From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: July's in the Rearview Mirror Edition
"Congress is now getting ready to take a month off. From what?
---David Letterman
"That lawsuit against the president is ridiculous. Unless they do the trial on Judge Judy, then I'm all for it."
---Jimmy Kimmel
Leia, Han and Chewy
aka Boehner, Scalise and Cruz
(I love metaphors made out of Legos.)
"Out of the 52,000 [refugee] children in federal custody, Uncle Sam is unfairly saddling Maine with a whopping eight of them. Eight! … Thankfully, Maine Governor Paul LePage caught wind of this plan and declared, 'We cannot become a state that encourages illegal immigration. We simply cannot afford it.' Folks, I never realized Maine was in such dire financial straits. They’re just one octomom away from bankruptcy."
---Stephen Colbert
"In Gaza the crisis continued. Over a thousand people have now been killed. There were multiple cease fires all week, none of which have held. One cease fire was so short it was technically only a 'cease f...' because fighting resumed before they could even finish the fucking word."
---John Oliver
"You can tell this drought is getting really bad. Today at lunch, my waiter asked if I wanted a glass of water or a future for my children. I took the water."
---Conan O'Brien
"You know who Americans hate more than we hate Russia? More than we hate Russia we hate our own Congress. The latest CNN poll puts the Russia approval rating at 19 percent [and] Congress' approval rating at 14 percent. So we American citizens are basically in a cold war with the 202 area code."
---Rachel Maddow
And one year ago...
"Some jackass vandalized the Lincoln Memorial. Who hates the Lincoln Memorial? Democrats love it because it honors the man who freed the slaves. And Republicans love it because it just sits there and does nothing. If it could cry and chain smoke, it would be John Boehner."
---Bill Maher
Hey Pacific Timers! it's 4:20! Time to make that odd gurgling sound that I have no idea what it is but boy it seems to make you happy. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, August 1, 2014
Note: Whoever replaced my entrenched narrative with fresh perspective has 24 hours to switch it back or I'm calling the proper authorities.
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8 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Ken Burns'
The Roosevelts: An Intimate History airs on PBS:
44
Days 'til the
Zombie Run in McCleary, WA:
8
Increase in cases of melanoma since 1973:
200%
Amount spent on the treatment of skin cancer per year:
$8 billion
(Source: Surgeon General's report)
Rank of North Dakota, New Hampshire and Montana among top beer-drinking states:
#1, #2, #3
(Source: Beer Institute)
Number of lobster processing facilities in Maine, up from 5 in 2010:
12
(Source:
The Portland Press Herald)
Year during which Vin Scully began broadcasting Dodgers games, which
he'll continue doing next year at age 86:
1950
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NEW! Michele Bachmann Departure Countdown
Michele Bachmann and her googly eyes leave Congress in 155 days. And, golly, I'm gonna miss headlines like this: Bachmann Suggests Gov't Wants To Use Migrant Children For 'Medical Experimentation'. [Sigh]
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Puppy Pic of the Day: If this is the new trend in headgear, count me in!
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Fact: August was first called the "Pootie Days
of Summer" 'til the dogs hijacked it.
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CHEERS to August. The dog days. The month everybody, not just Congress, should be allowed to take off for vacation. (Right, France?) The month everyone wears the shit out of their whites because they know Labor Day's just around the corner. The palooza of paloozas,
Lollapalooza starts today in Chicago, and the 13th is the high Republican holiday known as "Blame Someone Else Day." The next 30 days and four hours include National Raspberry Cream Pie Day, Watermelon Day, Ice Cream Sandwich Day, Mustard Day, Potatoe (I prefer the Dan Quayle spelling) Day, Cherry Popsicle Day and Trail Mix Day, to be followed on September 1st with "Honey, Where Did We Put The Treadmill?" Day. Loni Anderson and I (but, sadly, not Neil Armstrong this year, except in spirit) blow out our birthday candles on the 5th, a day after Barack Obama turns 53. Of course, it's also the month in which you
never want to introduce a bogus war based on lies to the public, but there'll be plenty of bloodshed around the world all the same. Oh, and on August 10 you'll see the biggest full moon of 2014. You'll know why when Jeeves drives me by your house with my butt sticking out the back window. Don't forget to wave!
P.S. Happy Gay Marriageiversary, Minnesota and Rhode Island. I read that the traditional one-year gift is paper, so everybody gets a decorative Post-It Note!
CHEERS and JEERS to conflicting conclusions. The July numbers from the Bureau of Workin' Stiffs came out this morning: the Obama economy added 209,000 jobs and the unemployment rate stands at 6.2 percent:
Or, if you were watching Fox News: the Obama economy added 6.2 jobs and the unemployment rate skyrocketed to 209,000 percent. Also too Benghazi.
CHEERS to the rules of the half-baked road. Yesterday, as chaos consumed the planet and Congress was on the verge of imploding, the merry elves in the House Oversight and Government Subcommittee on Government Operations (HOGS GO!) met to discuss the growing wave of pot legalization around the country and establish federal penalties for DUI'ing under the demon spell of marijuana. The meeting was considered a success when they all agreed that anyone caught driving while stoned should pay a hundred bucks for every ten miles per hour they're driving under the speed limit.
CHEERS to objects in mirror that are not closer than they appear. The Hubble telescope found a giant magnifying glass in space:
"Earthlings, we come
to eat you in peace."
[T]he galaxy is big enough to magnify an even more distant galaxy 10.7 billion light-years away, thanks to a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. Through lensing, the gravitational field of a massive foreground object bends, warps and magnifies the light from more distant objects. This phenomenon can reveal extremely dim, faraway galaxies that astronomers otherwise wouldn't be able to see.
The giant cosmic magnifying glass is one of those discoveries that thrills youngsters and frees them to dream of the exciting applications of it. Not so thrilled: ants on sidewalks.
It's like getting The Daily Show
on Sunday...in British!
CHEERS to home vegetation. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of the boob tube, I will fear no weekend talking heads: for Steve Kornacki and Melissa Harris-Perry art with me Saturday and Sunday morning; my nachos and my brewskis they comfort me. And mine viewing schedule may containeth some or all of the followingeth: On HBO's
Real Time, Bill Maher talks with Rep. Barbara Lee, Ralph Nader, "Nixon Tapes" historian Douglas Brinkley, Andrew Ross Sorkin and former RNC poobah Doug Heye. New
DVD releases include
Noah (Spoiler alert: he's
not gonna need a bigger boat) and the Criterion release of the '83 classic
The Big Chill. Your
baseball schedule is here. (As a Red Sox fan, let me just say that I am totally ready for…football season.)
On Bill Moyers & Company, John Lithgow drops by to talk about King Lear and its parallels to modern times. Sunday night John Oliver proves again on Last Week Tonight that you don’t want to get on John Oliver's bad side. (I send him fresh kippers every Tuesday.) And here's your Sunday morning lineup, which I post every week for reasons long since forgotten:
Meet the Press: They haven't posted a guest list yet, so I'm gonna say last week's test-pattern experiment improved ratings so much that they're going with it again.
This Week:This Week: White House advisor Dan Pfeiffer; Centers for Disease Control Director Dr. Tom Frieden; Vin Scully on 65 years of baseball broadcasting; roundtable with Joaquin Castro, Devid Remnick, Greta Van Susteren and poster child for all that is wrong with humanity Bill Kristol.
Exclusive: Palpatine's recipe for
avocado dip---Sunday on CNN.
CNN's State of the Union: They haven't posted their guest list yet, either, but word on the street is that half of them will be holograms.
Face the Nation: Face the Nation: CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook on the Ebola outbreak; Valerie Jarrett and Michael Bloomberg on the US-Africa Leaders summit; Commissioner General for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency Pierre Krahenbuhl, who is helping Palestinians in the Gaza Strip; Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) on the CIA's Senate-computers hacking scandal; John
Dean on the 40th anniversary of Nixon's resignation.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Creamy McDreamy Marco Rubio rages about how intolerance of intolerance is intolerable, making him intolerant too, resulting in a rare Rubio smackdown of Rubio as Chris Wallace looks on in confusion; Rep Steve "70-pound Calves" King (R-IA) and Rep Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on the lawsuit against the president. roundtable with Michael Needham, Juan Williams, Kimberly Strassel and Ron Fournier.
Happy viewing!
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Five years ago in C&J: August 1, 2009
JEERS to dashing through the heat and humidity in a one-sunroof open SUV. Don’t be surprised if you see Bill O'Reilly starting the war on the War on Christmas a little early this year. The economy "forced" stores like Sears and Kmart to officially launch their holiday shopping season this month. For the first time in his life, Santa's biggest problem isn't unruly children peeing in his lap...it's heatstroke.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the birth of a legend. And here we are in August, 2014. Israel-Gaza-Ukraine-Iraq-Syria-Afghanistan? Clusterfuck. Congress? Clusterfuck. Energy policy, immigration reform, infrastructure, personal income, retirement plans? Still a cluster-you-know-what. Well, I have something to snap us out of them clusterfuck blues. Thanks to wayback-machine technology, we take you to Sunday's date in 2006, when life was simple, cherub-faced children played stickball in the streets, and Daddy came home to find his slippers, pipe, newspaper and supper waiting for him as the aroma of jasmine wafted on the warm summer breeze. Oh, and this was at the top of the DKos charts:
ErrinF
(Artist's rendering)
Since I can't delete my account myself, my only recourse is to be as abrasive and disruptive as I can be UNTIL MY ACCOUNT GETS DELETED. As long as my account remains here, I do not feel comfortable leaving. Is it really such a tough request to delete my account so I can go? Just what kind of website lets you join up but won't let you leave? One that regards people as little more than statistics, that's what. How like the Democratic Party for Kos to view his site's members as little more than statistics.
DELETE MY FUCKING ACCOUNT, KOS.
And, for a brief moment, unicorns romp once again in the Fields of Orange. And I swear I'm catching a whiff of jasmine.
Have a great weekend! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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