From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You
Opens next Friday and I can see this generating a bit of box office mojo:
He Named Me Malala is an intimate portrait of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai, who was targeted by the Taliban and severely wounded by a gunshot when returning home on her school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. The film gives us an inside glimpse into this extraordinary young girl’s life – from her close relationship with her father who inspired her love for education, to her impassioned speeches at the UN, to her everyday life with her parents and brothers.
Here's the new trailer:
The official movie site is here and you can read reviews (90 percent positive) at Rotten Tomatoes.
Bonus programming note: Malala will be on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert tomorrow night.
And a special word for Ben Carson. America has its own share of Muslims who have the intelligence, grace, wit and forward-thinking vision as Malala Yousafzai. I hope one of them becomes president someday. And I hope you're still around to see it.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, September 24, 2015
Note: You apostrophe d be correct if you guessed that it apostrophe s National Punctuation Day period And you know what question mark I think it apostrophe s great ampersand noble that it apostrophe s got its own day period As I always say comma quotation marks A day without punctuation is like a day without sunshine exclamation point quotation marks Can I get an Amen question mark
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9 days 'til crunch time!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Michelle Obama appears on
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert:
5
Days 'til the
National Apple Harvest Festival in Biglerville, Pennsylvania:
9
Number of judges the Senate has confirmed in 2015, the slowest pace in over 60 years:
6
Increase in the number of judicial vacancies that have opened up since January 1:
24
(Source: Alliance for Justice)
Percent of iPhone users with a cracked screen:
15%
(Source:
The Week)
Factor by which Americans are sending more trash to landfills
than the EPA originally thought:
2x
(Source: Yale University study)
Length of Scott Walker's candidacy for president:
70 days
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Oh dear. I'm sure he didn't mean it. In Illinois' 6th Congressional District, long represented by Henry Hyde, Republican candidate Peter Roskam accused his Democratic opponent Tammy Duckworth of planning to "cut and run" on Iraq.
Duckworth is a former Army major and chopper pilot, who lost both legs in Iraq after her helicopter got hit by an RPG. "I just could not believe he would say that to me," said Duckworth, who walks on artificial legs and uses a cane. Every election cycle produces some wincers, but how do you apologize for that one?
---September, 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: babies…puppies…clickbait.
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CHEERS to a rock star welcome. It all started out so innocently yesterday morning at the White House gate:
[Ding dong!]
[Click] "Who is it?"
"Pope!"
"Hey, Francis! Hang on, I'll buzz ya in."
"Thanks, man."
"Sometimes the gate sticks. Give it a good tug."
[Bzzzzzzz….]
And then it was
off to the races, with a state welcome, a tour of the National Mall (accompanied by the most inane cable news anchor blather I've heard in a long time. "The police are on motorcycles!" "The Pope is waving with his right hand…now with his left hand!" "That yellow thing in the sky is, I'm told, called the sun!"), a church service, and some good old-fashioned canonizin'. Today Pope Francis, boldly wearing white after Labor Day, addresses a joint session of Congress where he'll tut-tut climate change deniers and Reaganomics supporters. Talk about a lion's den---if he makes it through the whole address without some obnoxious teabagger shouting "You Lie!" they should make him a saint on the spot because that'll be a freakin' miracle.
JEERS to breathing new life into an old ad campaign. In light of revelations that Volkswagen deliberately fudged with 11 million vehicle emission systems to make them appear like they don’t pollute as much as they actually do, I'm thinking that the company---which fired its CEO yesterday and faces at least $18 billion in fines---should bring back this classic ad from the 1960s…
…minus the irony.
P.S. If I was in charge of the penalty, I'd make VW fund at least two years of technical college for any American high school student who wanted it over the next decade. But I'm not. Phooey.
YOOJ CHEERS to the enemy of my enemy. It's official: yesterday Donald Trump hoisted his middle finger at Fox News and told Roger Ailes and his propaganda network to pound sand, eat dirt, go to hell, eff off, stick it where the sun don't shine, and spend the rest of their days surrounded by frowny-face emojis ya bunch of blow-dried talking-points-driven losers. Overnight, Trump's position in the polls moved to #2. Among Democrats.
CHEERS to the Environment President. On this date in 1906, Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill designating Devils Tower---that kewl rock formation in Wyoming---as the country's first National Monument. Some people call it America's national nipple:
Caution: don't show that photo to a fracker or he'll start drooling on you.
JEERS to a chip ff the old Bush. Earlier this year, George P. Bush---grandson of George H.W., nephew of George W. and son of Jeb!---won an election in Texas and became the state's new Land Commissioner. Being part of a new breed of enlightened politicians (he's only 39), you'd think he would place competence and experience above family and cronyism. And---say it with me---you would be wrong:
Surrounds himself with shameless
ass-kissers. Yep, he's a Bush.
Less than a year after being elected to lead the oldest state agency in Texas, Land Commissioner George P. Bush has dramatically remade the General Land Office by ousting a majority of its longtime leaders and replacing many of them with people with ties to his campaign and family. Eleven of the top 18 officials on the agency's organizational chart a year ago have been fired, forced out or quit and … [i]n their place, Bush has given top jobs to two of his law school classmates, two relatives of members of two Bush presidential administrations and at least three others with ties to the family or other political leaders.
Even more terrifying for Texans: he says they're all doing "a heckuva job."
Well, at least we can agree this
prediction came true...right?
CHEERS to not blowin' this popsicle stand after all. Yesterday was supposed to be the end of the world, according to everyone from Isaac Newton's interpretation of
Daniel 9:25 to French Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius---and if you can't believe them, well, who
can you believe??? In fact, the demise of the blue marble was so imminent that Buzzfeed even published
23 Things To Do Before The World Ends On Sept. 23, 2015. (Sadly, the only one I got to was "rearrange some olives in a dish in case company drops by." Hey, I had packing to do.) By the end of the day I was starting to believe that it was all a hoax, but then I woke up this morning to find that we're indeed living in a new world:
Mississippi is finally no longer #1 in obesity. I have only one thing to say to our new overlords who destroyed our universe yesterday and beamed us to this new parallel one: keep your slimy government tentacles off my Obamacare!
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 24, 2005
JEERS to looking the other way. From the San Francisco Gate:
"Skip, skip, skip to my lou..."
President Bush decided Wednesday to waive any financial sanctions on Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest Arab ally in the war on terrorism, for failing to do enough to stop the modern-day slave trade in prostitutes, child sex workers and forced laborers.
In June, the State Department listed 14 countries as failing to adequately address trafficking problems, subjecting them all to possible sanctions if they did not crack down.
The White House statement offered no explanation of why [Saudi Arabia was] regarded differently.
This calls for an
immediate Justice Department crackdown on porn inside the United States!
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the day the Straight Talk Express jumped the tracks. It happened seven years ago today, and it's become a high holy day on the American political calendar. It started when John McCain kinda-sorta but not really suspended his presidential campaign so he could ride to Washington on a white stallion to stop the economic collapse, a much-mocked effort that consisted of a perfunctory appearance at the Bush White House. But that half-baked stunt quickly faded into the background when, with Keith Olbermann sitting beside him as a witness to history, David Letterman delivered the coup de grâce after catching McCain in a pasty-faced lie:
"Hey John, I got a question! Ya need a ride to the airport?"
Today Barack Obama is in the Oval Office serving out his second term, and McCain is just another obstructionist senator whose closest buddies are the Sunday talk show hosts. Thank you, Dave, for being so sharp that night. But more important: Thank you, John, for being so dumb that night.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"Bill in Portland Maine is not somebody who as far as I can tell really invests a lot of time or energy in the truth. He's a snake oil salesman, he's a huckster, he's a carnival barker, but that's about it."
---Ron Reagan
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