From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Final Answer
As Barack Obama wraps up his eighth year in office, it's time once again for each of us to ask the perennial question: "How will I know if he was a great president…or a broken one?"
I've always said that we, a rabid pack of slovenly partisan bloggers pecking away at our crumb-encrusted keyboards in our Underoos, are in no position to pronounce judgment on the most powerful public figure in the world. It has always been a question best left to a higher power. Better yet, a Very. Serious. Person.
So once again---for our eighth year in a row---we turn to America's grey-templed sage and inventor of the Applebee's salad bar, David Brooks, to provide the wisdom we seek. He set the bar by setting the standard in January 2009, 12 days before Obama took the oath of office for the first time (and 13 days before he took it for the second time because the Chief Justice botched it the first time):
"By this time next year, he'll either be a great president or a broken one."
After pulling the economy out of Bush's ditch (with no help from Republicans) and winning reelection in a landslide in 2012, the president is leaving office atop a wave of major achievements, high approval numbers and consumer optimism---hardly signs of a broken president. So, using Brooks's infallible logic, President Obama is breathing the heady air of greatness along with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and the Roosevelt boys.
As we close the book on our 44th presidency, America offers its humble thanks to David Brooks for sealing his final verdict in the amber of freedom, forever confirming the indisputable greatness of the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, January 19, 2017
Note: We're pleased to announce that today is Bring Your Pet Grizzly Bear and/or Pet Salmon to Cheers and Jeers Day. Have fun and be sure to take lots of pics! ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Women's March on Washington: 2
Days 'til the 5th annual ION Autonomous Snowplow Competition in St. Paul, Minnesota: 7
President-elect Trump's approval rating in the latest CBS News poll: 32%
First year during which the a president-elect's mother attended her son's (James Garfield's) inauguration: 1881
Year in which inaugurations moved from March to January 20: 1941
Number of years the Ringling Bros. Circus was in business before folding its tents: 146
Number of U.S. troops President Obama sent to Poland Saturday: 3,500
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Many citizens of progressive political persuasion are finding that, soulwise, these are trying times.
To be a liberal in the Reagan era---not to mention being a lefty, pinko, comsymp---strikes most of us as damned hard cheese. Duty requires the earnest liberal to spend most of his time on the qui vive for jackbooted fascism, in a state of profound depression over the advance of the military-industrial complex, and down in the dumps over the incurable nincompoopery of a people addicted to The Newlywed Game.
Beloveds, fear not, neither let yourselves despair. Rejoice. I bring you good news. As a lifelong Texas liberal, I have spent the whole of my existence in a political climate well to the right of that being created by Ronald Reagan and his merry zealots. Brethren and sistren, this can not only be endured, it can be laughed at. ... All you need in order to laugh about Reagan is a strong stomach. A tungsten tummy.
---March 1986
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Underdogs!
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CHEERS to the BHO the Merciful. I'm so old I remember when we were all wondering if President Obama was ever going to grant a pardon or commute a sentence. He started out with quite a dry spell. But we needn't have worried. The commutation of Chelsea Manning's prison sentence sucked up all the oxygen Tuesday, but Obama showed the same leniency to 208 others, and also made history:
Obama has now granted more commutations than any president in American history, according to White House Counsel Neil Eggleston.
The number of federal prisoners who have had their sentences commuted during Obama’s presidency totals 1,385 individuals, though many of those who had their sentences shortened will spend several more years behind bars. The latest group includes more than 100 individuals who believed they would die in prison, as they’re serving life sentences, according to the White House.
“We commend President Obama for making history by continuing to grant hundreds of clemencies,” Jessica Jackson Sloan, the national director of #cut50, said in a statement. “Thanks to President Obama’s clemency initiative, more than one thousand people who were given overly harsh sentences during the War on Drugs now have a second chance at freedom.”
There are rumblings that he may add more names to the list today. So please cross your fingers and your toes in the hopes that he includes the bedraggled sap who has languished behind bars for 82 years as dogs and cars and horses and even a battleship passed by his corner window without so much as a glance. Yes, I'm speaking of the man in jail on the Monopoly board:
Parker Brothers will need someone to replace him with. Any objections to Dick Cheney?
CHEERS to gabbin' with the gaggle. President Obama held his last press conference yesterday. Unlike President-elect Trump, he was truthful, respectful, jovial, thoughtful, introspective, and used a certain currently-popular term for bullshit in its correct context:
“I'm talking about voting rights.
The reason that we are the only country among advanced democracies that makes it harder to vote is it traces directly back to Jim Crow and the legacy of slavery. And it became sort of acceptable to restrict the franchise. And that's not who we are. That shouldn’t be who we are. […]
This whole notion of voting fraud is something that has constantly been disproved. This is fake news."
Not to mention fake democracy. But I’m sure Trump will jump right on it.
CHEERS to good spelling. On this date in 1955, three years after Macy's made it a household name in America, Scrabble made its debut in Australia and the UK. The highest scoring word is "sesquioxidizing." My highest-scoring word while sober is "cow.”
JEERS to baking our planet. We knew that 2016 was “among” the warmest on record. Now we have December’s numbers, and we can officially say that the entire year was one for the sweaty record books:
In a powerful testament to the warming of the planet, two leading U.S. science agencies Wednesday jointly declared 2016 the hottest year on record, surpassing the previous record set just last year — which, itself, had topped a record set in 2014.
Average surface temperatures in 2016, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were 0.07 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than 2015, and featured eight successive months (January through August) that were individually the warmest since the agency’s record began in 1880.
The average temperature across the world’s land and ocean surfaces was 58.69 Fahrenheit, or 1.69 degrees above the 20th century average of 57 degrees, NOAA declared. The agency also noted that the record for the global temperature has now successively been broken five times since the year 2000.
To put that in perspective, within a hundred years the planet will become as hot as Sarah Palin’s brain activity when she tries to connect a noun and a verb.
CHEERS to the original "spokes" men---Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! On January 19, 1903, it was announced with great fanfare that the starting gun for a new bicycle race called the "Tour de France" would be fired that July. The grand prize: 3,000 francs and a lifetime supply of butt pillows.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 19, 2007
CHEERS to Democrats at the helm. Nancy Pelosi promised a slate of progressive reforms within the House's first 100 hours...and blew through it (with robust Republican support) in less than half the time. Since you have 58 hours left, come up here and shovel my driveway.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the most beautiful spread of land in the universe. Happy 88th Birthday---aka Acadia Name Day---to Maine's Acadia National Park! Miles and miles of unspoiled and federally protected nature that invites travelers to rest their weary bones and let the soul-replenishing eye candy revive their hopes for a better tomorrow:
Or, as modern-day conservatives say when they visit: "Can we frack now? Huh huh, can we, can we??!!!"
Have a nice Thursday. Remember to breathe. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Bill in Portland Maine's Cheers and Jeers Is TOTAL SHIT SHOW, Let's Laugh At It!
---Wonkette
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