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Cheers and Jeers: Wednesday [1]
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Date: 2022-12-14
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, December 14, 2022
Note: All I want for Christmas is the Tubman Twenty they promised back in 2016.
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By the Numbers:
2 days!!!
Days 'til Christmas: 11
Days 'til the Shit in the Dirt Film Festival in Portland, Maine: 2
University of Michigan's Consumer Sentiment Index reading for December, up from 56.8 last month, showing American consumers becoming more optimistic about the economy: 59.1
Expected drop in Florida's orange crop in the wake of the 2022 hurricane season: -36%
Percent chance that Special Counsel Jack Smith has issued a subpoena to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger: 100%
Increase in toy sales last year, up from $25.4 billion in 2020: to $28.6 billion
Percent of Americans who didn’t use all their vacation days last year: 75%
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 185 (including 5 plagues and 1 evening of quality family together time). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: The storm cometh...
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CHEERS to green shoots. Remember those? Was that a Bush II thing, "green shoots?" I can't remember. (Gimme a break, I've been blogging since 1932.) According to our illustrious Treasury Secretary, green shoots are turning into green stalks that we'll soon be able to climb to fetch our magic beans:
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen predicted inflation will be “much lower” by the end of next year, barring an unexpected shock. Ina “60 Minutes” interview broadcast Sunday, Yellen said shipping costs, delivery delays and gasoline—which can contribute to rising prices—are showing signs of easing. “The economy remains prone to shocks,” she said, but the U.S. banking, business and household sectors remain in good shape. Yellen also said the U.S. is doing everything in its power to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, hoping to limit the world economic impact. The Russian oil price cap agreed upon by G-7 countries, which started last week, aims to “suppress Russian revenue, make it more difficult for them to fight the war, and keep global prices in a moderate range, and avoid spikes,” Yellen explained.
But nothing, not a word, about dropping bundles of cash from helicopters over major New England cities to spur economic growth by letting it trickle down to the rest of the country. Honest to god, I don’t know why I even bother to call her every night at 3am with my brilliant ideas.
JEERS to stuff we already know getting known again. I guess it's fine that the House Oversight Committee dug into the "greenwashing" of America by the dead-dinosaur-goo industry and is now officially telling the country that, yes, Exxon-Mobil and their ilk are nothing but planet-killing liars. Sadly, though, nothing will be done about it in 2023. Mainly because nothing was done about the same damn thing in 2015:
Exxon knew all that there was to know about climate change decades ago, and instead of alerting the rest of us denied the science and obstructed the politics of global warming. […] To understand the treachery—the sheer, profound, and I think unparalleled evil—of Exxon, one must remember the timing. Global warming became a public topic in 1988, thanks to NASA scientist James Hansen—it’s taken a quarter-century and counting for the world to take effective action. If at any point in that journey Exxon—largest oil company on Earth, most profitable enterprise in human history—had said: “Our own research shows that these scientists are right and that we are in a dangerous place,” the faux debate would effectively have ended. [...] Instead, knowingly, they helped organise the most consequential lie in human history, and kept that lie going past the point where we can protect the poles, prevent the acidification of the oceans, or slow sea level rise enough to save the most vulnerable regions and cultures. … No corporation has ever done anything this big and this bad.
If there was any justice, the evil oil barons would be sentenced to lengthy prison sentences. Or, worse, lockdown in beachfront property in Florida without scuba tanks.
CHEERS to “Moscow Maggie.” Happy 125th birthday to Maine's own Margaret Chase Smith. She was the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House and Senate, and she reserved some choice not-so-nice words for Senator Joseph McCarthy (who responded by giving her the aforementioned nickname). And get a load of this from 1950, which would no doubt get her branded a libturd by the right-wing noise machine today:
"I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear. A Republican who actually cared about the American people. I doubt if the Republican Party could—simply because I don't believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans aren't that desperate for victory. I don't want to see the Republican Party win that way. While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican Party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican Party and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one party system."
Yeah. They'd be crazy to try that. And don’t call me Shirley.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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x When engineers get bored during the weekend. This is DIY bubble machine.
Created by animator and filmmaker Rafael Sommerhalder
Credit: C. Carter
pic.twitter.com/PGxHBJDaHn — Tech Burrito (@TechAmazing) December 12, 2022
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to missing 1800 by 18 days. He came this close. On December 14, 1799,George Washington died at age 67 (which was actually quite old for his family, relatively speaking, given how many of his relatives died at a younger age). He caught a cold during a horseback ride in the rain, but forensic historians suspect that the real reason he expired was the 300-pound leech doctors attached to him to drain his "tired" blood. I read in the book His Excellency by Joseph Ellis (highly recommended) that the last thing Washington did before he died was check his own pulse. Which probably explains his last words: "Oh, that ain't good."
CHEERS to setting the lowest of the low bars for yourself. The senior executives in the corner offices at TIME magazine, not content to rest on their laurels, set out to meet or exceed the most audacious goal they'd ever set for themselves. Would it be possible, they wondered, to make our person of the year even slightly more deserving than Elon Musk, the spoiled billionaire lowlife anti-Semitic anti-LGBTQ MAGA brat scum we chose in 2021? Dare we attempt to live that dream? Are we up to that challenge? Well, by god, they focused all their brainpower on the task and gave it their best shot:
Let me be the first to say: Congratulations, TIME. Mission accomplished.
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 14, 2012
CHEERS to blissful quiet. Home-delivery-based catheter commercials air at window-rattling volume. So do sex pill commercials, sleeping pill commercials, shingles pill commercials, prostate pill commercials, lying bullshit oil company commercials, lying bullshit natural gas commercials, insurance commercials, and car commercials. All of them obnoxiously louder than the programming they interrupt. There oughtta be a law. And now there is. As of today, the Commercial Audio Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act kicks in. And, of course, you can thank Democrats for dealing with yet another everyday annoyance:
Beginning Thursday, television stations and cable providers are required to keep the volume of commercials at a level consistent with programming. No more blaring car ads or holiday shopping spots, unless providers want to incur the wrath of the Federal Communications Commission.
No, this won’t fix the economy or get us out of Afghanistan faster or solve the effects of climate change. On the surface, this is a minor accomplishment. But one thing's for sure: in future elections, Democrats will have a lock on the tympanic membrane vote.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to D-Day 2020. Can’t let today slide by without noting that December 14th will be noted as the day America—and all the restaurants, theaters, gyms, and bowling alleys therein—was saved by a bunch of little pricks. And I admit that I remember getting a bit verklempt watching it happen:
[T]he battle against Covid-19 took what could be a decisive turn Monday as the first federally approved coronavirus vaccine was injected into an American arm. Good on ya, Nurse Lindsay. Sandra Lindsay, an ICU nurse who has been on the front lines of the battle against a virus that's killed almost 300,000 people in the United States alone, joined in the applause moments after the first dose was injected into her left arm. "I feel hopeful today, relieved," Lindsay, who works at at Long Island Jewish Medical Center said…"I feel the healing is coming. I hope this marks the beginning of the end of the very painful time in our history."
The vaccines (and, soon, miracle covid happy pills) have come a log way since then. For instance, one of the tricky things about that early vaccine was it keeping it stored in a receptacle that was super-duper-icy cold. Today they can just be shipped under normal refrigeration. But it was pretty dicey back then. The only known way for each shipping container to reach minus-94 degrees Fahrenheit was to let it be stared at for 30 seconds by Laura Ingraham.
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 Cheers and Jeers is all about how living in an old folks’ kiddie pool is tragic and depressing and only slightly preferable to our inevitable, terrifying deaths. Unless, of course, you find a bag of candy corn! Um… yay? —William Bibbiani, The Wrap
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[END]
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