TVSquad

Exxon's executive chief, Lee Raymond, is going to receive a very nice retirement package of $400 million. A package nice enough to outrage the public, suffering from rising gas prices. Jon also let us take a look at Mr. Raymond. Before we had a chance to judge, Jon insisted that Mr. Raymond's wicked jowls are not "the embodiment of greed run amok", but a very important storage system for valuable items such as doubloons, collectible baseball cards and Munch's "Scream".

"War Wars": On to another lovable character: Ol' Donald Rumsfeld. Six different retired generals recently called for his resignation. Rumsfeld found the idea of this laughable, saying that if a Secretary of Defense resigned just because two or three people called for a Secretary of Defense to resign, it'd be like a merry-go-round. Merry-go-round, eh? Jon begged to differ... The state of America is more like "being raped by carnies".

Senior Military Correspondent Dan Bakkedahl shared his insight on the issue. According to Bakkedahl, Rumsfeld didn't anticipate this insurgency... Not the one in Iraq, but the one by the retired generals. Bakkedahl's bottom line: Rumsfeld is a bit of a dick.

"The Eagle Has Loitered": Ed Helms filed a report from Homer, Alaska, the town that has been completely overrun by bald eagles. Some people, like Edgar Bailey (biologist and the only subscriber to Birding), consider this to be a bad thing. Unpatriotic bastard. Others, like Jean Keene (big red hair, big red glasses, wrinkled red lips), believe that this is a wonderful event. Keene goes out everyday to feed the eagles bits of cod (she thaws out pounds and pounds and pounds of cod in her house... which is why the interview was conducted in a hotel room). Helms showed that there are some patriotic people like Keene who fully appreciate our feathery friends and douchebags like Bailey who want to ban feeding the birds just because they can't take the bird crap "fresh glaze of freedom frosting". Helms thoughtfully posed the question, "Let's say you had hundreds of Ben Franklins walking around Homer, eating cod and shitting on cars. Would that be a bad thing? Think about it. What could be more beautiful?" Hands-down the best line of the segment.

The night's guest was Jon Meacham, author of American Gospels. The book is a reminder to people that America was meant to be both religious and secular. I felt that this interview was pretty interesting, even though I didn't agree with parts of it. Pretty straightforward book interview. Not much razzmatazz.

Jon/Stephen: Stephen Colbert applauded Jean Keene for her bald eagle efforts. Colbert's The Colbert Report graphics are pretty eagle-riffic as well. Moment of Zen: Holy CRAP, that's a lot of bald eagles.