From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE
“Now raise your shrunken hand and repeat after me...”
Bad Lip Reading goes inauguratin’:
Note: out of respect for the office, they did not redub Trump’s words.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, January 26, 2017
Note: Just a quick heads-up that there will be no C&J on Monday. We'll be back on Tuesday. Because if we're not, Trump will---say it with me---send in the feds!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til spring: 53
Days 'til the 5th annual Beer, Wine, Cheese & Chocolate Festival in Springfield, Missouri: 9
Current Trump approval rating in Gallup's just-begun 3-day rolling average (vs. 68% during Obama's first three days in '09): 46%
Percent of Republicans surveyed by Morning Consult-Politico who falsely believe Trump's inauguration had more people than the Women's March: 44%
Percent who correctly believe the Women's March was bigger: 20%
Percent of the nominees in this year's Oscar acting categories who are people of color: 35%
Percent chance that Manchester by the Sea is the first movie produced by a video streaming service (Netflix) to be nominated for an Academy Award: 100%
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
During the campaign, Bush urged his $1.3 trillion tax cut on us because we were going to have this enormous surplus.
Now the economy is tanking, the surplus is disappearing, and Bush insists that we still have an enormous tax cut because the economy is tanking and the surplus is disappearing. He says the money belongs to us. So does the national debt.
Angry Democrats have been vowing, "No honeymoon, no honeymoon." At this rate, the D's won't need to do a thing. Bush is ending his honeymoon himself before it even has a chance to get started.
---January, 2001
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Baby's first hole…
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CHEERS to treading on thin ice. So this despotic leader (yes, I'm calling him that!) gets---let's be honest here---installed into office, and immediately everyone knows things are going to go seriously off the rails for the duration, as evidenced by his first days in office: thuggish tactics, cracking down on science, spreading lies daily, embracing nationalism, surrounding himself with boot-licking toadies, flipping the bird at the international community, severely restricting communications, endlessly banging war drums…and etcetera. But I want you to know that there's hope. Someone from inside his inner circle says things are already crumbling around him, and there's an almost inevitable feeling that the tighter he tries to squeeze, the more the people are going to slip through his fingers. So let's all take heart and let a ray of optimism thread its way through our movement. Because if it can happen in North Korea maybe it can happen here, too!
JEERS to stupid on steroids. Yesterday President Trump unveiled his big plan for building the wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Using his brilliant dealmaking prowess, it’ll only cost us $30 billion yaaaaay! And, golly, you'll never guess who's paying for it: we are! And you'll never guess who we're paying to build it: Mexico!
A majority of the labor that would be brought in would likely come from the Mexico side of the border as well because their wage requirement is lower and more cost effective.
“There would be a certain irony of getting Mexicans to build it,” he noted. “It would likely be a mixed labor force, but Mexicans would be much less expensive.” At the same time, the enormity of steel and concrete needed would require the U.S. to rely on Mexican-owned cement and concrete plants. Having the steel and concrete from U.S. companies means an added expense to transport it while the Mexican companies are closer to the border.
Bernstein Investment Bank estimated that the Mexican company Cemex is the best one positioned to provide the materials.
Trump said last August that his wall will be 45 feet high, which brings us to today's surefire stock tip: invest everything you have in that fine Mexico City company Forty Six Foot Ladders "Я" Us.
P.S. A former Mexican president sends an early valentine to our current press secretary:
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CHEERS to going "nay"-gative. When it comes to senators, Maine is a mixed bag. Republican Susan Collins is so squishy she has to hang her brain on the clothesline every night to dry out. But our independent senator Angus King---who caucuses with Democrats---is calm, rational, and steeped in what I call "folksy-bluntness." He's also well-schooled, which is how he knows that Trump's education secretary nominee Cruella DeVos deserves to be sent packing back to Michigan to tend to her multi-billion-dollar Amway scampire:
“To say she’s a proponent of school choice is an understatement,” King said. “Her whole career has been school choice to the exclusion of the basic public education system, and I am just such a firm believer in public education that I can’t go that far.”
“Nobody argues that the public education system is perfect or can’t be improved, and I think that’s where the emphasis should be,” he added.
“I’m a product of public schools. My parents went to public schools. My kids went to public schools. My dad used to say that public schools are the idea at the heart of democracy. I would hate to depart from that in a wholesale fashion, which is what she seems to intend to do.”
I don’t want to say that DeVos took King's vote of no confidence poorly, but this morning he woke up to find a grizzly head in his bed.
CHEERS to old soldiers. Today is General Douglas MacArthur's 137th birthday. After destroying the Japanese forces during World War II, he gained their respect as Military Governor of Japan, but then he became too much of a loose cannon over Korea and got fired by President Harry Truman. Afterward...
There was an unsuccessful attempt by Republicans to have him run for President in 1952, but he deferred, and the nomination went to General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower.
After retirement, he became Chairman of the Board for the Remington Rand Corporation, and spent his remaining years in NYC, speaking out on public issues.
His final address, in January 1962, to the graduating class at West Point is considered one of his finest speeches.
Pay your respects here. In his farewell address to Congress, MacArthur said that old soldiers never die, they just fade away. Thanks to the size of his ego, he'll finish fading sometime during the next ice age.
CHEERS to a modest suggestion of an unambiguous nature. The members of Greenpeace who scaled this sucker to post America's marching orders in the back yard of the Trump White House have some serious guts:
When Trump saw it he turned red, balled up his tiny hands and came up with a brilliant plan to make the banner disappear. And that's why all the White House windows are bricked up this morning.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 26, 2007
JEERS to cheap imitations. Fox News's new "comedy" show, called---I kid you not---The Half-Hour News Hour, appears to be a great way to practice your eye-rolling skills. In episode one, they apparently drop kittens from a balcony and beat up some "fags." They're gonna be wearing out laugh-track buttons faster than Dennis Hastert going through a bag of Cheetos.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the land down under. Hit it...
Happy Australia Day 2017. But if you come near me with anything resembling vegemite, I'm calling in Seal Team 6.
And this just in: Heaven’s newsroom just got a major talent upgrade. Sadly, no film at 11. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
REPORT: Trump ‘Visibly Enraged’ by Comparisons Between Inauguration Crowd, C&J kiddie pool splashers
---Mediaite
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