From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
So Bored With All The Winning
It's a well-established fact by now that C&J's "Who won the week" poll, introduced nine years ago this week, is considered America's 500-pound gorilla of weekly polls. Every Friday we pluck a gaggle of worthy candidates from the previous seven-day news cycle and affix them to their place of honor on the front page. The candidate who gets the most votes wins. Period. No electoral college here---fuck that.
I can't really remember what inspired me to create the first one, but today it's a feel-good feature that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with such time-honored American traditions as stickball, setting pies on window sills to cool, and following competent and popular Democratic presidents with Republican shitbags. As you contemplate tonight's candidates, enjoy a recap of some notable past winners with an emphasis on the year we just left behind:
6/27/08 The folks in San Francisco who tried to get a sewage treatment plant named after George W. Bush.
10/31/08 Texan Amanda Jones, the daughter of a slave, who cast her vote for Barack Obama at age 109.
3/20/09 Daily Kos, for placing #3 on Bill O'Reilly's "Media Enemies List."
3/26/10 Democrats who passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
9/30, 10/4, 10/14, 10/28, 11/4 and11/18/11 The Occupy protesters.
11/29/13 Pope Francis, for issuing a papal manifesto that calls for an end to the 'new tyranny' of income inequality.
8/15 and 8/22/14 The Ferguson, Missouri protesters.
7/3/15 Bree Newsome of Charlotte NC, who climbed the flagpole in front of the South Carolina state house and took down the Confederate flag.
3/25/16 President Obama: Three words---"¿Que bolá Cuba?"
4/22/16 Harriet Tubman, chosen by the Treasury to boot Andrew Jackson from the front of the $20 bill
7/29/16 Hillary Clinton: the first woman from a major party to be officially nominated as a candidate for President of the United States
11/4/16 The Chicago Cubs, for winning their first World Series since 1908
3/24/17 The Resistance, for forcing Republicans to abandon their attempt to gut the Affordable Care Act, delivering a cataclysmic defeat to Trump and Ryan
By the way, "Senator" Barack Obama won our first poll. And the next. And the next. In fact, by the time he left office he'd won 84 of the 432 WWTW polls voted on by the Daily Kos community, making him indisputably first in the hearts of our countrymen. (Sorry, George Washington, but we're just not into your "uniformity in weights and measures" shtick anymore.)
The tradition continues tonight. Go vote, then c'mon down and splash in the kiddie pool. We're making a replica of the Bridge on the River Kwai with the tongue depressors I stole from the hospital. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, March 31, 2017
Note: As to next week's C&J posting schedule, I've been informed that, just as the general outranks the colonel in Stratego, so too does the oncologist outrank the moonbat libtard blogger in the kiddie pool. So, on their orders, I'll be putting a significant chunk of my week in their Purell-soaked mitts (including some minor surgery that’ll require knocking me out with a comically-oversized mallet). C&J will post on Tuesday and Friday, and we'll do our darndest to pump something out Wednesday. To compensate for your withdrawal symptoms, we have a giant bowl filled with free samples of the C&J patch, which releases a steady stream of pie-scented brain-numbing tincture over a period of 48 hours. Caution: Side effects may include anything because we kinda forgot to do clinicals on it. Oops. ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of the Memorial Day weekend: 56
Days ‘til the Pasadena Festival of Women Authors: 8
Percent of Americans who do believe and don’t believe, respectively, that members of the Trump campaign team worked with Russia to help him win, according to PPP: 44%, 42%
Percent who think Trump should resign if he or people from his campaign are discovered to have worked with Russia to rig the election: 53%
Percent of U.S. voters who want the federal government to maintain/strengthen the Affordable Care Act instead of repealing/replacing it, according to a McClatchy-Marist poll: 65%
Number of warm temperature records broken at local weather stations in the U.S. during February, according to NOAA: 11,743
Babe Ruth's highest salary: $80,000 (1931-32)
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Puppy Pic of the Day: WARNING! Only click on this National Geographic link if you're prepared to trigger a release of the chemicals dopamine and oxytocin in your brain!
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CHEERS to April! Wikipedia tells me that "The traditional etymology is from the verb aperire, 'to open,' in allusion to its being the season when trees and flowers begin to open. Zodiac signs for the month are Aries (until April 19) and Taurus (April 20 onwards)."
And what a packed month we have in store when it rolls in a few hours from now. It's Poetry Month and Jazz Appreciation Month. The Gorsuch SCOTUS nomination hits full boil in the Senate. Baseball season is almost here (Go Sox of the reddish variety!), the Masters golf tournament starts next week, the flowers go full "Poink!", plus there's Earth Day (and the big Science March on the same day), Patriots Day, Arbor Day, Passover, National 8-Track Tape Day, Administrative Professionals Day, Veep premieres on the 16th, Bill Nye’s new series Bill Nye Saves the World premieres on the 21st (on Netflix), April the giraffe will appropriately drop her calf this month, and the Pulitzers get handed out for the 101st time starting on the 10th.
On the downside, the April movie list looks hella-weak, taxes are due this month, and Portland's getting another 8 inches of snow this weekend. Do me a favor: wake me up in May, kthx.
CHEERS to champions of the little guy. Happy 90th birthday to the late Cesar Chavez. He founded the National Farm Workers Association, which gave a voice to migrant farm workers. He also had a spiffy motto that might sound familiar: "Si sepueda!" (Yes we can!) These days we could use all the Chavezes we can get, and I bet the anti-Trump resistance movement will produce some. Pay your respects here. Today in his honor: total boycott of lettuce and grapes. P’too!
CHEERS to the great unraveling. Oh, I do so love the predictability of presidential scandals---I mean the real kind, not the phony Obama-years kind. Pulling one thread at a time, a loose consortium of seasoned investigative journalists, law enforcement pros, and an army of analysts showing up across the media to put it all in perspective for the public are now slowly defrocking the Russia-abetting corruption of the Trump gangster ring down to its skivvies. That there's a cover-up is obvious (Devin Nunes: worst toady ever), and now Trump's former (read: fired) kooky, precious-bodily-fluids-obsessed National Security Adviser Mike Flynn apparently has some beans he'd like to spill all over an FBI interrogation table. My, my, my…how quickly things change:
As a famous carrot-faced, propecia-addicted sage named Drumpf once said: “The reason they get immunity is because they did something wrong. If they didn't do anything wrong, they don't think in terms of immunity. Folks, I'm telling you: nobody's seen anything like this in our country's history.” Well…let's just say in the last 43 years of our country's history. But point taken.
P.S. Clint Watts of the George Washington Center for Cyber and Homeland Security testified yesterday before a Senate committee, and he gets a big gold star for this honest-to-a-glorious-fault response as to why the Russians were so much more successful than usual in fucking around with our elections last year:
Pass that along to your Fox-watching Uncle.
JEERS to crazy fool stunts. On April 1, 1930, baseball Hall-of-Famer Leo "Gabby" Hartnett of the Chicago Cubs broke some kind of altitude record by catching a baseball dropped from the Goodyear blimp 800 feet over Los Angeles. He caught the ball awkwardly, and it broke his jaw. We think someone should faithfully re-enact that stunt on its 87th anniversary with complete historical accuracy. Is Bill O'Reilly busy tomorrow?
P.S. In a serious breach of protocol and American tradition, “best baseball player in New York” Donald Trump won’t be throwing out the first pitch at the Nationals game. “Whew---thanks for sparing me the embarrassment,” said the baseball.
JEERS to revisionist history (via David Waldman on Daily Kos Radio). Did you hear about the famous "River of Blood" from the Civil War? Northern Virginia. Very sad. There's a plaque on the spot that reads: "Many great American soldiers, both of the North and South, died at this spot. The casualties were so great that the water would turn red and thus became known as The River of Blood." But before you doff your cap and offer a moment of silence in their memory, you should know this: the plaque is stuck to a flagpole at a Trump golf resort, and that can mean only one thing: the story is bullshit...
“No. Uh-uh. No way. Nothing like that ever happened there,” said Richard Gillespie,the executive director of the Mosby Heritage Area Association, a historical preservation and education group devoted to an 1,800-square-mile section of the Northern Virginia Piedmont, including the Lowes Island site.
“The only thing that was remotely close to that,” Mr. Gillespie said, was 11 miles up the river at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff in 1861, a rout of Union forces in which several hundred were killed.“The River of Blood?” he added. “Nope, not there.” […]
Mr. Trump repeatedly said that “numerous historians” had told him that the golf club site was known as the River of Blood. But he said he did not remember their names. Then he said the historians had spoken not to him but to“my people.” But he refused to identify any underlings who might still possess the historians’ names.
And coming soon to Mar-A-Lago: a plaque commemorating the Bowling Green Massacre during the War of Swedish Aggression.
CHEERS to fun in the sun. On March 31, 1917, the U.S. took possession of what are now the U.S. Virgin Islands (not to be confused with the inferior British Virgin Islands) from Denmark for $25 million. Residents there---who are considered U.S. citizens---are allowed to vote in presidential primaries but not the general election. Which is like your parents giving you a scoop of freezer-burned vanilla ice cream on your birthday while your sibings get a big bowl of Chunky Monkey with chocolate sauce, whipped cream, nuts, Oreos and gummi bears delivered by strippers. Damn. I thought I'd blotted that day out. Back to the therapist we go.
CHEERS to calling a bigmouth’s bluff. There are lots of perfectly fine and upstanding sheriffs in America. And then there are the tin-star-wearing whackadoos. Among them is Bristol County, Massachusetts Sheriff and Trumpbot Thomas Hodgson. In January he offered up his inmates to help build the Mexican border wall (that likely won’t get built except for small, insignificant stretches paid for with your tax dollars). And now he's jumped on the Jeff Sessions train with a head-vein-popping tirade against mayors of so-called 'sanctuary cities.' He wants them all arrested and hauled off to prison. And those mayors are taking his threat about as seriously as it deserves:
The Democratic mayor of one of those cities---Somerville's Joseph Curtatone---called Hodgson "a jack-booted thug" and said sanctuary cities are not breaking any laws.
Curtatone added: "Come and get me."
Hodgson, of course, won't come and get him since bullies tend to beat a hasty retreat when they get punched back. He'll take out his aggression instead on something less mouthy: a box of chocolate doughnuts. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!
CHEERS to home vegetation. If couch-potatoing is on your agenda this weekend, here are a few things that may pop up on your TV. Chris Hayes and Rachel are essential viewing tonight for the latest on the slo-mo collapse of the Trump administration. On HBO's Real Time, Bill Maher veers right with Trump-supporting wacko Roger Stone, former intelligence honcho Gen. Michael Hayden and former Senator Rick "Google" Santorum…balanced out by Neera Tanden and Jose Antonio Vargas.
New home video releases include one of Annette Bening's best performances (robbed of an Oscar nod) in 20th Century Women and the Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. (Spoiler alert: you’ll find them getting a bite to eat down at the local beastro.) The NHL schedule is here, and the NBA schedule is here. But most sports-obsessed eyes will be on the NCAA tourneys, and you can check out the women's bracket here and the men's bracket here. On 60 Minutes: the officer awaiting a criminal trial for shooting unarmed black man Terence Crutcher speaks (and Crutcher's twin sister responds), and an expose on architect Peter Marino. Great timing for The Simpsons’ new episode, as Mr. Burns starts his own for-profit university two days after today’s announcement that Trump has to officially fork over $25 million in Trump U. reparations. And if you're suffering from Shiny Awards Deprivation Zyndrome (SADZ), the Country Music Awards air Sunday night on CBS. And John Oliver wraps up the weekend in a happy little bow on HBO's Last Week Tonight.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Main guests TBA; roundtable with Eugene Robinson and Robert Draper, and Amy Walter.
This Week: This week it’s George Stephanopoulos’s turn to babysit John McCain while Cindy goes shopping; former Defense Secretary Ash Carter; U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley; and, in a brilliant stroke, ABC News gives Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov to spew unfiltered Russian propaganda. Smooth move!
Face the Nation: Maine independent Senator Angus King; Senator John Cornyn (R-TX); Nikki Haley.
CNN's State of the Union: Commerce Secretary and crook Wilbur Ross; The thorniest thorn in Trump’s side, House Intelligence Committee ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA); Crush The Poor Caucus, aka “Freedom Caucus” member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: EPA administer and crook Scott Pruitt; Chris Wallace’s eyes pop out of his head as Mitch McConnell chastises Democrats for having the unprecedented audacity to obstruct a Supreme Court nominee.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 31, 2007
CHEERS to goin' eyeball-to-eyeball. Yesterday the Senate passed its version of the emergency supplemental spending bill, which includes a non-binding gentle suggestion wrapped in colorful tissue paper that says maybe we should consider leaving Iraq next March. To help him fuss and fume over it, President Bush assembled his closest allies. They met in the Presidential Broom Closet and still had enough room for the buffet table.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to Rachel Maddow---TV host, razor-sharp political analyst, hypocrisy slayer, Rhodes Scholar, avid angler, and birthday chick! MSNBC's brightest bulb turns 44 tomorrow. (I'm old enough to be her father, assuming I sired a child at 8.) Every night, piece by piece and brick by brick, she dismantles the GOP monolith and corporate shenanigans with such grace and dexterity that her conservative guests (those with the guts to show up, which is pretty much no one these days) usually end up thanking her for the shellacking. She's been particularly tenacious this year on the Trump-Russia scandal, and her layer-by-layer peeling back of that rotten onion has sent her ratings up dramatically. She tolerates no BS---and that's why we love her. In her honor, a cocktail…
Cheers, Rachel, and---everybody say it with me---many blessings on your camels.
Oh, and today is the Eiffel Tower’s 128th birthday. In its honor, climb up on your roof, light a cigarette, bite a chunk out of a baguette, and look down on your neighbors with detached bemusement as you recite passages from Sartre. (And don’t forget the beret!) Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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