From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: Torpedoing the Trump Crime Family Edition
"Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison for multiple counts of tax evasion and for paying Trump's mistresses to keep them quiet during the campaign, which is a violation. The big question, of course, is whether Trump himself knew about and directed those illegal payments. And the big answer to that question is: Duh."
---Jimmy Kimmel
"Before Cohen climbed up onto the prison bus, he made sure to throw Trump under it, telling the court: 'Recently, the president tweeted a statement calling me weak, and he was correct, but for a much different reason than he was implying. It was because time and time again I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds.’ And evidently you suck at it."
---Stephen Colbert
"Cohen said, 'It could have been worse, I could have been sentenced to be White House chief of staff.'"
---Jimmy Fallon
"I think, going forward, everyone working for Donald Trump should just be read their Miranda rights on their first day. They should be like, 'OK, here's your desk, coffee’s in the kitchen, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law, and Fridays are jeans days.'"
---Trevor Noah
"Trump got into an argument with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi on camera today. Then, as usual, he tried offering them $130,000 to be quiet."
---Seth Meyers
"Fox News has birthed 'Fox Nation.' … The New York Times describes Fox Nation as 'Netflix for conservatives,' which means it's for people who like Netflix, but wish its World War II documentaries weren't so mean to the Nazis."
---Samantha Bee
And this holiday classic from 2013…
Clip of Fox News host Megyn Kelly: For all you kids watching at home, Santa just is white.
Jon Stewart: Santa is just white? Who are you actually talking to---children who are sophisticated enough to be watching a news channel at 10 o'clock at night, yet innocent enough to still believe Santa Claus is real, yet racist enough to be freaked out if he isn’t white?"
C’mon down and set a spell. Tonight we’ve got human monster Kirijtsjstjen Nielsen sitting in our figgy pudding dunk tank---and it’s a 20-foot drop. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, December 14, 2018
Note: But enough about you…let's talk about me. Me me me me me. Little old me is getting another infusion of fabulous sparkling chemotherapy champagne on Monday, so that will affect our C&J posting a bit. We'll be here Monday morning as usual, then return in all likelihood on Wednesday, and definitely show up on Thursday and Friday. In our absence, please lean on the caregivers in the Abbreviated Pundit Roundup, the Good News Roundup, and the Daily Kos Elections Roundup. Then round up the usual suspects and throw them in jail for allowing gambling in this establishment. The nerve. ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Martin Luther King Jr. Day: 38
Days 'til the San Francisco Tape Music Festival: 21
Number of residential and commercial property insurance claims, respectively, from the most recent California wildfires: 28,000 / 2,000
Total value of those claims: $9 billion
Number of real and artificial War on Christmas trees sold last year, respectively: 27 million / 21 million
Speed at which the Australian Dracula ant can move its pincers, making it the fastest animal movement on earth if you don’t count how fast Paul Ryan can steal candy from a baby: 0.000015 seconds
Cost of securing all of the gifts in The Twelve Days of Christmas this year, up $450 from last year according to the annual PNC Wealth Management Index: $39,094.93
Number of Beatles who never wrote or recorded a song specifically about Christmas: 1 (George Harrison)
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Dinnertime for a pup and a pup….
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JEERS to premature cut-offiness. After slashing the enrollment period in half, tomorrow is, for most states, the last day to sign up for a 2019 Obamacare health plan in time to start coverage on January 1st. You only have mere hours left! Here, let me hit you over the head one more time with a flashy graphic I paid one million dollars to commission (rest assured the electricity is provided in an environmentally-friendly way, with 20% solar, 30% wind, 25% geothermal, and 25% used cooking grease):
I stayed with a basic silver plan, and after consulting with my death panel I decided to add the hospice-care stripper option. It costs a few bucks extra, but I get to pay my monthly premium by slipping dollar bills into their g-strings. What a way to go.
CHEERS to Russian to judgement...or should that be judgement to Russian? As of yesterday it became official in court: an agent working for the Kremlin pleaded guilty to hypnotizing the weak-minded rubes in the NRA and other Republican political circles so special favors---like the easing of sanctions---could be secured on behalf of Mother Russia. But instead of going to her grave with her secrets intact, she's spilling the beans to her American prosecutors. And that's really bad news for the GOP:
"Butina sought to establish unofficial lines of communication with Americans having power and influence over US politics," prosecutors said. […]
It described her plan to become an unofficial conduit of communication between Russia and the US, especially through the Republican Party, at a time when the two governments were less willing to negotiate formally. She had also planned to use $125,000 from a Russian billionaire to attend conferences associated with the GOP---particularly the NRA, which she believed "had influence over" the Republican Party, she admitted.
Butina agreed to turn over any evidence of crimes she is aware of, submit a full accounting of her financial assets, sit for interviews with law enforcement (and waive right to counsel during those interviews) and testify before grand juries or in trials in Washington or elsewhere.
Nobody topped former Stoneman Douglas student and March for Our Lives organizer (and, we have no doubt, future congressman) David Hogg's rhetorical beanball:
We should send them flowers. Would black roses be too subtle?
CHEERS to the reason why coffee replaced tea as our national go-to hot drink. Don't forget to throw a few bags of Earl Grey into the ol' wood chipper Sunday, the 245th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. That was the day in 1773 when rebellious colonists went all tiki-torchy and dumped a few hundred chests of tea into Boston Harbor.
They actually botched it at first because they woke up the next morning to find the chests floating around intact, so they had to row out and bust 'em open so no one could recover them. (D'oh!) It was a brazen act of defiance against the British Crown for imposing taxation without representation. Which is exactly what the modern-day "tea party"---i.e. the Republican party---is all about, plus racism, secessionism, misogyny, Islamophobia, homophobia, and making the rich as comfortable as possible...but minus the taxation without representation part since they do have taxation with representation. (Hint: they're called "representatives.")
CHEERS to…I can't believe I'm saying this…a Trump judge! Do not adjust your set, that's not a misprint. A judge appointed by Donald Trump just shot down smarmy Republican Rep. Bruce Poliquin's attempt to have the nation's first ranked-choice election---up here in Maine's 2nd District---declared null and void:
U.S. District Court Judge Lance Walker ruled that, contrary to the arguments of Poliquin’s legal team, the U.S. Constitution does not require that congressional elections be decided by “a plurality” of votes. Instead, Walker wrote that the Constitution grants states discretion to decide how to run elections, including whether to require the type of runoff elections triggered by Maine’s ranked-choice voting law. […]
Democratic challenger Jared Golden emerged the victor in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District race last month, defeating the two-term Republican by roughly 3,500 votes following a tabulation of voters’ ranked-choice ballots. […]
“The Court in no uncertain terms and with no contingencies or cautions ruled today that the people of Maine have a right to choose the way we elect our leaders,” said Cara Brown McCormick, the [Committee for Ranked Choice Voting's] treasurer. “With this historic ruling, we predict that Ranked Choice Voting will sweep the nation.”
Yes. But only after we get done raking all the forest floors first. Priorities, people.
CHEERS to “Moscow Maggie.” Happy 121st birthday to Maine's own Margaret Chase Smith. She was the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House and Senate, and she reserved some choice not-so-nice words for Senator Joseph McCarthy (who responded by giving her the aforementioned nickname). And get a load of this from 1950, which would no doubt get her smeared by The White House and Fox News as a traitor today:
"I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny---Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear.
I doubt if the Republican Party could---simply because I don't believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans aren't that desperate for victory.
I don't want to see the Republican Party win that way. While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican Party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people.
Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican Party and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one party system."
Yeah. They'd be crazy to try that. And don’t call me Shirley.
JEERS to missing 1800 by 18 days. He came this close. On December 14, 1799, George Washington died at age 67 (which, if I remember correctly, was actually quite old, relatively speaking, given how many of his relatives died at a younger age). He caught a cold during a horseback ride in the rain, but forensic historians suspect that the real reason he expired was the 300-pound leech doctors attached to him to drain his "tired" blood. I read in the book His Excellency by Joseph Ellis (highly recommended) that the last thing Washington did before he died was check his own pulse. Which probably explains his last words:"Oh, that ain't good."
CHEERS to home vegetation. Sure, the world's crumbling around us…but at least we've got the magic talking picture box to make things better, so cheer up, Bucky!
The evening starts out the usual way, with Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow delivering the latest horribleness from Trump World…or you can catch the I Love Lucy War on Christmas Special on CBS. New home video releases include absolutely nothing notable (beyond the Criterion Blu-Ray release of Some Like It Hot), but maybe you'll find something decent here. The NBA schedule is here, the NFL schedule is here (hopefully the Patriots will remember to bring their defense with them to Pittsburgh this week), and the NHL schedule is here. Matt Damon, who absolutely nailed Brett Kavanaugh earlier in the season, hosts SNL. On 60 Minutes: a novel way to clean up the disgusting Pacific plastic garbage patch that’s killing wildlife left and right, and a guy who successfully took on the tobacco industry goes after Big Pharma’s opiod producers. And the weekend wraps up with an epic duel between the Miss Universe Pageant (thankfully not live from Moscow) on Fox and The Sound of Music on ABC. Billy's pro tip: never bet against Julie Andrews---never.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Rep. and soon-to-be-Intelligence-Committee-Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA); Sen. Roy “Roll Me Up A” Blunt (R-MO); the most recent HUD secretary with a functioning brain (which is weird considering Ben Carson is a brain surgeon) Julian Castro; the great Eugene Robinson is on the pundit panel.
This Week: TBA
Face the Nation: Sen. Amy Klobuchar; Senior White House Nazi adviser Stephen Miller; Michael Cohen’s former lawyer Lanny Davis. Damn...I hope Amy remembers to take her anti-cootie spray.
CNN's State of the Union: Rep. and soon-to-be-Oversight-Committee-Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD); Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) on her plans after she gets shellacked in 2020.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Bill Gates and Rudy Giuliani. Guess which one will make Twitter explode Sunday morning? G’head...guess.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 14, 2008
CHEERS to the best parting shot ever. President Bush couldn’t leave well enough alone---he just had to swoop into Baghdad one more time to prove that the country is still so unstable that he can only arrive under super-secret cover. Well, this time he got a surprise. An Iraqi reporter delivered a message on behalf of the planet's collective human, animal and flora populations:
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As he threw his shoes at Commander Codpiece, Muntadhar al-Zaidi shouted: "This is a farewell kiss, you dog!” But what was really telling was this: the Secret Service agents, who normally are trained to take a bullet for the president, weren't even willing to take a shoe for this one. Back to your bubble, boy!
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And just one more...
CHEERS to the brittle parchment of freedom. 227 years ago tomorrow, on December 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights was ratified. Let's take a moment for our annual review of The Precious:
I You can say anything you want except "Fire!" falsely in a crowded theater or "Donald Trump will one day win a legitimate honorary degree, award, or Medal of Freedom" seriously in a crowded room of people with functioning brains; You can peaceably assemble in public spaces to call out the government when it's acting badly, but we reserve the right to pepper-spray you in the face, zip-tie your hands behind your back and haul your ass off to jail if we feel like it; The press has the freedom to treat the statements and policies of the left and the right as equally valid because we know you gotta sell papers and achieve your daily clickbait goals.
Bonus 1st Amendment right: The United States is technically neutral on religion, except for prayers in Congress, and invocations at inaugurations, and language in proclamations, and at the end of political speeches, and during the Pledge of Allegiance, and in assorted draft legislation, and on your money, and...oh, never mind.
II This amendment is the reason why this document is shielded by six-inch-thick glass.
III You don’t have to let soldiers in your house. But police dressed like Seal Team Six can drive up in a surplus tank and bust down your door any old time.
IV Prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures of your person, house, papers, and effects without a warrant. However, if one or more agents of the government slips on a banana peel and accidentally searches and seizes everything in sight to keep from falling down, well, c'mon, give 'em a break.
V The amendment to invoke when your lawyer knows you're in deep doo-doo.
VI You have a right to a trial by a jury of your peers. Also called the Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid amendment.
VII You have the the right to punch anyone in the face who blurts out a spoiler from a Star Wars movie you haven’t seen yet.
VIII Whoever authorizes the use of cruel or unusual punishment---like, say, waterboarding---is going straight to H-E-double-toothpicks.
IX You have a lot more rights than these ten, but Jefferson lost the master list and we're kinda scrambling here at the last minute. So sue us. No, seriously. Use this amendment to sue us.
X States don’t gotta do nuthin' if they don't wanna, and if you don’t agree then we're gonna secede. Also known as the Sore Loser amendment and the official motto of Texas.
If you want to see the Bill of Rights in person, it's currently being used as a doormat in front of the Oval Office.
Have a nice weekend, and please keep our dear friend and C&J splasher JBL55 in your thoughts. Fucking cancer. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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