From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Will of the People
Today marks the anniversary of "cowboy philosopher" Will Rogers’ death at 55 in a plane crash in Alaska. In 1935 Roosevelt (whom he supported) had only been in office for two years and my parents were still in diapers. Huge Hollywood star, razor-sharp pundit, reporter, and one of the best things to come from Oklahoma. Here are some of his observations that ring as true today as they did nearly a century ago:
"Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can't buy enough to eat."
“When the judgment day comes, civilization will have an alibi: ‘I never took a human life, I only sold the fellow the gun to take it with.’”
"I guess our country holds the record for dumbness. The Pope spoke to the world this morning in three languages and we didn’t understand a one of ’em. But the minute he finished and the local stations got back to selling corn salve and pyorrhea toothpaste we were right up our intellectual alley again."
"Remember, write to your Congressman. Even if he can’t read, write to him."
"I love a dog. He does nothing for political reasons."
"People want just taxes more than they want lower taxes. They want to know that every man is paying his proportionate share according to his wealth."
"One thing about Republican presidents: They never went in much for plans. They only had one plan. It says, 'Boys, my head is turned. Just get it while you can.'"
"The difference between our rich and poor grows greater every year. Our distribution of wealth is getting more uneven all the time. A man can make a million and he is on every page in the morning. But it never tells you who gave up that million he got."
"If all politicians fished instead of spoke publicly, we would be at peace with the world."
And a special proclamation that seems written for 2020…
"There ain’t any finer folks living than a Republican that votes the Democratic ticket.”
I have a feeling there might be a few of them next year. Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, August 15, 2019
Note: If you don’t eat your paste, you won’t grow up to be big and strong. Remember: Five servings a day, fuels you up for work and play! —C&J Office of Nutritional Superiority
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Brexit deadline hits: 77
Days 'til the New York State Fair in Syracuse: 6
Size of the CBS-Viacom merger: $30 billion
Rank of Pete Buttigieg among the first 2020 candidates to stump in Maine: #1
Length of time Mitch McConnell's enlistment in the army lasted in 1967 before his dad convinced a senator to bail him out so he could go to NYU: 37 days
Amount of their Trump tax cuts Lowe's used to buy back stock, versus $0 on severance for the thousands of employees they recently fired with no notice: $10 billion
Number of signatures so far for a petition to rename the part of 5th Avenue in front of Trump Tower "President Barack H. Obama Avenue": 261,000
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
A recent Ku Klux Klan rally in Austin produced an eccentric counter-demonstration.
When the fifty Klansmen appeared (they were bused in from Waco) in front of the state capitol, they were greeted by five thousand locals who had turned out for a “Moon the Klan” rally.
Citizens dropped trou both singly and in groups, occasionally producing a splendid wave effect.
It was a swell do.
---June, 1993
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Mail's here…
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CHEERS to the middle of the beginning of the end of the beginning of the end. The only people who think Trump has made America great again are the yokels whose brains are so stunted that the only way they can get an endorphin rush is by watching footage of "illegals" getting deported while dry-humping their AR-15s. The rest of us, meanwhile, are sick of waking up every morning wondering what else he f*cked up while we were asleep. And the revulsion is spreading:
President Trump has a problem with suburban voters—and it could have profound consequences for his chances of reelection next year.
An NBC News analysis Monday noted that Trump has been “underwater” with suburban voters in five out of six NBC News–Wall Street Journal polls conducted this year. […] The margins [in key states he won in 2016] were so narrow that any shift in the suburbs could swing those states back into the Democratic column, even if Trump were to retain the enthusiasm of his base. […]
GOP strategist Liz Mair noted her own experience traveling to different states where “one of the things I notice a lot is that there is an overwhelming sense of exhaustion. People are tired. People feel like Donald Trump the reality TV star was fine when we had ‘The Apprentice’ one or two hours a week. But now it’s 24/7, week after week.”
And 70 percent of us are just living for the morning of November 4, 2020 when every headline in the country screams, "TRUMP: YOU'RE FIRED." And his rotten family, too.
CHEERS to medical breakthroughs in the nick of time. This is great news in a week full of shitty news. The Ebola virus, which the Republican party shamelessly exploits in the service of turbo-charging their racist immigration policies against black people in "shithole countries," has apparently met its match:
On August 9, a committee overseeing a clinical trial of four experimental therapeutics for Ebola determined that two relatively new antibody-based treatments were so effective that they would become the new standard of care.
When these two treatments were administered within a day of infection, survival rates were around 90 percent. As the first Ebola trial to confirm a medical success, it’s a hopeful development. The Ebola virus, which hijacks the immune system and causes massive hemorrhaging, currently proves fatal for nearly 70 percent of patients.
“From now on, we will no longer say that Ebola is incurable,”Jean-Jacques Muyembe, a longtime Ebola researcher who now directs the D.R.C.’s National Institute of Biomedical Research, said in a conference call with reporters.
Sadly, no cure yet for Republicanism. But at least their lifetimes of booze and diner food are culling the herd.
CHEERS to VJ Day. Seventy-four years ago, on August 15, 1945, America celebrated the end of the war in the Pacific. Our youngest W.W.II vets are now 90 or older, so today it's our pleasure to slip a nip 'o scotch in their Ensure with a wink and a "thank you"—that was a war that needed to be fought. Meanwhile the Afghanistan war that, lest we forget, President Barack Obama started in 2001 has dragged on fourteen years longer than the Second World War. Not that we're counting. Mainly because we’ve run out of fingers to count on.
JEERS to unnecessary poetry maintenance. Let's check in with acting immigration viceroy Ken Cuccinelli and see how his latest re-write of the Emma Lazarus inscription on the Statue of Liberty is going:
Give me your Rolex, your caviar
Your one-percenters yearning to live tax-free
The wretched excess of hookers, booze and blow by the shore
Send these, the trust-fund babies, to me
I lift my American Express Platinum Card up to the Mar-A-Lago door!
Add some bongos behind it and I say the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry is in the bag. The Gucci bag, of course.
CHEERS to an artery's worst best friend. On August 15, 1911, obedient and properly submissive American housewives across the country swooned to the sound of Crisco (short for "crystallized cottonseed oil") glopping into their frying pans and mixing bowls as Procter & Gamble brought it to market.
Over a hundred years later, Americans still love it because it lets them enjoy so many sinful foods. And cardiologists love it because it lets them enjoy so many brand-new Porsches.
JEERS to the white, white, white, white White House. Oh, hey, it’s been a full year, so let’s check in and see how Kellyanne Conway’s coming along in her Herculean effort to name a senior Trump aide who’s black:
Oops. Must still be on her potty break. We’ll check back in 2020.
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15 years ago in C&J: August 15, 2004
JEERS to lousy excuses. On Larry King Live last night, Bush says he stayed in the classroom on 9/11 after being told "America is under attack" because "I was collecting my thoughts and I was sitting with a bunch of young kids, and I made the decision there that we would let this part of the program finish." Says Bill Maher:
"This was a moment a President should have imagined a thousand times. There is no time in the nuclear age for a President to sit like Forrest Gump ‘gathering thoughts' after an attack has begun."
Plus it would take him a lot longer than 7 minutes to gather one, anyway.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to a big pain in Trump’s ass. Happy Birthday, Rep. Maxine Waters, Democrat from the Great State of One Fifth Of The World’s Economy! The most senior of our black members of Congress and chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee turns 81 today. Waters has never been shy about speaking her mind, and she saves her biggest barbs for Cadet Bone Spurs, and it’s a pleasure watching her fire her rhetorical arrows with a joyous Thwip! Thwip! Thwip! right where it hurts the most: his ego…
"The most deplorable person I've ever met in my life."
"Don't forget, this unpatriotic president was unwilling to fight for his own country, using deferments & bone spurs to dodge military service."
"A bully, an egotistical maniac, a liar and someone who did not need to be President."
"He doesn't care about anybody but himself. He's earning money on his golf clubs, hotels, and Trump Org deals while skimming Americans' money."
“He claims that he's bringing people together but make no mistake, he is a dangerous, unprincipled, divisive, and shameful racist.” … “Trump has made it clear—it is now the White Supremacists' [White] House."
"When I get through with Donald Trump, he's going to wish he had been impeached."
For your daily Moments of Maxine, follow her on Twitter here. Happy birthday, Congresswoman. Remind me to never get on your bad side.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"It's enough to poop in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool every other day. That will be better for the whole world,"
—Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro
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