From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE
Oh! More Things I Know...
» The sitting President of the United States still hasn't read the Constitution and doesn't know the words to our national anthem.
» Pence knew. Barr knew. Pompeo knew. They all knew.
» Next time Iowa should go last and New Hampshire should go 49th.
» So far in the new year I've been really good at writing 2019 instead of 2019.
» Democrats reject Republican policy ideas because facts show they don't work. Republicans reject Democratic policy ideas because facts show they do.
» If you're going to straddle both lanes, driver, you should remove the "COEXIST" sticker from your !@*%!!& bumper.
» As of today, the Netroots Nation convention in Denver is only 30 weeks away.
» It's an election year. Under the Biden Rule defended by Mitch McConnell so fiercely that he tore a rotator cuff, that means no vacancies on the Supreme Court can be filled until next year.
» I looked it up in the Bible, and it turns out God really did have strong reservations about low-flow toilets. It's right there in the Book of Kohler.
» My spellchecker put a red squiggly under the word dodecahedron and insisted I change it to rhododendron. I finally agreed. It finally lowered the gun.
» And, as with every previous year, the #1 phrase of 2020 will be: "I swear this is not from The Onion."
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, January 16, 2020
Note: If you wish to return a broken New Year's resolution for a refund or credit toward a future resolution, please take a number and have a seat. Our average wait time this morning is three and a half months. Thanks for your patience. —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Iowa Caucus: 18
Days 'til the 40th Toy Train Show in Utica, New York: 3
Trump's job approval among independents, according to a new Quinnipiac poll, a fatally bad number for him: 35%
Percent by which Trump has blown up the deficit in three years: 68%
Percent support for Biden, Sanders and Warren in North Carolina via new primary polling by PPP: 31%, 18%, 15%
Length of George Washington's 1793 inaugural address, the shortest ever: 135 words
Year during which women were included in an inaugural parade for the first time: 1917
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Contrary to the paranoid fantasists on The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, populists are not motivated by some burning resentment of the rich—we don't spend our lives in an envious funk that someone else is better off than we are. "No skin off my nose" is the general attitude, with others coming in at "Lucky them" or "Good for them."
The problem is that the rich are screwing up our democracy. Less than 0.1 percent of the U.S. population gave 83 percent of all itemized campaign contributions for the 2002 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. According to the Houston Chronicle, just 48 wealthy Texas families provided more than half the campaign funds for the major Republican state candidates this fall.
How dumb do you have to be not to be able to connect the dots here? Law, policy and regulation are consistently shaped to favor the rich over the rest of us, and that, dammit, is not fair, it is not right, it is not the country we want and for which we are asked to sacrifice.
---January, 2003
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Uber for dogs…
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CHEERS to history of the historical kind. Ladies and germs within the sound of my keyboard clickety-clacking, you chose to be alive at a momentous time. Yesterday the Virginia House of Delegates and state Senate voted to be the last domino needing to fall in pursuit of the Equal Rights Amendment. And how cool that there was trans representation during the vote. This is video taken by Delegate Danica Roem—who served her constituents so well that she was easily reelected last fall with 57% of the vote—as she cast her vote and waited for the final tally:
Now all that needs to happen for it to be adopted nationwide is a bunch of misogynist Republican men in positions of power need to do a bunch of non-misogynist stuff to give it their blessing. We might be here awhile. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em.
CHEERS to sunlight: the best disinfectant. But, blech, I feel bad for what that poor sunlight had to disinfect when documents by Giuliani aide Lev Parnas were released by the House Intelligence Committee Tuesday night. I mean, where to start? How about here: Rudy Giuliani, likely at the behest of the President, hired some goons—including Parnas, his insect-eating pal Igor, and some Connecticut GOP congressional candidate with "a dubious mental state" named Robert Hyde…y'know, only the very best people—to stalk U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich because she was getting in the way of Trump's secret campaign to get dirt on Joe Biden in the hopes of rigging the 2020 election. Also this:
[T]he documents make clear that Giuliani told the Ukrainians he was acting at Trump’s behest. He wrote a letter to Zelensky dated May 10, 2019, while Zelensky was still president-elect and shortly before he was inaugurated, asking for a meeting.
“In my capacity as personal counsel to President Trump and with his knowledge and consent, I request a meeting with you,” Giuliani wrote.
Giuliani did not explain what the meeting was about—but the letter’s date is one day after Giuliani told the New York Times he would soon be traveling to Kyiv to try to get the Ukrainian government to investigate the Bidens and supposed Ukraine interference in the 2016 election.
Just more proof, as if we needed any, that anyone in Trump's orbit is also part of his crime syndicate. But, on the bright side, it's also proof that loyalty to him is often paper-thin, and not even the mighty AG Bill Barr can prevent henchmen down the chain-of-command from flipping. This should make for a very interesting Senate trial.
CHEERS to a very interesting Senate trial. The House voted yesterday to send the twin articles of impeachment over to the upper chamber, but not before announcing who the Democratic trial managers will be when Chief Justice John Roberts drops the gavel next Tuesday morning:
The managers are: Reps. Adam Schiff of California, Jerry Nadler of New York, Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Jason Crow of Colorado, Zoe Lofgren of California, Val Demings of Florida, and Sylvia Garcia of Texas.
The managers have varied biographies: Schiff was a federal prosecutor, Demings was a police chief, several were litigators in private practice, and Lofgren was a staffer on the House Judiciary Committee during the Nixon impeachment and a House member during the Clinton impeachment.
The trial is set to begin on Tuesday; it’s not yet clear if witnesses will be called.
The Republicans, meanwhile, announced their seven trial managers: Grumpy, Dopey, Shouty, Wheezy, Creepy, Spiteful and an ACME 2000 document shredder.
P.S. Someone’s in trouble…
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JEERS to messing with The Precious. On January 16, 1919, the tenacious temperance twits in Wyoming became the last ones necessary to ratify Prohibition, which went into effect on January 16, 1920...in the name, of course, of Jeeeeeezus. As a lapsed Episcopalian, I’d like to apologize for this on behalf of all my brethren and sistren:
Many Prohibition groups, called “dries”, were church-based, mainly Protestant denominations.
The anti-Prohibition groups, or “wets”, tended to be mostly Roman Catholic, Episcopalian and Lutherans from Germany. Both major political parties had wet and dry factions.
[W]hen Congress convened in January, 1917, the mandate was clear: regardless of party, dries outnumbered wets in Congress by 2-to-1.
The result: a huge spike in organized crime. The stock market crash of 1929 led to the eventual repeal of the 18th amendment on the premise that reviving the legit liquor industry would create jobs. So you might say that in a weird way the banksters toppled the gangsters. (Although, like today, it took authorities awhile to figure out who was who.)
CHEERS to today's edition of Ouch! That's Gonna Leave A Mark. Courtesy of The Hill:
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic presidential candidates combined to raise $580 million in 2019, according to a DNC official, outpacing President Trump and the Republican National Committee (RNC) by about $120 million.
This has been today's edition of Ouch! That's Gonna Leave A Mark.
CHEERS to the war hawks’ terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Four years ago—Saturday, January 16, 2016—one of the (many) significant events in Barack Obama’s presidency was etched onto the wall of history. It started when the White House announced that five American detainees, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, had been freed from Iranian prisons in exchange for a handful of Iranians we were detaining at the Hoboken Club Med (for violating the two-beach-towels-per-person-per-day rule). But that was just the warm-up act for this:
On January 16, 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency verified that Iran has completed the necessary steps under the Iran deal that will ensure Iran's nuclear program is and remains exclusively peaceful.
Before this agreement, Iran's breakout time---or the time it would have taken for Iran to gather enough fissile material to build a weapon---was only two to three months. Today, because of the Iran deal, it would take Iran 12 months or more. And with the unprecedented monitoring and access this deal puts in place, if Iran tries, we will know and sanctions will snap back into place.
I remember it well: the American people were happy, the Iranian people were happy (they even lowered their catchphrase from "Death to America" to "slightly swollen ankles to the upper Midwest"), and all the other nations involved in the pact—China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK, and the rest of the 28 EU states—were happy. But not Donald Trump. Drawing on his fine command of absolutely nothing related to foreign policy, he just had to pull out because diplomacy bad, bombs good. To be fair, though, it's what the coal miners wanted.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 16, 2010
CHEERS to proving the dummy wrong. I got an URGENT email yesterday from some conservative hack who wanted me to know something very important. It's—as most of these conspiratorial screeds are—very long, but here's the Crazy Clifs Notes version. Being a fan of alliteration, the first sentence gave me goosebumps:
The discredited, democrat funded 'DailyKos' web site continues with it's daily doctored, dishonest, democrat funded pro-Obama polling numbers. Today's doctored poll shows Obama's approval numbers a full EIGHT points higher than the average of all the respected, neutral, trusted polls and a full TEN points higher than the respected CBS News poll released earlier today.
Let's be clear, Kos is taking money from democrats to doctor opinion polls and the boot-lickers and sycophants that support Kos are afraid to challenge Kos. Remember, dissenting opinion, debate and argument are not allowed on the Kos web site. If you disagree with Kos you are not allowed to post articles on the democrat funded Kos web site so none of the information regarding doctored Kos polls and other Kos lies will ever appear on his web site. Much like the low rated Olbermann program, dissent on the 'DailyKos' is forbidden!
The evidence and history of the phony doctored polls on the democrat funded DailyKos irrefutable and striking, unfortunately the anonymous so-called writers that post stories on Kos are not allowed to criticize him or they'll be banned for life.
And this is where yours truly takes the "democrat funded" risk of a lifetime, steps off the ledge, and tests the emailer's grand theory. As a Daily Kos "bootlicker" this is difficult, but here goes: Markos, you are a butthead! The rest...is in God's hands. Please pray for my soul.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to joining the coolest club in Clubland. I must say, this whole Rock and Roll Hall of Fame fad seems to have some staying power. The 35th annual inductees were announced yesterday, and the winners are:
They'll make it official on May 2 during a big concert that'll be televised—from the waist up to protect our children from the evils of gyrating hips, from the neck down to protect our children from stray cuss words, and the chest area will be blurred to protect our children from nipple-revealing wardrobe malfunctions. God bless the Trump era.
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
Fox's Brian Kilmeade Hits Trump for Retweeting Photo of Schumer and Pelosi in Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool: 'Not Smart'
—Mediaite
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