Cheers and Jeers is a keto-friendly weekday post from the great state of Maine.
Late Night Snark: Let ‘er Rrrrrrrrrip Edition
"After President Trump gave his State of the Union address, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore it in half. Then Melania said, 'Great—now do my prenup.'"
—Conan O'Brien
"[Fox News is right], my friends. When Nancy Pelosi tore up a copy of Trump's speech, she wasn't just ripping up a speech. She was ripping up the memory of the people in that speech. Those people are gone now. That's how paper works. Like one time I was at dinner and the waiter ripped up my receipt, and then I was hungry again."
—Trevor Noah
There’s more down in the enchanted grotto.
"Minority leader Chuck Schumer said that from here on, Trump's presidency will always have an asterisk next to it. And Lindsey Graham will be there to kiss that asterisk at all times."
—Jimmy Kimmel
"[Senator Susan Collins] now says she probably shouldn't have said she 'believes' President Trump has learned his lessons from the fallout from his dealings with Ukraine and impeachment. She now says a better word would've been 'hopes.' Yes, and a better word than 'Senator' Susan Collins would be 'Former' Senator Susan Collins."
—Stephen Colbert
"In a new book, John Bolton claims that last August President Trump told him directly that he was holding up aid to Ukraine until they investigate the Bidens. Hey, guys, what's up with the books? When there's an emergency, just tell us right away. If your friend's about to get murdered, you don't go off and write a novel called The Killer Behind You."
—Colin Jost, SNL
"The Palestinian president has rejected Trump's Middle East peace plan, saying 'a thousand noes’ to the deal. Incidentally, a thousand noes is what Trump calls consent."
—Michael Che, SNL
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Cheers and Jeers for Friday, February 7, 2020
Note: A quick heads-up that there will be no C&J on Monday as I'll be recovering from the trauma of knowing that the Betelgeuse star exploded, killing us all (and the squirrels). See you Tuesday in the afterlife, which unfortunately is a perfectly-synchronized carbon copy of this one.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Mardi Gras: 18
Days 'til the Festival of Dark Arts in Astoria, Oregon: 8
Reduction in the number of U.S. drug overdose deaths in 2018, the first drop in 28 years, according to the CDC: 3,000
Percent chance that the Unicode Consortium approved a transgender pride flag and several gender-neutral face emojis for 2020: 100%
Amount of Exxon Mobil's market valuation that's evaporated since its 2014 peak: $184 billion
Current number of Disney+ subscribers: 28.6 million
Cost of the ice cream-making class Ben and Jerry took before they launched their empire out of a gas station: $5
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Weekend manscaping…
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CHEERS to Manchester melee!!! Can you say bladder buster? That's right, kids, tonight there’s another Democratic primary debate, this time in the great state of New Hampshire. In honor of the late Kirk Douglas, Biden, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Yang, Klobuchar, and Steyer will dress in animal skins (sorry, PETA) and be given their choice of a sword, a trident, or a net with which to take down their opponents in a circular arena with no exits at St. Anselm College. According to the press materials, four moderators will ask the candidates "questions on the minds of the voters." We got a sneak peek at a few of them in advance:
» Do you know who won Iowa yet?
» Is it fair that those lying, cheating bastards up in Dixville Notch---[P'tooey!]---should get to vote next Tuesday at midnight before'n the rest of us? Hiram still ain't returned my lawnmower and he took it in '78.
» Did you know Franklin Pierce is buried up the road apiece? Cuz he is. They don’t call me Trivia Bob for nothin', ya know.
» Could one of you moderators ask the candidates a question about the climate crisis that's turning our planet into a giant polluted fireball of doom? No? Oh, okay. I'll sit down and quietly seethe, then.
» Yes, my question is for Deez Nuts. Mr. Nuts, I would like to know….. What do you mean he didn’t qualify? Rigged!
» In the 30 seconds allotted to you, can you please explain your health care plan line by line, including costs, revenue adjustments, offsets, restrictions, add-ons, buy-ins, fiduciaries, economic impacts, and all the other minutia Republicans never, ever have to reveal?
» Can you stop talking for a few minutes? I need to go grab some more cheesy fries and I don’t want to miss anything.
» What…the…actual…f*ck…is going on?
Yeah. I’d definitely like an answer to that last one. My cheesy fries just disappeared.
JEERS to pissing down our back and calling it God's plan. By way of the Joe.My.God. blog comes this gem from Trump cultist Christopher Harris, director of some uninformed grifter outfit called Unhyphenated America. Seems ol' Chris is thrilled with the outcome of Trump's sham impeachment trial. How thrilled? Tingle up the leg thrilled:
"It’s a great day. Listen, I would argue that it’s probably three of the greatest years since maybe Jesus walked the Earth with his ministry."
So, to recap: the Trump presidency has taken us back to a time when humans walked the earth on roads made of equal parts mud, piss and shit, among disease-ridden ignoramuses wearing filthy rags who lived in leaky, rodent-infested huts to the ripe old age of 30 under the thumb of gluttonous dictatorial tyrants who worked them like dogs and grossly underpaid them, if they paid them at all. Yup. That sounds about right.
CHEERS to Tippeca...ca...cachoo! Happy 247th birthday Sunday to "#9" William Henry "Tippecanoe" Harrison. During his nearly two-hour inaugural address (sans overcoat), he pledged not to run for a second term and, in one of the fastest fulfillments of a campaign promise ever, caught pneumonia and died 32 days later, but not before being plied with enough ipecac, opium, castor oil, calomel, camphor and brandy to kill a small army. But he did have a lasting effect on our electoral process. From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien:
[I]f Harrison was no dream candidate, his campaign for president was one of the most important in American history.
Before 1840, active campaigning for office was considered about as crass as writing a blurb for your own book.
Candidates were supposed to maintain an air of ambivalence while others did their stumping for them.
Harrison changed all that by personally jumping into the fray with earnest, smiling enthusiasm, and his Whig party cohorts turned the campaign into a circus.
They dismissed opponent Martin Van Buren as a snob and a dandy, claiming their boy Harrison was the real man of the people. There were parties, bands, garish banners. It worked.
The Whigs only fielded two winning candidates (Zachary Taylor was the other), and neither could finish their first term without a visit from the grim reaper. But, hey—they did throw great parties.
CHEERS and farewell to Kirk Douglas. You can't say he didn’t live a full and long life, but the world still seems a little less hospitable today without the cinema legend, whose films are responsible for the disappearance of approximately—[clickety clackety clack]—149.3 pounds of popcorn into my belly. The star of too many classics to name, and rock-ribbed Democrat, was 103 when he died Wednesday. Along with his film career, he stuck his neck out against the Trumpian orcs of his day:
Douglas was responsible for helping to break Hollywood's infamous blacklist at the height of Cold War paranoia when he was instrumental in hiring and crediting the legendary screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, a member of the so-called Hollywood Ten, for his work on "Spartacus."
He was also a committed philanthropist.
"I've known Kirk Douglas personally and appreciate his friendship," President Jimmy Carter said as he awarded Douglas the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 1981. "But more than that, I have known how dedicated he is to using his talent as an actor and a director and the esteem with which he's held by his own people in spreading the good news about this country and explaining our purposes, our ideals, our commitments and our achievements, our hopes and our dreams to people around the world."
Following a small private funeral, he was buried in his chin dimple.
CHEERS to construer constriction. On February 7, 1795 the Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. It says:
"The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another State, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state."
Sadly, they failed to include "or by aliens from another planet," leading to the unexpected annexation of Texas by the Emperor Glarb of the Xxxxorpp Nebula. Whoops! (But I have to admit Louie Gohmert looks downright regal in his viceroy sash.)
CHEERS to home vegetation. If it's Friday, the boob tube must be singing its siren song. As we mentioned above, a septet of fine and civil Democratic candidates will smash each other over the head with their flaming debate lecterns tonight in Manchester (8ET, ABC), Or you can catch up on the latest news dumps with Chris, Rachel, and Lawrence Maddow on MSNBC.
Tonight on HBO's Real Time, Bill Maher talks with Ezra Klein, Mayor Andrew Gillum, Fareed Zakaria, human barnacle Steve Bannon, and Sarah Isgur. New home video releases include Dr. Sleep (Stephen King's sequel to The Shining, with Ewan McGregor) and the dream pairing of Helen Mirren and Ian McKellen in The Good Liar. The NBA schedule is here and the NHL schedule is here. SNL is must-see this weekend with dream host RuPaul and musical guest Justin Bieber, who will no doubt put his legit comedy chops to good use.
And Sunday night on ABC the least-suspenseful Oscars in history will air, hostless again (which actually worked out pretty well last year). I'll spare you the suspense. Best Picture and Director: 1917. Best Actor: the Joker guy. Best Actress: the uncanny Judy Garland clone. Best Supporting Actor: the Once Upon A Time in Hollywood stunt double. Best Supporting Actress: the Marriage Story divorce lawyer. Buy ya Sony Pictures if I’m wrong.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Mayor Pete. Bernie.
This Week: TBA
Face the Nation: Bernie. Mayor Pete. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-The Cult); Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai.
CNN's State of the Union: TBA
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Mayor Pete.
Happy viewing.
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Ten years ago in C&J: February 7, 2010
CHEERS to mess management. U.S. General "Flat" Stanley McChrystal says things are looking a bit better in Afghanistan, although he admits he's "not prepared to say we've turned a corner." When asked if he was prepared to say that we've rounded the bend, seen light at the end of the tunnel, crossed a bridge, reached a plateau, shifted into high gear, achieved liftoff, blazed a trail, opened a door, forged a path, laid down tracks, left the dock, or skipped to our Lou, he gave us a Three Stooges eye poke. Impressive reach.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the Energizer Maestro. Woo-hoo! It's time for our annual "Happy Birthday" salute to 25-time Grammy winner, 5-time Oscar winner, 3-time Emmy winner, Kennedy Center honoree, Lifetime Contribution to Hollywood Award winner and rock-ribbed dirty fucking hippie union-loving Democrat John Williams. He is hands-down my favorite composer, and he's widely considered America's greatest living composer period. Over a span of 60 years he's given us:
» One iconic theme for NBC Nightly News and another for Meet the Press
» One Kirk Douglas movie (The Fury)
» One score for an Oscar-winning animated short based on the late NBA star Kobe Bryant's poem Dear Basketball
» Two Jaws scores
» Two Jurassic Park scores.
» Two themes and one episode score for Land of the Giants
» Three Oliver Stone films (Born on the 4th of July, JFK,Nixon)
» Three iconic disaster flicks (Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake,Towering Inferno)
» Three Harry Potter scores
» Four Indiana Jones scores
» Five themes for various Olympic Games
» Nine Star Wars scores—a 42-year magnum opus d'cinema thatwill never be equaled
» 20 scores for episodes of Gilligan's Island
» 28 scores for Steven Spielberg movies
» And, yes, a disco version of his theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind that he regrets recording but it was a Top 40 hit and it’s actually pretty catchy.
He's also composed music involving a gaggle of American presidents: John F. Kennedy (JFK), John Quincy Adams/Martin Van Buren (Amistad), Tricky Dick (Nixon, The Post), Lincoln (Lincoln), and Obama (a piece for the first inauguration, in which he expressed "in a very simple and not ostentatious way the solemnity and beauty of the moment and the promise of the moment"). Also: Queen Elizabeth II (in The BFG).
Now the million-dollar question: can you imagine Star Wars without Williams’ iconic music? The Auralnauts did, and it’s just not quite the same…
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As this…
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After capturing Vienna's heart last month by conducting two sold-out concerts there (with two more scheduled in Chicago and Pittsburgh—sold out within seconds, of course), he's currently pondering his next project, with no intention of retiring. Happy 88th birthday, John. Only 12 more years and we'll let you retire.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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