A Guest Cheer from Maine’s Governor
It’s gotta be five o’clock somewhere...
More on the Autonomy brew here. Bottoms up.
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, September 29, 2022
Note: No time for a note. A car alarm is going off and I must call 911 now before the perpetrator absconds with the vehicle and… Oops, too late. Okay, back to our note, then: today’s special in the C&J cafeteria is gekko fritters with slaw and sunshine. Have a nice day.
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By the Numbers:
8 days!!!
Days 'til the next full "Hunter's Moon": 10
Days 'til Acadia's Oktoberfest at Archie's Lobster in Bass Harbor, Maine: 8
The last time a major hurricane hit Tampa and St. Petersburg: 1921
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont's current lead over his Trump-cult challenger in the latest CTInsider-WFSB poll: 15 points
Percent chance that premiums for Medicare Part B will decrease next year for the first time in over a decade, according to President Biden: 100%
Number of states in which construction of a network of electric-vehicle charging stations has gotten the green light from the Dept. of Transportation: 50
Estimated minimum number of Russian military officers killed in Ukraine: 1,222
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
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Puppy Pic of the Day: "Quack."
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JEERS to water, water everywhere. Longtime C&J readers know that my worst nightmares almost always involve water—water coming through the roof, smashing through the windows, rising from the floor, waves chasing me faster than I can run, cutting off my escape route, leaving me stranded. Fuckin' hate it. But considering what's going on down south, I should shut up and quit whining:
Feel free to shout at clouds this morning. Call ‘em every name in the book—they earned it.
CHEERS to high times in the upper chamber. What an exciting Tuesday it was in Washington. The Senate took a crucial vote on a motion to start debating the motion to end the beginning of the debate to decide if debating a motion to debate is debatable, or if they should just move straight ahead with debating the motion to debate the motion to end debate right at the start. Having done that, a budget resolution bill was placed in one of three "shell bills," upon which senators took turns trying to guess which shell the bill was under. (You can try this at home, it's great fun.) Having found it after several hours of looking, they voted to motion the motion to table the table and motion the bill to the full floor for a full motion and maybe even a vote...
Then, for reasons yet to be made clear, the Republicans all winked at Rand Paul, who is now deciding whether or not to send the motion and its table into retrograde, in which case a bill buster-busting NASA spacecraft will be launched by Chuck Schumer to collide with the obstruction and obliterate it. The budget bill is expected to pass and will last for all of two months, upon which we'll do all this shit over again. God Bless our republic. If we can keep it.
CHEERS to one of the great troublemakers. Lech Walesa, electrician, founder of the anti-Communist Solidarity Union, President of Poland, and Nobel Peace Prize winner turns 79 today.
Happy birthday, Lech.
My memory of his most rebellious time—the late 70s and early 80s—is kinda grainy, but I do remember how I felt back then, living in then-West Germany as I was and occasionally visiting East Berlin as part of a school or family trip, and feeling the oppressiveness of the Soviet influence over everything. So when I saw what Walesa was doing, I felt like, Wow, that is one gutsy electrician. Despite his anti-abortion views, whenever I hear his name, that's still what I think—one gutsy electrician. In his honor, today: no light bulb-changing jokes.
JEERS to Black Monday. On September 29, 2008, when Republican George W. Bush lorded over the land, America's throat dropped into its stomach when the Dow Industrials fell 777 points, losing $1.1 trillion in market value in seven hours and signaling a low-water mark in the economic crash that we now know as the Great Recession. It was the largest single-day point loss Wall Street had ever experienced, and President Barack Obama had to use every tool on his belt to help us claw our way back to fiscal health. And since Obama's successor was a Republican who took over Obama’s healthy economy, you can guess what happened: he smashed through Bush's old record over and over and over again. These are now the worst Dow drops in all of human history:
I remember feeling actual terror that day in 2008, and for many days after. But Al Qaeda had nothing to do with it; the evildoers were Goldman Sachs, AIG, Moody's, Standard & Poor’s etc., their toxic assets of mass destruction, and a government that deliberately looked the other way. I continue to fear them a lot more than I will ever fear ISIS. Because George W. Bush was at least right about one thing: oceans can't protect us. From our own greedy-ass selves.
CHEERS to taking one more lap around the insurrection track. The House Jan. 6 Committee, which has already proven beyond doubt that 1) the insurrection was planned by Donald Trump and his domestic terrorist buddies down to the last detail, and 2) Josh Hawley runs away from danger like an antelope with mad cow, was supposed to meet again yesterday for televised hearings. Unfortunately, Hurricane Ian put a stop to that, but not before C&J sneakily got hold of the committee's agenda by ransacking Adam Schiff's office and then, having come up empty, ransacking Google for instructions on how to ransack ABC News to get this damning nugget that reveals why the 45th president's goose will be cooked when the committee makes good on its rain check:
Boom! But keep that just between you and me for now. I'm thoroughly enjoying all the ransacking and am thinking of making it a new hobby. (Today I'm adding a Viking helmet.)
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 30, 2012
JEERS to this week's Worst! Prop Master! In the World!!! I thought Mahmud Ahmadinejad would be the natural replacement for Muammar Ghaddafi as the silliest performer at the annual United Nations shindig. Color me mistaken. Turns out it was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who yesterday reduced his warning of an imminent nuclear weapons showdown with Iran to a playing piece from the Napoleonic War game Stratego or, if you prefer, a sight gag from a MAD magazine cartoon. It was a moment only slightly less ridiculous than Colin Powell holding up a vial of baby powder in the run-up to the Iraq war, and even America's most blood-thirsty neocons are rolling their eyes. Next time, Bibi, please use a serious visual aid: Colonel Mustard wielding a candlestick in the billiard room.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the skinny brown guy with the big ears and the funny name. No, not Barack Obama. India's favorite son, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi would've been 153 this weekend. He pretty much wrote the book on non-violent dissent which, closer to home, was adapted to great effect by Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis, among others. In honor of his day, some timeless Gandhi wisdom, which is being sorely tested these days:
And this one, which seems especially relevant in light of the current Republican war on American democracy:
I just wish they weren’t so good at getting back up. But, yeah, okay...point taken.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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It’s gotta be five o’clock somewhere...
More on the Autonomy brew here. Bottoms up.
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, September 29, 2022
Note: No time for a note. A car alarm is going off and I must call 911 now before the perpetrator absconds with the vehicle and… Oops, too late. Okay, back to our note, then: today’s special in the C&J cafeteria is gekko fritters with slaw and sunshine. Have a nice day.
-
By the Numbers:
8 days!!!
Days 'til the next full "Hunter's Moon": 10
Days 'til Acadia's Oktoberfest at Archie's Lobster in Bass Harbor, Maine: 8
The last time a major hurricane hit Tampa and St. Petersburg: 1921
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont's current lead over his Trump-cult challenger in the latest CTInsider-WFSB poll: 15 points
Percent chance that premiums for Medicare Part B will decrease next year for the first time in over a decade, according to President Biden: 100%
Number of states in which construction of a network of electric-vehicle charging stations has gotten the green light from the Dept. of Transportation: 50
Estimated minimum number of Russian military officers killed in Ukraine: 1,222
-
Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Jimmy Carter needs no defense from me. The man is enough to give Christianity a good name. Following the Christian doctrine of works as well as faith, he has done immeasurable good in the world, and no mean-spirited attack from a petty pundit [like Bob Novak] can diminish him.
The only reason I bother to note Novak's nastiness is because it left such a bad taste with me. I was traveling on the West Coast that day, and all through the airports and in cabs and hotels, people were saying to one another with real pleasure: "Jimmy Carter got the Nobel Peace Prize. Isn't that nice?" A genuine piece of good news in a world with little of it lately.
Even the right-wing Wall Street Journal managed a negative editorial on what it feels are the inadequacies of Carter's approach without demeaning the man or his accomplishments.
The implicit criticism of President Bush in the Nobel Committee's selection (made explicit by the chairman) should not detract from this recognition of how long and how hard Jimmy Carter has worked for peace and human rights. I think he is an invaluable asset to the nation. Like Nelson Mandela, he has unique stature, and wherever he goes to help with an election or to try to work out a problem, he is welcomed and listened to. In this season when the dogs of pre-emptive war are running loose, it is good to hear Carter pointing out the obvious: that we would be better off working with the rest of the world to disarm Saddam Hussein rather than annihilating his whole country.
—October 2002
(Jimmy turns 98 Saturday)
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Puppy Pic of the Day: "Quack."
-
JEERS to water, water everywhere. Longtime C&J readers know that my worst nightmares almost always involve water—water coming through the roof, smashing through the windows, rising from the floor, waves chasing me faster than I can run, cutting off my escape route, leaving me stranded. Fuckin' hate it. But considering what's going on down south, I should shut up and quit whining:
Feel free to shout at clouds this morning. Call ‘em every name in the book—they earned it.
CHEERS to high times in the upper chamber. What an exciting Tuesday it was in Washington. The Senate took a crucial vote on a motion to start debating the motion to end the beginning of the debate to decide if debating a motion to debate is debatable, or if they should just move straight ahead with debating the motion to debate the motion to end debate right at the start. Having done that, a budget resolution bill was placed in one of three "shell bills," upon which senators took turns trying to guess which shell the bill was under. (You can try this at home, it's great fun.) Having found it after several hours of looking, they voted to motion the motion to table the table and motion the bill to the full floor for a full motion and maybe even a vote...
Then, for reasons yet to be made clear, the Republicans all winked at Rand Paul, who is now deciding whether or not to send the motion and its table into retrograde, in which case a bill buster-busting NASA spacecraft will be launched by Chuck Schumer to collide with the obstruction and obliterate it. The budget bill is expected to pass and will last for all of two months, upon which we'll do all this shit over again. God Bless our republic. If we can keep it.
CHEERS to one of the great troublemakers. Lech Walesa, electrician, founder of the anti-Communist Solidarity Union, President of Poland, and Nobel Peace Prize winner turns 79 today.
Happy birthday, Lech.
My memory of his most rebellious time—the late 70s and early 80s—is kinda grainy, but I do remember how I felt back then, living in then-West Germany as I was and occasionally visiting East Berlin as part of a school or family trip, and feeling the oppressiveness of the Soviet influence over everything. So when I saw what Walesa was doing, I felt like, Wow, that is one gutsy electrician. Despite his anti-abortion views, whenever I hear his name, that's still what I think—one gutsy electrician. In his honor, today: no light bulb-changing jokes.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to Black Monday. On September 29, 2008, when Republican George W. Bush lorded over the land, America's throat dropped into its stomach when the Dow Industrials fell 777 points, losing $1.1 trillion in market value in seven hours and signaling a low-water mark in the economic crash that we now know as the Great Recession. It was the largest single-day point loss Wall Street had ever experienced, and President Barack Obama had to use every tool on his belt to help us claw our way back to fiscal health. And since Obama's successor was a Republican who took over Obama’s healthy economy, you can guess what happened: he smashed through Bush's old record over and over and over again. These are now the worst Dow drops in all of human history:
March 16, 2020: -2,997
March 12, 2020: -2,352
March 9, 2020: -2,013
14 years ago Wall Street pulled the handle, hit triple sevens, and somehow we all lost.
June 11, 2020: -1,861
March 11, 2019: -1,464
March 18, 2020: -1,338
I remember feeling actual terror that day in 2008, and for many days after. But Al Qaeda had nothing to do with it; the evildoers were Goldman Sachs, AIG, Moody's, Standard & Poor’s etc., their toxic assets of mass destruction, and a government that deliberately looked the other way. I continue to fear them a lot more than I will ever fear ISIS. Because George W. Bush was at least right about one thing: oceans can't protect us. From our own greedy-ass selves.
CHEERS to taking one more lap around the insurrection track. The House Jan. 6 Committee, which has already proven beyond doubt that 1) the insurrection was planned by Donald Trump and his domestic terrorist buddies down to the last detail, and 2) Josh Hawley runs away from danger like an antelope with mad cow, was supposed to meet again yesterday for televised hearings. Unfortunately, Hurricane Ian put a stop to that, but not before C&J sneakily got hold of the committee's agenda by ransacking Adam Schiff's office and then, having come up empty, ransacking Google for instructions on how to ransack ABC News to get this damning nugget that reveals why the 45th president's goose will be cooked when the committee makes good on its rain check:
Boom! But keep that just between you and me for now. I'm thoroughly enjoying all the ransacking and am thinking of making it a new hobby. (Today I'm adding a Viking helmet.)
-
Ten years ago in C&J: September 30, 2012
JEERS to this week's Worst! Prop Master! In the World!!! I thought Mahmud Ahmadinejad would be the natural replacement for Muammar Ghaddafi as the silliest performer at the annual United Nations shindig. Color me mistaken. Turns out it was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who yesterday reduced his warning of an imminent nuclear weapons showdown with Iran to a playing piece from the Napoleonic War game Stratego or, if you prefer, a sight gag from a MAD magazine cartoon. It was a moment only slightly less ridiculous than Colin Powell holding up a vial of baby powder in the run-up to the Iraq war, and even America's most blood-thirsty neocons are rolling their eyes. Next time, Bibi, please use a serious visual aid: Colonel Mustard wielding a candlestick in the billiard room.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to the skinny brown guy with the big ears and the funny name. No, not Barack Obama. India's favorite son, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi would've been 153 this weekend. He pretty much wrote the book on non-violent dissent which, closer to home, was adapted to great effect by Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis, among others. In honor of his day, some timeless Gandhi wisdom, which is being sorely tested these days:
"Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment."
“Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man"
The world needs more Gandhis.
"The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
And this one, which seems especially relevant in light of the current Republican war on American democracy:
I just wish they weren’t so good at getting back up. But, yeah, okay...point taken.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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