From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
C&J Annual Fundraiser: Last Day!
I never imagined when I started writing C&J out of sheer Dilbert-like boredom 13 years ago that it would grow to be what it is today---a mental pressure-relief valve for many, a safe space free of pie fights where new Kossacks can get their feet wet and, above all, a place where we can snork at the lunacy---political and otherwise---that swirls around us like a swarm of drunken, ill-mannered locusts wearing American-flag lapel pins.
Over the coming year---assuming I don’t get sent to one of Trump's bigly re-education camps---I promise to deliver more of the same in the coming twelve months. The snark, the Molly Ivins Moments, the puppy pics, the polls, the drunken posting of entire articles in violation of copyright laws, the Wednesday Rapture Index, the ten-year flashback, a free orangesicle with any fill-up, and mixed-metaphoring my slow descent into madness.
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Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, January 13, 2017
Note: Today is Friday the 13th. Since Barack Obama is still president, there's no need to take any special precautions. The next Friday the 13th will occur in October, during which we'll encourage you to check your survival bunker food stores and short-wave radio batteries. Y'all have a great evening now, and thanks for your attention.
---Dept. of Homeland Security
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Martin Luther King Jr. Day: 3
Days 'til the 2nd annual Tamale Festival in Atascadero, CA: 8
Percent of respondents who approve and disapprove, respectively, of so-called “religious liberty” bills often used to excuse discrimination against the LGBTQ community, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution survey: 40%, 44%
Percent chance that Trump's director of communications Monica Crowley was exposed this week as a serial plagiarist, including on her college work: 100%
Average temperature in the lower 48 states last year, three degrees above the 20th century average according to NOAA: 54.9 F
Global economic growth last year according to the World Bank (which estimates this year’s number at 2.7%): 2.3%
Particles of fog it takes to fill a teaspoon, according to the internet: 7 billion
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Puppy Pic of the Day: If I see a cow jump over the moon I'm checking into rehab…
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CHEERS to Theodore Roosevelt. His Antiquities Act of 1906 has allowed President Obama to preserve---are you sitting down?---over 553 million acres for perpetual preservation, including landmarks essential to the telling and understanding of our country's bumpy history. Before heading out the door, Obama made a few more important designations this week. He started by expanding the existing California Coastal National Monument and the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Oregon and California. Then he went into the deep south:
Among them is the Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument. It includes the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, where four little girls died in a bombing set by a white supremacist in 1963, and Kelly Ingram Park, where protesters were hosed down in famous showdowns during the civil rights movement.
The proclamations also created the Freedom Riders National Monument in Anniston, Ala., which includes the site of a former Greyhound bus station where members of the Ku Klux Klan attacked protesters who demanded integration in interstate busing.
The other new site is the Reconstruction Era National Monument, made of a cluster of places in Beaufort County, S.C., where black Americans thrived and preserved their culture. Included in the South Carolina site is the Penn Center, formerly the Penn School, one of the first schools for freed slaves.
Not to be outdone, the KKK designated a few of their own cherished sites for special recognition: the original Acme Kerosene-Soaked Wooden Crosses warehouse, Trump Tower, and David Duke's ping-pong table.
CHEERS to wars worth winning. Meanwhile in the land of the ex-presidents, Jimmy Carter made a rather astonishing announcement this week:
Together with his eponymous foundation, Carter, 92, announced on Wednesday that dracunculusm, known as Guinea worm disease, has been eliminated from Mali and that there were just 25 reported cases in three African countries last year.
Through its partnerships and community programs, the Carter Center has played a key role in the disease’s decline.
The disease is contracted through drinking contaminated water that contains larvae, which mature and mate in the body. The male worm dies and the female worm grows to between 2 to 3 feet until it’s ready to exit the body, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The worms are about as wide as a cooked spaghetti noodle.
Carter said a couple years back that “I’d like for the last Guinea worm to die before I do.” I hope he gets his wish. I also hope we figure out a way to keep exactly one Guinea worm alive indefinitely.
CHEERS to one of the good guys. On this date 39 years ago, Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota---aka Mayor of Minneapolis, LBJ's vice president, 1968 presidential candidate (great platform except for supporting the Vietnam War) and fierce advocate in the war on poverty---died much too young at 66. He was wise:
"Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism."
"Behind every successful man is a proud wife and a surprised mother-in-law."
“We seek an America able to preserve and nurture all the basic rights of free expression, yet able to reach across the divisions that too often separate race from race, region from region, young from old, worker from scholar, rich from poor. We seek an America able to do this in the higher knowledge that our goals and ideals are worthy of conciliation and personal sacrifice.”
"Liberalism, above all, means emancipation---emancipation from one's fears, his inadequacies, from prejudice, from discrimination, from poverty."
And a special shout-out from Humphrey to the teabaggers: "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." Amen.
CHEERS to gravity defiance. Elon Musk and his SpaceX team have gone back to the drawing board after the September 1 explosion of their Falcon 9 rocket and are ready to give it another go tomorrow. Launch time: 12:54pm ET from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. Weather forecast: sunny and 60. The mission is to…
…place 10 French-designed, U.S.-built Iridium communications [satellites] into one of six orbital planes currently occupied by the company’s aging satellites, which launched between 1997 and 2002 and were originally designed to operate only eight years. […]
SpaceX completed a major preflight test Thursday, filling the Falcon 9 with propellants and helium pressurant on a launch pad for the first time since a rocket exploded at Cape Canaveral on Sept. 1.
The “static fire” test culminated in the ignition of the first stage’s nine Merlin 1D engines for a few seconds, briefly ramping up to full power with 1.7 million pounds of thrust.
You can watch the launch on NASA TV. And to little Tommy Feldmiller, whose loose tooth will be hooked to the craft via a mile-long string between it and the launch control center: stand real still, kid, and you won’t feel a thing.
CHEERS to stopping with all the shooting and the banging and the bayoneting and whatnot. 233 years ago tomorrow, on January 14, 1784, Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, officially ending the War of Independence. It also included earmarks for a pantaloon museum, a giant biodome for the study of butterfly flatulence, and a bridge to nowhere. Say this for Congress---they learned quickly.
CHEERS to home vegetation. The weekend TV schedule is slowly morphing back to post-holiday normalcy, including the return of SNL, which will feature Rogue One star Felicity Jones as host and you can probably count on an Alec Baldwin-as-Trump vs. Kate McKinnon-as-Meryl-Streep cage match.
New home video releases include Deepwater Horizon (John Malkovich's Cajun accent is worth the price alone, but the pulse-pounding depiction of what led to the oil rig explosion is riveting) and the all-star thriller The Accountant. The NHL schedule is here, the NBA schedule is here, and the NFL's division playoff schedule is here. (The Patriots will mess with Texas and turn it into the "Lone Whiner State" Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!) President Obama sits down for one more interview as president with 60 Minutes. Then The Simpsons airs its first-ever one-hour episode with Mr. Burns suffering the slings and arrows of the music biz with guest stars Keegan-Michael Key, Taraji P. Henson, Snoop Dogg, RZA and Common.
And here's your Sunday morning lineup:
This Week: Democratic pollster Cornell Belcher, author of the new book "A Black Man In the White House."
Meet the Press: Congressman John Lewis (D-GA); Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA); Trump’s chief of bullpucky distribution Reince Priebus.
Face the Nation: Newt Gingrich, Mike pence, Sen. Joe manchin (WV) and David Ignatius, i.e. two Republicans, a democrat thinking of becoming a Republican, and David Ignatius. BALANCED!
CNN's State of the Union: Obama’s chief of staff Denis McDonough; Sen. Rand Paul; panel with National Urban League president Marc Morial, Google Santorum, Nina Turner and some flunky who speaks on behalf of Jeff Sessions.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Mike Pence; CIA chief John Brennan on Trump’s war with the intelligence community.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 13, 2007
CHEERS to Party Central. Howard Dean makes yet another grand decision, choosing Denver as the site of the '08 Democratic National Convention. The final hurdle was cleared when the city promised the snow from '06 would be gone by then.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to moments that need no introduction. Yesterday…
“For the final time as president, I am pleased to award our nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And for the first and only time in my presidency I will bestow this medal with an additional level of veneration, an honor my three most recent successors reserved for only three others: Pope John Paul II, President Ronald Reagan and General Colin Powell. Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom with Distinction to my brother Joseph Robinette Biden, Junior.”
---President Obama
And now please join me in the closing invocation for moments like this: "Nothing, dear! I was just cutting up some onions." Amen.
Have a great weekend. Oh, and happy Rubber Ducky Day. C&J's mascot Kevin the Socialist Duckstick will be in the kiddie pool tonight, so be sure to say squeak. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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