From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
I Needed This, Thanks
America’s greatest president of our lifetime (Pew Research) gave the annual Nelson Mandela lecture in Johannesburg yesterday. It’s a sober, unflinching assessment of where we find ourselves as a global community in 2018, and an eloquent defense of democratic principles and institutions. Vintage Obama. Here’s a snip that illustrates why the gaslighting Republican party deserves to be stripped down to the bare walls in November:
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Carve out some time to watch the entire speech here. It’s the perfect antidote to the poison we were exposed to in Helsinki on Monday.
P.S. A few choice words from Mandela, who would’ve been 100 today:
Somebody should tell that to the “family values party.”
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Note: The National Emergency Ant Preservation Service has issued an Evil Children Walking Around With Magnifying Glasses Warning. Federal and local authorities urge you to stay in your hill until the threat passes. Sometime around September, we guess. Please keep your antennae tuned to the NEAPS for further updates and a variety of light conga classics. Thank you. ---Atom
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the annual Jewish fast day Tisha B’av: 3
Days 'til the Lumberjack World Championships in Hayward, Wisconsin: 1
Percent of Americans who believe the U.S. should be following the greenhouse gas-reduction guidelines outlined in the Paris agreement, according to ABC News: 80%
Favorable opinion of Vladimir Putin among Americans, according to a CNN poll: 11%
Percent of Democrats and Republicans, respectively, who say in a Pew poll that Putin poses a major threat to America: 63%, 38%
Percent chance that we’re alone in the observable universe, according to Oxford scientists: 40%
Date on which I started adding pics to C&J: 7/18/12
Major League All-Star Game
American League 8 National League 6
(including a record 10 home runs)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 182 (including 5 Russian gogs and 1 restraining order against the Antichrist). Soul Protection Factor 45 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Smooth…..
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JEERS to President Oopise von Marblemouth. Yesterday, the professional money launderer and admitted sexual predator currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue informed the nation that, doggone it, all that treason talk he was talkin’ in Helsinki with that Russian KGB agent was just a big ol’ misunderstanding. See, he said one word out of his mouth hole but he really meant to say another, so that changes everything. All better now! No treason, no treason! Let’s go live to the Oval Office and see how Trump’s cleanup job is proceeding:
Ha ha! Just kidding! That’s his bedroom. Trump doesn’t show up to work until 11.
CHEERS to fresh world peace. Over in northeast Africa, tensions have eased bit. For that you can thank Sunday’s bury-the-hatchet-palooza in Ethiopia, whose leader embraced Eritrea’s, ending a two-decade state of war and then cold war:
As they entered the entered the Millennium Hall on Sunday evening, Abiy and Isaias held hands and waved at the crowd, prompting loud cheers. Musicians performed under giant portraits of the two men.
“We have chosen to tread a path and work together for development, prosperity and peace, having overcome a conspiracy of hatred, revenge and destruction,” Isaias told the audience, which included Ethiopian celebrities.
Eritrea formally seceded from Ethiopia in 1993 after a long battle for independence, but the two went to war in 1998 over a border dispute. Though a peace deal was signed two years later, Ethiopia refused to implement it, saying it wanted more talks.
I’m sure there’s a certain amount of strategic maneuvering and back-room intrigue involved, and the move is probably pissing somebody off. But whenever two leaders of anything say “We have chosen a path of forgiveness and love,” ya gotta give ‘em points.
CHEERS to merry meetings. Forty-three years ago this week, an Apollo crew docked with the Soyuz 19 spacecraft in orbit. (Because, if memory serves, Denny's was too crowded.) It was the first time the world's foremost cold warriors hooked up in space for procreative purposes. A floppy-haired Peter Jennings anchored the event on ABC News, inadvertently calling it a “meeting between an American space capsule and a Russian space ‘crapsule’”:
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Yes, those are model spaceships hanging on strings behind him. Ed Wood shoulda sued the network for stealing his idea.
CHEERS to Democrats with the right stuff. Speaking of space, happy 97th birthday to the late John Glenn, one of the most durable human beings who ever lived. Not only was he the first astronaut to orbit the planet, he later became the oldest person in space when he blasted off in the Shuttle Discovery at the age of 77. I don’t plan to have a whole lot etched on my Billystone after I die, but one thing you'll definitely read on it will be, "John Glenn Was My Freakin' Senator." Probably with an exclamation point---or more if I can get a volume discount.
P.S. {{{{{Annie}}}}}
CHEERS to cool science. We may not be able to find a solution to stopping a 300-pound dotard from destroying democracy as we know it, but did you hear what we DID find? A loogie that a black hole hocked...
When the sun was young and faint and the Earth was barely formed, a gigantic black hole in a distant, brilliant galaxy spat out a powerful jet of radiation. That jet contained neutrinos---subatomic particles so tiny and difficult to detect they are nicknamed "ghost particles."
Four billion years later, at Earth's South Pole, 5,160 sensors buried more than a mile beneath the ice detected a single ghostly neutrino as it interacted with an atom. Scientists then traced the particle back to the galaxy that created it. […]
Neutrinos are the second most abundant type of particle in the universe, after photons (light particles). If you held your hand toward the sky, about a billion neutrinos from the sun would pass through it in a single second.
Physicists say that the study of neutrinos is off-the-charts “mind-boggling and extreme.” In that case I suggest they rename the particles Trumpinos.
JEERS to the current chain of command. Seventy-one years ago today, on July 18, 1947, President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, which clearly establishes who takes over if the president dies or is incapacitated. If you ever need to induce vomiting because you or someone else has OD’d on something, just whip this list out and give it a look:
Vice President Mike Pence (But only with Mother's permission)
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan [Stunned, horrified silence]
President pro tempore of the Senate Orrin Hatch (How does "The United States of Mormon" grab ya?)
Sec. of State Mike Pompeo
Sec. of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin
Bert the House Janitor (In fairness, if he can clean up vomit in the school cafeteria, he can probably clean up Washington.)
Sneezy (This would not be good because he'd be dwarfed by world events.)
After that they just start drawing random names out of Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's girdle.
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Ten years ago in C&J: July 18, 2008
JEERS to firearms for the faithful. Let's see...if Jesus were here on Earth, I wonder if he'd entice fresh converts like this…
An Oklahoma church canceled a controversial gun giveaway for teenagers at a weekend youth conference. Windsor Hills Baptist had planned to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle until one of the event's organizers was unable to attend.
The church’s youth pastor, Bob Ross, said it’s a way of trying to encourage young people to attend the event. The church expected hundreds of teenagers from as far away as Canada.
What a wimp. Jesus would give out bazookas. Blessed are the buttkickers, baby!
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And just one more…
CHEERS to today’s big eggscitement! Today is National Caviar Day, dah’ling. I'm sure you're itching, as I am, to send the butler to the walk-in refrigerator to dip into your resplendent reservoir of roe. But before you do, make sure he's not gonna fuck it up:
Fine caviar should never be served with or stored in metal because of oxidation which can impart a metal flavour to the berries (yes, that what each little egg is properly called).
Serve caviar very cold and nestled inside another bowl or container that holds ice to keep it fresh and cool.
Choose servers made of glass, bone, wood or plastic. If you want to go by tradition, try mother-of-pearl or gold.
While it’s tempting to overdo it, try not to as eating more than two ounces or two spoons of caviar is considered a social faux pas.
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And no matter what, fellow Kossacks, never, ever spill any caviar on your Manolo Blanhiks. They kick people out of country clubs for less.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Landmark Day For Bill in Portland Maine As His Net Worth Briefly Surpasses $151
---Forbes
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