From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
Channel Surfing
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"Our guest this morning on Face the Nation is former vice president Dick Cheney..."
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"Our guest this morning on This Week is Liz Cheney..."
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"Coming up next on CNN: Dick and Liz Cheney..."
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"Welcome back to the Weather Channel. Here's Lynne Cheney to defend her husband's ordering of torture to establish a bogus Iraq-al Qaeda link, along with our weekend outlook..."
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"That's right, Liz! While you're on Fox News claiming that your dad kept Americans safe---even though 9/11 happened on his watch---your roast is cooking to perfection in my amazing Ronco Showtime Rotisserie. And your family will love this: it comes with an extra rack absolutely FREE!"
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"Welcome back to Judge Dick. The plaintiff, Gladys Higginbotham, claims that her mechanic, Buzz Taylor, overcharged her for a spring tune-up on her Honda Civic. But Judge Dick says there's 'no doubt' Buzz knows about secret meetings between Mohammed Atta and Saddam Hussein. Let's see if Buzz has cracked under ten days of sleep deprivation and forced nudity in a freezing cell..."
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"See, kids, my dad says Cookie Monster only feels like he's drowning, but he's not. So it's not water torture...it's more like rinsing your face and sinuses and throat and lungs so they're really, really clean! Yaay! Let's give Big Bird a turn...!"
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"Welcome to the Cheney Channel! All Cheney All the Time! This hour, Dick Cheney shows you how to shift the blame for anything onto Nancy Pelosi! First up: newly-unearthed CIA documents reveal how the Speaker personally sank the Titanic before she was born!"
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Anyone wanna buy a slightly kicked-in TV?
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Note: But what if all the conspiracy theorists are working for one secret uber-conspiracy theorist to try and divert our attention from the REAL conspiracy?
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Netroots Nation Convention in Pittsburgh August 13-16: 85
Days `til the Hall City Tattoo Festival in Columbus, OH: 9
Percent of Americans who say they're saving money by stopping or reducing their use of medicines for chronic conditions: 10%
(Source: American Heart Association via Parade)
Number of scientists it took to map the 22,000 genes of the common cow: 300
Years it took them to do it: 6
(Source: The Week)
Length of the giant lobster roll that'll be made in Portland on June 4 to set a Guinness Book record: 60 feet
Number of lobsters that will be used to make it: 300
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 164 (including 3 "Civil Rights" and 1 major league brown-noser). Soul Protection Factor 16 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: It was a sad day in Anytown, USA when the hippies moved in...
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CHEERS to reining in Big Plastic. Yesterday the Senate voted 90-5 to adopt new rules that will stop the credit card companies from being total dickheads. Among the provisions are more plain-spoken language on statements; rules on how often they can raise interest rates; a 21-day grace period to pay bills; more restrictions on issuing cards to people under 21; and, of course, the most important part of any credit card legislation:
One amendment attached to the Senate bill by Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, would restore a Bush administration policy allowing loaded guns in national parks.
Yes, because bears are notorious for stealing people's MasterCards and going on nut and berry binges at Whole Foods. Good catch, Senator!
JEERS to the sad, downward spiral of Michael Steele. First the new RNC chairman was optimistic ("I'm gonna make the GOP hip and jiggy"). Then he was defiant ("Rush is just an entertainer"). Then he was contrite ("Please forgive me, Rush"). Then he was robbed ("They took away my control over the RNC budget"). Then he was illogical (Gay marriage is bad because, unlike straight marriages, they'll hurt small businesses...or something"). And now he's just incoherent. I mean, the guy actually wrote this line into a speech and spoke it: "This change, my friends, is being delivered in a teabag...and that's a wonderful thing." Methinks someone dipped into his dime bag before writing that. What's next...streaking down K Street?
JEERS to faulty predictions. On May 20, 1926, Thomas Edison said Americans would always prefer silent movies over talkies. Great inventor. Terrible psychic.
CHEERS to Jack Cafferty. In today's must-read, America's favorite grumpy old CNN commentator says Washington needs to stop covering the Bush administration's ass:
From Nancy ("Impeachment is off the table") Pelosi to President Barack ("I want to look forward, not backward") Obama, the country is being poorly served by their Democratic government. And on this subject President Obama is dead wrong.
George W. Bush and his accomplices damaged this country like it's never been damaged before. And it's not just the phony war in Iraq or the torture memos that justified waterboarding. It's millions of missing emails and the constant use of executive privilege and signing statements. ...
It's too late for George W. Bush to resign the presidency. But it's not too late to put the people responsible for this national disgrace in prison.
Gosh, do we have enough cells for 59,054,087 people? If the answer is yes, I call dibs on Chuck Norris's mansion when they drag him away to the pokey.
JEERS to legislative lockdown. Memo from Congress---including soon-to-be-booted Senate majority leader Harry Reid---to every maximum-security prison employee in America: YOU PEOPLE ARE PUSSIES AND WE CAN'T TRUST YOU! How astonishing that they're so scared of a bunch of thugs from Guantanamo that they won’t allow Obama to shut the place down:
President Barack Obama's allies in the Senate will not provide funds to close the Guantanamo Bay prison next January, a top Democratic official said Tuesday. ... The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the proposed changes to the bill were to be unveiled later.
The administration has yet to develop a plan for what to do with the detainees, and Obama's promise to close the facility is facing strong GOP opposition. It appears to be a tactical retreat. Once the administration develops a plan to close the facility, congressional Democrats are likely to revisit the topic, provided they are satisfied there are adequate safeguards.
Thank God our legislators know that our top-security prisons have walls made out of tissue paper (in fairness, it is 2-ply) and stoner guards who forget to lock the cell doors half the time. Disgraceful! Oh, sure, no prisoner has ever come close to escaping from one of the facilities. But that just means that the odds of it happening in the future are growing by microscopic leaps and bounds! So thank you, Congress. Thank you for saving us from an infinitesimal chance of embarrassment on a national scale by keeping open the facility that guarantees a 100 percent chance of embarrassment on a global scale. That's some deep thinkin'!
P.S. Senator Ensign of Nevada, returning from a trip to Gitmo, says of the detainees there: "They get better health care than the average American does." Of course they do---they're on a single-payer, universal-care U.S. government plan. [sigh] Hey, black helicopters! Take me, you, er, American pigdogs! Take me!!!
CHEERS to spring flings. Josh Marshall reacts to Maureen Dowd's, um, "accidental duplication" in her Saturday column of a paragraph written by him. He must be angry! He must be outraged! He must be taking umbrage! Or, perhaps not:
I generally think we're too quick to pull the trigger with charges of plagiarism. I haven't said anything about this because I really didn't think I had anything to add. Whatever the mechanics of how it happened, I never thought it was intentional. Dowd and the Times quickly corrected it, which I appreciated. And for me, that's pretty much the end of it.
That can only mean one of two things: either Josh Marshall is a humble, forgiving man...or he's become totally bedazzled by the pheromone-fueled allure of MoDo and her irrisistable leather-bound dominatrix ways. Run, Josh! Run for your wife!
CHEERS to Jimmy Stewart. And Happy 101st Birthday to one of the few actors whom I'd watch in absolutely anything except porn. He had more great roles than we can count, but here are two favorite moments from each end of his life: learning from Jean Arthur how a bill winds its way through the Senate in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and his Tonight Show tribute to his dog Beau, which always does me in. There won’t be another one like him. But if it's not heresy to say so, Tom Hanks channels him nicely.
JEERS to wimping out. The special session of the RNC was supposed to end today with a grand finale worthy of a Cecil B. DeMille epic. Members were going to vote on whether or not to rename the "Democrat Party" the "Democrat Socialist Party." But it looks like they've chickened out and turned into a gaggle of yellow-bellied, lily-livered, terrorist-appeasing cut-and-runners. Thanks a lot, guys. You sure know how to spoil our fun.
CHEERS to quick thinking. Portland, Maine may have been the lead story in the national news cycle yesterday---in a very bad way---if not for the fast action of a high school security officer, who may have prevented a massacre in a local church. This is totally bizarre. I'll just touch on the barest of highlights and let your imagination fill in the rest:
Officer Stephen Black said he was locking the rear school doors, as he does every day at 8 a.m., when he saw Herbert Jones, 46, holding a rifle in a small paved area behind the school ... He said he then saw Jones, whose back was to him, loading rounds into the gun. ... Black drew his sidearm and ordered Jones to put down the gun, a 7 mm Remington ... spent time in Spring Harbor psychiatric hospital. ... he saw a documentary about pedophiles and became furious. ... "I wanted to do an 'angel of the night' thing and catch somebody in the act---pedophile, rapist, doesn't matter. ... planned to shoot a man at the meetings who he believes was a priest and a convicted pedophile. "I believe he's possessed by a demon...I see it in his eyes." ... he's been obsessed with a 26-year-old woman ... he believed that another man might take advantage of the woman he likes. ... "I know demons are after me." ... also was a shotgun in the trunk, and another man, later identified as Walter Begaye, in the passenger seat of the car. There were two open beers in the car's console. ... a knife was found under his seat. ... In the car, police found 40 rounds of ammunition and four other knives. ... Jones said he bought the guns at L.L. Bean a week ago. ... Police said the felony conviction they believe Jones has in Florida includes a different date of birth for the recipient, which might have contributed to his ability to purchase the weapons. Having a criminal record prohibits the purchase of guns.
Niiiice! In response to the incident, our tourism office is changing our state slogan from "Maine: The Way Life Should Be" to "Maine: Lobsters, Lighthouses, Lakes and, Occasionally, Loons."
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Five years ago in C&J: May 20, 2004
JEERS to the Battle for Hearts and Minds. U.S. aircraft mow down 40 Iraqis at a wedding party. Army officials say all the dancers, musicians, buffet table, giggling children and festive decorations looked suspicious.
CHEERS to Medicare scandal flare-up. Turns out those positive prescription card "news items" "anchored" by "reporter" "Karen Ryan" were not only bogus but also illegal. New York's Charles Rangel states the obvious: "If someone is willing to do this much to sell them something, it's probably a scam."
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And just one more...
CHEERS to the Comeback Kid. One year ago today, we all got the shocking news: 76 year-old Ted Kennedy had been diagnosed with a malignant glioma in his brain. Doctors guessed back then that he had three months to live, but...
[S]ince his diagnosis, Kennedy has provided moments of drama that have inspired many. "I pledge to you that I will be there next January on the floor of the United States Senate when we begin the term of Barack Obama," Kennedy said, to chants of "Teddy, Teddy" in Denver’s Pepsi Center at the 2008 Democratic Convention.
He was indeed there at Obama’s inauguration---and back in the Senate to cast crucial health care votes and fight for legislation he has called "the cause of my life."
Meanwhile, this weekend he'll be aboard his yacht, Mya, shouting "Eat my sea spray!" as he competes in the Fugawi race off Nantucket. I hope he gives the other competitors a head start. Just to even the playing field.
Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
How Can an Egghead Nerd Clear Out a Room Full of Bodybuilders? Just Scream "Bill in Portland Maine!"
---Jonathan Turley
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