From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: Crimea River Edition
"Vladimir Putin says that Russian troops did not invade Crimea. Really? Well, what are those guys? Mall cops?"
---David Letterman
Jon Stewart unveils Fox News's new slogan: "We
Read The Chain Emails Your Grandma Gets In
Her Inbox Out Loud Like They Were True."
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"Sixty percent of Crimea is ethnically Russian. Basically it's not Russia, but it's right next door and it's full of Russians. The closest thing we have to that in America is Cancun in March."
---Seth Meyers
"House Speaker John Boehner referred to Vladimir Putin as a “thug,” and then called on President Obama to stand up to him. Which is sort of like throwing your drink on a big guy at a bar and then saying, 'My friend here will take care of you.'"
---Jimmy Fallon
"Piers Morgan announced that he's stepping down from his low-rated CNN talk show. Morgan says he wants to spend more time gradually morphing into a potato."
---New SNL co-anchor Colin Jost
"Stock trader Steve Schwarzman---net worth $8 billion---once said that Obama raising his taxes three percent felt like when Hitler invaded Poland. Sounds like something Sarah Palin would tweet after huffing paint thinner."
---Bill Maher
And a reminder from March 2006:
"We're now down to the final four. Not college basketball, the number of people who still think President Bush is doing a good job."
---Jay Leno
Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, March 7, 2014
Note: Lawyers rush to scene after baker's man refuses to play pattycake on religious grounds. Film at 11.
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24 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of the Memorial Day weekend:
77
Days 'til the
Oakdale Testicle Festival in California:
24
Number of years it took for the otter population to bounce back in Prince William Sound after the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil disaster:
25
(Source: federal study via AP)
Amount NASA has set aside in its 2015 budget for planning a robotic mission to Jupiter's "watery moon" Europa:
$15 million
Americans in their 40s who agree that, as people age, they deserve more respect from others:
60%
Americans in their 60s who agree that, as people age, they deserve more respect from others:
46%
(Source: AARP survey)
Amount hackers stole from the now-shuttered bitcoin depository
known as Flexcoin:
$600,000
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NEW! Michele Bachmann Departure Countdown
Michele Bachmann and her googly eyes leave Congress in 302 days. Please plan your Bar Mitzvahs accordingly.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: A new twist on the old motto Dog Is My Co-Pilot
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CHEERS to brighter evenings. Hey, America---are ya ready for some
DAYLIGHT??!!! Yes, indeed, Daylight Saving Time starts Sunday morning at 2am, suspending the sun's descent by an extra hour. And here in Maine we are...SO...READY...for it. Here's the deal: make a note to turn your clocks ahead an hour this weekend. As usual, Democrats on Capitol Hill will help their Republican colleagues set their pocketwatches. They still can't do it themselves. They're allergic to forward.
CHEERS and JEERS to two sides of the same employment report. The February numbers from the Bureau of Workin' Stiffs came out this morning. Here's the saggy-butt recovery chart:
Our side shouts, "175,000 thousand new jobs! Three-and-a-half years of uninterrupted job growth! The unemployment rate is down to 6.7 percent!" The other side shouts, "Only 175,000 new jobs? Only three-and-a-half years of uninterrupted job growth? The unemployment is up to 6.7 percent?" Unreal---Democrats and Republicans can't even agree on punctuation marks.
CHEERS to drinking from the unintentional-humor well. At the CPAC conference (see the agenda here), here's what happened yesterday and today:
> Donald Trump referred to "the late" Jimmy Carter, and was later given a wedgie in a dark alley by the "right on time" Jimmy Carter.
> Mitch McConnell brandished a firearm on stage, then dropped it and took out three chandeliers.
> The room during the minority outreach seminar was nearly empty.
> It's been a financial bonanza for gay hookers...
> ...and straight hookers too (but not as much).
> Rick Perry spent 11 minutes complaining that America is a real shithole and then closed with: "God bless this great country we live in!"
> Oh my god would you right-wing freaks give it a REST with all the FETUSES!!! We get it! (ironically, the majority of fake plastic fetuses they give away to attendees will end up in the trash.)
> The gun makers sent a collective message that was delivered by their amplification device known as The Wayne LaPierre Horn. See if you can spot which emotional hot button they're pushing. It's pretty subtle...
Wayne LaPierre's baby blanket.
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"We know in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and there are home invaders, drug cartels, car jackers, and knockout gamers, and rapers and haters and campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, and killers who seek to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse our society that sustains us all."
And, on top of all that weirdness, yesterday Senator Tom Coburn said, "There's hundreds of thousands of Tom Coburns out there." I just have one question: is it better if I slit my wrists sideways or longways?
CHEERS to Pa Bell. 138 years ago today, in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a patent---#174,465---for a communications device that has a diaphragm inside it. Bell called it the telephone. Rush Limbaugh calls it a slut.
JEERS to playing House. When Republicans aren't cutting off microphones to avoid getting schooled by a member of the opposite party, they're voting once more to repeal Obamacare. This week was their 50th attempt (remember, these votes cost precious taxpayer dollars) and they of course failed. This prompted the DNC to insert a few quarters into the mockery machine and push "Play"…
Having learned that they will never, ever successfully repeal the Affordable care Act, Boehner and company will move on to…repeal attempt #51, of course.
CHEERS to the original plastic diva. 55 years ago this Sunday, the Barbie doll made its debut at the American Toy Fair in New York. Today she's a billion-plus-dollar-a-year industry, thanks in part to collectors editions like Betty Boop Barbie. (If someone wasn't stoned when they came up with that, I'm the Easter Barbie.) As I recall, when I was a kid my job was to distract Barbie so Ken and G.I. Joe could sneak off for some clandestine cuddle time. Their garden wedding was beautiful. Until the barn owls snatched 'em.
Sunday!
CHEERS to home vegetation. I mostly turn on the TV so I can keep tabs on what the poltergeists in our house are plotting. (Last night I heard the word "spatula," which worries me a bit.) This weekend's tubage starts with mad switching between
Rachel and
Shark Tank from 9 to 10. Then, since Bill Maher's off tonight, we'll pop in a new DVD, like maybe the Oscar-winning Best Picture
12 Years a Slave or
Hunger Games II: You Gonna Eat That Twinkie? The NBA schedule
is here and the NHL schedule
is here. Lena Dunham hosts SNL. On
Bill Moyers & Company, author Haney Lopez continues the discussion on "how politicians use strategic racism to win votes." And the weekend wraps up on a spectacular note---a "big bang," if you will ha ha ha!---when the reboot of
Cosmos with host Neil deGrasse Tyson airs on Fox and National Geographic.
And here's your Sunday morning lineup. Please hold your applause until you see Paul Ryan eating his lunch out of a brown paper bag:
Meet the Press: Cardinal Timothy Dolan does his little hate-is-love spiel; Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken reassures everyone about Putin's intentions and urges everyone to STAY CALM!!!; Ralph Reed, Ron Fournier, Andrea Mitchell and Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA).
What the Sunday shows will look
and sound like this weekend.
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This Week: This week it's George Stephanopoulos's turn to babysit Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) while his wife Kristi goes shopping; Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Ted Cruz (R-TX); roundtable with Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), GOP strategist Ana Navarro, GOP concern troll Peggy Noonan and Democratic strategist David Plouffe; plus Misty Copeland, the first African-American soloist in two decades at the American Ballet Theatre.
Face the Nation: Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) isn't questioned about why he plagiarized the whole "brown bag" story because Bob Schieffer is Bob Schieffer; Reagan fossil James Baker gets propped up in a chair to talk about the way things wuz; roundtable with Rich Lowry, Margaret Brennan, Peter Baker and Jeff Goldberg.
CNN's State of the Union: White House Deputy National Security Advisor, Tony Blinken; past and future Florida Governor Charlie Crist; political panel with Donna Brazile, AB Stoddard and Ben Ferguson.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Tyranny!!! Fox has booked former Defense Secretary Robert gates to talk about the situation in Ukraine instead of John McCain. That's gotta hurt. Plus: Rand Paul on how he plans to be both President of the United States and a sitting Senator at the same time, and roundtable jibber jabber with George Will, Rana Foroohar, Google Santorum and Jane Harman.
Happy viewing!
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Five years ago in C&J: March 7, 2009
CHEERS to the arrival of the banjo-strummin' cavalry. Always nice to have a living legend on your side in a labor dispute, and the latest to weigh in on the strange Madison times is a man who knows a thing or two about unions---folk singer Pete Seeger:
"Dear Gov. Walker: Stop it.
Hugs, Pete"
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"Maybe the Republican governor, he's done us a favor by bringing the problem to national attention," the 91-year-old Seeger said in a telephone interview from his New York home. "It shows the whole country how much we need unions. We may end up thanking him." […] Seeger, who's been singing since the Great Depression and released a record in 1942 titled "Talking Union," said he was following the issue in Wisconsin.
"Without collective bargaining rights we'd be right back to primitive times," Seeger said.
Upon hearing the news, Governor Walker called Seeger's remarks outrageous and then drew a frowny face on his cave wall.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to great moments in wingnut whapping. Sixty years ago Sunday, on March 9, 1954, Edward R. Murrow took Ann Coulter's pin-up idol, Senator Joseph McCarthy, to the cleaners over his Communist witch hunt. His fab-o wrapup could serve as a middle-finger salute to McCarthy's successor, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas:
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men---not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular."
Senator McCarthy, of course, was the ideological jerk who thought he could bully and bluster his way to power and glory. As opposed to Senator Cruz, the ideological jerk who thinks he can bully and bluster his was to power and glory. They're totally different. McCarthy had better hair.
Have a great weekend. Good night and good luck. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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