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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
The Perfect War on Christmas Gift
Who gives a sh*t if Santa knows if you’ve been good or bad? Jimmy Kimmel introduces the must-have present for all the boys and girls who refuse to be held accountable for their actions...
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Only drawback: instead of batteries, to keep it functioning properly you have to fill it every day with fresh bullshit.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, December 13, 2018
Note: ACME Steel, Inc. has recalled over 30 tons of metal shavings after customers complained about finding dangerous bits of Jimmy Dean sausage in them. Film at 11.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til winter: 8
Days `til the New Year's Eve Ghost Tour of Philadelphia: 19
Percent chance that Fox News programs used the words “invasion” or “invaders” to describe migrants and asylum-seekers more times in the 30 days leading up to the midterm election than they did during 2015, 2016 and 2017 combined: 100%
Percent of voters who say climate change is caused by human activity, a 13 point increase over the percent who said the same thing in 2015, according to a Morning Consult-Politico survey: 58%
Percent of Republicans who say it was a big deal that Ivanka Trump used a private email server for official government business, compared to 64% of Democrats who agree: 16%
Number of orders taken by L.L. Bean on Dec. 4, the largest number recorded for a 24-hour period in the company’s history: 315,000
Age John Kerry turned on Tuesday: 75
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Here's to all the Americans on both sides of this year's unusually peppy fights over the allowability of religious symbols on public property.
This annual battle, in which the American Civil Liberties Union strives once more to make itself as popular as the Grinch, is over the part of the First Amendment that says the government cannot sponsor religion.
I always liked what former Gov. Ann Richards said when informed there were demands that the large star on top of the state capitol come down. "Oh, I'd hate to see that happen," she drawled. "This could be the only chance we'll ever have to get three wise men in that building."
---December, 2004
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Sneak-up Fail...
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CHEERS to 36 months in the hoosegow. Former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi nailed it yesterday on MSNBC: "You don't get out of the Trump cult unscathed." That now-self-evident truth rained down like a ton of bricks on the head of Trump crime family "fixer" Michael Cohen yesterday, as he received a three-year prison sentence in the Southern District of New York for…
…a total of nine crimes including bank fraud, tax evasion, lying to Congress, and two instances of campaign funding violations conducted at the direction of Donald Trump. […]
The campaign finance violations were carried out under supervision and direction from Donald Trump, in order to suppress the stories of two women with whom Trump had affairs from reaching the public in advance of the 2016 election. These were not “civil” matters as Trump has maintained, but felony violations of federal law intended, according to US attorneys for the Southern District of New York, to deceive the public and defy the “transparency” required of campaigns.
The lying to Congress charge was also directly related to Trump. In appearances before both the Senate and House, Cohen maintained that Trump had ended efforts to execute a real estate deal with Russia before beginning his campaign for the White House. That was not true.
Absolutely damning for the President of the United States, and certainly uncomfortable for Cohen, who may now choose to spill even more beans in the hope of shaving off a few days or weeks from his sentence. But wait---it gets better! Also yesterday the publisher of The National Enquirer admitted he took orders from Trump to bury his sexcapades with a Playboy model in order to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, a violation of that pesky little thing called the law. But the damage wasn't limited to just Cohen and Trump. Several hospitals reported a late-day surge of conservative Christian grifters with repetitive-motion injuries from cranking out Mulligans all day.
P.S. Lest we forget, Michael Cohen was considered to be such a pillar of honor, integrity, and family values that he was made a deputy finance director of the Republican Party. Can they pick ‘em or can they pick ‘em?
CHEERS to the new sheriff in town. Get used to seeing the name Letitia James in some of the most blazingly-hot headlines of 2019. She's New York's new Attorney General, and when she hangs her shingle out next month she's taking direct aim at the current title holder of Most Notorious Crime Family in America:
New York Attorney Gen.-elect Letitia James says she plans to launch sweeping investigations into President Donald Trump, his family and "anyone" in his circle who may have violated the law once she settles into her new job next month.
"We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well," James, a Democrat, told NBC News in her first extensive interview since she was elected last month. […]
She's also enlisting help from some prosecutorial heavy hitters, like former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, as a part of her transition to help her identify important hires for her office with an eye on bringing in experts for its Trump-related investigations.
Fearless prediction: massive popcorn shortage in 2019. Stock up now.
CHEERS to trapping a very large rat. Fifteen years ago today, members of the 4th Infantry Division's 1st Brigade found Saddam Hussein stinking up a"spider hole" near Tikrit. He was given a public trial and then executed. Or as Hussein himself would've said when he was still in power: "Hey, you did that backwards."
CHEERS to a fine parting shot. As former proud Marine John Kelly prepares to limp away from the White House chief of staff's office with his dignity in tatters (funny how racism and pathological lying will do that), one of the targets of his unhinged rage---whom he repeatedly referred to as "an empty barrel"---has a few words to say:
Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL) blasted chief of staff John Kelly on his way out of the White House and noted he should beg America for forgiveness for the disastrous treatment of Sgt. La David Johnson’s family after he was killed in Niger. […]
“I have seen him lose a star every six months,” Wilson said, talking about Kelly’s service as a four-star general. “It started with me, but there were so many other instances where he was not this man…that everyone expected him to be. He lost all of his stars, all four stars through many more instances that involved racism, misogyny and immigration.
General Kelly needs counseling from a pastor or someone who can help him ask for forgiveness from the nation for all of his insults, not just to me but to the Dreamers who he said were lazy.
And if counseling doesn’t work, I say we go to Plan B and toilet-paper his trees. In the name of Jesus, of course.
JEERS to America: the world's new punch line. Unfortunately, I mean that literally. We have gone so off the deep end on climate change that our government can't make a statement about it without having a drummer on hand to provide a rim-shot:
President Trump’s top White House adviser on energy and climate stood before the crowd of some 200 people on Monday and tried to burnish the image of coal, the fossil fuel that powered the industrial revolution---and is now a major culprit behind the climate crisis world leaders are meeting here to address.
“We strongly believe that no country should have to sacrifice economic prosperity or energy security in pursuit of environmental sustainability,” said Wells Griffith, Trump’s adviser.
Mocking laughter echoed through the conference room. A woman yelled, “These false solutions are a joke!”
In our defense: laughter is known as "the best medicine," so America is actually adding time to the life spans of rest of the world's citizens through the humor we're generating by promoting fossil fuels over green energy. It's carbon neutral, see? Funny…there was supposed to be a rim shot there. Drummer must be on break.
CHEERS to happy gays. Forty-five years ago this week, in 1973, the American Psychiatric Association declared that homosexuality is not a mental illness. But to this day they still declare that being a Log Cabin Republican is "puzzling."
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 13, 2008
JEERS to spinning, spinning, spinning to the bitter end. As he tries to prop up his tattered legacy in end-of-term interviews, President Bush is saying that his biggest regret was not knowing that the pre-Iraq-war intelligence was wrong:
"It wasn't just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence.”
Oh, boo frickin' hoo. (Or, if you prefer something stronger: "Bullshit!") Forgive me for pissing in your rose garden, Mr. Worstever, but a major intelligence report released last June says you're lying like a rug:
Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
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Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence
information.
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Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
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The Secretary of Defense’s statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
That's only a partial list, by the way---if I published the entire thing I'd use up the world's supply of pixels. Bush, of course, is embarking on a mission to get history to rewrite itself in his favor. Mr. Quixote, your windmill is thataway...
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And just one more…
CHEERS to saving our celluloid. Twenty-five movies from yesteryear have been inducted into the 30th class of the National Film Registry. Many of them---Jurassic Park, Cinderella, My Fair Lady, Broadcast News---are mainstream hits. Others are less known but significant in their own right, such as…
Dixon-Wanamaker Expedition to Crow Agency (1908)
The original nitrate footage that comprises the 1908 “Dixon-Wanamaker Expedition to Crow Agency” was discovered in a Montana antique store in 1982 and subsequently donated to the Smithsonian Institution. It is the only known surviving film footage from the 1908 Rodman Wanamaker-sponsored expedition to record American Indian life in the west, filmed and produced both for an educational screening at Wanamaker’s department store in Philadelphia and to document what Wanamaker and photographer Joseph K. Dixon considered a “vanishing race.” This film captures life on Crow Agency, Crow Fair and a recreation of the Battle of Little Big Horn featuring four of Custer’s Crow scouts.
Hearts and Minds (1974)
Director Peter Davis describes his Academy Award-winning documentary “Hearts and Minds” as “an attempt to examine why we went to Vietnam, what we did there and what the experience did to us.” Author Frances FitzGerald praised the documentary as “the most moving film I’ve ever seen on Vietnam, because, for the first time, the camera lingers on the faces of Vietnamese and one hears their voices.” Author David Halberstam said it “brilliantly catches…the hidden, unconscious racism of the war.”
Hair Piece: A Film for Nappy-Headed People (1984)
“Hair Piece” is an insightful and funny short animated film examining the problems that African-American women have with their hair. Generally considered the first black woman animator, director Ayoka Chenzira was a key figure in the development of African-American filmmakers in the 1980s through her own films and work to expand opportunities for others.
As ever, I remain hopeful that the all-time greatest movie ever---Cats and Dogs---will one day find itself nestled among the NFR's pantheon of greatness for its message of universal truth in a world gone mad: "Dogs drool, cats rule."
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
"Now we know, for certain, that Bill in Portland Maine is a fraud. He’s a weakling."
---World Net Daily
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