From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: "Only the Very Best People" Edition
"Sean Spicer’s out, Reince Priebus is out, Trumpcare is dead, and Kim Jong Un has a missile that can reach New York. And, weirdly, I don’t feel tired from all the winning yet."
---Jimmy Kimmel
"People are still talking about Anthony Scaramucci---he lasted just ten days, making him the shortest-serving White House communications director ever. But don’t feel bad---publishers have offered him a lot of money to write a tell-all pamphlet about the experience."
---Jimmy Fallon
"White House officials yesterday said they hope to have a bill on tax reform sent to President Trump before December. December? That’s 12 Scaramuccis from now."
---Seth Meyers
"Rick Perry, the first energy secretary to put the word "science" in finger quotes, recently had a 22-minute phone call with the Ukrainian prime minister. [But] Secretary Perry wasn't talking to the prime minister at all. He got called by Vovan and Lexus, better known as 'the Jerky Boys' of Russia, who [tried to] convince him that pig shit would make a great sustainable energy source. Sounds crazy to you and me, but you have to remember that for almost a year Rick Perry ran a presidential campaign made entirely out of horseshit."
---Chris Hardwicke, @Midnight
"Trump hired new White House chief of staff Gen. John Kelly. … According to one source, ‘The kinds of people that Trump particularly likes are people with bucks, money, and braids, the military.’ Yes, he likes people with bucks and braids. So if Kelly doesn’t work out, congratulations to our next chief of staff, Sparkle the show pony."
---Stephen Colbert
C’mon down and splash in the kiddie pool. Mueller’s grand juries are facing off in water polo. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, August 4, 2017
Note: Just a heads-up that C&J will not appear next week since we'll be on convention duty in Atlanta, filling our head with all kinds of far-left nonsense like equality and democracy and non-violence and progress and suchlike. We'll be back here on Tuesday, August 15. The post-Netroots Nation dirt I end up dishing will depend entirely on how much people there are willing to pay me to not dish it. I hope they're tightwads!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Thanksgiving: 111
Days 'til the Huckleberry Festival in Trout Creek, Montana: 7
President Trump's staggeringly-low approval rating in the new Quinnipiac poll: 33%
Percent chance that 33 looks like two butts mooning the right: 100%
Portion of U.S. counties that saw opioid prescriptions rise by over 10 percent over the last 5 years, according to FiveThirtyEight: 1-in-5
Percent of drivers who admit they've texted while driving, according to AAA, even though 80 percent say it's unacceptable to text while driving: 31%
Percent of moviegoers who check RottenTomatoes.com first before they decide to see a flick, up from 28% in 2014: 36%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Support dogs see spots…
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CHEERS to #44 at #56. On today's date two score and 16 years ago:
Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy., son, Aug. 4
---Honolulu Advertiser, 1961
Remember during the '08 campaign when the traditional media tried spinning the line that Obama was too young and wet-behind-the-huge-ears to be president? I laughed, knowing that his accomplished POTUSmates in the 40-something club include Teddy Roosevelt, James K. Polk, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton. Besides, a quick check of the highlights of his birth year, 1961, is enough to make your bones feel a bit creaky:
✓ None of the James Bond movies had been released; West Side Story won the Oscar for Best Picture
✓ John F. Kennedy was sworn in as the 35th president---Obama is #44
✓ The Dow Jones Industrials reached a high of...734!!!
✓ Median price of a new home: $17,200
✓ Harper Lee won a Pulitzer for To Kill A Mockingbird
✓ East Germany replaces its barbed wire barricades with a permanent wall dividing Berlin
✓ The Emmy for outstanding news program went to The Huntley-Brinkley Report
✓ Roger Maris hit 61 home runs, breaking Babe Ruth's single-season record
✓ The price of a gallon of gas was 31 cents.
Certain policy and strategy differences aside, I consider Obama one of the greatest embodiments of what the U.S. presidency should be, and I'm ready to be adopted as soon as he and Michelle submit the paperwork. (What is taking so long???) So Happy 56th Birthday, Mr. President…and many blessings on your Marxist socialist Muslim Jade Helm Benghazi tan-suit-wearing gum-chewing camels named Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.
CHEERS to positivity in motion. As we head into a glorious summer weekend, let us take stock of some important things that happened over the last several days that pushed the bad people back into a corner and gave the good people room to breathe sighs of relief. In no particular order:
> Education secretary Betsy DeVos tried to consolidate all the student loan companies into one "too big not to fail" outfit, and was forced to flush the idea down terlet. But the department will follow through with Barack Obama's idea to "create a single web portal for borrowers to make payments on student loans regardless of their borrowers."
> EPA director Scott Pruitt wanted to drag his heels on enforcing Obama’s ozone pollution rules, but 15 states and D.C. sued and Pruitt was forced to flush the idea down the terlet.
> President Trump ducked into his secret hidey hole under the staircase to sign the Russian sanctions bill that cockblocks his BFF Putin even more. White House maintenance staff say his tears were filled with so much rage that they bored a hole clean through to the secret bomb shelter in the basement.
> Republicans said "no effing way" to reviving Trumpcare, and have agreed to work across party lines to shore up Obamacare (the job-killing law that just added 39,000 new jobs to the health care sector in July), which many are now referring to as our new established “national health care system.” Meanwhile, Republicans informed the White House that the push for a massive tax cut disguised as a GOP health care bill is over, cuz One, Two, Three strikes yer out.
> The Senate will remain technically un-adjourned through its August vacation so Trump can’t make any dang-fool recess appointments. Like, say, for a new Attorney General.
> A bipartisan group of senators is drafting legislation that would prevent Trump from firing special investigator Robert Mueller if he starts leaving scorch marks on the president's hiney...like, say, via impaneling a grand jury.
> Senior FBI honchos are champing at the bit to go all obstruction-of-justice on Trump.
And best of all, the orange menace is starting a 17-day vacation at one of his golf resorts, leaving our nation's capital without it's most dangerous threat to the republic. Although, truth be told, I'm not so sure leaving Barron in charge of the nuclear football was a wise idea.
P.S. Welcome to Donald Trump’s “Tweets for All Occasions”…
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JEERS to stupid white men. Let this be a cautionary tale to all the knuckledraggers on the right who insist that Robert Mueller’s independent investigation into Russia-Trump election collusion can’t veer into other territory like, say, Trump’s illegal money-laundering operation. On tomorrow’s date in 1994, Kenneth Starr, solicitor general under President George H.W. Bush, was named as independent prosecutor investigating Whitewater. His final report said virtually nothing about that non-scandal. But it did mention the word…
...over 500 times. Even Larry Flynt was like, "Whoa. Kenny. Dude. Get some help."
JEERS to dial-a-fool. Continuing his 71-year string of unfettered lies, Donald Trump made two ego-stroking claims that proved to be total bullshit. First he claimed that the leader of the Boy Scouts of America called to say his recent Jamboree speech was "the greatest ever made to them." Then he claimed that Mexico's president called him to say that, as far as border security goes, "very few people are coming because they know they’re not going to get through our border, which is the ultimate compliment.” Both the BSA and Mexico confirm the phone calls…never happened. To prevent any potential disastrous chats in the future, new chief of staff John Kelly has replaced Trump's Cisco desk phone with this model:
In a positive sign of progress, it only took Ivanka six hours to teach him how to use it.
CHEERS to smart war management. 156 years ago, in 1861, President Lincoln signed into law the first federal income tax. He felt it was fiscally responsible because we were waging a civil war. Today tea party Republicans would tar Lincoln as a tax-and-spend liberal and hold the surrender ceremony at Appomattox hostage until he backed down and repealed it. And after Abe got done with them there'd be a lot of teabaggers who wouldn't be able to sit down for a week.
JEERS to local killjoys. I was walking the dog yesterday when I noticed a little sign that was nestled among someone’s posies a block over from our place. It read:
That is so sweet, I thought to myself. So naturally I hopped in and started dancing in their garden. They came out with a broom and chased me down the street. Fuckers.
CHEERS to home vegetation. Doesn’t look like there's a whole helluva lot on the teevee box this weekend, which makes sense since it's the middle of frickin' summer. Chris Hayes has been on fire lately, and is a must-watch at 8 tonight, followed by another Richard Engel special on MSNBC.
Bill Maher returns from hiatus at 10 on HBO's Real Time with guests Al Gore, Joshua Green, Michael Weiss, Kristen Soltis Anderson and the odious Ralph Reed. And at 11 on Comedy Central, a sad occasion as Chris Hardwicke signs off from the brilliant @Midnight after concluding his 600th episode. New
home video releases include the old-men-rob-a-bank comedy Going in Style, and Bryan Cranston in Wakefield. The baseball schedule is here. (The Red Sox will "stain" the White Sox with more hashmarks in their 'loss' column Ha Ha Ha!) On 60 Minutes: architect Peter Marino, and a company that sold faulty protective gear during the Ebola scare. Here's your Sunday night Game of Thrones spoiler alert: tragedy unfolds when a committee agrees to replace the ice wall with a modest picket fence. And John Oliver wraps up the weekend with a classy British accent on Last Week Tonight. Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ); California Gov. Jerry Brown (D); Demos president Heather McGhee.
This Week: TBA
CNN's State of the Union: Congressman and constant thorn in Trump’s side Adam Schiff (D-CA); Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA); bumbling New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, aka “Keeper of the Sacred 15% Approval Rating.”
Face the Nation: Former director of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson; Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) & Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R); evil Republican senator Tom Cotton (R-AR).
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC)
Happy viewing!
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Nine years ago in C&J: August 4, 2008
CHEERS to possessors of off-the-charts courage. Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote about the horrors of Stalin's work camps at a time when to do so was---to put it mildly---a "nyet nyet." So, while we're sad he died, we're happy that he spent nearly 20 happy years here in the states and returned to Russia a hero. But if I may add a bittersweet note: I got docked more points in high school and college for misspelling his name on tests and reports than I can count. Alexander Smith would've had such a nice ring to it.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to my August 5 birthday posse. Neil Armstrong. Lizz Winstead. Director John Huston. Loni Anderson. Maureen "Marcia Marcia Marcia!" McCormick. Patrick Ewing. The Elephant Man. Kossacks "Simple," "dmb0857," "stlsophos" and "LeoDaLion."
It’ll be the usual routine for us tomorrow: we’ll swarm Denny's for our birthday discount (53% for me, so I’ll order a Bacon Slam, a Sausage Slam, a Ham Slam, a French Slam, A Wham Bam Thank You Slam, a Slam Slam combining all the Slams, and a Lipitor chaser), and then spend the day stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. And since then the poor will be rich and the rich will be poor, we’ll do the whole thing over again in reverse.
Then we’ll just kinda go freestyle, marauding for awhile and then soaking our feet during Jeopardy! before we head back out to play a few rounds of "Shut up, you kids, or we're calling the cops!" So, basically, just an ordinary day ending in y---but with yummy cake.
Have a great weekend, and please behave while we’re off next week or I’ll get banned by Keyboard Kingpin Markos and be forced to take retribution on all the local milk people. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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