“Not a Black Dog, Not a Black Cat...”
Donald Trump promised in 2016 he’d be such a popular president that by 2020 he’d have 95 percent of Black voters on his side. With the end of the election just around the corner, Jimmy Kimmel set out to see how that promise is holding up...
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Then again, there’s still 20 days to go.
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, October 14, 2020
Note: Please sign my petition for a constitutional amendment requiring all American flags to wear an American flag pin. But not American flag underwear, because that would just be silly and probably hurt if you sat down wrong. I mean, seriously, what’s wrong with you? —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til National Nut Day: 8
Estimated portion of voters who will have voted by the end of this week: 1/3
Amount Kansas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Barbara Bollier raised in the 3rd quarter, a state record: $13.5 million
Number of LGBTQ candidates appearing on various ballots across America this year, up from 432 in 2018: 574
Number of the Vatican's Swiss Guards who recently tested positive for covid-19: 4
Total number of influenza cases seen this past winter in New Zealand, a 99.8% reduction from previous years: 6
Year Washington, Iowa's State Theater opened, making it the oldest continuously-operated movie theater in the world: 1897
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 182 (including 3 gogs and 1 Taliban endorsement of the sitting Republican president). Soul Protection Factor 45 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: The entirety of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in 14 seconds...
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JEERS to Day 2. The confirmation hearings of some judge who, like Neil Gorsuch, will soon be illegitimately installed by Republicans on the Supreme Court continued yesterday. Let's copy and paste this actual exchange here and see if we can suss out any clues as to her judicial temperament:
"The rivers shall run red with the blood of the unbelieving heathen, and man shall take his rightful place at the top of the pecking order lest God the Father smite ye in thy beds! The maritally-infidelitous fornicators shall be sent to re-education camps to repent their wicked ways! The devil's minimum-wage hikers shall be banished from the poor, downtrodden corporations and cast out of the Kingdom of Heaven at the barrel of a AR-15 like the kind the Minutemen used in 1775 at the battle of Lexington, Kentucky, but not before the skies turn black and lightning strikeths every woman who believeth she has control over her own body and every American who insisteth that health care is a—P’tooey!—human right. And yea, I say to you: REPENT! REPENT! REPENT, SINNERS! Or spend eternity in a Soros-approved den of serpents and hellfires!"
"Uh, ma'am? The question was, would you like to break for lunch now?"
I like her. She's got spunk.
JEERS to the Second Coming. While science-denying Republican senators play fast and loose with proper covid safety protocols in the confirmation hearings…and the president claims "total immunity" from the covid that ravaged his bloated body last week…and his brainwashed cult continues packing themselves into his rallies like lobotomized sardines…and young people continue insisting they're not at risk for the virus…an inconvenient truth reared its head this week and gave them all something new to deny:
A [25-year-old] Nevada man who had already gone through a bout of COVID-19 was infected a second time with even worse symptoms, doctors say. They believe it is the first documented case of reinfection in the US, a rare occurrence that nonetheless suggests having had COVID-19 does not automatically confer immunity.
During the second infection, the man was found to be short of breath and hypoxic—meaning his blood was short of oxygen. He was sent to the emergency room for oxygen, the report said.
The Lancet Infectious Diseases study's findings have "significant" implications for how we understand immunity, Dr. Mark Pandori, an associate professor of pathology at the University of Nevada who was a coauthor of the study, told the BBC. "Our findings signal that a previous infection may not necessarily protect against future infection," he said.
And in other news:
Less than 40 percent of Americans have lost their minds. That’s progress.
CHEERS to that guy America really, really liked. Happy 130th birthday to Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower, bringer-downer of the Third Reich and our 34th president. According to author Cormac O'Brien (Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents), Eisenhower loved golf and played at least 150 rounds a year during his presidency, a right he earned because he worked hard and smart and responsibly. And while the deplorables went apeshit over Hillary Clinton's brief bout of pneumonia in 2016, they say nothing about Ike’s heart attacks, his intestinal affliction known as ileitis (a cousin of Crohn's disease), and his 1957 cerebral occlusion during which he terrified wife Mamie by "stuttering a bunch of incoherent words" and then "pounding his fists in frustration at not being able to enunciate his own thoughts." Then there's this:
His domestic agenda bore a striking resemblance to those of his Democratic predecessors.
He expanded Social Security and spent lavishly on public works projects such as the interstate highway system. Though mostly silent on issues of race, he intervened forcefully to support the desegregation of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas [and signed into law the first civil rights bill in 82 years].
He was also just as disgusted as Harry Truman had been by Senator Joe McCarthy's rabid anticommunism rabble-rousing.
Plus he famously had a few harsh words for our out-of-control military-industrial complex. Pay your respects here. And once more, for old time's sake: Sieg heil! [Thppt!] Heil! [Thppt!] right in der Fuhrer's face.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to the number crunchers among us. The Nobel Prize for economics was awarded this week to a pair of gentlemen with giant, throbbing dendrites in their heads and space-age auction paddles in their hands:
This year’s Laureates, Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, have studied how auctions work. They have also used their insights to design new auction formats for goods and services that are difficult to sell in a traditional way, such as radio frequencies. Their discoveries have benefitted sellers, buyers and taxpayers around the world. […]
People have always sold things to the highest bidder, or bought them from whoever makes the cheapest offer. Nowadays, objects worth astronomical sums of money change hands everyday in auctions, not only household objects, art and antiquities, but also securities, minerals and energy. Public procurements can also be conducted as auctions.
Milgrom and Wilson invented new formats for auctioning off many interrelated objects simultaneously, on behalf of a seller motivated by broad societal benefit rather than maximal revenue.
While the news was greeted enthusiastically by the business world, Donald Trump noted that there still hasn’t been a Nobel Prize awarded for the miracle of trickle-down Reaganomics, leading "many people I'm hearing" to suspect that the Stockholm-based Nobel committee has been rigged by Crooked Hillary, Barack Obama and Crazy Nancy, and prompting a call for a total and complete ban on Swedes entering the country “until we figure out what the hell's going on.” He added that an exception would be made for Swedish supermodels, whom he would personally vet on Air Force One. And in other news, 20 days before voting ends Donald Trump's favorability among women still stands at Kellyanne Conway.
JEERS to Democratic brain farts we'd like to forget. Speaking of dissing women, 115 years ago today, in 1905, former president Grover Cleveland wrote an article for Ladies Home Journal opposing women's voting rights. His words:
"We all know how much further women go than men in their social rivalries and jealousies...sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by men and women in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence."
I believe the relative position of his wife's rolling pin that night was right between his eyes.
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 14, 2010
CHEERS to finding an heir in your lens. Yay! Finally we've got some photographic proof that Kim Jong Ill's successor is possibly a real live human. His name is Kim Jong Un. Huh—looks more like a Dick to me.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to home sweet home. Livability is out with its latest list of the Top 100 Best Places to Live. The top ten are populated by 100k+ cities like Fort Collins, Madison, Fargo and Asheville…and this humble Maine hamlet of only 66,000 on the northeast Atlantic coast checking in at #4:
The secret’s out—Portland is on the rise, thanks to its supportive business climate, incredible quality of life and creative residents. This city in southern Maine is home to 66,000 residents, so it’s just the right size for finding your tribe.
Families love living in Portland, where nature is just out the front door and history abounds. It also has an incredible food scene, plenty of arts and culture opportunities and a true sense of community.
Sounds right to me. Then again, I’ve only lived here for 27 blissful years. More study is needed.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"As this crowd is chanting that there are members of the press here who suck, I should also point out what also sucks: Cheers and Jeers.”
—Jim Acosta
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