From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: Mueller Time Edition
"Robert Mueller testified for like 25 hours today—a double-header with the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees. I was up early this morning watching with my kids, and I think they learned a lot. I asked my five-year-old if she was ready for school this morning, and she said it was outside her purview and referred me to the report."
—Jimmy Kimmel
Clip of Mueller: I've been in this business for 25 years, and in 25 years I've not had occasion once to ask [my staff’s] political affiliation. What I care about is the capability of the individual to do the job quickly, seriously, and with integrity.
Stephen Colbert: Cares about people doing their jobs quickly, seriously, and with integrity. He just admitted he's biased against Donald Trump!
—The Late Show
"Donald Trump pressured James Comey to drop an investigation into Michael Flynn's ties to Russia and then fired him after he refused. Trump pressured his cronies not to give information on him and ordered that Mueller himself be fired. It's hard to see how that's not obstruction. You have everything you need to decide the question, 'Should Donald Trump be impeached?' And the answer is: Yes! Yes, you should! We don’t need to force the world's grumpiest law daddy to read between the lines of his report, when you can just read the lines."
—Samantha Bee
"In a new interview, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dismissed Republican speculation about her health, saying: 'There was a senator who announced with great glee that I was going to be dead within six months. That senator, whose name I've forgotten, is now himself dead and I am very much alive.’ And that's how we learned RBG one time killed a guy."
—Seth Meyers
"You have a clown as president, and now we have a clown as prime minister. Anything you can do, we can do just as stupidly."
—British actor Jamie Bell on The Late Show
C’mon down and splash. We survived another week. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, July 26, 2019
Note: Tonight's entertainment is being provided by the Alpine horn stylings of Hans Stahlenclaws and the Death Metal Cloggers. For your own safety, please give them a wide berth. A very wide berth.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Star wars Episode IX—The Rise of Skywalker From His Amazing New Jedi Lift Chair: 146
Days 'til the Montana State Fair in Great Falls: 0!!!
Percent of voters who believe the Trump rally's "send her back" chant is offensive, according to a new Morning Consult poll: 67%
Percent of voters who believe Trump is racist, up from 48% in January: 54%
Number of actual government-ordered raids in over a dozen cities last week, versus the 2,100 originally targeted by ICE: 35
Portion of Mainers who receive food stamp assistance, to which Trump wants to make severe cuts: 1-in-8
Percent chance that some Nickelodeon slime went up to the International Space Station along with 5,500 pounds of experiments and supplies yesterday: 100%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Me in a few hours...
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JEERS to grift-grift-griftin' along. The Trump family's in legal hot water AGAIN??? I know you'll think this sounds crazy, given that the religious right claims they're church-goin' folk personally anointed to lead our nation by Jesus Christ himself, but I'm starting to sense a pattern that suggests the great anointer is just the devil wearing a rubber JC mask:
President Donald Trump, his company and three of his children must face a class-action lawsuit in which people claim they were scammed into spending money on fraudulent, multilevel marketing ventures and a dubious live-seminar program.
U.S.District Judge Lorna Schofield in Manhattan ruled Wednesday that the case can go forward with claims of fraud, unfair competition, and deceptive trade practices. The decision likely opens the door for the plaintiffs to start gathering evidence from Trump and his company, including documents and testimony. […]
A group of four people claims the Trumps ripped off thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs by promoting two bogus multilevel marketing ventures and the live-seminar program that promised to teach Trump’s “secrets to success” in real estate. They’re seeking to sue on behalf of a nationwide class of people they claim were also cheated.
The plaintiffs first grew suspicious when they saw the words "Trump" and "Success" in the same sentence.
CHEERS to clearing the air. Like Pickett's disastrous charge at Gettysburg, the Republican party's hail-Mary attempt to save the coal industry is being cut down left and right by a withering hail of progress. For instance, this week we learned that wind energy in Texas surpassed coal energy for the first time in its history. And up in the cradle of east coast elitism, a major polluter is cleaning up its act:
PSEG has relied on fossil fuels to keep the lights on for the past 116 years. Now, New Jersey's largest and oldest power company is pledging to deliver carbon-free electricity to fight climate change.
The $30 billion utility provider announced Thursday that it's on track to slash carbon emissions by 80% by 2046, compared with 2005 levels. And PSEG, which also serves more than a million customers on Long Island, is setting an ambitious goal of getting down to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. To get there, the power company is shutting down its coal plants, betting big on offshore wind and working hard to keep its existing nuclear plant alive. […]
Last month, PSEG announced an agreement to sell its stake in a pair of coal plants in western Pennsylvania. The company plans to shut its final coal-powered unit, located in Connecticut, within 18 months.
Just one teensy-weensy little snag: we apparently only have 18 months to fix everything or the planet is doomed. So better make that 17 months and 29 days, PSEG.
CHEERS to the end of the end. It was all over for Tricky Dick 45 years ago tomorrow, thanks to a 27-11 vote by the House Judiciary Committee to adopt the first of three articles of impeachment against President Nixon who, said ABC News's Tom Jarrell at the time, was "presumably still in his swim trunks" while on vacation in California when he heard the news. Meanwhile, then-Vice President Gerald Ford just couldn’t help but play a little game of up-is-downism:
Ford: It's interesting that every Democrat on the committee—north and south—voted for the article. ... It tends to make it a partisan issue.
Reporter: Even if one-third of Republicans voted for it?
Ford: Well, the fact that every one of the Democrats voted for it, I think, uh, lends credence that it's a partisan issue, even though some Republicans have deviated.
...said the Republican who later unilaterally exonerated the Republican crook with a pardon. But, hey, what's a little hypocrisy among friends?
CHEERS to great moments in stinkola. A rare "corpse flower"—aka Amorphophallus titanium aka “Scentennial”—bloomed this week at the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California. You can click on a livestream link here. There's a method to its malodorousness, according to How Stuff Works:
Why does the corpse flower smell so terrible? To attract insects of course.
Because Titan Arum plants are located so far apart from one another and bloom so infrequently, they need to attract as much insect attention as possible to ensure pollination.
The corpse flower uses its smell to attract sweat bees and beetles looking for a prime location to lay their eggs. By crawling all over the plant, these insects play a vital role in pollinating the Titan Arum.
Put another way, it's like the botanical world's version of a Trump rally. Just not as smelly.
CHEERS to climbing aboard this republic’s crazy train. On July 26, 1788, New York's delegation ratified the U.S. Constitution in Poughkeepsie. But not before there was a brief conversation in the cloak room:
Delegate 1: Are you sure that we should not insist upon inclusion of some kind of balanced budget amendment in here? For the sake of our union and in the spirit of shared sacrifice, so that nothing is left on or off the table and we may all partake in the bounty of such a grand bargain?
Delegate 2: What, are you nuts? That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard. No one will ever be so stupid as to try and put that insanity into the Constitution! Whoever makes the attempt is dumb. Dumb, I tell you. Dumb dumb dumb dumb, dumbeth and dumber!
Delegate 1: So, uh, would this be a bad time, then, to bring up amendments banning flag-burning and gay marriage?
Delegate 2: Lay off the grog, kid. You're startin' to weird me out.
After ratification they celebrated by overturning a bunch of carriages in Jersey.
P.S. For old time’s sake…
CHEERS to home vegetation. The entertainment industry is here to entertain you, and here’s some of the wowee zowee excitement on the tube this weekend, starting tonight with Chris, Rachel and Lawrence buttoning down the Friday news cycle.
New home video releases include the Hellboy we didn’t need and the Criterion Collection edition of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing we did. The baseball schedule is here. On 60 Minutes: some billionaire dude wants to reform capitalism, robots are trained to clean up after nuclear disasters, and, because the 60 Minutes staff wanted a free vacation (many people are saying), there's a segment on Monaco. And talk about happy surprises: I thought John Oliver was on vacation, but apparently not, so we get a new edition of HBO's last Week Tonight Sunday at 11. If all that doesn’t make you open your window and shout "Wowee Zowee!" I just don’t know what else I can do to make you happy.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA); 2020 candidate and impeachment drum beater Tom Steyer; Sen. Rick Scott (R-Viper Pit).
CNN's State of the Union: Live from Detroit, Michigan, it’s Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm! Wow—it’s a rare Leftypalooza!
This Week: TBA
Face the Nation: TBA
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Granny starver Mick Mulvaney.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: July 26, 2009
JEERS to the 'girthers.' Fox News opens a line of attack on the president's excellent nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Regina Benjamin, by inviting a crooked fitness kook (whose sex-obsessed "anti-gym" was shut down by the IRS this year) to say that, just by looking at her, she's overweight by 50 pounds. Which is quite a coincidence because, just by looking at the people on Fox News, I can tell they're undersmart by 50 IQ points.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to red meat that's not the political kind. On Sunday's date in 1900, reportedly while trying to piss off his vegan neighbor, Louis Lassen invented the humble hamburger in New Haven, Connecticut. Louis' Lunch is still in business and kickin' it old-school:
The beginnings of the hamburger sandwich as we all know it today was really quite simple.
One day in 1900, a gentleman hurriedly walked into Louis' Lunch and told proprietor Louis Lassen he was in a rush and wanted something he could eat on the run. In an instant, Louis placed his own blend of ground steak trimmings between two slices of toast and sent the gentleman on his way. And so, the most recognizable American sandwich was born.
Today, Louis' great grandson, Jeff Lassen, carries on the tradition. The hamburgers have changed little from their historic prototype and remain the specialty of the house. Burgers are made fresh daily; hand-rolled from a proprietary blend of five meat varieties and cooked to order in the original cast-iron grills dating back to 1898. The Lassen family holds firm on their desire not to offer any condiments. The Louis Lunch experience is about the taste and simplicity of a fresh burger grilled to perfection. Cheese, tomato, and onion are the only acceptable garnish.
So happy birthday to the hamburger, for 119 years the quintessential representation of America's diet. And today a high holy holiday among the makers of Lipitor. (And, yes, I would like fries with that.)
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are youcheering and jeering about today?
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