C & J for Thursday, December 20, 2012
Note: Here's the posting schedule for the holidays:
Tomorrow Evening: West Coast-friendly post as usual.
Monday Evening: Join us for A Very Special C&J Christmas Eve Bean Supper, Nudeblogging, and the Sharing of the Conspiracy Theories.
Tuesday and Wednesday: A very special absence of C&J
Thursday and Friday: A Very Special Look Back at 2012, Pt. I & II
Rum balls will be served on one condition: that you bring rum balls.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Inauguration Day and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: 41
Days 'til the BrickFair Lego Fan Festival in Birmingham, Alabama: 30
Percent of Americans who trust President Obama and Republicans in Congress, respectively, to do a better job protecting the middle class: 58%, 32%
(Source: ABC News/Washington Post poll)
Number of the top ten North American bottled water brands that are distributed by Nestle, Pepsi, or Coke: 9
(Source: Beverage Marketing Corp.)
Number of Americans expected to travel at least 50 miles from home between Dec. 22 and Jan. 1, an increase of 1.6% over last year: 93.5 million
Average increase in rental car rates from a year ago: 41%
(Source: AAA)
Percent chance that if you haven't got a penny a ha'penny will do: 91% (Up from 90% last year. And god bless you!)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Cheap irony and Christmas don't go well together. Christmas and war is another bad combination. But there it is. The only president we've got went down to the Capitol Area Food Bank in Washington, D.C., the other day for a photo op with people who can't afford to eat. … Right away, we notice real progress. When Bush was running for the presidency in 2000, the feds released their annual report on hunger in America, and Texas was once again in its perennial spot at the top of the list, No. 1 in Hunger.
Bush thought it was some dastardly scheme by the Clinton administration to make Texas, and hence Bush, look bad. He denied there were any hungry people in Texas and said, "You'd think the governor would have heard if there are pockets of hunger in Texas." Yeah, you would. But look on the bright side: so he didn't know there's hunger in Texas after six years in office; after only two years in Washington, he's discovered the problem.
---December, 2002
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Unbalanced breakfast
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CHEERS to Pat Kelsey. The head basketball coach at Winthrop University in South Carolina recognized that the live microphone in front of him during a post-game (against OSU) interview was his one shot at getting a wide audience to hear what he wanted to say in the wake of the Newtown massacre. I know that President Obama made headlines by announcing a task force on reducing assault-weapon violence, but for my money this is a headline maker of its own. Watch it:
More on his story here. Suddenly the "shame on Bob Costas" crowd just got real quiet.
JEERS to missing one of the most amazing things of the week. Did you know that American astronauts gave gravity the middle finger yesterday and blasted skyward in a Russian rocketship? I didn't know that. No one told me that. I would've liked to have known that. But I guess our sense of wonder has been dulled by repetition and current events. Oh well. So that happened:
Have a safe trip...and bring
us back a snow globe from
the Space Station gift shop.
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Flight Engineers Tom Marshburn, Roman Romanenko and Chris Hadfield will orbit the Earth for two days before docking to the [International Space Station] at 9:12 a.m. Friday. The new trio will join Commander Kevin Ford and Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin who’ve been residing at the orbital laboratory since Oct. 26.
Expedition 34 will be a six-member crew until March 2013 when Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin undock from the Poisk module and return home inside the Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft for a landing in Kazakhstan. When they undock Expedition 35 will officially begin as Hadfield becomes commander staying behind with Marshburn and Romanenko before finally returning home in May 2013.
All together now: "
USA!!! (and russia a little bit too).
USA!!! (and russia a little bit too)."
P.S. Sorry to say, but the Mars Rover came in fourth place to Miss USA last night at the Miss Universe Pageant in Las Vegas. But it did win the Soil Collection and Analysis portion of the competition. All together now: "Blorp Bleep!!! Blorp Bleep!!!"
MEH FEH BLEH to fools on the Hill. I've spent the last 24 hours poring over every single detail, update and development in the fiscal not-a-cliff negotiations, and here's what the situation looks like at the moment:
Whatever you do, don’t go near it without a hazmat suit.
CHEERS to territorial irony. On this date 209 years ago, the Louisiana Purchase was completed (though the formal transfer happened 10 days later) in a New Orleans ceremony with representatives of Napoleon's administration. The land mass encompasses parts of Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Wyoming, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Nebraska. Imagine that---almost all "red" states who owe their existence to the kindness of…France. Sacre bleu, pard'ner!
CHEERS to getting a fair hearing in front of the Ultimate Judge at the Pearly Gates. Judge Robert Bork, who had a real talent for saying things that made liberals' eyes bug out in horror, has died:
Bork had recently served as a senior legal adviser to Republican Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. He was a solicitor general during the Nixon administration and first gained notoriety for carrying out the president's order to fire the special prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal in 1973, an episode known as the Saturday Night Massacre. …
Bork was also known as a staunch advocate for "originalism," a principle that defends the original intent of the Constitution.
I'm happy that he was able to enjoy 85 years on the planet. I'm even happier that he wasn't able to spend a single one of them on the Supreme Court.
"Newman!"
to joining the club in Cleveland. I must say, this whole Rock and Roll Hall of Fame fad seems to have some staying power. The 28th annual inductees
were announced, and the winners are:
Performer Category:
Rush
Heart
Randy Newman (awesome!)
Public Enemy
Donna Summer
Albert King.
Ahmet Ertegun (nonperformer) Award:
Lou Adler
Quincy Jones
They'll make it official on April 18 during a big concert that'll be televised---from the waist up to protect our children from the evils of gyrating hips, from the neck down to protect our children from stray cuss words, and the chest area will be blurred to protect our children from nipple-revealing wardrobe malfunctions. It'll be a wonderful day of navel gazing.
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Four years ago in C&J: December 20, 2008
CHEERS to the sole man. It was inevitable---the shoe model that Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zeidi threw at Commander Codpiece is flying off the shelves:
In Tikrit there is a monument
to the shoe thrown at Bush.
The brown, thick-soled "Model 271" may soon be renamed "The Bush Shoe" or "Bye-Bye Bush," Ramazan Baydan, who owns the Istanbul-based producer Baydan Ayakkabicilik San. & Tic., said in a telephone interview today. "We’ve been selling these shoes for years but, thanks to Bush, orders are flying in like crazy," he said. "We’ve even hired an agency to look at television advertising."
Baydan has received orders for 300,000 pairs of the shoes since the attack, more than four times the number his company sold each year since the model was introduced in 1999.
You know what they say: "That's shoe biz!"
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And just one more…
This is the Digby who says
all those things that make us
all say: "What Digby said..."
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to the Pale Yellow Goddess. This is just a quick reminder that, as awesome as the Daily Kos subscription drive is, there are amazing bloggers on other sites who help fuel the liberal netroots, and they deserve our support, too. I can give you an example that will simultaneously fire up your neurons and melt your heart in one word:
Digby. She's one of the sharpest, most observant writers you'll find on the lefty interwebs, and when you combine that with her Molly Ivins-like wit it's easy to see why "What Digby said..." has become the equivilent of the netroots bat signal---you see it, you click it. And with (relatively-)new trusty sidekick Dante Atkins (aka Thereisnospoon, also a card-carrying Kossack), the Hullabaloo blog is better than ever.
Digby's in the middle of her 10th-year(!!!) fundraiser now so she can keep chasing after the bad guys. If you feel so inclined to send a little holiday cheer in her direction, here's the linky dinky. (The donation buttons and snail mail address are on the upper left side of her page.) You won’t get much in return, though. Just the equivilent of a Ph.D. and…more Digby!
Hey. We've almost made it to the end of the week. Clap louder and maybe time will go faster. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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