A Few Words From the February Birthday Table
"It was immigration that taught us it does not matter where you came from, or who your parents were. What counts is who you are."
—Congresswoman Barbara Jordan
"I have said this before, and I will say it again: the vote is precious. It is almost sacred. It is the most powerful non-violent tool we have in a democracy."
—Congressman John Lewis
“If the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.”
—Charles Darwin
Continued...
Birthdays Cont’d...
"To me, the most important part of winning is joy. You can win without joy, but winning that’s joyless is like eating in a four-star restaurant when you’re not hungry. Joy is a current of energy in your body, like chlorophyll or sunlight, that fills you up and makes you naturally want to do your best."
—Bill Russell
"The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves, in their separate, and individual capacities."
—President Lincoln
"The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous."
—Frederick Douglass
"Seize the moment. Remember all those women on the Titanic who waved off the dessert cart."
—Erma Bombeck
"Guys, is this inauguration speech running too long? No? You sure? We're cool? Great. As I was saying…"
—President William Henry Harrison
And the classic:
“You don’t need no gun control. You know what you need? We need some bullet control. That’s right—I think all bullets should cost five thousand dollars. Five thousand dollars per bullet. You know why? Cuz if a bullet costs five thousand dollars, there would be no more innocent bystanders.”
—Chris Rock
If you’re marking another year around the sun this month, Happy Birthday and many blessings on your camels. And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, February 17, 2022
Note: Just to blaze a new and exciting crypto trail, instead of a non-fungible token, I’m putting up for auction a non-tokenable fungus. Its name is "Precious." Starting bid: $1 million. Virtual petri dish included. We suggest you never, ever open it. —C&J Dept. of Let’s See If I Can Get Away With This
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Mardi Gras: 12
Days 'til the New York Farm Show in Syracuse: 7
Size of the settlement reached between the relatives of nine Sandy Hook Elementary massacre victims and Remington: $73 million
Estimated number of years since the West had a worse mega-drought than it's having now, taking us back to the year 822: 1,200
Expected rise in sea levels along U.S. coastlines over the next 28 years: 1 foot
Amount being allocated to the states by the federal government to help build its network of EV recharging stations across the country: $5 billion
Percent of Americans polled by Gallup in 1939 who approved of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's resignation from Daughters of the American Revolution because they wouldn't allow Black opera singer Marian Anderson to perform in their building (Roosevelt invited Anderson to sing at the Lincoln memorial instead): 57%
Current U.S. Olympic Medal Count
Gold: 8 Silver: 8 Bronze: 5
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
The trouble with being a congenital optimist is that gloom-mongering feels so uncomfortable. The election in Iraq Sunday, like the one in Afghanistan last year, was moving, inspiring and hopeful. When there's a ray of light breaking through in a dark sky, I'd much rather concentrate on the ray than the black clouds.
But mitigating my optimism is the fact that I've been around for a long time. Not that longevity is any guarantee of wisdom, but it does provide perspective. I can remember when they had elections in Vietnam that looked hopeful in 1967. I can remember the elections in El Salvador in 1984. And I remember last year's election in Afghanistan, with the almost unbearably moving sight of Afghani women coming out to vote. Still, it didn't kill off a single raping warlord, did it?
In Iraq alone, we've been through 'mission accomplished,' then the violence would end once we captured Saddam Hussein, then the all-important handover of sovereignty that would make all the difference and next the destruction of Fallujah that was going to break the insurgency. (Well, it did destroy Fallujah.) Someday, we will actually capture al-Zarqawi, and I bet we find that doesn't make much difference, either.
—February 2005
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Just in case you were wondering
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JEERS to stupid American human tricks. The biggest floods this year haven’t come from weather events. No, they've come from the tears of our fellow countrymen crying, "Inflation! Inflation! We can't buy anything with all this inflation! Calgon, take us away! No, wait, scratch that, we can't even afford Calgon!" Uh huh. Drama queens…
Fueled by pay gains, solid hiring and enhanced savings, Americans sharply ramped up their spending at retail stores last month in a sign that many consumers remain unfazed by rising inflation.
Retail sales jumped 3.8% from December to January, the Commerce Department said Wednesday, a much bigger increase than economists had expected. Though inflation helped boost that figure, most of January’s gain reflected more purchases, not higher prices. […]
“Consumers say they are worried about inflation, but they continue to spend,” said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial. “Job growth is strong, wages are increasing and household wealth is way up thanks to rapidly rising home values and, until recently, stock prices.”
So what will we all cry about now that we're bored with inflation? Oh, give us a few seconds—we'll think of something.
CHEERS to no longer guessing who was coming to dinner. Remember back in 2017 when none of our jaws dropped (but our teeth did do some grinding) after The Thing From Perv-A-Lago announced that the White House would keep its visitor logs secret to protect all the crimey types who would be walking in and out at their leisure for at least four years? Yeah, about that. Seems the current president can, and will, send the logs to the House January 6 Committee for a li'l peek-a-boo:
"The president has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States, and therefore is not justified, as to these records and portions of records," [White House counsel Dana] Remus wrote in the letter, which was obtained Wednesday by NBC News. "The records in question are entries in visitor logs showing appointment information for individuals who were processed to enter the White House complex, including on January 6, 2021."
The letter noted that the Biden administration voluntarily discloses White House visitor logs each month, a practice that was also followed under the Obama administration.
Thankfully the Trump visitor records are at the National Archives, so they can be retrieved without requiring the services of a plumber.
CHEERS to great discoveries. 92 years ago this week, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered a new "dwarf planet" waaaay out at the outer rim of our solar system, just south of Tatooine. A half a dozen summers ago the New Horizons probe flew by and took some Polaroids, and you can keep track of its further adventures here. Here's a wild image from the Griffith Observatory that shows what the sphere (and its adorbs heart-shaped region) would look like if it was just a wee bit closer to earth:
By the way, Tombaugh called it “Pluto.” Republican ideas called it “Home.”
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to legal libations. On this date in 1933, the U.S. Senate passed the Blaine Act, which effectively ended prohibition. Who says Christmas comes in December?
CHEERS to today's edition of As The Mama Grizzly Turns. When last we tuned in, a judge in New York was laughing Sarah Palin and her libel lawsuit against The New York Times out of court. As we join today's episode, a jury is rendering its verdict in the exact same case. Let's listen…
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!
Don’t bother joining us tomorrow for another edition of As The Mama Grizzly Turns, since we just canceled it on account of, as of five seconds ago, we once again forgot who Sarah Palin is.
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Ten years ago in C&J: February 17, 2012
JEERS to being a pain in the brass. Here's something you don’t see every day: a mysterious outbreak of California thievery involving...um...
“It was strictly a tuba raid,” said Rolph Janssen, an assistant principal. Bell High School is only the most recent victim in a string of tuba thefts from music departments. In the last few months, dozens of brass sousaphones—tubas often used in marching bands—were taken from schools in Southern California.
Police have started to make some headway in catching the thieves. It turns out that asking "Is that a tuba in your pocket or are you just happy to see me" during interrogations is surprisingly effective.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to getting into the proper SCOTUS mindset. It's been three weeks since Justice Stephen “Mad Dog” Breyer announced that he's cleaning out his office mini-fridge and heading for retirement at the end of the current term, and that means President Biden's announcement of his successor (spoiler alert: a Black woman, hooray) is close at hand.
The moment Joe whispers the name in that hypnotic whispery whisper of his, the media and both political parties—Democrats and Orcs—will cause an earthquake of derp that will register 327.6 on the Richter Drama Scale. To get your brain aligned with this momentous occasion, which will last for months, here are some activities that you and your kids and/or grandkids can do together, courtesy of The Daily Show's epic 2004 bestselling civics textbook America: The Book, which, amazingly, hasn’t been banned or burned by any unhinged school boards yet. Have fun...
1. Using felt and yarn, make a hand puppet of Clarence Thomas. Ta-da! You're Antonin Scalia!
2. Dress up in black robes and put white wigs on. Observe how much easier it is to get serious work done.
3. Name the five differences between a gavel and an ordinary hammer.
4. Explain that most Supreme Court justices decide cases along ideological lines, but there are "swing justices" who could go either way, and are therefore fun to bet on. Start a bookmaking operation, collecting wagers from your students on which way the justices will vote.
5. While you're at it, start a death poll—many justices are on their last legs.
6. Make the judicial branch come alive by conducting mock Supreme Court proceedings in the case of Smelt It v. Dealt It.
7. Separation of church and state is one of the fundamental principles of our government, yet court witnesses are required to swear on The Bible. Justify this.
8. Have your students "re-argue" Colgrove v. Green, 328 U.S. 549 (1946), to determine if, as Colgrove argued, the Illinois congressional districts "lacked compactness of territory and approximate equality of population." That'll teach the little shits for chewing gum in class.
And for extra credit, list the 465 conflicts of interest from which Clarence Thomas has refused to recuse himself over the last 31 years. (Hint: 400 of them involve his psycho teabagger MAGA political bomb-throwing wife.) Good luck.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"I don’t think I’ve ever seen, in 40 years of Super Bowl watching, Bill in Portland Maine buy a multimillion dollar commercial for Cheers and Jeers. But watching those ads reminded a lot of us of some ass bubbles we’ve seen before."
—Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
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