Late Night Snark: Will This Time Be Different? Edition
“’Responsible’ gun owners, now would be a great time for you to stand up and change something about the depraved political choices you made that got us here.” —Samantha Bee
“Gonna take Texas a while to get around to gun laws. They’re still legislating dildos.” —Roy Wood Jr., The Daily Show
"Congress could pass HR-8, a bill that was passed by the House over a year ago which would close loopholes in the background checks law. It's being held up by Senate Republicans, possibly because background checks are only supported by 90 percent of voters. Ninety percent! The only thing more popular than background checks is Dolly Parton riding a giant corgi bringing you ice cream." —Stephen Colbert
Continued...
You are now below the fold. It’s just like above the fold only lower.
"Maddeningly, there are those who say they support gun-control measures, but aren’t willing to use their power to get those measures passed. Like West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, who said he would do “anything I can” to move common-sense gun legislation forward, but still refused to eliminate the filibuster. Then you're not willing to do anything you can! It's like if you told your spouse you're willing to do anything to clean the dishes except get up from the couch." —Seth Meyers
-
"It has been a busy week. Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO, George W. Bush basically admitted to war crimes by accident, and monkeypox cases were reported in multiple countries, to which we all collectively said: NOT…NOW." —John Oliver
It’s called “monkeypox” because every 8th disease is named by a medieval barber. —Conan O’Brien via twitter
"Representative Liz Cheney attacked the House GOP leadership, saying they've enabled white supremacy and anti-Semitism. The leadership rejected Cheney's attacks, calling them 'cheaper than a Black rabbi.'" —Colin Jost, SNL
"Nike is reportedly leaving Russia permanently. Nike is basically the same in Russia except the slogan is: Do It…or Else." —Jimmy Fallon
And now, our feature presentation…
-
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, May 27, 2022
Note: We wish you a safe and hammock-filled holiday weekend. C&J will return on Tuesday, May 31, probably with an errant lawn dart or two stuck in our foot, thigh, chest, head or buttock region. God bless our time-honored traditions. —Mgt.
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Independence Day: 38
Days 'til the Temecula Valley Balloon and Wine Fest in California: 7
Number of Americans who have served their country in wartime: 46 million
Year in which Congress officially declared Waterloo, New York as the birthplace of the Memorial Day holiday: 1966
Rank of Orlando, Florida among top Memorial Day weekend travel destinations: #1
Rank of San Francisco, Minneapolis, and New York City on Lawnstarter's survey of Best Biking Cities in America, based on criteria like "access to bike lanes and bike rentals, the share of bike commuters, the presence of cycling clubs, and the number of bike races and tours": #1, #2, #3
Age of Google Street View as of this year: 15
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Iconic image taken at the War Dog Memorial and Cemetery in Guam…
-
CHEERS and JEERS to the week in review. Just a quick moment to take lightning-round inventory of our universe as we prepare to pause for an extended holiday weekend of picnics, memorials, delayed flights, and lots of unexplained rashes:
» Russia continues turning to uninhabitable apocalyptic dust those areas of eastern Ukraine that they want to make part of glorious Russian empire.
» Congress's slumber went undisturbed.
» Republicans continued their love affair with mail-in voting during primary season.
» Every Republican-inspired mass-murder prevention measure, up to and including funding the police, failed to prevent a mass murder in Texas.
» New details show President Trump approved of the hanging of his own vice president on January 6th. No one cares.
» Emergency pallets of baby formula started arriving in the U.S. from Germany because America is an exceptional nation that is #1 at everything.
» Daily Kos turned 20 and marked the occasion with several hours of botox injections.
» Gas prices are so high that people are driving less. "Gee, that's too bad," said Planet Earth and just a hunch but I think it was being sarcastic.
» A ruthless and scary space alien trapped the Enterprise in a tractor beam and threatened to blow it up unless its demands were met, but it turns out it was just baby Clint Howard who was easily fooled by Captain Kirk's fake "Corbomite Maneuver."
Oh, and NOAA released its forecast for the 2022 hurricane season. Consensus: the gays, feminists, and pagans are angry this year. Can’t say I blame ‘em.
CHEERS to multitasking. As our endorphins go wild over the prospect that our first warm-weather holiday weekend (and the unofficial start of summer) is upon us, the Newburyport (Mass.) Daily News offer up a few words for the occasion:
Memorial Day is the day set aside to honor servicemen and women who died while serving the nation. Earlier known as Decoration Day, the tradition of honoring the graves of dead military veterans dates to 1868, after the many losses of the Civil War. From 1868 to 1970, each May 30, visitors to graves left flowers and flags. In 1971, following earlier legislation, Memorial Day became a federal holiday, and the date was set to coincide with the last Monday in May. And with the federal holiday designation, the day would be observed across the country.
It is OK to mark Memorial Day with a cook out or if so inclined, to spend the day at a shopping plaza. So long as the real reason for the day is remembered—to honor those who died in the line of service.
And, as always, we pause to reflect on Dwight Eisenhower's famous words: "I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." Me, too. Minus the living it part, but I'll take his word for it.
CHEERS to the other star-spangled banner. On May 29, 1916, the official flag of the President of the United States was adopted by executive order. This is interesting, via historian David McCullough:
One morning, standing at his desk, [President Truman] presented to the press a new presidential flag … “This new flag faces the eagle toward the staff,” Truman explained, “which is looking to the front all the time when you are on the march, and also has him looking at the olive branch for peace, instead of the arrows for war …”
Both the flag and presidential seal had been redesigned for the first time since the Wilson years, and Truman meant the shift in the eagle’s gaze to be seen as symbolic of a nation both on the march and dedicated to peace.
Astonishingly, Trump didn’t change it back.
-
BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
-
END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
CHEERS to the end of an era. Did you know that Sunday is also technically a holiday? Yup…it's "End of the Middle Ages Day." To mark the occasion, despondent Republicans will lower their flag pins to half-lapel.
CHEERS to the end of the end. It was all over for Tricky Dick 48 years ago today, thanks to a 27-11 vote by the House Judiciary Committee to adopt the first of three articles of impeachment against President Nixon who, said ABC News's Tom Jarrell at the time, was "presumably still in his swim trunks" while on vacation in California when he heard the news. Meanwhile, then-VP Gerald Ford just couldn’t help but play a little game of up-is-downism:
Ford: It's interesting that every Democrat on the committee—north and south—voted for the article. ... It tends to make it a partisan issue.
Reporter: Even if one-third of Republicans voted for it?
Ford: Well, the fact that every one of the Democrats voted for it, I think, uh, lends credence that it's a partisan issue, even though some Republicans have deviated.
...said the Republican who later unilaterally exonerated the Republican crook. But, hey, what's a little hypocrisy among friends?
CHEERS to home vegetation. Here's some of the haps on TV this weekend, starting tonight with a pre-Memorial Day MSNBC reality check by the prime time hosts, or you can catch Handmaid’s Tale author Margaret Atwood reacting to the pending SCOTUS repeal of Roe v. Wade on PBS’s Firing Line at 8:30.
The new movies and streamers (led by the Top Gun sequel on screen and Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+) are all reviewed here at Rotten Tomatoes. The MLB schedule is here, the NHL Stanley Cup playoff schedule is here, the WNBA schedule is here, and the NBA playoff schedule is here (Go Boston woo woo woo). Or you can catch the Senior PGA Championship tomorrow and Sunday afternoon on NBC.
Sunday on 60 Minutes: the devastation on the human body caused by assault-style gun bullets, and new discoveries of Caligula’s gardens. The National Memorial Day Concert airs Sunday at 8 on PBS. And beyond that you should just go outside and tiptoe through the tulips.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Oh god—a “special edition” on guns. I’m sure Chuck Todd will solve all the problems. Well, unless he’s out of time and he has to leave it there.
This Week: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT); Jan. 6 committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).
Face the Nation: Chris Murphy; Gov. Asa Hutchinson (The Cult-AR); Uvalde County Commissioner Ronnie Garza; Rep. Val Demings (D-FL); CEO of Sandy Hook Promise Foundation Nicole Hockley; Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivor and co-founder of March for Our Lives Jaclyn Corin.
CNN's State of the Union: Rep. Dan Crenshaw (The Cult-TX); Texas Senator Ronald Gutierrez (D); Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL).
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Rep. Mo Brooks (Traitor-AL); Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD).
Happy viewing!
-
Ten years ago in C&J: May 27, 2012
CHEERS to dissension in the ranks. There's another war brewing in the Republican party today. I'm speaking of course, about the battle of the blue bloods:
"What voter is going to vote for [Romney] because he’s seen with Donald Trump? The cost of appearing with this bloviating ignoramus is obvious, it seems to me. Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics.” —George Will on This Week May 27
"George Will may be the dumbest and most overrated political commentator of all time. If the Republicans listen to him, they will lose." —Donald Trump on Twitter May 27
We hear that they plan to settle their feud the old-fashioned way: Mont Blanc pens at dawn. [5/27/22 Update: In the end, Trump and his red-hatted orcs defeated Will and his bow-tied intellectuals. With a Sharpee. Go figure.]
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to hurtling through space together. On Monday my partner Michael (aka "Common Sense Mainer" here at DK) and I will be memorializing something else in addition to Memorial Day. Namely, another trip around the sun together. Number 29.
We met in Saginaw, Michigan on May 30, 1993 at a bar called Bambi’s during Bill Clinton's fifth month in office as our 42nd president. And here we are now, with #46 Joe Biden at the helm and a lot of water under the bridge. We're noticeably grayer and creakier—COPD knocked on his door, cancer knocked on mine. But we're still reasonable approximations of our younger selves if you squint hard enough, and so far we've resisted the temptation to shoo any kids off our lawn.
Longevity seems to boil down to a few essentials: love, shared responsibility, and accepting the fact that neither of us hears half of what the other one says. But that's okay—we're quite smooth at the art of "yupping," and we fill in the blanks by texting each other from our respective ends of the couch.
In a tradition I started a few years back, here's the annual posting of a smug snippet from "The new apostle of sanity in sex," David Reuben, M.D. Fifty-two years ago, in 1969, his mega-seller Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask—a copy of which I once found in my grandparents' attic—was published and treated as gospel (in fairness, he later took a chill pill and lightened up on us):
What about all the homosexuals who live together happily for years? What about them? They are mighty rare birds among the homosexual flock. Moreover, the "happy" part remains to be seen. The bitterest argument between husband and wife is a passionate love sonnet by comparison with a dialogue between a butch and his queen. Live together? Yes. Happily? Hardly.
For the record, in our household the proper pecking order endures: the cat's the queen, the dog's the butch, and Michael and I are their humble servants. Scandalous, I know.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-