The Swashbucklin’ 19th
Avast me hearties and suchlike. It's me, Captain Billybeard, fear-instiller of the deep blue kiddie pool. For thems who don't knows, today is the blow-me-downest day of the year: International Talk Like A Pirate Day. And arrrway we go…
President Biden: "By 2035 we’ll all be drivin’ electric carrrs!"
Democratic strategist: "That Whitmer lass is a rising starrr!"
Winston Churchill: "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest arrr!'"
JD Vance: ”Immigrants are eating all our arrrmadillos!”
American worker: "Thanks to those greedy bastards on Wall Street, I may never get to retarrr!"
And please remember: it’s “Arrr,” not “Arrrgh.”
Paul Revere’s midnight ride: ”To arrrrms!”
JD Vance again: ”...and all our aarrrdvarks, too!”
Daily Kos blogger: “My favorite front-pager is the Joan they call McCarrrter.”
Judge Merchan, shortly after the election: "I sentence ye, Donald J. Trump, to twenty years behind barrrrs."
Buzz Aldrin: "To Marrrs!"
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland: "Come one, come all, to visit our national parrrks."
Red-hatted End Times fanatic: "Prepare ye for Arrrrmageddon."
Theatre Critic: "Don’t miss the revival of Streetcarrr Named Desarrr!"
Postal abbreviation of Bill Clinton's home state: AR
Trump's campaign team: "Ready! Farrr! Aim!"
Thanks for reading. You've been a swarrrthy arrdience. And now, our feature presentation…
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, September 19, 2024
Note:
[Today’s note, above, is written in invisible pixels. To reveal the secret message above, rub lemon juice over your screen for several hours until it appears. Is it worth all the fuss? If you consider “Drink more Ovaltine” your prime directive, we say YES! —Mgt.]
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By the Numbers:
7 days!!!
Days 'til International Day of Sign Languages: 4
Days 'til New Glarus Oktoberfest in Wisconsin: 7
Increase in industrial production during August, up 1.7% from July: 0.8%
American adults polled by Navigator Research who believe Republicans and Democrats, respectively, are more prone to promoting violence to achieve political aims: 49%, 36%
Percent who say they trust Republicans and Democrats, respectively, to combat political violence: 36%, 44%
Current share of Americans without health insurance: 8%
Time it takes for sunlight to reach the earth: 8 minutes, 20 seconds
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
I have it on good authority that when he was informed that one of his aides had used a military chopper to get to a golf game, Clinton was so mad he nearly broke a chair by picking it up and slamming it to the floor.
He further had several observations to make concerning the sea of problems he's facing and how, on top of all that, this dag-nabberty-blabbit, adjectival-deleted residue of bovine digestion (or words to that effect) had taken a chopper to go golfing.
Has no one in Washington any sense of history? For impressive presidential temper tantrums, you had to have heard Lyndon B. Johnson in full fury. Upon being informed that one of his aides had been arrested for indecent conduct in a men's room, LBJ turned the air so blue that Bird had to say, "Now, Lyndon." And she was used to him. (To the Johnsons' credit, they never abandoned the man or his family.)
—June, 1994
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Puppy Pic of the Day: "Hey, Dad…"
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CHEERS to the Cut Heard 'Round the World. Jerome Powell, you glorious bastard, you did it!!! Yesterday at the stroke of a freckle past a hair, the Federal Reserve Chairman announced that our long four-year nightmare over interest rate hikes is finally less nightmarish. It's the move that everyone has been obsessing over: car dealers, credit card companies (and holders), financial planners, CNBC pundits, grandmas and grandpas who give savings bonds for gifts, alligators in the sewers, penguins in the Antarctic, the good, the bad, the ugly, the pope, the king, the dowager…and all because a butterfly flapped its wings in the Philippines in the year 426. Take it away, Jerry…
"In light of the progress on inflation and the balance of risks, the Committee decided to lower the target range for the federal funds rate by half a percentage point. In considering additional adjustments to the target range for the federal funds rate, the Committee will carefully assess incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the…oh blah blah blah blah my point is woo-hoo!!! We're all rich, RICH I tell you! Buy! Buy!! Buy!!!
[Rips off clothes]
Last one in the Reflecting Pool's a rotten egg! Wheeeee!!!
And another half-point cut is planned before the year is out. That sound you hear is consultants for Republican political candidates saying lots of words that cannot be printed in this family-friendly publication.
CHEERS to closing a major loophole. Some rare good news this week on the environmental front. Remember back when Ronald Reagan was elected president, and in response the ozone layer said "Screw this, I'm outta here?" Well, after 40 years of patient coaxing, cuddling, comforting, and cooing, it looks like we've convinced it to come back and keep doing that ozone layer thing ozone layers do:
The UN weather agency said ozone could recover to 1980 levels—before any hole in the ozone layer appeared—by around 2066 over the Antarctic if current policies remain. This could also lead to full recovery of the layer by 2045 over the Arctic and 2040 for the rest of the world.
“USA! USA! USA!”
(FYI, that chant works in any situation.)
Matt Tully, Chair of WMO’s Scientific Advisory Group on Ozone and Solar UV Radiation, said the organization’s Global Atmosphere Watch Programme is continuously providing crucial support for ozone science by means of observations, analysis, modeling, data stewardship and capacity-building.
“It is critical that observations of ozone, ozone-depleting substances and ultraviolet radiation are maintained with the quality, resolution and global coverage necessary to account for changes in ozone over the coming decades,” Mr. Tully said.
The news was so encouraging that members of the World Meteorological Organization celebrated by breaking out and lighting up a box of chlorine and bromine cigars.
JEERS to the nexus of fear and politics. 23 years ago this week, in 2001, Governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania was named by President Bush to head the new Office of Homeland Security. During his tenure the color-coded terror alert system was created and, depending on which Tom Ridge you believe, the system was either manipulated by the Bush administration to influence the outcome of the 2004 election or not manipulated by the Bush administration to influence the outcome of the 2004 election. Hint: The second Tom Ridge tied up the first Tom Ridge and locked him away in the attic with a rubber ball in his mouth and he was never heard from again.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to deep-sixing #20. Trump should consider himself a lucky little MF’er. On September 19, 1881, President James Garfield died, 80 days after some disgruntled jerk whipped out a couple guns and shot him in the back. One bullet grazed his arm, the other hit his backbone but not the spinal cord or any internal organs. Had the radical notion of sterile hands and instruments (already embraced for 30 years by much of Europe) been in use at the time, and had they not basically starved him, the president would’ve lived. True story: Alexander Graham Bell tried to locate the bullet using his new invention, the metal detector...
As the doctors struggled to understand the extent of Garfield's wounds, Bell, inventor of the telephone, used this machine to try to locate the bullet. When found, the machine was to send a sound to the attached telephone receiver.
“Hello, operator? Please connect me to the president’s bullet. No, I haven’t been drinking. And I also need Amanda Hugginkiss.”
Despite attempts on July 26 and August 1, 1881, Bell could not situate the bullet.
Turns out the steel springs in Garfield's bed likely rendered it useless. Someday we'll be able to joke about it. But not today—after only 143 years, it’s just too soon.
JEERS to stale sales. One of the last remaining vestiges of old fashioned face-to-face product pitching has hit a rough patch:
Tupperware Brands, the company that revolutionized food storage decades ago, has filed for Chapter 11bankruptcy protection.
Looks like I made the last payment on my Tupperware casket just in time.
Orlando, Florida-based Tupperware plans to continue operating during the bankruptcy proceedings and will seek court approval for a sale, “in order to protect its iconic brand,” the company said just before midnight on Tuesday.
The company is seeking bankruptcy protection amid growing struggles to revitalize its business. Tupperware sales growth improved some during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, but overall sales have been in steady decline since 2018 due to rising competition. And financial troubles have continued to pile up for the company.
Sad. But I'll give 'em this: no company's fate has ever been more elegantly sealed.
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 19, 2014
CHEERS to the giant throbbing bad-guy-nabbing machine. You know why I'm not worried about ISIS "spilling over our borders" to kill us all? Because, see, back when al Qaeda did their Very Bad Nine Eleven Thing to us, we created this gigantic monolith called the Department of Homeland Security. And their job—besides horning in on all of your and my personal communications and porn-watching habits—is to do things like this:
A New York man who was arrested in May was indicted by a federal grand jury Tuesday for allegedly trying to aid the terrorist group Islamic State and planning to kill returning U.S. soldiers. … Federal authorities accused Elfgeeh, a U.S. citizen, of trying to help three people - two of whom are FBI informants - get to Syria in order to fight on behalf of Islamic State, the news release said.
See? Your tax dollars sometimes really are hard at work. Oh, and before I forget, I have an important message for C&J's designated NSA snooper Bart: the German chocolate cake recipe I emailed to my dessert group that you intercepted had an error. It's two teaspoons of weed, not two pounds. Please make a note of it when you come down off the ceiling.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to bumper cars...in space! The news from our insignificant speck of dust on the universe's butt can be put on hold for a moment. Instead, let's fwoof 465 light years away and gawk at the image of an “interaction between an elliptical galaxy and a spiral galaxy, collectively known as Arp 107” captured just days ago by the Webb telescope. And in case you're not utterly gobsmacked by this image, may I remind you that the Webb 1) Took the photo with a Polaroid OneStep 2) extracted the print and waved it around for two minutes until the image appeared 3) addressed a 5x7 envelope to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory 4) affixed 3,500 Star Trek-themed Forever stamps on it, and 5) prayed to god Louis DeJoy hadn't also f*cked up the Space Mail. Thankfully, we lucked out:
You can see it in super close-up here at NASA’s site. The description says that the meeting of the two “seems to have given the spiral a happier outlook thanks to the two bright ‘eyes’ and the wide semicircular ‘smile.’ Alternate theory for why they it looks so gleeful? They’re 465 million light years away from JD Vance.
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
Oh, baby! A little hippo in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool has taken the internet by storm, becoming a viral sensation."
—USA Today
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