From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE
Yesterday--3pm: Boehner's Phone Rings…
[I like big butts and I cannot lie! You other brothers can't de…]
"Boehner here."
"Mr. Speaker. It's the President."
"Hello, Mr. President. What can I do for ya?"
"I heard you wanted me to pick up the phone and call so we could have a conversation."
"Thank you for calling, Mr. President. But it's too late to have a conversation. That offer expired about 20 seconds ago."
"How about a dialogue, then?"
"No, sir. The deadline for a dialogue passed on Monday."
"A chat?"
"That offer died in August, Mr. President."
"I don’t think so, Mr. Speaker. August was supposed to be a heart-to-heart."
"Well, whatever. The time for all that is in the past. The American people want us to put aside our differences and have a real, honest back-'n-forth."
"No can do. The back-'n-forth deadline passed two weeks ago. You know that."
"Negotiation?"
"No."
"Meeting of the minds?"
"No."
"Encounter? Kaffeeklatsch? Pillow talk?"
"Parley, Mr. Speaker. I looked it up and this week it's a parley."
"Well, then, let's have a parley."
"I don’t parley with hostage takers. Call me when you're ready to surrender. Oh, and Mr. Speaker?"
"Yes, Mr. Pesident?"
"Ditch the Camels. Nasty habit."
[Click.]
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Note: If you don’t mind, I think I'll just phone it in today, thanks. [Zhick! D'd'd'd'd... Zhick! D'd'd'd'd'd… Zhick! D'd'd'dd'd'd'd...] Um, this may take awhile. I still use a rotary phone.
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10 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Christmas:
77
Days 'til the
Keene Pumpkin Festival in New Hampshire:
10
Terry McAuliffe
44% Ken Cuccinelli
35%
(Source: VA Guv poll by
Politico)
Congressional Republican favorable rating:
24%
President Obama favorable rating:
45%
(Source:
WaPost-ABC News poll)
Year tea partier Paul LePage became governor of Maine:
2011
Percent increase in the number of people in Maine who have died from heroin overdoses since 2011:
300%
(Source: Harper's Index)
American League Division Series:
Boston Red Sox 3 Tampa Bay Rays 1
(Boston wins the AL Division Nobel Prize for Baseball 3 games to 1)
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 187 (including 3 Peace Processes and 1 earth-destroying wind power industry). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Happy 5th Birthday, Bo!
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CHEERS to winning a big one. Democrats have reason to be happy this morning after last night's bombshell that the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve will be a chair...woman:
As you can see, Janet Yellen is also a Jedi.
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Janet Yellen will be named the next chair of the Federal Reserve on Wednesday, cracking one of the highest glass ceilings as the first woman to head the central bank in its 100-year history, the White House confirmed late Tuesday. … Yellen was appointed vice chair in October 2010. She was president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004 to 2010 and also served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisors from 1997 to 1999. Prior to joining the Fed, Yellen spent much of her career as a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, where she had been teaching since 1980.
President Obama will make it official today at 3ET. Yellen will be the first woman to hold the position, and the first Democratic Fed Chair in 25 years. Still, I'm a bit bummed---one more balding white guy and we would've all gotten a free shiny new dime.
CHEERS to cool science. The parade of Nobel Prize winners continued yesterday. Congratulations are in order:
The Professor was
snubbed again.
Britain's Peter Higgs and Francois Englert of Belgium won the Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday for predicting the existence of the Higgs boson particle that explains how elementary matter attained the mass to form stars and planets. The insight has been hailed as one of the most important in the understanding of the cosmos. … Higgs' and Englert's work shows how elementary particles inside atoms gain mass by interacting with an invisible field pervading all of space---and the more they interact, the heavier they become.
That explains why Mr. Englert's dirty underwear never seems to quite make it to the clothes hamper, said Mrs. Englert.
Anatomically correct,
by George!
CHEERS to landmark landmarks. 125 years ago today, on October 9, 1888, the public was first allowed inside the
Washington Monument:
At the time of its completion, it was the tallest building [at 555 feet, 5 inches] in the world, and it remains the tallest stone structure in the world. It is the tallest building in Washington, D.C.. This monument is vastly taller than the obelisks around the capitals of Europe and in Egypt and Ethiopia, but ordinary antique obelisks were quarried as a monolithic block of stone, and were therefore seldom taller than approximately 100 feet.
Visitors to the monument that day were thrilled at the sight. Unfortunately, their enthusiasm quickly turned to disappointment when they realized there was no launch button.
CHEERS to conversations and negotiations that actually do something productive. As Republicans prepare to blow up the United States in 8 days, the Obama administration, Russia and and the U.N. continue to make progress in mopping up and destroying Syria's chemical weapons stockpiles:
Syria's WMDs will be
disarmed mostly with
U.N. Barbeque tongs.
Secretary of State John Kerry lauded Syria Monday, saying he was “very pleased” at news that experts had already begun the process of destroying Syria's chemical weapons arsenal. … At a news conference in Indonesia, where he is on an official visit, Kerry lauded the start of the destruction of chemical weapons in Syria as a "good beginning," and said Washington and Moscow had agreed to press the U.N. to set a date for a Syria peace conference in November. “We’re very pleased with the pace of what has happened with respect to chemical weapons in a record amount of time,” Kerry said.
True fact: each team member is required to have extensive experience in dealing with highly-toxic substances, including advanced degrees in the hard sciences and at least four years cleaning McNugget vats.
JEERS to playing with fire. Russia's hideous new anti-gay laws seem to be haunting the Land of the Prancing Bear Who's Totally Not Gay (Wink Wink). For the first time in the history of the universe (Source: some web site I found that supports my pre-conceived conclusion), the Olympic torch got extinguished by God's breath as a former Olympic swimmer in a rainbow jacket (really!) jogged around the Kremlin under the watchful eyes of Vladimir Putin. They struggled mightily to re-light it, and after several awkward seconds, the torch continued on its way, leaving behind embarrassed officials, crying children, and a city in ruins. I think Mother Russia just learned a lesson the hard way about putting on a show: there's a reason the gays own the Tonys.
CHEERS to loading the holiday catapults. Yesterday my partner Michael came home from the store with boxes of greeting cards for December. Continuing our decade-long crusade to keep Fox News paranoid about a left-wing conspiracy to "destroy" Christmas via a "war," our cards feature a Sharia-Atheist-Secular-Hippie-Socialist-Tyrant greeting:
Blasphemy!!!
Some say that the birth of Christ
Is the tale that should be told.
The swaddled kid in a bed of straw
And wise men bearing gold.
But I think the joy I truly feel---
What really makes me smiley---
Is saying "Happy Holidays"
Just to piss off Bill O'Reilly.
On the cover is a loofah sitting under a sprig of mistletoe.
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Five years ago in C&J: October 9, 2008
JEERS to the silence of the rat bastards. The very last line in Sunday night's 60 Minutes' expose of the financial meltdown says everything---absolutely everything---about the assholes who helped create the mess we're in:
"60 Minutes requested interviews with top executives at Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch , Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and AIG. They all declined."
I guess they're saving their chit-chat for the jury. [10/9/13 Update: Ha Ha Ha, boy was I an idiot. Those economy-crashing executives may not all be at the same companies, but they're still doing now what they were doing then, with one small difference---they're making even more money. Great country, huh.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to million-dollar makeovers…minus $999,900. Here it is, America. You've waited so patiently for it and now I present to you our nation's new hundred-dollar bill!!! There are some differences from the current version worth noting:
Mmm...orange paste.
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• There's a jar of paste---in Daily Kos orange, of course---on the front and yes that was my idea.
• If you peer into Ben Franklin's eyes with a magnifying glass, you'll see a reflection of a bawdy French wench beckoning him to join her in a Paris bathtub.
• The surface is smoother so there's less waste when you're snorting cocaine through it.
• When you squeeze the seal of the Treasury, it plays the Chinese national anthem.
• As a security measure, all the locks on Independence Hall have been changed.
• There is a freakishly large 100 on the back. This is to cover up the giant penis the engraver's 14 year-old son thought would be a hilarious addition.
But one thing about the hundred-dollar bill remains the same: for working women it's still only worth 77 bucks. We should probably change that.
Have a nice Wednesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
How much real meat is in Cheers and Jeers? Less than you think, study finds
---CTV News
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