From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Energize An Ally Tuesday
A quick reminder that today is take-to-the-streets day to voice opposition against the right-wing's war on women, which reached peak fanatic last week in Alabama. From the consortium of allies at StopAbortionBans.org:
Across the country, we are seeing a new wave of extreme bans on abortion, stripping away reproductive freedom and representing an all-out assault on abortion access. This is Trump’s anti-choice movement…and it’s terrifying, particularly for women of color and low-income women who are most affected by these bans.
Together we say: Stop the bans.
This Tuesday, May 21st at noon local time at statehouses, town squares, and courthouses across the nation---with other events throughout the week---we will show up to speak out and fight back against this unconstitutional attempt to gut Roe and punish women.
There are over 200 300 400 events scheduled, and you can see the interactive map here to find one closest to you. With less than 1-in-4 Americans wanting Roe overturned, I don’t think the right-wingers really understand what they've stepped in.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, May 21, 2019
Note: Ivanka Trump checks self into hospital for comprehensive neurological evaluation after inexplicably coming up with original fashion idea. Film at 11.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the next new moon on Monday, aka the "Duran Duran moon": 13
Days 'til the Down East Spring Birding Festival around Cobscook Bay: 4
Number of states in which support for banning abortion reaches 25 percent, according to a Data for Progress analysis of 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Studies: 0
Percent of voters who believe Robert Mueller and Trump, respectively, more regarding the Russia investigation according to a new Fox News poll: 45%, 27%
Rank of Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands among countries that are best at recognizing and countering Russian propaganda, according to CNN: #1, #2, #3
Increase in Mainers' incomes in 2017, a bit above the national average: 2.8%
Number of times Sherpa Kami Rita, 49, has climbed Mount Everest, a record: 23
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NEW Tuesday feature! "Packin' for Philadelphia!"
Brought to you by the 2019 Netroots Nation Convention in Philadelphia, July 11-13. I swear this is absolutely true: Philadelphians are a musical people. And one of the favorite hits that blares from loudspeakers 24/7 in front of Independence Hall is Elton John's Philadelphia Freedom. He wrote it for tennis icon Billie Jean King, who tells the story of how the 1975 #1 hit came about:
I was thrilled. I said, “That’s great. It will be a great gift to the people of Philadelphia.” And the timing was perfect because of the Bicentennial being just the following year [from the song’s release].
And I love the word “freedom.” I would say it is one of my all-time favorite words since I was a child. I remember talking about freedom in elementary school. And I am the one who named the [World Team Tennis] team the Philadelphia Freedoms. And then in 2009, I got the Medal of Freedom from President Obama…it just goes on and on. Elton says the reason why the song works so well is because “Philadelphia” is iambic. […]
"And we’re in the locker room…not real spiffy…and he put it in the cassette player on the trainer’s table and I loved it within the first three notes. I love "the sound of Philadelphia”...so he really went out of his way to get people from Philadelphia to arrange it."
Cool story. Read it here. And if you plan on attending the convention, remember: walking up to random Philadelphians and screaming the lyrics in their face is a gesture of respect. But before you do it, let me start videotaping. For posterity.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Special addition to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School yearbook…
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CHEERS to equal pay for equal work. The Democratic primary season continues to boogey down the road, with plans being unveiled in rapid succession. Jay Inslee and Michael Bennet have plans to battle the climate crisis. Bernie Sanders has a plan on education. Kirsten Gillibrand has a plan to protect women's reproductive rights. Elizabeth Warren has a plan for near every damn thing. Joe Biden has a plan for being Joe Biden. And over the weekend Kamala Harris unveiled her plan for gender-pay equality:
The plan would make large companies pay a fine if they don't obtain an "equal pay certification" from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A senior campaign official says for every 1% wage gap that exists, the company would be fined 1% of its profits. They will additionally be required to post on their company's website if they are certified with paying men and women equally.
"It is a proposal to address the reality of pay inequity and the disparity of pay based on gender. Women are paid on average 80 cents to the dollar for the exact same work as men," Harris told reporters after the event. "Black women are paid 61 cents on the dollar. Latinas are paid 53 cents on the dollar.And this has real implications not just for those women but for their families and for their communities and for society...These statistics and their disparities have not much changed over the decades in spite of all the talk of how we need to address the obvious unfairness of it."
Meanwhile today Pete Buttigieg will unveil his own ten-point plan...for how to pronounce his last name Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! (Please don’t blame me for that—my cat insisted I write that while dangling a claw above my eyeball. Nice kitty.)
CHEERS to taking names and knocking heads. A non-politician who captured the world's attention and defied the odds to win a seat at the head of the government took the oath of office yesterday. It'll be a huge challenge dealing with the shooting war and the rampant corruption in the government…not to mention the influence of Vladimir Putin's continued cyber-hostilities. But by taking a different path and bucking many of the entrenched "ways things have always been done," there's real hope that the bloodshed and chaos in the region can finally be stemmed, leading to peace and prosperity and bringing the different factions together to face their challenges as one people. But enough about Chicago's new mayor Lori Lightfoot. I also hear Ukraine's new president is shaking things up. Godspeed to 'em both.
JEERS to the Boy Wonder's bubble-headed blunder. Twenty-seven years ago this week, in 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle cited Murphy Brown as a poor example of family values. Said Ken Tucker back then in Entertainment Weekly:
Dan Quayle's spleen venting about the way Murphy Brown subverts family values is only the most direct expression to date of a notion that has gained in intensity over the past decade---that TV has some sort of obligation to present only ''positive'' examples of family life, that any portrayal of something other than the happy nuclear clan is detrimental to our American way of life.
But TV isn't an arm of social policy or government propaganda; it has no more responsibility to be upbeat and positive than do, say, poetry or the theater....
Someone pour Quayle a glass of cold milk, please.
Isn't it nice to know that the Republican party has come so far in its thinking over the last 27 years? (Please try to not break your face while smirking.)
CHEERS to our robot overlords. Sure, artificial intelligence will one day figure out that it can build an army of robot gorillas that will chase humans down the street, dismember them, and feed the limbs to the robot lions. But we'll all be dead by then anyway, and it'll be our grandkids' grandkids' problem to sort out. In the meantime, AI is our benevolent diagnostician, and getting better at it every day:
Google AI researchers working with Northwestern Medicine created an AI model capable of detecting lung cancer from screening tests better than human radiologists with an average of eight years experience.
When analyzing a single CT scan, the model detected cancer 5% more often on average than a group of six human experts and was 11% more likely to reduce false positives. [...]
When it came to predicting the risk of cancer two years after a screening, the model was able to find cancer 9.5% more often compared to estimated radiologist performance laid out in the National Lung Screening Test (NLST) study.
But one thing on which humans matched AI's abilities, with a perfect 100% detection rate: the cancer on the presidency. Then again, a blind deaf mute in a sensory-deprivation chamber could find that.
JEERS to pandemonium across the pond. One of the big events—at least I think it's a big event—coming up this Thursday is the EU vote in (formerly great) Britain. From what I understand, this is a vote to choose 73 British representatives for the 751-member European Union parliament. And with the empire's exit just five months away, it's going about as well as you'd expect:
Britain’s participation in the European elections has taken on an aura of farce as would-be MEPs campaign for seats even though the UK voted almost three years ago to leave the EU. Deadlock in Westminster has prevented Theresa May’s government from enacting a withdrawal deal it concluded with Brussels.
The impasse has infuriated some corners of public opinion. The poll found one in four people hoped the European elections would result in nothing less than a “revolution” in the EU, compared with 14% who hoped the 23-26 May ballot would amount to a vote of confidence in the EU. […]
Mark Leonard, the director of the ECFR, said: “Rather than engaging in a conversation with each other’s ideas, voters seem to be retreating into two camps whose divisions become ever deeper and more unbridgeable. The ‘Big Sort’ that bifurcated American politics and society is becoming the defining feature of political life in the UK.”
With one minor difference: Britain puts fewer children in cages.
CHEERS to partying parties. On this date in 1832, the first Democratic National Convention got under way in Baltimore. The top issues were Andrew Jackson's contempt for the Second Bank of the United States and the business of voting on a running mate. (Martin Van Buren got the nod in a blowout.) And there was this curious factoid:
[T]he Summary of the Proceedings notes that a delegation was sent to ask Charles Carroll of Carrollton to attend. At that moment in time, he was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Carroll declined, citing ill health. (He died later that year.)
Jackson and Van Buren went on to crush Henry Clay and John Sergeant in the general, due mostly to their campaign slogan: "Don't Make Andrew Mad. You Don't Want to See Andrew When He's Mad."
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 21, 2009
JEERS to the sad, downward spiral of Michael Steele. First the new RNC chairman was optimistic ("I'm gonna make the GOP hip and jiggy"). Then he was defiant ("Rush is just an entertainer"). Then he was contrite ("Please forgive me, Rush"). Then he was robbed ("They took away my control over the RNC budget"). Then he was illogical (Gay marriage is bad because, unlike straight marriages, they'll hurt small businesses...or something"). And now he's just incoherent. I mean, the guy actually wrote this line into a speech and spoke it: "This change, my friends, is being delivered in a teabag...and that's a wonderful thing." Methinks someone smoked a mega-doobie before writing that. What's next...streaking down K Street?
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And just one more…
CHEERS to famous firsts. In their relevant-as-ever book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Al Ries and Jack Trout write about the advantage of being the first in the marketplace. Or, as the case may be, the Trump impeachment bandwagon:
What's the name of the first person to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo? Charles Lindbergh, right? Whats the name of the second person to fly the Atlantic? Not so easy to answer, is it?
The second person to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo was Bert Hinkler. Bert was a better pilot than Charlie---he flew faster, he consumed less fuel. Yet who has ever heard of Bert Hinkler?
(The first woman to fly the Atlantic solo? Why, Amelia Earhart, of course---87 years ago today.) They call that particular principle the “Rule of Leadership.” Over the weekend, a humble congressman from western Michigan became the first Republican member of the House of Representatives to show what leadership looks like in the age of Trump. He tweeted many tweets supporting his position, but here’s the Cliffs Notes tweet. Pay particular attention to #2...
The history books will remember his name: Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI). Cuz he's #1.
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
“I’m old enough to remember when Republicans talked a lot about character in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool.”
---Mayor Pete Buttigieg
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