Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Resistance FRIDAY!

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

Late Night Snark: Miscellaneous Catch-up Edition

“There were 20 liberals onstage [during the two-night Democratic debate]. Bernie promised health care for everybody, and after what Kamala Harris did to Joe Biden, Joe needed it.”

—Bill Maher

Clip of Trump speaking to Kim Jong Un in North Korea: It was an honor that you asked me to step over that line, and I was proud to step over the line. I thought you might do that, I wasn’t sure. But I was ready to do it, and I want to thank you.

John Oliver: So Trump wanted to step over the line and was ready to do it, but waited until he received affirmative consent. What a refreshing change of pace for him! Maybe Trump’s mantra going forward should be: ‘Treat women with the same respect you show murderous autocrats.’ He’s growing. Good for him.

—Last Week Tonight

—Samantha Bee

“Republicans in the House have come up with a list of words they don’t want Democrats to use when describing the President. Words like ‘crook,’ ‘conman,’ ‘demagogue,’ ‘draft dodger,’ ‘misogynist,’ ‘racist,’ ‘sexual predator.’ Basically they don’t want them to call him anything he is.”

—Jimmy Kimmel

“According to newly-released testimony, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Trump did not prepare at all for his 2017 meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Or, for that matter, anything in his entire life.”

—Seth Meyers

“Let’s call his Independence Day celebration what it really is: The 4th of You Lie!”

—Bette Midler

“It’s easy to think that Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is a coward for delaying the release of the Harriet Tubman twenty-dollar bill. See how easy it is?”

—Conan O’Brien

“[2020 Senate candidate] Roy Moore famously lost his Senate race in 2017 after it came out that he had faced charges of sexually-abusing underage girls. In fact, his reputation was so notorious that Moore was banned from the local mall. So I look forward to his [new] campaign poster: Roy Moore 2020: Hey, Can Somebody Hang This Up In The Mall for Me?”

—Stephen Colbert

Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold… [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Cheers and Jeers for Friday, July 5, 2019

Scheduling Note: We’re gonna be scarce for a bit. After we post Monday morning we’re boarding an iron horse and heading to Philadelphia to get our Netroots Nation on. Then, the following week, we’re getting cataract surgery #2 done. So we should return Tuesday the 16th, and after that we’ll play it by ear. In the meantime, lean on the Abbreviated Pundit Roundups, Morning Election Digests, and Good News Posts to meet your emotional, intellectual, and nutritional needs. But not your irrigational needs, because that’s strictly the domain of Frank’s Garden Hose Emporium.  —Mgt.

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By the Numbers:

13 days!!!

Days ’til Labor Day: 59

Days ’til Comic-Con San Diego: 13

Expected years until ethnic minorities make up the majority of Americans, according to the Census Bureau: 25

Year during which over 50% of new births in the U.S. were to parents of color: 2012

Number of wasp “supernests” (that can hold up to 15,000 wasps) expected to be seen this summer in Alabama, up from two or three a year because of climate change: 90

Number of Tesla electric cars sold in the second quarter, a record: 95,200

Age of the Sony Walkman as of this year: 40

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Puppy Pic of the Day: Summer state of mind…

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CHEERS and JEERS to the blue, white and red.  Meaning, blue skies giving the sun carte blanche to turn white people red.  It was a picture-perfect Maine holiday/summer vacation weekend (we hope yours was nice, too), all wrapped up with fireworks that sent the dog scurrying for cover.  Meanwhile we read that this happened just down south:

A man suffered minor injuries in Taunton, Massachusetts on Tuesday night after setting off commercial-grade fireworks at his home, police said.

First time I’ve posted this pic un-ironically.

The man was on his porch with a large amount of fireworks, building launching tube racks, police said. He lit one of the fireworks, setting off a chain reaction of explosions that spread to the side of the house.

A bomb squad was called to the scene to assist the police and fire departments in defusing the situation. […] Authorities confiscated the rack and all remaining fireworks on the property.

Thus answering the question: what kind of idiots need to watch those government videos of mannequins getting blown up by fireworks so they won’t blow themselves or others up with fireworks like the mannequins in those government videos?

JEERS to Tanksgiving. Speaking of Fourth of July disasters: Donald Trump. If you bet money in the office pool that his “greatest July 4 mega-celebration in the history of our country” would end up a poorly-planned disaster that looked like it fell off the back of a truck, congratulations. To the surprise of no one, you nailed it. In no particular order: 

»  From their outposts surrounding D.C., the gays, feminists, and pagans spent the day rubbing wool against plexiglas rods, whipping up thunderstorms that sent many of the Q-anon and MAGA Bubbas scurrying for cover. (In the interest of full disclosure, a side effect of our awesome power was a 6.4 earthquake in California, which we deeply regret.)

“Oh, shite! It be Cornwallis in flight! Duck!”

»  The mighty tank division—all “two” Abrams beasts (plus two APCs to provide suppressing embarrassment)—were virtually invisible and did not roll down the street to massive cheers for even a millisecond.

»  The crowd was so thin that the White House quickly shut off the livecam from the Washington Monument.

»  For the first time in Independence Day history, more American brains were damaged by a presidential speech than by fireworks.

»  The fireworks—offered up by two companies as bribes to Trump in exchange for leaving them off his profit-crushing tariffs list—were so excessive that they were quickly obscured by a massive smoke cloud.

 Like his inauguration and State-of-the-Unions, no one will remember anything Trump said or did yesterday. Well, except that he informed the nation that Washington won the War of Independence by destroying General Cornwallis’s airport at Yorktown, a new “alternative fact” which was immediately approved as an update to all 2020 American history textbooks by the Texas School Board. God bless America.

CHEERS to greenbacks. In a famous first, on tomorrow’s date 1785, Congress agreed that the dollar would officially become America’s first “unit of U.S. currency.”  Also on July 6, 1785, the American public agreed that the dollar would officially become America’s first unit of “endangered species.”

CHEERS to going on a little stroll. As we enter the last year and a half of his accidency, it’s worth reminding ourselves that Donald Trump’s attempt to re-jigger the United States as a fascist paradise has been thwarted time and again by an army of persistent democracy-loving Americans doing end-runs around his bloated carcass. One of them this week was Senator and 2020 candidate Cory Booker (D-NJ), who put on his walkin’ shoes down at the border and ran an errand on behalf of the State of Liberty when he…

…accompanied five migrant women as they crossed the southwest border to seek asylum, a day after his presidential campaign released his immigration plan. […]

Booker, joined by advocates and attorneys, entered the United  States after traveling to Ciudad  Juárez, Mexico where he met with migrants who have left their homelands and hope to seek asylum. But under new policies implemented by the Trump administration, some asylum seekers have had to wait in Mexico for their day in U.S.immigration court even after they have been processed by Customs and Border Protection.  

Booker: walkin’ the walk.

All five women had been previously sent back to Ciudad Juárez under the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, according to Families Belong Together, a coalition of 250 organizations which have joined together to fight family separation, and Las Americas, an immigrant advocacy center in Texas.Representatives from both organizations joined Booker on Wednesday. […] Booker said some of the women were survivors of sexual violence.  “Their stories of the violence they endured were painful, heartbreaking, and unacceptable,”  Booker said.

Less publicized was his related accomplishment that day: hitting 10,000 steps on his Fitbit before lunch.

CHEERS to starting out on the right side of history. 164 years ago today, on July 6, 1854, the Republican Party held its first convention in Jackson, Michigan. Back then, they really did have a good idea:

The first GOP meeting “Under the Oaks.”

We believe that slavery is a violation of the rights of man—as a man—we vow at whatever expense, and publicly proclaim our determination, to oppose by all the powerful and honorable means in our power, now and henceforth, all attempts,direct and indirect, to extend slavery in this country, or to permit it to extend into any region or locality in which it does not now exist by positive low, or to admit new slave states into the Union.

Today the Republicans’ de facto leader is Donald Trump, a thin-skinned fraud who tweets stuff he finds on white supremacist sites and then feigns ignorance (something he’ll never have to worry about running out of), and whose BFF Ted Nugent believes our country would’ve been better off if the south won the Civil War. Memo to Abe Lincoln: there’s a word for old-school Republicans like you in modern-day America: it’s called Democrats. Here…have a brew and a bong hit, you look like you could use one. Besides, it’s gotta be Four score and twenty somewhere.

CHEERS to home vegetation. It’s the middle of summer, and you really should spend the weekend outside burning brats, drinking beer and nursing horrible gaping lawn-dart wounds. So all you’re getting tonight is the briefest mention of what’son the tube, starting at 8 with the NEA Presidential Candidates Forum from Houston (CSPAN), featuring at least 10 of the Democratic 2020 nominees.

On C-SPAN tonight (and other times this weekend.)

Or you can catch Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and Lawrence O’Donnell (or their subs) as they digest today’s news dump while providing the meaning of it all.  Or you can take in some rarefied air from inside the beltway bubble tonight at 8ET during the season premiere of PBS’s Washington Week, which answers the question, “Washington Week is still on the air???” And at 8:30 Rob Reiner is interviewed on the season premiere of Firing Line.

New home video releases include the Criterion release of the 2001 LGBT classic Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and The Best of Enemies, based on “the true story of Ann Atwater and C.P.Ellis, an African-American activist and a KKK leader who found common ground while fighting over school integration.”  The baseball schedule is here.  But the highlight of weekend sports is Sunday’s women’s World Cup soccer final (11am ET, Fox)—a brutal match between Team USA and Team Netherlands. On an encore of 60 Minutes: AOL founder Steve Case does something or other, and how Russia is combating the climate crisis in Siberia. And since there’s no episode of Last Week Tonight this weekend, the rest of Sunday evening is yours to dress up in something lacy, strap on your xylophone, and hit the streets.

Now here’s your Sunday morning lineup:

Meet the Press: Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR); Sen. and 2020 candidate Amy Klobuchar (D-MN); Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX).

This Week: Rep. and House Oversight Committee member Rashida Tlaib (D-MI); acting head of the DHS’s asylum-seeker torture brigade Kevin McAleenan; Rep. and 2020 candidate Seth Moulton (D-MA).

Face the Nation: TBA

—A public service message from Samantha Bee

CNN’s State of the Union: Southpaw Michigan founder and progressive activist Abdul El-Sayed; Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI…Oops!!!…I mean I-MI).

Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Sen. and 2020 candidate Michael Bennett (D-CO); weirdo Ken Cuccinelli. 

 Happy viewing!

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Ten years ago in C&J: July 5, 2009

CHEERS to haulin’ ass in the heartland.  This is good news for train lovers and air-travel despisers.  The initial plans for high-speed rail in America are taking shape.  Here’s one example:

Conducted by transportation planning firm TranSystems, the study proposes operating the high-speed trains on a corridor serving Kankakee, Champaign-Urbana, Decatur and Springfield, Ill., complementing 110 mph train service already proposed in other parts of Illinois and the Midwest. Trains could make the trip between Chicago and St. Louis in a little more than two hours. … It would cost about $12 billion to upgrade the corridor to handle 220 mph trains, according to the study.

For comparison, that’s like traveling at the speed of a Cessna 350 Corvalis.  But smoother and with an 80-foot-long bar car in the middle.  If you build it, I will come. [7/5/19 Update: Ten years later, still waiting.]

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And just one more…

CHEERS to the Energizer Married Couple.  Best-ex-president-ever Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn have been together so long that it’s impossible to think of one without thinking of the other. Sunday the 39th president and First Lady celebrate their—you sitting down for this?—73rd anniversary. An amazing number, especially considering that a few years back Jimmy was fighting for his life against cancer. (He kicked its ass and is now cancer-free). As for the secret to their longevity…

“She was the right person. That’s the first thing.

That’s amore, y’all.

And then, we decided fairly early in our life to give each other plenty of space. Rosalynn has her own ideas, her own ambitions, her own goals in life, which, in some ways, are different from mine. I let her do her thing; she lets me do my thing. And we try to resolve our inevitable and fairly frequent differences before we go to bed at night.” […]

“We try to find all the things that we’d like to do together,” he says. “Sometimes things we’ve never done before.” Downhill skiing, for instance, is a hobby the Carters picked up later in life. “I was 62 years old before I ever put on a pair of skis,” he says.

This year they’ve decided to try something new on their big day: daring midday jewelry-store heists. If the results are anything like last year’s bank-robbing spree, Rosalynn is gonna leave some mean Studebaker skidmarks.

Have a great weekend. Floor’s open…What are you cheering and jeering about today?

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