From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Billy Sayz
Hey terrorist car dud guy, can we talk for a sec?
Looks like our federal law enforcement system did what it was supposed to and swept your sorry ass off the airport tarmac last week after you botched what was supposed to be your moment of glory except it failed so you ended up trying to run away like a scaredy cat. Since you're an American citizen I support your Miranda rights. And if you hadn’t already confessed to the crime I would've done the American thing and considered you innocent until proven guilty. But you did, so I can look at you now as just a young, misguided, bumbling fool who tried to kill and otherwise terrorize as many people as you could. What a putz.
I admit I was a bit taken aback when I heard about the car bomb discovered by those street vendors (and "Migs" the police horse). But terrorized? By you? I don’t think so.
Hurricanes, tornadoes, catastrophic oil spills, economic collapse? Now that's some scary shit. Thirty four thousand fatal car crashes a year? Yikes! One hundred thousand deaths from the kind of heart attack where you're alive one second and, without any warning, face-down in your Spaghetti-O's the next? That's the ticking-time-bomb scenario that keeps me up at night.
But you and your firecrackers and propane tanks and cow shit? Um...sorry. No sale.
Because, see, here's the thing. In America we---most of us, anyway---try and act the way the Whos did after the Grinch tried to terrorize Whoville: we pull together, hold hands, count our secular and/or non-secular blessings and refuse to be fucking terrorized, especially by a sad little clown who makes Rupert Pupkin look like Albert Einstein.
So, Faisal Dipshit (or whatever your name is---it's really not important to me), congratulations. You're in the running for the 2010 Halfwit of the Year award. Because all you did was give us valuable info on how to make our anti-terrorism defenses stronger, make our citizens more vigilant (like, way more vigilant!), and condemn yourself to a 6-by-6-foot cell with a TV tuned to Fox News for the rest of your life. Hope it was worth it, ya big jerk.
And I hope you get really bad eczema.
To the rest of you: Good morning! Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, May 10, 2010
Note: Got Gringo Mask?
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the senate primaries in Pennsylvania and Arkansas: 8
Days `til the Maine Comic Arts Festival: 13
Estimated number of people who are injured every year as a result of tripping over a pet, according to the CDC: 86,000
Ratio of injuries from tripping over a dog vs. tripping over a cat: 8:1
Amount of income the average American pays in federal taxes: 20.7%
(Source: USA Today via The Week)
Percent chance that the RNC's finance chief and his deputy got booted Friday in the wake of the lesbian-bondage strip club scandal: 100%
(Source: AP)
Months C&J has been posting as of today: 77
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Your Monday "Nevada Nugget"
Brought to you by the Netroots Nation convention in Las Vegas July 22-25.
The first slot machine with a direct payout was invented in 1887 by Charles Fey of San Francisco, California who wanted to devise a simpler automatic mechanism. Fey's slot machine had three spinning reels, with diamonds, spades, hearts and one cracked Liberty Bell painted around each reel, which gave the machine its name.
---Legends of America.
You can see the original Liberty Bell machine at the Liberty Belle Saloon in Reno. (We hear there might be one or two of the modern-day variety in Vegas...)
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Please---clean up after your human.
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CHEERS to off-the-charts Monday morning excitement!!!!! [Inhale] [Exhale]---Pardon me, I'm a little---[Inhale] [Exhale]---verklempt this morning so I'm lying on the floor breathing in and out of a paper sack to keep myself from hyperventilating. I think you'll agree that bombshells don’t come much bigger than---[Inhale] [Exhale]---an announcement of a Supreme Court nominee, and TPM says that it looks like---[Inhale] [Exhale]---President Obama will announce his pick---[Inhale] [Exhale]---sometime today... [POP!!!!] Ow...that's gonna leave a mark.
CHEERS to comic relief. The big Monday morning question: was Betty White all that on SNL? Holy mother of god, yes! So were the former cast members who showed up (Poehler, Rudolph, Dratch, Gasteyer, Shannon and Fey). And the ratings were boffo. From Betty's monologue:
"I really have to thank Facebook. When I first heard about the campaign to get me to host Saturday Night Live I didn't know what Facebook was. And now that I do know what it is, I have to say it sounds like a huge waste of time. ... At my age if I want to connect with old friends I need a Ouija board. ... In my day seeing pictures of people's vacations was a punishment. Yes, we had 'poking,' but it wasn't something you did on a computer. It was something you did on a hay ride. Under a blanket."
Watch for Emmy nominations later this year---White is probably a lock in some guest-star category or other. And the writers should take home some hardware, too. Bravo---it was actually worth watching from beginning to end. (The last time I said that was, I think, back in 1980.) But, sadly, after watching the NPR sketch we're giving up muffins until we can afford a lobotomy.
JEERS to that damn cofferdam. Well, folks, BP tried to cap the oil pipe with their one-hundred-ton iron outhouse, but they were thwarted by the primal forces of nature. Thus proving that sometimes when you throw an idea at the wall it doesn't always stick. (Although the oil is sticking quite nicely to the marshlands and their furry, finned and feathered inhabitants). BP says it will now move on to Plan B: a one-hundred-ton wad of Bubblicious.
P.S. Now we know why the rig exploded in the first place: Earth farted. As my partner so often says to me: "Gee, thanks for the warning."
CHEERS and JEERS to employment art. On the one hand, we have the April jobs report presented in a portrait we call---with apologies to Bob Ross---our "Happy little bar graph". And then there's the comparison of the employment situation now versus previous recessions, in a portrait we call---with apologies to Munch---"The Scream." If my calculations are right, by the time we start breaking even on job creation in 2012 we'll have spent nine out of the last 11 years in negative territory. I think I'm gonna switch to pottery. Much more satisfying to throw it at the wall than a canvas.
CHEERS to bulldogs unleashed. On May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill was called in to replace Neville Chamberlain as British prime minister after Mr. "Peace in our time" lost a confidence vote in the House of Commons. Churchill offered blood, sweat, toil and tears in the run-up to war. As opposed to Tony Blair, who decades later offered lies, deception, stonewalling and fake evidence. Potato, puhtahto.
CHEERS to sending a torpedo right into Arlen Specter's bow. I don't know who came up with the latest Sestak for Senate ad, (nice opening line: "I'm Joe Sestak, the Democrat, and I authorized this message..."), but it's a doozy and I hope it helps send his weasel opponent into forced retirement. The ad seems to be draining the air from Specter's tires---he's down by 4 in the latest poll and the trendline has Sestak surging. May the best rear-admiral win.
VEDDY INTERESTINK!!! to the drubbing in Deutschland. As the confusion from last weekend's elections in Britain continues, Germany experiences its own sturm und drang as Angela Merkel's party gets hit with a wet schnitzel in the regional election in Nordrhein-Westfalen. (The lady on the left's expression needs no translation):
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative bloc lost its grip on the upper house of Germany’s Parliament on Sunday, as voters in an important regional election dealt her party a strong setback seen as the first significant political fallout from the Greece crisis. ... [T]he steep drop of 10 percentage points compared with the last election, in 2005, was even larger than most analysts had predicted and gave the Christian Democrats their worst postwar showing in that state.
Just a wild guess: Bush's backrub finally caught up with her.
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Five years ago in C&J: May 10, 2005
JEERS to the Creepiest Guy of the Day. James West, the anti-gay mayor of Spokane, Washington, is taking a leave of absence (read: fleeing) because he got caught soliciting sex from boys in gay chat rooms. He's been described as a member of the hard right. Yeah, no kidding.
CHEERS to Republicans who say what we're thinking. A group of Arkansas-based white supremacists came to Boston to disrupt a Sunday holocaust remembrance event at Fanuel Hall. Governor Mitt Romney...[now settle down, let me finish]...who attended the event, minced no words: "I wish they'd go back home where they came from and bury themselves under the rocks that they crawled out from." We think that deserves a light smattering of applause. Okay, that's enough...we now return you to our regularly scheduled scorn.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to one colossal Canadian castoridae compound. A gang of Alberta beaver thugs (with glowing red eyes, we presume), working over a span of 30-plus years, has built their own version of an impregnable 2,800 foot-long green zone---the world's largest dam---from which to eventually launch a major beaver attack on...um...probably Montana. This completely justifies what I've been saying for years: comprehensive immigration reform must include a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants who come into this country from the south...and a 1,952 mile-long wall to thwart the impending beaver attack from the north. In the meantime, please join my new volunteer border surveillance group, The Minutemen Beaver Brigade. We meet every Thursday in Madawaska. Bring your binoculars. And your double entendres.
P.S. I read that it only takes a beaver a few hours to gnaw through a tree. Which, coincidentally, is the amount of time it takes me to gnaw through my TV remote when I'm watching Fox.
Oh, and this just in: Senator Bob Bennett (R-Trashbin of History) will soon be available to entertain at your next birthday party, Bar Mitzvah or Rotary Club cookout. Ten percent discount when you book NOW! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
In this thrilling new column, Rickey shall award "cheers" to those exemplary parties deserving laudable mention, and "jeers" to those despicable individuals who have garnered his unfettered scorn. It’s a helluva lot like the weekly Daily Kos 'Cheers & Jeers' column, but minus the shallow and pedantic political diatribes. Enjoy our inaugural edition.
---Riding with Rickey
(Adding: We did!)
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