Hispanic Federation Fund for Puerto Rico Relief Link
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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Morning Munchies
Ellen takes a bite out of---I can’t believe I’m writing these words---Lady Doritos:
“I must’ve missed that march. ‘What do we want?’ ‘Quiet chips!’ ‘When do we want it?’ ‘Now!’ […]
They’re also saying that the female version is not going to leave as much Dorito dust on your fingers, and that it’ll be able to fit into a purse. Hallelujah! This is what our grandmothers and our mothers marched for. This is what the pink hats are all about. […]
I think we're going after the wrong issue. Women weren't wronged by Doritos, they were wronged by a giant orange Cheeto."
She just turned 60. Unreal.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, February 8, 2018
Note: Yesterday 77-year-old Nancy Pelosi spoke for over eight hours on the floor of the House of Representatives, breaking the previous endurance record (5 hours) set 109 years ago. The next time we see her in the chamber for that amount of time, I hope she’s wielding a gavel and leading impeachment hearings. Or leading a gavel and wielding impeachment hearings, I’m not picky.
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By the Numbers:
9 days!!!
Days 'til the winter Olympics opening ceremonies: 1
Days 'til the Winter Carnival in Bridgton, ME: 9
New estimated GDP for 2018, down from 5.4% originally forecast, according to the Atlanta Fed: 4%
Length of time the Berlin Wall was up: 28 years, 2 months, 27 days
Date on which the length of time the Berlin Wall was down surpassed the length of time it was up: 2/5/18
Number of cameras being deployed for broadcasting the Winter Olympics: 706
Total number of medal events, a record high: 102
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Of course the jokes are flying all over Texas---what's the fine for shooting a lawyer?---and so forth. Dick-Cheney-shooting-Harry-Whittington is fraught, as they say, with irony. It's not as though the ground in Texas is littered with liberal Republicans. I think the vice president winged the only one we've got.
Not that I accuse Harry Whittington of being an actual liberal---only by Texas Republican standards, and that sets the bar about the height of a matchbook. Nevertheless, Whittington is seriously civilized, particularly on the issues of crime, punishment and prisons. He served on both the Texas Board of Corrections and on the bonding authority that builds prisons. As he has often said, prisons do not curb crime, they are hothouses for crime: "Prisons are to crime what greenhouses are to plants."
---February 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Worst birthday party ever?
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CHEERS to another dead Republican canary in the midterm election coal mine. It was supposed to be a routine cakewalk for the American Putin Party candidate in Missouri’s 97th state House district. Trump won there on behalf of Russia in 2016 by a 28-point blowout. But Tuesday night Republican candidate Vladimir Cowpoke got his head handed to him by 27-year-old Democrat and real American Mike Revis, who is now an overnight political rock star.
Congrats, Mike!
But the good news doesn’t stop there! There were three other elections in deep-red Missouri districts, and although the Putin Party members won, check out their winning percentages versus Trump’s in 2016: In the 39th district, the margin shrank from 47% to 29%. In the 129th district, the margin shrank from 64% to 38%. And in the 144th district, the margin shrank from freaking 59% to 5%. Put ‘em all together and the Moscow-loving yokels saw a 32 percent collapse in their support. The bottom line, according to Daily Kos Elections’ Carolyn Fiddler:
Overall, this victory is Democrats’ 35th red-to-blue state legislative flip this cycle, compared to just four for Republicans. The GOP’s ongoing inability to hold on to formerly safe seats is terrible news for the party in November’s elections at every level of the ballot.
The reckoning is here, and no Republican is safe.
The next test for the canaries in the midterm election coal mine: the March 20th contest in Pennsylvania’s deep-red 18th District between Democrat Conor Lamb and Russia sympathizer Rick Saccon, a contest so close that Republicans are now in full panic mode. Oh, and I should probably mention that the canaries in the midterm coal mines don’t actually die when a Republican loses. They just briefly pass out from laughing too hard.
JEERS to unwanted invasions. President Barack Obama, as a cheap vanity stunt, ordered a massive, multi-million-dollar parade down Pennsylvania Avenue complete with every kind of military hardware on wheels or treads at the pentagon’s disposal. He said he got the idea from the French, and wanted to be just like them because France is super awesome! In response, Republicans immediately launched successful impeachment hearings, but not before changing the name of the cafeteria’s French fries and French toast back to freedom fries and freedom toast, banning French’s mustard altogether, and agreeing to start calling the French “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” again. --[Long pause]-- Naaaaah, just kidding! It’s Cadet Bone Spurs who just ordered a massive military parade because he saw the French do one (completely misunderstanding what their annual Bastille Day parade is all about), and Republicans are super cool with it. The District of Columbia, not so much:
If the stupid North-Korean-style stunt does happen, the Pentagon will need to include a special pontoon-bridge brigade so the parade can cross the chasms created by the sinkholes left in the wake of the tanks as they crush one water main after another. Or as press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will describe them the next day: victory fountains.
Also swept up in the payola scandal: D.J. Tinkles.
JEERS to paying-for-playing. On February 8, 1960, Congress opened hearings on payola, a scheme in which disc jockeys (Dick Clark among them) accepted payment for playing and hyping certain records. Payola was outlawed, and it became punishable by a maximum $10,000 fine. Meanwhile members of Congress accept payment every day for playing favorites with and hyping corporate interests over the public interest, an offense punishable by a fat paycheck, a full pension, gold-plated healthcare benefits, and guaranteed employment in the lobbying sector if they get booted from office. My point is: shame on the record industry---that was just wrong!
CHEERS to compromise. While our government continues to dick around with its budget, debt ceiling, immigration policy and other issues that should be no-brainers, things are looking brighter over in Germany, where Angela Merkel’s tenuous hold on power threatened to snarl the country in gridlock (or, in German, gridelschteinigungenhafenloch). By keeping their wits about them, and putting country over party, Merkel’s CDU party and the rival SPD party are now a likely coalition that will serve as a bulwark against the far-right maniacs that are growing in influence. Also a plus: the deal means Merkel’s backing off of her fiscal conservatism…
In a move that heralds a shift in Germany’s euro zone policy, the SPD will take the finance ministry, a post held until recently by conservative Wolfgang Schaeuble, widely loathed in the euro zone’s indebted periphery during his eight-year tenure for his rigid focus on fiscal discipline.
SPD leader Martin Schulz, who now needs his party’s grass roots to approve the deal in a postal ballot, said this week that the SPD had ensured the coalition would stop “forced austerity” and set up an investment budget for the euro zone. […]
Any excuse will do for posting this classic.
While the talks have dragged on, Europe’s biggest economy has moved into overdrive, offering increased scope for government spending and investment. Investors and partner countries had been alarmed at Merkel’s struggle to assemble a government at a time when Europe faces multiple challenges, including the need for euro zone reform and Britain’s looming departure from the EU.
The members of the SPD still have to vote on approving the coalition. If they appear shaky, Merkel is prepared to give them one more concession guaranteed to put ‘em over the top: a year’s worth of free wienerschnitzel and beer, of course.
JEERS to Spaceman FAIL. You remember that Elon Musk wannabe who built a one-man rocket ship with the goal of launching himself into space to prove (with photos!) that the earth is flat? Well, on Saturday the human Wile E. Coyote struck a match, lit the fuse, and…
…failed to overcome the gravitational force of a 13,166,800,000,000,000,000,000,000-pound sphere directly beneath him. […]
Saturday marked Hughes’ third aborted launch since he declared himself a flat Earther last year and announced a multipart plan to fly to space by the end of 2018 so he could prove astronauts have been lying about the shape of the planet.
Yes. Just like my sticking a fork in a wall socket as a kid was “research.”
Hughes climbed out of the rocket to face the cameras. He scratched his head. “Maybe I left a plug in there,” he said. Maybe an O-ring melted. Who knew? […] “I pulled the plunger five different times,” Hughes said. “I considered beating on the rocket nozzle from the underneath side. But you can’t get anyone under there. It’ll kill you. It’ll scald you to death. It’ll blow the skin and muscle off your bones.”
“Guys, I’m sorry,” Hughes said. “What can you do?”
How about get a life?
CHEERS to 108 years of helping old ladies across the street. The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated on this date in 1910. For years I hesitated to give the organization a shout-out because of their seemingly-intractable policy of hating on the gays. But I always did it anyway to let the BSA know that, despite their ban---which to their credit they repealed a couple years ago (and last year they officially welcomed transgender boys)---the country is crawling with current and former gay scouts. Among them you can include my partner Michael and me…
Me and Michael--with Haley--in our BSA uniforms (mine no longer fits because of my Iron Man training) at Portland, Maine’s 2013 Pride parade.
Our Eagle certificates are both signed by none other than Saint Ronald Reagan. Of course, there are still a lot of narrow-minded people fuming over the BSA's new openness (the next thing that needs to go is the ban on non-believers which is still in place). So today we won't need to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together---we'll just wait for the bigots to self-combust.
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Ten years ago in C&J: February 8, 2008
JEERS to Homeland Berzerkity. When assholes like Jonah Goldberg talk about "liberal fascism," all I need to do is point out that Republicans were the ones who, after the 9/11 attacks, started using the jackboot-tinged word "homeland." FBI Director Robert Mueller is the latest to use it, saying that al Qaeda is still a "critical threat to the homeland." Call us the United States. Call us the U.S. Call us America. Call us "the nation." Call us "the country." Call us Sweetheart, but please knock off the homeland shit. You're creepin' the kids out.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the Energizer Maestro. Woo-hoo! It's time for our annual "Happy Birthday" salute to 24-time Grammy winner, 5-time Oscar winner, Lifetime Contribution to Hollywood Award winner and rock-ribbed dirty fucking hippie union-loving Democrat John Williams. He is hands-down (very, very large hands, much larger than Donald Trump's, believe me) my favorite composer, and he's widely considered America's greatest living composer period. Over a span of fifty-plus years he's given us:
>> One iconic theme for NBC Nightly News
>> One fanfare for the Boston Red Sox
>> Two iconic Irwin Allen disaster flicks (Poseidon Adventure & Towering Inferno)
>> Two Jaws scores
...and he’s just getting started.
>> Two Jurassic Park scores
>> Three Oliver Stone films (Born on the 4th of July, JFK, Nixon)
>> Three Harry Potter scores
>> Four Indiana Jones scores
>> Five themes for various Olympic Games
>> Eight Star Wars scores (soon to be nine!)
>> 20 scores for episodes of Gilligan's Island
>> 28 scores for Steven Spielberg movies (The Post is his latest, and it’s a damn fine one)
>> 1 score for an Oscar-nominated Kobe Bryant animated short based on the NBA star's poem Dear Basketball
He's also composed music involving a gaggle of American presidents: John F. Kennedy (JFK), John Quincy Adams/Martin Van Buren (Amistad), Tricky Dick (Nixon, The Post), Lincoln (Lincoln) and Obama (a piece for the first inauguration, in which he expressed "in a very simple and not ostentatious way the solemnity and beauty of the moment and the promise of the moment"). Also: Queen Elizabeth II (in The BFG). Here’s an amazing bit of Hollywood history---as goosebump-raising as it might be seeing Beethoven creating the first movement of his 5th Symphony. This is Williams and Spielberg working on his beloved score for E.T., which won every film music award in existence 36 years ago. Here they are catching lightning in a bottle:
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He's currently busy composing a special theme to accompany the galaxy’s most roguish smuggler in Ron Howard’s Solo, and will be back to write the score for Star Wars IX, due out next year. Today he turns 86, and at that age I’ll be lucky if I can still lift the TV remote. Happy birthday, John...only 14 years to go ‘til we let you retire.
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:
Cheers and Jeers, the latest post from Bill in Portland Maine, is about as warming, homey and distinctly American as a bag of candy corn on a rainy day.
---The Hollywood Reporter
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