Good morning! This being only my second authorized stint as a Cheers and Jeers replacement host, I find it helpful to ease in with some late-night snark because (1) it's something I didn't have to write, and (2) lorem ipsum has blocked me from their site for copyright violations...
"Joint Chiefs of Staff [Chair] Peter Pace is leaving his job. He's the one who announced that all homosexual acts are immoral, and so is adultery. No wonder he left. He attacked all the members of Congress."
--Jay Leno
"Undaunted by the protesters, the leaders focused on finding consensus over global warming. And by 'consensus,' we mean getting Bush to agree with the other seven."
--Jon Stewart, on the G8 Summit
"Paris Hilton is behind bars, but still no word on Osama."
--David Letterman
"Cheney is having an operation on his heart this week. Talk about microsurgery."
--Jay Leno
From the steamy hot wastelands that are Central New York on the brink of summer, this is today's host redlami, answering the eternal and ungrammatical question, what time does Cheers and Jeers start? [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
DISCLAIMER: this substitute edition of Cheers and Jeers is not affiliated in any way, shape, or form, with Bill in Portland Maine's Cheers and Jeers, nor with TV Guide, Reader's Digest, Popular Mechanics or Giant-Sized Man-Thing #1. The use of the words JEERS and CHEERS, the swoosh/gong device, references to pie, cabana boys, finger-pulling, washed goddesses and wet pooties are all used under the principle that it's better to ask forgiveness than permission. Any resemblances to Bill in Portland Maine's Cheers and Jeers are excruciatingly difficult to attain and therefore purely coincidental.
Cheers to freedom. What do Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Alaska, Washington, Oregon and California all have in common? They are 12 of the 26 states that recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday or observance, according to 19thofjune.com. Nearly three years after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the end of the American Civil war came to Texas with a polite notice from General Gordon Granger (assisted by 2000 Union troops) that slavery was now against the law. In case you were wondering about your state, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Tennessee, Virginia and Wyoming also recognize Juneteenth each year. North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Wisconsin have also recognized the holiday, though not on an annual basis.
Jeers to Utah and Mississippi, states where Juneteenth bills or resolutions failed to pass in both houses this year. Jeers to Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and West Virginia, the states in which no state senator or representative has agreed to introduce and support a Juneteenth holiday bill. As for the restayas... let's see some action. I'm talking to you, Alabama, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Ohio, Rhode Island and South Carolina!
Cheers to privacy. A three-judge panel ruled that email users have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Our Government™ had maintained that emails could be seized from service providers without warrants. Except of course for the emails sent by Karl Rove and 88 other White House staffers, those are extra double secret super private. And deleted.
Birthday cheers to Sir Salman Rushdie. In an official Administration statement, a buoyant Tony Snow congratulated him on simultaneously attaining knighthood and displacing Bush from the top of the list of most hated people in the Islamic world.
Cheers to pudgy pooties. Today is Garfield's 29th birthday. Celebrate it by sharing a tuna lasagne with your favorite feline. Then take a trip back to the surrealistic seventies with the Garfield Randomizer, which I find is sometimes even funnier than the unmodified version. Of course, I sometimes find Mallard Fillmore and Family Circus to be funnier than Garfield, so YMMV.
Jeers to collisions. Stay with me for a minute: June 19, 1934 is the day the FCC was established, the same FCC that later implemented the deregulation which allowed (among other things) mobile provider Cingular (originally a joint venture of baby Bells SBC and BellSouth) to swallow up AT&T Wireless, and SBC to merge with AT&T which then swallowed up Cingular and rebranded it AT&T Mobility. Got that? Hang on, curves up ahead...
June 19 (1949) is also the day NASCAR sanctioned the first "strictly stock" race, which eventually evolved into the Nextel Cup. When Nextel acquired the rights, there were some racers being sponsored by other telecom companies, notably Jeff Burton by Cingular. But hey, this is what deregulation (and racing) are all about, right? Market forces and competition?
Not so fast. When AT&T decided to rebrand Cingular as AT&T Mobility (if you ask me, they could have saved a lot of trouble by not changing any names in the first place), NASCAR said no new telecoms allowed. AT&T sued for the right to use its new logos. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction allowing Cingular logos to be replaced by the new ones. And now NASCAR is countersuing AT&T for not abiding by NASCAR rules.
There's clearly only one way out of this mess. When the Democrats finally take over the White House, I fully expect to see re-regulation of the telecoms and NASCAR high on the agenda.
WSPs, start your engines... what are you cheering and jeering?