From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: 1 Nut Goes to SCOTUS, 1 Nut Goes to the Oval Edition
"The Senate confirmed Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court with a vote of 50-to-48. Fifty is the lowest number of votes for a justice in history, but keep in mind it's also the most yeses Kavanaugh has ever heard. Even if you look past Dr. Ford's testimony, Kavanaugh did a bunch of disqualifying stuff just this past week. He basically lied under oath at a job interview to become a judge. That's like cheating on your wife during your wedding. Then he had to publish an apology letter in The Wall Street Journal, which is something AA calls Step Nine. In that op-ed, Kavanaugh vowed he'd be an open-minded judge, and I actually think he will be open-minded because you've gotta be pretty open-minded to try a Devil's Triangle."
---Colin Jost
"Then there was Susan Collins, whose yes vote should really not have been remotely surprising to anyone. She disappoints at a rate normally associated with dinners cooked by divorced dads."
---John Oliver
"As you probably know by now, there was a ranting lunatic in the Oval Office today. And he had to sit there quietly while Kanye West [went on a lunatic rant]. Trump's mouth went, 'That was pretty impressive,' but you could see he was thinking, 'Is it racist if I call the cops?'"
---Trevor Noah
"The president spent the day with Kenye West, and Kid Rock was there, too. Meanwhile, people down in Florida were like, 'Never mind, we'll just handle this hurricane ourselves.’"
---Jimmy Fallon
"This is the kind of conversation that would be held between people wearing hospital bracelets. This ranting and raving is the kind of thing that happens in the subway in New York, not the Oval Office. It was like Trump was sitting across from his own twitter feed come to life."
---Jimmy Kimmel
Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, October 12, 2018
Note: Remember back in 1973 when I was nine and you asked me to remind you what a total scumbag Spiro Agnew was so you wouldn’t forget? [Tap Tap!] Spiro Agnew really was a total scumbag, wasn’t he?
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the full "Hunter" Moon: 13
Days 'til the Krewe of Boo parade in New Orleans: 8
Percent of Mainers who did and did not, respectively, support confirming Boof Kavanaugh, per a PPP poll: 41%, 54%
Percent of Americans who do and do not believe, respectively, that Kavanaugh lied about his alcohol abuse, according to a new CNN poll: 50%, 37%
U.S. trade deficit in August, the third month in a row it's widened: $52.3 billion
Amount the "rock"---actually a meteorite---that Michigander David Mazurek was using as a doorstop for years turned out to be worth: $100,000
Ocean temperature off the coast of Portland Maine: 58°
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Baby's bodyguards…
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JEERS to unexpected trips to hell and back. This item is personal, but it explains our inexcusable absence from C&J yesterday. Basically what happened was, the chemotherapy cocktail the oncologist drip-drip-dripped inside of me (session #1 of 12 to kick out the last remains of cancer in my system), was met at the biological door by my giant 300-pound-gorilla blood cell defenders, and they were having none of this invasion business inside the Kingdom of Billeh. Within a couple hours all-out war was waging between Tiger tanks and catapults and (of course) chemical warfare. Then the bad cancer cells saw that the "good guys" were fighting each other, so they hopped on and started stabbing at anything that moved.
So here I was, barfing and sweating and shaking and doing terrible things I'd never do under normal circumstances, like wear a MAGA hat and express an interest in joining the Log Cabin Republicans. A couple trips to the emergency room later and we figured out a rather elegant course of action: Dr. Smeltenhauer knows a guy who has an industrial crane, so they hoisted a huge funnel containing every anti-nausea, steroidal, sedative, and silicone-filled bag they could find and just dropped it into my mouth from thirty feet and left the rest to God. God, hearing all of your prayers, gently glided down from the hillside, sorted out all the components, inserted them where they needed to go, accepted my $5 tip, and flew back up to his mahjong game with Joan of Arc, David Bowie and Arnold Palmer. (Fred Trump would've been their fourth but he's been scrubbing heaven's toilets for the last 20 years.)
So thank you for your patience during our absence. We're back tonight (yay), but will be off Monday cuz this really is kicking our ass. And now…on with the show….
CHEERS to fabulous first ladies. Today is Eleanor Roosevelt's 134th birthday. Like Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, she didn't confine herself to picking out White House china patterns, especially when it came to women's rights:
She held the first women-only press conference at the White House in 1933.
Her 6-day a week syndicated column, My Day, encouraged women to "become more conscious of themselves as women and of their ability to function as a group. At the same time they must try to wipe from men's consciousness the need to consider them as a group or as women in their everyday activities, especially as workers in industry or the professions." And in 1939, when black singer Marian Anderson was denied the right to perform at Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the Revolution, Eleanor resigned from the group and helped arrange a concert at the Lincoln Memorial.
And this from a discussion of the 1946 proposed Statement of Purpose of the U.N. Subcommittee on the Status of Women:
Whereas freedom and equality are essential to human development and whereas woman is as much a human being as man and therefore entitled to share with him;
We believe that the well-being and progress of society depend on the extent to which both men and women are able to develop their full personality and are cognizant of their responsibilities to themselves and to others, and we believe that woman has thus a definite role to play in the building of a fine, healthy, prosperous and moral society and that she can fulfill this obligation only as a free and responsible member. Therefore, be it resolved that the purpose of the subcommission is to raise the status of women to equality with men in all fields of human endeavor.
In the end, Roosevelt---whose image will soon grace the revamped $5 bill unless Steve Mnuchin decides to go full male chauvinist pig---marveled that "I became more of a feminist than I ever imagined." The world is a better place for it. Pay your respects here. In her honor, today everything in the C&J cafeteria will be slathered in Good Luck Margarine.
CHEERS to bees and 'shrooms: together at last. It's no surprise to anyone by now that our bee colonies are taking it on their tiny, hairy chins. Much more collapse and we could say adios to a third of our food-growing capacity around the world. So it's welcome news that the humble mushroom may be a natural solution to restoring their numbers. Pay attention, because this is science and I'm drugged:
In 1984, [mushroom curator Paul] Stamets witnessed bees moving woodchips to get closer to the mushrooms' mycelium, or underside. At the time, Stamets assumed the bees were seeking sugar there.
But recently, Stamets realized there may be a medicinal quality found in the mycelium. His theory could potentially kickstart a movement of quick cure to rehabilitate the bee population, which has been dramatically affected by a breakout of mites since 1980. […]
Sheppard and colleagues tested two groups of bees. Both groups had previously been exposed to the Varroa mites. One group was fed sugar mixed with the mushroom additive. The second group was fed only sugar. According to WSU assistant research professor, Brandon Hopkins, the mushroom additive nearly eliminated all illness in some of the virus strains.
Impressive. The scientists say they should make the mushroom extract available by next year to honeybees, who say they're delighted to hear the news. But if it's not too much trouble, they'd prefer them sautéed in a light mixture of olive oil with shallots, a dab of sherry and unsalted butter. Oh, and hold the garlic. (Small hive, queen's a burper.)
JEERS to kids without a conscience. Twenty years ago today, 21 year-old University of Wyoming student Matt Shepard died after being severely beaten and tied to a fence outside of Laramie, Wyoming 5 days earlier by two aimless thugs with shit for brains who will languish in prison for the rest of their lives. Matt, who would’ve turned 41 this year, was politically aware and we have no doubt he would have been all over social media. And now, finally, twenty years later, he'll have a decent burial at a place where he'll never have to worry about troglodyte thugs ever again. Instead he'll be greeted daily by Americans from all walks of life who will pay their respects and acknowledge his worth and dignity, the way those two killers should've:
Dennis and Judy Shepard have finally secured a safe resting place for their son. On October 26, Matthew Shepard’s remains will be buried in a secluded niche of the Washington National Cathedral, known as the “spiritual home of the nation.”
The towering Gothic cathedral is the official seat of the Episcopal Church, making it a fitting place for Shepard to be laid to rest; he was active in the Episcopal Church, serving as an acolyte as a child, and his parents told Boorstein that he “loved” the church community. The Washington National Cathedral also regularly hosts memorial services for notable individuals. Some 200 people have been buried there, among them Woodrow Wilson, George Dewey, and Helen Keller.
“I think that with Matt’s sense of occasion and drama, he would have found [being interred in the cathedral] tremendously gratifying and very cool,” James Marsden, a friend of Shepard who is now the executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, tells Jacey Fortin of the New York Times.
Closure. At last.
CHEERS to the sanctity of marriage. Happy 42nd anniversary to Bill and Hillary Clinton! According to the Texas School Board-approved Big Pop-up Book of American History, they got hitched 43 years ago this week while running from the Feds during a string of bank robberies, after which they bribed and murdered their way to the Arkansas governor's mansion, where they participated in masked spouse-swapping parties while dipping their enemies in slopgrease and feeding them to the hogs out in the back yard next to their bribe cash vault. What can we say? That's amore!
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CHEERSto home vegetation. An idle TV screen is such a lonely-lookin' thing, so here are a few things to fill it with.
Obviously, news junkies will want to start things off tonight with Chris, Rachel and Lawrence on MSNBC. Snark junkies will find guests Omarosa, MSNBC elections guru Steve Kornacki, New York Magazine's Rebecca Traister, Reihan Salam, and professor of religion at Princeton Eddie Glaude on HBO's Real Time. Sports junkies will find the baseball championship schedule here, the hockey schedule here, and the civil war skirmishes over the national anthem schedule here. Movie junkies can catch the new home video releases, including The Rock's Skyscraper and Bill Hader in the Emmy-winning Barry. Seth Meyers returns to host SNL. On 60 Minutes: Joal Satrore's work for National Geographic, and the "Pavarotti of Pasta." Then John Oliver recaps yet another, well, let’s say “eventful” week on HBO’s Last Week Tonight.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Georgia governor candidate Stacey Abrams! Former National Security Adviser John Brennan; Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL); Missouri governor candidate Josh hawley (R).
This Week: Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Jeff Flake (Disgrace-AZ); Larry Kudlow.
Face the Nation: Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Ben Sasse (R-NB). CBS News Director of Elections & Surveys Anthony Salvanto has newe battleground polling.
CNN's State of the Union: Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Marco Rubio (R-FL); George governor candidate Stacey Abrams (D) comes out swinging against voter suppression.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Economic wrecking ball Larry Kudlow; Chinese Ambassador to the U.S. Cui Tiankai.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 12, 2008
CHEERS to an Axis of One. Iran is apparently now our only remaining enemy in the world. Over the weekend we took North Korea off the ooga-booga terrorist evildoer list, downgrading its status to "Pain In The Ass." John McCain denounced the move, while his running mate Sarah Palin welcomed it and questioned McCain's judgment. They're so cute when they're fighting.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to good advice. Possibly the cutest story in American politics.
A hundred and fifty-eight years ago this week, in 1860, an eleven year-old girl named Grace Bedell put quill to parchment and suggested to candidate Abraham Lincoln that he might win the election more easily if he dropped the innocent boy-next-door look and whiskered up:
I have yet got four brothers and part of them will vote for you any way and if you let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is going to vote for you and if I was a man I would vote for you to but I will try to get every one to vote for you that I can.
As they say, the rest is history. By the way, during his presidency---you can look it up---Lincoln went through exactly four score and seven beard combs. Eerie.
P.S. Bedell's letter reminds me that not a single woman was legally able to cast a vote for Lincoln, or any candidate, until Harding in 1920. America: land of the free, home of the slow as molasses.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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