Late Night Snark: Shitheads in High Places Edition
“Donald Trump laid out a detailed plan to lower grocery prices and bring down the cost of living… Wait, sorry, I read that wrong. He wants to occupy the Gaza Strip and turn it into ‘the Riviera of the Middle East.' “
—Seth Meyers
“Okay, just so I’m clear: your plan is to take over Gaza, turn it into Mar-a-Lago, and make sure that the Palestinians who live there can’t go back? That is the craziest thing he’s said since yesterday and until tomorrow.”
—The Daily Show’s Desi Lydic
Can’t say they didn’t warn us!
—The Daily Show
“The president signed an executive order giving Elon the power to make the government more ‘efficient.’ Which is like saying: why sleep when it’s more efficient to do cocaine? … Call me crazy, but I don’t love the idea of handing the government over to guys who are still on their parents’ health insurance.”
—After Midnight host Taylor Tomlinson
“Anyone who’s ever had a toddler knows this feeling. You leave the room for one second, and when you come back everything from the bookshelves is on the floor, the walls are covered in ketchup, and when you ask who gave the dog a haircut with safety scissors, your kid says it was DEI.”
—Stephen Colbert
"That's the irony of this whole thing. The people standing next to Trump on that terrible night [of the American Airlines-Blackhawk helicopter collision] blaming DEI and trying to reinstall white guys as the only non-suspect pool of hires are themselves DEI hires for one particular identity that they possess: the ass kisser. [Plays clip of cabinet members Sean Duffy and Pete Hegseth fawning over Trump during post-collision press conference] DEI: Dick-sucking Ego Inflation."
—Jon Stewart
“People are wondering why Trump would start a trade war with our closest allies. And Trump was like, ‘I didn’t say anything about Russia and North Korea.' ”
—Jimmy Fallon
And now, our feature presentation…
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, February 7, 2025
Note: If you can't say something nice about someone, then let loose with every insult, cuss word, disparagement of their mother and threat of God's wrath you can think of.
—Republican proverb
-
By the Numbers:
7 days!!!
Days 'til the full "snow moon": 5
Days 'til Oregon's Wine, Chowder, and Glass Float Trail in Florence: 7
Expected completion year of the new Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, which will be taller and more difficult for ships to hit: 2028
Expected cost of the bridge: $1.7 billion
Percent chance that all the bodies have now been recovered from the DC plane-helicopter collision: 100%
Current worldwide box office sales for Moana 2: $1.03 billion
Percent chance that the hills are alive with the sound of music, according to the Von Trapp Institute for Paranormal Alpine Activity: 100%
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Nighty night…
-
CHEERS to sounding the alarm. We have sirens. We have church bells. We have ah-ooh-gah horns. We have loud barking dogs. But nothing…nothing...makes us stand bolt-upright as fast as when Senator Susan Collins opens her gob and activates her Horn-O-Concern. And it just went off with a nasal, ear-piercing whine:
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told reporters on Capitol Hill Wednesday that she was concerned about Elon Musk unilaterally gutting USAID and seizing control over the Treasury Department’s payment system. […]
“I am concerned if the Trump administration is clawing back money that has been specifically appropriated for a particular purpose,” she added.
For your protection, fallout shelters are now open. Please: no crowding at the omelet station.
CHEERS to order in the courts. First a judge halted Very Bad Man's spending freeze because oh my god what the hell are you doing, you piece of shit on a shoe??? Then another judge stopped his attempt to cancel birthright citizenship because have you even read the Constitution, you twit, or is RFK's brain worm eating yours now??? And in our continuing saga of judicial action prompting serious questions, a third judge has stopped VBM's federal employee buyout scam because am I being punished for having to take this farking case???
U.S. District Judge George O'Toole Jr. set a Monday afternoon hearing to consider further blocking the so-called "Fork in the Road" offer. […]
Federal workers respond to the dictator.
[F]our unions—including the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Association of Government Employees, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees—argue that the OPM violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to provide a legal basis for the buyout offer and leaving open the possibility that the government might not follow through with the buyout once federal employees agree to resign.
Among the additional reasons cited for the buyout's unconstitutionality: they can't promise payments through September because "the current appropriation for federal agencies expires in March," it was made under the threat of future layoffs, and—[checks notes]—it's the brainchild of Elon Musk.
CHEERS to Tippeca...ca...cachoo! Happy 252nd birthday Sunday to "#9" William Henry "Tippecanoe" Harrison. During his nearly two-hour inaugural address (without an overcoat), he pledged not to run for a second term and, in one of the fastest fulfillments of a campaign promise ever, caught pneumonia and died 32 days later, but not before being plied with enough ipecac, opium, castor oil, calomel, camphor and brandy to kill a small army. (To his credit he rejected the ivermectin, bleach injections, and mugs of his own pee.) But he did have a lasting effect on our electoral process. From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien:
[I]f Harrison was no dream candidate, his campaign for president was one of the most important in American history.
A face that just screams “earnest, smiling enthusiasm.”
Before 1840, active campaigning for office was considered about as crass as writing a blurb for your own book. Candidates were supposed to maintain an air of ambivalence while others did their stumping for them. Harrison changed all that by personally jumping into the fray with earnest, smiling enthusiasm, and his Whig party cohorts turned the campaign into a circus.
They dismissed opponent Martin Van Buren as a snob and a dandy, claiming their boy Harrison was the real man of the people. There were parties, bands, garish banners. It worked.
The Whigs only fielded two winning candidates (Zachary Taylor was the other), and neither could finish their first term without a visit from the grim reaper. But, hey—great parties.
-
BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
-
END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
JEERS to paying-for-playing. 65 years ago tomorrow, in 1960, Congress opened hearings on payola, a scheme in which disc jockeys (Dick Clark among them) accepted payment for playing and hyping certain records. Payola was outlawed, and it became punishable by a maximum $10,000 fine.
Also swept up in the payola scandal: D.J. Tinkles.
Meanwhile members of Congress accept payment every day for playing favorites with and hyping corporate interests over the public interest, an offense punishable by a fat paycheck, a full pension, gold-plated healthcare benefits, and guaranteed employment in the lobbying sector if they get booted from office. My point is: shame on the record industry—that was just wrong!
CHEERS to home vegetation. In addition to the Concussion Bowl (more on that below), here's some stuff on TV this weekend, starting with the MSNBC lineup for news junkies, a new episode of Penn & teller: Fool Us! on the CW at 8, and an interview with former Surgeon general Richard Carmona on PBS’s Firing Line at 8:30.
Starts at 2.
The new movies and streaming options are all reviewed here at Rotten Tomatoes. The NBA schedule is here and the NHL schedule is here.
Sunday on 60 Minutes: profiles of Kevin Hart, artist Jeff Koons, and musician Dua Lipa. As for the little football game, CBS's pre-game coverage begins at freaking 1pm—that's worse than the Oscars. How dare they stomp on Puppy Bowl XXI (2pm, Discovery, TBS, Max, and Animal Planet). The kickoff is finally at 6:30, followed by (I looked it up) 11-15 minutes of actual football action interrupted only by 90 ads that try too hard and a halftime show starring Kendrick Lamar, who may or may not be planning a gasp-inducing wardrobe malfunction.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ); National Security Fuckup Mike Waltz; Poet Amanda Gorman.
Senator Andy Kim is off to a fine start. He’ll be on Meet the Lapdog Press Sunday morning.
This Week: Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT); Rep. Mike Turner (Fascist-OH).
Face the Nation: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN); Rep Michael McCaul (Fascist-TX).
CNN's State of the Union: Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ); puppy murderer and Sassoon School of Cosmetology dropout Kristi Noem who is now in charge of our nation’s entire security apparatus.
Fox Fascism Sunday: Louisiana first lady Sharon Landry; hapless House Speaker Mike Pornapp (Fascist-LA).
Happy viewing!
-
Ten years ago in C&J: February 7, 2015
JEERS to taking an RPG blast to your credibility. Apparently NBC Nightly Infotainment anchor Brian Williams had this thing about telling people he got shot down in a helicopter over in Iraq—presumably to, I dunno, get people to buy him drinks or something. Anyway, he now wants you to know that mistakes were made and his memory was failed. His story never happened. So I guess it was all just a…yes, a chopper whopper.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to the Energizer Maestro. Woo-hoo! It's time for our annual "Happy Birthday" salute to 26-time Grammy winner, 5-time Oscar winner, 3-time Emmy winner, Kennedy Center honoree, critic flummoxer and rock-ribbed dirty fucking hippie union-loving Democrat John Williams. He is hands-down my favorite composer, and he's widely considered America's greatest living composer period. Over a span of 70 years he's given us:
» One iconic theme for NBC Nightly News and another for Meet the Press
» One score for an Oscar-winning animated short based on the late NBA star Kobe Bryant's poem Dear Basketball
» Two Jaws scores
» Two Jurassic Park scores.
» Two themes and one episode score for Land of the Giants
» Three Oliver Stone films (Born on the 4th of July, JFK, Nixon)
Spielberg and Williams: a director-composer partnership that will never be equaled.
» Three iconic disaster flicks (Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, The Towering Inferno)
» Three Harry Potter scores
» Five Indiana Jones scores
» Five themes for the Olympic Games, one of which (the Grammy-winning 1984 fanfare) you’re still hearing on NBC 40 years later.
» Nine Star Wars scores—a 42-year magnum opus d'cinema that will never be equaled
» 20 scores for episodes of Gilligan's Island
» 29 scores for Steven Spielberg movies
» The latest theme for the College Football National Championship Game
» And, yes, a disco version of his theme from Close Encounters of the Third Kind that he regrets recording but it was a Top 40 hit, won a Grammy, and it’s actually pretty catchy.
He's also composed music involving a gaggle of American presidents: John F. Kennedy (JFK), John Quincy Adams/Martin Van Buren (Amistad), Tricky Dick (Nixon, The Post), Lincoln (Lincoln), and Obama (a piece for the first inauguration, in which he expressed "in a very simple and not ostentatious way the solemnity and beauty of the moment and the promise of the moment"). Also: Queen Elizabeth II (in The BFG). And we can’t forget Dick Cheney’s theme:
-
Amazingly, he still accepts the occasional conducting gig, and says he’s still open to scoring an occasional film if one tickles his fancy. He has no intention of calling it quits. Until his next project, you can catch up on his extraordinary life via last year’s exceptional Disney+ documentary Music by John Williams. Happy 93rd birthday, John. Only seven more years and we might let you retire.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
