From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
“Oh no! Tinkerbell is dying!”
If I was a honcho at Comedy Central, today I’d be kicking myself for not hiring Samantha Bee to replace Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Her debut episode of Full Frontal aired this week, and if the show stays this sharp, she’s gonna need to clear space on her mantel for some serious Emmy hardware. This almost makes me feel sorry for the Jeb campaign. Almost...
Monday nights. TBS. Don’t call me then. Phone’ll be turned off.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, February 10, 2016
Note: To deal with a squirt of grapefruit juice to the eye, quickly jump up and run around the house screaming and overturning furniture. Add profanity until the pain subsides and follow up with a dirty look to your partner for daring to suggest that you're being melodramatic.
---Your Friends at The New England Journal of Medicine
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Super Tuesday, with Democratic primaries/caucuses in 12 states: 20
Days 'til the Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival in Des Moines, Iowa: 10
Percent chance that $1 billion in gold would fit into an average bedroom closet: 100%
Number of two-million-barrel-capacity supertankers it would require to hold $1 billion in crude oil: 17
(Source: CNN)
Number of individuals who renounced their American citizenship in 2015, compared to 3,415 in 2014 according to the Treasury Dept.: 4,279
Current domestic gross of Star Wars VII---The Force Awakens: $907 million
Current ticket sales for Gone With The Wind, the highest-grossing movie of all time when adjusted for inflation: $1,757,788,246
-
Mid-week Rapture Index:
182 (including 3 beast governments and 1 Sharia-compliant Barbie. Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
-
Puppy Pic of the Day:
New York City's "The Dogist"
-
CHEERS to that thingy next door I've already almost forgotten. The New Hampshire primary is now history. Congratulations to Bernie Sanders, whose hashmark in the 'win' column (with a whopping 60% of the vote) officially ties him up with Hillary Clinton at one Quidditch point apiece. For those who care, here's the breakdown of the Republican results:
34 percent voted for Trump as visions of beautiful border walls and torture “much worse than waterboarding” danced in their heads ---34%
15 percent Slouched to the polls to gruffly vote for Kasich.
12 percent believed a deceptive mailer saying vote for Ted Cruz or an Obamacare death panel will condemn you to an ice floe.
11 percent voted for Jeb Bush and, upon exiting the booth, looked forlornly at the nearest poll worker and said: “Please clap.”
10 percent voted for Marco Rubio. Fun fact: ten percent of Granite Staters are robots.
8 percent voted for Chris Christie after the other 92% decided that it was “time for some election-prospect problems in New Hampshire.”
4 percent and 2 percent went to cheap-publicity parasites Fiorina and Carson.
And 0 percent voted for Jim Gilmore, who gave an emotional concession speech after calling to congratulate “Other” on its victory over him.
None of the candidates have bowed out. So now the next circled date on the calendar is February 20th, when Democrats caucus in Nevada and Republicans primary in South Carolina, but not before more debates take place (Tomorrow for Team D, Saturday for Team Crazy). Because they're trying to kill my liver.
P.S. Ben Carson didn’t stick around for his post-primary party in New Hampshire, opting instead to high-tail it down to South Carolina. Unfortunately for the other passengers the flight was delayed for 45 minutes as Carson stood at the top of the boarding ramp waiting for his name to be called.
And this just in:
CHEERS to dollars and sense. President Obama unveiled his 2017 budget yesterday, and he's getting rave reviews for two items in particular, according to my email inbox. First from the Brady Campaign:
President Barack Obama's fiscal year 2017 budget proposal makes it clear that gun violence prevention is at the top of his list.
[It] would create an even more effective National Instant Background Checks System (NICS) and fund the hiring of 200 additional federal agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. These specific funding proposals were included in the President's Executive Actions on Gun Violence in early January and require congressional approval.
And from the Sexuality Information and Education Council's Jesseca Boyer:
“SIECUS is grateful for President Obama’s leadership in seeking to end abstinence-only-until-marriage funding once and for all.
After three decades and nearly $2 billion in federal spending wasted on this failed approach, the President’s proposed budget increases support programs and efforts that seek to equip young people with the skills they need to ensure their lifelong sexual health and well-being. SIECUS also applauds the President’s proposed $4 million increase for the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, helping communities implement evidence-informed and innovative strategies to support the sexual health of our nation’s youth.”
The Republicans immediately dismissed Obama's budget as just a liberal fantasy, and said they plan to reveal their own budget just as soon as their unicorn returns from retrieving it from the top of Bullshit Mountain.
JEERS to the child bully of Augusta. While no one except the orc community will miss hearing him insult them to their faces, it's still pretty lame that Maine Governor Paul LePage chose to deliver his state-of-the-state message by putting crayon to construction paper and delivering it via flying monkeys to the legislature. And, according to Mike Tipping at the Bangor Daily News, you'll never guess what buzzword-of-the-moment he's latched onto:
[T]he governor devotes the bulk of the letter to rehashing past disagreements with the legislature and attacking members of the House and Senate.
LePage’s new favorite insult is apparently “socialist” and he uses a variation of the word 13 times in the 8-page note, blaming a “foreign socialist ideology” for everything from deaths due to heroin overdoses (an issue the legislature has actually found bipartisan consensus on) to Maine’s electricity rates (which, for the record, are the lowest in New England). […]
His decision to retreat from the chambers of the legislature in favor of writing insult letters and attending locked-down “town halls” packed with his supporters is certainly unfortunate from the perspective of the dignity of his office, if not necessarily detrimental to the governance of the state.
Although one person at the state house is positively dancing for joy over LePage’s absence: the lectern spittle cleaner.
JEERS to the jalopy of the skies. Using the latest in nuclear rubberband technology, North Korea launched a rocket containing a satellite into space last weekend. And, well…
The North Korean satellite launched this weekend is tumbling in orbit, rendering it useless, just like another one of the country's satellites launched in December, 2012.
A U.S. official told ABC News that while the Unha 3 rocket was able to get its payload into orbit, it has been tumbling ever since. […]
The Joint Space Operations Center (JSPOC) at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California has been tracking the North Korean satellite as well as a rocket booster stage that has also gone into orbit. […]
According to Space Command “The object with NORAD catalog identification number 41332 is KMS-4, the payload (satellite). The object with NORAD catalog identification number 41333 is UNHA 3 R/B, the rocket body.”
And a third object with NORAD catalog identification 41334 is labeled "Valet who missed piece of lint on Dear Leader's favorite smoking jacket."
CHEERS to the most important day in U.S. history. On February 10, 1945, the Andrews Sisters hit the top of the charts with 'Rum & Coca Cola.' Why we don't get today off as a national holiday is beyond me.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: February 10, 2006
CHEERS to pleasant diversions. The 2006 Winter Olympic Games start today in Turin, Italy with the opening ceremonies, including Luciano Pavarotti singing Some Enchanted Evening while hurtling down the bobsled run. Where he'll stop nobody knows.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to a Very Barry Weekend (or...My, How Time Flies). Barack Obama officially announced his candidacy nine years ago today in front of the old state capitol in Springfield, Illinois:
"As Lincoln organized the forces arrayed against slavery, he was heard to say this: "Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought to battle through."
That is our purpose here today. That is why I'm in this race. Not just to hold an office, but to gather with you to transform a nation. I want to win that next battle---for justice and opportunity. I want to win that next battle---for better schools, and better jobs, and better health care for all. I want us to take up the unfinished business of perfecting our union, and building a better America."
Seven years into his improbable two-term presidency, we're still frustrated by the unfinished business still on the table, mostly because of petty GOP obstruction and a conservative movement that has taken leave of its senses by displaying a willingness to burn the country down before they'll let that "foreign" and "lawless" black guy succeed. And yet, to the right-wing's tooth-grinding chagrin, Barack Hussein Obama will end up higher than Saint Ronald Reagan on historians' Best Presidents lists. That's gonna hurt. A lot, I hope.
Have a nice Wednesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Cruise ship headed home after 'truly terrifying' ordeal in C&J kiddie pool
---Talking Points Memo
-