Hispanic Federation Fund for Puerto Rico Relief Link
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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
What Made Trump Look Like a Bigger Jackass in November
Water
China
Lavar Ball
Geography
The Samurai
Vladimir Putin
Time magazine
This British kook
His big racist mouth
China’s legal system
His economic adviser
His secret eating habits
His twitter drafts folder
Fox News’s Shep Smith
His knowledge of planes
His big mouth on foreign soil
His National Security Adviser
His profoundly stupid eldest son
His profoundly stupid middle son
This “Thanksgiving argument” lady
His meddling in the Bowe Bergdahl case
The bloodthirsty leader of the Philippines
And, of course, his mind-numbing laziness
True fact: Trump’s bullshit mountain is now so big it can be seen from space.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, November 30, 2017
Note: Only 15 days left to sign up for ACA health insurance at www.healthcare.gov. Pass it on.
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By the Numbers:
Weeks 'til Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi opens: 2
Days 'til the NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Festival in Bethesda, Maryland: 8
Revenue brought in by women-owned businesses in Maine in 1997 and 2017: $3 billion / $13 billion
Drop in business since January 20th at the Trump Hotel in Panama, which is dropping the Trump name because of the drop in business: -32%
Years that 93-year-old Robert Mugabe spent in power as dictator of Zimbabwe before he was finally booted: 37
Estimated number of black bears that have returned to their range in the Great Basin of Nevada, where they’ve been gone for 80 years: 500
Amount James O’Keefe grifted last year through his sleaze peddling, according to the Daily Beast: $317,691
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Goody, goody, gumdrop. We could get Phil Gramm back again, this time as secretary of the treasury.
Oh how I've missed that little ray of sunshine, the bleeding heart from Bryan, the man who thinks poor people are all fat. As author Jim Hightower used to say, if you need a heart transplant, try to get Phil Gramm's---it's never been used.
Just what we need for treasury secretary: the banking industry's errand boy. The man who helped bring us Enron.
---November 2004
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Puppy Pic of the Day: That face, that face, that whappable face…
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CHEERS to crossing the finish line (with more than a few gobs of seaweed up our nose). Southerners and East Coasters rejoice! As of today your 2017 Atlantic hurricane season is officially over. A glance back...
In August, the waters of the equatorial Pacific cooled, quieting powerful western gales that act as a balm to the tropical Atlantic during hurricane season.
The atmosphere took advantage of the lull, whipping quickly into a violent lather that crashed three Category 4 storms into the U.S., created the longest lived 185-mph hurricane in recorded history and drowned Houston in a tropical broth 5-feet deep.
[2017’s]formidable resume also includes the most named storms since 2012, more than double the normal number of major hurricanes, and an intensity and longevity cyclone score twice as fierce as the 30-year historical mean.
Hundreds of people in the U.S. and Caribbean died in storm-related incidents,although a final tally may not be known until the National Hurricane Center completes its storm reviews.
These storms were Trump’s first disaster-management test. He made perfunctory appearances, sent out self-congratulatory tweets, focused almost entirely on Florida and Texas, and basically left Puerto Rico to rot while awarding wholly-unqualified tarp and electric contractors millions of dollars to fuck things up even worse. It only took him nine months to earn the well-deserved nickname “Heckuva Job Donny.” Meanwhile, the NOAA 2018 hurricane season forecast comes out next May. Other than blizzards, ice storms, tornadoes, nor'easters, mudslides, droughts and Republicans in charge of everything, we're in the clear.
JEERS to locking and loading for the holidays. Says here that the FBI was swamped on Black Friday with background-check requests because a record number of shoppers were emptying store shelves of Chia Pets Snuggies guns:
The FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS) database system said they fielded 203,086 background checks on Black Friday, a day when US retailers mark down prices on their products to kick off the annual holiday gift-shopping period.
The previous record of 185,713 background checks was set on Black Friday a year earlier, according to figures provided by the FBI. […]
They did not indicate what may have caused the uptick in sales. Gun sales have generally risen during periods when lawmakers have indicated that they may take action to restrict gun ownership. Sales rose after former President Barack Obama's election---due to fears he would restrict them---and have fallen since Donald Trump became US president.
As a public service, C&J offers our usual helpful tip for Santa when he goes about his business in 25 days: swap out the fur suit for Kevlar.
CHEERS to bulldogs with brains. Happy 143rd birthday to Sir Winston Churchill. For all his faults, ya gotta admit: he kicked ass against the Crazy Corporal and Il Duce and remains one of the world's most steadfast crisis managers. (Gary Oldman will get an Oscar nod for his all-in portrayal of Churchill in Darkest Hour, which opens tomorrow.) Speaking of which, here's a li'l message on leadership that our current commander-in-chief might want to pay attention to (and remember, Trump worships Churchill):
"Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."
Pay your respects here. And marvel at how some people can smoke like a chimney, drink like a fish, and eat like a pig...and still live to be 91. Neat trick.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. Over at Wonkette, Five Dollar Feminist asks: perhaps we wouldn’t have a lunatic in the White House if Hillary Clinton hadn’t been demonized by a press corp populated by misogynistic harassers. Remember that awesome debate where Lauer hammered Hillary on her stupid email server instead of asking Trump hard questions like, “Can you find Russia on a map?”
Yes.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
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JEERS to evil takesie backsies. As Republicans at the FCC continue plotting to give a handful of companies full power to censor content and control loading speeds by eliminating net neutrality, you’d think the ISPs would know that the entire internet is watching them like a hawk. But nooooo. Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica found a glaring omission in Comcast’s fine print:
Comcast deleted a "no paid prioritization" pledge from its net neutrality webpage on the very same day that the Federal Communications Commission announced its initial plan to repeal net neutrality rules.
Starting in 2014, the webpage, corporate.comcast.com/openinternet/ open-net-neutrality, contained this statement: "Comcast doesn't prioritize Internet traffic or create paid fast lanes."
That statement remained on the page until April 26 of this year, according to page captures from the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine. But on April 27, the paid prioritization pledge was nowhere to be found on that page and remains absent now. […]
If the FCC vote next month happens as expected, then Comcast will have free rein to charge websites and online application providers for priority access later next year.
When asked to justify the apparent subversion of the company’s net neutrality principles, a spokesman for Comcast blamed it on the dog and then bit down on a cyanide capsule. His widow is now dating a lumberjack.
JEERS to unhappy words. Ah, ‘tis List Season in America, that joyous time when we put the best and worst of everything into neat, tidy little boxes that are made of ticky-tacky and all look just the same. This week we got the Grammy nominations and the National Board of Review’s top movies (Spielberg’s The Post won top honors). And, because they’re complicit in all this year-end award madness, Dictionary.com has announced its Word of the Year:
Our 2017 Word of the Year Is Complicit: “choosing to be involved in an illegal or questionable act, especially with others; having partnership or involvement in wrongdoing.” […]
The largest increase in lookups for complicit this year (up over 11,000%) was on April 5 [following] an interview with the real Ivanka Trump in which she attempted to redefine complicit. When asked by CBS This Morning’s Gayle King about accusations that she and her husband Jared Kushner are complicit in the actions of her father, Ivanka Trump responded: “If being complicit is wanting to be a force for good and to make a positive impact, then I’m complicit.”
As many of you know from looking up the definition of complicit, there’s nothing positive or good about it.
“Yeah, I know…heh heh heh,” said Robert Mueller as he patted his bulging folder of pending indictments.
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Ten years ago in C&J: November 30, 2007
CHEERS to good positioning. The Center for American Progress has a new 30-second ad up on the tubes that seems tailor-made for tipping a few independents. After running through a list of highly popular issues on which Democrats are the leaders, the tag line brings it home: "That's progressive. That's you." The conservatives, meanwhile, have a 10-second ad of their own: "We make you feel scared, angry, suspicious and alone. That's conservative. That's you. Or you'll die!" I'm kinda partial to ours.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to "The true father of our national literature." That's how H.L. Mencken described the force of nature that was Samuel Langhorne Clemens, aka Mark Twain. If ever there was a person whose bullshit detector went to 11, it was him. Also in his corner: he was anti-slavery, pro-women's rights, clear-eyed about religion, and a supporter of labor unions. Damn funny, too. His zingers are endless---here's a few:
The political and commercial morals of the United States are not merely food for laughter, they are an entire banquet.
“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.”
“Patriot:the person who can holler the loudest without knowing what he is hollering about.”
What, sir, would the people of this earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir.
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can.
A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining and wants it back the minute it begins to rain.
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.
Today is Twain's 182nd birthday. Pay your respects here. And then donate a few copies of Huck Finn to your local library…just to piss off the book-ban-happy wingers.
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:
"Bill in Portland Maine is the great explainer to the rest of the world of what the heck is going on in America."
---Prof. Douglas Brinkley, Rice University
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