The Week Ahead
Monday The first full week of the 117th Congress begins with Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the helm of the House for a historic fourth term. No longer taking up valuable oxygen in the chamber: Dan Lipinski, Steve King, and Doug Collins. Golly they'll be missed, said no one.
The first full week of Brexit also begins, officially severing the UK from the European Union it joined in 1973. But don’t worry, they’ll be fine. When have conservatives ever steered a country wrong?
Continued…
Tuesday After weeks of record-setting early voting, Georgians get one last chance to head to the polls and vote in two elections that will determine the balance of power in the U.S. Senate. If Democrats Jon Ossoff & Raphael Warnock win, you get an extra $1,400 of covid relief in your pocket, plus President Biden's judges and Supreme Court nominees, climate/green energy legislation, a $15 minimum wage, a new Voting Rights Act, the Equality Act, gun control, and and massive infrastructure projects. If Trump cultists David Perdue & Kelly Loeffler win, you get to own the libs. So, y'know…flip a coin.
Wednesday With all eyes fixated on the Senate chamber, the envelopes containing the certified electoral votes of all 50 states from the 2020 presidential election are opened by Mike Pence, who will either declare Joseph R. Biden the winner or make a fast getaway after chewing them up and swallowing them. Following the session, light refreshments will be served on a platter, along with Josh Hawley’s head.
Thursday House Republicans demand the impeachment of President-elect Biden. The official charge: "Something…anything!"
The pandemic suddenly disappears and things get back to normal. Moments later, my alarm clock goes off.
Friday The unemployment numbers for December are released. As usual: if they're good, the president will take all the credit. If they're bad, the president will accuse unemployed people of trying to make him look bad and declare them enemies of the state.
For yet another week, the climate will continue to make good on its promise of delivering change. The maniacal laughter that accompanies it will be troubling.
Saddle up. We have 361 days of 2021 left to tame.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Monday, January 4, 2021
Note: "Former President Trump." "Ex-Vice President Pence." Y'know, I'm warming up to the idea.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til inauguration day: 16
First-time unemployment claims for the final week of 2020: 787,000
Percent of Americans polled by Suffolk University/USA Today who believe that the electoral college should and should not, respectively, be abolished so that the president can be elected via popular vote: 49%, 47%
Minimum percent of dentists surveyed by the ADA who say they've seen an increase in tooth grinding and jaw pain among their patients since the pandemic began: 50%
Percent of Americans polled by Fox News who agree that 2020 was a bad year: 78%
Percent of Americans who slept through 2020, apparently: 22%
Lifespan of Adobe Flash: 1996-2020
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Monday feeling…
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CHEERS to January! Anyone who enjoys winter sports is in heaven this month. And hot clam chowder (or your favorite soup, since it's Soup Month) on a frigid, snowy day is unbeatable!
Nancy Pelosi maintains her grip on the Speaker's gavel, doing her damndest to help enact the agenda of Joe Biden, whose landslide electoral vote tally will officially be counted in Congress Wednesday, but not before, lord willing, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock win the Senate races tomorrow and turn control of the upper chamber to the Demon Rats!!!
Plus: minimum wage hikes kick in all over the damn place! It’s Clean Your Computer Month! Be Kind to Food Servers Month! FDR's birthday! Australia Day! National Pie Day! California Dried Plum Digestive Health Month! Marijuana may become legal (or "more legal") in nearly a dozen states! This Saturday is Static Electricity Day, aka The Day the Cat Disappears Into the Closet and Doesn't Come Out Until the Day After Static Electricity Day!
We get a "Full Wolf Moon" on the 28th! MLK Jr. Day is the 18th, two days before the D.C. swamp is drained as Joe Biden takes the oath as our 46th president!!! Here’s an interesting bit of trivia: Today is National Trivia Day! And best of all, this month exclamation points are buy-one-get-one-free!!! Whee!!! What fun!!!
JEERS to keeping track of America’s fugliest numbers. It may be a new year, but unfortunately there's nothing new about our weekly check on the pandemic as the mighty Covid-19 Wurlitzer plays on. 85 million cases worldwide at the moment—over 20 percent of them in the U.S. Here are this week's numbers for the C&J historical record, courtesy of the most depressing tote board in the world, as our death toll now roughly equals the population of America’s 55th-largest city Anaheim, California:
6 months ago: 3 million confirmed cases. 133,000 deaths.
3 months ago: 7.7 million confirmed cases. 215,000 deaths
1 month ago: 15 million confirmed cases. 288,000 deaths
This morning: 21 million confirmed cases. 360,000 deaths
Adding to the bad news is the catastrophic fact that Donald Trump is president for two more weeks of dithering, and the pandemic isn’t even close to over. Anyone know how to safely induce a coma ‘til January 20th? (Oh, right…silly me. Just turn on the Hallmark Channel.)
CHEERS to routing the redcoats. 243 years ago this week, during our War of Independence, George Washington's army drove back a British attack at the Battle of Assunpink Creek and Municipal Airport near Trenton, New Jersey. This was the follow-up to Washington's famous crossing of the Delaware, where he defeated the Hessians by using the aroma of fresh pan-fried wienerschnitzel to lure them into a giant pit:
General William Howe, the British Commander-in-Chief of North America was furious with the defeat at Trenton. He canceled Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis' scheduled leave to Britain for the winter and ordered him to Princeton immediately. […]
Washington's men held back three assaults from the British, felling hundreds of British soldiers in the process, causing Cornwallis to hold a council to decide what to do. … Washington took advantage of the break. … When Cornwallis arose in the morning, to his horror, Washington's entire army was gone.
You might say Cornwallis got his Assunpink handed to him. Ha Ha Ha!!! (Aren't you glad C&J is around for a whole 'nother year of this? Me, too.)
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to adding bleach to the dirty laundering. When the Panama Papers were released five years ago, they shined a damning spotlight on our status as one of the world's top havens for anonymous shell companies operated by the scum of the earth, from sex traffickers to your basic arms merchants of death. But given how things work in our government, I figured nothing would come of them. Happy to be wrong: included in the defense bill that Congress just passed into law over Trump's veto is the Corporate Transparency Act. Over at NBC News, Ian Gary is coming out of his socks with equal parts relief and amazement:
For decades, national security officials, law enforcement officers, human rights groups and anti-corruption advocates have seen the ability to form and misuse anonymous shell companies as arguably the biggest loophole in our anti-money-laundering framework. […]
[T]his act will take the simple yet effective step of requiring companies to report the names of their true owners at the time of formation and update the data upon any changes in ownership.
Despite the bill’s simplicity, its significance is grand. After more than a decade of debate and inaction in Washington, criminals, kleptocrats, tax cheats and terrorists will no longer be able to hide behind the veil of secret companies formed in the United States.
Cool! Now Congress will move on to putting American political fundraising through the legal wringer. Ha ha…my best punch line of 2021 so far.
CHEERS to 84,904 square miles of madcap fun. Happy 124th Birthday to Utah—aka the "Beehive Hairdo State"—which entered the union on January 4th, 1896. The state animal is the Rocky Mountain Elk. The state gem is topaz. The state bird is, oddly, the California Sea Gull. And the state fossil remains, of course, Orrin Hatch.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 4, 2011
OH GOD to the deity whisperer. I know you're on pins and needles waiting to hear what God told Pat Robertson to tell the 700 Club to tell CBS News to tell me to tell you, so I'll spare the formalities and cut to the chase:
Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson says God told him that the U.S. is bankrupt and heading into economic turmoil, but there won't be a global nuclear holocaust. Robertson said God told him that America's lenders will demand repayment—not this year, but in 2012—and the U.S. won't be able to pay, resulting in currency collapse, rampant unemployment and riots.
Economics and thermonuclear war? Nothing about the poor? Nothing about the sick? Nothing about the hungry? Nothing about the downtrodden or the less-fortunate or the oppressed? Or the wicked or the greedy or the hypocritical or the tyrannical? Pat obviously caught the Lord on an Old Testament day. [1/4/21 Update: God also told Robertson that Trump would win the election “without question.” Oops. I think He needs to leave the predictions to Daily Kos Elections and go back to work at Shake Shack.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to cleaning up a little unfinished business. Last week in C&J we reminded ourselves that our Friday "Who Won the Week" polls offered ample evidence throughout 2020 that there was a small army of do-gooders—from clear-eyed judges putting the brakes on Republican efforts to seize power, to scientists giving us the tools necessary to put the brakes on the coronavirus—who prevented the year from being a total washout. We covered three out of the four quarters of the year, and it'd be downright gooberiffic of us to not give the fourth its due. So here are the winners of the week from October through December, including I believe the first time (Nov. 20) a hardcore Republican has hauled home the trophy:
Oct 2 New York Times Reporters Russ Buettner, Susanne Craid, and Mike McIntire, for getting hold of Trump's tax returns going back decades to confirm he's nothing but a broke, corrupt, desperate huckster
Oct 9 The federal & state law enforcement officials who stopped a right-wing terrorist cell—emboldened by President Trump—from kidnapping Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
Oct 16 The estimated 21,000,000 Americans, including those standing in outrageous lines to shatter early-voting records in Texas, Georgia and other states, who have early-voted
Oct 23 Team Biden-Harris: rockin' the polls; strong closing ads; earns USA Today's first POTUS endorsement; crushes it at debate; Obama filets Trump in Philly speech
Oct 30 The 84 million early voters, and all the phone/text bankers, door knockers, postcard writers, and ride-givers who have turned out to make sure Trump and his evil enablers get turned out
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Nov 6 "All of the above"—related to Democratic wins in the historic 2020 elections
Nov 13 Team Biden-Harris: officially our new POTUS/VPOTUS-elect with 306 EVs, 5+ million vote lead; Joe's Covid task force earns rave reviews; and Nationals ask him to throw out first 2021 pitch
Nov 20 Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger (R), for fiercely defending the state's election integrity & certifying the results for Biden despite pressure to rig them for Trump (who later called Raffensperger "an enemy of the people")
Nov 27 Team Biden-Harris: Smashes 80 million votes, leading Trump by over 6 mil; PA, MI, MN, & NV join GA election certification for Joe/Kamala; rave reviews for cabinet picks; transition access officially granted.
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Dec 4 America's medical professionals enduring burnout and red-hatted covidiots to keep on saving lives as the pandemic spirals out of control
Dec 11 (Tie) PA Attorney General Josh Shapiro, for calling the Texas lawsuit attempting to nullify the 2020 election a "seditious abuse of the judicial process" … and Team Biden-Harris: "Safe Harbor Day" makes win official; 57 post-election court victories, including two at Supreme Court; Joe & Kamala voted TIME Persons of the Year
Dec 18 Medical scientists, as Pfizer and Moderna vaccines & rapid at-home test get FDA approval, and the first vaccine goes to nurse Sandra Lindsay of Long Island Jewish Medical Center
Dec 26 The doctors, nurses, hospital administrative staff, and first-responders working round-the-clock as covid casts its pall over the holidays
Stay tuned as the 2021 winner's circle fills up with heroes and achievers who go above and beyond to make this magma-filled everlasting galactic gobstopper a more pleasant place on which to hurtle through space. Make sure you slather on plenty of aloe gel—you know how easily you chap at 67,000 miles per hour.
Oh, and quick programming note: Stacey Abrams is on with Stephen Colbert tonight (11:30, CBS) to talk about the Georgia senate vote. Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
“Bill in Portland Maine—think about what a yutz this guy is!"
—George Clooney
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