From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: 14 Months 'Til Election Day Edition
"The State Department just released another batch of Hillary’s e-mails from when she was Secretary of State. In the e-mails, Hillary asked an aide what time “The Good Wife” was on, how to charge her iPad, and how to get wi-fi. Hillary sounds less like the Secretary of State and more like my mom at a hotel."
---Jimmy Fallon
America's Colbert drought ends Tuesday!
"At a press conference yesterday, Donald Trump kicked out a Latino reporter but the man returned a few minutes later. Yeah, so already Trump's deportation plan isn't working."
---Conan O'Brien
“Guys like [Trump] are very empowering to broke, hateful assholes.”
---Marc Maron on Real Time
"All the new polls indicate that Donald Trump is getting more popular every day. Apparently his inspiring riches-to-riches story is really resonating with everyday Americans. Right now members of the Republican National Committee are essentially the scientists in a movie realizing their creation has escaped from the lab."
---Jimmy Kimmel
Only two members of Congress are trained scientists: Bill Foster and Jerry McNerney. They’re from the same party---guess which one? I’ll give you a hint: not the one that believes Noah’s Ark is settled science.
---Bill Maher
And four years ago…
"Rick Perry becomes the Republican front-runner. Of course they're letting him run in front. He's the one with the gun."
---Stephen Colbert
I love the smell of holiday weekends in the evening. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Update: The Adam Levine tweet in tonight's poll is actually a few years old. So consider it a 'better late than never' option. C&J regrets the error.
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, September 4, 2015
Note: We're taking a bit of slacker time next week to catch up on the 3,496 3,498 TV judge shows we've DVR'd, so there will be no C&J Monday or Tuesday. Back Wednesday to declare the whole lot of you people out of order. ---BiPM
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8 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til
Star Wars Episode VII:
105
Days 'til the
Snowboard on the Block Festival in Denver:
8
Minimum number of acres that have burned in U.S. wildfires in 2015:
8,202,557
Number of large fires currently raging across the country:
65
(Source: National Interagency Fire Center)
Increase in wages & salaries in July:
0.5%
(Source: Commerce Dept.)
Ratio of economists to non-economists during discussions of the economy on the five major Sunday morning shows in the first half of 2015:
1-in-30
(Source: Media Matters)
Length of the prison sentence for the guy who killed a dozen people at that Aurora, Colorado movie theatre in 2012:
12 consecutive life sentences plus 3,318 years
(Source: Judge Carlos Samour Jr.)
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Proud Momma
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The annual NN online auction
starts Thursday Sept. 10th.
CHEERS to bling on the block. Woo hoo---the annual
Netroots Nation online auction starts Thursday to raise money that helps offset costs of the annual convention (
St. Louis next July and C&J is making plans to be there). I'm donating a complete set of official 2015 collectible wooden White House Easter eggs, mint-condition
Star Wars comics, and collectible shiny objects from the U.S. Mint. The NN crew is now accepting your donations for the auction block: political memorabilia, CDs, books (signed or not), clothing, pink flamingos, pet toys, trips, crafts, prints, services, games, electronics, etc. Food is also good, particularly if it's of the sweet and baked variety.
To donate an auction item, just
click here to send in a description (with a photo or link to a photo, if possible).
Questions? e-mail Karen Kolber at
Karen [at] netrootsnation.org. When the auctyion starts next week, please be kind: whack others bidders on the back of the head with your auction paddle responsibly.
CHEERS to more paychecks and fewer pink slips. The Obama recovery rolls on. Fresh jobs numbers from the Department of Fresh Jobs Numbers reveal that August 2015 became the 59th straight month with employment growth---173,000 new keys to the employee restroom were forged in the fires of Mount Human Resources and the unemployment rated dropped to 5.1 percent. Here's the Calculated Risk graph, with our usual reminder that the disastrous plunge on the left is the legacy George W. Bush left behind:
And this is nice: the June job numbers were goosed from 231k to 245k, and the July numbers were revised up from 215k to 245k. When he heard the news, Jeb Bush issued a brief statement from his new Kennebunkport mansion: "Vote for me, and with hard work and God's blessing we will reverse this alarming trend."
Hey, where's the halo?
CHEERS to following the rules. Yesterday a federal judge
threw Kim Davis in jail for refusing to fulfill her constitutional obligations as county clerk in Rowan County, Kentucky. The move officially makes her a martyr to all those poor, angry conservative Christian souls who feel like their grip on their God-given right to lawlessness is slipping away from them, but it also allows Davis's deputy clerks (five out of six, anyway) to start issuing marriage licenses again---including, finally, to same-sex couples. As of this writing, God has failed to spring the thrice-divorced adulteress from the slammer. But it's early. The cake with the file in it is probably still in the oven.
Priebus's pledge is on the left.
Trump's signature is on the right.
JEERS to meaningless gestures. RNC chairman Reince Priebus spent the week with his crayons and his
Big Book of Wurdz creating a pledge for all 297 GOP candidates to sign that would cement their loyalty to whoever becomes the GOP nominee. The big question was whether or not Donald Trump would cave and, in an act of Munich-like appeasement, sign it. And
sign it he did. However, it doesn't appear that the document will change the current balance of power between The Donald and The RNC. One sign: just before he held a post-signing news conference, Trump handed Priebus's leash to an aide and said, "Take him out behind the bushes. I think he needs to pee."
JEERS to clumsy cover-ups. In Millis, Massachusetts, schools were closed and a manhunt was launched after a police officer claimed he was shot at while he was at the wheel of his cruiser, causing it to crash, hit a tree and catch fire. But after a day of terror and uncertainty, it turns out that the cop made the whole thing up and actually riddled his own vehicle with bullets to apparently cover for his own shitty driving skills. But the amazing part of this story is: he told his boss that the phantom shooter was a white guy. That's...oddly refreshing.
Carpenters Hall grand opening: 1773.
CHEERS to the bestest convention evuh! On tomorrow's date in 1774, the First Continental Congress
assembled at Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia:
It was held because the colonists were very upset about the Intolerable Acts and the taxes. The Intolerable Acts were punishments that King George III put on the colonies. He put them on so the colonists would feel sorry about dumping tea into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party.
Of course, the opposite happened. We got royally pissed, revolted, formed our own country, and then thrived and prospered until we started coming apart at the seams thanks to the efforts of the...Tea Party. George, you sneaky bastard.
CHEERS to that other city that never sleeps. On September 4, 1781, Los Angeles (Spanish for "Los Angeles") was founded by Spanish settlers. They would've settled there sooner but traffic was a bitch.
Now streaming and on DVD
CHEERS to home vegetation. Now that September is here and Maine is snowed in until next June (18 inches last night), the TV is in complete control of our lives. Unfortunately there's not much on this weekend, now that the 24-hour Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon has been ripped from the fabric of society like a cheap strip of Velcro. But there are some
new DVDs to fill the gap, including George Miller's astonishing apocalyptic chase movie
Mad Max: Fury Road and season one of
Star Wars: Rebels. (
The Force Awakens opens in 105 days!) The baseball schedule
is here and the U.S. Open tennis schedule
is here. And because we're gluttons for punishment, here's your Sunday morning lineup in all its usual rightwinginess:
Meet the Press: Joy Reid; Doris Kearns-Goodwin. Plus Republican candidates TBA.
And Fox will let them.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Dick and Liz Cheney unveil the nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile they assembled in the garage and fire it at Iran. Because, goddammit, if no one else in this country has the balls to do it, we will! Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn do their segment and then take the Cheneys away in cuffs.
This Week: Conservative Christian cultist Mike Huckabee; Grouchy Ohio Governor John Kasich; International Rescue Committee President David Miliband on theb refugee crisis overseas.
Face the Nation: Carly Fiorina and Newt Gingrich.
CNN's State of the Union: Sarah Palin and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Happy viewing!
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Five years ago in C&J: September 4, 2010
JEERS to our constitutional right to be really, really---oh, what's the word?---stupid. Why do politicians feel such freedom to run roughshod over We The People? Because, frankly, we make it so easy for 'em:
The current chief justice
is, of course, John Marshall.
Asked to name the current chief justice of the Supreme Court, and given four possible names, nearly one-in-ten Americans (8%) choose Thurgood Marshall, despite the fact that Justice Marshall left the Supreme Court roughly 20 years ago, and passed away in 1993. In fact, very few Americans can name the current chief justice in a Pew Research news quiz; just 28% were able to correctly identify John Roberts. Another 6% thought the recently retired Justice John Paul Stevens was chief justice, while 4% named Sen. Harry Reid. A majority (53%) admitted that they did not know the answer.
The news isn’t all bad. Half of those surveyed can list the days of the week, and a whopping 85 percent can function without having to write "remember to breathe" on their hand.
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And just one more…
Never have so many iconic characters,
sights, sounds and catchphrases been
packed into one TV series that ran for
only three seasons. And those sets!
CHEERS to
Space...the final frontier. C&J will be off Tuesday, so we'll take the opportunity tonight to remember that on September 8, 1966, the first episode of
Star Trek---"Wagon Train to the Stars" as Gene Roddenberry called it---aired on NBC. It was regularly beaten in its time slot, and placed 52nd among all series in 1966-1967, its best season. Today its
message resonates as loud as ever:
[I]t had a crew that said discrimination was a thing of past; it had a future that said we were not all annihilated by nuclear holocaust; it had an economy that was driven by progress and achievement, not simple wealth accumulation; it had science as a guiding force, not mysticism or superstition; it had technology as a means
to explore, not just make life easier; and, perhaps most importantly, it had a peaceful mission at its core, not one of conquest.
The show screamed peace in a time of war.
The original cast is like a who's who of role models: George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, James Doohan, DeForrest Kelley, Leonard Nimoy and, yeah, even Shatner (whose twitter feed is pure gold). And by the way, Portland Maine has its own unique connection to Star Trek: the
U.S.S. Enterprise is named after a 19th century U.S. warship that
engaged and destroyed a British vessel 203 years ago today off our coast. The captains---both killed during the battle---are buried side-by-side in Portland. Ironically, neither lived long and prospered. I guess they shoulda set their cannons on "stun."
Have a safe Labor Day weekend. Wear thee white while ye may! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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