From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: Hippity Hop Edition
"This year's Easter Sunday happens to fall on the same day as the marijuana holiday, 4/20. Which means no matter what your religion, this Sunday you're probably going to see a giant bunny."
---Conan O'Brien
"Chickies! Don't get on that ship!
The rest of the book 'To Serve
Fowl,' it's... it's a cookbook!"
"Walmart's owners are so absurdly rich that one of them, Alice Walton, spent over a billion dollars building an art museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, 500 miles away from the nearest person who ever would want to look at art. And she said about it: 'For years I've been thinking about what we can do as a family that can really make a difference.' How about giving your employees a raise, you deluded nitwit?"
---Bill Maher
"A woman in Las Vegas was arrested after she threw a shoe at Hillary Clinton while Hillary was giving a speech. The woman was tackled, cuffed, and thrown into a police car. Then the cops said, 'Normally, we do that, Hillary, but thank you for the help.'"
---Jimmy Fallon
"Kim Jong Un was re-elected as leader of North Korea, winning 100 percent of the vote, easily defeating his challenger, Or Else."
---Colin Jost
"It's Derek Jeter's final year in baseball. Don't you hate it when a guy announces his retirement a year in advance and then spends every day milking it for cheap sentimentality?"
---David Letterman
And five glorious years ago:
"People have been mailing tea bags to members of Congress to express their dissatisfaction with taxes and government spending. Nothing shakes a politician up like a complimentary bag of tea. Next year will be crumpets, buddy!"
---Jimmy Kimmel
"Let me get this straight. To protest wasteful spending, you bought a million tea bags? Are you protesting taxes or irony?"
---Jon Stewart
C'mon down and splash---we turned the kiddie pool into a giant coconut nest and filled it with Cadbury egg goop. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, April 18, 2014
Note: Due to a sinus infection, the Easter Bunny is unable to deliver candy and eggs this year. For your safety, please lock your family in the bathroom until the Easter Rhino has left. And have your insurance agent on speed dial.
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7 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the midterm elections:
200
Days 'til the
Asparagus Festival in Stockton, California:
7
Percent chance that Attorney General Eric Holder and Rep. Louie Gohmert will sit down together for some delicious asparagus bisque at the festival:
0%
Percent of baby boomers who describe their physical health as "very good" and "fair/poor," respectively:
43%, 29%
(Source: AARP survey)
The last time the gas tax was increased (to 18.4 cents):
1993
Number inmates who were moved to other facilities after Iraq closed down the infamous Abu Ghraib prison:
2,400
Height of the largest Easter egg ever built (by the Belgian chocolate producer Guylian):
27 feet
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NEW! Michele Bachmann Departure Countdown
Michele Bachmann and her googly eyes leave Congress in 260 days. To avoid injury, keep your knees springy as you jump up and down for joy.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: By law I have to post this in order to meet the requirements of the Adorable Care Act:
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CHEERS to the holiday quintifecta. In order of appearance:
• Passover is now underway. For Jewish people it's a celebration of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. For conservatives, it's a celebration of what modern-day Republicans do to qualified blacks, latinos, LGBTers and women.
• 2,014 years ago today (or thereabouts---I get confused by cubits and shit), a bunch of Roman thugs nailed a guy to a cross while a filthy rabble with six teeth among them and a combined IQ of 12 watched the poor sap bleed to death. "Good" Friday, my ass.
The reason for the season.
• Sunday is Easter, the day Christ the Savior rose from the dead. Also the day Lenny the tomb attendant checked into rehab.
• Sunday---4/20---is also "Weed Day." If you have to read the Bible stoned that day, stick to the New Testament because the old one will totally harsh your buzz.
• Monday is Patriots' Day, but only liberal blue states Maine and Massachusetts love their country enough to celebrate it. You know who else didn't commemorate Patriots Day in America? Hitler. Jus' sayin'.
Please: celebrate safely and gorge on Easter candy 'til you explode responsibly.
CHEERS to even numbers. Don’t get me wrong, I was amazed when HHS hit its 7.1 million ACA sign-up number. Exceeding projections is always a good thing, especially when it makes Republicans cry and double down on their "repeal and replace with nothing" strategy for the mid-terms. But "seven point one" is such a long number to say. Couldn’t we reduce it to, say, one syllable instead of four, Mr. President?
Yeah. See what I mean? Much better.
Less well-known was the
1775 Cambridge pie fight.
CHEERS to saddle sores for freedom. 239 years ago today, On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott hopped onto their Segways and scootered from Boston to Concord, Mass., warning the citizens of the approaching British army (Prescott was the only one with enough juice to make it all the way). Their focus group-tested talking point: "The British Are Coming!" The day after, our
War of Independence began with a brief skirmish at Lexington, an engagement at Concord's North Bridge, and then guerrilla warfare as we chased 'em back to Boston. Shortly afterwards, British General Thomas Gage quietly took down the "Mission Accomplished" banner from the bridge of his frigate.
CHEERS and JEERS to sibling revelry. Scientists with gigantic eyeballs are hootin' and hollerin' this week after discovering a planet---Kepler-186f---that's just like ours. The good news: it has a moderate climate, water, gravity and the same chemical composition as us. Bad news: it doesn't have war, pollution, greed, vanity or the filibuster. So congratulations, fellow Earthlings---we're the evil twin.
JEERS to the coin-tosser-in-chief. Eight years ago, George W. Bush, in yet another moment of detachment from reality, proclaimed after 5½ years of utter incompetence that "I'm the decider and I decide what's best." If I may weigh in on that, sir, now that there's a sizable amount of water under the legacy bridge? You sucked at deciding. (Almost as much as painting.)
"Damn you, Weather Channel,
for predicting sunshine!!!"
CHEERS to home vegetation. The elephant in the room on TV this weekend is the annual Easter-weekend airing of
Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments tomorrow night on ABC, featuring the mom from
The Munsters as Moses' wife and music by the guy who also scored
Airplane! and
Ghostbusters. (Spoiler Alert: Ramses chooses…
poorly.) For best results, watch with the sound turned down and create your own dialogue. There's also sports on TV, including
baseball (somebody wake the Red Sox, please),
NBA playoffs, and
NHL playoffs. (The Bruins will "pluck" the Red Wings' feathers Ha Ha Ha!) New DVD releases include---finally!---the Judy Dench/Steve Coogan buddy cop flick (I think)
Philomena, and also the Ben Stiller/Kristen Wiig buddy cop flick (I really should fact-check these movies)
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. And Sunday night on
Cosmos, Neil deGrasse Tyson makes the Kessel run in 11.99 parsecs. Suck it, Han!
On Bill Moyers & Company, Paul Krugman SMASH! And here's your Sunday morning lineup featuring the annual ritual of Easter pandering:
Meet the Press: Ukraine Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk; Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) of the Foreign Relations Committee; DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL); Jo Becker, author of "Forcing the Spring: Inside the Fight for Marriage Equality” (If it's true that she failed to mention Maine attorney Mary Bonauto's success in making Massachusetts the first marriage-equality state, she should shred every copy and start over); roundtable murmuring with Chuck Todd, Bobo Brooks, Radhika Jones (TIME) and David Shribman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Sunday on "This
Week": Stevens!
This Week: Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens on his new book “Six Amendments”; Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) and former NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly on Boston Marathon security; roundtable with Donna Brazile, S.E. Cupp, Bill Kristol and Jeff Zeleny. And this is the panel they've assembled for their "religious" segment: Franklin Graham. Ralph Reed, Russell Moore and Cokie Roberts are the "religious panel" on "This Week" Sunday. Let that sink in. Better yet…don't.
Face the Nation: Easter pandering with Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York; Boston Governor Deval Patrick; roundtable bickering with John Dickerson, David Ignatius and Michael Duffy.
CNN's State of the Union: Senate race talk with Mo Elleithee (DNC), Sean Spicer (RNC) and Stu Rothenberg; Kim Beazley, Australia’s Ambassador to the U.S. on the missing jetliner; suicide in the military discussion with Sen. John Walsh (D-MT) and Tom Tarantino of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Easter pandering with Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington; Sergey Kislyak, Russia’s Ambassador to the U.S.; roundtable withy Rana Foroohar; George Will, Robert Costa and Evan Bayh.
(Not that we're counting, but the above guest list includes 30 men and 7 women.) Happy watching
Up with Steve Kornacki and
Melissa Harris-Perry instead!
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Five years ago in C&J: April 18, 2009
JEERS to fuzzy crystal balls. The "experts" are at it again. In the business section of today's Portland Press Herald, there are three more examples of whoopsiness in three separate stories:
What experts do when
they're off the clock.
First-time jobless benefit claims fell more than expected for the second straight week.
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The decline [in housing construction] was worse than economists had expected and February activity was revised lower.
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Nokia led high-tech stocks higher after the world's top mobile phone maker said it was maintaining its outlook for the phone market and had surpassed analyst expectations for mobile phone sales during the first quarter.
You can be an analyst, too! All you need is a coin and a springy thumb to flip it with. Add a pair of green eyeshades and you can charge an extra 25k.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to Evolution Man. Charles Darwin---the poster child for the theory of evolution---started out as a single wriggly cell in 1808, evolved into a fully-grown human being, and died on tomorrow's date in 1882. His legacy is always worth revisiting:
True Fact: Darwin was
a popular mall Santa.
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Influenced by the ideas of Malthus, he proposed a theory of evolution occurring by the process of natural selection. The animals (or plants) best suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce, passing on the characteristics which helped them survive to their offspring. Gradually, the species changes over time.
[T]he logical extension of Darwin's theory was that homo sapiens was simply another form of animal. It made it seem possible that even people might just have evolved---quite possibly from apes---and destroyed the prevailing orthodoxy on how the world was created. Darwin was vehemently attacked, particularly by the Church. However, his ideas soon gained currency and have become the new orthodoxy.
Of course, there are some organisms that demonstrate evolution in reverse. Like
dust mites. And Cliven Bundy.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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