From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Moral Compass Check
Love this ad, courtesy of Denmark’s TV2. Two and a half million views so far:
If he’s confirmed, Jeff Sessions promises to fight for and protect everyone in all our boxes. As long as all the boxes are labeled “white,” “male,” “straight,” “conservative,” “rich” and “Trump.”
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Note: In the spirit of conciliation and understanding, today I will try to see the world through President Trump's eyes by hating everyone who disagrees with me, praising myself in public at every available opportunity, shuffling around morosely in my bathrobe, and squinting as hard as necessary until reality becomes distorted beyond recognition. Wish me luck!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Alec Baldwin hosts SNL: 3
Days 'til the 38th annual Eelpout Festival in Walker, Minnesota: 15
Number of NCAA championship events, worth $250 million, that North Carolina stands to lose if Republicans don't repeal the anti-LGBT HB2 law, according to the NCAA: 133
Percent of Americans who correctly believe that Trump's travel ban is designed to keep Muslims out of the country, according to a CNN-ORC poll: 55%
Date that the stage version of George Orwell's 1984 opens on Broadway: 6/22/17
Rank of New York and Rhode Island among states with the highest share of private-sector employment derived from non-profit organizations, tied at 18% each according to the Census Bureau: #1
Average state's percent of employment derived from non-profits nationally: 10%
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Mid-week Rapture Index:
182 (including 4 Satanisms and thousands of demon-possessed Trump protesters). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Deadline is midnight tonight for Indianapolis residents (within 20 miles of downtown) to order your Puppy Love Valentines!
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CHEERS to gettin' sprung. Despite my dozen attempts to smuggle in cakes with a file inside, former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman languished in prison after his conviction for "appearing" to do something that countless other politicians do every day yet never get locked up for. In 2015, the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin nicely explained why Siegelman deserved a pardon or at least a commutation from President Obama…an executive action that never came. But today he finally leaves prison. As for what happens next:
Siegelman, 70, has been told that he will be released Wednesday, Chip Hill, a friend and former aide to Siegelman stated in an email.
"He will be on very restricted supervised probation for an initial period of time," Hill stated. "This is expected to be about six months."
"Following that, he (Siegelman) will be on unsupervised probation for an extended, but not yet specified, period of time," Hill stated. "Immediately after returning home, he will report to an assigned probation officer who will provide him with much more detailed information about what restrictions he will have, including specifics regarding media access. Naturally, his family and many friends are very excited about his release and very much look forward to seeing him."
Siegelman joined us at Netroots Nation 2008 in Austin when he was out on bail pending his appeal, and not a soul he met walked away thinking he was anything but a really nice guy who got railroaded by the likes of Karl Rove (yeah, him) and other conspirators. His term officially ends August 8th…and this year's NN convention starts August 10 in Atlanta. I hope he plans to join the reverie. It'll be good to see him in front of bars instead of behind 'em.
JEERS to the death of public education. Too hyperbolic? We'll see when Trump gets booted in 2020 what kind of carnage billionaire Amway scam vixen Betsy DeVos's Department of Education leaves behind. Having bribed enough Republican senators---and they're not even denying it---DeVos was confirmed yesterday in a vote so close that VP Mike Pence had to drive his panzer to Capitol Hill and cast the tie-breaking "Aye." So get ready for your kids to come home with A-pluses on their tests for correctly regurgitating that 1+1 = Jesus!!! But only after you've first paid your charter school dues, which will be one gazillion dollars per quarter. But…and this is important…tuition will include free grizzly bear protection.
P.S. Please don’t be too impressed with mealy-mouthed "moderate" senator Susan Collins of my fair state for voting "no." She could've stopped DeVos in committee, but chose to give her the green light knowing Mitch McConnell had enough votes for confirmation. That doesn’t make her a hero---it makes her shit on a shoe. I say that with all due respect.
JEERS to paying-for-playing. On February 8, 1960, Congress opened hearings on payola, a scheme in which disc jockeys (Dick Clark among them) accepted payment for playing and hyping certain records. Payola was outlawed, and it became punishable by a maximum $10,000 fine. Meanwhile members of Congress accept payment every day for playing favorites with and hyping corporate interests over the public interest, an offense punishable by a fat paycheck, a full pension, gold-plated healthcare benefits, and guaranteed employment in the lobbying sector if they get booted from office. My point is: shame on the record industry---that was just wrong!
CHEERS to catching the media doing something right. It looks kinda sorta like the traditional media is figuring out how to call out the liar-in-chief on his lies, aka "alternative facts." A gold star goes today to CNN, for showing how simply it can be done:
Trump falsely claims US murder rate is 'highest' in 47 years
Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump continues to decry a record-high murder rate that simply doesn't exist.
The President said Tuesday that the US murder rate "is the highest it's been in 47 years."
"I'd say that in a speech and everybody was surprised because the press doesn't like to tell it like it is," Trump said during a meeting with US sheriffs at the White House. "It wasn't to their advantage to say that. The murder rate is the highest it's been in I guess 45-47 years."
But the reason there's no reporting on a 45- or 47-year high murder rate is because the US murder rate isn't even close to such record highs.
Very basic construction: Headline calls out the lie. First paragraph calls out the lie again. And from there a calm, deliberate and surgical disembowelment of the lie, leaving little lie guts all over the floor, shriveling and withering under the sunlight, crying out in their squeaky lie guts voices, "Oh no, help us Mr. Spicer! Help us Kellyanne!" But it's too late. The dog's already licked 'em off the floor and in twelve hours will poop 'em out and then they'll be scooped up in a poop bag and sent to the landfill with the rest of the trash. Like I said, very basic.
CHEERS to fun in the sun. According to CBS News egghead Mark Knoller, Barack Obama took 217 days of vacation as president---a relatively modest four weeks a year (which everybody should get). Considering he just punched-out for the last time after fulfilling the duties of the toughest job in the world, he deserves all the downtime he and Michelle want. And the old man's having fun (check out them guns), from the looks of this kite-surfing match with Richard Branson, where he pulled off a victory:
Trump, meanwhile, spent his day channel-surfing in his bathrobe, and pulled a finger muscle.
CHEERS to 107 years of helping old ladies across the street. The Boy Scouts of America was incorporated on this date in 1910. For years I hesitated to give the organization a shout-out because of their seemingly-intractable policy of hating on the gays. But I always did it anyway to let the BSA know that, despite their ban---which to their credit they repealed a couple years ago (and this year they officially welcomed transgender boys)---the country is crawling with current and former gay scouts. Among them you can include my partner Michael and me…
Our Eagle certificates are both signed by none other than Saint Ronald Reagan. Of course, there are still a lot of narrow-minded people still fuming over the BSA's new openness (the next thing that needs to go is the ban on non-believers which is still in place). So today we won't need to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together---we'll just wait for the bigots to self-combust.
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Ten years ago in C&J: February 8, 2007
JEERS to verbal whiplash. John McCain on ABC's This Week last Sunday speaking about the Iraq quagmire:
"[It] took us a long time to get in the situation we’re in, and to somehow assume that in a few months that things are going to get better I think is not realistic."
McCain 47 seconds later on the same show...
"I think in the case of the Iraqi government cooperating and doing what’s necessary, we can know fairly well in a few months."
Honest to god, sometimes the punchlines write themselves.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the Energizer Maestro. Woo-hoo! It's time for our annual "Happy Birthday" salute to 21-time Grammy winner, 5-time Oscar winner, Lifetime Contribution to Hollywood Award winner and rock-ribbed dirty fucking hippie union-loving Democrat John Williams. He is hands-down (very, very large hands, much larger than Donald Trump's, believe me) my favorite composer, and he's widely considered America's greatest living composer period. Over a span of fifty-plus years he's given us:
>> One iconic theme for NBC Nightly News
>> One fanfare for the Boston Red Sox
>> Two iconic Irwin Allen disaster flicks (Poseidon Adventure & Towering Inferno)
>> Two Jaws scores
>> Two Jurassic Park scores
>> Three Oliver Stone films (Born on the 4th of July, JFK, Nixon)
>> Three Harry Potter scores
>> Four Indiana Jones scores (soon to be five!)
>> Five themes for various Olympic Games
>> Seven Star Wars scores (soon to be eight!)
>> 20 scores for episodes of Gilligan's Island
>> 27 scores for Steven Spielberg movies (soon to be 28 when he scores Ready Player One)
>> 1 imminent score for a Kobe Bryant animated short based on the NBA star's poem Dear Basketball
He's also composed music involving a gaggle of American presidents: John F. Kennedy (JFK), John Quincy Adams/Martin Van Buren (Amistad), Tricky Dick (Nixon), Lincoln (Lincoln) and Obama (a piece for the first inauguration, in which he expressed "in a very simple and not ostentatious way the solemnity and beauty of the moment and the promise of the moment"). But, oddly enough, his most diverse theme is Darth Vader’s. Seriously. Not only is it the unofficial anthem for the truly evil Dick Cheney, it also boosts the humor quotient exponentially in this impossibly-sweet, instant-classic ad for Volkswagen starring a kid working on his Force skills:
He's currently busy recording his score for Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi, due out in December. Today he turns 85, and at that age I’ll be lucky if I can still lift the TV remote. Happy birthday, John...only 15 years to go ‘til we let you retire.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Jenna Fischer, AKA Pam From "The Office", Finally Returned To The Cheers and Jeers Kiddie Pool And It’s The Best Thing
---Buzzfeed
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