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Cheers and Jeers: Thursday [1]
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Date: 2023-03-16
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, March 16, 2023
Note: Please don’t make a run on the C&J Savings and Loan. We only got five dollars and a crypto trading card of George Santos eating a bag of Funyuns.
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By the Numbers:
7 days!!!
Days 'til the start of Ramadan: 6
Days 'til the 48th annual Louisiana Crawfish Festival in Chalmette: 7
Net worth of U.S. households and nonprofits during the 4th quarter of 2022, according to Calculated Risk: $147.7 trillion
Drop in college enrollment between 2019 and 2022: -8%
Percent by which the average college graduate makes more than someone who doesn’t hold a college degree: 75%
Percent of Americans who say it takes them about a week to feel back to normal after Daylight Saving Time kicks in: 40%
Percent chance that women can now swim topless in Berlin's public swimming pools: 100%
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Aside from my own sentimental attachment to newspapers, I have no objection to all of us shifting over to the Internet and doing the same thing there. You'd still have the two big problems, however: A) How do you know if it's true? And, B) how do you put a lot of information into a package that's useful to people? If newspapers were just another buggy-whip industry, none of this would be of much note—another disappearing artifact, like the church key. But while Wall Street doesn't care, nor do many of the people who own and run newspapers, newspapers do, in fact, matter beyond producing profit—they have a critical role in democracy. It's called a well-informed citizenry. —March 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Lend me your ears…
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Say hi to the president of Amazon Web Services.
JEERS to suspended animation. That's what it felt like when Daily Kos went down for two days. It was horrific in many ways, not least of which was the sudden deprivation of your morning enjoyment and/or addiction to this influential column and its award-winning author-influencer. To put the calamity in perspective, the usually-unflappable DK engineering crew ran the gamut of homepage error messages from 502 ("Minor hiccup—back up soon!") through 509 ("Redrum! Redrum!"). On the bright side, I used the free time to organize all the drawers in the apartment and solve the climate crisis. (You're welcome.) As for the official cause of the longest site-access disruption in American history going all the way back to Lincoln, the official story is "Computer stuff blah blah blah servers overload blah blah blah third-party host issues blah blah blah and coding errors blah blah blah." The unofficial story now emerging in hushed voices from secret sources during clandestine meetings on park benches: "Cocaine orgy." And once again my invitation must’ve gotten "lost in the mail."
JEERS to echoes of 2008. Remember that time when we were told that to be a good American was to sock a bunch of money away with the financial muckety mucks for retirement, but then the banksters who told us that did some really unethical shit that wiped out half our savings? And remember how they all got bailed out and none of 'em went to jail for crashing the world economy, but we patriotic retirement-saving schlubs were told to suck it up, buttercup? Yeah, well, we've been suffering a little flare-up of Great Recession PTSD this week:
On Wednesday, SVB announced it had sold a bunch of securities at a loss, and that it would also sell $2.25 billion in new shares to shore up its balance sheet. That triggered a panic among key venture capital firms, who reportedly advised companies to withdraw their money from the bank. SBV investors would like you to leave several of these at their homes. Use the back door and the butler will retrieve them. The bank’s stock began plummeting Thursday morning and by the afternoon it was dragging other bank shares down with it as investors began to fear a repeat of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. By Friday morning, trading in SVB shares was halted and it had abandoned efforts to quickly raise capital or find a buyer. California regulators intervened, shutting the bank down and placing it in receivership under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Everyone is telling me that everything is fine. That's what scares me. On the upside, this morning I found some stray 2008 Prozac pills between the couch cushions. Hence the designation of today as Levitation Thursday.
CHEERS to Ol' Shortstuff. Happy 272nd birthday to "Father of the Constitution" James Madison—at 5-foot-4 our president (1809-1817) with the lowest center of gravity and our next-to-last Founding Father to occupy the White House (Monroe ended the era after him). Frankly, it's amazing what he accomplished considering that he was one sick puppy:
James Madison was without a doubt the sickliest president in American history. Madison in his late 70s. Sick as a dog much of his life, but didn’t shuffle off his mortal coil until he was 85. The man's life reads like the index to a medical textbook. Influenza, rheumatism, hemorrhoids—you name it, he had it. He suffered frequent bouts of illness from a young age and abstained from serving in the Continental Army during the Revolution on account of them. […] The location of the founded capital—Washington—didn’t help. The area's proximity to a swamp meant summers there could be infernally humid and plagued by fetid, unhealthy air. While unpleasant for most people, it was downright crippling for Madison, whose "bilious indispositions," as he called them, usually forced him to flee D.C. during the hot months. —From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien
And yet he lived to be one of our oldest ex-presidents, expiring in 1836 at the ripe old age of 85. Madison was also at the helm during the War of 1812, when The Star Spangled Banner was written. Pay your respects here. Preferably under the red glare of some sort of rocket-like projectile.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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x The Gravimorph Spindle is a subtle yet intricate kinetic art of Kazunari Higuchi whose work always features unintuitive motion of uniquely shaped objects coupled with an intriguing audio experience
[source, read more:
https://t.co/HZVlDwKghE]pic.twitter.com/uQdou5oFeI — Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 12, 2023
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to the looooong wait. Don’t you dare say “Belated Happy Equal Pay Day” or you’ll get a frying pan to the face and rightly so. Yes, Tuesday was Equal Pay Day, symbolizing how women have to work roughly 16 months to earn what men earned during the twelve months of 2022. CNBC reports that employers are aware of the issue, and many have promised that they're working on it. But many aren't, and for that you can look to the Republican party to see why. For your entertainment, we present our annual single reference to the late Phyllis Schlafly, who once donned her finest antebellum hoop skirt and belched:
"Suppose the pay gap between men and women were magically eliminated. If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate. … The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap."
She’s dead and buried now. Sadly, someone forgot to toss the GOP in with her.
CHEERS to an eventful first 120 months. Pope Francis, who I believe is the first pontiff (out of 266) with only one lung to get the white-smoke treatment, and is definitely the first Jesuit pope and first non-European pope of the modern era, began his reign ten years ago this week. He's quite a mixed bag, ain't he? I love the way he tut-tuts conservatives on climate-change, Putin’s war, and trickle-down economics. But his stance on LGBTers and women remains firmly rooted in reality-denial territory. (Pssst...and don’t tell Republicans he dresses in drag.) Then again, at least he's not the lump of German sourdough he replaced. In keeping with his reputation as a humble and casual Pontiff, today he'll sleep in 'til noon, pull on a pair of sweatpants and a "Party Like It's 1499" t-shirt, down a bowl of Cocoa Puffs, ride his skateboard to the office, give everybody high fives and invite busloads of poor people in for a fish fry and games of beanie Frisbee. But he’ll stop short of taking take a hit off the incense bong. Ya gotta draw the line somewhere.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 16, 2013
JEERS to rude departures. Sorry to break the news, but Google Reader is going away in July. To mark the news, Google's "I Feel Lucky" button has been changed to "Me So Melancholy."
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And just one more…
CHEERS to "Q"—but not the wackadoo Q. Composing and producing legend—like, the kind of legend that other legends look at and say, "Okay, now he's a legend"—Quincy Jones turned 90 on Tuesday. Our favorite Q-tune is his junky-tonk theme for Sanford and Son, and if you want to release some waterworks just go revisit his Oscar-nominated score for The Color Purple. For pop thrills there's Thriller. And for sheer mojo-rejuvenating goodness, no playlist should be without Soul Bossa Nova. But his latest gig is just as freaking awesome: assembling some of the greatest jazz musicians to pay a centennial tribute to film composer Henry Mancini, including his iconic theme from Peter Gunn. Among the players: John Williams, now 91, who played piano on the original recording. Here’s a great segment on the project from CBS This Morning...
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In his roller-coaster ride interview with Vulture a few years back, he said: “I stopped drinking two years ago and I feel like I’m 19 years old. I’ve never been so creative. I can’t tell you, man—what a life!” Live forever, Q. I mean it.
Have a nice Thursday. Good to be back! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial “The Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool is really safe and well-chlorinated. It’s resilient." —Janet Yellen
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[END]
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