Late Night Snark: Honk If You’re An Oligarchy Edition
“Trump is full of bigly ideas. Just in the past week he's proposed buying Greenland, taking Greenland, co-opting Canada, reclaiming the Panama Canal, and changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. And then yesterday Uncle Scam announced his plan to create a new government agency to collect all those beautiful tariffs he wants to impose. He calls it the External revenue Service. Trump says the ERS will make other countries pay their fair share. And who knows more about paying your fair share than the billionaire who paid $750 in taxes in 2016 and again in 2017?”
—Jimmy Kimmel
"This Monday the three richest men in the history of mankind will attend the inauguration, where they will be seated together on the platform with Trump's cabinet nominees and elected officials. Sweet Jesus in a sky box, that is the most corrupt-appearing thing I have ever heard. If we’re gonna go complete Roman Empire then at least throw Denzel Washington in there.”
—Stephen Colbert
"An Arctic blast is about to hit the country and it could make Monday the coldest inauguration ceremony in 40 years. There's a real chance that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg's lips could freeze to Trump's butt."
—Jimmy Fallon (The shitshow will now be held indoors because of Trump’s delicate skin and fear of flying Arctic sharks.)
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“A military cannot function unless it’s staffed by a system based on pure merit, where only the most qualified people rise to the top. So says the next Secretary of Defense, who will run the most complicated, powerful, deadly organization the world has ever known, and whose only qualification is that Trump liked watching him sit on a couch on Saturday mornings.”
—The Daily Show anchor Jordan Klepper on Pete Hegseth's confirmation hearing
"Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon criticized Elon Musk in an interview with an Italian newspaper last week. He told the newspaper that he would have Musk run out of the MAGA movement by inauguration day. 'Oh, he runs out on his own,' said his kids."
—Seth Meyers
And Jon Stewart on MAGA cultists in the House and Senate who want "strings attached" to emergency relief for California:
“Republicans appear to want to attach their I told you so’s as a condition of funding California’s disaster relief. What the fuck is wrong with you? Really, senator [Tommy Tuberville] from Alabama, the state near the bottom in math, reading and test scores? Next time you get hit by a hurricane, why don’t we have a little parent-teacher conference to say that if you got your scores up you would get the money? Or actually, let’s not do that, because you’ll get the money anyway—because we’re not psychos. [...]
“Yes, improvements can be made in leadership, in management, in design, in materials, in myriad ways. But sometimes fire fucks a tornado and makes a mockery of human infrastructure and our ability to dictate the terms of our existence on this planet. But the one thing it shouldn’t dictate is the cruelty that we would show to those in pain, just because we don’t think they consistently vote right.”
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, January 17, 2025
Note: I just got done writing “A Picasso is not a drink coaster” a hundred times on the blackboard. Lesson learned.
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By the Numbers:
8 days!!!
Days 'til Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day: 10
Days 'til The Great Fruitcake Toss in Manitou Springs, Colorado : 8
Current rate of inflation: 2.9%
Year erythrosine-based red dye #3 was approved for use in foods: 1969
Date by which red dye #3 must cease being used in foods, under a new order from the FDA because of its cancer risk: 1/15/27
Length of the first phase of the Biden-brokered cease fire between Israel and Hamas: 6 weeks
Rank of The Towering Inferno at the box office 50 years ago this week: #1
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Puppy Pic of the Day: We have liftoff...
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CHEERS to C&J Theater. Our first production of the new year is, all modesty aside, pure Tony bait. An EXCLUSIVE sneak preview:
The Confirmation Hearing
Setting: Senate confirmation hearing Room
A senator is asking questions of a Trump cabinet nominee
Senator: Do you promise to uphold the laws of our land?
Cabinet nominee: I promise to destroy my leader's enemies, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentation of the women!
Senator: Okay. Ha ha, funny line from Conan the Barbarian, but seriously…
Nominee: Can I phone a friend???
Senator: No, you can't…
Nominee: I'm being oppressed by the woke mob!!!
Senator: I'm just asking if you…
Nominee: I invoke my Fifth Amendment rights!
Senator: This isn’t that kind of hearing…
Nominee [now singing in falsetto]: Jeeeesus! Jeeeesus! We’re nukin' Greenland for Jeeeesus!
Senator: Are you drunk?
Nominee: I'm not as think as you drunk I am!
Senator: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to call a recess so we can…
Nominee: Were you in the muddy, feces-filled trenches of Pennsylvania in 2020, dodging mortar fire and missiles to prevent the Demon Rats from stealing Republican votes for their satanic rituals and sex change operations as they ate their neighbors' pets??? Well, WERE YOU?!!! BECAUSE I WAS THERE—BAPTIZED UNDER FIRE IN ALLENTOWN AND HARRISBURG AND THAT AMISH PLACE WITH THE BARN…!!!
Committee Chairman: Yeah, why don’t we take five?
[Curtain down for Intermission]
Wait'll you see Act II. There's an orgy in a bunker.
JEERS to baking our planet. We knew that 2024 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:
Climate breakdown drove the annual global temperature above the internationally agreed 1.5C target for the first time last year, supercharging extreme weather and causing “misery to millions of people.”
Brought to you by Earth’s hairless biped parasites.
The average temperature in 2024 was 1.6C above preindustrial levels, data from the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service shows. That is a jump of 0.1C from 2023, which was also a record hot year and represents levels of heat never experienced by modern humans.
The heating is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and the damage to lives and livelihoods will continue to escalate around the world until coal, oil and gas are replaced.
To put that in perspective, within a hundred years the planet will become as hot as Lauren Boebert's’s brain activity when she tries to connect a noun and a verb.
JEERS to turning a deaf ear. On this date 64 years ago, during his farewell address in 1961, President Eisenhower warned us all against the rise of the now-infamous "military-industrial complex." (Although we’re quick to point out that Ike himself helped contribute to it, so his hands aren’t exactly clean. But, hey, c’mon—he did D-Day.) Every year, as his warning appears ever more prescient, this speech ranks right up there with Lincoln's Gettysburg Address or FDR's Four Freedoms speech:
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.
And be sure to check out the great discounts at Sears. Page A-12.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
Let's see how that's working out: We did let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties and democratic processes. We did take it for granted. And we the ignorant and apathetic citizenry did not compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty are now fighting like rabid dogs. Other than that...Thumbs-up!
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to Synonym Fever! Happy 246th Birthday to Peter Roget, who published the first Thesaurus in 1852 (a decades-long endeavor undertaken in part to help him deal with bouts of depression). Curious if there was a synonym for thesaurus, I went to—where else?—Thesaurus.com to find out. Their list is BOGUS, and let me tell you for the umpteenth time why:
A thesaurus is a glossary, but a glossary isn’t necessarily a thesaurus.
Finally—as of today, an end to those insufferable Thesaurus Day carols.
A thesaurus is a language reference book, but a language reference book isn’t necessarily a thesaurus.
A thesaurus is a storehouse of words and a treasury of words and even a word list, but neither a storehouse of words nor a treasury of words nor a word list is necessarily a thesaurus.
A thesaurus is an onomasticon, but an onomasticon is not necessarily a thesaurus.
Now you know why the one thing my parents made sure never to run out of was earplugs.
CHEERS to home vegetation. Very disappointed that our weekly roundup of what’s on the weekend TV schedule failed to win a single Emmy or Critics Choice Award. Shame! Shame! Shame! But we muddle on anyway, bruised ego and all.
I’ll take a dozen!
It’s a quiet weekend, actually. Tonight you can catch Penn & Teller: Fool Us at 8 and a pair of Whose Line Is It Anyway? episodes on the CW. As always, we’ll be live-skeeting tonight’s original-series episode of Star Trek (“Friday’s Child,” featuring McCoy’s classic line: “I’m a doctor, not an escalator!”) at 8 via the H&I Network and hashtag #allstartrek. (You’ll find me on BlueSky here.)
The most popular movies and streamers are all reviewed here at Rotten Tomatoes. The NHL schedule is here, the NFL playoff schedule is here, and the NBA schedule is here. Dave Chappelle hosts SNL.
No 60 Minutes or Simpsons Sunday night, but ABC airs the live-action update of Beauty and the Beast at 8:30. After that the monster under your bed will read Goodnight, Moon and then it’s off to Slumber Land for you, kiddo.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Martin Luther King III; House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY); porn-obsessed House Speaker Mike Johnson (Fascist-LA).
With the Fascist Party having the smallest majority possible, Democrat Hakeem Jeffries (on NBC Sunday) is effectively co-Speaker with human mayo dollop Mike Johnson.
This Week: Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer; evil wad of dryer lint Steve Bannon; Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA); the parents of Israeli-American hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen.
Face the Nation: Rep. Mike Waltz (Fascist-FL); Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA).
CNN's State of the Union: The families of hostages Omer Neutra and Edan Alexander; scumbag Rahm Emanuel; boys’ shower room enthusiast Rep. Jim Jordan (Fascist-OH); Mike Waltz.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Senator Dave McCormick (Fascist-PA); Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL).
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 17, 2015
JEERS to the growing business sector known as Big Whiner. MetLife is a massively huge company that could, if it collapsed, send shock waves through the U.S. economy. As such, it's been designated under the Dodd-Frank law as "systemically important," aka "too big to fail," and thus susceptible to addition federal scrutiny. Naturally, they're not happy about that, so they're suing the government to leave us alooooone!
Treasury spokeswoman Suzanne Elio said Tuesday that the [Financial Stability Oversight Council] has been notified of MetLife's legal action. "The council's decision to designate a nonbank financial company is reached only after a thorough analysis and extensive engagement with the company, both of which occurred in this case. We are confident in the council's work," Elio said.
Responded MetLife: "If you don’t stop saying that we can single-handedly crash the economy, we'll make you pay by single-handedly crashing the economy! I mean…er…um, we'll get back to you." Paging MetLife's P.R. department: cleanup in aisle six.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to America’s favorite “Girl from the South Side.” Michelle Obama was the ninth First Lady whose iron-fisted regime I lived under. During her eight way-too-fast years in that official capacity, she was an amazing role model—not only in terms of her grace and humor and intelligence and optimism and down-to-earth authenticity and… (I'll stop there for space reasons—my list of her pluses is 12 pages long, single spaced), but also for throwing open the doors of the White House and making it feel more like the "People's House" than any time I can remember. (Under her icy successor it felt more like 1945 Berlin, and will again during her looming 2nd Reich.) Today is Michelle’s frrfrrfrth birthday, and that’s all the reason I need to post these…
I know there's no job description or requirements for the role of presidential spouse, but I think it's fair to say that she set the bar just about as high as it can go. She rocked it. So, in conclusion: Happy happy happy (I'll stop there for space reasons—my list of happys is also 12 pages long) birthday, Michelle, and many blessings on your camels.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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