From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: Mitt's Out Edition
"Mitt Romney is not going to be running for president. So you know what that means. We're getting closer and closer to President Trump."
---David Letterman
"It's all coming back to me now. I got
shot down in a turtle balloon by a
lawn dart." ---Brian Williams
Sarah Palin at Freedom Summit in Iowa: So we can afford no retread or nothing will change with the same people and same policies that got us into the status quo, another Latin word, status quo, and it stands for, man, the middle-class and the Americans are really gettin' taken for a ride.
Jon Stewart: Y'know, that's the kind of talk you normally hear right before the pharmacist says, "Ma'am, you've got to leave the Walgreens."
---The Daily Show
"Maybe the big primary contenders in the Republican party will be Donald Trump and Sarah Palin this time, in which case I will volunteer to work seven days a week and do a five-hour show every day."
---Rachel Maddow to David Letterman
"Harper Lee announced that she will release a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, which was published in 1960. Apparently she releases a new book every time the measles comes back."
---Seth Meyers
"SkyMall is going out of business. SkyMall was the premier shopping destination for people who just drank four tiny bottles of Jim Beam."
---Jimmy Kimmel
And one year ago, at the height of Bridgegate:
"The Seahawks beat the Broncos 43-8. The Broncos are blaming it on a traffic study."
---David Letterman
It's
Low-Life Scum Night in the kiddie pool. Come on down...we're playing games of Pin the Clue on the Maverick. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, February 6, 2015
Note: Portland, Maine is expected to get its 51st, 52nd, 53rd, 54th, 55th, 56th, 57th, 58th, 59th, 60th, 61st, 62nd, 63rd and 64th inch of snow between Saturday night and Tuesday morning. Not that we're counting.
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20 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til St. Patrick's Day:
39
Days 'til the
Wanderlust Festival on the Island of Oahu:
20
Amount GM made in profit last year:
$2.8 billion
Amount GM would've made if it wasn't for all the recalls:
$5.6 billion
(Source:
The Portland Press Herald)
Percent of Americans who believe satirizing religion is okay:
60%
NASA's current approval rating:
68%
(Source for the above two items: Pew poll)
Minimum number of copies of
To Kill A Mockingbird sold since 1960:
40 million
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Puppy Pic of the Day (via Kossack Vacationland): Why the 2016 Netroots Nation convention needs to be in London and this needs to be our official hotel...
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CHEERS to jobs, jobs, jobs. The punctual bunch at the Labor Department released their January employment report this morning at the stroke of 8:30, and it's terrific news: 257,000 new jobs. As if that wasn't sweet enough, December's number was revised upward to a whopping 329,000 and November's up to a HULK SMASH 423,000. Here's the updated graph, with a reminder that the carnage Republican President George W. Bush slept through is over on the left:
Best of all, none of the newly-employed is Tom Coburn.
CHEERS to historic moments in getting busted for doing something naughty with your hand. Five years ago tomorrow, while bamboozling a rapt Tea Party audience in Nashville at the height of the movement's ascendancy, former everything Sarah Palin got caught for the most juvenile of transgressions: writing cheat notes on her hand:
Energy. Budget Tax cuts. Lift American spirits. So complex were those concepts that she had to write them down. On her hand. We don’t say this to our right-wing friends nearly enough: thank you for your healing gift of laughter.
The minutemen whipped these
at the redcoats' heads as they
fled from Concord back to Boston.
Most historians view it as the
birth of guerrilla warfare.
CHEERS to Massachusetts. The "Thank God Mitt's Outta Here" commonwealth officially became the sixth member of our kooky union on February 6, 1788. And I'd like to remind the right-wing knuckledraggers who bash the state for being a den of anything-goes liberalism that a) the Salem witch trials were conducted by ultra-conservatives, b) the freedoms you guys have to speak your evolution-denyin' minds are largely the result of a bunch of Massachusetts types who shed their blood to make it possible, c) the state has the lowest divorce rate in the country, d) it's the home of Romneycare, the genesis of Obamacare, e) it's also the home of
Necco Wafers and the New England Patriots, making it the cradle of all that is wholesome and civilized. But we'll concede that Bay Staters---whom I never refer to as "Massholes" to their face unless I'm drunk and wielding a crowbar---do act like fundies in one respect: they drive like they're all late to Second Coming.
P.S. The 2015 World Series-winning Red Sox exhibition games start in 28 days. Yah huh!
O'Reilly's combat zone.
JEERS to lying liars. Fox News is, of course, having a field day with the chopper whopper
NBC Nightly News infotainer Brian Williams just got snared in. (Personally, I think Williams should say bye-bye and go where deception skills can be put to better use…namely the infomercial circuit.) But it might be helpful for the Murdoch empire to remember that their own flagship pundit, Bill O'Reilly, tried to get away with
a war-zone whopper of his own:
"I've been in combat. I've seen it. I've been close to it. And if my unit is in danger and I got a captured guy and the guy knows where the enemy is and I'm looking him in the eye, the guy better tell me. That's all I'm gonna tell you. If it's life or death, he's going first.
For the record, the closest Bill O'Reilly ever got to combat was fighting a sexual harassment lawsuit and settling out of court to prevent
the perv tapes from surfacing. Although most experts agree: getting shot down in a helicopter by an RPG is similar to suffering exfoliation-related abrasions in the shower with an
overcooked falafel. War is hell.
CHEERS to the Gipper. Happy 104th birthday, Ronald Reagan. He made some classic movies, including Kings Row, Knute Rockne: All American, The Killers (the 1964 version, in which he plays a mean sumbitch), and Santa Fe Trail. Oh, and this:
Other than that, I have no recollection of him. Well, except the tax-raising, deficit-ballooning, race-baiting, illegal-arms-trading, AIDS-ignoring, tan-suit-wearing and bowing-to-foreign-leaders part. (And after 34 years---[taps watch]---that trickle-down magic can start anytime now.)
I hope John Oliver takes a victory lap for
helping get the FCC to keep net neutrality.
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CHEERS to home vegetation. This weekend's TV will be dominated by two words: John Oliver. The Brit wit returns to HBO's
Last Week Tonight Sunday at 11pm, and he has a lot of sacred-cow skewering to catch up on. Meanwhile tonight on HBO's
Real Time, Bill Maher's panel includes Johann Hari, Janet Mock, Amy Holmes, John McCormack and Marianne Williamson. New
DVD releases include Keanu Reeves as a human candle in
John Wick and the job-seekers-in-North-Dakota documentary
The Overnighters. The NBA schedule
is here and the NHL schedule
is here. (The Bruins will "strand" the Islanders Ha Ha Ha!!!) The
Grammy Awards are Sunday night, and I'm feline confident that this is the year Keyboard Cat finally takes home some hardware. And on the season premiere of
The Walking Dead, zombies totally use the wrong forks and spoons while dining on the flailing residents of
Downton Abbey. (To their credit, they do remember to extend their pinkies.)
And here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: John…Kerry…reporting…for…dutyyyyyy!!! Plus: a TBA guest fills in after Brian Williams calls in to say he's been detained by orcs on elephantback.
But you'll have way more fun
if you go to Nerdland instead.
This Week: Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS John Allen sums up Jordan's airstrikes as, "They came, they saw, they kicked its ass! 2016 GOPOTUS hopeful Rick Santorum hawks a book; GOPOTUS hopeful Ted Cruz hawks crazy; roundtable with John Heilemann and Mark "Drudge Rules My World" Halperin (Bloomberg), Kristen Soltis Anderson (Daily Beast), and Van Jones.
Face the Nation: Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), former Obama National Security Advisor Tom Donilon and CBS News' Michael Morell on the situation with ISIS; Dr. Anthony Fauci of the NIH and CBS News chief medical poobah Dr. Jon LaPook on a topic that should never have become a news story again: an outbreak of freakin' measles; roundtable with Ruth Marcus (WaPost), David Sanger (NYT), Nancy Youssef (Daily Beast) and John Harris (Politico).
CNN's State of the Union: Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson introduces a new color-coded system that will be used to categorize the intensity of Republican freakouts on everything from border security to ISIS to communist infiltration. It has one color: RED!!! 2016 GOPOTUS hopeful Ted Cruz demands a second color be added: DOUBLE RED!!!
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: 2016 GOPOTUS hopeful Dr. Ben Carson; former Defense Intelligence Agency Director Michael Flynn; roundtable with Karl Rove, Laura Ingraham, Juan Williams and Bob Woodward.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: February 6, 2005
JEERS to God the teaser. Pope John Paul II got rushed to the hospital on the brink of death Tuesday...but now he's making a speedy recovery. Doctors predict he'll be strong enough to start condemning people again by Monday.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the Energizer Maestro. Woo-hoo! It's time for our annual "Happy Birthday" salute (two days early this year) to 21-time Grammy winner, 5-time Oscar winner, and rock-ribbed dirty fucking hippie Democrat John Williams. He is hands-down my favorite composer. Over a span of fifty-plus years he's given us:
Half of my music
collection has this
guy's name on it.
>> One iconic theme for NBC Nightly News (In the wake of the Brian Williams' idiocy, Williams is re-arranging it for solo sad trombone.)
>> Two Jaws scores
>> Two themes for Lost in Space
>> Three Harry Potter scores
>> Four Indiana Jones scores
>> Five themes for various Olympic Games
>> Six Star Wars scores
>> 12 years as conductor of the Boston Pops
>> 20 scores for episodes of Gilligan's Island
>> 26 scores for Steven Spielberg movies
He's also composed music involving a gaggle of American presidents: John F. Kennedy (
JFK), John Quincy Adams/Martin Van Buren (
Amistad), Tricky Dick (
Nixon), Lincoln (
Lincoln) and Obama (a piece for the
first inauguration, in which he expressed "in a very simple and not ostentatious way the solemnity and beauty of the moment and the promise of the moment"). And none of this year's Super Bowl ads can hold a candle to the VW commercial with the best-ever use of Darth Vader's theme:
He's currently sketching out his score for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, so please don't tell the soon-to-be 83-year-old about Obamacare or he might get ideas about escaping "job lock" and stop working. Happy birthday, music man...and many blessings on your cowbell.
Have a great weekend! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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