C&J Annual Fundraiser: Day 3
Sorry to pull out the big persuasion gun, but this morning I feel it's necessary to play the country song card in the hopes that it'll help keep this column and my meager passbook savings account afloat for another year. So here goes. I hope this works: "I'm beggin' ya darlin’, please."
Kos set up PayPal accounts for both one-time donations and recurring monthly donations. The monthly subscriptions are hugely helpful for minimizing the total needed during our annual C&J pledge week:
One time contribution: click here.
$5 monthly contribution: click here
$10 monthly contribution: click here
$20 monthly contribution: click here
Snail mail and thrilling conclusion below the fold...
To send a donation via snail mail, the address is:
Bill Harnsberger, 16 Pitt Street, Portland, ME, 04103.
If you're already a C&J monthly subscriber through PayPal
You don’t have to do anything but make sure your card is still active
and then feel good about your excellent investment.
A few brief points as we near the end of our 2021 plea for cash and jewels and/or fine artwork:
1) 100% of your donations go toward vital food, medicine and sagebrush clearing.
2) I have never taken money from Super PACs, and if they ever offer me any I would certainly turn them down. [Uncrosses fingers]
3) Spreading your wealth around to someone like me would be socialism, which I guarantee you will drive the Republican snowflakes bonkers. So it's a unique opportunity to "own the cons." Do it! Do it! The more you give, the angrier they’ll get.
Thanks again for supporting America’s longest-running kiddie pool-based blog post. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled stuff you were doing before reading this.
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Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, March 3, 2021
Note: Lawyers rush to scene after baker's man refuses to play pattycake on religious grounds. Film at 11.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Meatball Day: 6
Percent of Americans polled by Morning Consult who support the Covid relief bill: 76%
Expected number of vaccine doses that'll be available by the three manufacturers by the end of this month: 130 million
Percent of North Carolinians polled by PPP who believe teachers shouldn't be forced back into classrooms before having the opportunity to be vaccinated: 56%
Percent in the same poll who say tax money shouldn’t be diverted away from public schools to private charter ones: 63%
Sen. Ron Johnson (Cult-WI) approve/disapprove rating among Wisconsinites polled by PPP: 34% / 48%
Sales of beer last year, up 8.6% from 2019: $40 billion
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 188 (including 4 volcanoes and1 spokesman for Jesus who seems to know an awful lot about how to please a goat in bed). 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: Champ and Major's Secret service detail?
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CHEERS to the left making things right. The defining word of the previous administration to occupy the White House will forever be "cruelty"—against Blacks, women, Covid-19 sufferers, animals, the LGBTQ community, and certainly immigrants and refugees at the southern border. Under Trump, "kids in cages" became a well-understood catchphrase to describe his family separation policy, which let America's Gestapo—ICE—terrorize their victims any way they chose. It remains to be seen what President Biden plans to do with that dripping-with-cruelty-and-corruption agency, but this seems like a good start:
The Biden administration's task force for reuniting migrant families separated by the Trump administration will give separated families the option to be reunified in the U.S. or their countries of origin, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Monday. […]
"We are hoping to reunite the families either here or in their country of origin. We hope to be in a position to give them the election, and if, in fact, they seek to reunite here in the United States, we will explore lawful pathways for them to remain in the United States and to address the family needs," he said. […]
Other benefits and protections for separated families include transportation, health care and mental health services, as well as legal, career and educational services, with no costs passed down to families.
If you ask me, the cages should be re-purposed to hold the hundreds of Republican party insurrectionists who tried to overthrow the government in January. But unlike what ICE did with those innocent children, we'll definitely give each of the guilty rioters a toothbrush. I hear they're perfect for scrubbing toilets.
CHEERS to making it through the first hurdle. Hey, whaddya know—the Senate actually is capable of giving Merrick Garland a confirmation hearing. Next thing you know, unicorns are gonna fly out of our butts:
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday advanced federal appeals court Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination to be attorney general to the full Senate, paving the way for his confirmation to head the Department of Justice. The bipartisan vote was 15-7. A full Senate vote has not been scheduled but could come…this week.
Garland’s hearings before the committee last week focused on the sprawling investigation into the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. The largely cordial question-and-answer session indicated that the nomination of the centrist former Supreme Court nominee was likely to be approved on a bipartisan basis.
The nominee is expected to be crucial to accomplishing President Joe Biden’s agenda on a number of fronts, particularly with regard to civil rights and criminal justice reform, but also on antitrust enforcement, climate change progress, financial regulation and other areas.
Remembering all these new administration names can be tricky, so here's how I remember this one: I picture the elephant man wearing Dorothy's ruby slippers. John Merrick…Judy Garland. Merrick…Garland. Merrick Garland! Did I mention I'm doing my annual C&J fundraiser this week? I'd say you just got your money's worth.
CHEERS and JEERS to making cents (and also losing them). Being a world-renowned fauxconomist, I know that my opinion can have an overly-influential, um, influence on the fiduciary proceedings of the global markets and pork belly futures. So I'll simply stay neutral and recap the week thus far in economics and horse tradin' with some traditional-media headlines. Caution—minor whiplash ahead:
» China is worried a bubble in global markets could burst
» John Kerry urges oil and gas industry to embrace clean energy revolution
» Target saw more sales growth in 2020 than last 11 years combined
» The price of food and gas is creeping higher
» U.S. consumers boost spending 2.4% as income jumps
» Labor Dept. expands eligibility for unemployment
» Fraud overwhelms pandemic-related unemployment programs
» Costco to raise minimum wage to $16
» 2021 could be big year for labor unions
» Volvo to go fully electric by 2030
» Surge in complaints about credit bureaus
» Delta Air Lines to pay out thousands of dollars to managers—but not to pilots or other workers
» Merck will help manufacture J&J's Covid vaccine
Tonight on our dinner plate: chicken stir-fry and irrational exuberance.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to frozen assets. Oh, we have been spoiled the last couple years—here in Maine, at least—with what seemed like winters that zipped right along and didn’t give us a whole lot of trouble. But yesterday we were thrust once again into the deep-freeze, with blizzard winds and wind chills in the minus-teens. How cold was it? So cold the squirrels put hot potatoes in their coat pockets on their way to work at the widget factory. Colder than Ted Cruz's tit in a brass bra face-down in a snowbank. Colder than Bill Barr at a civil liberties convention. Colder than Jeff Bezos at a pro-union rally. Colder than the glares the on-air staff gives the lone fact-checker at Fox News. It was so cold that we actually pulled this photo out of storage:
It was so cold that, for a brief shining 24 hours, global warming was a hoax. I’ve never seen Republicans up here so happy.
CHEERS to fun things a president can do as his country disintegrates from a Great Depression. On March 3, 1931, President Herbert Heebert Hoobert signed a measure making "The Star-Spangled Banner"—which the previous president still doesn’t know the words to—our official national anthem. Hey, let's all sing the third stanza! And a-one and a-two...
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
On second thought, let's just stick with the first.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 3, 2011
CHEERS to fourteen more days of FABULOUS RICHES! The Senate, bless their ch' chingin' little hearts, voted to keep the republic awash in money for two more weeks. So now, instead of the U.S. government being non-functional due to a lack of money, the U.S. government will continue to be non-functional due to it being the U.S. government.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to strange holidays. I gotta "hand" it to whoever came up with this one. Today is What If Cats And Dogs Had Opposable Thumbs Day. I'm not supposed to do this, but because it's our C&J fundraising week I can let you in on a little—[whispers]—top secret intel.
If cats and dogs had opposable thumbs, the world would be a better place. Yes, they'd wreck our kitchens with their constant culinary experimentation, but they'd also retrieve and bury all our guns. How do I know this? I'm not at liberty to say—you'll have to ask the mad scientist across the street. (Speak loudly—she’s 134 and refuses to change the batteries in her Bel-Tone.)
Have a happy humpday. 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 a pathetic figure.”
—John Bolton
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