Hand Over Your Heart Time
Among my private papers destined for display in the Bill in Portland Maine Library and Janitor’s Closet is a ragged piece of construction paper on which is scrawled my attempt at age 7 (circa 1972, below) to write out the words to our National Anthem. It's virtually illegible today, so I've transcribed it below to mark the 206th anniversary of the day Francis Scott Key wrote it. (Please hold your applause—he was all goo goo for slavery, a viewpoint he was happy to write into his Banner.) Please stand, sit, go down on one knee, raise your fist, or just wing it, and join me in our annual tradition of singing the, um…
Continued…
Star Bangled Baner
Oh say can you see by the dons early light
What so proudleeree haild at the twilited flashed gleaming.
Were galenntlee sareeming.
And the rockets gleenly of bombs bursting in air
Came our thru our thru the fight that are flag was still there
O say gotslan stare spangled banner ye whenne
Forb the land of the free and the home of the brave.
The saddest thing about this: at age 7 I knew the words better than the current President of the United States does at 74. (Same with the Pledge of Allegiance.)
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Monday, September 14, 2020
Note: Never enter into a verbal agreement with Monday without also getting a signed contract. Can't trust that day.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til election day: 50
Palindromic month and year Dr. Anthony Fauci expects America to get back to normal from the Covid-19 pandemic: 12/21
Biden-Trump matchup numbers among Michigan likely voters age 50+ polled by AARP: 54%-40%
Biden-Trump matchup numbers among Wisconsin likely voters age 50+: 50%-46%
Percent of Democrats, independents, and Republicans, respectively, polled by the Washington Post-University of Maryland who say they want to cast their votes before election day: 70%, 65%, 48%
Percent of Trump supporters polled by Pew Research in 2016 and 2020, respectively, who say they believe immigrants "threaten traditional American customs and values": 79%, 65%
Jobless claims last week, 34k more than forecast: 884,000
Totally Random NFL Score
New England Patriots 21 Miami Dolphins 11
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Monday!!!!!
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CHEERS to the cavalry arriving just in time. The Mike Bloomberg, exuding cool and calm in the face of calamity, sat in the wingback chair wedged in his cubicle, fingertips-on-fingertips, index fingers gently pressed to his lips as he ignored the slings and arrows being flung his way. Then, when the sturm and drang of the conventions had faded, and all the tell-all books had been released, The Mike Bloomberg spoke, barely above a whisper: "Rosebud." NO WAIT SORRY SORRY WRONG SCENARIO CANCEL THAT! He spoke, barely above a whisper: "Release the C-notes."
Billionaire Mike Bloomberg announced Sunday he would spend as much as $100 million in Florida to defeat President Donald Trump in his must-win state. […]
“Communicating with Hispanic voters will be a key part” of Bloomberg’s effort, which will primarily focus on digital and TV ads, according to a press release issued on behalf of his Independence USA political committee. […]
Bloomberg advisers hope that his cash will help tip the state in favor of Biden, all but killing Trump’s chances to win the Electoral College. Also, they say, the Florida money should help free up Democratic efforts in other states.
And than, having done his part for humanity, The Mike Bloomberg calmly swiveled his wingback chair back to his computer screen, and resumed Level 57 of Donkey Kong.
JEERS to keeping track of America’s fugliest numbers. While Trump and McConnell continue dithering (there will no further relief packages passed in the Senate this session, and the one passed by Democrats in the House last spring will remain a lonely doorstop in Moscow Mitch's office), the mighty Covid-19 Wurlitzer plays on (over 29 million cases around the globe now, with over 25%of them in the U.S.). Our Monday tradition of maintaining a benchmark of the awfulness for the C&J historical record continues. Let’s check the most depressing tote board in the world with all due reluctance as our death toll now equals the population of America’s 122nd-largest city Montgomery, Alabama:
20 weeks ago: 987,000 confirmed cases. 55,000 deaths.
10 weeks ago: 3 million confirmed cases, 133,000 deaths
5 weeks ago: 5.2 million confirmed cases, 165,000 deaths
This morning: 6.7 million confirmed cases, 198,000 deaths
And in other covid news, President Trump told Bob Woodward that he lied his ass off to the entire nation about the severity of the virus so that people wouldn’t panic. "Good to know," said all the dead people.
CHEERS to easy layups. The Treasury Department spent all of Trump's term blocking payments to New York City's 9/11 first responders. Now they say they're "aiming to fix the problem." Yeah. I might feel more confident if they weren't part of the administration that can't shoot straight!
Thank you. Buy my CD.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to previews of coming attractions? New polling over the weekend, notably from The New York Times, shows Joe Biden still moderately-firmly on track to carve up the current White House murderer-in-chief like Whoville's roast beast in 50 days. But the polls can be deceptive, so C&J always looks for other signs of which way the electoral winds are blowing. And let's just say this little factoid looks good for our side:
The baby name “Donald” continues to decline in popularity in the U.S., according to new data from the Social Security Administration.
The agency on Friday released its list of the most popular baby names in the U.S. for the year 2019. Between 2018 and 2019, the name Donald fell 27 places to 553th from 526th among the most popular baby names for boys―its lowest-ever ranking on the annual list, which dates back to the 1880s. […] The names of many Trump family members also fell in popularity last year. The name Tiffany dropped from 690th to 700th, and Eric fell from 160th to 176th.
To be fair and balanced, I looked up "Joseph" to see where it fell on the list, and it's sittin' pretty at #24, 529 notches above Donald. So I'm officially calling it: Joe Biden will win the 2020 election with 529 electoral votes. It's just science, people.
JEERS to getting Second Amendmented. On this date in 1901, our 25th president, William McKinley, died from an assassin’s bullet at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. A couple years back, Ohioans and conservatives in general went nuts when President Obama granted native Alaskans their wish to revert Mount McKinley back to its original name, Denali. A popular question asked by proponents of the move was, "What did McKinley do that was so great he warranted his own iconic mountain?" I had to think for a bit, but I managed to come up with a doozy: he picked a helluva vice president.
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 14, 2010
JEERS to the new tide of immigrants. They're streaming into America, and we don’t want them! I'm speaking, of course, of herds of walruses that are straggling onto our shores. We don’t want them here because they're supposed to be out there on their sea-ice pads in the ocean, frolicking and feasting on fishies and making little walruses. But thanks to—Ding Ding Ding!—global warming there ain't no ice, so they gotta swim ashore to survive. Environmental officials say the biggest fear from the influx of the "intensely social but easily spooked" tusked ones is stampeding. Meanwhile, Sarah Palin says her biggest fear is a proliferation of "anchor walruses" and called for an immediate repeal of the 14th amendment.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to the ultimate spin machine. Don’t forget to hug your hard drive—this week marks the 64th birthday of the IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Method of Accounting and Control), the first computer to ship with a hard drive:
The total amount of information stored on its 50 spinning iron-oxide-coated disks--each of them a pizza-size 24 inches--was 5 megabytes. That's not quite enough to hold two MP3 copies of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog."
"It was about the size of two large refrigerators, about as tall as a person stands, and though it used vacuum tubes, it was always running," recalls Jim Porter, who worked at Crown Zellerbach in San Francisco in the mid-'50s and would proudly take people to the basement to see what he claims was the very first unit delivered by IBM." It really turned the tide [in the Information Age]," he says.
Here’s the original promotional film for it. “Another business service of tomorrow made possible today by IBM...”
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And now let's all say Happy Birthday to the hard-workin' hard drive: "01001000 01100001 01110000 01110000 01111001 00100000 01000010 01101001 01110010 01110100 01101000 01100100 01100001 01111001" And a 00010001 to grow an inch.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
“In our deepest, darkest hour, let us call on the power of Bill in Portland Maine to give us, his kiddie pool splashers, some of the needed confidence, strength and candy corn to accomplish good.”
—John Kasich
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