From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
the One, the Only...All New Randy Rainbow:
-
He should host the Oscars with Wanda Sykes. Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Note: If there is a sudden loss of cabin pressure in the C&J kiddie pool, an oxygen mask will fall from the overhead compartment. But only one, so you'll all have to fight over it. (What, you think we're made of money?) ---Mgt.
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of the Memorial Day weekend: 131
Days 'til the 4th annual Tamale Festival in Atascadero, CA: 3
Trump approval rating in the latest CNN poll and Gallup poll: 37%
Approval among women and under-45s in the CNN poll, respectively: 29%, 29%
Percent of who say Trump and McConnell are at fault for the partial government shutdown, versus 29% who blame Democrats, according to a new ABC News-Washington Post poll: 53%
Percent of Americans in the same poll don't support Trump declaring the border hoax a national emergency: 66%
Number of Maine legislators who will introduce a bill that would expunge the criminal record of anyone convicted of marijuana possession: 4
Particles of fog it takes to fill a teaspoon, according to the internet: 7 billion
-
Mid-week Rapture Index: 181 (including 5 liberalisms and 2 guardian angels watching over Donald Trump). Soul Protection Factor 12 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: But Mooooooommmmm…!!!
-
CHEERS to order in the courts. A trio of gavelriffic events this week that have real Americans cheering:
1) A federal judge rules that old fossil Commerce Director Wilbur Ross can't include the question on citizenship in the 2020 census. Said Judge Jesse Furman: "Hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of people will go uncounted in the census if the citizenship question is included," U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman said in a 277-page opinion. "In arriving at his decision as he did, Secretary Ross violated the law," the judge said, adding the secretary also"violated the public trust."
2) Robert Mueller wants to delay the sentencing of Rick Gates---a BFF of Paul Manafort---for another couple months. Apparently he's getting even more goods out of him that he can drop on Trump like a wet sack of Burger King Hamberders.
3) A pair of judges in Pennsylvania (Wendy Beetlestone) and California (Haywood Gilliam) slapped down a trump effort to make it easier on religious grounds to let companies deny employees contraception in their insurance plans. "A preliminary injunction is unquestionably in the public interest because it maintains the status quo pending the outcome of this litigation," wrote Beetlestone.
And in other news, Ruth Bader Ginsburg continues her full recovery at home from her lung surgery and broken ribs. This morning's fitness routine involves biceps curls with a pair of volumes of The Unabridged History of World Law and then a few sets bench-pressing her Mercedes.
JEERS to conservatives fucking up somewhere else besides America. Oh, Britain…you and us are joined at the hip by right-wing incompetence:
U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May has overwhelmingly lost a crucial vote on her Brexit plans in the House of Commons, the U.K.’s lower house of parliament.
May lost by 230 votes after lawmakers voted by 432 to 202 to reject the deal. … It’s reportedly the largest defeat for a sitting government in U.K. political history.
The result creates a political vacuum in the Brexit process, with no firm certainty as to what might happen next. Potential outcomes range from a revised attempt by May to force her plan through, a second Brexit referendum or even a General Election. May added on Tuesday evening that she would now make a statement to the Commons on Monday 21 where she is due to present a “plan B” for the exit agreement.
Yeah. Plan B. Abort, abort, abort.
CHEERS to the war hawks’ terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. Three years ago---Saturday, January 16, 2016---one of the (many) significant events in Barack Obama’s presidency was etched onto the wall of history. It started when the White House announced that five American detainees, including Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian, had been freed from Iranian prisons in exchange for a handful of Iranians we were detaining at the Hoboken Club Med (for violating the two-beach-towels-per-person-per-day rule). But that was just the warm-up act for this:
On January 16, 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency verified that Iran has completed the necessary steps under the Iran deal that will ensure Iran's nuclear program is and remains exclusively peaceful.
Before this agreement, Iran's breakout time---or the time it would have taken for Iran to gather enough fissile material to build a weapon---was only two to three months.
Today, because of the Iran deal, it would take Iran 12 months or more. And with the unprecedented monitoring and access this deal puts in place, if Iran tries, we will know and sanctions will snap back into place.
I remember it so well: the American people were happy, the Iranian people were positively giddy (they even lowered their catchphrase from "Death to America" to "slightly swollen ankles to the upper midwest,") and all the other nations involved in the pact---China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the rest of the 28 European Union states---were happy. But not Donald Trump. Drawing on his fine command of absolutely nothing related to foreign policy, he just had to pull out because diplomacy bad, bombs good. The good news: The U.S. will happily rejoin in January, 2021 when President Kamala Beto Julian Elizabeth Cory Amy Kirsten Sherrod and Vice President Biden take the helm. Oops…spoiler alert.
JEERS to the big clumsy buffoon. Once again, we see that the bloated blob occupying the Oval Office has no clue what to do with the opposition party when they're in control of something. This is beyond a rookie mistake:
President Donald Trump tried a new strategy to get his border wall by going around House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Politico reported. He failed spectacularly.
On Tuesday, Trump invited moderate House Democrats to join him at the White House for lunch to talk about his wall and the shutdown. He used a similar strategy when Paul Ryan controlled the House, going around the speaker to negotiate with the far-right Freedom Caucus. But unlike Republicans, no Democrats attended the lunch meeting, according to White House press secretary Sarah Sanders.
The embarrassing episode shows two things: Democrats are united on shutdown politics and the president is underestimating Pelosi’s hold on her caucus.
And also: don’t bring a cheeseburger to a knife fight.
JEERS to messing with The Precious. On January 16, 1919, the tenacious temperance twits in Wyoming became the last ones necessary to ratify Prohibition, which went into effect on January 16, 1920...in the name, of course, of Jeeeeeezus...
Many Prohibition groups, called “dries”, were church-based, mainly Protestant denominations.
The anti-Prohibition groups, or “wets”, tended to be mostly Roman Catholic, Episcopalian and Lutherans from Germany. Both major political parties had wet and dry factions.
[W]hen Congress convened in January, 1917, the mandate was clear: regardless of party, dries outnumbered wets in Congress by 2-to-1.
The result: a huge spike in organized crime. The stock market crash of 1929 led to the eventual repeal of the 18th amendment on the premise that reviving the legit liquor industry would create jobs. So you might say that in a weird way the banksters toppled the gangsters. (Although it did take authorities awhile to figure out who was who.)
-
Ten years ago in C&J: January 16, 2009
CHEERS to strength in numbers. Lately I've been pretty brutal---for good reason---towards Harry Reid. (Putting itching powder on his yoga mat probably went too far.) But I gotta admit, once in a rare while he makes contact with the ball:
Senate Democrats will edge their Republican counterparts by at least three votes on almost all committees under an assignment scenario laid out Tuesday night by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
After weeks of negotiations with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Reid announced a lineup that assigns three more Democrats than Republicans to all committees except Appropriations and Armed Services, which will have four more Democrats.
In addition, all Democratic chairpersons will now wield a brutal gladiator's gavel. "What's that, Senator McConnell? You have an objection? Really?" [THWANG!] "Denied."
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to the 'Miracle on the Hudson.' A hundred and fifty five airline passengers got a shock ten---ten!!!--- years ago this week when al Qaeda-trained birds, each having been promised 72 virgin chicks in Paradise, flew themselves into the engines of Flight 1549 as it took off from LaGuardia, leaving it crippled with no way to keep it aloft. To give you an idea of the freakish nature of the event, and the skill of pilot Chesley Sullenberger in landing the craft, consider this: "This [was] only the fourth time in the jet era" that pilots have intentionally put an airliner down in water, said Todd Curtis, a former Boeing safety engineer who runs the AirSafe.com website.
"Sully," who took a public stand last fall on the deadweight (read: Republicans) in our government and the need to boot out the crooks, is back in New York this week to mark the occasion and say a few words. Nothing prepared, really. He'll just wing it.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
In 2018, for the first time, a majority of Democrats said they considered themselves to be “Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool splashers,” according to Gallup.
---FiveThirtyEight
-