Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday

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“I’ve been married for 56 years and Leah has been very good at keeping my head the right size. Once I was driving and when I looked at her she looked slightly more complacent and self-satisfied than usual. When I wondered why, she showed me this bumper sticker that said: Any woman who wants to be equal to a man has no ambition.

The "Pale Blue Dot" photo of earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager Probe, enhanced by modern technology at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
If you MUST have proof that Desmond Tutu and I hung out together, here we are in ‘90 posing for Voyager 1.

“As a young priest I traveled to the United States to meet leaders of the civil rights movement, and rejoiced in their victories over prejudice and discrimination. Today, I battle to reconcile that joy with the disproportionate number of African Americans in prison and being shot in the streets.”

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.  If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”

President Barack Obama greets Archbishop Desmond Tutu as he arrives at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre in Cape Town, South Africa, June 30, 2013.
Archbishop Tutu with President Obama, 2013.

“Children are a wonderful gift.  They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.”

“I don’t preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn’t say, `Now is that political or social?’  He said, ‘I feed you.'”

“The Arch” died Sunday at 90. Too young.

And now, our feature presentation…

Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Note: We hope you had a nice holiday. If you got a Christmas gift that displeased you, toss it in the C&J woodchipper and go pick out a nice replacement from your neighbor’s garage and/or tool shed. Probably best to do it late at night so they’ll be less inclined to come out and distract you with their loud voices and wavy arms while you’re making your excellent selection. —Mgt.

By the Numbers:

2022.jpg
4 days!!!

Days ’til 2022: 4

Rank of “Trump” when respondents were asked by Marist pollsters an open-ended question about what word they found the most annoying: #1

Americans in the Marist poll who say they’re optimistic and pessimistic, respectively, about 2022: 49%, 47%

Years that James Webb, after whom the Webb telescope is named, was NASA administrator: 1961-1968

Number of sitting presidents besides Joe Biden who have visited Children’s National Hospital on Christmas Eve: 0

Number of workers injured last week in a refinery blast in—where else?—no-regulations Texas: 4

Length of Congressman Madison Cawthorn’s (Cult-NC) sanctity-of-marriage marriage before his wife realized he’s a psychopath and got out: 8 months

Puppy Pic of the Day: A plethora of wagglebutts…

CHEERS to blessed silence.  They’ve turned off the Christmas carols.  It’s safe to come out now.  We hope you were as fortunate as we were by making it through another season without hearing the Kenny G version of Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer or FIFA’s rendition of The Little Vuvuzela Boy.  But we’re not entirely out of the woods yet. Nothing but non-stop Auld Lang Syne for the next four days, and Grandpa’s still only on page 16 of his Festivus grievances. (This CHEER is sponsored by ACME earplugs. Remember: If you haven’t heard a thing about ACME Earplugs, you must already be using ACME earplugs.)

CHEERS and JEERS to action news lightning round.  I can think of zero reasons to get into the weeds of hard news while we’re still basking in the glow of a holiday weekend and standing on the precipice of another. So toss I shall a mere smattering of fresh headlines to get you up to speed without killing the buzz:

»  The Biden-Harris administration is banning work requirements for Medicaid recipients.

»  The pause on student loan payments has been extended until May 1.

»  Putin is still being a butthead over Ukraine, but he’s treading cautiously because he knows that his hand-picked useful idiot is no longer in the White House.

»  Every single flight in the United States was canceled over the holidays because one of the toilets was clogged at LaGuardia.

» This:

»  That Canary Islands volcano finally stop spewing molten lava after 85 days, thanks to a new agreement giving it a pay raise and six weeks of paid parental volcano leave.

»  The now-legendary Christmas Eve water main break on our street was stanched and sealed just in time for the municipal work crew to make it home in time for Christmas. (But the kids were sad that, no, daddy didn’t buy them an actual backhoe to put under the tree.)

And this just in: pessimists lament that there’s a 50 percent chance that 2022 will suck, while optimists gush that there’s a 50 percent chance that 2022 will rock. Highlights of ensuing street brawl tonight on Newscenter at 11.

BRIEF SANITY BREAK

END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

CHEERS to gravity defiance. Planet Earth delivered a sweet little present for the universe on Christmas morning, as a rocket thingy blasted off (in that sexy blast-offy way rocket thingies do) and delivered the $10 billion James Webb telescope—a culmination of 40-million hours of nerdwork—into outer space:

Eventually, it will probe the heavens so remotely, infinitesimally, and retroactively that it’ll be able to tell us exactly where our universe comes from, going back 13.5 billion years. My guess: bottom of a shoe.

CHEERS to keeping things in focus. Speaking of seeing stuff up close, happy 450th birthday, technically yesterday, to Johannes Kepler, the “founder of modern optics.” Among many other accomplishments, he designed the first lenses to help farsightedness and nearsightedness. Sadly for our current political class, there was nothing in his bag of tricks to help shortsightedness.

15 years ago in C&J: December 28, 2006

WHATEVER to traditional-media condescension. TIME magazine’s person of the year is YOU. I’m filing an appeal. It should’ve been me.

And just one more…

CHEERS to home sweet safe home. This year’s rankings released by WalletHub (“For all your hub needs as they relate to wallets and such”) say that Maine‘s two largest cities are among the safest in the country. Out of over 180 cities studied for “home & community Safety, natural-disaster risk, and financial safety,” Portland ranks 6th (up from 31 last year), and Lewiston—which has a large and thriving immigrant population, so it should be a madhouse of crime, right?—ranks 42nd.  The top ten safest cities:

Columbia, MD

careless-monkey-will-end-you.gif
Needless to say, if this guy lives in your town, it’s not on WalletHub’s safest cities list.

South Burlington, VT

Nashua, NH

Yonkers, NY

Madison, WI

Portland, ME

Warwick, RI

Raleigh, NC

Burlington, VT

Winston-Salem, NC

As usual, the most dangerous place in America remains the space between a megachurch grifter and an old lady’s checkbook.

Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor’s open…What are you cheering and jeering about today?

Today’s Shameless C&J Testimonial

Alongside the challenges the country faced in 2021 were tales of perseverance, bravery and the will to survive. Scientific breakthroughs were made, endangered species endured, and Bill in Portland Maine became a superhero.

USA Today





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