From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
A Few Words For Our Kossack Buds Graduating This year
With the rise of Trump and the American white supremacist/Nazi movement, I thought this segment of Kurt Vonnegut's graduation speech at Fredonia College in New York on May 20, 1978 might resonate today…
I come to a close now by noting that the press, whose business is to know and understand everything, often find young people to be apathetic (especially when pundits and commentators can't think of anything else to write about or talk about). The new generation of graduates has failed to eat a certain vitamin or mineral perhaps, iron perhaps. They have tired blood. They need Geritol. Well, as a member of the zippier generation, with sparkle in its eyes and a snap in its stride, let me tell you what kept us as high as kites a lot of the time: hatred.
All my life I've had people to hate---from Hitler to Nixon, not that those two are at all comparable in their villainy. It is a tragedy, perhaps, that human beings can get so much energy and enthusiasm from hate. If you want to feel ten feet tall and as though you could run a hundred miles without stopping, hate beats pure cocaine any day. Hitler resurrected a beaten, bankrupt, half-starved nation with hatred and nothing more. Imagine that.
So it seems quite likely to me that the young people of today in the United States of America are not in fact apathetic, but only look that way to people who are used to getting their ecstasies from hatred, among other things, of course. The members of your graduating class are not sleepy, are not listless, are not apathetic. They are simply performing the experiment of doing without hate. Hate is the missing vitamin or mineral or whatever in their diet, they have sensed correctly that hate, in the long run, is about as nourishing as cyanide. This is a very exciting thing they are doing, and I wish them well.
From the book full of Vonnegut’s graduation speeches, If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? (Much) Expanded Second Edition. Great read.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, May 24, 2017
Note: If you have a giant glowing orb, leave a giant glowing orb. If you need a giant glowing orb, take a giant glowing orb. ---Mgt.
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of Atlantic hurricane season: 8
Days 'til the National Spelling Bee: 6
Percent chance NATO downgraded its May 25 "summit" to a "meeting" to"minimize the chance of a Trump eruption": 100%
Cuts to Medicaid in Trump's budget, which will go absolutely nowhere: $800 billion
Share of U.S. newlyweds in 2015 who were of differing races or ethnicities, up from 3 percent in 1967, according to FiveThirtyEight: 17%
Number of Americans who have car loans, a record according to the Federal reserve Bank of New York: 107 million
Number who are 90 days or more behind on their payments: 6 million
-
Mid-week Rapture Index:
182 (including 4 Tribulation Temples and the first white horse of the apocalypse). Soul Protection Factor 22 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Tickle tickle tickle Zzzzzzzzz….
-
CHEERS to sunlight: nature's best disinfectant. Today is a day of dread for Republicans, as the Congressional Budget Office finally releases its score for the "Trumpcare" money grab disguised as a health care bill that was rammed through the House a few weeks back with no understanding of what's in it besides a giant kickback to the top 1 percent. You can tell they're freaking out because some GOP PAC is foisting $2 million on TV stations to run a totally dishonest ad ahead of the announcement. Marketwatch adds:
Official Washington will comb through the analysis, known as a score, with partisans on each side hoping it suits their talking points. Democrats would seize on a greater-than-previously-estimated increase in the number of uninsured people. Republicans would hail a bigger cut in the deficit. And the whole thing may have to go back to the House for another vote if it’s not found to save enough money. […]
The first CBO score estimated that 24 million more people would be uninsured in 2026, and the number did not change in the second analysis. Democrats ripped that number,but it also made some Republicans uncomfortable. Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said the first report was a “cause for alarm,” and fellow GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said the score was “awful.” So if that number goes up, expect the outcry from members of Congress to get louder.
If past Republican competence is any indication, we know what they'll be doing when the CBO report comes out: scrambling like hell. And lying like a rug.
JEERS to poor representation. Lord Dampnut, who claimed "exhaustion" less than three days after arriving in the Middle East, has managed to thoroughly embarrass his country (by which I mean Russia) through a series of gaffes and weirdness that would've been unthinkable during the Obama years. A brief recap:
>> Curtsied to the King.
>> Placed his hands on one of the Saudi King's giant radioactive kidney stones and tried to conjure the ghost of Ronald Reagan. He failed, although Nixon made a brief appearance to remind Trump to hoist V-for-victory sign when he boards Marine One for the last time after his impeachment.
>> Promised the Saudis a huge price break on buying weapons from the United States in exchange for a $100 million bribe for Ivanka's fake women's initiative thingy. This is considered a "great deal."
>> Participated in a dance ritual using the same type of swords used to behead Saudi citizens for adultery and homosexuality.
>> Refused to say "radical Islamic terrorism" in his big terrorism speech, breaking his biggest foreign policy campaign promise to use it everyday and everywhere.
>> After arriving in Israel, said he "just got back from the Middle East."
>> With a teeth-grinding Bibi Netanyahu mere inches away, Trump clumsily confirmed that he did, indeed, divulge Israeli secrets to the Russians.
>> Got his hand slapped away on the tarmac in Tel Aviv…by his current wife. Um...twice.
>> After refusing to allow American journalists to attend his press conference, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson referred to Tel Aviv as the "home of Judaism."
Today Trump's bloated carcass will be hauled off to Vatican City, where he'll be propped up in a corner for a meeting with the Pope. Pomposity meets humility. Won’t that be a kick.
CHEERS to Monsters of Mass Deception. On May 24, 1933 the Loch Ness Monster was "sighted" for the first time. For 84 years no one has ever been able to provide definitive proof that it actually exists. It’s like the Republican ability to govern of sea monsters.
-
-
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. CNN asks: Can Donald Trump solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
No.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
-
-
JEERS to terrorism like clockwork. We know this can happen anytime and anywhere, and Monday it happened in Manchester, England: over twenty dead and scores injured in a bomb blast at a concert. The response---aside from the anger and grief---is predictable, if more grown-up compared to our right-wing freakouts on this side of the pond: the shock slowly wears off, the site is cleaned up, police track down any living suspects, funerals take place, life returns to the normal, and the stoic Brits do what they always do: stay calm and carry on. And then…sometime somewhere else it'll all happen again. And that's the reason why intelligent beings from other solar systems never visit ours.
CHEERS to veeek-tory!!! I believe it was the great Mahatma Gandhi who famously said, "We are the champions, my friends. And we'll keep on fighting 'til the end." Last night two Democratic champions emerged in state races that had previously been Republican strongholds. DK Elections Poobah David Nir says…
In New Hampshire, Democrat Edie DesMarais defeated Republican Matthew Plache by a 52-48 margin in the state House’s 6th Carroll District, a seat Donald Trump won 51-44 last fall.
Meanwhile, in the New York Assembly’s 9th District, Democrat Christine Pellegrino beat Republican Thomas Gargiulo 58-42, even though Trump romped to a 60-37 victory there in November.
This means that DesMarais moved the needle 11 points in the Democratic direction while Pellegrino did the same by an astounding 39 points.
Congrats to both. Meanwhile, the next test of anti-Trump backlash---and it's a biggun'---happens tomorrow in Montana, where Democrat Rob Quist will try to beat the odds and defeat Republican Mr. Wall Street Moneybags for the state's only House seat. Cross your fingers and your toes. Three in a row and we all get a free Slurpee.
CHEERS to jump-starting the jalopy. 117 years ago, the first auto repair shop opened in Boston. Followed soon after by the first auto repair bill-induced cardiac arrhythmia.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: May 24, 2007
CHEERS to the Stork Express. Mary Cheney had her baby yesterday. Within seconds of Samuel's arrival, the infant told the nurse to go fuck herself. Yep...that's the Cheney bloodline, all right.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to Robert Allen Zimmerman. You know him better as Duluth-born Bob Dylan, and today we wish him a happy 76th birthday. No one in my conservative family listened to Dylan when I was growing up (it was classical, showtunes, Bread, John Denver, Up With People, and The Carpenters in our house, which is why I think I'm somehow related to Ned Flanders), and I don’t remember anyone playing him when I went to college in the early 80's. So, Dylan never made it on my mix tapes, sorry to say. But I'm smart enough to know a living legend when I see one, especially since he just won a freaking Nobel Prize for doing that thing he does. And judging by his summer tour schedule, he ain’t slowin’ down any. Here he is in Newport a month before I was born:
His Wikipedia entry is like a museum---you could get lost in it. Many blessings on your camels, Bob. And thanks for Blowin' in the Wind. Best fart song ever.
Have an amazing Wednesday that slices your week in half with no muss, no fuss and no sticky residue for just three easy payments of only $19.95! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
This Time Lapse Video of the Cheers and Jeers Kiddie Pool Will Give You an Existential Crisis
---Gizmodo
-