From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark Goes GAY!
"The Supreme Court heard arguments on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. It could be a major blow for those who believe that marriage should be between two bitter and eventually overweight people of the opposite sex."
---Jimmy Kimmel
"Skim milk marriage is just a gateway to
skim milk polygamy!" ---Tony Perkins
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"Some people traveled to Washington and paid as much as six thousand dollars to watch the Supreme Court's deliberations on gay marriage. Yeah, six thousand dollars. Maybe that's why the Supreme Court launched its 41-city Monsters of Gay Marriage Deliberation tour."
---Conan O'Brien
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Clip of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: You're saying there are two kinds of marriages: the full marriage and then this sort of skim-milk marriage.
Stephen Colbert: Yes---skim milk marriage. I have always suspected that skim milk was gay. I mean, for god's sake, it's got "homogenized" right on the carton. And please: don’t call me a bigot just because I'm lactose intolerant!
---The Colbert Report
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"Have you been watching The Bible? They have a character who plays Satan, and he looks a little bit like President Obama. And I thought, if President Obama was actually Satan, Republicans might be willing to deal with him."
---David Letterman
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"Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is under investigation for alleged misuse of campaign funds. She's blaming the accusations on her arch nemesis: the facts."
---Jay Leno
And two years ago:
"It turns out that the Republican budget that they submitted for next year slashes funding for the agency that issues tsunami warnings and organizes responses to the tsunami. In their defense, Republicans say that tsunamis are just a theory. They are not a real threat like ACORN, the Black Panthers, NPR, and math teachers in Wisconsin."
---Bill Maher
Come splash in the kiddie pool. I filled it with ten thousand gallons of that goop they put inside them Cadbury eggs. Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, March 29, 2013
Note: No C&J on Monday in observance of the day-after-Easter holiday. Back Tuesday with no money but a huge warehouse full of surplus Peeps I got for half price!
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The largest chocolate moose
is 1,700 pounds and lives at
Len Libby Candies in Maine.
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Holocaust Remembrance Day:
9
Days 'til the
Berkeley Bay Festival in California:
15
Overall 5-year cancer survival rate in 1975:
49%
Overall 5-year cancer survival rate in 2008:
68%
(Source: Time)
Number of times that 78 year-old imprisoned cult leader Charles Manson has been caught using a smuggled cellphone over the last four years:
2
(Source:
The Portland Press Herald)
Height of the largest Easter egg ever built (by the Belgian chocolate producer Guylian):
27 feet
Percent of Americans surveyed who believe Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Lincoln:
7%
(Source: 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll)
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Puppy Pic of the Day: "Yo." "Sup." "Egg?" "Sure."
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CHEERS to a holiday trifecta. In order of appearance:
• 2013 years ago today (or thereabouts), 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.
• 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 competent people.
• Sunday is Easter, the day Christ the Savior rose from the dead. Also the day Lenny the tomb attendant checked into rehab.
Please: gorge on Easter candy 'til you explode responsibly.
CHEERS to timely reminders. President Obama, ever the master of the pregnant pause, yesterday used them to great effect to re-ignite interest in efforts to curb gun violence:
Obama yesterday.
"The notion that two months or three months after something as horrific as what happened in Newtown happens and we've moved on to other things? ….. That's not who we are. ….. That's not who we are…… And I want to make sure every American is listening today. ….. less than 100 days ago that happened, and the entire country was shocked. ….. and the entire country pledged we would do something about it and that this time would be different. ….. Shame on us if we've forgotten. ….. I haven't forgotten those kids. ….. Shame on us if we've forgotten."
NRA head Wayne LaPierre quietly made a note to look up "shame" in the dictionary but forgot.
JEERS to not-so-cheap imitations. Congress reprimanded the IRS recently because it spent a bunch of money to create a fantasy world filled with bad actors pretending that tyranny lurks around every corner. I believe John Boehner's exact words were: "No one steals our act and gets away with it."
John Tyler was Mr. Burns before
Mr. Burns was Mr. Burns.
CHEERS to "His Accidency." Happy 223rd birthday to "#10" John Tyler, who became president when William Henry Harrison kicked the bucket after ingesting Diet Coke and Pop Rocks during the "Truth or Dare" portion of his inauguration. It was the first time the nation had a president who wasn't elected to the office. Tyler insisted that he possessed all the powers of his predecessor, and wisely refused to let Congress refer to him as "acting president." Historians recognize him for very little except a couple of treaties. But we'll give him points for saying something that will make the Republican base writhe in agony (from the book Rating the Presidents):
Tyler demonstrated a complete tolerance of other religions. His family opposed the bigotry of the nativist Know Nothing political movement, which espoused hatred and suspicion of immigrants, particularly the wave of Irish Catholics entering the country at the time.
But he was also made of Old South stuff, and later unwisely became the only U.S. President to join the Congress of the Confederacy. Oh, and he had 15 kids, a presidential record not likely to be surpassed anytime soon. Pay
your respects here. If nothing else, give him a fist-bump for stamina.
CHEERS to...huhhuhhhuh...rubbers. On March 30, 1858, the pencil-with-attached-eraser was patented by Hyman L. Lipman of Philadelphia. Then things got a bit ugly:
In 1862 Lipman sold his patent to Joseph Reckendorfer for $100,000, who went [on] to sue the pencil manufacturer Faber for infringement. In 1875 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against Reckendorfer declaring the patent invalid because his invention was actually a combination of two already known things with no new use.
Rumor has it all the Bush administration officials who wrote their memoirs used Lipman pencils. One end to make up their own history, and the other end to erase the real history.
CHEERS to champions of the little guy. Happy 82nd birthday Sunday to the late Cesar Chavez. He founded the National Farm Workers Association, which gave a voice to migrant farm workers. He also had a spiffy motto that might sound familiar: "Si se pueda!" (Yes we can!) Pay your respects here. Memo to the Higher Power: send down more people like him, please.
"He's baaaaack!"
Peter Dinklage in
Game of Thrones.
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CHEERS to home vegetation.
Game…Of…Thrones. I'm kinda keen on it, so Sunday's season premiere will be the highlight of my weekend teevee viewing. Other stuff that's on is mainly of the sporting variety, i.e. more NCAA
March Angryness and the sound of "Play ball!" Sunday as the regular season of
Major League Baseball starts with Texas vs. Houston. (The Red Sox will win every one of their games and you can take that to the bank---namely, the Cypress bank with the "Closed" sign on the door.) You can watch the Pope do Easter. (Sorry, does that sound dirty?) New DVDs
include Spielberg's
Lincoln and Elia Kazan's
Panic in the Streets. On
60 Minutes: advances in arson investigations and the story of Sudanese refugees.
On Bill Moyers & Company): legal scholar Bryan Stevenson on the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Gideon v. Wainwright decision which established the constitutional right of defendants to legal representation even if they can’t afford it...and a good old-fashioned rant by Bill on the "hypocrisy of 'justice for all'.” Plus: Steve Kornacki makes his weekend morning debut as the new host of "Up!" on MSNBC.
And here's your Sunday morning lineup, now fortified with even more Catholic cardinals than ever!!!
Meet the Press: Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) on guns and immigration, both of which are moot points if Harry Reid doesn’t fuckin' do something about filibuster abuse; roundtable on marriage equality and other stuff with Eugene Robinson, former Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), Rob Reiner, hatemonger Brian Brown of NOM, concern troll Peggy Noonan, NBC legal guru Pete Williams, Rev. Al Sharpton and David Axelrod.
Cardinal Dolan sings on Sunday.
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This Week: Cardinal Timothy Dolan; Newark Mayor and future U.S. Senator Cory Booker; Rep. Peter King (R-NY); White House photographer Eric Draper; roundtable with Jeff Zelaney, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Matt Dowd, and religion talk with Jim Wallis, Richard Land, Rev. Calvin Butts, Reza Aslan, and atheist (!!!) Susan Jacoby.
Face the Nation: Cardinal Timothy Dolan; Islamic Society of Boston's Imam Suhaib Webb, Rabbi David Wolpe of the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, The Episcopal Diocese of Washington's Bishop Mariann Budde and Bishop Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church talk God stuff.
CNN's State of the Union: Excellent!!! Anti-Prop. 8 lawyers Ted Olson and David Boies will appear together; Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Lindsay Graham (R- Fussyville); Senate Chaplain Barry Black and House Chaplain Patrick Conroy; roundtable with Donna Brazile, Jessica Yellin and Kevin Madden.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Capt. Mark Kelly on gun laws; Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington; roundtable with Bill Kristol, Mara Liasson, Charles Lane and Ed Gillespie.
Happy viewing!
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Five years ago in C&J: March 29, 2008
JEERS to "him"...again. Joe Lieberman, a man who will never be called a maverick unless it's to point out that he's full of horse shit, showed up on This Week to whine and waffle his way through an endorsement of John McCain for president. According to Joe, McCain knows where the unicorns of unity roam. So do we: in a dark, damp, Metamucil-scented place just below his small intestine. (Now you know why he looks so uncomfortable when he sits.)
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And just one more…
CHEERS to our winter of discontent. Every Friday our C&J poll asks, "Who won the week?" Obviously a subjective thing, and "won" isn’t necessarily in the context of, "Yay! Let's do a victory lap!" But we do try to round up a representative sample of the people and events that spark feelings of optimism in the Kossack soul. Here are the victors for the first quarter of 2013. Please hold your applause until the…[Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap Clap!!!!!!]…um, end:
Jan. 4 Chris Christie, Chuck Schumer and other northeast Republicans and Democrats, for unloading on John Boehner after he blew off the Superstorm Sandy relief vote
Jan. 11 Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly, for taking a leading role in the effort to curb gun violence; and Joe Biden, whose anti-gun-violence task force is running ahead of schedule
Jan. 18 President Obama: announces (with Biden) new gun control measures and rides into second term with decent approval ratings and ambitious agenda
Jan. 25 Hillary Clinton, for standing up to the GOP bullies on the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees that grilled her on Benghazi
Each winner gets a free play on the Space
Invaders machine in the C & J rec room.
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Feb. 1 The D.C. marchers, Gabby Giffords, Mark Kelly, law enforcement officials and Newtown residents who spoke out for stronger gun-safety laws
Feb. 8 NBC News's Michael Isikoff, whose reporting opened a nationwide discussion of the government's drone-strike program
Feb. 15 President Obama: memorable State of the Union address followed by multi-state barnstorming
Feb. 22 'Mother Jones' reporter David Corn, who won a Polk Award for breaking the story (with assist from James Carter) about Mitt Romney's 47% speech
Mar 1 Elizabeth Warren, for making Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke squirm in front of the Senate Banking Committee over the banks' 'Too big to fail' status
Mar 8 Rep. John Lewis and others who commemorated the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches…and Montgomery police chief Kevin Murphy, who officially apologized for the police brutality committed on the Freedom Riders
Mar 15 Scott Prouty, the bartender who shot the 47 percent video and came forward to tell his story Wednesday night on The Ed Show
Mar 22 President Obama: rock star treatment during Middle East trip, nominates Thomas Perez for Labor Secretary, drives right-wingers CRAZY by taking 30 seconds to reveal his NCAA bracket
Mar 29 Justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who owned the proceedings during the Supreme Court hearings on Prop. 8 and DOMA
Who will the winners be in the second quarter? Wild guess: not teabaggers or Kim Jong Un.
Happy Easter and Happy Weekend! (Not necessarily in that order.) Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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