From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Wish Granted
Pete Seeger died one year ago this week. I was tooling around the You Tube yesterday, and I found this clip of "This Land Is Your Land" from Farm Aid 2013---just four months before he died at 94---in which Pete added a "verse you never heard before." It starts at 2:29:
New York is my home, New York is your home
from the upstate mountains down to the ocean foam
With all kind of people
Yes, we're polychrome!
New York was meant to be frack-free!
And the crowd, of course, goes nuts.
This is one of those times I hope there's the kind of afterlife where the departed can still look down and see what's going on here. Because it would be cool if Pete knew that, a little over a year after he sang that, New York listened.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Note: For a delicious blizzard stew, mix one part snow with two parts snow, bring to a boil, simmer, add two cups of snow and then gently stir in half a tablespoon of snow. In a separate bowl, mix snow, snow, snow and snow, then add mixture to the snow. Add snowballs. Season with snow. Whip with 65 mph wind gusts until snowy. (And if you feel daring, toss in a pinch of snow for a dash of "Zing!") Serves several million...whether they want it or not.
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9 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the next full moon:
6
Days 'til the
U.S. National Toboggan Championship:
9
Portion of Americans who think it's more important to avoid offending people because of their religion than protecting freedom of speech:
1-in-5
(Source: HuffPost/YouGov)
Percent chance that Rio de Janeiro will make good on its promise to fix its raw sewage and garbage problem in time for the 2016 Olympics:
0%
(Source:
AP)
Number of times Dish Network violated telemarketing rules (including calling people on the Do Not Call list), for which it could be fined $16,000 each:
57 million
(Source: FiveThirtyEight.com)
Increase in hard cider sales last year, making it the fastest-growing segment of the American beer market:
75%
Hard cider sales last year:
$366 million
(Source:
The Week)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 179 (including 3 date settings and 1 new no-go zone known as Dearborn, Michigan). Soul Protection Factor 12 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Happytime blizzard snow!!!
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CHEERS to fun in the USA. As a United States delegation (including the president) slobbers over the new awful Saudi king, children in New England are playing in two feet of glorious fresh snow and thanking their lucky stars they don’t live over there:
Seriously, Saudi Arabia?
A prominent Saudi Arabian cleric has whipped up controversy by issuing a religious ruling forbidding the building of snowmen, describing them as anti-Islamic. Asked on a religious website whether it was permissible for fathers to build snowmen for their children after a snowstorm in the country’s north, Sheik Mohammed Saleh al-Munajjid replied, “It is not permitted to make a statue out of snow, even by way of play and fun.”
Oh yeah? Well, my five-foot-tall middle finger snow statue says you're wrong. Bless yer heart.
CHEERS to the smell of olive-scented liberalism in the morning. Over the weekend the Grecians decided they'd had enough of the punitive austerity measures imposed upon them by the much-wealthier EU nations, voting in a left-wing government headed by the Syriza party that will actually spend some money on its citizens. Heading it up is this 40-year-old whippersnapper:
True Fact: the Greek PM works
from a cubicle in the Parthenon.
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As he climbed on an elevated stage in central Athens to give his victory speech on Sunday night, Alexis Tsipras looked more like a rock star than Greece's newly-elected prime minister. "Our people too have a right to joy and celebration. For five years, they had taken both away from us," he told thousands of ecstatic supporters gathered to celebrate a historic victory for the left. […]
Some of his first actions as Greek leader appear designed to show he aims to maintain a careful balance. He was Greece's first prime minister to take a civil rather than a religious oath, and yet his first visit after he was elected was to the head of the Church of Greece.
Tsipras says he can't stand neckties. I like him already.
Happier days: Challenger's
maiden voyage.in 1983.
JEERS to premature descents. On January 28, 1986---good lord, 29 years ago---the
Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven crew members, including civilian teacher Christa McAuliffe. I'm guessing that if you more than toddler-age, you remember exactly where you were when you heard about it. I was in the Otterbein College (Westerville, Ohio) campus center at 11:38am, and can still conjure up the queasy feeling that set in when I realized what had happened. A big crowd of students and faculty stood around the big-screen TV, stunned. Today folks from the Challenger Center, along with family members of the crew, will
commemorate the tragedy today. It takes off-the-charts courage, brains and skill to put yourself through the rigors of space flight. Which pretty much explains why I blog for a living.
CHEERS to sending the bad guys packing. The terrorist dead-enders in ISIS are learning the three most important rules of warfare: 1) Don’t mess with the Kurds 2) Don’t mess with the Kurds and 3) Don't mess with the Kurds:
In Kobani, mission accomplished.
A coalition of Kurdish and Syrian opposition forces claimed full control of Kobani on Monday, gaining an important symbolic victory over militants of Islamic State (Isis) who had besieged the Syrian-Kurdish city since September. […]
A message on the official website of the Kurdistan presidency said: “Today we received the news of liberation of defiant Kobani. I congratulate all people of Kurdistan … This is the victory of humanity over the barbaric terrorists … It is an honour for people of Kurdistan to face the most evil terrorist organisation … and defeat it. “On behalf of people of Kurdistan I thank the coalition forces for supporting the Kurdish warriors … I also thank Turkey for allowing the peshmerga to cross through its territory to support the Warriors in Kobani.”
On the down side, everyone agrees that the Ewoks were useless.
JEERS to denialist derrieres. Jenny McCarthy is reportedly appearing in a photo spread for Playboy magazine. No word yet on whether she posed partially or fully unvaccinated.
CHEERS to the first ringy-dingy. On January 28, 1878, the commercial telephone switchboard made its national debut in New Haven, Connecticut. The first customers were Amanda Hugginkiss, I.P. Freely and Seymour Butz. We hear the first operator lasted a whole five minutes.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 28, 2005
CHEERS to unexpected guests. Senator Barbara Boxer dropped by DailyKos yesterday to say "thanks" for the post-Rice-grilling mojo we've been giving her. Believe me, Senator, we won't forget that you remembered us. P.S.---Is this the most-recommended diary in Kos history?
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And just one more…
Today's "Just one more" feature will not be seen today because of yesterday's blizzard, thus granting Mr. Bill in Portland Maine a few actual minutes of "snow day time." We will resume our regular schedule tomorrow. In the meantime, please enjoy two cats fighting over a box:
Have a nice humpday day. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
People who read Cheers and Jeers don't just get more done---a new study says they sleep better, too.
---Inc.
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