Don’t tell Ron DeSantis or he’ll send in the National Guard to invade the Magic Kingdom.
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, May 5, 2022
Note: Now that we’re all publicly gathered here on this National Day of Prayer, I’ll start with the customary opening prayer:
O Lord, please give us the strength and wisdom to abolish opening prayers on the National Day of Prayer on account of they’re really obnoxious. And while it is clear once again that you didn’t hear this prayer, since it has obviously gone unanswered for another year, we can only assume that you’re seeing another universe. If you ever show your face here again, you’re sleeping on the couch. In your name we seethe. Amen.
Number of Americans who quit their jobs in March, a record due mostly to better jobs being available: 4.5 million
Job vacancies in the U.S.: 11.5 million
Size of the Maine fishing industry’s haul last year, a record: $890 million
Amount of that total that came from lobstering: $730 million
Number of colors the National Weather Service uses to communicate watches, warnings, and advisories on its maps: 122
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
As usual, the Democrats have forty good issues on their side and want to run on thirty-nine of them. Here are three they should stick to:
1) Iraq is making terrorism worse; it’s a breeding ground. We need to extricate ourselves as soon as possible. We are not helping the Iraqis by staying.
2) Full public financing of campaigns so as to drive the moneylenders from the halls of Washington.
3) Single-payer health insurance.
Every Democrat I talk to is appalled at the sheer gutlessness and spinelessness of the Democratic performance. The party is still cringing at the thought of being called, ooh-ooh, “unpatriotic” by a bunch of rightwingers.
Take “unpatriotic” and shove it. How dare they do this to our country? “Unpatriotic”? These people have ruined the American military! Not to mention the economy, the middle class, and our reputation in the world. Everything they touch turns to dirt, including Medicare prescription drugs and hurricane relief.
CHEERS to having a sane governor. Maine’s first woman governor—Janet Mills, who previously was the state Attorney General who made former Trump-lite governor Paul LePage’s two terms a living hell—heard about the leak of the Supreme Numbnuts Court’s decision to turn over control of all American uteruses to Republican Jesus freaks and said Not on my watch you don’t:
“As long as I’m the governor of the state of Maine, I will be the backstop to protect the rights of women and men to reproductive freedom, the right to birth control.” […]
Like Biden, Governor Mills kicks it in shades.
Mills read the draft to mean abortion can be prohibited at any stage without exceptions, for example, for cases of rape or incest. “In other words, there is no right to privacy in the U.S. Constitution,” Mills said. “That is terrifying.”
Since taking office in January 2019, Mills, a Democrat, and the state’s first woman governor has signed several laws expanding access to abortion. One adopted in her first year requires insurers, private and public, such as MaineCare insurance for low-income residents, to pay for the procedure. Mills said, “It is only fair that low-income women have the same access to reproductive health care as middle class and well-to-do women have.”
So my advice is, everybody move to Maine: “The Way Life Should Be.” (But if you park on the wrong side of our street I’ll have the ticketers on you faster than Sam Alito volunteering to be chief magistrate at the next witch trial.)
JEERS to Buckeye choices. After all that sturm and drang, now we know after Tuesday’s primaries who our choices are in the Ohio Senate race:
The Democrat:Puncher of liberals Joe Manchin in a Tim Ryan suit.
The Republican:Puncher of liberals and fascist billionaire Peter Thiel in a J.D. Vance suit.
And in other news, liberals have to much power in this country and they’re ruining it.
CHEERS to Cinco de Mayo (or, thanks to our previous president, now also known as Taco Bowl Abuse Awareness Day). This is the one day a year when we can legally re-enact the Battle of Puebla using live ammunition. At Casa de C&J this morning we observed our usual custom of planting a Mexican flag in our neighbor’s yard and then taking them prisoner. Finally, after beating our Archduke Maximilian piñata senseless, we dug into some nachos so we could revel in, of course, “an authentic Irish experience.” Meanwhile, the actual Mexicans in Mexico will partake in their annual May 5 tradition of rolling their eyes at us and wondering if a wall keeping us out of their country is something they might want to pay for after all.
CHEERS to cool science. One of the biggest threats to Planet Earth, particularly our oceans, is plastic. It’s all over the place, making life a living hell for our animal co-inhabitants and a leading cause of planetary uglyfication. So leave it to the nerds—again—to figure out how to science the shit out of the shit making our environment so shitty. It’s an enzyme that I believe scientists in lab coats refer to as “Holy Amazeballs Wayne Come Here And Look At This Enzyme It’s Eating Up All The Damn Plastic And Bring Carla With You She’s Gotta See This Too,” or HAWCHALATEIEUATDPABCWYSGSTT for short:
This discovery, published today in Nature, could help solve one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems: what to do with the billions of tons of plastic waste piling up in landfills and polluting our natural lands and water.
Humans: simultaneously the dumbest and smartest (in that order) creatures in the universe.
The enzyme has the potential to supercharge recycling on a large scale that would allow major industries to reduce their environmental impact by recovering and reusing plastics at the molecular level. […]
The enzyme was able to complete a “circular process” of breaking down the plastic into smaller parts (depolymerization) and then chemically putting it back together (repolymerization). In some cases, these plastics can be fully broken down to monomers in as little as 24 hours.
“That’s a really practical and amazing way to dissolve plastic,” said the scientific community. “Ahhhhh!!!! Keep that stuff away from my face!!!” said all the Kardashians.
P.S. After 19 years of writing C&J, that was my first Kardashian joke. It will also be my last. Glad we finally got that out of the way—the suspense was killing me.
CHEERS to a heckuva deal. 396 years ago this week, in 1626, Manhattan was purchased from Native Americans for around $24 in beads, trinkets and wampum. Or in today’s terms: A medium espresso. Or funding for 1/1000th of a second at a private college. Or the amount of money Republicans would like to put into alternative energy. Or the number of singles Ted Cruz rolls up and uses to light his Cuban cigars. Or… Well, let’s just say pretty cheap.
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 5, 2012
CHEERS to dollars and sense. The House Financial Services subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology holds a hearingtoday on ways to improve the Federal Reserve. Proposals expected to receive unanimous support: “Taco Tuesdays,” new air fresheners in the bathrooms, and an extra row of marble columns.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the brain fillers. I’m a product of America’s fine public school system, and you can put me on record as feeling pissed off about the way our teachers are treated by so many state governments. (And don’t get me started on the reign of error we endured under grizzly bear-obsessed Betsy DeVos.) It’s nuts. I had great public school teachers. And they had a troublesome student. That’s why, during National Teacher Appreciation Week, I offer the following thanks to my earliest schoolmarms, starting in 1970:
Mrs. Dunn, Kindergarten: Thanks for introducing me to the rich, creamy flavor of paste and all its culinary possibilities.
Mrs. Cline, 1st Grade: Thank you for teaching me how to read and feed the goldfish.
Mrs. Martin, 2nd Grade: Thank you for noting that my writing skills were below-average. Your words lit a fire under me that burned brightly in my soul until recess. I’ve been trying to relight it ever since.
Mrs. Dunn’s Kindergarten class. (To answer your question: front row, second from left.) To this day, no one can figure out why everyone became an ax murderer but me.
Mrs. Wiley, 3rd Grade: Thank you for being the one teacher who somehow figured out how to make math fun for me. The candy rewards for right answers might’ve had something to do with it.
Mrs. Giaque, 4th Grade: Thanks for encouraging my interest in World War II history, to the point of having your high-school-age son, also a WW II buff, make up quizzes for me just for fun. Thank you also for letting us play Dodgeball so often. It allowed me to hone my skills for the day I entered the professional workforce and started playing my favorite adulthood game: dodge work.
Miss Woolson, 5th Grade: Thanks for letting us bring in our novelty records to play every Friday afternoon before the final bell, even after you got in trouble with the principal for letting us drop the needle on Ray Stevens’ The Streak.
And to all my teachers: Thank you for not blaming me for driving you to drink. It’s a sweet little lie that warms my heart whenever I think of you.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor’s open…What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today’s Shameless C&J Testimonial
“The definition of insanity is splashing in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool over and over again and expecting soft, smooth, supple skin.”
