From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: Cacophony in Corn Country Edition
"Ted Cruz's [Iowa] victory last night raises a lot of questions, like one: can he keep this momentum going into New Hampshire? And two: just how much does it cost to move to Canada?"
---James Corden
“Donald Trump came in second with 24 percent, and Marco Rubio is right behind him with 23 percent. Third is pretty good considering the fact that most Iowa voters think that Marco Rubio is a game you play in the swimming pool.”
---Jimmy Kimmel
"On Monday, Dr. [Rand] Paul came in fifth in the Iowa caucus with only 4.5 percent of the vote. Alas---people had such high hopes for Rand winning, in that those who hoped were clearly high."
---Stephen Colbert
"In Governor Snyder's inbox of terribles, one email mentions a [Flint] resident who said she was told by a state nurse in January 2015 regarding her son's elevated blood level, ‘It's just a few IQ points…it's not the end of the world.’ I'm afraid this lead poisoning will make kids so dim they'll end up being like the governor of Michigan."
---Larry Wilmore
“According to a new report, Americans spent more money last year on legal marijuana than they did on Doritos and Cheetos combined. Or as pot smokers call that: a salad.”
---Seth Meyers
Four years ago:
"Rick Santorum says Newt Gingrich is too hot, Mitt Romney is too cold, but he's the 'Goldilocks candidate.' Yes, nothing gets voters excited like comparing yourself to tepid porridge."
---Craig Ferguson
Santorum quit the 2016 race this week. But his legacy will Google on and on and on.
Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, February 5, 2016
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
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til John Oliver returns to Last Week Tonight on HBO: 9
Days 'til the Queen Mary Scottish Festival in Long Beach, California: 8
Percent of "commercially-managed" fish/invertebrate species between North Carolina and Maine that will be negatively, positively, and neutrally affected, respectively, by climate change according to an NOAA study: 50%, 20%, 30%
Date of the Hillary-Bernie debate in Flint, Michigan: 3/6/16
Number of driver tolls paid on the Maine turnpike last year, a new record: 79.5 million
Number of Ben & Jerry’s vegan flavors introduced this week: 4
Cost of the ice cream-making class Ben and Jerry took before they launched their empire out of a gas station: $5
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Puppy Pic of the Day:
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CHEERS to jobs, jobs, jobs. The punctual bunch at the Labor Department released their January employment report this morning at the stroke of 8:30, and it's got some good stuff in it: 151,000 new jobs (that’s 70 straight months of job growth), wages rising, and the average monthly job growth for the last three months stands at 231,000. Jared Bernstein's always-helpful analysis is here, and here's the updated graph with a reminder that the carnage Republican President George W. Bush slept through is over on the left:
Oh, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.9%, which reminds us of a funny story. In 2012, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney crowed: “I can tell you that over a period of four years, by virtue of the policies that we’d put in place, we’d get the unemployment rate down to 6 percent." Golly, with aspirations like that I can't understand why we opted to re-up the black guy with the funny name.
CHEERS to the rumble in the Granite State. As last night's debate at UNH Durham proved, Republicans may have five times as many presidential candidates, but intellectually and morally the two candidates representing Team D have the deeper bench. Or, as Bernie said, "On our worst day, we are 100 percent better than any Republican." He and Hillary focused like lasers on the proverbial "issues that matter”---although climate change got royally stiffed---and refused to take any bait that would send them jumping down rabbit holes over emails or firewalls. The biggest loser of the night was DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, since it's now obvious that more debates are better for everybody. But for me the biggest overall letdown was the moderation by Rachel Maddow and Chuck Todd, who both failed to ask the most obvious question for the New Hampshire audience: Live free or die? Duh!
CHEERS to the Illinois governor who took on the Kansas general. Happy 116th birthday to Adlai Stevenson II. He lost to Dwight Eisenhower in both 1952 and 1956. (Then again, I think God herself would have.) But as U.N. Ambassador he pleasantly surprised the Kennedy administration by giving the Russians hell during the Cuban missile crisis. And he sure understood Republicans:
"A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation. "
"I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them."
And I love this:
We travel together, passengers on a little space ship,
dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.
We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of man, half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day.
No craft, no crew can travel with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.
In other words: nice knowin' ya.
CHEERS to getting your above-the-law balloon popped. For more than a month Ammon Bundy and his gang of armed terrorists occupied the Malheur wildlife refuge in Burns, Oregon. Law enforcement officials showed infinitely more restraint than they would have if the criminals weren't white Christian cowboy-hat wearin', pickup truck-drivin' papa grizzly "patriots," and one of my biggest fears---besides gun violence killing police or innocent townspeople---was that they were gonna be let go without penalty. So file this under "Good!"
A newly unsealed indictment names 16 defendants…
...including the holdouts, standoff leader Ammon Bundy and other occupiers arrested last week.
Also named is Kenneth Medenbach, who was arrested after being caught driving a government vehicle from the refuge to a supermarket. A federal grand jury charged all with felony conspiracy, accusing them of using intimidation to prevent federal officers from doing their work at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
I hope they get plenty of years in jail cells to contemplate who really enforces the laws in America. Meanwhile, there are still four dead-end holdouts at the refuge. Police appear to be waiting them out, and two signs suggest they're close to surrendering: they're running low on vanilla creamer for their lattes and battery power for their sex toys.
CHEERS to historic moments in getting busted for doing something naughty with your hand. Five years ago Sunday, while bamboozling a rapt Tea Party audience in Nashville at the height of the movement's ascendancy, former everything Sarah Palin got caught for the most juvenile of transgressions: writing cheat notes on her hand:
Energy. Budget Tax cuts. Lift American spirits. So complex were those concepts that she had to write them down. On her hand. Six words. And even then she made a mistake. Y'know, we don’t say this to our right-wing friends nearly enough: thank you for your healing gift of laughter.
CHEERS to Massachusetts. The "Thank God Mitt's Outta Here" commonwealth officially became the sixth member of our kooky union on tomorrow's date in 1788. And I'd like to remind the right-wing knuckledraggers who bash the state for being a den of anything-goes liberalism that a) the Salem witch trials were conducted by ultra-conservatives, b) the freedoms you guys have to speak your evolution-denyin' minds are largely the result of a bunch of Massachusetts types who shed their blood to make it possible, c) the state has the lowest divorce rate in the country, d) it's the home of Romneycare, the genesis of Obamacare, e) it's also the home of Necco Wafers and the New England Patriots, making it the cradle of all that is wholesome and perfect and civilized. But we'll concede that Bay Staters---whom I never refer to as "Massholes" to their face unless I'm drunk and wielding a crowbar---do act like fundies in one respect: they drive like they're all late to Second Coming.
CHEERS to home vegetation. As far as TV goes, Super Bowl VVVVVVVVVV steals the oxygen this weekend as the Panthers tackle the Broncos. Seriously, that's all that's going to happen Sunday---Panthers tackling Broncos so deal with it. But the TV time starts tonight with Chris Hayes at 8 and Rachel at 9, followed by HBO's Real Time, where Bill Maher talks with Gloria Steinem, Ben Carson campaign mismanager Armstrong Williams, Alex Wagner, P.J. O'Rourke and Erin Brockovich (addressing the Flint water crisis in place of Michael Moore, who is battling pneumonia---get well soon!). New DVD releases include Sufragette and Our Brand Is Crisis. Tomorrow night at 8 ABC is hosting a Republican clown car debate, and all the candidates know that Marco Rubio is He Who Must Be Knocked Down A Peg. Larry David and his spot-on impersonation of Bernie Sanders are hosting SNL, with a cameo by Bernie Sanders and his spot-on impersonation of Larry David. The hockey schedule is here and the NBA schedule is here.
And here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Bernie!!!
This Week: Hillary!!! Plus Sen. Marco Rubio (R-DoNothing)
Face the Nation: Hillary!!! Bernie!!!
CNN's State of the Union: Bernie!!! Plus Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) and Gov. Chris Christie (R-Bridgegate).
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: A fair and balanced lineup: Gov. Chris Chrstie (R-NJ), Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) and Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL), aka the rude guy, the Buckeye and the son who flushed his family dynasty bye-bye.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: February 5, 2006
CHEERS to tales from the Downing Street Memo. Really, King George? You were going to paint U.S. spy planes with U.N. colors and fly them over Iraq to provoke a war with Saddam?? Oh, that would have been silly. Bullshitting the nation and the world about non-existent WMDs was definitely the way to go.
And just one more…
CHEERS to a profession full of highs and lows. Happy Weatherpersons' Day! After shoveling the snow off the Wikipedia page, I see that it "recognizes individuals in the fields of meteorology, weather forecasting and broadcast meteorology, as well as volunteer storm spotters and observers. It is observed on the birthday of John Jeffries, one of the United States' first weather observers who took daily measurements starting in 1774." Yes, it took our best scientific minds over 200 years to build our modern forecasting tools, and You Tube mere minutes to assemble the outtakes. Enjoy…
Forecasters predict National Weatherpersons' Day will blow over within the next few hours, followed by an 80 percent chance of lingering National Weatherpersons' Day hangovers. Mostly among weatherpersons.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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