Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Open letter to Cher (Ava and C.I.)

cher

Cher's been many things in her long career -- part of a popular musical duo, a successful solo singer, a TV entertainer on variety shows and specials, a Vegas regular, a Broadway actress, an Academy Award winning actress, queen of the power ballads, dance queen. More recently, she's become a Twitter celebrity.

Cher's been around long enough to know the business of celebrity which is you're in and then you're out and, "if you're willing to play the game, it will be coming around again," as Carly Simon points out.



She's forgotten that. Which explains her Twitter explosion a few days back.

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE OVER ME & WANT OUT……GO I DONT GIVE A ✈️FK


Oh, Cher. Or, Cher alike.

She declared her support for Joe Biden. And she expected her followers to bow down before her.

Seriously? Cher, when, in your lifetime, has that ever happened.

And try to remember, you're supporters on Twitter include a lot of young people -- a lot people under thirty, for example. Joe Biden is not the choice of Young America. It's as though the year is 1964 and while America is grooving to the hits of Motown, Cher saying, "Tisk, tisk, forget Diana Ross and the Supremes and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, let's all rock out with that far out Lawrence Welk!"

She endorses Joe and is surprised that she experiences push back?

Joe's big goal is to, yes, Cher, turn back time. He wants to turn it back to 2016 -- to the do nothing terms of Barack Obama. This was eight years of pretty words, empty promises. If you missed it -- we think Cher did -- US troops remain in Iraq. Barack was going to bring them home, remember? He was going to close Guantanamo, remember. Didn't manage that either. He publicly swore he would end veterans' homelessness and, no, he didn't do that either. Empty words -- pretty, but empty.

We can't afford that.

We can't afford doing nothing with climate change.

The Paris Agreement? Empty words. Worthless. Not even Canada has followed it:

A recent report published by the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), Closing the Gap: Carbon pricing for the Paris target, estimates that Canada will need to impose a total carbon tax of $102 per tonne if it wishes to meet its Paris Agreement emissions target by 2030. Under the Paris Agreement, Canada committed to reducing its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 30% below 2005 levels to 513 megatonnes.

According to projections relied upon by the PBO, Canada will reduce its GHG emission to 592 megatonnes by 2030, falling 79 megatonnes short of its Paris Agreement target. To close the gap, the PBO states “an additional carbon price rising from $6 per tonne in 2023 to $52 per tonne in 2030 would be required to achieve Canada’s GHG emissions target under the Paris Agreement.” This is on top of the $50 per tonne federal carbon price scheduled to be in place for 2022. The PBO assumes that the additional carbon price would be mandatory for all jurisdictions and all sectors, except agriculture. By comparison, the federal backstop only applies to provinces/territories that have not put a price on carbon. Furthermore, the PBO assumes that, like the federal carbon price, all revenues collected would be refunded back to households.

As we discussed in a recent post, the future of carbon pricing in Canada is an increasingly contentious issue. In its report, the PBO acknowledged that the additional carbon price will have a negative impact on Canada’s economy when compared to the current plan. If imposed, the additional carbon tax would reduce Canada’s real GDP in 2030 by 0.35%. It would also have an impact on day-to-day expenses, such as gas. The PBO estimates that the price of gas would increase by 23 cents a litre if the additional carbon price is imposed. However, the PBO notes that the report does not take into account the economic cost of environmental inaction.

The PBO intends to publish yearly “estimates of the additional carbon pricing needed to achieve Canada’s 2030 Paris target and corresponding economic impacts” in response to Environment and Climate Change Canada’s GHG emissions projections.



The Paris Agreement is nothing but empty words. That's all Barack ever offered. But Joe's going to turn the clock back to those days and this has Cher excited. Nostalgia, however, does not work for everyone. There is no more time to wait, time is up on climate change.

There is also, as the coronavirus has made clear, no time to wait on Medicare For All -- and on demanding that drugs like insulin be made less expensive.

That's not something Cher thinks about. She's never had to worry about money in her adult life. Sonny took care of the money when they were together and her only interest was in whether he said "Spend" or "Don't spend." She never even knew when they were in serious financial trouble. When she split with Sonny? Then-boyfriend David Geffen took care of the finances and ensured Cher wouldn't have to worry about money. And she hasn't. She doesn't grasp what the average person goes though. The average worker, for example, can't tell David Letterman, "Yeah, I'll do your show but only if you cover that $30,000 outstanding hotel bill I have." Cher's feet don't touch the ground.

And that's how she ended up surprised that everyone was not thrilled with her reactionary pick for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

Cher and Cher alike, we say.

We like Cher, we know Cher. But we're not giving a damn, honestly.

Hey, Cher, wasn't it you who sang (and wrote), "What I did so many times was finally done to me"? (Yes, it was -- "My Song (Too Far Gone)" from her TAKE ME HOME ALBUM.)

See, Cher, we don't care and this is why we don't care that you are hurt that others are mocking your choice and being mean: You've done that over and over yourself.

If you were someone who respected the right of a citizen to vote for whom they wanted, we'd care. But you've savaged people for, among other things, voting for Jill Stein. She was a Green Party nominee and you thought it was a wasted vote -- you who publicly supported H. Ross Perot in 1992 had the audacity to slam others for voting something other than Democrat.

Reality, who you vote for is your business. How you use your vote is your business. That doesn't mean you have to be silent about. You can be. But, like Cher, if you want to share who you're voting for, don't be surprised if everyone doesn't agree with you. And if you've been rude and hateful about other people's votes -- and, Cher, you have -- than don't be surprised when they are rude and hateful about your choice. Especially don't be surprised when you are trying to work up a Red Scare against Bernie Sanders in your Tweets.

That's outrageous and not in the way you're usually outrageous -- fashion choices. That's just reprehensible and so below who and what you are Cher.

Or as you might say, If you can dig it, we're happy for you, if not, we're sorry.


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Illustration is Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Cher's Ridin' With Biden."