Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Note: Wanna win an argument right quick? Just squint at your opponent and growl, "Don't make me go all Boies-Olson on yer ass."

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By the Numbers:

Days 'til Labor Day: 27

Days `til Seattle Hempfest: 11

Number of years in America's history that we've been at war: 47 (20%)

(Source: The Week)

Average age of a Supreme Court Justice before Elena Kagan: 69

Average age of a Supreme Court Justice after Kagan was sworn in: 64

(Source: The New York Times)

Revenue at U.S. casinos in, respectively, 2006 and 2009: $34 billion / $30.7 billion

(Source: AP)

Weight of the engraved boulder that the English town of Shitterton bought to replace the ordinary sign that kept getting stolen: 3,000 pounds

(Source: The Telegraph)

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Tuesday Words of Wisdom from the Right-wing Blogosphere:

This needs investigating, they may just let her drop out of that position and keep the racist doing paperwork, or taking the trash out....she needs to be FIRED !!!!! will follow up with FOX ,and let them find out about this... This is pretty much proof that NAACP allows racist in their organization. Notice that the news medias, abc,cbs,nbc is NOT covering this although they covered the tea party racist claim.... ---Commenter TBR in a Yahoo message board, calmly sifting through the evidence and reserving judgment on the day Andrew Breitbart released his doctored video of Shirley Sherrod

All together now: One...two...three... Classy!!!

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Puppy Pic of the Day: Cover girl!

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CHEERS to sweet tweets. After months of speculation and suspense, it would appear, according to The Nation (a fine publication to which you should subscribe), that progressives finally have a reason to celebrate truly, madly, and deeply:

WH (& others) indicate Elizabeth Warren 2 be nominated next week to head Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Kudos 2 all who worked 4 her.

If true, someone take away her nail clippers. For that job she won’t be needing them anymore.

CHEERS to primary day! Here we go, kids---it's all on the line today in Colorado, Minnesota and Connecticut, with runoff elections in Georgia. The race I'm watchin' today is the Connecticut governor's primary, where m'buddy Ned Lamont has a real good chance of being the Dem contender. He's got an invite for you nutmegers:

After you've found your polling place, voted, and asked your friends and family to vote as well, please join me on Tuesday at 8:15PM at Testo's, 1775 Madison Avenue, in Bridgeport to watch the returns come in! For information about how and where to vote, or to help out, please click here.

Good luck to all the progressive Democratic candidates. And fair warning: the voting booth pens have GPS chips in 'em now so swipe 'em at your peril.

OOOH ICKY ICKY! to sleeping with the slimeballs. Oh, lord, grab some popcorn and pull up a seat. Republicans is fightin':

The Georgia governor runoff careens toward an end Tuesday, and in the closing weeks the bitter fight between Republicans Karen Handel and Nathan Deal has become a proxy war among several leading 2012 presidential candidates.

In this corner: the primped 'n pretty dream team of Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, who want Handel to win. And in that corner: the wielders of the jowls of death, Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee, who want Deal to win. So no matter which candidate wins, they both lose.

JEERS to separation anxiety. A huge "ice island" four times the size of Manhattan broke up with Greenland and is now careening out of control at .00001 mph. Why the separation? Some blame it on global warming. Others blame it on a fight over a groupie. (You don’t even wanna know what it looks like when it trashes a hotel room.)

P.S. Schuuuultz!!! Find those iceberg aliens and lock them up in the cooooler! DIS...missed!

CHEERS (because we never jeer anyone on their birthday) to Herbert Hoover. Today marks #31's 136th orbit around the sun. He was in many ways an outstanding public servant---1928 southern strategy and awful presidency excluded---and he certainly upheld traditional Republican Values:

The president...preferred not to see the servants at all. The mansion's bell system was used to keep a distance between Hoover and the people who served him: Three rings announced his approach, requiring staff to hide in the nearest closet until he was out of sight. The same went for the groundskeepers, who found themselves jumping behind shrubs when the president was rumored to be nearby. Those staff members with an insufficient cloaking device faced the possibility of dismissal.

---From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien"

Go pay your respects here...very quietly from behind the bushes.

JEERS to whatever they're smokin' over at CNBC. Erin Burnett dropped by the Chris Matthews Show over the weekend, and during the "Tell Me Something I Don't Know" segment, she gushed:

"This week we found out mortgages were almost a record low for a 30-year mortgage. Home sales are still down. We can’t get better without housing getting better. One economist out there, he said, 'Guess what? We're gonna see new home construction double in the next two years.' It'll be huge for the American economy. We've got Dupont, Move Makers, all of them saying it's possible this is doubling. If that happens, we're gonna be in a totally different place."

I'll preserve this bit of unicorn-petting in the mighty C&J archives and yank it out every Friedman Unit or so to check on its status. Prediction: Burnett and her "one economist out there" will wish I hadn't.

CHEERS to great advances in sodapopology. On August 10, 1889, Dan Rylands patented the screw cap for bottles. Very convenient, yes. But we still keep breaking our teeth on 'em just the same.

CHEERS to finishing the job. Ladies and Gentlemen, C&J Theatre presents our world premiere of Saved By the Speaker in its entirety without commercial interruption. Curtain up...

TOWN HALL MEETING ATTENDEE IN TRI-CORNERED HAT: "Ah'm pissed, I tell ya! Ah'm madder'n a hornet stuck in a horse's ass with nothin' but hippety Hoppity music! Congressman, I tells ya that Obama is a Marxist Communist socialist Kenyan Muslim spy who came here to destroy America and give it to Mexico! Whaddya got to say to that?" TOWN HALL MEETING ATTENDEE #2 WITH POWDERED WIG AND GLOCK STRAPPED TO THIGH: "Ah jus' wanna know one thing, congressman. Are you treadin' on may? Are you treadin' on may???!! Nobody treads on may! You tread on may I tread on you...maybe with 'second amendment remedies' if ya know what ah mean." [SFX: Congressman's cell phone rings] CONGRESSMAN BOOGERSCHMEAR: "'Scuse me, folks, I have to take this call. Hello? Yes, hello, Madam Speaker. What? You need me to fly to Washington right away and vote to save teachers' jobs and shore up Medicaid funding? Yes, Madam Speaker. I'm on my way. Goodbye. [Click] Sorry, folks, but I gotta go." BOOGERSCHMEAR quickly exits and yells from offstage: "Wheeeeee!!!!! I'm Freeeee!!!" [Curtain]

Thank you, thank you! And now that it's over, stay tuned for forty commercials in a row.

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Four years ago in C&J: August 10, 2006

JEERS to red meat for Fox News. The U.S. and Britain are now at Terror Alert Level "Mommy!!!" as an apparent terrorist plot to blow up six-to-ten airliners is apparently thwarted. Officials say all liquids are now banned in the cabins of overseas flights. Great...just what a passenger riding on a potential flying bomb needs: an empty liquor cart.

CHEERS to having the right stuff to survive the wrong turn. John and Annie Glenn were released from the hospital after getting in a fender-bender with another car last week. "I do not recommend you go test your airbags the way we did the other night." Okay...you convinced me.

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And just one more...

CHEERS to C&J's little corner of paradise. Outside magazine is, um, out with its annual list of the Top 25 Dream Towns in America, and the #1 Shangri-la of the east is---[bats eyelashes]---why, it's li'l ol' Portland, Maine:

Portland is one of those rare places that really does combine small-town charm with big(ger)-city opportunities. But what we really love is the uniquely Maine mix of generational fishermen and young professionals, the latter lured here by the relatively low cost of living and (for Maine, at least) a diverse economy that includes everything from major financial and insurance corporations to media companies like our partner Outside TV.

Plus we've got a profitable Amtrak line, a hiking/biking trails system that's growing like a weed, a new hospital, an airport ("jetport," as we properly call it) undergoing expansion, schools getting makeovers, a thriving Red Sox farm team, microbreweries, and even a brand new (and admittedly inside) bowling alley right on the peninsula. Oh, and this is also worth noting: even though lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta started his deadly day in Portland, a permit was recently granted to a group of Muslims who applied to open a new mosque here---and no one batted an eye. (But please don’t tell Gingrich or Palin. We really enjoy the quiet up here.)

Oh, and farewell to goddess Patricia Neal. She introduced me to the product that allows me to tolerate the rantings of Republican halfwits. Much obliged. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?

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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:

I am definitely naming my next cat after Paul Krugman. And the first mouse he brings in will be named Bill in Portland Maine.

---Digby

8/5/10

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