From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark Welcomes the (romney)-RYAN Ticket:
The Vaudeville team of Comedy & Gold
"Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate. This guy is a representative from Wisconsin. He looks like one of those guys who pretends to be a doctor on an infomercial."
---David Letterman
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"I mean, white, Christian, and male? That's a triple not-threat to me. … And, of course, like all Republican VP picks, he looks exactly like Tina Fey."
---Stephen Colbert
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"His eyes are just so blue. It's like looking into a Smurf's anus."
---Jon Stewart
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"Mitt Romney kept his selection of Ryan as his VP nominee secret for more than a week. You know how he was able to keep it secret? He had it hidden next to his tax returns."
---Jay Leno
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"Mitt Romney is hoping to energize Republicans by announcing Paul Ryan as his running mate. Seriously? That’s like trying to spice up a bowl of oatmeal with MORE oatmeal."
---Jimmy Fallon
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"Speaking of Paul Ryan, a new poll actually found that 42 percent of Americans do not approve of Mitt Romney's running mate, which isn't too bad considering most Americans don't approve of Paul Ryan's running mate."
---Jimmy Kimmel
More at
Dan Kurtzman's place. Oh, and this too also...
"Tell me one area where Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin would disagree. I cannot find one area. So, somehow, he's the smartest guy in the party and she's the stupidest woman on earth but they agree on everything."
---Bill Maher
Yeah, but at least Paul Ryan didn't
cavort with a witch hunter in church. On the other hand, he
did spend decades cheating on God by shacking up with the atheist views of his philosophical mistress, Ayn Rand. So on the scale of crazy I guess it's a wash.
Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, August 17, 2012
Note: One of my recurring nightmares is realizing that I've forgotten to write a Note for C&J. Why it always ends with me losing a Jell-O match to the Lorax on Tatooine remains a mystery.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Republican National Convention in Tampa: 10
Days 'til the San Diego Spirits Festival: 8
Number of countries that produce more wind power than the U.S.: 1 (China)
Minimum percent of the nation's power that could come from wind energy by 2030: 20%
(Source: The White House)
Date on which media campaign spending for the 2012 general election reached $500 million: 8/16/12
Percent of a very young child's knowledge that is attributable to hearing background conversations: 90%
(Source: Parade)
Number of years actor Ron "Horshack" Palillo, who died this week, had been with his partner, Joseph Gramm: 41
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NEW! Friday Joe Lieberman Wanker Walk Countdown:
Joe Lieberman will end his Senate reign of error in 151 days.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: This might induce a little water therapy in your eyes.
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CHEERS to people with the greatest first name on the planet. Early Happy Birthday (and blessings on your camels) to Bill Clinton!!! #42 turns a boyish---for ex-presidents, anyway---66 on Sunday. But don’t expect him to make it to his party on time. From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien:
42 turns 66 on 8/19
(Don't be late, kid.)
On his inauguration day, Bill Clinton was twenty-seven minutes late for his customary courtesy call on the Bushes. It was a sign of things to come. He once kept Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist waiting forty-five minutes and even showed up late for his formal greeting of the king of Spain.
One the one hand: brash, charming, scary intelligent, beat Bush, humiliated Gingrich, made the economy hum, is a fantastic surrogate for Democrats up and down the ballot, great humanitarian…and he feels your pain. On the other hand: DOMA, DADT, Monica, repeal of Glass-Steagall, NAFTA, and I hear he reed-synched his sax solo on
Arsenio. [sigh] That's our Bubba.
P.S. Tomorrow the Lady from Plains, First Lady Rosalynn Carter, gets an 85 percent discount at Denny's tomorrow. I hear she plans to celebrate the usual way by stealing a Harley and going on a bank-robbing spree with Jimmy in the sidecar and Lord help anyone who gets in their way. Kids these days...
CHEERS to businesspeople with brains. A new survey of corporate muckety mucks from around the world reveals what they think about our upcoming election. By a two-to-one-margin, they believe the best pick for President of the United States in 2012 is (SPOILER ALERT! IT'S BARACK OBAMA): Barack Obama. And in other news, I've just been informed that I suck at spoiler alerts.
JEERS to Governor Paul LePage: International Idiot of Mystery. Yes, Maine's Teapublican governor is at it again. At a meeting of Republicans---secretly taped, which is how we found out about this---he indicated that he intended to call a special session of the legislature so it can do something presumably nefarious:
Maine Gov. Paul LePage plans to
unleash a bold plan. Anyone know
what "soylent green" means?
“I’m just trying to do what other Republican states have done this year and I gotta wait before I say too much more about it, but what I’m telling you is this: If we get this done, the state of Maine will be on the right track for the next 10 years,” LePage says on the tape. He said Republicans will have to do it on their own. “I think we can get it done in about a day and the Democrats, if you think they hate me now---Wow,” he says.
His comments were so loaded with cuckoo-luckoo that even Republicans are saying, "Whoa, dude...what the fuck?" So everybody's in the dark and nobody's even remotely looking forward to whatever turd he's about to lay. Union busting? Voter suppression? Oil rigs off our coast? All we know for sure is: the stupid will burn.
"A man of extraordinary vision and
brilliance approaching to genius"
HA HA HA!!! to great moments in wingnut nostalgia. Here's a gem from the mighty C&J archives that we enjoy holding up to the light of day every once in awhile. Savor the hackery posted seven years ago by John Hinderaker at what was once the awesomest conservative blog in the universe,
Powerline:
It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.
Thus answering the question: "How come Powerline isn’t the awesomest conservative blog in the universe no more?"
CHEERS to things that go clank…or is it clunk? On this date in 1835, Solyman Merrick of Springfield, Massachusetts got a patent for improvements to his invention called the screw wrench. 157 years later, they're coming in handy there as Elizabeth Warren throws one after another into Scott Brown's re-election machine. So many gears, so little time.
CHEERS to home vegetation. Last night Michael was channel surfing, came across an NFL pre-season game and hit the roof---the dreaded sign that fall is near. Hopefully your weekend TV viewing will be a bit more pleasant, and here are few things that'll be on: the new DVD lineup includes The Hunger Games (fun fact: in Panem, ketchup is not a vegetable) and the Blu-Ray of Jaws that's getting unanimous mega-acclaim for its frame-by-frame restoration. Your MLB schedule is here, and I'm going to make an absurdly bold prediction: the Red Sox are going to finish first in the race to finish in next-to-last place. On 60 Minutes: profiles of the Archbishop of Dublin and Aerosmith. (Those are gonna be some wild after-party pics.)
With the Olympics over ("Retro-USA! Retro-USA!"), Up! With Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris-Perry are back in action.
And here's your Sunday morning lineup, now with C&J's EXCLUSIVE Bucket of Warm Spit Index. It works on the basic principle that the fewer the buckets of warm spit, the better:
Virginia's GOP Governor will
be on 'Meet the Press' Sunday.
Meet the Press: Gov. Martin O'Malley (D-MD) vs. Gov. Vaginal Ultrasound (R-VA); roundtable with Chuck Todd, E.J. Dionne, Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, Tea Party senate candidate Ted Cruz (Texas), and Peggy Noonan. Bucket of Warm Spit Index: 7 (Because Ultrasound, Cruz and Noonan won't be challenged by David Gregory no matter how much they lie.)
This Week: Fearmongering "special edition" asks if America is going bankrupt. Panel with Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), TARP dude Neil Barofsky, Austan Goolsbee, Grover Norquist, and Kimberly Strassel. Bucket of Warm Spit Index: 10 (All heat, no light.)
Face the Nation: Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) squares off against Rudy 9/11; Grover Norquist updates Bob Schieffer on how that whole "drowning the government in the bathtub" thing is going, while Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress gets clobbered in her debate with him because all she has on her side are facts. Bucket of Warm Spit Index: 10 (5 each for Norquist and irrelevant 9/11 guy.)
Bill Moyers & Company (link): Encore of interview with Khalil Muhammad on the importance of learning from America’s racial history. Bucket of Warm Spit Index: 0 (Best critical-analysis show on TV next to Rachel.)
Washington Week: Analysis on the 2012 presidential race with Jackie Calmes of The New York Times, John Harris of POLITICO, and Alexis Simendinger of RealClearPolitics. Bucket of Warm Spit Index: 2 (The roundtable is fine, but you know someone's gonna say, "Both sides do it.")
The McLaughlin Group: Four conservatives against scrappy liberal Eleanor Clift. Bucket of Warm Spit Index: 9 (Because that's how many it'll take to hold all the spit that'll be flying out of the conservatives' mouths during the show. Clift gets a complimentary C&J spittle shield and safety goggles.)
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: BIG AWESOME EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with…um…just clumsy GOP hack Ed Gillespie; Robert Gibbs gives the Romney campaign some zingers to clutch their pearls over; roundtable with the usual bobblebrains. Bucket of Warm Spit Index: 10 (aka this show's default setting.)
Happy viewing…and spitting!
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Five years ago in C&J: August 17, 2007
JEERS to lying sacks of you-know-what. Remember when Rudy Giuliani said he was working at Ground Zero "as often, if not more, than most of the workers" digging through the rubble of the World Trade Center? The New York Times did some digging of their own and found that, between September 17 and December 16, 2001, he spent less than two-and-a-half hours per week there. They've obviously forgotten how the Herculean mayor used his massive bucket-scoop hands to clear ten times the debris as the other workers while flexing his tree-trunk thighs to lift two-ton sections of the fallen structures and snuffing out lingering fires with his amazing Arctic ice breath. But nice try, liberal media!
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And just one more…
CHEERS to getting Burn'd. 92 years ago tomorrow, on August 18, 1920---a whopping 144 years after the founders wrote that "All Men Are Created Equal"---the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave women the right to vote, was assured passage when Tennessee's legislature became the 36th in the nation to approve it. It's a great story. The pro-suffragists wore yellow roses on their lapels, the anti-suffragists wore red ones, and it looked like the reds were going to win. Until.......
Harry T. Burn
...the legislators squared off for the third roll call. A blatant red rose on his breast, Harry Burn---[at 25] the youngest member of the legislature---suddenly broke the deadlock. Despite his red rose, he voted in favor of the bill and the house erupted into pandemonium. With his "yea," Burn had delivered universal suffrage to all American women. The outraged opponents to the bill began chasing Representative Burn around the room. In order to escape the angry mob, Burn climbed out one of the third-floor windows of the Capitol. Making his way along a ledge, he was able to save himself by hiding in the Capitol attic.
The sore losers were, naturally, the forebears of modern-day Republicans, who are now trying to steal votes left and right in swing states (sadly with some success). And what prompted Burn to vote for progress? A
letter:
Dear Son: Hurrah and vote for suffrage! Don't keep them in doubt! I notice some of the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet. Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the "rat" in ratification.
Your mother
She always did know best.
Have a great weekend. Go make history! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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