From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: Big Messy Grab Bag!
"Finally---we're rid of the corrosive influence of not enough money in politics!"
---Jon Stewart on the McCutchen v. FEC ruling
"The Kremlin announced yesterday that Vladimir Putin and his wife have officially divorced. Over their 30-year marriage, the couple shared two daughters, several homes and one laugh."
---Seth Meyers
This just in: Maine Sen. Angus King searches
last place on earth for signs of serious GOP
health care alternative. Returns empty-handed.
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"A couple of days ago, Jane, a lovely woman who does my makeup every night…says to me, ‘Dave, there's really nothing more I can do. I said, ‘OK, fair enough.'"
---David Letterman, on why he's retiring next year.
"In an interview, former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan said he does not have a racist bone in his body. However, he admitted he has three sexist bones and his spine is homophobic."
---Conan O'Brien
"A report on the 'bridgegate' scandal which was compiled by a team picked by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was released and clears the governor of any wrongdoing. And you can totally trust it because it was fact-checked by independent investigator 'Trish Trishtie.'"
---SNL Weekend Update anchor Colin Jost
And from
The Colbert Report…
Stephen Colbert: 7.1 million Americans have signed up for Obamacare. … Folks, they were never supposed to make it to seven million:
Clip of Karl Rove on Fox holding whiteboard days before Obama's Tuesday announcement: There's no way they're gonna get anywhere close. It just ain't gonna happen!
Colbert: I just don't see how Karl Rove and his life partner, Boardy, could be wrong. After all, they're the mathematical wizards that called Ohio for Romney.
Just when we start thinking weeks can't get any crazier. Dang.
Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, April 4, 2014
Note: The last mound of snow in front of our house is almost melted down to two feet high. If you're missing a blue sock, a mustache from a Mr. Potato Head or 625 cigarette butts, please see the attendant at the Lost & Found booth. ---Mgt
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14 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til
Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry's:
4
Days 'til the
Sweetwater 420 Fest in Atlanta:
14
Minimum number of journalists now working at 500 digital news outlets:
5,000
(Source: Pew
State of the News Media report)
Minimum number of states that will push a minimum wage hike either legislatively or via ballot initiative this year:
30
(Source: Think Progress)
Diameter of the pink dwarf planet VP113 aka Planet Biden, where the temperature is -430F:
208 miles
Distance of Planet Biden from the sun:
7.5 billion miles
(Source: AP)
Percent chance that the title of Hillary Clinton's new book might end up being called
112 Countries and It is Still All About My Hair:
100%
(Source:
Hillary Clinton)
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NEW! Michele Bachmann Departure Countdown
Michele Bachmann and her googly eyes leave Congress in 274 days. Please plan your party today as banquet halls are filling up fast.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Who knew there were so many?
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CHEERS and JEERS to two sides of the same employment report. The March numbers from the Bureau of Workin' Stiffs came out this morning. Here's the saggy-butt recovery chart:
On the up side, there were 192,000 thousand new private-sector jobs. On the downside: Americans got less free speech in their paychecks last month.
JEERS to the good dying young. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis 46 years ago today at the age of 39. Our favorite Kingjuniorism resonates even louder now, given the radicalization of the Republican party: "Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Chances are your favorite quote is here too. And how nice to finally have a memorial---MLK Jr.'s---on the National Mall that isn’t in honor of either a war or a president known for fighting one. That was a dream worth having, too.
JEERS to not-very-crafty hypocrites. Well, well, well. It turns out that Hobby Lobby, which argued before the Supreme Court that they have a right on religious grounds to strip all contraceptive coverage out of their employee health insurance plan in defiance of ACA regulations, has a little problem called investing in contraceptive companies:
Hobby Lobby-funded "make
your own" contraceptive kit.
Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company's owners filed their lawsuit---show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions.
In fairness, though, the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, says their money is only going towards contraceptives that are made out of popsicle sticks, glitter and glue.
JEERS to the long and short of it. After he was sworn in, 68 year-old William Henry Harrison gave the longest inaugural speech of any president: 105 minutes. Here are some of the highlights:
True Fact: Harrison was the
first vampire elected president.
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9 minute mark: "That reminds me of a funny story, you guys will love this. I'll give you the short version…"
26 minute mark: "Okay, lemme back up. See, what I didn’t mention was that Aunt Gladys was a sleepwalker. So round about 3am she's plowing my daddy's fields in her nightgown, sound asleep, when a barn owl swooped down and…wait…was it a barn owl? Might have been a snow owl…whatever. Anyway, the point is…"
42 minute mark: "Now, let me say a few words about weights and measures. I'll limit my remarks on this topic to 25 paragraphs…"
60 minute mark: "Aaaaaahhhh…CHOO!!!! I know, I know, say it don't spray it, ha ha ha…but as I was saying---[sniffle]---I think the ounce is overrated and let me tell you why…"
102 minute mark: "So in conclusion… Oh! One more thing… No, two!"
The day was unusually cold and windy, and he delivered his address in nothing more than a pair of boxers and a swath of leopard skin draped over his shoulder. Bad move. 31 days later, on April 4, 1841, Harrison became the first president to die in office of either pneumonia or his doctors' treatment of his pneumonia. Pay your
respects here. Keep it brief.
CHEERS to another edition of Duly Noted. From Lisbon, Portugal:
This has been another edition of Duly Noted.
CHEERS to the red white and blue. On April 4, 1818, Congress finally got off its duff and officially proclaimed that the U.S. flag would have thirteen red and white stripes to honor the minty freedom freshness of candy canes, and one star for each star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They also decreed that any politician who fails to wear a five-pound American-flag lapel pin 24/7 will thus and forevermore be branded "a filthy tyrant wretch in dire need of a caning." In other words, they got more done in a day than John Boehner has in three years.
America's Dinklage deficit
gets disappeared Sunday.
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. (Sorry,
Cosmos, you're getting taped.) But the tube watching starts tonight with
Whose Line at 8 on the CW, then
Shark Tank and HBO's
Real Time. The big new
DVD release is
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, which got snubbed for every single Oscar it wasn't nominated for. Sports schedules are as follows:
MLB,
NBA,
NHL and, of course,
NCAA women's and
NCAA men's. Portland, Maine's own Anna Kendrick hosts SNL. Sunday night, besides
Thrones and
Cosmos, there's Mike Judge's reportedly very funny new HBO series
Silicon Valley, and the 49th annual
Academy of Country Music Awards. (Spoiler Alert: hearts get whomped, stomped, broken, cheated on, dragged through the dirt, and drop-kicked through the goalpost of life.)
On Bill Moyers & Company: Saru Jayaraman, co-founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, talks "about the group’s fight for better wages and working conditions for America’s 10 million restaurant workers." And here's your Sunday morning lineup. Please hold your applause until Charles Koch stops bawling because you hurt his feelings:
Meet the Press: Former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Michael Mullen on the Fort Hood shooting; journalist Michael Lewis on Wall Street flash-trading; Shaun McCutcheon of McCutchen v. FEC takes a victory lap but is tripped up by president of Public Citizen Robert Weissman; roundtable that is too painful to list. (Hint: ParkerSununuFordzilla); Kevin Tibbles fails to complete a single thought during his Keystone pipeline update because David Gregory keeps snorking at the name Tibbles.
What Gen. Michael
Hayden sees when he
looks in the mirror.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Former General and Bushie intelligence awful person Michael Hayden, Rep Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) agree that the Fort Hood shooting was bad; roundtable members Brit Hume, Liz Cheney, Elise Viebeck and Juan Williams agree. The remaining 59 minutes are spent on BENGHAZI. (Seriously---Hayden is booked to talk about BENGHAZI.)
This Week: Let's get the roundtable out of the way first: two of the Very Serious Butts sitting in the chairs will belong to Newt Gingrich and Bill Kristol. Having said that, you don’t need to know anything more about who is on this crapfest except that the three main guests are all conservatives.
Face the Nation: White House advisor Dan Pfeiffer on White House stuff; climatologist Heidi Cullen on climate stuff; Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) on Michael McCaul stuff; roundtablers John Dickerson and Amy Walter on round table stuff; and Tom Friedman tosses out a few random Friedman Units for sport.
CNN's State of the Union: Dunno. As usual, the web updaters appear to be out in the parking lot rolling up a fat one.
Happy viewing!
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Five years ago in C&J: April 4, 2009
CHEERS to touching moments. Reeling from its biggest scandal since Benny Hill chased a gaggle of nurses around a parking lot, Britain is trying to make sense of why the Queen would destroy hundreds of years of strict monarchial protocol by putting her arm around the American First Lady...and accepting a similar gesture from Mrs. Obama in return. We may never know the answer to that, but one thing we finally do know: when given a squeeze, the Queen honks.
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And just one more…
Many thanks from me
and the horse I rode in on.
CHEERS to nine years of front-page silliness. On tomorrow's date in 2005, sixteen months after our debut in the Daily Kos diaries, this little column
got promoted to the front page by Markos. I love to tell the story of that first day: how I posted C&J from my desk at work, then went to a meeting, then went to lunch, then came back to find an email from Kos asking me why I did something horrible with my html formatting that made the front page margins go kerflooey. To quote Rick Perry: "Sorry…oops." I'm happy to say that's the one and only time I broke the blog, and I shall carve the accomplishment on my tombstone.
Whether you're a long-time splasher or a relative newcomer, thank you for reading and supporting this snarky little pimple on the blogiverse's butt. I promise to continue focusing on the liberal issues you care about in a serious and sober manner. Oh, and huhuhuhuh…I said butt.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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