From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
The Bill in Portland Maine Letter
March 26, 2019
Dear America,
According to the letter released Sunday by Attorney General William Barr, the still-hidden-from-view Mueller Report concludes that President Trump didn’t collude with the Russians.
Perhaps not. But if I may calmly carve out a cache of confirmed concurrent conclusions:
He did (and still does) canoodle with the Russians, cave to the Russians, carry on with the Russians, canonize the Russians, cater to the Russians, cowtow to the Russians, connect with the Russians, cuddle the Russians, coddle the Russians, cackle with the Russians, cling to the Russians, cower before the Russians, caress the Russians, coo at the Russians, click with the Russians, compliment the Russians, congratulate the Russians, carry the Russians' water, cotton to the Russians, converse over a cuppa covfefe with the Russians, clap for the Russians, capitulate to the Russians, and confide to Vladimir Putin: “You complete me.”.
However. we can concede that he doesn’t criticize the Russians, clash with the Russians, curtail the Russians, complain about the Russians, contradict the Russians, cross the Russians, combat the Russians, cajole the Russians, condemn the Russians, curse the Russians, confront the Russians, or constrain the Russians.
Clear? Cool.
Courteously, Bill in Portland Maine
Cumberland County
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, March 26, 2019
Note: The Force is strong with us. The results are in---Mercy Hospital's head oncologist says Bill in Portland Maine (that's me!) is, for the second time, cancer-free. First and foremost that means we'll be around to see Star Wars Episode IX on December 19th. And December 20th. And December 21st. And December 22nd. But not the 23rd because that's Festivus. Thank you all for "praying away the decay," and especially thank you, my partner Michael, for seeing me through this ordeal with patience and, well, even more patience. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go outside and bench-press our Honda Civic for a few dozen reps. I’m told exercise is important.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Palm Sunday, when Christian churches give out palm branches that can be used as makeshift lightsabers during services: 19
Days 'til the South Jersey Geek Fest: 5
Percent of Americans who believe Trump interfered in the Mueller probe (versus only 36% who don't), according to the latest Fox News poll: 52%
Minimum number of tweets from Trump calling the Mueller probe a “witch hunt" since the start of the investigation, according to CNN: 170
Value of the order that the Garuda Indonesia airline just canceled for new jets from Boeing: $5 billion
Percent chance that Trump's tax cuts for the rich trickled down to autoworkers in northeast Ohio: 0%
Weekend box office sales for Jordan Peele's Us, the largest opening ever for an original R-rated movie and the largest original live-action film debut since 2009's Avatar: $71 million
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NEW Tuesday feature! "Packin' for Philadelphia!"
Brought to you by the 2019 Netroots Nation Convention in Philadelphia, July 11-13. I don’t know about you, but I've got a bad case of Philly Topography Fever!!!
The geographic center of Philadelphia is located approximately at 40° 0′ 34″ north latitude and 75° 8′ 0″ west longitude. The 40th parallel north passes through neighborhoods in Northeast Philadelphia, North Philadelphia, and West Philadelphia including Fairmount Park.
The city encompasses 142.71 square miles, of which 134.18 square miles is land and 8.53 square miles, or 6%, is water. Natural bodies of water include the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, the lakes in Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, and Cobbs, Wissahickon, and Pennypack creeks. The largest artificial body of water is the East Park Reservoir in Fairmount Park.
The lowest point is sea level, while the highest point is in Chestnut Hill, about 446 feet (136 m) above sea level on Summit Street near the intersection of Germantown Avenue and Bethlehem Pike (example coordinates near high point: 40.07815 N, 75.20747 W).
With marijuana possession decriminalized in Philly, displacing Chestnut Hill as the highest place in town during NN19 will be the area directly around the convention center. Or so I’m told.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: America's favorite dog, for the 28th year, is the….
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CHEERS to the view from 30,000 feet. MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace posted a handy list of all the criminal and congressional oversight investigations currently underway into the Trump crime family's family crime-related activities. Kinda makes the Mueller Report kerfuffle look pebble-in-a-pond'ish:
Federal and State Investigations:
Campaign finance violations
Pro-trump Super PAC
Private businesses
Trump family taxes
Trump Foundation
Emoluments
Inaugural committee
Insurance practices
Congressional Committees investigations:
House Intelligence
House Judiciary
House Oversight
House Financial Services
House Foreign Affairs
House Ways and Means
Senate Intelligence
And, as always: health-code violation investigations at his resorts. (Don't order the shrimp unless you have a death wish, many people are saying, believe me.)
CHEERS to a high-quality, dependable Speaker you won’t find at Best Buy. Happy birthday, Nancy Pelosi! I defer to my eight-years-younger self, who wrote this moments before she passed the Speaker’s gavel to John Boehner in January, 2011. And wait’ll you read the last line---I’m an effing Nostradamus, I am:
I just want to go on the record in defense of that San Francisco liberal
She passed bills and passed bills and passed bills and passed some more. Bills to reform health care (with a public option, no less), bills to reform our environmental responsibilities, bills in unabashed support of gay rights. Bills that improved public safety and education. A bill that would've ended the Bush tax cuts on the rich. Hundreds and hundreds of good bills...and a pathetically high number of them were sent to the Senate like cattle headed for the slaughterhouse. She was a good Speaker, an aggressive Speaker, a progressive Speaker, a historic Speaker.
And best of all, you know what, kids? She'll be back.
Our apologies in advance for having Dana Rohrabacher jump out of your cake wearing nothing but a tutu today, ma'am. He's the only person we could get on short notice. (And the guy literally works for cab fare these days...)
JEERS to promises unkept. Remember when Trump promised "four, five, even six percent" economic growth for each year of his presidency? Remember how Republicans in Congress promised an economic renaissance due to the "trickle-down" effect of their tax cuts for the rich? Remember how we were promised that Trump's tariffs would make the sky rain Franklins? Remember how the GOP swore on the manger of Baby Jesus that they were the party of iron-fisted deficit control? Yeah, me too. Sorry to break it to ya, but it looks like they were---oh, what's the term?---slightly off:
The nation’s business economists foresee a sharp slowdown in U.S. economic growth over the next two years, in sharp contrast to the Trump administration’s predictions that growth will accelerate this year and next.
That finding comes from the latest survey by the National Association for Business Economics being released Monday… Among the key factors in their dimmer assessment are a global slowdown and the ongoing trade conflicts between the Trump administration and several major trading partners.
[T]heir estimate is much lower than the Trump’s administration’s new projection that GDP growth will remain above 3 percent this year and over the next six years. But the administration is already projecting huge deficits above $1 trillion over the next four years. If growth falls short of its optimistic forecasts, those deficit figures could soar even higher and inhibit the economy’s ability to accelerate.
If I were White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, I'd definitely file a formal complaint against White House economic numbers guy Mick Mulvaney. Someone clearly forgot to carry the one. And also to throw Mick Mulvaney's numbers in the dumpster.
CHEERS to amazing discoveries. There's a lot of chatter this morning about a calcified, hulking, fat-gutted carnivore with tiny hands and a pea brain best known for lurching around its domain, screeching at the top of its lungs, and scaring the bejeezus out of everybody. But enough about Trump. There's also a lot of chatter about this T-Rex bad boy:
As if Tyrannosaurus rex wasn’t terrifying enough already. A skeleton in Canada [named"Scotty"] belonged to a T. rex that was comfortably heavier than any other previously found, making it the largest land predator on record. The discovery means we may have underestimated just how large predatory dinosaurs could grow. […]
[B]ecause its bones were encased in particularly hard rock, freeing them took decades. “It wasn’t until now we’ve been able to take a step back and look at the specimen as a whole,” says [University of Alberta researcher Scott] Persons. “And doing so there’s an oh gosh moment, because the specimen really is enormous.”
The bones are now on display at the University of Alberta. All are welcome to come and check them out. Except, as usual, dogs. Drool issues.
CHEERS to makin' up and makin' nice. Forty years ago today, on March 26, 1979, Israel's Menachem Begin and Egypt's Anwar Sadat signed a historic peace agreement that is still holding up today:
The Egypt-Israel peace treaty was a direct result of the Camp David Peace Accords, signed in September 1978. President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize later that year.
Under the accords, Israel agreed to withdraw troops from the Sinai Peninsula in return for Egypt's recognition of the state of Israel. Palestinians were also granted the right to some self-determination.
Said Sadat of the mediator, Democratic President Jimmy Carter: "[He is] the man who performed the miracle. Without exaggeration, what he did constitutes one of the greatest achievements of our time." Yeah, we're kinda fond of him ourselves.
JEERS to the final countdown. Let's check in and see how Stormy Daniels' flamboyant, supremely-confident former attorney Michael Avenatti's 15 minutes of fame are coming along:
Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock ticktock tick tock…BOOM!
Michael Avenatti to be charged with wire fraud and bank fraud.
Oops. Only lasted fourteen minutes and 21 seconds. Premature immolation. How embarrassing. (But thanks for all the ”Bastas.”)
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 26, 2009
JEERS to shooting yourself in the foot on purpose. Here's another lesson on how the GOP brain works: During the post-9/11 years, Republicans effectively backed spineless Democrats into a corner by endlessly repeating the question, "Do you want the president to fail?" The obvious implication was that answering in the affirmative meant they really wanted America to fail. In a nifty little backflip---fueled by Rush Limbaugh's spontaneous assertion that, yes, we wants Obama (and, by extension, America) to fail---Republicans are now asking the same question of themselves, but blaming the Democrats for asking it! Here's Louisiana Governor Piyush Jindal to show you how it’s done:
Jindal described the premise of the question---"Do you want the president to fail?"---as the "latest gotcha game" being perpetrated by Democrats against Republicans. "Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, 'Why no sir, I don't want the president to fail,' is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism," Jindal said at a political fundraiser attended by 1,200 people. "This is political correctness run amok."
So to recap: Republicans revive a line of attack that they once used to accuse Democrats of treason when Bush was in the White House, turn it on themselves, and then blame Democrats for starting it. [Clap... Clap... Clap...] That takes stones, man. Rocks in the head, also...but definitely stones.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the best science officer in the galaxy. This guy:
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Happy 88th birthday, Leonard Nimoy, wherever you are.
Live long and have a prosperous Tuesday. Floor'sopen...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
Cheers and Jeers will pin you to your seat and leave you stiff with fear.
---David Graham, The Detroit News
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