From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Energize An Ally Tuesday: Holiday Edition
One of the big heroes of the three-months-and-counting Puerto Rico relief effort---not just in terms of raising money and resources, but also raising awareness in our short-attention-span society---is the Hispanic Federation. And they couldn’t have a better advocate working on their behalf than Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wants you to know about the organization’s latest project, in partnership with Toys “Backward R” Us: helping kids on the island have a happy holiday...
Three months later, so many families in Puerto Rico are still struggling without clean water and electricity. The continued generosity and offers of support from people across the country and across the world has been incredible and inspiring. Puerto Ricans are rebuilding with a sense of hope for the future.
As we approach the holidays, we know that many families won’t have the opportunity to buy gifts for Three Kings Day, the pinnacle of the Christmas season for Puerto Ricans (and most Latin Americans!) celebrated on January 6, 2018.
I hope you will help me meet our goal of providing 10,000 toys to kids throughout the Island. They will be distributed to Hispanic Federation and R.Evolución Latina’s community partners throughout Puerto Rico. The more gifts you buy, the more kids we can reach. Tell your friends and family, too.
Together, we can bring some holiday cheer to thousands of children in Puerto Rico this season.
Supporting Toys 4 Puerto Rico is easy-peasy: just click on this link, scroll down to the donation levels ($5, $10, $20), choose the number of toys you want to donate at the level you choose, and fill in your payment info.
C&J donated three toys at the $10 level. As fate will have it, they’ll find their way into the hands of three young’uns who will grow up to become world leaders in eradicating poverty, defeating fascism, and perfecting the squirrel-proof bird feeder. Bless ‘em one and all. And thanks for helping out.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Note: Authorities levy $5 million fine against the ABC for allowing Frosty the Snowman to run around naked during prime time. Blurred film at 11.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Babyjesusmas: 6
Days 'til the Ullr Fest in Breckinridge, Colorado: 22
Percent chance that Roy Moore still hasn’t conceded to Doug Jones in the wake of the Alabama special election: 100%
Percent of Americans who believe Trump has failed to deliver on his promises, according to an AP-NORC poll: 75%
Percent who believe the country is moving in the right direction: 30%
Number of Grammy Awards won by Beyonce and John Williams, respectively: 22 / 23
Minimum number of minutes the Hanukkah candles should burn each night: 30
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Odd couple…
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CHEERS to second thoughts. What do Clinton voters think of the GOP’s daylight robbery posing as a tax-relief bill? Who the hell knows? The media is too obsessed chasing around voters in “Trump Country” to document their every utterance, gesture and baked-bean fart. But in this one instance I won’t complain as loudly as I usually do, because this could be a very bad sign for the Republicans in what will surely be a 2018 full of very bad signs. We take you to Mausten, Wisconsin:
President Donald Trump calls the GOP tax plan a great gift to the middle class. But people in this part of “Trump Country” appear altogether underwhelmed. […]
“We have no clue,” said Christopher Swan, part of a group of men in their 60s, 70s, and 80s who meet every weekday morning for coffee at Randall’s Uptown tavern in Mauston.
His assumption? “We’re not going to feel any (tax) relief and, if anything, it will get a little worse,” he said. […]
“I just don’t hear any kind of resounding or clarion call for getting this tax bill through,” said former GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson, who grew up in Juneau County and owns a farm there. “I don’t think (people) understand it. I don’t think they think there’s going to be anything in it for them. … A business tax cut from 39 to 22 (percent) doesn’t mean jack to them. … I think the Republicans are going to have one helluva tough election.”
The president’s approval is in the mid-30s and he’s officially the least-popular first-year president on record. He didn’t get health care reform done. Multiple sexual-assault allegations are still hanging over him. The Mueller investigation is spitting out subpoenas and arrest warrants faster than the Millennium Falcon can jump to light speed. Generic Democrats are favored over generic Republicans by 11 points. And now Trump’s “giant middle class tax cut that’s terrible for me” (my vote for “Lie of the Year”) is landing with a thud among his base. I tell ya, if you want to make $174,000 a year with some sweet perks, and you live in a district currently represented by a Republican, run for their seat as a Democrat. I like your chances.
JEERS to poor predictions predicted poorly. Yesterday senior White House adviser and her dad’s anti-urge-to-start-a-nuclear-war medication dispenser Ivanka Trump went in front of a TV to announce: “Hey, America! It’s depression time again!”
I think we have our next inductee into the World’s Worst Time Traveler Hall of Fame.
CHEERS to Billy the Powerful. Yesterday morning in C&J I mocked one of Trump’s judicial nominees, an inexperienced hack named Matthew Petersen who wilted during a confirmation hearing due to his lack of gavel-wielding experience. Moments after realizing that my post had instantly turned him into a national joke, Petersen turned tail and ran:
President Donald Trump’s judicial nominee Matthew Petersen has withdrawn his name from consideration after a video went viral of him failing to answer basic questions about law in his confirmation hearing.
“It happened,” an aide to a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee told HuffPost on Monday. “Mr. Petersen has withdrawn his nomination and the President has accepted,” a White House official told HuffPost.
In his letter to the president, Petersen said he’s withdrawing because he doesn’t want to be “a distraction” to the administration.
I’m glad he took the hint. I didn’t want to have to whip out my finger lightning bolts.
JEERS to backtracks that don’t sound very backtracky. You no doubt heard about the report last week claiming the Centers for Disease Control was under orders by Lord Dampnut to eliminate seven words from their vocabulary: “fetus,” “transgender,” “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.” The reality-based community came down on the agency like a ton of bricks. And now we enter the “let us clarify” stage…
[CDC director Dr. Brenda] Fitzgerald said in a series of tweets on Sunday said there are “no banned words,” while emphasizing the agency’s commitment to data-driven science.
in follow-up reporting, The New York Times cited “a few” CDC officials who suggested the move was not meant as an outright ban, but rather, a technique to help secure Republican approval of the 2019 budget by eliminating certain words and phrases.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, said the reported decree on banned words was a misrepresentation.
Ya know what? That actually makes a bit of sense. If CDC can secure a few million more dollars by being a little sneaky with the wording of their requests, fine. But you’ll pardon me if I remain skeptical. After all, this is the Trump administration, which is defined by one as-yet-unbanned word above all: bullshit.
CHEERS to home sweet teeth-chattering home. On this date in 1777, George Washington parked his 11,000 troops at Valley Forge for the winter. The General knew how to rally his men:
"Look, all we need to do, guys, is invent central heating after creating a regional power grid and it'll be just like Club Med! Plus I know a great caterer and he'll be along just as soon as we invent the smartphone app."
Needless to say, it was a very long winter.
CHEERS to new adventures in gravity-defiance. In a picture-perfect liftoff, EXCEPTIONAL BRAVE AMERICAN HERO ASTRONAUT SCOTT TINGLE (and russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov and Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai) blasted off into space Sunday (from russia):
The arrival of Tingle, Shkaplerov and Kanai will restore the station's crew complement to six. They will join Expedition 54 Commander Alexander Misurkin of Roscosmos and his crewmates, Mark Vande Hei and Joe Acabaof NASA.
The crew members will spend more than four months conducting approximately 250 science investigations in fields such as biology, Earth science, human research,physical sciences and technology development.
Highlights of upcoming investigations include demonstrating the benefits of manufacturing fiber optic filaments in a microgravity environment[and] a new study looking at structures that are vital to the design of advanced optical materials and electronic devices.
Another experiment they’ll conduct will focus on a drug delivery system that will help prevent the human body from falling apart “during prolonged periods of disuse, such as extended bed rest on Earth.” Or as it’s also known: being the current president.
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 19, 2007
CHEERS to Dan Fogelberg. My first job out of college in 1986 was working at an "easy listening" radio station, where I spent four hours a day playing something by Dan Fogelberg every twenty minutes (or so it seemed). I played his stuff so often it’s now in my DNA. Dan died Sunday of prostate cancer at 56. And suddenly his songs sound brand new again. And relevant:
Now there's people living out in the street
Going hungry with no shoes on their feet
While the government just twiddles its thumbs
And spends more money on guns
And they keep on planning nuclear war
Tell me who is it they're planning it for
If not the men that make their profits from hate
I swear it seems they can't wait
Is this what democracy means
---From "Democracy"
I suppose I'm not the first person to suggest that cancer sucks. But it does.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to saving our celluloid. Twenty-five movies from yesteryear have been inducted into the National Film Registry. Many of them---Titanic, Superman, The Goonies, Spartacus---are mainstream hits. Others are less known but just as important, such as…
4 Little Girls (1997)
An important documentary concerning America’s civil rights struggle, “4 Little Girls” revisits the horrific story of the young children who died in the 1963 firebombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Director Spike Lee…combines his experience in fiction filmmaking with documentary techniques, sensitively rendered interviews, photos and home movies to tell the story. The timing of this production was important due to the ages of the key witnesses and relatives and the need to refresh viewers’ memories regarding a dark period in U.S. history.
Fuentes Family Home Movies Collection (1920s-1930s)
Longtime Corpus Christi, Texas, residents Antonio Rodríguez Fuentes (1895-1988) and Josefina Barrera Fuentes (1898-1993) were very active in their local Mexican-American community. Their collection of home movies---mostly from the 1920s and shot on 9.5 mm amateur film format---are among the earliest visual records of the Mexican-American community in Texas and among the first recorded by Mexican-American filmmakers.
Interior New York Subway, 14th Street to 42nd Street (1905)
This early actuality film documents New York City’s newest marvel, the subway, less than seven months after its opening. It required coordinating three trains: the one we watch, the one carrying the camera and a third (glimpsed on the parallel track) to carry a bank of lights. The artistic flair is the vision of legendary cameraman G.W. “Billy” Bitzer.
As ever, I remain hopeful that the all-time greatest movie ever---Cats and Dogs---will one day find itself nestled among the NFR's pantheon of greatness for its message of universal truth in a world gone mad: "Dogs drool, cats rule."
Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
“The Lord Jesus appeared to me about the False Prophet who is mentioned in Revelation, chapter 13 and then very simply and very clearly he said, ‘The present guardian of the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool is the prophesied False Prophet.’”
---Sundar Selvaraj
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