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Late Night Humor
The Tonight Show
with Jay Leno
Barack Obama’s people are trying to
lower expectations. Everyone thinks he’s going to be able to fix
everything. If they want to lower expectations, they should keep
some of those Bush people on.
A political organization has filmed a
new TV ad thanking Sarah Palin for all she did for the campaign.
The organization is called the Democratic Party.
The executives of the Big Three
automakers have said that they will now carpool to Washington next year
instead of flying in on private jets. To make sure there won’t
be any problems, they will drive a Toyota.
The economy is so bad, the White House
turkey turned down the pardon. He says he lost all his money in
the stock market and has nothing left to live for.
Late Show Top Ten
Top Ten Signs
President Bush Doesn’t Care Anymore
10. Hasn’t taken off his Iron Man
costume since Halloween
9. The menu for the White House Thanksgiving dinner? Corn dogs
and Beefaroni
8. Drew a picture of Garfield on Dick Cheney’s
bald head
7. He’s barely trying to ruin the economy anymore
6. Spent the entire weekend in the Oval Office pardoning himself
5. Saw Osama at Arby’s drive-thru but didn’t feel like chasing
him
4. Spends Cabinet meetings scanning classifieds for next job
3. Primary focus is surpassing Hank Paulson’s high score on
“Guitar Hero”
2. Asking Obama, “How soon can you bail me out of the White
House?”
1. Started dating hefty interns
Late Show with
David Letterman
They have a new balloon at the Macy’s
Thanksgiving Day Parade: the John McCain balloon — it never gets
off the ground.
A mailman was arrested for not
delivering junk mail. Still no word on bin Laden.
Obama got $800 billion to rescue the
economy. All I can say is, Thank you, Oprah.
During the transition, President Bush
is busy granting pardons. Today he pardoned Sarah Palin for her
interview with Katie Couric.
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Today’s Papers
Mourning in Mumbai
The
New York Times leads with
emerging questions about how the Mumbai gunmen evaded
security forces and whether the government could have heeded
warnings from last year that showed the city was vulnerable from
the sea. The
Washington Post leads with more details about how
the attacks went down, as told by several American survivors who
were fired upon with no defense but to play dead. The
Los Angeles Times off-leads the
latest from Mumbai, while the top slot goes to possible
future repercussions of today’s bailouts. The government’s
deficit could top $1 trillion next year, and analysists warn
“the nation’s next financial crisis could come from the
staggering cost of battling the current one.”
The
WP’s
lead story is full of Mumbai attack survivors giving their
gruesome, tragic play-by-plays, including one group of Americans
fired upon in the “posh lobby café” of the Oberoi hotel.
Nashville resident Linda Ragsdale at first pretended to be dead,
but was shot when she pulled a 13-year-old American girl to the
ground, hoping to help her escape the gunfire. The girl died on
the floor next to Ragsdale, who spoke from a hospital. (The
general death tolls vary, but all three papers report 6 American
deaths.) Outside the hospitals, the city is slowly beginning to
stir again: The LAT
notes that Mumbai prides itself on being a city that bounces
back quickly, as it did after a 2006 bombing. That optimism is
leading many to resume their normal activities, though some are
referring to the attacks as their “9/11″ and remain leery of
crowded public places.
Indian defense
minister A. K. Antony told the country’s parliament in 2007 that
he had received intelligence about attacks from the sea, the
NYT
reports, based on details in the
Indian Express. A subsequent investigation showed
the Indian Navy and Coast Guard lacking in long-range
surveillance equipment. (None of the papers catch the overnight
news that Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil, facing heavy
criticism for the attacks, has
resigned.)
New initiatives
ranging from $600 billion spent to lower mortgage rates to $200
billion handed off to stabilize Citigroup have ratcheted the
government’s bailout costs to $8.5 trillion—half of the United
States’ total economic output this year, the
LAT
reports. Both the Bush administration and Obama’s economic
team are approaching the current situation as direly as a war,
“vowing to spend whatever it takes to avoid a depression;
they’ll worry about the effect later.” Not all of these
staggering figures are direct government spending, and the
government even stands to make money on transactions like the
purchase of equity in troubled banks. But at the very least,
Bush and Obama’s aggressive responses to the crisis may threaten
Obama’s expensive policy proposals like middle-class tax cuts
and a healthcare overhaul.
We need a
healthcare overhaul more than ever, experts tell the
WP in a
front-page story on the system’s wastefulness and
inefficiency. The U.S. spends 16 percent of its GDP on
healthcare, but the numbers show Americans getting a poor return
for their investment: we’re “29th in infant mortality, 48th in
life expectancy and 19th out of 19 industrialized nations in
preventable deaths.” The consensus among insurers, physicians,
and executives on the direction the industry should go is
“remarkable” for people with so many competing interests; most
of the experts suggest dramatically increasing efforts to
promote prevention and wellness.
The
NYT
reports that, as part of an agreement with Barack Obama,
Bill Clinton will release the names of 200,000 donors to his
foundation to “avoid any appearance of conflict of interest with
Mrs. Clinton’s duties as the nation’s top diplomat.” Releasing
the donor list was one of nine conditions Clinton agreed upon with
the Obama transition team, a detailed pact that also allows
Obama’s State Department to review the former president’s future
speeches and business activities. Known controversial donors to Clinton’s foundation include the house of Saud and “a
tycoon who is the son-in-law of Ukraine’s former authoritarian
president.”
The Cathedral of
St. John the Divine’s in Manhattan, the largest Gothic cathedral in the
world, will be reopen today after the completion of a $41.5
million renovation,
the
NYT reports. The cathedral’s massive pipe organ,
which was dismantled after a 2001 fire, will be played for the
first time in seven years at the rededication service.
The
WP fronts a
story on the complete absence of acorns in the D.C. area
this year, a mysterious act of nature that has botanists abuzz
and squirrels starving. The acorn drought seems to be part of a
natural cycle for the area’s oaks, and similar conditions have
been reported as far away as upstate
New York and Nova Scotia.
Lucille Two is back! After surviving numerous tabloid
marriages, “loopy” interviews, and a debilitating brush with
brain disease, Liza Minnelli is returning to Broadway in a
new show entitled “Liza’s At the Palace.” Along with the
usual celebrity new-beginning pleasantries, Minnelli
tells the
NYT
how she took control of her life’s drama and why
she’s decided to stay single.
Late Night Humor
Late Night with
Conan O’Brien
In a speech this morning, Barack Obama
said, “This isn’t about big government or small government. It’s
about building a smarter government.” When he heard this,
President Bush said, “I get it, I get it. I’m leaving.”
Earlier today, John McCain gave his
first press conference since the election, and he said that for
a lot of people, Sarah Palin was an energizing factor during the
campaign. Unfortunately for McCain those people are called
Democrats.
A new study has found that the Ford
Motor Company makes the cars with the highest safety ratings.
Apparently Ford cars are so safe because they never leave the
dealer’s lot.
The Late Late Show
with Craig Ferguson
Sarah Palin is back on the campaign
trail. She’s going to go to the Senate runoff election down in
Georgia. As soon as she finds out
where Georgia is, she’s going right down
there . . .
Somali pirates have captured another
ship. Interestingly, al-Qaida has declared war on the pirates —
it’s like evil versus evil. It’s like Dick Cheney versus his
lawyer.
The pirates have gone high-tech. They
even have MySpace pages. Current mood? “Looking for booty.”
Jimmy Kimmel Live!
I had $350,000 riding on Lance Bass to
win “Dancing With the Stars.” Now I have to sell my house.
Unless Lance comes up with the money he owes me.
For many voters, dancing wasn’t so
important. The undecided factor was the economy.
Barack Obama’s wife Oprah Winfrey has
her “Favorite Things” show this week. She’s featuring affordable
things this year . . . thumbtacks.
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