John Boehner has a potty mouth

Things got a little testy during the late negotiations to avoid the fiscal cliff. The Speaker tired and thirty from lack of booze served at the White House, told the Senate Majority Leader to 'go fuck himself', after the Majority Leader had accused the Speaker of running the House like a 'dictatorship.'

(I felt it was important to directly quote the Speaker, as he was calling out the Majority Leader in the White House Lobby. There are unwritten rules in Washington - There is no fighting in the War Room, and there is no cursing within ear shot of others in The White House lobby. We can at least, take solace in the knowledge that Malia and Sasha were not home at the time.)


Today's gift count (165 gifts): you currently have Nine ladies dancing,

16 young woman engaged in the dairy industry (and possibly their union rep. I've also never considered whether or not the cows come with them. If so contact the Omaha Steak Company), 21 Swans making a racket, 24 geese a' laying (check to see if you can make omelets for all those people), 25 golden rings, 24 calling birds, 21 French hens, 16 turtledoves and 9 partridges in their respective pear trees.



With this many people in the house, contact your local hit man and put out a contract on whomever is sending you these gifts.


January 2, 1882 -
The 28 year old Oscar Wilde arrived in New York City on this date to deliver a series of lectures across the U.S.A.

When a customs inspector asked him if he had anything to declare he replied, "Nothing but my genius." A cursory look through the Oscar Wilde Collection does not say whether or not Oscar enjoyed the full body cavity search by the TSA on that day.


Today in History:
January 2, 1492 -
After a siege that began in 1491, Abu 'abd-Allah Muhammad XII (also known as Boabdil) surrendered Granada (the last Moorish holdout in Spain) to Ferdinand and Isabella, the king and queen of Castile and Aragon, on this date. The incredibly elaborate ceremony, culminating with the handing over of the keys to the Alhambra, brought to an end over 700 years Muslim rule in Spain.

Legend has it that as the royal party moved south toward exile, they reached a rocky prominence which gave a last view of the city. Muhammad XII reined in his horse, and surveying for the last time the Alhambra and the green valley that spread below, burst into tears.

When his mother approached him she said : "Weep like a woman for what you could not defend as a man". The spot from which Muhammad XII looked for the last time on Granada is known as "the Moor's last sigh" (el último suspiro del Moro).


January 2, 1872 -
Brigham Young was arrested on charges of bigamy for having 25 wives on this date.

A cursory look through the Brigham Young Archives reveals that it's the first night he was able to sleep with both eyes closed in years.


January 2, 1890 -
Alice Sanger, the first female White House staff member began work on this date. She was hired as a stenographer for President Benjamin Harrison.

Sanger was the first woman to work a non-domestic service job in the White House, and her appointment was thought to be an olive branch to the growing suffragist movement.


January 2, 1935 -
Bruno Richard Hauptmann went on trial in Flemington, N.J., on charges of kidnapping and murdering the infant son of aviator Charles A. and Anne Lindbergh on this date.



(He would later be found guilty and executed for that crime that he probably did not committed.)


January 2, 1942 -
33 members of a German spy ring headed by Frederick or Fritz Joubert Duquesne were sentenced to serve a total of over 300 years in prison. The Duquesne Spy Ring, as they were known, is the largest espionage case in United States history that ended in convictions.

The 1945 film The House on 92nd Street was also a thinly disguised version of the Duquesne Spy Ring saga of 1941, but differs from historical fact. It won screenwriter Charles G. Booth an Academy Award for the best original motion picture story.


January 2, 1939 -
Time Magazine published its annual Man of the Year issue on this date for the year 1938. Time had chosen Adolf Hitler as the man who "for better or worse" (as Time founder Henry Luce expressed it) had most influenced events of the preceding year. The cover picture featured Hitler playing "his hymn of hate in a desecrated cathedral while victims dangle on a St. Catherine's wheel and the Nazi hierarchy looks on." This picture was drawn by Baron Rudolph Charles von Ripper, a German Catholic who had fled Hitler's Germany.

Who the hell else was nominated?


January 2, 1971 -
An advertising ban on TV commercials for tobacco products goes into effect on this date. The ban was delayed a day so that broadcasters could keep their commitments to advertisers during the Super Bowl the previous day.



Both the ABC and CBS networks later reported that the ban resulted in a fifty per cent drop in advertising revenue, for an estimated loss of $220 million. Under the Fairness Doctrine, the FCC also bans anti-smoking advertisements from broadcast.


January 2, 1974 -
President Richard Nixon signs a bill lowering the maximum U.S. speed limit to 55 MPH in order to conserve gasoline during an OPEC embargo.



Leadfoots everywhere cry out in pain.



And so it goes