From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
They'll Be Brief
The Webby awards were handed out Monday night. The best part about them is the acceptance speeches, which are limited to five words. (I believe the orchestra starts playing them off the stage at word #3). Here are some of the best of 2019's batch:
"There's nothing fake about this."
—CNN
"To all women breaking boundaries."
—Filament Games
"Love is stronger than cancer."
—SurvivorNet
"How to win: teach."
—Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access
"Russia couldn’t hack this vote."
—McClatchy News
"Houston, we have a Webby."
—NASA
"Earth isn't flat. Facts matter."
—Field Museum
"Meow meow meow hiss meow."
—Wieden+Kennedy
"Journalism is not a crime."
—VICE News
"Turn the tide—save Antarctica."
—National Geographic
"Do or do not? Exactly."
—Lucasfilm
The Oscars should be so succinct. Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Note: Happy Nylon Stockings Day. Pro tip: Before robbing a bank, place the stockings over your head and then tie up the leg parts behind you so they don’t flop around and distract you during the heist. And above all, have fun! ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til National Maritime Day: 7
Days 'til the Tualatin River Bird Festival in Oregon: 3
Percent chance that Betsy DeVos is the worst secretary of Education we've ever seen, according to Senator Elizabeth Warren: 100%
Percent chance Warren will appoint a former public school teacher to the post if she becomes president: 100%
The last year that the percent of major-league baseball players getting hit by wild pitches matched 2019's, according to FiveThirtyEight: 1900
Date on which Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest representative, at 29, to preside over the House: 5/10/19
Estimated number of Australian $50 bills in circulation that misspell “responsibility” as “responsibilty": 46 million
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 179 (including 5 Anti-Semitisms and 1 Demon Yoga Class). Soul Protection Factor 8 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Yes.
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CHEERS to the Big Sky guy vying for the public’s eye. Sensing that the current roster of 937 candidates in the Democratic primary just didn’t offer enough variety, another patriotic do-gooder entered the 2020 race yesterday. Let's check out his vitals:
Gov. Steve Bullock
Hails from: Missoula, Montana
Age on inauguration day 2021: 54
Primary campaign theme: "A Fair Shot for Everyone"
Education: BA from Claremont McKenna College in California. JD from Columbia University.
Official website: SteveBullock.com (Intro campaign video here.)
Strengths: Refused to abandon Montana campaign funding laws in the wake of the Citizens United decision as attorney general; expanded Medicaid in Montana as governor; supports assault weapons ban and increased spending on public education; vows to crack down on dark money, Super PACs, and to strengthen campaign finance oversight; first governor to sign an order protecting net neutrality. Holds liberal positions on abortion, LGBTQ rights, and immigration.
Weaknesses: Pro-coal guy; Thinks he can get D.C. Republicans to work with him to pass legislation and judicial nominees because he won election in a sparsely-populated red state that trump won by 20 points. He can not,and he's a fool to think he can. Personally, I don’t want a fool who thinks he can kick Lucy's football…do you?
Baby-kissing ability, based on reviews at Toddler Yelp: 8.8/10
He joins Kamala, Cory, Seth, Tim, Wayne, Michael; Elizabeth, Beto, Bernie, Tulsi, Julian, John, Andrew, Kirsten, Eric, Jay, Pete, Marianne,Amy, Joe, Mike, and John #2 in their quest to be the lucky duck who has the honor of chasing the Trump crime syndicate out of Washington. And just in time, because America shouldn’t be limited to only 11 generic-looking white dudes in our primary. Vive le diversity!
CHEERS to order in the court. Big day for the oversight power of House Democrats yesterday, as U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta heard arguments for and against the House Oversight Committee’s subpoena demanding Trump-related financial records from the accounting firm Mazars USA. And the verdict is…
No problem. We've become experts at that by now.
JEERS to fun with numbers…not. The world is going to evaporate in a giant cloud of carbon dioxide, and it's all Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's fault for not getting her Green New Deal Passed on her first day in office. Thanks a lot, AOC. Look what you caused in just four months:
In the latest bit of bad news for a planet beset by climate change, the concentration of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has climbed to a level last seen more than 3 million years ago---before humans even appeared on the rocky ball we call home.
On Saturday, sensors at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii indicated that concentrations of the greenhouse gas---a byproduct of the burning of fossil fuels---had reached 415 parts per million (ppm), meaning that for every 1 million molecules of gas in the atmosphere, 415 were of carbon dioxide. […]
“We’re not going to see the full consequences of 415 parts per million of carbon dioxide today,” [Stanford professor Rob] Jackson said. “It’ll take a thousand years of people—30 generations of people—to pay the price of what we’re doing today.”
But at least this is a good number: America's #3 coal company, Cloud Peak Energy, is filing for bankruptcy because they're hemorrhaging money and no one wants to buy their shitty product. So hip hip hooray, this’ll be great news. In 3019.
CHEERS to announcing your true intentions. Five years ago today the RNC, bless their hearts, put up a new graphic on twitter that was supposed to say something inspirational to their base. But thanks to the new twitter format, the left and right part got cut off, so all it said was "RNC Ate Your American Dream." For your amusement, a screen shot:
We keep this item in our special file. The one marked, "Republicans don’t get social media." (But they're starting to really excel in using the telegraph, so points for that.)
CHEERS to today's edition of You’re Preachin’ to the Choir, Lady. New Zealand's prime minister:
"To be honest I do not understand the United States.”
This has been today's edition of You’re Preachin’ to the Choir, Lady.
CHEERS to special deliveries. On May 15, 1918, the first airmail route got started in the U.S. It ran between Washington, Philadelphia and New York. They had to retool the operation when it became apparent that dangling a mailman from a rope was a really bad idea. Especially in Nettlepatch County.
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 15, 2009
CHEERS to Super Chuck and Warnerman! Senators Schumer of New York and Warner of Virginia are steamed because a bunch of unscrupulous predators are ignoring the Do-Not-Call list and badgering people into buying bogus auto warranties and other sham products via robocalls. To determine the extent of the problem, Schumer and Warner say they plan to call everyone on the list and offer them 20 percent off their next muffler if they'll answer a brief 53-question survey. And since they're such a busy senators, they'll have to squeeze them in between 1am and 4am. That won’t be a problem, will it?
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And just one more…
FAREWELL to the pride of Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Tim Conway almost killed me on several occasions in the 70s when he would make me laugh so hard on Saturday nights while watching The Carol Burnett Show that I literally couldn’t breathe. Nominated for 12 Emmy Awards in five separate decades (winning six times, his last one for a guest stint on 30 Rock), Tim was born to do sketch comedy. And while his systematic comic torturing of Harvey Korman was his specialty (particularly the dentist sketch), the elephant joke---here unedited---is my favorite Conway moment:
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Gone at 85. Too soon.
Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"Mr. Bill in Portland Maine, if you only knew how ridiculous that Cheers and Jeers is, you wouldn't have written it,"
---Andrew Neil
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