From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: Happy Autumn Edition
"This weekend some jerk placed pressure cooker bombs in a couple different places around New York City. Thankfully no one was killed and everyone who was injured is out of the hospital. At this point, can't we assume that any New Yorker buying a pressure cooker is up to no good? No one who lives here cooks."
---Stephen Colbert
"When my father came to New York a while back, when Trump Tower initially opened years ago, he wanted to go see it. And I said okay and I took him there. And we walked around. And he looked and he looked. And he turned to me after he'd seen it and said, 'This is, I think, what Rome looked like just before the fall.'"
---Lewis Black on Late Night
"Today, Donald Trump told an African-American audience, 'Black churches are the conscience of our country.' In response, the crowd said, 'Yes, that’s why we’re not voting for you.'"
---Conan O'Brien
"Fox News offered former anchor Gretchen Carlson 20 million dollars and an apology after she spent years being sexually harassed by Roger Ailes, who looks like they tried to clone Alfred Hitchcock but the DNA was incomplete so they just filled it in with genetic material from a Basset hound, mashed potatoes, and the mumps, which they then stirred around in a Waffle House toilet after the toilet had just looked at the Ark of the Covenant."
---Chris Hardwick, @Midnight
CNN anchor: Mr. Trump said that he would've ordered his generals to seize oil from our enemies. Isn’t that against the Geneva Convention or is that a good idea?
CNN reporter Barbara Starr: I'm no military lawyer, but I think that people can look at the definition of 'war crimes' and come to their own conclusion.
Samantha Bee: You heard her, average American: in your plentiful spare time, when you're not working your two jobs or watching your screaming kids, why not spend twenty or thirty hours studying the Geneva Conventions so you know whether or not it's okay to steal another country's oil. That's so much easier than asking reporters and moderators to do their fucking jobs.
---Full Frontal
Don’t forget the Netroots Nation Fall Online Auction is now OPEN! Bid early and bid often except stuff I'm bidding on, which I've surrounded with bear traps. Meanwhile your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, September 23, 2016
Note: From the Eyewitness News desk: Derp derp derp derp derp derp derp derp derp derp derp derp. Film at 11.
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Christmas: 93
Days 'til the Hoes Down Harvest Festival in Guinda, California: 7
Weekly jobless claims, which came in 10,000 under predictions and extended its sub-300k streak to 81 weeks: 252,000
Percent of Jewish donors in the 2012 election who gave to Obama and Romney, respectively, according to FiveThirtyEight: 71%, 29%
Percent who are giving to Clinton and Trump, respectively, in 2016: 95%, 3%
Approve/Disapprove rating, respectively, for Canada, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll: 75%, 3%
Number of vaginas kangaroos have, according to the internet: 3
New England Patriots 27 Houston Texans 0
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Proud papa…
-
CHEERS to grand openings over a century in the making. As black Americans find themselves mourning the loss of two more victims---Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte and Terence Crutcher in Tulsa---killed by trigger-happy cops, something historic is happening this weekend that officially puts an exclamation point at the end of the phrase Black Lives Matter. In Washington D.C.---right on the Mall, no less---the National Museum of African American History and Culture finally gets its grand opening:
On Saturday, the long wait is over: America's first black president and first lady will preside over the museum's opening. Thousands are expected to attend the museum's inaugural weekend, and millions more will virtually experience the milestone via social media. […]
Standing five stories high with 60 percent of the building below ground, the 400,000-square foot structure attempts to hold four centuries of black history. Visitors begin by descending to the basement and then walk up a series of ramps winding through the origins of slavery, to the bonds of Jim Crow, to an integrated society. […]
Visitors can eat at a cafe featuring authentic black cuisines from four regions of the country: the agricultural South, the Creole coast, the North states, and the Western range.
The exhibits range from the stomach-turning (ankle shackles, shards of glass from the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing) to the inspiring (a Tuskegee Airmen training plane, Harriett Tubman's hymn book). Like all great museums it'll be sensory overload of the very best kind (37,000 artifacts!) and demand repeat visits. Learn all about it here at the official web site. And all you racist "deplorables" out there: try and keep your traps shut for one friggin' day, okay? I know it'll be the challenge of your lifetime, but…go on, give it a shot.
CHEERS to a fine plan. As the United Nations General Assembly met this week, Ban Ki-moon---a real rock star Secretary-General if there ever was one---and a high-level panel unveiled an ambitious and extraordinary plan yesterday for making the world a better place for women and girls. They devoted countless backbreaking months to the task, pouring themselves and their brain power into the creation of the Women's Economic Empowerment Goals including "Eliminating legal barriers to female economic empowerment," "Reducing gender pay gaps," "Promoting financial and digital inclusion for women" and "enhancing the productivity of women-owned enterprises." Silly gooses---they could've saved themselves the time by just copying and pasting the Democratic party platform.
CHEERS to great moments in naval warfare. On September 23, 1779---during our War of Independence---Commodore John Paul George Ringo Jones, aboard the U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard (named as a tribute to Ben Franklin) engaged the British man-of-war Serapis in the North Sea. It was during this battle that Jones uttered the immortal words, "I have not yet begun to fight." Less known was the response from his crew: "Wild guess: you're in management."
CHEERS to fiscal unity. And now, a special joint message from the 1% (Wall Street banker class) and the 99% (Main Street job seekers), after learning that Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen announced this week that she still isn't going to raise interest rates yet:
“Wheeeeeee!!!!!”
File that under "sightings rarer than Sasquatch."
JEERS to the pooch who saved Tricky Dick. On this date in 1952, Ike's veep candidate Richard Nixon delivered a milestone in televised ass-covering when he gave his famous Checkers speech on national TV. Talk about drama queens:
“I should say this, that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat, and I always tell her she would look good in anything. One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don't they will probably be saying this about me, too. We did get something, a gift, after the election.
A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog and, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog, in a crate that he had sent all the way from Texas---black and white, spotted, and our little girl Tricia, the six year old, named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.”
Noting his blatant disregard for the law, the FEC hauled his ass off to jail, where he languished for 40 years. [Poof!!!] Whoa. I just had the coolest dream.
CHEERS to home vegetation. Nice cool weekend coming up here---our cue to fire up the teevee for some couch time, starting with oases-in-the-media-desert Chris Hayes at 8 and Rachel Maddow at 9. Then on HBO's Real Time, Bill Maher talks with Maureen Dowd (ugh), Max Brooks, Michael Franti, Neera Tanden, and Lanhee Chen.
The Emmy-winning series Transparent starts a new season today on Amazon. Anniversary editions of Labyrinth (30th) and Beauty and the Beast (25th) top this week's new DVD/streaming list---otherwise it's slim pickings. Click here for the baseball lineup (don’t get too close to the Red Sox---they’re so hot right now they’ll singe your bloomers) and click here for the NFL schedule. And Sunday is full of premieres: 60 Minutes' 49th (interview with Jordan's King Abdullah II and Picasso's legacy 40 years after he died from drinking a mixture of Pop Rocks and Diet Coke), The Simpsons' 28th (Springfield burns down in a fire and Mr. Burns agrees to rebuild it but only if he can put on a variety show---see this week’s couch gag here) and Family Guy's 14th. And just in time for the remainder of the election season, John Oliver returns to the set of HBO's Last Week Tonight with a shiny new Emmy.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Clinton advisor John Podesta; Republican advisor who plucked Sarah Palin from obscurity in ‘08 Steve Schmidt; Doris Kearns Goodwin; Gwen ifill.
Face the Nation: Bernie!!! The VP candidates: World’s Greatest Dad Tim Kaine and German Tank Commander Mike Pence; Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI); new poll numbers for Virginia, Missouri and Colorado; Bob Schieffer weighs in on Debate-a-pallooza.
CNN's State of the Union: Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook; Trump serial lies manager Kellyanne Conway; David Axelrod.
This Week: Mook and Conway; libertarian candidate Whats Aleppo; roundtable panelists of no consequence; And---I can’t believe I’m typing these words in this actual sequence---British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: I wonder if Gov. Mike Pence will be asked about the rumors that his running mate Donald Trump is possessed by demons. Probably not---it's pretty much a self-evident truth these days. Plus: chief Clinton strategist Joel Benenson.
Happy viewing!
-
Ten years ago in C&J: September 23, 2006
JEERS to corruption under the dome. A sign of the times: the FBI says it's added three new squads to investigate all the corruption oozing from Capital Hill. That should be shocking, but my first thought was, only three?
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to the day the Straight Talk Express jumped the tracks. It happened eight years ago tomorrow, and it's become a high holy day on the American political calendar. It started when John McCain kinda-sorta but not really suspended his presidential campaign so he could ride to Washington on a white stallion to stop the economic collapse, a much-mocked effort that consisted of a perfunctory appearance at the Bush White House. But that half-baked stunt quickly faded into the background when, with Keith Olbermann (doing a fabo job with his anti-Trump video “special comments” for GQ these days) sitting beside him as a witness to history, David Letterman delivered the coup de grâce after catching McCain in a pasty-faced lie:
Today Barack Obama is in the Oval Office finishing out his second successful term, and McCain is just an increasingly-frail (he looks terrible these days, sorry to say) obstructionist senator who is fighting for his political life in a reelection year. Thank you, Dave, for being so sharp that night. But more important: Thank you, John, for being so dumb that night.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-