From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE
Coming Attractions
Oh my…
-
Opens December 20. Same day as Star Wars IX. I may have to take the day off.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, October 17, 2019
Note: [Loads cannonball emblazoned with the words HAPPY HOLIDAYS into catapult, pulls lever, launches in direction of Fox News.]
It is time. Begun, the 2019 War on Christmas has.
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Halloween: 14
Days 'til the 11th Detroit Fall Beer Festival: 8
Estimated number of female truckers in America, an increase of 68% between 2010 and 2018: 234,234
Earliest allowable class start time in California for middle and high schools, respectively, under a new law signed by Gov. Newsom that's based on the latest sleep research: 8am, 8:30am
Percent of sports-related concussions among high-schoolers that occur during practice: 36%
Sports besides cheerleading that have higher concussion rates from practice than from competition: 0
Cost of the new Google Pixel 4 smartphone unveiled this week: $799
-
Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
One of the wisest editors I ever had was Dick Cunningham, who observed, "American journalists inherit the freest press in the world, but they enslave themselves to two masters: the conventions of their craft and the limits their society puts on what is acceptable thought."
How many times have I been clocked by various kinds of thought police? One of my faves is the condescending, "You do realize, Miss Ivins, that the polls show the great majority of Americans do not agree with you?" No shit?
The struggle to escape conventional wisdom is, in my opinion, made much easier by avoiding Washington, D.C. I like to pretend it's easy for me to say, "Aw, kiss my ass." What is in fact terrifying to me is how often I accept "what everybody else says."
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: An elegant, if sucky, solution
-
CHEERS to the dick in the dock. U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland takes the stand today in the Democratic impeachment star chamber, where Republican committee members will be hogtied and thrown in a soundproof closet, klieg lights will shine an inch away from his puss, the only beverage will be bottled water extracted from an old tire behind Adam Schiff's motor home, and rabid bobcats will circle his feet and drool. Sondland, you may recall, is a hotel magnate with no foreign policy experience who purchased his ambassadorship from Trump for a $1 million campaign donation. He was expecting to breeze through his tenure, hobnobbing with the hoity-toity Yurpeen elite and sleeping twixt the finest satin sheets in his lavish ambassador palace, ultimately getting the word "Ambassador" etched on his tombstone in the ultimate act of ego-stroking. Didn’t pan out that way, though, and today he's expected to take his turn at the wheel of the bus and run over his psycho boss:
A U.S. ambassador is expected to tell Congress that his text message reassuring another envoy there was no quid pro quo in their interactions with Ukraine was based solely on what he was told by President Donald Trump. […]
Gordon Sondland is set to tell House committees on Thursday that he did understand the Trump administration was offering Ukraine’s president a White House visit in exchange for a public statement by Ukraine committing to investigations Trump wanted. […]
But Sondland will say his text wasn’t based on any direct knowledge and he didn’t know the company being discussed for an investigation was tied to Joe Biden’s son.
Also testifying today is U.S. State Department counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl. Not because he has much useful information, really, they just want to watch him say his name over and over and see how long it takes his tongue to tie itself in a granny knot.
JEERS to life imitating art imitating life. I keep thinking of the plot thread in the 1987 Brian DePalma classic The Untouchables in which Al Capone keeps two sets of books, and gets busted when they're intercepted, mirroring the fate of the real Capone who was nailed for tax evasion. And guess who appears to be following the gangster's script, according to new research by ProPublica? Uh huh…good guess:
Documents obtained by ProPublica show "major inconsistencies" between the Trump Organization’s tax documents versus its loan documents, and that the organization "reported some expenses, profits and occupancy figures for two Manhattan buildings, giving a lender different figures than they provided to New York City tax authorities."
In other words, two sets of books. One made the business look more profitable to lenders, while the other made it look less so to the tax man. Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, said the discrepancies show "versions of fraud. […] This kind of stuff is not OK. [F]alse filings are subject to all applicable civil and criminal penalties."
As Kossack WildRice comments in McJoan's post: "Tax Evasion or Bank Fraud….take your pick. Both put you in an orange jumpsuit." I hope they'll send it here first so we can all autograph it. In black Sharpie, of course.
P.S. Trump reportedly blew up at Pelosi during a meeting at the White House yesterday afternoon. She dished it right back and then, like all good moms when their child is having a red-faced tantrum, left the room and shut the door behind her, but not before having this Kodak Moment, which is now the banner photo on her twitter feed:
Melania’s already framed it and put it above her bed. Whatever building that’s in these days.
CHEERS to book learnin'. On October 17, 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed legislation creating the Department of Education. It's one of the departments that the tea partiers always threaten to abolish because of its communist-socialist-libturd mission to turn every school into a monolithic institution of brainwashing. Except, well, not so much….
The Department of Education does not establish schools or colleges …
Unlike the systems of most other countries, education in the United States is highly decentralized,and the federal government and Department of Education are not heavily involved in determining curricula or educational standards (with the recent exception of the No Child Left Behind Act). This has been left to state and local school districts. The quality of educational institutions and their degrees is maintained through an informal private process known as accreditation, over which the Department of Education has no direct public jurisdictional control.
Did ya catch that? George W. Bush, the mighty titan of the party of "states' rights," increased the federal government’s authority over public education. What will we tell the children? Anyway, happy birthday to all the hard workers at the Education Department. I know religion has no place in our public schools, but with Betsy DeVos in charge, we’re praying for you all.
CHEERS to fillin' them coffers. On the heels of fresh polling showing Maine Senator Susan Collins' reelection chances in severe peril comes this bit of news regarding her likely Democratic 2020 challenger:
Democrat Sara Gideon raised significantly more money than Republican Sen. Susan Collins during the summer months, although the would-be challenger still trails the incumbent in total “cash on hand” despite a record $3.2 million haul.
Gideon, who is speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, raised more than $1 million in the first week of her campaign after announcing in June that she would launch a bid to unseat Collins. After raising an additional $3.2 million between July and September, Gideon’s campaign headed into the fall with $2.75 million in cash on hand, spokeswoman Maeve Coyle said. […]
Gideon’s campaign reported that 97 percent of the $3.2 million came from individuals giving less than $100 and that more than 3,700 Mainers had donated over the last quarter.
Gideon is strongly favored to win the Democratic primary on March 3rd. But whoever wins will have a sweet little present waiting in the form of $4 million raised via crowdfunding in the wake of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation debacle. Collins hasn't formally announced whether she plans to run or run away. If the former, she'll actually have to work hard to win this time, and that means getting out and wooing her Republican base. Which presents yet another dilemma: the thought of being wooed by Susan Collins makes even her supporters want to jump off a bridge.
CHEERS to blowing this popsicle stand. On this date in 532, Boniface II ended his reign as Catholic Pope, having finally saved enough money as a part-time farmhand to step down and blow this town to pursue his dream as a Broadway dancer. No, wait, wait, wait. Sorry—he actually died. That’s the last time I trust my history research to Footlooseipedia.
CHEERS to golly-gee gadgetry. Well knock me down and call me Tron, Batman. The new "Pixel 4" was unveiled amid much fanfare yesterday, and Gizmodo says it's a technological marvel that will have you swiping and tapping your way to nerdgeek heaven. I mean, my lord, just look at all the features they describe in this thin-as-a-pancake wonder of the civilized world:
» Aluminum frame with Gorilla Glass 5
» 5.7 in (140 mm) 1080p P-OLED at 444 ppi, 2280x1080 pixel resolution (19:9)
» Rear camera with 12.2 MP (1.4 μm) with f/1.7 lens, 28mm (wide), 1/2.55" + 16 MP (1.0μm) with f/2.4 lens, 45mm (telephoto), Dual Pixel PDAF, optical and electronic image stabilization, 2x optical zoom, Dual-LED flash, Auto-HDR, panorama, 1080p at 30/60/120 fps, 4K at 30 fps
» Front camera with 8 MP with f/2.0 lens, 22mm (wide), 1.22μm, 1080p at 30 fps, Auto-HDR
» Stereo speakers
» 6 GB LPDDR4X memory
» 64 GB or 128 GB storage
» Octa-core (1x2.84 GHz Kryo 485 & 3x2.42 GHz Kryo 485 & 4x1.78 GHz Kryo 485) CPU
» Motion Sense gesture recognition to track nearby objects like your hands or detect if anyone is nearby.
» Song skipper swipe technology
» Facial recognition
And here's the best feature of all: if you need to make a call, you just push a button and it directs you to the nearest person whose device actually has a phone. [Shakes head] Honest to god I can’t keep up with all this stuff.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: October 17, 2009
CHEERS to woozles and weasels and wozzles...oh my! Portland is all "afuzz" (Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!) over the progress of our new International Cryptozoology Museum. When it opens November 1st, visitors will be able to view life-size mockups of creatures who are thought to exist, but which no one can seem to find solid evidence of. The main attractions: Bigfoot and the elusive New England Republican Congressman.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to a life well-lived. Our country may not be able to take pride in our current president. But we can take infinite pride in the life life of this congressman who worked his butt off to make things better...
Rest in peace, sir. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
John Bolton didn’t want any part of Bill in Portland Maine's Cheers and Jeers according to Fiona Hill testimony
—Mediaite
-