From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Late Night Snark: Eat Your Veggies Edition
"What these companies are arguing is that the sincerity of their beliefs should allow them a line item veto over federal law. But government is not an à la carte system where you can pick and choose based on your beliefs. Taxation is more of an all you can eat salad bar. You don't get to show up and go, 'Look, I know it costs $10.99, but I'm only paying $7.50 cuz I have a moral objection to beets.' … if you can persuade enough people of that, then you can have a referendum to remove beets from the salad bar in the future. But until such time, you're paying for those fucking beets!"
---John Oliver
Oh, and this happened.
"Republicans have to stop saying that all those Central American kids we're detaining prove we have to secure the border. The border is secure. How do you think we caught all those damn kids?"
---Bill Maher
"According to a new report from BP, the earth will run out of oil in 53 years. Luckily, thanks to BP, the ocean will still have plenty."
---Seth Meyers
"There was a huge blowout at the World Cup when Germany beat Brazil 7-1 in the semifinals. It got so bad that the refs told Brazil, 'Y'know what? Go ahead and use your hands.'"
---Jimmy Fallon
"Happy birthday to Ed Lowe, the man who invented Kitty Litter. Here's what I admire about Ed Lowe: here was a guy who was thinking inside the box."
---David Letterman
And seven years ago on
The Colbert Report, when a certain Fox News host, whose median viewer age is 72, went apeshit over the fact that the second Yearly Kos (now Netroots Nation) convention in Chicago was going to be huge, with all the presidential candidates except one (Biden, who will be in Detroit for NN14 next week) attending:
Clip of Bill O'Reilly: [Daily Kos is] like the Ku Klux Klan. It's like the Nazi party!
Stephen Colbert: Exactly! The Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis were both notorious for allowing people to express unpopular views in an open and free forum.
Full moon tomorrow. Be sure to get your butt outside and wink at Neil Armstrong (and Elvis, if he's awake). Meanwhile your west coast-friendly edition of Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, July 11, 2014
Note: Just a heads-up that C&J will not appear next week since we'll be on convention duty in Detroit, filling our head with all kinds of far-left nonsense like equality and democracy and progress and suchlike. We'll be back here on Tuesday, July 22. The post-Netroots Nation dirt I end up dishing will depend entirely on how much people there are willing to pay me to not dish it. I hope they're tightwads!
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8 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Bastille Day:
3
Days 'til the 37th annual
Prince Lot Hula Festival at Moanalua Gardens, Hawaii:
8
Percent of people who bought health insurance plans through the ACA who said they were somewhat or very satisfied with their new health insurance:
73%
Percent of newly insured Republicans (including those whose crappy plans got canceled last year) who like their new health insurance plans:
74%
(Source: Commonwealth Fund
survey)
Percent of Americans who use a cellphone exclusively now:
40%
Percent of households who only use a landline phone, down from 17% in 2009:
9%
(Source: CDC survey)
Rolls Royce cars (starting price: $263k) sold in the first half of
this year, up 500 from the first half of 2013:
1,968
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NEW! Michele Bachmann Departure Countdown
Michele Bachmann and her googly eyes leave Congress in 176 days. If you're asking yourself if she'll continue to say idiotic stuff like this in private life, I need to ask: you really need to ask?
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Puppy Pic of the Day: By request, C&J's lab mix and rescue peach from Macon, Georgia, Haley…
Spooky: no matter where you go, her eyes follow you around the room.
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CHEERS to another edition of Simple Answers to Simple-Minded Questions. Yesterday Speaker of the House John Boehner stepped up to a microphone and, in his angryman voice that he does so unconvincingly, bellowed about President Obama:
"When's he going to take responsibility for something?!!"
When you pass a bill instead of the buck and give him something to take responsibility for. This has been another edition of
Simple Answers to Simple-Minded Questions.
JEERS to empty excuses. Portland, Maine's southern municipal neighbor, inexplicably named "South Portland," is home to one end of a pipeline that sends various fuels from docked tankers here up to Canada. But the recent tar-sands frenzy up north has folks here worried that the flow might be reversed, sending that heavy-ass crude in our direction to be shipped overseas. That's why the SoPo city council gave preliminary approval (6-1) to an ordinance that would preemptively nix that idea. Portland Press Herald columnist Bill Nemitz says the opposition is, well, a bit short on intelligent rebuttals:
Blech. You can keep it, Canada.
Maybe it was the guy from Steep Falls who told South Portland city councilors that if they approve the city’s “Clear Skies Ordinance,” they’ll forfeit the right to begin their meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance “because you don’t believe in it.”
Or maybe it was the 25-year employee of Portland Pipe Line Corp. who told the councilors that by banning the bulk loading of crude oil onto tankers in Portland Harbor, they’d “sell our souls to coffee shops, bakeries and restaurants.”
To their credit, however, no one claimed that the ordinance would take away people's guns, give the U.N. the green light to establish a One World Order, impose Sharia law, or cause millions of illegals to stream in from Maine's border with Mexico. Probably because they're saving that for round two.
CHEERS to a man who knew his way around a one-room cabin in the woods. Happy birthday to Henry David Thoreau, born 197 years ago tomorrow on July 12, 1817. He told the world to "Simplify! Simplify!" And his writings on civil disobedience influenced many, including Martin Luther King, Jr., who wrote in his autobiography:
"I mostly imagine myself
as a lazy butthead."
---BiPM
I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in our civil rights movement; indeed, they are more alive than ever before. Whether expressed in a sit-in at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, these are outgrowths of Thoreau's
insistence that evil must be resisted and
that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice.
By the way, if you're looking to buy the perfect housewarming gift for a
Walden lover, we still say that you can't go wrong with a Thoreau rug.
CHEERS to high times in the Alki state. Colorado now has company in the world of legalized pot. Washington state started allowing businesses to sell weed for recreational use this week and, well, it was pretty exciting:
The first sale and first customer in Bellingham, a visitor from Kansas, drew all the attention of a Powerball lottery winner. At 8:03 a.m., Cale Holdsworth bought two grams of pot for $26.50 as photographers and TV cameramen recorded the sale for posterity. “What better way to show support and participate,” he said before the sale. He had been waiting in line outside the Bellingham business since 4 a.m. Tuesday.
If Colorado's experience with their new law is any indication, there's
one thing Washington is going to need besides more snack aisles: a bigger bank vault.
P.S. I believe Barack Obama is the first sitting president around which people feel comfortable enough to ask in a crowded room, "Do ya want a hit, man?" POTUS said no thanks. He's so distant and aloof. I say twist up a fat one, America, and impeach!
JEERS to "Second Amendment remedies." 210 years ago tomorrow, Treasury Secretary, Founding Father and Horny Horndog Alexander Hamilton got knocked off during a duel in Weehawken, New Jersey, directly across from Manhattan. I mention this tragedy not to harp on the silliness of duels, but as a perfectly valid excuse to play this advertising-hall-of-fame commercial with the killer setup one more time:
Puhhhhfeck.
Universal sign of Red
Sox fans in distress.
CHEERS to the Bambino's beginnings. On this date in 1914, Babe Ruth debuted in the majors as a pitcher with the Boston Red Sox, and they ROCKED!!! Then they sold him to the (obligatory adjective alert: fucking) Yankees five years later, after which the "Curse of the Bambino" left the Sox World-Series-less for 86 years because they SUCKED!!! Then they won the Series in 2004 and again in 2007 and they ROCKED!!! Then for the next five years they SUCKED!!! But last year they ROCKED!!! And so far this season they've SUCKED so hard that all hope has been drained from Fenway's Optimism Reserve and that SUCK SUCK SUCKS!!! Not that we're bitter.
Will this flick get the coveted
"Obama bump" this weekend?
CHEERS to home vegetation. Here's some of the haps on the teevee this weekend. Tonight (after Rachel) on HBO's
Real Time, Bill Maher talks with Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), glaciologist Jason Box, journalist Ron Suskind, insufferable right-wing pundit Reihan Salam, and writer/actress Sandra Tsing Loh. New
DVD releases include Jason Bateman's foul-mouthed spelling-bee comedy
Bad Words and the actioner
The Raid 2 (and I bet
The Departed gets a fresh look after Obama's snarky
reference to it yesterday). Your
baseball schedule is here and Sunday's World Cup final is between Germany and Argentina. After that, the C&J vuvuzela goes back in the closet for, oh, about 15 minutes because I know it pisses off all my neighbors so why ruin a good thing? Speaking of Sunday: John Oliver is back for another edition of
Last Week Tonight on HBO. Boy, is he firing on all smoked kippers lately.
On Bill Moyers & Company, Linda Greenhouse (NYT) and Dahlia Lithwick (Slate) discuss last week's attack on America by the Supreme Court and its judicial weapons of mass destruction. And here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif; Martin Indyk, the former Mideast peace envoy, and The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg on humans behaving badly in the Middle East; Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) on the Mexico border situation and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) on the Canadian border situation (them Canadians is stealing our precious Vernors!); roundtable with Jennifer Granholm, Google Santorum, Stephen Henderson and Kimberly Strassel; Lester Holt on the high cost of limes.
I hope Netanyahu updates us
on his bomb fuse thingy when
he's on CBS and CNN.
This Week: Attorney General Eric Holder is told that John Boehner wants to sue President Obama, and spends the rest of the interview laughing; Trayvon Martin's friend Rachel Jeantel on the one-year anniversary of the Zimmerman verdict; roundtable with Anna Navarro, disgraced neocon Bill Kristol, David Plouffe and Cokie Roberts in full "these tea cakes are underbaked!" mode; The Scurvy Prevention Center's Angie Loma on the high cost of limes.
Face the Nation: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Ambassador Maen Rashid Areikat discuss immigration problem in Texas; Texas Governor Rick Perry and Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) and Lamar Smith (R-TX) discuss the Israel-Palestine problem; the roundtable with Jane Harman (Wilson Center), Nia-Malika Henderson (WaPost), Danielle Pletka (AEI) and Gerald Seib (WSJ) discuss the high cost of limes.
CNN's State of the Union: This week it's Candy crowley's turn to babysit John McCain while Cindy goes shopping; Benjamin Netanyahu; border patrol agent Chris Cabrera; GOP Reps. Marsha Blackburn and Aaron Schock and Democratic Reps. Donna Edwards and Beto O’Rourke; Darth Sidious hologram on the high cost of limes.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX); Ambassador Dennis Ross, former special assistant to President Obama; unhelpful roundtable with disgraced political mathematician Karl Rove, Bob Woodward, Juan Williams and Laura Ingraham; Charles Krauthammer on why Obama's impeachment over the high cost of limes is a sure-fire winner for Republicans in 2016 if not before.
Happy viewing!
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Five years ago in C&J: July 11, 2009
JEERS to the CIA. Which apparently stands for Coverups In Action:
Four months after he was sworn in, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta learned of an intelligence program that had been hidden from Congress since 2001, a revelation that prompted him to immediately cancel the initiative and schedule a pair of closed-door meetings on Capitol Hill. The next day, June 24, Panetta informed the House and Senate intelligence committees of the program and the action he had taken, according to Democratic and Republican members of the panels.
And just like that,
"Wild Roman-style Orgy Thursdays" got axed. Killjoys.
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And just one more…
HA HA!!! to revisiting the prediction of the century. With the 9th annual Netroots Nation convention six days away, it's worth remembering that it all started as "Yearly Kos." (Kudos to Pastor Dan Schultz, Gina Cooper and the team that put in the work to make that first experiment in Vegas such a chocolate fountainy success). But storm clouds gathered that same year when highly-influential right-wing journalist insisted that the Great Orange Satan was on the cusp of tumbling into the ash heap of history:
IS THE DAILY KOS ABOUT TO IMPLODE?
July 12, 2006
If the sight of Kos in a suit
didn't ruin us, nothing will.
It appears that the post-Yearly Kos month from hell is continuing for Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the proprietor of the Internet's premier liberal blog Daily Kos. After receiving some extremely negative press from major publications such as The New York Times, The New Republic and Newsweek immediately following his seemingly successful bloggers' convention in Las Vegas, Kos is now faced with an even greater challenge: dissension within his ranks.
Such internal squabbling comes at the same time that many prominent Democrats seem to be privately expressing concern about the direction the "netroots"---the self-described Internet grassroots movement of liberal bloggers and their loyal followers---are taking the Party. This seemingly inconvenient planetary alignment is not only threatening the long-term viability of this crusade, but also is putting Kos in an uncomfortable position just as his notoriety is skyrocketing.
Eight years, seven bigger-and-better Netroots Nation conventions, and oodles of election victories both big and small later, "The" Daily Kos continues to not implode. We're on great terms with a large number of Democratic lawmakers (Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi and Alan Grayson to name a few), candidates, unions, and grassroots organizers inside the liberal universe. Sure, our occasional pie fights are the stuff of legend. But imploding? Please. Still, perhaps I might get a second opinion about whether or not it's time to fold up our virtual tent poles and hide-rate ourselves into oblivion. Maybe next week I'll ask one of the lowly nobodies we scrounged up out of desperation to speak at our floundering little conference in Detroit. I believe he's known in some circles as the
Vice President of the United States. May he be merciful with his fingertip lightning bolts.
Have an implosion-free weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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