From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: "Gooooooal!!!
"Soccer is one of those things that the rest of the world cares more about than we do. Y'know, like healthcare, education, gun control…"
---David Letterman
"It's summer and the
beaches are open!"
"Protesters at the World Cup got into trouble for burning American flags. It's a shame because children in China worked very hard to make those flags."
---Conan O'Brien
"The campaign manager who helped unseat House Majority Leader Eric Cantor last night is a 23-year-old man who interviewed for a job at Panera Bread last month. Said Cantor, 'Is that position still available?'"
---Seth Meyers
"Eric Cantor was the tea party's biggest ally in Congress. He didn't know what hit him. After the concession speech he made, on the way home he was saying, 'I don't get it---I was unreasonable, I was uninformed, I was hateful. What happened???'"
---Bill Maher
"The John McCain military victory plan for America is the same as the John McCain media strategy: Be everywhere…forever."
---Jon Stewart
Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster tomorrow's the start of summer. Three months of peace, tranquility, and boring news cycles. Right?
Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, June 20, 2014
Note: Please disregard your original horoscope for today. Due to a rounding error we've determined that your face won’t actually get chewed off by a mob of angry wombats. The correct horoscope is: "You'll cheer up a friend with puppetry." We regret the error.
---Mgt.
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13 Days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes:
37
Days 'til the
UFO Festival in Roswell, New Mexico:
13
Weekly unemployment claims, nearly a 7-year low:
312,000
(Source: Labor Dept.)
Congress's current Gallup approval rating:
7%
Year by which El Paso Electric
says it'll be coal-free:
2016
Ratio by which aroma matters versus taste to a dog:
70/30
Ratio by which aroma matters versus taste to a cat:
50/50
(Source: Mary Roach in her book
Gulp.)
World Cup Soccuh
Costa Rica 1 Italy 0
France 5 Switzerland 2
Honduras 1 Ecuador 2
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NEW! Michele Bachmann Departure Countdown
Yes!!! We're finally under the 200-day mark. Michele Bachmann and her googly eyes leave Congress in 197 days. To celebrate, tonight in the kiddie pool we'll be bobbing for corn dogs.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Road trip
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CHEERS to the Winning Phrase of the Week. If you guessed it would be "Criminal Scheme," you win one MILLION dollars (minus my $999,999 courtesy fee for processing and handling). It fell from the ceiling and into Wisconsin's lap yesterday:
Walker's presidential plans
may be on hold for a while.
[P]rosecutors laid out what they call an extensive "criminal scheme" to bypass state election laws by [Governor Scott] Walker, his campaign and two top Republican political operatives […] The scope of the criminal scheme under investigation "is expansive," [prosecutor Francis] Schmitz wrote. "It includes criminal violations of multiple elections laws, including violations of Filing a False Campaign Report or Statement and Conspiracy to File a False Campaign Report or Statement."
Special bonus: Karl Rove is tangled up in the web he helped weave as he and Walker's gang practiced to deceive. If you need the governor for anything this weekend, he'll be in his backyard digging an undisclosed location.
JEERS to God's apathetic foot soldiers. The order was unequivocal from The Almighty: "I command thee to drop everything, race to DC, and take part in the most important march of your lifetime. Nothing less than the sanctity of marriage is on the line. Disobey me and ye shall feel my wrathiness!!!" Apparently even hardcore Bible-thumpers figured out it was just Mike Huckabee behind a curtain with a bullhorn, because this was the turnout yesterday:
In fairness, they were competing with an 11am showing of How to Train Your Dragon 2 and Free Doughnut Day down at the titty bar. Undeterred, the organizers say they'll hold another rally next year. Ironically, the crowd will be so small that they'll literally be able to hold it in a closet.
WHATEVS to the new teapublican in charge. It was a tough race, but in the end a radical fringe white Republican male beat a radical fringe white Republican male, a radical fringe white Republican male and a radical fringe white Republican male to become the new House Majority Leader. His name is… Oh, you silly goose, does it really matter?
CHEERS to being born! Early "Happy Birthday and many blessings on your camels" to Massachusetts's Elizabeth Warren, who turns [
hffrrhffrrhrrr] Sunday! Every now and then I pinch myself to make sure I'm not hallucinating over the notion that Elizabeth Warren is now a freakin' United States senator. Holy cow, y'know? People like her---a humble, soft-spoken, sharp-as-a-tack schoolmarm---aren't supposed to win elections. Where's the slick? Where's the posturing? The spinning? The vitriol? So I figure her birthday is a good excuse to say it again as if for the first time:
Elizabeth Warren is a freakin' United States Senator. How ridiculously cool is that. I hope she enjoys the Scott Brown
"bqhatevwr" mug we got her.
P.S. And she'll be keynoting at the Netroots Nation convention in less than a month. Bonus!
CHEERS to that picture that looks like an eagle flew into a window. On June 20, 1782, the Great Seal of the United States was finally adopted by Congress. They sure took their sweet time getting there:
Yes. The NSA has placed a
spycam inside the giant eye.
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On July 4, 1776, the same day that independence from Great Britain was declared by the thirteen states, the Continental Congress named the first committee to design a Great Seal, or national emblem, for the country. Similar to other nations, The United States needed an official symbol of sovereignty to formalize and seal (or sign) international treaties and transactions. It took six years, three committees, and the contributions of fourteen men before the Congress finally accepted a design (which included elements proposed by each of the three committees) in 1782.
It has 13 stars, 13 stripes, 13 arrows in the eagle’s talon, 13 letters in the mottos "e pluribus unum" and "annuit coeptis," 52 total letters on it (which is divisible by 13), 13 olive leaves, 13 olives on the branch, 13 levels in the pyramid, and 13 sides showing on the ribbon. But designer Charles Thomson stopped short of including a black cat walking under a ladder---that would've been considered unlucky.
We're hoping the rainbow
unicorn shows up again.
CHEERS to swishing towards Gomorrah. Southern Maine's annual
LGBT pride parade and festival---under new management that has infused lots of fresh energy into the week's pride events---is tomorrow, and a record turnout is expected. Naturally, we can tell that God is pissed at our wicked, wicked ways, judging by the Armageddon-like forecast:
sunny and 75. We have a lot to celebrate, including a year-and-a-half's worth of marriage equality, an openly-gay governor-to-be (
Mike Michaud will be tomorrow's Grand Marshal), and a whole crate full of win from our nation's Executive Branch. Michael and I have marched with PFLAG for nearly twenty years, and the participation has
grown like crazy since the days when they only shut down half of Congress Street for us and we literally could've been taken out by a Metro bus gone adrift. Last year we both wore our 30-year-old Boy Scout uniforms to both praise the BSA for accepting openly-gay kids in their ranks, and protest the BSA for continuing to bar openly-gay adult leaders. We're leaving them home tomorrow. Last year we popped some buttons and sent half a dozen people to the emergency room.
Wes Anderson's classic
is Now out on DVD.
CHEERS to home vegetation. Here's our weekly weekend roundup of the tube, starting tonight with HBO's
Real Time, where Bill Maher jawbones with Glenn Greenwald, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Kristen Soltis Anderson, Paul Rieckhoff and Mike Shinoda. New DVD releases include
The Grand Budapest Hotel and
The Lego Movie. The baseball schedule is
here, and World Cup info is at the
evil FIFA site. (The U.S. plays Portugal Sunday, and we'll be denyiong them any Portu-goals…get it?) On
Bill Moyers & Company, historian and combat veteran Andrew Bacevich unpacks the latest bad, bad human behavior in Iraq. And here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: They haven't updated their website yet, so I'll just assume it's 8 Republicans and 1 Democrat.
Watch him instead.
This Week: War criminal Hermann Goering Dick Cheney is given a platform from which to spin his blood-drenched years sucking the life out of "der homeland" into an argument for having his and Bush's faces chiseled into Mount Rushmore; Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor; roundtable with Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), Terry Moran, Greta van Susteren and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).
Face the Nation: This week it's Bob Schieffer's turn to babysit Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) while wife Kristi goes shopping; Presisdent Barry O'BUMMER!!!; Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) blathers about stuff he's not qualified to blather about; jibber jabber with Michael Morrell (CBS), Tavis Smiley (PBS), Robin Wright (Wilson Center), David Ignatius (WaPost), and John Dickerson (CBS).
CNN's State of the Union: Sen. Rand Paul; Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward on the 40th anniversary of the criminal Republican Watergate break-in.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: new House majority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gets the Fox tongue-bath treatment; roundtable with Judy Woodruff, Michael Needham, Juan Williams and disgraced columnist George Will.
And Sunday night at 11 is John Oliver's must-see
Last Week Tonight. Happy viewing.
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Five years ago in C&J: June 20, 2009
CHEERS to Obama the Enforcer. Yesterday the president outlined his administration's ideas for increasing oversight of the Wall Street gambling industry. (Geithner will sell it to Congress today---oh, joy.) Since most people [BiPM raises hand] have no idea how our financial system really works, the changes might be great or they might suck---we're guessing they'll fall somewhere in the middle. But one thing's for sure: the hucksters are already hard at work figuring out ways to game the system. That's why we love America---we're a nation of thinkers.
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And just one more…
Summertime!!!!
CHEERS to the thawing season. It's HERE! It's HERE!
The turnpike's aliiiiive...with the sound of Massholes!!! Forgive my irrational exuberance, but summer finally arrives tomorrow morning at 6:51am and we get a little excited about it up here in the otherwise toe-freezing tundra. For Maine it means 60 glorious days of heat after months of shutting ourselves inside, closing all the windows and cranking the furnace up to 11. First item on our agenda tomorrow morning when summer gets its solstice on: shutting ourselves inside, closing all the windows, and cranking the AC up to 11.
Have a great longest weekend of the year. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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