Happy Presidents' Day
Woo-hoo! I've got my Millard Fillmore tree set up, Andy Williams' classic It's the Most Executive Branchful Time of the Year is playing on the Victrola, and all my coupons are clipped for BIG Pre$ident$' Day $ale-a-bration $aving$ on every mattre$$ in the $tore!
Here's your annual quiz. Please solemnly swear you will faithfully not cheat by googling the answers:
1. Which president’s handshake was once compared to “a ten-cent pickled mackerel in brown paper”?
A) Tyler B) Hoover C) Wilson D) Obama
2. Which presidential candidate’s supporters rolled giant balls measuring 10-feet wide through the streets as a campaign gimmick?
A) W.H. Harrison B) Hayes C) Polk D) Jackson
3. Which president, while touring Andrew Jackson’s estate, was served coffee brewed at Nashville’s Maxwell House Hotel and allegedly coined the phrase, “Good to the last drop”?
A) Coolidge B) T. Roosevelt C) Garfield D) George H.W. Bush
Joe Biden needs to be added to this. His predecessor and successor will go on a plate of convicted felons.
4. Who said the following when someone first suggested he run for president: “Stop your nonsense and drink your whiskey”?
A) Jefferson B) Hoover C) Cleveland D) Zachary Taylor
5. Which president fought in a war and carried a bullet in his shoulder for the rest of his life?
A) Washington B) Monroe C) Kennedy D) Grant
6. Which president ordered his plane, called "Sacred Cow," to buzz the White House, which caused a bit of a panic?
A) Coolidge B) Carter C) Truman D) Eisenhower
7. Which president held a public auction on the lawn of the White House—including an old pair of Lincoln’s pants and a hat belonging to John Quincy Adams—so he could make room to refurbish the executive mansion?
A) Reagan B) George W. Bush C) J.Q. Adams D) Arthur
8. Which president signed the pardon of Confederate traitor Robert E. Lee?
A) Ford B) Trump C) A. Johnson D) Grant
9. President Lyndon Johnson complained over the phone that "the crotch, down where your nuts hang, is always a little too tight, they cut me. It’s just like riding a wire fence." Who was he talking to?
A) An executive at Haggar Clothing B) Bill Blass C) Lady Bird D) Charles de Gaulle
Answers: C, A, B, D, B, C, D, A, A.
Scoring: 9 = You're presidential material! 0-8 = Oh, let's not dwell on the mistakes of the past, let's focus on the future for the sake of the children.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, February 16, 2026
Note: Kudos to these books for providing the fodder for today's POTUS quiz: To the Best of My Ability edited by James McPherson, Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien, and Oval Office Oddities by Bill Fawcett.
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By the Numbers:
5 days!!!
Days 'til the start of the Chinese New Year (of the horse): 1
Days 'til the start of Maryland's Annapolis Restaurant Week: 5
Estimated increase in January consumer prices, factoring in the gap in data collection from last fall's government shutdown: 2.7%
Percent increase in grocery prices: 2.9%
Length of time a French, a Russian, and two U.S. astronauts (including Mainer Jessica Meir) will spend at the International Space Station after arriving there Saturday: 8 months
Number of passengers who passed through the Portland, Maine Jetport in 2025, a record: 2,593,067
Number of yahoos involved in a pickleball-related brawl at the Spruce Creek Country Club in Port Orange, Florida Friday: 20
Current U.S. Olympic Medal Count
Gold: 5 Silver: 8 Bronze: 4
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Puppy Pic of the Day: One kibble at a time…
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CHEERS to pleasant surprises. It was supposed to be a Saturday morning like any other: wake up, make a No-Doz smoothie (toss one can of Mountain Dew and six No-Doz caplets into a blender, whip, stir, add one boysenberry, puree, pour into L.L. Bean boot with two grams of cocaine from a toilet seat and enjoy), yell at the Airbnbers across the street for parking like shit, feed the squirrels, feed the squirrels, feed the squirrels, shovel some coal into the furnace, break into the stockroom down at the corner café to steal some eggs for breakfast, fire up the laptop, check AOL to see if "You've got mail!" (I did!), click on “The” Daily Kos to see what horrors befell us over the weekend, and…whaaaaat??? Hey, looka this….
Federal Judge Nancy Brasel (a Trump appointee) ruled that the Trump Regime has violated the Constitutional right to access counsel for thousands of people rounded up in immigration raids and held at the Whipple Federal Building near Minneapolis. [...]
Judges’ gavels have hit the Trumpies on the head so often they’ve started looking like bubblewrap.
“Defendants chose to operate a detention facility, so they must meet constitutional standards.” The judge pointed out that DHS devoted plenty of resources to rounding up those detained and “cannot suddenly lack resources when it comes to protecting detainees’ constitutional rights.”
Judge Brasel ordered nearly five pages of sweeping remedies. They amount to requiring the Regime to give detainees generous access to phones to call their attorneys, allowing attorneys to meet in person with their clients at the detention facility, and restricting the practice of DHS moving detainees from location to location to make it more difficult for attorneys to contact their clients.
Why, I'd call that…a pleasant surprise.
CHEERS to our invisible galactic overlords. I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about the existence of alien life "out there." It would be cool, I suppose, if they showed up sometime between now and my appointed kick-the-bucket date. My only request of our tentacled universe-mates is that they please not be assholes, as we have enough of them among our own species, thanks. Anyway, it all might be a moot point soon, because one of our nation's smartest and most beloved presidents—Barack Obama, no less—says they're around here somewhere:
“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in Area 51,” Obama said. “There’s no underground facility,” he continued, “unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the President of the United States.”
I took this on Friday night in the driveway. It kept bugging me for Reese’s Pieces so I called the cops and it shuffled away.
Cohen then asked, “What was the first question you wanted answered when you became president?”
“Where are the aliens?” Obama said with a chuckle.
Moments later, the former president was contacted by a very excited ICE recruiter and offered a $50,000 sign-on bonus.
CHEERS to the last useful thing the Vatican ever did. On this date in 600, Pope Gregory the Great decreed that "God Bless You" would become the religiously correct response to a sneeze. Mostly because the old response—"Oh, hey, that sounds bubonic"—was scaring off the faithful.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to the preparing for The Apostrolypse. To help solve the mystery of how, exactly, one punctuates today's holiday, over the weekend I performed my annual ritual of consulting the ads and assorted banners appearing in The Portland (Maine) Press Herald and online to get some clarity. This year's batch:
Agren Appliance: Presidents’ Day
AAA: President’s Day
CNN: Presidents Day
Engadget: Presidents’ Day and President Day
People: Presidents Day
Bowden & Carr Furniture: Presidents’ Day
Hannaford Supermarkets: Presidents' Day
Overstock.com: Presidents Day (last year it was Presidents’ Day)
Ugh...
Maxim: President's Day and Presidents Day
Home Depot: President’s Day (last year it was Presidents' Day)
Rolling Stone: Presidents' Day
Hub Furniture: Presidents Day (last year it was Presidents' Day)
LaZBoy: Presidents Day and Presidents’ Day
Travel & Leisure: Presidents Day
Our 2026 “Lighthouses of Maine” Wall Calendar: Presidents' Day
We trust this clears up any confusion for at least another year.
CHEERS to unleashing the romantic within. My credit card isn't happy with me this morning because Saturday I went all-out for my sweetie Michael on Valentine's Day. First I gave him the latest miracle weight loss plan. Then I got him a box of Hair Club for Men and lifts for his shoes. Then a cordless nose-hair trimmer. And finally, new vacuum cleaner bags and a lifetime supply of Windex. I know you're jonesin' to know how much he loved them. I'm jonesin' to tell ya! And I'll be sure to let you know just as soon as he lets me out of this crawlspace. (Y'know, with a little ketchup these cockroaches wouldn't taste half bad...)
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Twenty years ago in C&J: February 16, 2006
JEERS to the money-siphoning boogeyman-aversion machine. In order to protect our troops from harm, the military has spent $363 million over 10 years kicking 10-thousand gay soldiers out of the service. Let's see...that money would've paid for approximately half a million 700-dollar Kevlar vests. Glad we didn't waste our money on those.
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And just one more…
Due to the Presidents' Day holiday, And Just One More has the day off. In its place, please enjoy our annual moment with Grace Coolidge cuddling the First Family’s beloved pet raccoon Rebecca:
We regret yet another inconvenience.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"Cheers and Jeers is a bit haphazard in both structure and messaging, but there’s a creative spark under this one that’s missing from a lot of Daily Kos diaries of late."
—Brian Tallerico
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