Hispanic Federation Fund for Puerto Rico Relief Link
Unity March for Puerto Rico This Sunday in D.C.
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From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: The Rogues Gallery Rogues On
“It came out that Donald Trump Jr. was in direct contact with WikiLeaks during last year’s election. You can tell Don Jr.’s in trouble because his dad just demoted him to ‘Eric.’”
---Jimmy Fallon
“North Korea state media published a scathing review of President Trump's trip to Asia. They said Trump displayed his ‘true colors as an old lunatic, mean trickster and human reject.’ Now you listen here, North Korea: we may not like him either, but that is the president of the United States you're accurately describing!”
---James Corden
“According to a national poll, only sixteen percent of Americans believe that Republican Alabama candidate Roy Moore should stay in the Senate race following allegations of sexual misconduct with teenagers. Sixteen percent. Or as Moore calls it: old enough percent.”
---Seth Meyers
“If you’re watching from Alabama [and] you want to prove that your lovely state is better than liberal, sex-crazed Hollywood, the voter registration deadline for the special election is November 27th. Please: prove all of us Yankee assholes wrong about you!”
---Samantha Bee
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee on the subject of collusion with Russia. He was not forthcoming. Not since Finding Dory have I seen a character have this much trouble with their memory.”
---Jimmy Kimmel
Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, November 17, 2017
Note: A reminder that Sunday is Have A Bad Day Day. If you violate the spirit of the occasion by having a good day, that would be very bad, which would actually make your good day a bad day. Good for you! (In a bad way. Which is good! But that’s bad. Good! Good bad!)
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the special senate election in Alabama: 25
Days 'til the Jackalope Indie Artisan Fair in Old Pasadena: 1
Paul Ryan’s popularity in his own district, down from 49% in March according to PPP: 42%
Acres of cropland around the world, 15-20 percent higher than earlier estimates, according to a new U.S.Geological Survey report: 4.62 billion
Amount for which you can buy the last thing John F. Kennedy ever signed in the Oval office (a photo on Nov. 21, 1963): $80,000
The last time Nintendo had a year as good as this one: 2010
Top speed of the 2019 Corvette ZR1, the fastest Corvette ever: 210mph
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Puppy Pic of the Day: So basically, to raise a well-adjusted puppy, get him/her used to everything early. Makes sense.
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JEERS to dutiful orcs. The orders came from behind the gated mansions of Billionaire Acres: drain the middle class coffers, force everyone to be dependent on corporations for ever-dwindling health insurance benefits, and set fire to the social safety net Americans have depended on for more than 80 years. And the dutiful Republican orcs, fully knowing they’re going to get slaughtered one year from now in the midterm elections but too dependent on the money coming out of Billionaire Acres into their campaign coffers, said “Okeley Dokeley!” And thus it was done:
House Republicans just passed their bill to cut taxes for the wealthy, add $1.456 trillion in debt by 2027, and trigger automatic annual cuts to Medicare of $25 billion.
Oh, and it would also increases taxes over the next decade for many middle-class American families.
Now the billionaires will cast their Eye of Sauron onto the Senate, where the more hoity-toity orcs will be under pressure to pull the same daylight heist, only with the added bonus of stripping 13 million lower-income Americans (including yours truly) of their health insurance entirely, and exempting owners of private jets from paying taxes. Fortunately there seems to be more resistance here: Ron Johnson (R-WI) is already a no, and Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) will likely also buck their party. Three ‘nos’ shouldn’t be impossible to persuade. Three action steps for you: 1) call your senators this weekend or Monday morning: if Republican, tell them how all this fleecing of your hard-earned money will affect you, and if Democrat, tell them how much you appreciate knowing that they’re doing what they can to stop it. 2) If you want to help destroy the 24 most vulnerable House Republicans next year, see David Nir’s post here. And 3) Primal scream into the nearest pillow. Not necessarily in that order.
P.S. Look who’s become the new poster children of the GOP:
Billboards. I wanna see billboards.
CHEERS to off-the-charts eloquence. On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the Pennsylvania battlefield. I read these words every year and their simple elegance makes me appreciate them more each time. What a distillation of the American experiment:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
If you want an even more condensed version, here's the corporate-approved Power Point Presentation of the speech. (The “next” button is in the lower right-hand corner). A century and a half later we still haven't perished. But Lincoln would no doubt be alarmed (to put it mildly) at the rabid wave of Republican dotardism that followed our current president when he brought his thuggish brand of disgrace to Gettysburg last fall, and to the entire nation on January 20th. In fact, I can imagine Honest Abe’s one-word tweet now: ”Sad!”
JEERS to another pig in the pen. Oh, look---it’s another incident involving a man thinking with the wrong head. This time Senator Al Franken (D-MN) is the one busted for not taking “No. No. NO!!!” for an answer. Franken’s statement is here. (Leeann Tweeden quickly forgave him and doesn’t want him to resign.) Ethics investigation will follow as Republicans wail over, Biblically speaking, the speck in Al’s eye as they ignore the log in their president’s:
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I think the biggest message we’re getting this year in this, the year of the male groper is: we need women running this joint from top to bottom.
JEERS to the hunchback of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Forty-four years ago today, in 1973, Richard Nixon uttered his immortal words: "People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook."
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And to prove he wasn't a crook, Gerald Ford shielded him with a "full and unconditional pardon" after Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment for crooky things like high crimes and misdemeanors. Trust me: the less you think about it, the more it makes sense.
CHEERS to identity politics. While our country descends into madness, the folks over in France are dealing with their own major issue, in which anarchic citizens are trying to slip through the cracks and engage in what can best be described as reverse identity-theft. I’m speaking, of course, of parents naming their children names that can not be named, according to the oppressive, jack-booted French government. Among the names you can’t slap on Junior’s hiney: Nutella, Mini Cooper, MJ, Prince William, Manhattan, Babar, and…really?...Joyeux. (I wonder what MSNBC’s Joyeux Reid thinks of that.) Among all of the legal ones, the #1 names for women and men in France remain, as usual, Baguette and Quasimodo.
CHEERS to home vegetation. Here's some of the haps on the teevee this weekend. After Chris Hayes and Rachel tonight on MSNBC, Bill Maher ends his season with Chelsea Handler, Carl Bernstein, Bill McKibben and Rebecca Traister on HBO’s Real Time.
New home video releases include the always-watchable Charlize Theron in the actioner Atomic Blonde, and the tenth Amityville Horror sequel (they shoulda stopped at one). The basketball schedule is here, the hockey schedule is here and the concussion manufacturing schedule is here. (The Patriots will “plunder” the Raiders Ha Ha Ha pirate joke!) Tomorrow night at 8 on HBO, Jon Stewart hosts Night of Too Many Stars his fundraiser for (or, more accurately, against) autism. Chance the Rapper and Eminem have hosting/warbling duty on SNL. On 60 Minutes: a report on the Voyager 1 and 2 probes that were launched 40 years ago, with special focus on the golden record that was sent with them. (Won’t that suck if the space aliens only have a CD player.) Tracee Ellis Ross (black-ish) hosts the American Music Awards Sunday night, during which her mom Diana Ross will receive a lifetime achievement award. (See the nominees here.) My power ballad, The Greatest Underwear of All, is up for all the major categories, including Best Vuvuzela Solo.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA); Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI); Trump Alabama campaign co-chair Perry Hooper, for reasons that escape me.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Treasury raider Steve Mnuchin.
CNN's State of the Union: Bernie!!! Plus Sen Susan Collins (R-ME) and White House funneler of middle class money to the rich Mick Mulvaney.
This Week: TBA
Face the Nation: Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) reacts to all the recent sexual assault admissions (and non-admissions); Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and White House budget vulture Mick Mulvaney will lie their asses off about the GOP daylight robbery of the middle class, but CBS News didn;t see fit to book a DEMOCRAT to rebut them. Stay classy, CBS News.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: November 17, 2007
JEERS to thoughts better left unshared. Yesterday, while heading downtown on the Metro bus, I found out from an apparently lobotomized passenger that, if Barack Obama is elected president, we'll all have "watermelons and banjos on the lawn." Moments later I found out that "God needs to come down and sort this all out." Maybe you should go see Her instead, moron.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to that people-powered dude. Happy hrffrfrrhrth birthday to Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor (first in the nation to sign same-sex civil unions into law---a quaint milestone, but groundbreaking at the time) who became the loudest 2004 presidential candidate to rail against the warmongering Bush II regime. (His 2003 speech in Sacramento remains one of the most influential barn burners in modern political history.)
Of course, we all know Governor Dean got bumped out of the race for uttering "Yeah" in Iowa at a higher volume than is allowed in polite political society. (We're a very sensitive republic, you know.) He then went on to become the chairman of the DNC, and unleashed a radical strategy that would give the Democratic party an active, robust presence in---gasp!---all 50 states! Following Obama's 2008 win, campaign manager David Plouffe sent out an email with an unambiguous verdict on how Dean’s 50-state strategy worked out:
Our friends at the Democratic National Committee laid it all on the line to bring change this year.
The DNC's 50-state field strategy was crucial to our campaign's success, as well as victories for Democrats up and down the ballot. Their organizing infrastructure allowed us to compete---and win---in states that seemed insurmountable just four years ago.
His reward was to get tossed on his ear in favor of triangulation-as-usual. (How'd that work out in 2014 and 2016, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Donna Brazile?) Yet Howard is still fighting the good fight via Democracy for America and his MSNBC political analyst gig, has a near-perfect attendance record at our Netroots Nation conventions, and is a proud card-carrying Kossack. So when you're pouring your first drinky tonight (may we recommend a cocktail made with pure Vermont maple syrup?), hoist it and say happy birthday to the old man...and many blessings on his camels.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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