From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Monday Morning Margaret and Helen Blogging
America's feistiest octogenarian bloggers don’t post often, but when they do, fire extinguishers are kept at the ready. In their latest, Helen responds to the Crazy White People Party’s latest phony-outrage-fueled attacks on reproductive rights:
[O]ne thing for damn sure a man knows nothing about is what’s in a woman’s mind and heart when she is making a decision about whether or not to terminate a pregnancy. [...]
Contrary to what our asshat of a President and his confederacy of dunces think, women don’t pull up to a Planned Parenthood and order up an abortion like it’s a Big Mac. No one at Planned Parenthood takes our request for a pregnancy test and tries to upsize us to an abortion and some fries. Women make this decision with a great deal of thought, prayer and consultation with our loved ones and our doctors.
I am an old woman. I don’t like the f-word. I didn’t use that word until the orange asshat arrived. But on this topic, you bet your sweet ass I’ll use it. FUCK YOU GOP for continuing to politicize this deeply personal decision that should be left between a woman and her doctor. Get your lies out of our government and get your politics out of our vaginas. And while you are at it, why don’t you get those children at the border out of those cages. I mean it. Really.
Read the rest here. They really should have their own radio show. Did I say radio show? I meant TV show. Did I say TV show? I meant TV network.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, March 18, 2019
Note: Three months later my dreidel is still spinning. That’s either amazingly cool or super creepy.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Game of Thrones Season 933: 27
Days'til the Roswell Beer Festival: 5
Tons of plastic Coca-Cola produces in a year, 2019 being the first time they've divulged this statistic: 3 million
Rank of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) among 2020 Democratic candidates in terms of highest net approval in their home state among all voters, according to FiveThirtyEight: #1, #2, #3
Number of job postings in January, one million more than there are unemployed workers, according to the Labor Department: 7.6 million
Percent chance that Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign staff is the first to be represented by a union, as it hooked up with the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, according to CBS News: 100%
Year in which the yeast now being used in St. James Brewery's Deep Ascent Ale was sent to the bottom of the Atlantic in the first-class dining section of the luxury liner S.S. Oregon after it collided with a schooner: 1886
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Puppy Pic of the Day: This is a pic of C&J's rescue lab-mix Haley, taken last week by my partner Michael. As of last week we’ve had her for six years, and we’re happy to report she’s re-upped her lease with us. Here she's either diving for her tennis ball or mooning the squirrels…
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JEERS to more carnage. Awful news spread like wildfire Friday that a terrorist armed with semi-automatic weaponry and a brain infected with Trump's white-supremacist ideology killed 51 people. And, naturally, since this is America, absolutely nothing will be done to stop future attacks beyond Marco Rubio’s thoughts and prayers, and….. Oh, wait! The attack happened in New Zealand, so of course something will be done beyond "T&P" to stop future attacks:
The day after more than 40 were killed in mass shootings at two mosques in New Zealand in the worst terror attack in the nation's history, the country's prime minister vowed to strengthen the country's gun laws.
"I can tell you one thing right now: Our gun laws will change," Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said during a press conference Saturday morning local time. "Now is the time for change." […]
New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush commended Ardern for her remarks about the nation's gun laws, saying he was "very happy to hear the prime minister’s comments this morning that there will be a change in the gun law."
And the NRA can't do a f*cking thing about it. Suck it, gun nuts.
CHEERS to cool science. While the world reacted to the sudden loss of the mosque victims, over a million students were out in streets and plazas around the world (including here in Maine) pro-acting to prevent the slow-motion loss of---spoiler alert---our entire planet. While the prognosis for humanity's future on the blue marble is bleak, the dwindling community of people for whom science hasn’t become "fake news" is still plugging away, and coming up with some cool innovations in their Petri dishes:
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have created an artificial leaf prototype that is designed to cut down on carbon dioxide---the main greenhouse gas behind global warming and climate change, experts say. […]
It works in the same way trees and plants absorb carbon dioxide through leaves and turns it into the fuel they need to live. The carbon, which is turned into carbohydrates, is stored while the oxygen is released back into the atmosphere.
A lot of research is being conducted around artificial leaves and even artificial trees. But the UIC team has created a prototype that's been tested in a lab and can work in real-world conditions.
When asked if they could come up with a cube to scrub the toxic gases from the air around TV sets tuned to Fox News the team said in unison: “Dammit, man, we’re scientists, not miracle workers!”
CHEERS to another lectern on the debate stage. Sensing that the current roster of 929 candidates in the Democratic primary just didn’t offer enough variety, another humanoid entered the 2020 race Friday morning. Let's check out his vitals:
Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke
Hails from: Texas
Age on inauguration day 2021: 48
Primary campaign theme: "We're all in this together"
Jimmy Stewart channeling ability: A+
Official website: BetoORourke.com
Strengths: Experienced congressman. Gave Ted Cruz a helluva run last year for a U.S. Senate seat by running a tight, focused campaign in which he traveled to every county in the state, played to enthusiastic crowds, and raised a ton of money. Not bad on the issues. And get this: he's a legendary teen hacker, which means he could probably mete out some serious frontier justice on Putin's trolls.
Weaknesses: Record in Congress is a tad more conservative than the average Democrat's. Eclectic, self-admitted "white male privilege" past occasionally trips him up in a field dominated by strong female candidates. Keeps a hydrogen bomb in his back pocket “for luck.”
Baby-kissing ability, based on latest reviews on Toddler Yelp: 8.2/10
Beto joins Kamala, Pete, Cory, Elizabeth, Bernie, Tulsi, Julian, John, Andrew, Kirsten, Jay, Marianne (Marianne?), Wayne (Wayne?), Amy, Andrew, and John in their quest to be #46. Officially out of the running: Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown. So if you're progressive and looking to capture the rumpled wing of the Democratic party, there's your opening!
P.S. Sorry, Bernie. Beto just broke your one-day fundraising record. The nerve.
JEERS to a costly little crime. The crooked-to-the-core Trump crime family got busted again less than a hundred hours ago. Fraud on a multimillion-dollar scale. The grifter's marks: of course, his core supporters and their open wallets ripe for the pickin'…
New York prosecutors said new evidence shows President Donald Trump used foundation money during his 2016 presidential run---a violation of the bar against charities getting involved in political campaigns.
Trump urged supporters at his rallies to donate to the Donald J. Trump Foundation, and then gave his campaign total control over the disbursement of the donations, from choosing the recipients to the amounts and timing of the grants.
“This arrangement not only violated New York law, but also ran afoul of federal campaign finance law, turning a charity fundraiser into a campaign fundraiser and campaign rallies into opportunities for the candidate to dole out money the public had donated to a charity,” [New York AG Letitia] James wrote in a 19-page brief.
It's going to cost the fake-charity sleazebag and three of his spawn (guess which three, go ahead guess) a cool $8.4 million to atone for their crimes. Golly, I hope the mainstream media doesn’t crack a nail ignoring this.
JEERS to Britain's relentless effort to out-stupid us. With the official deadline for separating from the European Union just 18 days away, let's check in with MetaphorVision to see how the preparations are going across the pond for the upcoming cataclysm that is Brexit. Click for the latest update:
Any questions?
CHEERS to "Uncle Jumbo." Happy Birthday to #22 and #24, Grover Cleveland, born March 18, 1837. According to Cormac O'Brien's book Secret Lives of the U.S.Presidents, as sheriff of Erie County, New York in the 1870s, Cleveland "personally threw the noose around the necks of two convicted criminals," making him the only American president who personally hanged someone. That is, if you don't count presidents Hoover, Nixon, Bush II, and Trump, who did a pretty good job of personally hanging themselves.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 18, 2009
JEERS to dollars for the undeserving. The New York Times on the AIG bonus payouts (if your significant other is in the room, softly explain that you may be throwing your cereal bowl across the room momentarily):
The company paid the bonuses, including more than $1 million each to 73 people, to almost all of the employees in the financial products unit responsible for creating the exotic derivatives that caused A.I.G.’s near collapse and started the government rescue to avoid a global financial crisis. ... "The only justification they had for this was, well, we needed to keep these people, but there are 50 people who left anyway or who they decided they didn’t need to keep," [NY Attorney General Andrew] Cuomo said in an interview.
AIG CEO Edward Liddy trudges up to Capitol Hill today to face a blast of hot air from the House Financial Services Committee. I believe Barney Frank will use the event to unveil his new rotten-tomato catapult. (Spare the shoes, man---they're gator.)
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And just one more…
JEERS to sad goodbyes. Oh, facing reality is tough. Our headbone has known for a while that the faithful Mars rover Opportunity got knocked out of action during that rude Martian dust storm last year. But our heartbone just couldn’t emotionally accept the loss until we got some final message from dear ol' Oppy. Over the weekend we noticed that that message had indeed arrived in the form of a stunning swan song: "[a] 360-degree panorama composed of 354 images taken by the Opportunity rover's Panoramic Camera (Pancam) from May 13 through June 10, 2018, or sols (Martian days) 5,084 through 5,111. This is the last panorama Opportunity acquired before the solar-powered rover succumbed to a global Martian dust storm on the same June 10." What a magnificent sight from a well-spent life popping wheelies and Polaroids…
You can play around with the fully-interactive version here at the NASA site. Naturally, this could be a sensitive time for younger space watchers. If your kids ask, we recommend you tell 'em rover's just gone to live on a farm in upstate New York.
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
"As a parent, I wish a blog column like this had been written when my daughter was young. In Cheers and Jeers, Bill in Portland Maine comes to learn that the most important power he possesses has been kiddie pool splashing all along.
---Leonard Maltin
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