From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: Mid-January Mishmash
“Welcome to 2018!!! I hope your new year’s resolution is to register to vote, because mine is to kick nonvoters in the face.”
---Samantha Bee
“I don’t know how to break this to you, but I think the president might be racist. Y’know what? Personally, as someone from South Shithole, I’m offended, Mr. President.”
---Trevor Noah
"They're not shithole countries. For one, Donald Trump isn't their president."
---Stephen Colbert
“According to The Washington Post, which has been keeping track, yesterday Trump told his 2,000th lie since taking office. So happy Lie2K, everybody!”
---Jimmy Kimmel
“According to a recent article, President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner has been asked to turn his focus to prison reform. And based on the way the Russia investigation is going, I assume he wants to make prisons way harder to get into.”
---James Corden
"We're all here tonight courtesy of the Hollywood Foreign Press, a string of three words that could not have been better designed to infuriate our president. The only name that would make him angrier is the Hillary Mexico Salad Association."
---Seth Meyers, hosting the Golden Globes
And, much to everyone’s relief, this is our final appeal in our annual C&J fundraiser, which will keep me in Huggies and my partner Michael in vodka and cran for the next year. Here are the various options via PayPal and snail mail:
One time contribution: click here
$5 monthly contribution: click here
$10 monthly contribution: click here
$20 monthly contribution: click here
To send a donation via snail mail, the address is:
Bill Harnsberger, 16 Pitt Street, Portland, ME, 04103.
If you're already a C&J monthly subscriber and you want to continue, you don’t have to do anything---you’re all set. Once again, thank you for buying my soul for another year. I’ll send it through the car wash this weekend and ship it out on Monday.
Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, January 12, 2018
Note: Today is National Pharmacist Day. They celebrated the usual way, by inviting customers to pick a goodie from the giant bowl full of pills they found on the floor over the course of the year. (Note: if you picked the one shaped like a dodecahedron, allow yourself three days to float back down to earth.)
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Republicans allow the government to shut down: 8
Days 'til the first Heber Tamale Festival in California: 8
Approval/disapproval for the GOP tax plan in a new Gallup poll: 33% / 55%
Number (so far) of Republicans running for Congress who are convicted criminals (Joe Arpaio, Don Blankenship, Michael Grimm & Greg Gianforte): 4
Percent of Millennials in the new Quinnipiac poll who disapprove of Trump: 67%
Percent of Americans in the same poll who believe Obama is more responsible for the current U.S. economy (which 66% of voters deem good or excellent) compared to 40 percent who say Trump is responsible: 49%
Millions of Golden Globes viewers this year and last, respectively: 19 / 20
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Thug ambush!
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CHEERS to continuity in the commonwealth. Terry McAuliffe, who surprised just about everyone by morphing from a weasely Democratic campaign manager into a serious and accomplished Democratic governor in Virginia, will hand the reins over to a fellow Democrat tomorrow. (Weather: partly sunny and 50.) Ralph Northam, M.D. will be sworn in at noon as governor #73, and he’ll instantly make history by being the first chief executive in state history to have a majority-female cabinet. Northam won because Democratic voters turned out to stop Trump clone Ed Gillespie, who would’ve been a typical Republican train wreck. Instead, here’s what that Democratic turnout hath wrought:
Governor Terry McAuliffe and Governor-elect Ralph Northam today proposed their joint legislative agenda for the 2018 General Assembly session.
The legislative package includes proposals to expand Medicaid, implement universal background checks in order to purchase a gun, reform the absentee voting process, formally join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), prevent the personal use of campaign contributions, raise the felony larceny threshold, institute a Borrower’s Bill of Rights creating an ombudsman who can help borrowers understand their payments, and support for the Whole Women’s Health Act.
I have a modest idea: let’s all remember this lesson and hath wrought harder in 298 days, shall we?
JEERS to President Pottymouth. Yeah---him again. The worst president in American history shot off his mouth in the White House yesterday, calling Haiti and various African nations “shithole nations.” Responded the nations: “At least our housekeeping staff doesn’t need a hazmat suit to clean our leaders’ bedroom.”
P.S. Trump got his physical today at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Things got a bit awkward when doctors said, “Let’s take a peek inside your shithole” and he opened his mouth.
CHEERS to the master of humungo signatures. John Hancock turns 281 today. His is the largest signature on the Declaration of Independence, apparently because he really wanted to rub it in King George's nose. Pay your respects here. But please don’t ask him for his John Hancock---he's really sick of hearing that one.
P.S. Rush Limbaugh, the once-mighty radio titan who today is lucky if he can scrounge up enough sponsors to pay the light bill each month, turns 67 today. Funny, he doesn’t look a day under 666.
JEERS to the 9-year-old at the helm. This will surprise nobody,but a statistical analysis of the first 30,000 unscripted words from every president’s mouth since Herbert Hoover reveals that self-described “very excellent” “genius” President Shithole actually speaks at a 4th-grade level---the lowest of them all. Normally, I applaud anyone who “talks plain English” when communicating about complicated issues (see science guy Bill Nye or economics guy Robert Reich). But in Trump’s case, he talks like a 4th-grader because he’s, in his own cabinet members’ words, a “dope,” an “idiot,” and a “fucking moron.” And now here’s the official response from Heather, president of the 4th Graders Defense Network:
“We strenuously object to this inapt comparison of our intellectual capacity and linguistic skill to the nefarious dotard currently occupying the executive mansion, and we demand an immediate correction. The only appropriate moniker for his chosen parlance is ‘spoiled brat,’ and as such we consider Mr. Trump and his penchant for verbal diarrhea worthy of a wedgie, a swirlie, and two purple nurples.”
Thus explaining why you’ll never see him delivering speeches on a playground.
JEERS to that time the bizarro freak circus rolled into town. Twenty-three years ago today, the O.J. Simpson trial got pre-started with pre-trial hearings. My view of it has completely changed since 1995. Back then I was like, "He got zero years? I am so pissed." But today I'm like, "He got zero years twenty-three years ago? I am so old."
CHEERS to home vegetation. Typical mid-winter weekend on the TV. We’ll start with Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow deftly parsing whatever Friday news dump(s) happened today. New home video releases include Stephen King’s It and the Thurgood Marshall biopic that goes by the crazy title Marshall. The basketball schedule is here, the hockey schedule is here and the NFL schedule is here. (Tomorrow night the Patriots will demote the Titans from gods to mere mortals Ha Ha Ha!) Golden Globe winner Sam Rockwell hosts SNL. On 60 Minutes: An update on the war in Afghanistan (now in its 17th year), and a look at the changes happening in Portland, Oregon.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Sens. Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Rand Paul (R-KY).
CNN's State of the Union: Rep. Mia Love (R-UT), the only Haitian-American in Congress, will repeat her demand that Trump apologize for his “shithole” comment. (He won’t.) Plus MoveOn’s Karine Jean Pierre; Center for American Progress’s Neera Tanden; former Sec. of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez.
This Week: Congressman John Lewis (D-GA); Sens. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and David Perdue (R-GA).
Face the Nation: Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Cory Gardner (R-CO) and Tom Cotton (R-AR); CBS News’s Anthony Salvanto unveils new polls.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: California Attorney General Xavier Becerra; Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 12, 2008
CHEERS to being recruited into Howard Dean’s army. I got my DNC membership card in the mail yesterday! #051152182---Woodrow Wilson's old number! It entitles me to hold it while I breathe, to jimmy locks, and arrest people for any reason whatsoever (why should the RNC have all the fun?). Plus, now I can add it to the 600 other DNC membership cards I've gotten over the past 12 months and use them to make a replica of the White House. I'd like to thank each and every dead tree that made it all possible.
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And just one more…
JEERS to nuts with buttons. Before we adjourn for the weekend, here’s a peppy reminder that two nations on our exceptional planet are currently led by lunatics who are actively threatening each other with nuclear strikes…and one of those lunatics is ours. So leave it to Randy Rainbow to turn thermonuclear annihilation into a fabulous musical number. Hit it…
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Have a great weekend. Hope it doesn’t involve any ducking or covering. Floor's open...What areyou cheering and jeering about today?
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