From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: One Ring, Many Hats
"Yesterday Hillary Clinton made the big announcement we all knew was coming. She's going to join the all-female cast of Ghostbusters."
---Conan O'Brien
"Rand Paul announced that he's running for president, and his slogan will be, 'Defeat the Washington machine, unleash the American dream.' Which is a lot better than Jeb Bush's slogan: 'Buy two Bushes, get one free.'"
---Michael Che, SNL
Wednesday: astronaut Terry Virts wears a replica Jackie
Robinson jersey at the Space Station. 4/15/47 was
Robinson's first day in the majors.
"Let me be clear. Speculating over who's going to win the 2016 election now is like speculating over who's going to win the shot put at the 2016 Olympics. The only thing we know for sure is that Ted Cruz isn't going to win either."
---John Oliver
"The ubiquity of cell phones is far outpacing police awareness of the ubiquity of cell phones."
---Jon Stewart
"About eighty percent of taxpayers get money back, which is a weird thing to be happy about. That means
you've been overpaying all year long. It's like if someone broke into your house and the police recovered the stuff and brought it back and you said, 'Ooh! Presents!'"
---Jimmy Kimmel
"Utah might bring back firing squads, combining two things America has an abundance of: guns and bad ideas."
---Larry Wilmore
And three years ago:
"Whatever Republican is going to replace Obama is going to need three things: vision, leadership, and enough cash to make up for not having vision or leadership."
---Stephen Colbert
Come on down and splash in the kiddie pool. We're bobbing for day-old dumplings. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, April 17, 2015
Note: Shush, Rand. Shush.
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8 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Queen Elizabeth II's 89th birthday:
4
Days 'til the
Nihon Matsuri Japan Festival in Salt Lake City:
8
Percent of airline seats (not including airline employees and frequent-flier-mile redeemers) sold last July, a record high:
87.8%
Percent chance that the Dept. of Transportation sets space standards for dogs flying on commercial jets, but not for passengers:
100%
(Source: DOT consumer advisory group)
Average monthly apartment rent in the U.S.:
$1,219
(Source: AP)
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence's approval rating in 2013 and today:
52%, 35%
(Source: HPI poll)
Minimum number of people around the world who eat bugs:
2 billion
(Source: U.N. Food & Agriculture Organization)
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Fresh happiness from Polish photographer Agnieszka Gulczynksa.
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CHEERS to Happy Fun Game! Here's how it works---guess who said this about Senator Elizabeth Warren:
It was always going to take a special kind of leader to pick up Ted Kennedy’s mantle as senior Senator from Massachusetts---champion of working families and scourge of special interests. Elizabeth Warren never lets us forget that the work of taming Wall Street’s irresponsible risk taking and reforming our financial system is far from finished. And she never hesitates to hold powerful people’s feet to the fire: bankers, lobbyists, senior government officials and, yes, even presidential aspirants. … She fights so hard for others to share in the American Dream because she lived it herself.
If you guessed
Hillary Clinton in Time magazine, you win! (If you guessed Ted Cruz,
what is WRONG with you?!)
CHEERS to shooing away a pesky stigma. Over at ACA Signups, Charles Gaba (aka Kossack brainwrap) brings up an interesting point about the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. He says we seem to have chosen the right path when presented with a certain emotional fork in the road:
Can I get an amen?
One of two things could have happened, culturally: The new enrollees could also become embarrassed at their situation, or all of the enrollees (including the prior ones) could gradually start to realize that there's nothing to be ashamed of here: There's no more reason to be embarrassed about being on Medicaid than there is in, say, riding public transportation because you can't afford a car. That's what the program is there for.
Put another way, I don't think anyone whose house catches on fire feels "embarrassed" about calling the fire department just because they don't happen to be able to afford their own hydrant, hose, equipment and fire axe.
That's a big reason why liberals are so impatient for single-payer health care. Yes, it saves money and neuters the private-sector insurance vultures. But it also dissolves the class-based mentality and makes us all one big nation of "American schlubs who have the right to guaranteed health insurance." If it ever comes to pass, I vote we call it Schlubcare.
CHEERS to a good thumpin'. 240 years ago this Sunday, on April 19, 1775 (a day after Paul Revere & Co.'s famous ride) our War of Independence began with a brief skirmish at Lexington, an engagement at Concord's North Bridge, and guerrilla warfare as we chased the redcoats---Really, guys? Red? Bright red? Lemme guess: your uniforms were designed by a committee---back to Boston:
Less well-known was the April
19th, 1775 Lexington pie fight.
Because the Americans never formed a firing line the inexperienced British had little to shoot at. This style of flanking and shooting from behind trees, walls etc. destroyed the British morale, and they broke ranks while retreating towards Lexington. The British suffered badly, nearly 20 percent casualties, but more importantly, this action led to the siege of Boston and the start of the Revolutionary War.
And today we're still fighting wars. Lots and lots of wars. Wars against ISIS, the Taliban, women, Easter, religion, welfare moochers, secularism, fast food, guns, drugs, freedom, terror, lady parts, education, capitalism, culture, liberals, conservatives, Hispanics, blacks, gays, Grandma, the 99 percent and the 1 percent. Oh…and Christmas. Can’t forget the war on Christmas, right Fox?
Buh-bye.
One final JEERS to one seriously evil second fiddle. Remember when the U.S. military came up with that funky idea in 2003 to distribute a
deck of playing cards featuring the most-wanted members of Saddam Hussein's regime? (Saddam, of course, was the ace of spades.) Almost all of those tyrants have been captured, killed, or otherwise accounted for, but one big fish kept getting away: Saddam's right-hand man, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. He never stopped plotting his comeback, and recently he'd taken on the role of some kind of evil Yoda figure in ISIS. I always thought he was the nastiest-looking of the bunch, so I'm glad to see that
the King of Clubs has finally been dethroned. According to sources, he's currently in the hereafter wondering aloud why 72 virgins are beating him with shoes. Get used to it, buddy. Eternity is a long time.
JEERS to the number 20. As of Sunday that's how many years it's been since Timothy McVeigh parked a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The explosion killed 168 people and injured hundreds more. We hope you'll pause a moment Sunday and pay your respects. One person who probably won't is Ann Coulter---she'll be too busy writing "jokes" like this:
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."
Republicans love her because she's their deep thinker.
One of Blogger Land's
most popular voices.
CHEERS to the Baby Blue Cherub. Everybody stop by and say "Heh indeedy" to Atrios (aka millstone-around-Philadelphia's-neck Duncan Black) on this, the
lucky thirteenth anniversary of
his Eschaton blog. Few dirty fucking hippies can reduce the traditional media and punditry's wankery to one or two lines of cool-as-a-cucumber snark like this communist peacenik can. He was especially ahead of the curve on the economic meltdown and the Iraq debacle, and he led the charge to
expand Social Security, a movement with real traction these days. Besides that, his is a classic, old-fashioned blog that looks the same as it did a baker's dozen years ago (although he happily
embraced the twitter revolution early on). By the way, this was
the moment on April 17, 2002 when he flicked the switch for the first time:
Is this thing on?
22:13 0 Comments
Still is. And if it ever shuts down, civilization is doomed.
Also back on HBO Sunday nights:
season 4 of the best comedy on TV.
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CHEERS to home vegetation. If you don’t have anything better to do this weekend---like, say, attend your local communist party meeting---you can share some intimate moments with the sacred socialist TV box. On HBO's
Real Time, Bill Maher argle bargles with Neera Tanden, Iraq War cheerleader Judith Miller, Jon Meacham, Clay Aiken and Michelle Caruso-Cabrera. New
DVD releases include Tim Burton's
Big Eyes and the horror flick
The Babadook. Sports schedules:
major league baseball here,
NBA playoffs here and the
Stanley Cup playoffs here. If you're having awards-show withdrawal pangs, there's the Academy of Country Music Awards Sunday at 8 on CBS. Your
Game of Thrones (Sunday at 9 on HBO) spoiler alert: the "magic dragons" are just a metaphor for marijuana. And the weekend wraps up with John Oliver slaying another sacred American cow with a sprightly British accent on
Last Week Tonight.
And here's your Sunday morning lineup. Please hold your applause until someone fills that fucking Chipotle tip jar to the fucking brim!!!
Meet the Press: Ohio Gov. John Kasich does a little 2016 strip-tease for Chuck Todd and ends up knocking over a bank of klieg lights; roundtable with four talking daffodils.
Bernie Sanders uses one-finger
Jedi mind control Sunday on Fox.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Sen. Lindsey Graham talks about his plans for a presidential run while sipping lemonade and fanning himself under a sycamore tree; Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) causes a mass evacuation from the building when he triggers the network's socialism alarm; House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) calls for a constitutional amendment banning gyrocopters; roundtable with four talking yams.
This Week: House Homeland Security Committee Chair Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) reacts to the gyrocopter attack on the Capitol lawn by calling for an invasion of a country…any country! Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) talks him down, arguing that just invading another country's lawn might be more proportional. Roundtable with four talking celery kumquats.
Face the Nation: Senator Marco Creamy McDreamy (R-FL) campaigns like it's 1899; former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley cites many reasons to admire the cut of his jib; Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia shows Bob Schieffer the card he keeps in his wallet to remind him which party he belongs to; roundtable with five talking rutabagas.
CNN's State of the Union: Roundtable with four talking radishes.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: April 17, 2005
CHEERS and JEERS to Richard Cohen. The Washington Post columnist writes a lovely smackdown of UN Ambassador nominee John Bolton, stating in paragraph one that, "He's nuts." But then he blows it by saying, "Why the Bush administration would want such a person at the United Nations is beyond me." Hint: Because it's the Bush administration, silly goose.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to our favorite Galaxy Far Far Away. The new Star Wars VII preview landed in our lap yesterday. Spoiler Alert: I've got a good feeling about this, Chewie…
The force awakens in 244 days. Be still my midichlorians.
Have a great weekend! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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