Nazi/KKK boycott of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story has been so successful that the movie is now the only 2016 release to gross $500 million. Clearly Disney is thiiiis close to crying uncle. As in, crying tears of laughter at the grave of Uncle Walt.
CHEERS to the war hawks’ terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. One year ago---Saturday, January 16, 2016---one of the (many) significant events in Barack Obama’s presidency was etched onto the wall of history. It started when the White House announced that five American detainees, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, had been freed from Iranian prisons in exchange for a handful of Iranians we were detaining at the Hoboken Club Med (for violating the two-beach-towels-per-person-per-day rule). But that was just the warm-up act for this:
On January 16, 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency verified that Iran has completed the necessary steps under the Iran deal that will ensure Iran's nuclear program is and remains exclusively peaceful.
Before this agreement, Iran's breakout time---or the time it would have taken for Iran to gather enough fissile material to build a weapon---was only two to three months.
Today, because of the Iran deal, it would take Iran 12 months or more. And with the unprecedented monitoring and access this deal puts in place, if Iran tries, we will know and sanctions will snap back into place.
I remember it so well: the American people were happy, the Iranian people were happy, and all the other nations involved in the pact were happy. But not Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mainly because he had to move the scary red line on his cartoon bomb from the top to the bottom. Oh the indignity.
CHEERS to getting your mojo back. A lot was riding on the SpaceX mission Saturday. Not only did they have a payload containing a client's communications satellites that needed to be released into their proper orbit, but the company itself needed to prove it could bounce back from last September's rocket explosion. Spoiler alert: they nailed it…
Bonus: the first-stage rocket section successfully returned to earth and landed on its floating platform in the Pacific, so it can be used for another mission. So, for yet another day in the 200,000th year in the history of the species Homo sapiens: nerds rule.
JEERS to messing with The Precious. On January 16, 1919, the tenacious temperance twits in Wyoming became the last ones necessary to ratify Prohibition, which went into effect on January 16, 1920:
Many Prohibition groups, called “dries”, were church-based, mainly Protestant denominations.
The anti-Prohibition groups, or “wets”, tended to be mostly Roman Catholic, Episcopalian and Lutherans from Germany. Both major political parties had wet and dry factions.
[W]hen Congress convened in January, 1917, the mandate was clear: regardless of party, dries outnumbered wets in Congress by 2-to-1. [...]
There were forty-eight states in the Union at that time, so thirty-six state legislatures would have to ratify the amendment in order for it to be certified as part of the Constitution. This amendment was unique up to that point in American constitutional history in that it contained a codicil requiring it to be certified within seven years. The states needed barely one.
The result: a huge spike in organized crime. The stock market crash of 1929 led to the eventual repeal of the 18th amendment on the premise that reviving the legit liquor industry would create jobs. So you might say that in a terrible and horrifying way the banksters toppled the gangsters. Then again, terribly and horrifyingly is the only way they know how to topple anything.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: January 16, 2007
CHEERS to crack for political junkies. It's official! Barack Obama is apparently looking into running for president. Some people say he can't be commander-in-chief because of his funny name. Tell that to Grover and Millard.
-
And just one more…
Due to the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday,
today's "Just One More" feature is closed.
If we catch you climbing over the
Velvet rope, you are
so grounded,
bub.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Bill in Portland Maine Once Sang Telegrams In A Tutu
---Huffington Post
-