From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Today's Boring Corrections
"[T]he Republican base put up with George Bush the first, put up with Bob Dole, were deeply disappointed with the big-spending George W and…again by Mitt Romney and are now going to come loaded for bear for the race for 2016. So I predict the hard right is gonna take over the Republican party in 2016 and the nomination is going to Rand Paul. You watch---This is what I do for a living."
---Chris Matthews, 2013
Rand Paul becomes the latest Republican candidate to give up on his dream to drive the clown car, and is dropping out of the 2016 presidential race.
---Reality, 2016
We're sure Mr. Matthews regrets the errors---1) that the hard-right hadn’t already taken over the Republican party by 2013 and 2) that Rand Paul would be the nominee---and will now stop doing this for a living.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, February 4, 2016
Note: The National Pathogen Safety Commission reminds the germ community to always wash your tentacles and feelers with a pro-bacteria non-sanitizer after coming in contact with a human. It's the law!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til major league spring training begins (full-squad): 18
Days 'til the 33rd annual Eelpout Festival in Walker, Minnesota: 14
Amount Jeb Bush paid per vote in Iowa, according to Morning Consult: $2,800
Percent of after-tax income Americans saved in December, the highest level in three years, according to the Commerce Dept.: 5.5%
Number of low-income Americans in 21 affected states who could lose their food stamps if they don’t meet strict new work requirements that kicked in this year, according to AP: 1 million
Amount Mainers spent on medical marijuana last year from its eight dispensaries, up 46% from the previous year: $24 million
Amount Hillary Clinton and Carly Fiorina have spent, respectively, on pizza for their campaign staffs: $9,000 / $0.00
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Setting aside that Pat Buchanan is a racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic anti-Semite, what wonderful news from New Hampshire! It's the nuts! It's the berries!
Yes, well, that is rather a large mound of manure there connected with his name, much of it justified, I'm afraid.
There's even more---he defends old Nazis or something. But since Buchanan has just sent the entire Republican Establishment and half the Democratic Establishment as well into a wall-eyed, blue-bellied snit, what can we do but rejoice?
---On the 1996 New Hampshire primary
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Puppy Pic of the Day:
New ad from Subaru: "The Barkleys' bedtime routine goes awry"
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CHEERS to The Bern and The Hill: together again. After tussling back and forth over dotted i’s and crossed t’s, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have agreed to show up for tonight's debate at…um…[Google Google Google]…the University of New Hampshire in Durham. The big story here isn’t the debate itself, but the lefty blogosphere's total annihilation of the DNC:
The Democratic National Committee had for months refused to reconsider its official debate schedule, which featured only six sanctioned debates, and threatened that any candidate who participated in an unsanctioned debate would be barred from future official events.
Supporters of Sanders and O’Malley had been vocally protesting the schedule, claiming the national party was trying to protect Clinton by limiting the number of contests and scheduling debates on weekends, when viewership is lower. Clinton’s campaign, as the front-runner, initially wanted fewer debates, but allies have more recently come to the conclusion that the format benefits her, especially in New Hampshire where she is behind in polls.
If Debbie Wasserman-Schultz doesn't try to screw it up again at the last minute, you'll see Rachel Maddow and Chuck Todd firing off the questions at the candidates tonight at 9 for two hours on MSNBC. If she does, you'll see Rachel Maddow throwing Velcro balls at Chuck Todd's goatee tonight at 9 for two hours in the parking lot.
JEERS to a day at the kangaroo court. The poisoning of Flint, Michigan's water supply---and the heartless attempted cover-up by the state---is one of the most horrifying failures of Republican-style government ever. Yesterday the House Oversight Committee held a hearing on it, and over at Michigan-based Eclectablog, Chris Savage's headline says it all: "At Congressional hearing on #FlintWaterCrisis, Republicans go after the EPA, Democrats go after the truth." Unfortunately, the evil man at whose desk the buck stops was nowhere in sight:
Gov. Snyder himself is, perhaps, the most central character in this entire fiasco. It is HIS policy of Emergency Management that brought us here.
It is HIS personally-appointed Emergency Managers that executed his austerity policies in hard-hit urban centers which led to the poisoning of Flint’s drinking water. It was HIS personally-appointed [Dept. of Environmental Quality] director---a man with no qualifications for the job---who headed the department that failed in its responsibility so profoundly.
Gov. Snyder was not present to testify and, in fact, was never invited.
But Republicans aren't the only ones on the committee. As I wrote in C&J yesterday morning, "If ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings (D-MD) is true to form, there will be plenty of squirming going on from the witnesses." And, well, see for yourself:
And so the fiasco continues. Ironically, all thanks to trickle-down economics.
CHEERS to #1. On February 4, 1789, George Washington---whom today's right-wingers would despise because he preferred bowing to shaking hands---clinched the presidency with 69 electoral votes. Upon hearing the news, he said his feelings were "...not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution." His first official act: providing all Americans equal access to quality mattresses at low, low discount prices, a February tradition that lives on to this day.
CHEERS to lame-duck president not following the script. While Nixon talked to the portraits, Reagan took lots of naps and George W. Bush cowered in his bedroom with an Xbox, Barack HUSSEIN Obama is bringin' it all the livelong day during his last year in office. Tuesday he outlined an aggressive legislative agenda with slackers Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, including a new authorization of force against ISIS and cancer (synonyms in my book) and criminal justice reform. And yesterday he paid his first visit to a mosque as president:
"Muslim Americans keep us safe," Obama told the audience, crediting the contributions Muslims have made to communities. They are our police. They are our fire fighters. They're in (the Department of) Homeland Security."
At the Islamic Society of Baltimore, a 47-year-old mosque with thousands of attendees, Obama heralded the contributions of Muslims to American society while issuing a forceful counterpoint to the language favored by some Republican presidential candidates like Donald Trump, according to White House officials.
"We've seen an alarming willingness on the part of some Republicans to try to marginalize law-abiding, patriotic Muslim Americans," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Tuesday. "It's just offensive to a lot of Americans who recognize that those kinds of cynical political tactics run directly contrary to the values that we hold dear in this country. And I think the President is looking forward to the opportunity to make that point."
Obama has visited mosques in the past, but never inside the United States, which is home to 2.75 million Muslims, according to the Pew Research Center.
Today he'll make the Christian panderers in the Republican party squirm at the National Prayer Breakfast by speaking some uncomfortable truths. (Watch for Sarah Palin to toss a jumbo bowl of derp salad.) Then he'll welcome the 2015 NBA champion Golden State Warriors to the White House by going one-against-seven on the court and crushing them 78-24. In wingtips. But not with his eyes closed as that would be ostentatious.
CHEERS to the gift that just kept on giving. Happy birthday to former Vice President Dan Quayle, who turns 69 today. He certainly wasn't an evil vice president like Dick Cheney, but I still want to see him tried in the International Criminal Court for torturing the English language:
“If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure.”
“One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice-president, and that one word is 'to be prepared.'”
“What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.”
"I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future."
"[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system."
"A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls."
You’re still no Jack Kennedy, Dan. But you're also not your idiot son who said in a campaign ad that Barack Obama was the worst president in history and then got booted after one sorry-ass term in Congress. So for today only---in honor of the occasion and for all the laughter ya brung us---we'll let potato have an e.
JEERS to self-Rickrolling. Looks like we won’t have Google Santorum to kick around anymore, now that he's officially leaving the 2016 campaign trail after losing in Iowa Monday night. His announcement comes a day after fellow holy roller (but with a much keener sense of the grifter's art) Mike Huckabee informed a grateful nation that he, too, will never sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office after losing in Iowa Monday night. But lest we forget, Huckabee won Iowa in 2008. Santorum won Iowa in 2012. And right about now 2016 Iowa winner Ted Cruz is ever-so-briefly wiping that smirk off his face.
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Ten years ago in C&J: February 4, 2006
YAWN to the Oscar nominations. The big surprise is...no surprises. But kudos to Paul "Cinderella Man" Giamatti for snagging his first nod (after getting robbed two years in a row for American Splendor and Sideways), and my main man John Williams with two Best Score nominations for Munich and Memoirs of a Geisha---his 44th and 45th. (But no fair acting all cocky `til ya hit 50, Maestro.) [2/4/16 Update: Ten years later, Williams got his 50th nomination for his score---a bona fide masterpiece---to Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens. But he refuses to act all cocky about it, preferring humility instead. He’s a Democrat.]
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And just one more…
JEERS to catcalls from the pigsty. Manly man Bob Woodward, furrowing his brow to reflect the Very Serious Nature of his manly mind, reached deep into his mental man cave and pronounced Hillary Clinton irritating because---in his totally no-misogynist opinion---"she shouts." So I'll just leave this here, courtesy of Correct the Record:
Stay tuned today as Bob Woodward laments the demise of the hoop skirt. Goddam country’s goin’ to hell.
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:
Ted Cruz Welcomes Endorsement Of Mike Bickle, Who Believes Bill in Portland Maine Is A Forerunner To The Antichrist
---Right Wing Watch
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