From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Friday Carlin Blogging
Raise a glass of whatever ya got handy and wish a Happy Birthday to the late George Carlin, who would've been 80 today. He spent many a glorious decade dissecting language, culture, politics and human nature, wielding a comedic scalpal and jackhammer with equal dexterity. All the reason we need to take a moment to revisit a mere smidgeon of his comedic Esprit de George…
“Working-class people ‘look for work.’ Middle-class people ‘try to get a job.’ Upper-middle-class people ‘seek employment.’”
“Someone said to me, ‘Make yourself a sandwich.’ Well, if I could make myself a sandwich, I wouldn’t make myself a sandwich. I'd make myself a horny, 18 year-old billionaire. ”
“Where ideas are concerned, America can be counted on to do one of two things: take a good idea and run it completely into the ground, or take a bad idea and run it completely into the ground.”
“You know how you speed up baseball? Everybody gets one swing. That's it. One swing, fuck you, you're out, sit down.”
“Boy, these conservatives are really something, aren't they? They're all in favor of the unborn---they will do anything for the unborn. But once you're born, you're on your own. Pro-life conservatives are obsessed with the fetus from conception to nine months. After that, they don't want to know about you. They don't want to hear from you. No nothing. No neonatal care, no day care, no head start, no school lunch, no food stamps, no welfare, no nothing. If you're preborn, you're fine; if you're preschool, you're fucked.”
“Ever notice that anyone going slower than you is an idiot, but anyone going faster is a maniac?”
“One of the best expressions in the English language is, ‘Who says so?’ I guarantee, if you keep saying, ‘Who says so?’ long enough, sooner or later someone will take you into custody."
…and, of course, those (NSFW, natch) seven words you can’t say. To this day they still make Jeff Sessions soil his Depends.
Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, May 12, 2017
Note: Monday’s chemo session #3 was fun. I’m not exactly sure why the side effects hit the the mouth so hard. If you've ever wondered what it’s like to suck on James Bond villainess Rosa Klebb's shoe spike, I can tell you it is vastly overrated. On doctor's orders, C&J posting will be slightly abbreviated next week: Tuesday through Friday. We regret the inconvenience. Thanks for your patience. ---The Patient
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the special House elections in Montana and Georgia: 13, 39
Days 'til the Roots and Vines Festival in Yakima, Washington: 8
Percent of voters in the latest Quinnipiac poll who "strongly support" Trump: 25%
Rank of "muscle/back/joint disorders," "Cancers/tumors" and "Injuries/poisonings" among most common causes of long-term disability claims, according to AARP: #1, #2, #3
Number of Confederate statues still waiting to be removed in New Orleans, now that the Jefferson Davis monstrosity was hauled away Thursday morning: 2
Decline in Vista Outdoor's profits from gun sales during Trump's presidency: -28%
Percent chance that the huge glut of guns on the market is because retailers stockpiled them before Election Day, expecting Clinton to win, according to Ruger: 100%
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Puppy Pic of the Day:
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CHEERS to chicken soup for lots of hungry souls. Here's an event coming up this weekend that we always put front and center in C&J. It's the 25th annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, and all you have to do is make a note to leave some vittles out for your postal carrier:
The National Association of Letter Carriers, in conjunction with the United States Postal Service, will be collecting non-perishable food items like canned meat sand fish, canned soup, juice, pasta, vegetables, cereal and rice during the Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive on Saturday,May 13, to help families in need in our community.
You can help by placing your food donation at your mailbox on Saturday, May 13 before your letter carrier arrives with the day's mail. It will be taken back to the Post office and then delivered to local food banks or pantries. Please do not include items that have expired or those in glass containers.
There's more info at their official site. So be sure to put a Post-It reminder on your fridge reminding you to put a reminder on your forehead reminding you to leave a Reddit post reminding you to leave a text message reminding you to tweet a reminder to your Facebook status reminding you to leave a reminder pic on your Pinterest peg reminding you to send a snapchat reminding you to knit a reminder into your tea cozy before you put it up on Etsy. God bless social media---it makes life so much easier.
JEERS to going backwards. One of the more bizarre things that our kooky president has become obsessed with lately is the way aircraft carriers (the ones he hasn't lost track of, anyway) launch our flying aces into the skies. The old-fashioned steam-pressure catapult method is being replaced by a new digital-electrical system, which makes it more conducive to launching a wider variety of aircraft. But Trump heard something or other about a glitch with "digital," so now he says---brace yourself, this is an actual quote---”It's very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said---and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said what system are you going to be---Sir, we're staying with digital. I said no you're not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it's no good.” As you can rightly guess, Trump is handing nothing but a huge headache to the Navy since, as Popular Mechanics points out, "the problems will eventually be worked out [and] it will almost certainly be cheaper and less time-consuming to debug the new system than to reintroduce the old one." But my main point here is not to wallow in techno-speak, but to post video of the Navy testing their digital catapult by launching their little red wagon off the deck and it's hilarious…
Dear Santa: Guess what I want for Christmas?
CHEERS to Republican Presidents with a conscience. 110 years ago this week, Teddy Roosevelt spoke at the Governor's Conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources. Seriously---he said this in freaking 1907:
"The occasion for the meeting lies in the fact that the natural resources of our country are in danger of exhaustion if we permit the old wasteful methods of exploiting them longer to continue.
In the development, the use, and therefore the exhaustion of certain of the natural resources, the progress has been more rapid in the past century and a quarter than during all preceding time of history since the days of primitive man.
All these various uses of our natural resources are so closely connected that they should be coordinated, and should be treated as part of one coherent plan and not in haphazard and piecemeal fashion."
EPA administrator Scott Pruitt issued a brief statement this morning to mark the occasion: "Teddy who?"
CHEERS to great ideas. While Maine's "mealy-mouthed moderate" senator Susan Collins hems and haws and waffles her bumbling way to a decision on whether or not she thinks the Russiagate investigation needs some more gas thrown on it, her counterpart, Angus "The Mustache of Independence" King says hell yes we need to kick it up a notch, and he's come up with the perfect way to do it: hire the guy who just got the boot:
Earlier Wednesday…Angus King, floated the idea that [James] Comey should be hired to lead the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Trump-Russia investigation.
As FBI director, Comey was overseeing that agency’s investigation into the same matter, until the president abruptly fired him Tuesday afternoon, shaking Washington.
Speaking on CNN’s “New Day” program Wednesday morning, King said he had come to the “fun idea in the middle of the night,” but that it made sense for Comey to lead the investigation. “Already got his clearances, knows the subject, man of integrity,” King told host Chris Cuomo. “I’m going to float that today and see what kind of reaction I get” among members of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Asked if hiring Comey for the job would be permissible, King said: “I don’t know why not. He is a free man as of today. Doesn’t have a job.”
I love the idea, but I do have one worry: when Trump hears about it he'll start hurling cans of Diet Coke at all the presidential portraits. Then again, he’s so weak they'll all fall short and land on the floor, to be swept up by the help. So, yeah, let's go with Comey.
CHEERS to great moments in history. 224 years ago, the self-flushing toilet was patented. To drain a pile of crap, you just pull a chain. Or, if you want the same effect at Fox News, just pull the fire alarm while Hannity’s broadcasting.
CHEERS to the Holy Grail of philately. On May 13, 1918, the first 24-cent stamps featuring the Curtiss Jenny biplane---the aircraft chosen to inaugurate the U.S.'s new air mail service---reached post offices. Collectors heard that some of the stamps could be rare "inverts," so they fanned out to find them. Some were successful in locating one of these:
Today the stamps are worth approximately one bazillion dollars. Or, put another way, slightly less than a year's worth of Goldman Sachs bonuses.
CHEERS to home vegetation. I've thought long and hard about it, and I've narrowed my weekend activities down to two things: clean up six months worth of dog poop in the yard…or watch a bunch of TV. Either way, I'll have plenty to work with. On HBO's Real Time, Bill Maher talks with Russiagate rock star Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) along with Jon Favreau, Michael Render, author Annabelle Gurwitch and Reason's Matt Welch. New DVD/Home Video releases include the must-watch documentary Dying Laughing, about the lives of stand-up comics, and aless intentional comedy called Fifty Shades Darker.
SNL ALERT: goddess Melissa McCarthy hosts this weekend. The baseball schedule is here (the Red Sox will hook, filet,batter, fry and serve the Rays on a platter with melted butter Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!),the NHL Stanley Cup playoff schedule is here, and the NBA playoff schedule is here. If you're a golf fan, the Player's Championship (aka the "5th major") is now underway. On 60 Minutes: a piece on the Comey firing and another on documents seized during the 2011 bin Laden raid (thanks again, Obama!) The Miss USA pageant is live from Las Vegas Sunday night (Fox), and you can bet the contestants will be thrilled that Trump is 2,085 miles away from their dressing rooms. And John Oliver, who set up fresh lines of defense against the Republican-controlled FCC's war on net neutrality last weekend, takes on another sacred cow this Sunday night at 11 on HBO. In fact, they’re adding ten minutes to compensate for the deluge of news that gushed out of the fire hose this week.
And here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-Pawpatch County) and Chuck Schumer (D-New Fuckin’ Yawk); Eugene Robinson is on the pundit roundtable.
This Week: TBA
Face the Nation: Former defense secretary Bob Gates; Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Kickass California); Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE).
CNN's State of the Union: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY); former director of national intelligence James Clapper; Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) and Neera Tanden (Center for American Progress) are on the roundtable.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA) and Mike Lee (R-UT). The ghost of Robert Fulton weighs in on steam power on U.S. aircraft carriers vs. digital.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 12, 2007
JEERS to the pot calling the kettle black. Russia's president Vladimir Putin---he of the pure soul, according to our Commander Guy---says the United States has become like the Third Reich. See, that's where you're wrong, Vlad. In the Third Reich, I couldn’t call our leader a scum-sucking incompetent greedy trigger happy lying drunk coke addict warmonger shit for brains mealymouthed lunatic asshole. Now if you'll excuse me, the guard just shoved some slop under my cell door and I'd like to slurp it in peace.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the start of a great joke. Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions and James Comey walk into an airplane. Hilarity ensues, per this week's New Yorker cover by Barry Blitt, putting this bizarro week into perfect perspective. Sessions’ utterly-blank expression says so much about the banality of evil:
Blitt's punchline: It'’s probably a bit of a leap,” Barry Blitt says, about his cover of the May 22, 2017, issue. “James Comey is six feet eight---he probably would have been happy to give up his seat in a cramped cabin. ”Ba-dum-bum. Okay, let's drink.
Have a great weekend and Happy Mother’s Day, all the mamas! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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