From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Maddow with Your Morning Mimosa?
David Hochman interviews Rachel for Playboy and discovers that she may in fact be the sharpest knife in the drawer. A few snips:
On the Republican primary race:
“It’s fascinating how Republicans pick their candidates. Honestly, I think the Republican Party’s voters are drunk. I’m sure they’re having a great time and they feel euphoric, but you can’t eat a ton of greasy food and not feel terrible in the morning. I mean, Ben Carson!
What’s amazing is that the conservative movement since the Reagan era has been telling conservatives that government is the problem, which makes experience running government a mark on your record. ... Honestly, the very idea that you would thirst to hold high government office in Washington, D.C. almost inherently disqualifies you as a Republican.”
On Hillary:
“She has to avoid unforced errors. The political track we’ve seen a few times with Hillary is that when she’s ahead she gets a little loosey-goosey. When people start talking about her as inevitable, she believes she’s inevitable and sort of moves on to the next thing. You can’t do that. Hillary stops paying attention to the fundamentals of being a good candidate when she’s ahead.”
On Bernie:
“The thing that’s interesting about Bernie is that he is a freaking good politician, and he’s aggressive. … Bernie Sanders is running this fascinating campaign where he’s all about people being angry and dissatisfied and frustrated. He wants you to be disaffected and frustrated about an economic system that keeps you from ever ascending the ladder. ... He gets tens of thousands of people to turn out, but that sort of economic populism is a tough sell. The diagnosis is right; the cure isn’t easy.”
On the Obama presidency:
Obama will go down as one of the more consequential and good presidents in American history, mostly because of what he did with what he was handed. Recovering from the Great Recession alone made me glad Paul Ryan wasn’t in the vice president’s office trying to make economic policy and going, “Hey, we’ve got to cut taxes for the rich!” In many ways, Obama held the tiller firm and got us through a terrible time.
On what it would take to have Ann Coulter on her show:
[Sighs] The one rule I have about my show is that, by virtue of being invited, I’m telling my viewers that this person has something to say that you ought to listen to. That’s the rule. Ann Coulter would not meet that requirement.
She also talks about her early years as an AIDS activist, the state of LGBT rights, her work ethic, battling depression, and what it's like to shake hands with Bill O'Reilly. A great read.
(Hat tip to Kossack SanDiegoDem)
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Note: "If you don’t vote for my son Jeb, I'll press this red button in my purse and blow this planet to smithereens. I'm serious. Now who wants a hug?" ---Barbara Bush
[This hail mary advertisement paid for by Jeb! 2016]
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the premiere of Michael Moore's latest movie Where to Invade Next: 3
Days 'til the 17th annual Everglades Day Festival: 11
Approximate number of cases appealed to the Supreme Court every year, according to Parade: 10,000
Number of cases that SCOTUS actually agrees to hear: 75-80
Months that Norwegian police were allowed to carry guns due to a terror threat before the order expired and they disarmed again: 14
Barrels of commercial crude oil the U.S. has stockpiled, the most since 1936 according to CNN: 503 million
Expected top bid at auction for the guitar used by Robert Blake in the movie In Cold Blood and the actual guitar used by killer Perry Edward Smith, the real-life character Blake played: $200,000
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Tuesday Words of Wisdom from the Right-wing Blogosphere:
The merry elves at RedState weigh in on Saturday night's Republican debate:
"Rubio being killed here and proving Christie's point. It is his weakness. He just does canned talking points."
"I'll bet dollars to donuts the next response Marco gives, Christie will jump in and criticize no matter what. Christie's strategy is obvious and sad. Go back to eating donuts and closing down bridges Obama boy."
"AAaaaand Kasich is slicing fruit again....."
“There's a burgeoning groundswell for Gilmore. As these candidates beat each other bloody, wait for Jim to spring forward as the savior of the republican party!”
All together now: 1…2…3… Gilmorementum!
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Puppy Pic of the Day:
Let’s see how well Jimmy Fallon's puppies predicted the Super Bowl:
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CHEERS to the joyful noise coming from next door. We're very happy that the New Hampshire primary will be over in a dozen hours, mainly because it'll mean an end to all the horrible political TV and radio ads that have bled over into Maine for the last several weeks. I admit it's fun watching Republican super PACs beating their rivals over the head while Bernie and Hillary stay positive, but it's all too much. As for the outcome, this tidbit we plucked from The Colbert Report circa 2012 sums up just what kind of barometer the proceedings are today:
Clip of Jon Huntsman TV interview: They pick corn in Iowa. They actually pick presidents here in New Hampshire.
Stephen Colbert: Yes! New Hampshire picks presidents! Just ask Presidents Buchanan, Tsongas and Kefauver.
So keep that in mind. The person you think is going to win might not win. This is, after all, New Hampshire, so don’t take anything for granite. Ha Ha Ha!!! That goes out to my peeps in the igneous rock community.
P.S. Last night, at the stroke of midnight, the nine voters in tiny Dixville Notch, New Hampshire cast their ballots. The biggest winner, as usual: the guy at the door selling coffee to the bleary-eyed media for ten bucks a pop. But congrats to victory harbingers Bernie Sanders and Don...whaaaa???...John Kasich??? Today could be veddy interesting.
CHEERS to Mardi Gras! Nothing but decadence and gluttony on the schedule today as Americans celebrate the religious observance of, um, decadence and gluttony. (I'm a bit behind in my Bible studies---45 years to be precise.) As I understand it, if I display some boobs you'll throw me some beads. Right? Okay then, check out these babies:
I'd like my beads to be made out of trillion-dollar platinum coins, please.
CHEERS to Tippeca...ca...cachoo! Happy 243rd birthday to "#9" William Henry "Tippecanoe" Harrison. During his nearly two-hour inaugural address (sans overcoat), he pledged not to run for a second term and, in one of the fastest fulfillments of a campaign promise ever, caught pneumonia and died 32 days later, but not before being plied with enough ipecac, opium, castor oil, calomel, camphor and brandy to kill a small army. But he did have a lasting effect on our electoral process. From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien:
[I]f Harrison was no dream candidate, his campaign for president was one of the most important in American history.
Before 1840, active campaigning for office was considered about as crass as writing a blurb for your own book. Candidates were supposed to maintain an air of ambivalence while others did their stumping for them. Harrison changed all that by personally jumping into the fray with earnest, smiling enthusiasm, and his Whig party cohorts turned the campaign into a circus. They dismissed opponent Martin Van Buren as a snob and a dandy, claiming their boy Harrison was the real man of the people. There were parties, bands, garish banners. It worked.
The Whigs only fielded two winning candidates (Zachary Taylor was the other), and neither could finish their first term without a visit from the grim reaper. But, hey---great parties!
JEERS to dispatches from the C&J mailbag. Sent via Camel Post:
Dear Saudi Arabia,
Hello! How are you? I am fine. I wrote this poem for you and your royal family. I hope you enjoy it:
Roses are red, violets are blue
I see you've decided to not behead a poet in your country on a charge of "apostasy" but you're still going to tie him down and give him 800 lashes with a bullwhip, so fuck all of you.
Sincerely,
BiPM
As usual, to avoid a diplomatic incident I put little hearts over the i's.
CHEERS to great moments in stinkola. At C&J we never miss an opportunity to talk about the latest corpse flower (aka "titan arum") to gross out people's olfactory senses. The latest one popped open---a few days later than expected---at the Biological Sciences Conservatory at the University of Minnesota yesterday. There is a method to its malodorousness:
The "fragrance" of the titan arum resembles rotting meat, attracting carrion-eating beetles and flesh flies (family Sarcophagidae) that pollinate it.
The inflorescence's deep red color and texture contribute to the illusion that the spathe is a piece of meat. During bloom, the tip of the spadix is approximately human body temperature, which helps the perfume volatilize; this heat is also believed to assist in the illusion that attracts carcass-eating insects.
Analyses of chemicals released by the spadix show the “stench” includes dimethyl trisulfide (like limburger cheese), dimethyl disulfide, trimethylamine (rotting fish), isovaleric acid (sweaty socks), benzyl alcohol (sweet floral scent), phenol (like Chloraseptic), and indole (like human feces).
If there's no corpse flower available where you are, you can get the same effect by scratching and sniffing any newspaper column by Ann Coulter.
CHEERS to the meteorologeewhiz kids. As we wake up to see another half a foot of snow in our back yard, we note that today is the 146th birthday of that dastardly socialist entity known as the National Weather Service. It's mission: to provide...
"...weather, hydrologic, and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and ocean areas, for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy. NWS data and products form a national information database and infrastructure which can be used by other governmental agencies, the private sector, the public, and the global community."
The nerve of them, redistributing weather information willy-nilly like that! Bernie got to 'em, didn't he!??
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Ten years ago in C&J: February 9, 2006
CHEERS to Barack Obama. He now has a shiny new Grammy Award for his Senate office desk. John McCain...does not.
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And just one more…
JEERS to déjà vu: doggie style. More on the personal side than political: Saturday we got confirmation that C&J's three-year-old yellow-lab mix Haley needs to go under the knife…again.
She developed a bad limp a couple weeks back after running at the beach, and the vet says it's because a ligament protecting one of her knees went thwang. "Excess cranial tibial thrust" they call it. Dogs have weird back legs---the way the upper and lower bones are angled it's kinda like they're walking around in stilettos their entire lives. And some knees are weaker than others, so here we are.
Next week Haley will undergo her second "Tibial Plateau Leveling Osteotomy" (left leg this time) one year after her first. She'll be restricted to her cage for two months---we'll carry her 50-pound doggie ass up and down the stairs and support her weight with a sling while she goes pee---and she should be fully recovered by late spring. The good news is we've been through this before, so we all know the script. Step one: restock liquor cabinet. Step two: have credit-card-balance grief counselor on speed dial.
Have a nice Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
“Let’s dispel once and for all with this fiction that Bill in Portland Maine doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing.”
---Sen. Marco Rubio
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