From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
The Week Ahead
Monday Republican defense lawyers, finishing their opening arguments in the impeachment trial of Republican President Donald J. Trump, break the record for the number of times a legal team has ever blurted out "But her emails" in a single day.
Today is chocolate cake day. Chocolate has healthy properties. Be healthy—eat chocolate cake today. And every day. Even if it’s not Chocolate Cake Day. Which today it is, so alright!
Tuesday During the questions portion of the impeachment trial, Senator Marcia Blackburn demands to know where the sun goes at night.
Today is Data Privacy Day. Or as hackers call it: Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Day.
Wednesday Today is Freethinkers Day, which celebrates those who believe that truth should be formed on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism, rather than authority, tradition, or religion. Noted freethinkers include Thomas Paine, Albert Einstein, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and anyone who has ever shouted, “The Fox News, it burns.”
During the impeachment trial, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma burps and is sent to prison for the remainder of the trial, per the U.S. Constitution. No one complains.
Thursday The gross domestic product report is released. As usual, "the food at a Trump resort" tops the list.
Today is Dick Cheney's birthday. He turns 666. Again.
Friday Brexit officially goes into effect, severing the UK from the European Union it joined in 1973. But don’t worry, it'll be fine—when have conservatives ever steered a country wrong?
The latest consumer sentiment index is released. America's sentiment registers a downtick from "impetuous" to "goutish." (It's a weird index.)
Plus lots of the usual blah blah blah 'cause we never run out of that.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, January 27, 2020
Note: Can't get the cap off the maple syrup bottle? Try this: set your house on fire and then twist gently. The heat will warm the sticky syrup caught between the aluminum cap and the glass grooves and allow it to be gently loosened with your fingertips. Or try pliers. —Hugs, Heloise
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Iowa Caulkus: 7
Days 'til the Groundhog Wine Trail Festival in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, which will end tragically with several inebriated participants frozen to the ground behind the Walmart Superstore in neighboring Plymptonville, their mouths agape in a silent scream that will forever haunt the memories of the stock boy who discovers them: 5
Percent of Americans polled by CNN who approve of how Trump is handling health care policy: 37%
Percent in the same poll who approve of how he's handling immigration policy: 42%
Year in which Kobe Bryant, who died in a helicopter crash yesterday at 41, scored 81 points in a single game against the Toronto Raptors: 2006
Age at which Kobe became the youngest NBA player to score 30,000 career points: 34
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Moon rover…
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CHEERS to Lev'ing the playing field. President Trump has been swearing on Bibles for weeks now that—checking the transcript here, I want to get this right—"I don’t know [Lev Parnas]. He's sort of like a groupie. He shows up at fundraisers. So I don’t know anything about him." I guess he must've been swearing on those infamous "Mulligan Bibles" used by Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell Jr., because it turns out that Trump seems to enjoy sharing vittles with Lev while barking orders to neutralize his opponents, like former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine and corruption fighter Marie Yovanovich. I do love being able to say this: let's roll the tape…
The bad news: our president lied. The badder news: it's your turn to tell the children.
JEERS to weekend whining. The impeachment trial of President Donald J. Trump continued Saturday. With the Democratic managers having rested their airtight case Friday night, it was time for Trump's team to defend the indefensible. After throwing up a little in their mouths, they took a deep breath and gave it their best:
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!
Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending the president, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.”
I'm just kidding. That's from South Park. The actual Trump defense lawyers threw their poop at the walls and called for Joe Biden's head on a pike as Chief Justice John Roberts, knowing how this all ends, gave 'em the "wrap it up signal" so he could be home in time for the NHL All-Star game. The table pounding continues today. Expect tremors in your neighborhood registering 5-6 on the Grifter Scale.
JEERS to Germany's great shame. Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz and Birkenau Nazi death camps. With memories of World War II rapidly fading, and the Nazi movement once again eyeing world domination, survivors continue telling their stories with greater urgency:
A strip of skin tattooed with the Auschwitz death camp number 99288 sits in a silver frame on a shelf in Avraham Harshalom’s living room. It is his prisoner number, etched on to his forearm in 1943.
Harshalom, 95, is very clear about why he kept it. “For history. To tell it to the next generations,” he said. […] More than a million people, nearly all of them Jews, died at Auschwitz, whose name has become synonymous with the industrial-scale killings carried out at the Nazi death camps. […]
Another Auschwitz survivor, Vera Grossman Kriegel, 81, said she was pained by the rise of anti-Semitism in recent years and feared that history might repeat itself. “It can happen anywhere,” she said. “Hate is born of ignorance. No one is learning from the past, no one wants to learn.”
We'll mark the occasion as we always do—by not joking about it.
P.S.
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CHEERS to hot tea and fresh drying ink. Mere days before this Friday's separation of the United Kingdom from the European Union—aka the biggest political and economic upheaval in the UK since World War II—British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Brexit will, in fact, not be the no-deal kind, after the two sides signed an agreement last week:
The document, which runs to nearly 600 pages, includes agreements on citizens’ rights, the UK’s £33bn worth of financial obligations to the bloc and the Northern Ireland protocol, establishing the arrangements for maintaining an open border on the island of Ireland. […]
Under the agreement, the UK will leave the EU at midnight central European time on 31 January. The UK will remain in the EU’s single market and customs union, but none of the decision-making bodies, until the end of 2020.
In a sign that Johnson and his Tories may not have read the document as completely as they should have, as of Friday Britain's national anthem changes from God Save the Queen to the theme from The Benny Hill Show. Very cheeky, EU.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. Over at FiveThirtyEight, Galen Druke and Jake Arlow ask: There has to be a better way to pick presidential nominees…right?
Right.
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
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CHEERS to the good times. On January 27, 1998, Democratic President Bill Clinton told the nation during his State of the Union address that the federal government would have a balanced budget in 1999...the first in 30 years. And then he callously left his Republican successor the back-breaking task of screwing it all up. And then his Democratic successor cleaned it all up. And now his Republican successor is screwing it all up. I'm sensing a pattern here.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 27, 2010
CHEERS to the Biggest Story of the Millennium!!! Today Apple will unveil the "iPad" (expected price: $500) which is being described as an iPhone on steroids. Steve Jobs says that the device, whose primary purpose is to give Apple fans something to read while they stand in line waiting for version 2.0, is "The most important thing I've ever made." Responded his kids: "Gee, thanks."
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And just one more…
CHEERS to movin' and groovin'. Congrats to the winners last night at the Grammy Awards, including Michelle Obama—Woohoo!!!—for Best Spoken Word (“Becoming”), Dave Chappelle for Best Comedy Album (Sticks and Stones), Willie Nelson for best Solo Country Performance (Ride Me Back Home), best new artist Billie Eilish, Gloria Gaynor for Best Roots Gospel Album (My Testimony), and holy cow John Williams won his 25th Grammy (Best Instrumental Composition for his Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge theme park music) and now has to build a newer wing to his new wing for his awards shed. And, thanks to Best Metal Performer Tool, the world finally has its first Grammy-winning song with the words…
Blame it all on the bastards when you're blowing out
Shame on you
Shame on you, now
No amount of wind could to begin to cover up your petulant stench and demeanor
Calm as cookies and cream, so it seems
Calm before the torrent comes, calm before the torrent comes, calm before the torrent comes
calm before the tempest comes to reign all over
Mark my words, DJs: That's got "wedding song" written all over it.
Have a tolerable Monday. Please don’t forget to watch all the impeachment coverage and report back to me today so I can plagiarize your notes for my Pulitzer-winning column tomorrow. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
“I’ve known Bill in Portland Maine since he was a newly-appointed diarist here in Daily Kos. Then he became a front-pager, and we all lived with him when he was the most magnificent kiddie pool splasher on earth. To see him kind of deteriorate right before your very eyes…”
—Geraldo Rivera
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