Oh! More Things I Know…
✌ President Biden has been in office for 3 years and 2 months. The MAGA crowd has “cared” about deficits for 3 years and 2 months.
✌ Democrats and independents are dedicated to the idea of forming a more perfect union. Republicans are dedicated to the idea of hatching a more perfect coup.
✌ The Maine lobster industry hauled in 93.7 million pounds last year. That sounds impressive until you realize it only came from six lobsters.
Continued…
✌ What the media calls a “toxic political divide” in this country is really just Republicans being assholes.
✌ The drunkest holiday isn’t St. Patrick’s Day. According to Time magazine it comes in second to Cinco de Mayo. And, if memory serves, third to National Bring Your Child To Work Day.
✌ Nobody thought for even a millisecond of strewing the sidewalk in front of George W. Bush’s house with sweets and flowers on the 21st anniversary of his invasion of Iraq.
✌ The financial institution I opened in December was dissolved this month. Deposits to Billy’s Front Yard Snow Bank weren’t insured by the FDIC, but I did compensate my investors with some black licorice I found in a drawer.
✌ The #1 thing I’ve learned from watching the squirrels on my porch roof is, it’s important to chase people around in circles really fast and then use your head like a battering ram to knock them down before you run to the nearest window and smear it with your muddy hands to beg for nuts. The Founders would absolutely deem this a self-evident truth.
✌ This sentence crosses a line that everyone said could never be crossed.
✌ Daylight Saving Time should be renamed Confuse The Dog At Dinnertime Time.
✌ Former senator and current U.S. Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry once said, “In America you have a right to be stupid,” and he’s correct. It’s just too bad so many people in America treat it as a responsibility.
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, March 14, 2024
Note: Did you know this is International Ask A Question Day? Or am I just bullshitting you? Who knows???
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By the Numbers:
Days ’til St. Patrick’s Day: 3
Days ’til the 40th International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas: 5
Inflation rate between February 2023 and February 2024: 3.2%
Percent of teens who have access to a smartphone: 95%
Portion of teens who say they feel happy or peaceful when they go without smartphones: 3-in-4
Number of anti-LGBTQ bills that are, for now, dead after the Florida legislature adjourned: 21
Number of sugar houses that’ll be open to the public for Maine Maple Sunday on March 23 and 24: 30
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
South Dakota is so rarely found on the leading edge of the far out, the wiggy, the California-esque. But it has now staked its claim.
First to Outlaw Abortion This Century. The state legislature of South Dakota, in all its wisdom and majesty, a legislature comprised of sons and daughters of the soil from Aberdeen to Zell, have usurped the right of the women of that state to decide whether or not to bear the child of an unwanted pregnancy. THEY will decide. Women will do what they decide. …
In South Dakota, pharmacists can refuse to fill a prescription for contraceptives should it trouble their conscience, and some groups who worked on the anti-abortion bill believe contraception also needs to be outlawed. Good plan. After that, we’ll reconsider women’s property rights, civil rights and voting rights.
—March, 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Puppy meets human propeller…
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CHEERS to order in the courts. If all the term “judge shopping” meant was Clarence Thomas sneaking out at 3 am to buy the latest copy of Juggs from his local newsstand, no one would care. Unfortunately, it’s a sinister, thumb-on-the-scale scheme invented by Republicans to steer lawsuits against Democrats (or liberal social causes, like abortion rights) into jurisdictions lorded over by MAGA-aligned judges. And thanks to a decision by the Judicial Conference of the United States, it’s about to come to a screeching halt:
At least in the short term, this policy is a massive victory for the Biden administration—and, indeed, for anyone who believes that federal and state policies should not rise and fall based on one outlier judge’s partisan views.
Texas’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, for example, has been very aggressive in bringing lawsuits that challenge Biden administration policies before right-wing judges who have then issued sweeping, nationwide orders blocking those policies—sometimes on highly dubious grounds that are reversed, months later, by the Supreme Court.
Among other things, this practice turned Matthew Kacsmaryk, an obscure advocate on the Christian right appointed by former President Donald Trump to the Northern District of Texas, into one of the most powerful government officials in the entire country. Because Kacsmaryk is the only federal trial judge in Amarillo, Texas, any case filed in Amarillo was automatically assigned to him.
It’s worth noting, however, that conservative Supreme Court judges will still be available for bulk purchase in convenient 6-packs by weirdo billionaires.
CHEERS to going crazy irrational!!! Let’s hear it for secular holidays—Yaaay!!! Today is 3/14, and at 1:59 this afternoon the world will erupt in slide-rule giddyness for Pi Day. Jet Propulsion Laboratory geeks speak, you listen:
Fred Calef, a geospatial information scientist at JPL, uses pi to make measurements—like perimeter, area and volume—of features on Mars.
“I use pi to measure the circularity of features, or how round or compact they are,” said Calef. “Craters become more elliptical if the projectile hits the surface at a lower angle, so I use pi to measure how round a crater is to see if it impacted at a low angle.”
“We use pi every day commanding rovers on Mars,” said Hallie Gengl, a rover planner for the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, “Everything from taking images, turning the wheels, driving around, operating the robotic arm, and even talking to Earth.”
I admit I got mostly Cs and Ds in math, so I think I’ll stick with regular pie today, thanks. Humble. With 3.141592653 scoops of ice cream.
P.S. Happy birthday to pi fan Albert Einstein. He once said, “He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.” Wild guess: not a MAGA cult fan.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to socialism, American-style. Through the collective approval and funding by We The People, the Wildlife Refuge System celebrates its 121st birthday this week. Ever wonder how it got started? If you answered ‘no,’ tough. You’re gonna find out anyway. From the Department of the Interior:
In the late 1800s, the whims of fashion dictated that women’s hats would be decorated by bird feathers. To meet this need, poachers hunted many species of birds to the brink of extinction. Concerned citizens, scientists and conservation groups found a champion in President Theodore Roosevelt.
Their concern about the rookery at Pelican Island on the Atlantic Coast of Florida inspired Roosevelt to use his presidential powers to protect pelicans, egrets, ibises and other birds. With the establishment of the first national wildlife refuge on Pelican Island on March 14, 1903, Roosevelt created the National Wildlife Refuge System. […]
Building on that foundation, the National Wildlife Refuge System today spans 150 million acres, including 566 national wildlife refuges and 38 wetlands management districts.
If you’re thinking of visiting a wildlife refuge, make sure you take a map, a canteen, and trail mix. But, uh, you best leave the feathered hat at home. Too soon.
CHEERS to MAGAs in disarray. The old saw that says Republicans march in total lockstep has been turned on its ear in the age of the Trump crime syndicate, which functions moment-to-moment and turns on any member who doesn’t do what he or she is told by Hair Fuhrer. As we’ve seen many times recently in Congress, for example, cultist allies will turn on each other for something as petty as wearing their red hat slightly askew or saying “Good morning” to a Democrat. With paranoia and power-mongering raging across the party, this is predictable:
Many Republicans plan to skip the House GOP retreat as they grumble about both the location and the idea of spending time with one another, with tensions still running high inside the party in the wake of their unprecedented speakership drama.
Fewer than 100 Republicans have RSVP’d to attend the retreat, which is less than half of the entire conference, according to a GOP source familiar with the attendance sheet.
And speaking of retreats, Congressman Ken Buck of Colorado says he’s fleeing the House this month, much earlier than expected. He says he wants to spend more time with his anything else.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 14, 2014
JEERS to the fog of 24/7 news. Here’s what we know about the Malaysia Airlines jet that went missing in Asia Saturday, according to the network, cable and online media:
The plane was hijacked. Or not. The plane made a weird sharp-left turn. Or not. The pilot turned off the transponder. Or not. The plane flew for hours after whatever happened. Or not. Satellite photos show wreckage of the plane in the water. Or not. It went down in the Sea of China. Or not. The Malaysian military is withholding information. Or not. This was a UFO abduction authorized by Putin. Or….um…
We hope this clears up any confusion.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to listening your way to a healthy home. Will the wonders of marine biology never cease? The obvious answer, of course, is no. So why am I even bringing it up? No reason, really, except to point out that marine biologists have brought on the wonder yet again. And if they can do this on a wide enough, scale, it might be a game-changer for our shrinking coral reefs:
The sounds of a healthy reef could be used to encourage coral larvae to recolonize damaged or degraded reefs, according to a study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science on Tuesday. Underwater speakers that play the sounds of a healthy reef, such as fish calls, were found to help coral larvae settle at rates up to seven times higher. […]
In their first days of life, coral larvae make a permanent decision of where they will settle and metamorphose into adults—swimming or drifting with the currents in an effort to seek the right conditions to settle. The sounds of the reef are important settlement cues, the paper found. Corals are immobile as adults, so the larval stage is their only opportunity to select a good habitat. […]
Reef populations will need all the help they can get to recover from climate change-induced stressors, [marine biologist Nadege] Aoki said.
Conversely, the Florida experiment also revealed which sound kills coral reefs faster than any other: Ron DeSantis changing into a Speedo.
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
Governor Kristi Noem Drops Random Five-Minute Infomercial for Cheers and Jeers, Reasons Unknown
—Mediaite
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