From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
While We’re Waiting
All eyes are on the Senate today...well, assuming the exalted and high holy gatekeeper Mitch McConnell allows our eyes to be on it, that is. To set the mood, here’s the latest from Motor Trend’s Musical Parodist of the Year, Randy Rainbow:
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Coincidentally, today is Squirrel Appreciation Day. How fitting that Senate Democrats will be forced to spend it with a bunch of nuts. (Ba-dum.)
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, January 21, 2020
Note: As mentioned above, today is Squirrel Appreciation Day. This site recommends that you dress your dog up like a squirrel. My dog wishes to add: “Only if you have a death wish.”
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Brexit: 10
Days 'til the Queen City Brewers Festival in North Carolina: 11
Number Trump aides, donors, and advisers who have been indicted or imprisoned: 14
Percent of independents in a new Quinnipiac poll who approve of how Trump is dealing with Iran: 34%
Increase in retail sales of oat milk over the 12-month period ending in November: 600%
Amount a Michigan man found (and returned) in the cushion of a used couch he bought for his man cave from Habitat for Humanity: $43,000
Percent chance that Harry, Meghan, and Archie are no longer official members of the royal family: 100%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Those eyes…
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CHEERS to gavels at dawn. Oh, Stanley! The impeachment trial starts today and I haven't a thing to wear! You simply must drive me to Saks so I can pick out a splendid ensemble that says "This is all so exciting" with an unmistakable subtext that screams, "Not with my democracy, you don't, Mi-ster McConnell! [Slap! Slap!]" Now, I wish to have a BBC explainer. Jeeves, where is my BBC explainer?
Two people are deciding how the trial will be conducted: Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate, and his Democratic counterpart, Chuck Schumer.
They'll both have to agree guidelines for evidence, witnesses, duration and arguments. But because the Republicans control the Senate, Mr McConnell has the final say over the format of the trial. Senators will vote on the rules of the trial on Tuesday. […]
Justice Roberts is there to make sure the trial sticks to the predetermined rules.
A group of seven Democrats will act as impeachment managers---essentially prosecutors for the House, who will present its case for impeachment to the Senate. President Trump's defence team will include special prosecutors from President Bill Clinton's impeachment---Ken Starr and Robert Ray.
Now the only question is what goes best with chiffon: my pearl "Fuck Trump" necklace, or my diamond "Impeach the Motherfucker Already" brooch. Of course. Silly me. Both.
CHEERS to turning back Pickett's Charge…again. If they'd gotten their way, the Nazis and Confederates would've been among the "gunrights" swarmers at the Virginia Capitol yesterday. But they got their butts kicked so bad at Charlottesville (how many of those Goebbels-wannabes are in the pokey, again?), Boston and elsewhere that it’s finally sunk in that they can't pop their heads up anywhere except dark-web sites and occasional midnight forays to spray swastikas on stuff. So the goose steppers and Johnny Rebs didn’t show up—or at least left their confederate flags and Iron Crosses at home. But lord knows they wanted to drop in and let all their hate hang out:
Last week, Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, declared of state of emergency that banned guns and other weapons from the Capitol grounds, citing "credible intelligence" from law enforcement that armed militias and hate groups were threatening violence. Gun-rights groups, led by the Virginia Citizens Defense League, which organized the rally, tried unsuccessfully to get a court to overturn the ban.
A day after Northam's announcement, federal authorities said they had arrested of three members of a neo-Nazi group called The Base, whom law enforcement officials said had been planning to attend the rally. More alleged members of the group were arrested on Friday.
JEERS to John Q. Corporation: Super Citizen!!! Ten years ago today, five conservative activist judges on the Supreme Court delivered their verdict on our system of government: it's for sale to the highest bidder. Citizens United is now a four-letter two-words to anyone who values clean and fair campaign financing. But we now know that there's a rather sizable silver lining in the wake of that decision. Those idiot Justices, who agreed that "corporations are people," pissed off so many people that the billionaires and their Super PAC lapdogs got run over by a grassroots stampede in 2012 and subsequent elections. Money is still huge and often decisive, hence the need to do something to curb the tidal wave of cash. But it's not a bell that automatically makes us drool over a candidate when Sheldon Adelson (how is that blob still breathing?) or the remaining Koch brother rings it. Unless, I concede, the candidate's name is Dairy Queen Oreo Blizzard.
CHEERS to the embodiment of the phrase “Nothing to see here, please move along.” Congratulations to White House Senior Adviser to the President Ivanka Trump. I can only assume she was the seamstress with enough vision and tactical knowledge to create the official uniforms for America’s new military branch: Space Force! Check it out and feel safer from Martian invaders than you ever have before, now that they’ll never see us coming, thanks to 21st-century camouflage technology...
I think it’s a brilliant design. It dovetails perfectly with the new Space Force slogan: “In space no one can hear you scream...or see you hiding in the bushes.”
JEERS to little jerks. Turning now to human biology, Team Lab Coat at Huffington Post wants you to know the secret of that moment when you're almost asleep and something mysteriously jolts you back into full consciousness and you're all like, "Huh? Wha? Yomigod!" Here's what they say goes down at that moment:
What you’re most likely experiencing is something called a “hypnic jerk,” according to Ellen Wermter, a board-certified family nurse practitioner and Better Sleep Council spokesperson.
A hypnic jerk is a form of myoclonus, which is essentially just “a fancy way of saying ‘muscle twitch,’” Wermter told HuffPost. (Another form of myoclonus is the hiccups.)… During this drowsy phase of sleep, your muscles relax. Your brain sometimes interprets this sensation as“falling,” so it then triggers a muscle contraction.
The Sleep Council says that most episodes of nocturnal myoclonus occur to people around the world for no particular reason. However they do agree that these days most cases in America can be attributed to a now-common condition called Justicedeniedus: the sudden and horrifying realization that Bill Barr is still the Attorney General.
CHEERS to Grandpa the Green Slayer. Fellow Ohioan and "Golden Bear" Jack Nicklaus turns 80 today. He won 73 PGA tournaments and a record 18 majors during his career, never coming within a mile of a steroid. Tiger Woods' goal in life, he says, is to beat Jack's record, and there’s still a smidge of a chance he may pull it off. (He needs four more majors to do it.) But in the character department, well...no contest there. So happy birthday, Jack. You're an increasingly rare bird: a likable country club Republican with a smidge of class.
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And Just One More/Ten years ago in C&J: January 21, 2010
As the pundits spend the week parsing Trump's disastrous three years in office as the Senate considers the articles of impeachment against him, we revisit this more optimistic assessment of his predecessor’s first year on the job (after Bush-Cheney’s disastrous eight years) via a Cheers and Jeers from a decade ago:
CHEERS to Year One. When I pulled the lever for Obama 14 months ago, it was a four-year deal...and that's why I'm choosing to focus on the positive aspects of his first year, and consider his unfinished business "a work in progress." For starters, the world loves us again—wow, that was quick! Sonia Sotomayor seemed like an inspired choice. Despite the surge in Afghanistan, I don’t doubt for a second that his goal is to bring our troops home while leaving behind some semblance of stability. The White House feels like the people's house again. Biden—I love Biden. And Michelle and the kids. And Hillary. And seeing sexual orientation added to the hate crimes law. And now I'll pass the baton to Eleanor Clift:
[Congressional Quarterly] rates Obama higher than any president in the last five decades in working his will on Capitol Hill, surpassing even the fabled Lyndon Johnson. Obama's success rate in the House and Senate on votes where he staked out a clear position was 96.7 percent, beating previous record-holder Johnson's 93 percent in 1965. ...
[F]air-minded historians looking back will give him credit for pulling the economy back from the brink, and the $787 billion stimulus bill that he passed during his first hundred days with almost no Republican support was critical to the rescue effort. If Obama gets health-care reform, which seems likely, that will be an enduring achievement despite all the partisan nitpicking.
He will have accomplished these things without some of the structural advantages LBJ enjoyed. The filibuster, which has its poisonous history in Southern segregationist efforts to kill civil-rights legislation, has morphed into a routine requirement for a supermajority of 60 votes on everything. Also, the dealmaking in Johnson's time wasn't made public so voters didn't witness in real time the spectacle of reeling in a single senator the way the Democrats did with Ben Nelson.
So, looking at the forest instead of the trees, I give him a B+. A+ if he invites me for a sleepover in the Lincoln Bedroom.
Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
“I wouldn’t go to splash in Cheers and Jeers. You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”
—Donald Trump
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