From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Friday Night Grab Bag
Couple must-reads to put on your weekend list. I came across this from the Rude Pundit, and it encapsulates the beltway lunacy beautifully:
Republicans have paid almost no long-term price for the Caligula-like madness of the Bush administration. There's a chance that, now, two-years later, they're gonna get rewarded for refusing to participate in running the country. It's like setting free an arsonist after you've started to rebuild the house and telling him, "Oh, and here's those matches we took from you. Sorry for the inconvenience."
Meanwhile, Octogenarian Helen of the Helen and Margaret blog raises her right hand:
I pledge that I will actually read the Constitution before pledging to uphold it. And I pledge that if I am too stupid to understand its intent, I won’t become a politician.
I pledge not to start two wars, give tax breaks to millionaires, ruin the economy and then get mad when someone shows me the bill.
I pledge not to be a hypocrite or a Tea Party Republican---whichever comes first.
I pledge to remember that religious freedoms apply to all religions including the lack of a religion. And I pledge to remember that no matter how much I believe in my religion, I will remember that my neighbor believes in his religion just as much. And finally, I pledge that if I believe in my religion too much I will keep it to myself. [...]
I pledge that I won’t hate gay people in public and then sleep with them in private.
I pledge to accept the fact that John McCain really can’t pull his head out of his ass at this point. It’s in too deep. [...]
And Margaret, my dear, I pledge that I will vote on November 2. I meant it. Really.
Awesome! Oh, and here's how to make tonight's yummy cocktail. Please guzzle responsibly.
Your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, October 15, 2010
Note: CRISIS! DEFCON 1!!! There will be no C&J on Monday! [Crickets] [Tumbleweed rolls by] [In the distance, a dog barks] Well...okay, then. See ya Tuesday.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Hanukah, Festivus and Christmas: 47/69/71
Percent increase last week in applications to refinance mortgages: 21%
Percent decrease in applications for home loans: 8.5%
(Source: Mortgage Bankers Association)
Percent of Pakistanis who hold a favorable view, respectively of us and China: 16%, 84%
(Source: Harper's Index)
Expected lifespan of an Hispanic born in 2006: 80 years, 7 months
Expected lifespan of, respectively, a white person and black person born in 2006: 78 years, 73 years
(Source: The Portland Press Herald)
Rank of the Yankees' Mariano Rivera among major-league pitchers with the most championship series saves (12 so far): #1
And from the Department of Homeland Security:
Days the color-coded federal terror alert system has been in place: 3,139
Days spent at terror alert level Blue or Green: 0
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Yup.
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CHEERS to keeping yourself in stitches. Don’t tell 'em I said this, but there's an A-list roster of studs and studettes who want to lie on top of you all night: Hunter, Malacandra, General Wes Clark, Pastor Dan, McJoan, Kos, Digby, Sharoney, Atrios, Sam Seder, Pam Spaulding, Bill Richardson, Darcy Burner, Eric "The Tickler" Massa (seriously!) and over a hundred other sexy liberal beasts. They could be all yours---night after night after night---if you win the drawing for Sara R's hand-made multi-autographed quilt. Proceeds go to help get Jerry Brown elected in California so he can start picking up the pieces from the Terminator's reign. As Meteor Blades wrote:
It's the contest between Jerry Brown, the progressive attorney general who already served as governor three decades ago, and Meg Whitman, the corporate executive who has poured tens of millions into a campaign designed to bid her way into office on a platform dedicated to eviscerating California's publicly funded social services. It's the Grover Norquist formula brought down to the state level.
Ten bucks or an up-to-50-word essay (subject line, "Jerry Brown Essay," to communityquilts (at) yahoo (dot) com) puts you in the running, and you can enter as many times as ya like. The Act Blue donation page is here. Contest ends on October 31. And good lord willin' Meg Whitman's political career will end on November 2nd.
CHEERS to Friday Night Mad Libs! Even if you're already drunk you can play this fun little brain teaser. All you have to do is correctly guess the country involved in this eye-popping news story:
[Country]'s government will this week present a bill allowing debtors to walk away from obligations that exceed asset values and to nullify personal bankruptcies after four years.
"All [citizens of Country] can see that our society is currently in turmoil," [Government official] said in an interview. "We’re therefore required to sit down at the table and offer solutions; I don’t anticipate that the people running financial institutions will disagree." [Government official], who spoke in an Oct. 11 interview, says he favors a proposal put forward by the Interest Group of the Homes, which represents households demanding debt relief. The lobby group wants lenders to forgive about 200 billion [currency of Country] in mortgage debt. The opposition, which met with the government yesterday, is likely to back the proposals.
To recap: Bold measure in response to citizen pressure. Out-of-the-box thinking. Huge relief for average citizens who are hurting. Short-term pain for long-term gain. An opposition party offering constructive advice and support for the good of the country and its people. If you said The United States of America, you WIN...nothing. Because the correct answer is: Iceland!!! I think you'll like our next game better: Pin the Bank of America CEO's Face on the Horse's Ass.
CHEERS to the bridge to somewhere. Hey, look, world! America did something really BIG that didn’t involve invading another country or destroying the global economy: we done went and built a bridge! It's "the largest single-span concrete arch in the western hemisphere." And that sound you just heard was every member of the World Bungee Jumping Society having a simultaneous orgasm.
P.S. Meanwhile, the Swiss just announced that they've completed the world's longest tunnel. When they broke through the other side and found out that the 33 miners had already been rescued the day before, all they could do was curl up and sob.
JEERS to America's #1 pubic-hair-on-Coke-cans expert. Nineteen years ago today, in 1991, Clarence Thomas was confirmed by the Senate 52 to 48, making him the Supreme Court's first justice with a neatly-catalogued porn collection (#1 on his list: The Adventures of Bad Mama Jama). Today he sits on his fat ass all day, an aging, bitter, pear-shaped pervert who hollers at the world the way Grampa Simpson hollers at clouds. Oh my god---that makes him my soulmate.
JEERS to bringing up a sore subject. A new interview with attorney Harry Whittington---Dick Cheney's shooting victim---is up. What happened was: Cheney drank a beer up. Then he got camo'd up. Then a car picked him up. Then he arrived where the bird hunt was set up. Moments later a bird flew up. Cheney looked up. Cheney fucked up. Whittington got all shot up. His face and insides, worse than we ever knew, got tore up. Cheney covered it up. The press got wind of it and the jig was up. With tweezers doctors carefully picked nearly 200 pieces of birdshot up (33 pieces remain, which light airport metal detectors up). Eventually Whittington healed up. But when it came to an apology, Cheney just couldn’t man up. And I just realized something: thinking about Deadeye Dick still makes me wanna throw up.
CHEERS to hot African ta-tas. On Sunday's date in 1888, the first issue of National Geographic went on sale. Followed later that evening by the first kid to stash one under his mattress.
CHEERS to home vegetation. Little known fact: just as we call our lazy selves "couch potatoes," lazy couches call themselves "human spudlings." (I read it on Sofapedia!) Weekend viewing starts tonight when Kos is one of Bill Maher's panelists on HBO's Real Time, along with Al Sharpton, John Legend, Dana Loesch and Dan Neil. New DVD releases include How to Train Your Dragon (IF ya know what I mean...) Jonah Hex (a member of Christine O'Donnell's family, we assume) and, on Blue-Ray, the hugely underrated Gulf War dramedy Three Kings. The American League championship series between the Yankees and Rangers starts tonight, while the National League championship between the Phillies and Giants starts tomorrow evening. The Patriots will beat the Ravens Sunday by simply staring at them. 60 Minutes solves the mystery of a 100 year-old piece of film shot on San Francisco's Market Street. (Seriously...isn’t it time the bowler hat made a comeback?) And here's your Sunday morning lineup, now with C&J's EXCLUSIVE white people/non-white people (WP/NWP), including hosts, Index:
Meet the Press: Colorado senate debate between Democrat Michael Bennett and Republican Ken Buck; Robert Gibbs fumbles and bumbles (I SO want to replace him with Gilbert Gottfried). WP/NWP Index: 4:0
This Week: Maria Shriver on women and Alzheimer's; Christiane Amanpour talks to Delaware voters; Meghan McCain joins George Will, Terry Moran and Matthew Dowd on the roundtable. WP/NWP Index: 6:0
Face the Nation: Howard Dean, Liz Cheney, Lindsay Graham, William Galston. WP/NWP Index: 5:0
Washington Week: Politico's Jeanne Cummings on the outlandish campaign spending this year; Slate's John Dickerson on the senate race in Nevada; National Journal's Major Garrett whines iver the fact that, if his parents really loved him, they woulda named him General; and McClatchy's Nancy Yousseff on the judge's ruling to overturn the Don't 'Ask, Don't Tell' policy. WP/NWP Index: 4:1
Fox GOP Talking Points: Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX); Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO); GOP California senate candidate Carly Fiorina; roundtable with Droopy Dawg Hume, Mara Liasson, Bill Kristol and Elisabeth Bumiller. WP/NWP Index: 8:0
The whiteness---it burns. But happy viewing, anyway!
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Five years ago in C&J: October 15, 2005
CHEERS to the least-bamboozleable generation. Remember earlier this year when the GOP said they wanted to reach out to the black community? Well, according to the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, they've done such a swell job that only two percent of African Americans now support President Bush. And with a 3.4% margin of error, that means it's possible even the unborn hate him. That's our li'l uniter!
JEERS to same planet, different knuckledragger. Time magazine features this quote from a prayer leader at the Illahi Bagh Mosque in Sringar, India, reacting to the killer earthquakes that killed tens of thousands in the region: "Whatever the scientists say, our prophet said that when the earth is replete with sin, this would happen." Oh, you and Pat Robertson have got to meet for brunch sometime!
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And just one more...
CHEERS to Jon Stewart's (faux)-evil twin. How time flies. The Colbert Report debuted five years ago this Sunday as the yang to The Daily Show's yin. While Jon Stewart assumes the role of a rational observer horrified by the lunacy and hypocrisy of politics and media, Stephen Colbert dons the leopard skin of the modern-day conservative and "feels the news" from the perspective of "a well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot." He revealed his weapon of choice in his debut:
"And that brings us to tonight's Word: Truthiness. Now I'm sure some of the 'word police'---the Wordinistas over at Webster's---are gonna say, 'Hey, that's not a word.' Well, anyone who knows me knows I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books.
I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart. And that's exactly what's pulling our country apart today. 'Cause face it, folks, we are a divided nation. Not between Democrats and Republicans, or conservatives and liberals, or tops and bottoms. No, we are divided between those who think with their head, and those who know with their heart."
"Truthiness" has since become a bona fide word in the dictionary. Colbert and his creative staff have won four Emmys, a Grammy, two Peabodys and 57 troll ratings from Daily Kos. He fearlessly sliced and diced George W. Bush while the then-POTUS was just a few feet away. He testified before a House subcommittee---in character---forcing the spotlight on the working conditions of immigrant farm labor. (The media tut-tutters should be hanging their heads in shame for piling on the way they did. Last time I checked the republic was still standing.) And in 15 days he and Stewart will attract a bigger crowd than Glenn Beck did last August when they host the now-merged "Rally to Preserve Our Sanity And/Or Keep Fear Alive" in D.C. So tonight a Tip 'O the Hat to the man who spends four nights a week playing 'Chicken' with conservative ideology, and always wins. And that's the Word.
Have a nice weekend. Maybe take a day trip somewhere exciting. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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