From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
A Li’l Polk in the Ribs
Today is the 32nd annual "Presidential Joke Day." Since I've already OD'd on news this month (I thought August was supposed to be the "slow" month), enjoy some POTUS punchlines:
"When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.'"
---Teddy Roosevelt
"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress."
---John Adams
''Did you ever think that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.''
---Lyndon Johnson
"It was absolutely involuntary. They sank my boat."
---John F. Kennedy, on how he became a war hero
"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?"
---Abraham Lincoln
"Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day."
---Harry Truman
“My esteem in this country has gone up substantially. It is very nice now. When people wave at me, they use all their fingers.”
---Jimmy Carter
"Eight years ago, I was a young man, full of idealism and vigor, and look at me now. I am gray and grizzled, just counting down the days 'til my death panel. Hillary once questioned whether I'd be ready for a 3 a.m. phone call---now I'm awake anyway because I've got to go to the bathroom."
"I won't lie---look, this is a tough transition. It's hard. Key staff are now starting to leave the White House. Even reporters have left me. Savannah Guthrie left the White House Press Corps to host the Today show. Norah O'Donnell left the briefing room to host CBS This Morning. Jake Tapper left journalism to join CNN."
---President Obama, 2016 White House Correspondents Dinner
President Clinton will be funny in her own right. But, good gravy, what an act to follow.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, August 11, 2016
Note: Please cup responsibly. Stemmed crystal only. ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til inauguration day: 162
Days 'til the Milford Oyster Festival in Connecticut: 9
Percent of Trump supporters in North Carolina who believe the election will have been rigged if Hillary wins, according to PPP: 70%
Percent of them who believe ACORN---which no longer exists---is actively trying to tilt the election in Hillary's favor: 40%
Number of the 308 Republican congressional districts that have held primaries this year in which a woman was nominated, according to FiveThirtyEight: 26
Number of the 13 Republican candidates who ran in last week's Tennessee primary to replace Rep. Stephen Fincher who were women: 0
Number of oxen used to pull the historic 1823 Orleans County (Vermont) Grammar School to its original location ¾ miles away: 44
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Team USA Olympic Medal Count
Gold 11 Silver 11 Bronze 10
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
What amazes me is the level of vituperative hatred aimed at Bill and Hillary Clinton.
A lot of people hated Johnson because of Vietnam and civil rights; a lot of people hated Nixon because he was so full of hate himself. But what this reminds me of is John F. Kennedy.
Most people have forgotten it, but there was a substantial amount of intense, almost insane hatred of Kennedy. I always thought it was a class thing; Kennedy embodied that aristocratic ideal of making excellence look easy. You're supposed to get a First at Oxford and play championship cricket all without appearing to work for it. With guys like Nixon, the sweat always shows. […]
If you go to Georgetown, Oxford and Yale, you pretty much learn to walk the walk and talk the talk common in those places. But that doesn't mean you wouldn't really prefer barbecue in some joint back in the Piney Woods where no one cares which fork you use---or if you use one at all. It's not a matter of being two-faced; it's just being comfortable in two different worlds.
---June 1994
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Puppy Pic of the Day: This mooved me.
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CHEERS to talking dollars and…wait for it…sense! Hillary Clinton, the first woman to become a major party's candidate for president (I like writing that a lot), delivers remarks on the economy today at the Futuramic Tool & Engineering in Warren, Michigan. Her speech comes three days after the buzz from her chief rival's economic speech in Detroit evaporated when he released his now-infamous "how to assassinate Hillary Clinton" plan. Here's a little contrast to whet your appetite:
By the way, Hillary will soon have 12 campaign offices buzzing with activity throughout Michigan. As for Trump, he plans to pay a six-year-old $5 an hour to sell made-in-China "Make America Great Again" baseball caps from a roadside stand in Sterling Heights. And then, of course, using the principles taught at Trump University, stiff the little shit.
CHEERS to pulling a shopworn truism out of mothballs. "It ain't the crime, it's the cover-up." And guess what? Apparently the most hated man in New Jersey (but, in fairness, the most dependable McDonald's courier in the Trump camp) threw a big ol' tarp over the stinkiest scandal of his administration:
Christie was asked during a December 2013 press conference whether anyone of his staff had ordered the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge.
Christie denied that they had, and even specifically said his campaign manager Bill Stepien had assured him he had nothing to do with it.
But a document filed by the defense team of former Port Authority official Bill Baroni shows that Christie’s remark prompted a flurry of text messages between his aides. “Are you listening?” texted Christina Renna to her coworker Peter Sheridan. “He just flat out lied about senior staff and Stepien not being involved.” […]
“And if emails are found with the subpoena or ccfg [Chris Christie for Governor] emails are uncovered in discovery if it comes to that it could be bad.”
When pressed about his fibbing, Christie said, "Outta my way! If Mr. Trump doesn’t get his McNuggets while they're hot, he throws darts at my ass." Wild guess: he never misses.
JEERS to hanging out with the dregs of humanity. Speaking of Trump, the Republican candidate for president has another lousy day ahead in a campaign full of lousy days. Today he'll pal around with the conservative American Renewal Project crowd as they---get ready to throw up a little in your mouth---"Rediscover God in America." Translation: lock themselves in a room and hate on the LGBTQ community. Think of it as a Chuck E. Cheese party for psychopaths:
David Lane founded the American Renewal Project as a way to mobilize conservative Christian voters and inspire right-wing pastors to run for elected office.
He told [Bloomberg News's Jennifer] Jacobs that he intends to quiz Trump on how he plans to fight “homosexual totalitarianism” and the gay rights “militants.”
Lane, a vocal opponent of LGBT equality, has said that “homosexuals praying at the Inauguration” in 2012 would cause “car bombs in Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Des Moines, Iowa” as a sign of God’s judgment and that the “pagan onslaught” of the LGBT rights movement will lead to the destruction of America.
Also in attendance to muse over how intrinsically evil he believes LGBT Americans are: Marco Rubio, who reneged on his pledge to leave the U.S. Senate because he was so "deeply impacted" by the massacre in Orlando two months ago this week of 49 LGBT Americans he believed at the time were blessed by God as intrinsically good. Sounds to me like his brain may have been “deeply impacted” by a “falling brick.” For his part, Trump will attend the event even after making this promise during the GOP convention: "I will do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology." But protecting us from domestic violence and oppression? Well, c'mon, LGBTQers…let's not get greedy.
CHEERS to the least-surprised people in the world. That would be the people of color in Baltimore in the wake of this bombshell dropped at the feet of the city’s law enforcement machine:
The 15-month Justice Department probe was prompted by the death of Freddie Gray, the black man whose fatal neck injury in the back of a police van touched off the worst riots in Baltimore in decades. To many people, the blistering report issued Wednesday was familiar reading. […]
The Justice Department looked at hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, including internal affairs files and data on stops, searches and arrests. It found that one African-American man was stopped 30 times in less than four years and never charged. Of 410 people stopped at least 10 times from 2010 to 2015, 95 percent were black. During that time, no one of any other race was stopped more than 12 times.
With the release of the report, the city agreed to negotiate with the Justice Department a set of police reforms over the next few months to fend off a government lawsuit. The reforms will be enforceable by the courts.
Okay, Justice: where to next?
CHEERS to cleansing your soul. The Perseid meteor shower is putting on a display of Perseidiousness this week:
The Perseids show up every year in August when Earth ventures through trails of debris left behind by an ancient comet.
This year, Earth may be in for a closer encounter than usual with the comet trails that result in meteor shower, setting the stage for a spectacular display. “Forecasters are predicting a Perseid outburst this year with double normal rates on the night of Aug. 11-12,” said Bill Cooke with NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office in Huntsville, Alabama. “Under perfect conditions, rates could soar to 200 meteors per hour.”
“Here’s something to think about. The meteors you’ll see this year are from comet flybys that occurred hundreds if not thousands of years ago,” said Cooke. “And they’ve traveled billions of miles before their kamikaze run into Earth’s atmosphere.”
Everyone agrees that meteor showers are beautiful, unite Americans in a common activity, and make lots of people happy and curious about the universe and the wonders of science. And in other news, Republicans announced this morning that they plan to introduce a constitutional amendment banning all future meteor showers.
JEERS to opening big mouth before engaging small brain. On August 11, 1984, during a radio voice test, President Reagan joked (and this joke became the spark for Presidential Joke Day): "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that would outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." (Listen to it here.) The Russians had a good laugh over it...right after they carefully put their missiles back in their silos and sucked down a bottle of vodka (not necessarily in that order).
P.S. President Trump would never do something like that to Russia. One does not nuke one's BFF.
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 11, 2006
CHEERS to the Vacationer-in-Chief. The president sends a postcard to reassure the shaky-knees crowd:
Dear `Murica,
Having fun in Crawford. Wish you were here. Watch out for terrorist evildoers. Now watch this drive. HehHehHeh...
GWB
Everybody feel better now?
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And just one more…
CHEERS to a wild time in the Hawkeye State. Skies will be a mix of sun and clouds and the air will be hot in Iowa through the weekend, and for the latter you can thank the vats of bubbling fat and roving gangs of bloviating politicians at the legendary State Fair that starts today. A million people are expected there this year. This time around the traditional 600-pound butter cow has company in the form of a tribute to Star Trek. And another tradition that will be on full display is the awkward eating of the corn dogs. So, for old time's sake, enjoy these golden memories of 2012, with bonus ice cream cone:
People really love watching politicians stuff their faces at the fair. Mainly because it shuts them up for a few minutes.
Oh, and BIG breaking news: a new trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story debuts tonight during the Olympics. May the Force be with it. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"As painful as it is to read Cheers and Jeers and as embarrassing as it is as an American to hear Bill in Portland Maine talk, I think it's good.”
---Will Smith
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