From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Oh! More Things I Know:
>> The Netroots Nation convention in Atlanta starts six months from today.
>> The Bush administration's motto was "Ready, Fire, Aim." The Obama administration's motto was "Ready, Aim, Fire." The Trump administration's motto appears to be "Fire, Backpedal, Tweet."
>> Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine will happily screw you over when it really counts, then act like she's riding in on a white horse to save you when it doesn't.
>> One-third of Americans don't know that the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare are the same thing. IT'S THE SAME FREAKING THING AND YOU LIKE IT!
Also what I know: I’d wear this.
>> I'm sick of Corinthian columns and the way they stand around all day acting so superior to the Dorics and the Ionians.
>> After accusing Putin of murder, Bill O'Reilly now pays a kid three bucks every morning to start his car for him while he crouches behind his mansion wall.
>> Karl Rove says the Falcons could still pull an upset once the rest of the points from Ohio are counted. Peggy Noonan agrees, adding that "all the vibrations are right."
» The latest Republican excuse for not releasing their superior alternative to the Affordable Care Act is: “Copier’s broke and the repair guy can’t come until 2018.”
>> Coincidentally, "Two Iraqi nationals came to this country, joined ISIS, traveled back to the Middle East to get trained and refine their terrorism skills and come back here and were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre" is also the worst-selling Hallmark greeting card of all-time.
>> Nobody could've predicted that a mentally-unstable narcissist with no government experience would instantly be a failure running the most complex government office in the world.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, February 9, 2017
Note: Eyewitness News team battles the flu. Phlegm at 11.
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By the Numbers:
16 days!!!
Days 'til the Oscars: 17
Days 'til the Naperville Ale Fest in Illinois: 16
Percent of voters who want the filibuster to remain a tool in the Senate for opposing Supreme Court nominees, according to a Politico-Morning Consult poll: 59%
Number of solar jobs currently filled in the United States, an increase of 25% over the last year according to The Washington Post: 260,000
Sentence for an anti-Muslim arsonist who burned down a mosque in Fort Pierce, Florida on Sept. 11 last year: 30 years
Number of Lady Gaga albums and songs, respectively, that were sold after her Super Bowl halftime show: 23,000 / 125,000
Percent chance that Donald Trump has complained that the hand towels on Air Force One aren't soft enough: 100%
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
"In public life, as in kindergarten, the all-important word is no.
We are living with the consequences of the inability to say no to the president's war of choice with Iraq, and we shall soon see how Congress and the courts will respond to the latest challenge from the White House -- the claim by President Bush that he has the right to ignore FISA's prohibition of government intrusion on the private communications of Americans without a court order and his repeated statements that he intends to go right on doing it."
The time is coming when someone will have to say no.
---February, 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Click for woozle cardio workout!
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CHEERS to shooting blanks. In the immortal words of Bubbanomics: HaHaHaHaHaHa! (Your spelling may vary.) Yesterday the "so-called" President of the United States (I've never seen his birth certificate, have you?) threw a twitter tantrum on an issue of utmost national importance: Nordstrom. Seems they dropped daughter and de-facto First Lady Ivanka's shoe and handbag lines because apparently no one wants to buy her foreign-made shit anymore. Nordstrom stock tanked, leaving Trump was victorious, having struck a mighty blow for nepotism. Or not, according to the L.A. Times…
[T]he market impact of Trump’s tweet was especially evanescent.
The big retailer’s stock took a hit around the time of the tweet, falling about 0.65% to $42.47 as trading volume soared from about 6,700 shares in the minute or so before the tweet dropped to roughly a half-million shares during the four minutes that followed.
But the action was over soon thereafter; by 2:01 p.m. New York time, Nordstrom was back above its pre-Trump peak. The shares closed at $44.53, a gain of more than 4% on a day when the rest of the market was essentially flat.
If you need me for anything today, I'll be in my hyperbaric chamber trying to think of ways to get Lord Dampnut to say something awful about C&J. I can use the cash.
P.S. Speaking of failures that are spelled with a capital T, another building with Trump's name on it is now fire-sale fodder. Investors in Trump Tower in Toronto are suing him and his---get this---two Canadian-Russian entrepreneur pals because the project was "doomed to failure" from the git-go. Or, in Canadianspeak, they got hosed, eh.
JEERS to the new sheriff in town. I look at it this way: a modern-day Republican attorney general, no matter who it is, is going to be a scary, vindictive creature. Think Alberto Gonzales, John Mitchell, John Ashcroft, Ed Meese. So last night's confirmation of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions means we're back into "holy futzing crap" territory, only this time we've got a gen-yoo-ine Dixie-born-and-bred white supremacist at the helm who is named after both the president of the Confederacy and a Confederate general. And just to remind everybody of his greatest hits as he starts measuring the drapes with which to cover the Lady Justice statue and her decadent lady parts:
When Sessions was up for a federal judgeship in 1986, Coretta Scott King --- the late widow of Martin Luther King, Jr. ---begged the Senate Judiciary Committee to vote against his appointment. Senators on both sides of the aisle ultimately considered him too racist for the job, based on his disparaging comments about African Americans.
This might be a problem, too.
He reportedly said the NAACP and ACLU were “Communist-inspired” and “un-American,” called one of his black staff members “boy,” and joked that the worst thing about the KKK was its marijuana-smoking members.
In 2007, he argued that immigrants “create culture problems,” steal jobs from Americans, and that their “numbers cannot be too great.” Sessions is also adamantly opposed to LGBTQ equality. He once argued that members of those communities don’t experience enough discrimination to warrant hate crime protections.
If you're white, male, straight, Republican and rich, this guy has your back. If you're not, watch your back. The only silver lining I can think of: we'll never hear him warble Let the Eagle Soar.
CHEERS to happy returns. It's over. Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman's Kafkaesque experience is over. Prison life---which included a stint in solitary for the bullshittiest of reasons---is behind him. He's back home:
"I feel like a refugee coming into New York," Siegelman said as he was greeted friends and family at the airport.
At the corner of 20th Street North and Second Avenue North, the governor rolled down his passenger side window and waved to the dozen or so supporters, some who held "We Love Don" signs with the "Love" denoted by a heart. "It is bittersweet just to think that finally he will have the freedom that should have never been taken away from him," said Sharron Williams, a volunteer who manages the Free Don Siegelman Facebook page.
First order of business when he got inside his house: taking all the doors off the hinges.
CHEERS to Tippeca...ca...cachoo! Happy 244th birthday to "#9" William Henry "Tippecanoe" Harrison. During his nearly two-hour inaugural address (sans 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. 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.
Harrison was the first president to vant to suck your bloooood.
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!
JEERS to Operation Shoot Yourself In The Foot. By now we all know about the Trump-approved raid on an al Qaeda camp in Yemen that ended up getting a Navy Seal and a bunch of civilians killed. Apparently the White house screwed up so bad that now Yemen is telling POTUS to go be an armchair warrior on someone else's turf:
Yemen's government has requested that the United States stop ground operations in the country unless it has the government's full approval after an anti-terror raid authorized by US President Donald Trump killed civilians, two senior Yemeni defense officials told CNN on Wednesday.
The Yemeni officials said the government had sent a firm message to the US administration condemning the January 29 operation that left one US Navy Seal dead along with Yemeni women and children, complaining of a lack of coordination with its officials.
So Trump has to find another foe to feed his delusions of grandeur on the field of battle. In the distance, Australia wipes sweat off its brow and points frantically at Mexico.
CHEERS to the meteorologee-whiz kids. As we anticipate nearly a foot of snow dropping in our back yard throughout the day, we note that today is the 147th birthday of that dastardly socialist entity foisted on the nation by President Grant known as the National Weather Service. It's mission: to provide...
"...weather, hydrologic, and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and ocean areas, for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy.
Today’s National Weather Service forecast for the coasts: messy.
NWS data and products form a national information database and infrastructure which can be used by other governmental agencies, the private sector, the public, and the global community."
Weather forecasters are among the professionals who are criticized relentlessly by the public for getting things wrong. That can only mean one thing: their jobs will be among the safest in the Trump administration.
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Ten years ago in C&J: February 9, 2007
JEERS to silly ideas. Joe Lieberman wants us all to pay---I kid you not--- a "War On Terrorism Tax." Fine...just as soon as he agrees to pay a Lily-livered Turncoat Tax.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to 1/300th notes. On this date in 1992, Thomas Scholl of Germany became the fastest yodeler alive, delivering 22 tones---15 of them falsettos---in 1 second. (To put that in perspective, that’s almost as fast as it takes for Kellyanne Conway to think up with an alternative fact.) Here he is in action:
Meanwhile the blue ribbon for speed-shouting "Benghazi" remains safely locked away in Fox News's trophy case.
Have a yodeltastic Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Bill in Portland Maine is nothing but lizard brain, and his kiddie pool splashers are all too happy to blab about his craziness.
---Kos
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