From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Ho Ho Ho!!!
It's gift giving season, and here are some offerings from the Republican party for all the conniving conservatives on your CHRISTmas list:
The EZ Bake God's Law Oven! Spread out the Supreme Court decision you disagree with---like, say, Roe v. Wade or Obergefell v. Hodges---on the handy baking sheet, pop it in the oven, turn the knob and Presto! Out comes a yummy biblical edict from the Lord A'mighty rendering it null and void. Personally recommended and endorsed by constitutional non-scholar Marco Rubio!
Acme Magic Video Creator! If you've made a false claim about something you witnessed to score cheap political points---like, say, harvesting of baby parts by Planned Parenthood or New Jersey residents cheering the World Trade Center towers as they fell---you need the Acme Magic Video Creator! Just push the button, describe the content of the footage you need, and watch it appear before your very eyes. [Disclaimer: But nobody else's eyes. We're working on that.]
The Illegal Immigrant Express!
Pack up to 11 million illegals into this happy little engine-that-can and watch it chug-chug the whole bunch back across the Mexican border, dump 'em off, and return for more! Comes with locomotive, Donald Trump conductor action figure, and as many boxcars as ya need to ship 'em out.
Drill Here, Drill Now Play Set! Solar sucks! Wind blows! Fossil fuels are what real Americans use to make America great again you betcha! The Drill Here, Drill Now Play Set comes with a drill. A big drill. A massive, 30-foot-wide behemoth of a drill that makes professional drillers stop and mumble, "Holy [Bleep]! That's a [Bleep]-ing drill." Comes complete with four-word instruction booklet ("Drill here, drill now") and emergency numbers to call when you inevitably bore into an electric, gas or sewer line. Or an oil pipeline. That would be awkward. Try not to do that.
Let’s play Jade Helm 15! The board game where your mission is to defend the Republic of Texas from Barack HUSSEIN Obama's insidious invasion by air, sea, and secret tunnels under local Walmarts! Meet at a San Antonio Applebee's with your patriot freedom militiamen and plot your strategy. Then roll the loaded dice and yell: "Pew pew pew! Take that, you Kenyan colonialist tyrant! Yeehaw!" Naturally your side always wins because the history of your engagement will be written by the Texas School Board! Hours of fun for the whole family while you're all cleaning your guns.
Backyard Great Pyramid Grain Storage Silo! Some assembly required, which will take approximately 20 years. Grain sold separately. Add approximately $10 billion for shipping and handling.
Eat yer heart out, Hammacher Schlemmer. Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Note: Please be aware that the Baldwin sisters' eggnog is likely spiked with moonshine. Ike Godsey has pulled it from his supermarket shelves and the proper authorities have been notified.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til 2016: 30
Days 'til Christmas by the Sea in Camden, Maine: 2
Rank of the United States on the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap report: #28
Number of countries in the report that beat the U.S. in pay parity: 74
Number of Otis elevators sold to China this year, according to FiveThirtyEight.com: 600,000
Copies of Adele's new album sold in its first week, a record: 3.38 million
Number of lights on a Christmas tree in Australia, setting a new record: 518,838
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Mid-week Rapture Index:
182 (including 4 famines and a bunch of witches causing poor, innocent televangelists to get caught up in horrible scandals). Soul Protection Factor 12 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day:
The Walter Matthau of dogs
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CHEERS to more totally-not-boots on the ground. President Obama upped the stakes in the fight against the terrorist regime in the Middle East. No, silly, not Saudi Arabia---ISIS, aka Club Behead. Another [TBA] troops will be activated in Syria to do all the derring-do that they do. It's win-win-win, really. They're willing to die for our country, Republicans in Congress are willing to ignore their own role in setting the anti-terrorism strategy so they can keep attacking the president for not having a strategy, and We The People are willing (if we must) to keep shopping without worrying our pretty little heads about what they're doing over there because TERRORISTS WANT TO KILL US OVER HERE SO RUN FOR YOUR LIVES INTO THE ARMS OF THE NEAREST REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE!!!! For the record, I want a pony.
CHEERS to one tough sunovabitch. Bernie Sanders took a brief pause from his presidential campaign and senate duties Monday afternoon so he could make a rare medical pit-stop, and then he…
…walked out of the George Washington University Hospital Monday evening after successful afternoon surgery to repair an inguinal hernia in his abdomen. And, not 12 hours later, he walked into his Senate office for a day's work. […] "I don't think I've taken a day off because of sickness in several years," Sanders said. […]
Even as he emerged from the OR on Monday, Sanders was promoting his universal health-care policies. Recalls [spokesman Michael] Briggs with a chuckle, "The first thing he said when he came out of surgery was 'Medicare for all!'"
The first thing his doctor said when he came out of surgery: "Anyone seen my watch?"
JEERS to locking and loading for the holidays. Says here that the FBI was swamped on Black Friday with background-check requests because a record number of shoppers were emptying store shelves of Chia Pets Snuggies guns:
The Bureau says this Black Friday shattered the single-day record with 185,345 background checks processed in a 24-hour period — or slightly more than two background checks every second. (The total fell just short of the Bureau’s estimate of 190,000 checks.)
Friday’s record-breaking number of checks reshuffled a ranking heavy on new entries: the second busiest day for background checks ever was recorded just last year, on Black Friday 2014. On November 28, 2014, the FBI performed 175,754 checks, only 1,416 fewer than December 21, 2012, which came exactly a week after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
As a public service, C&J has a helpful tip for Santa when he goes about his business in 23 days: swap out the fur suit for Kevlar.
CHEERS to great adventures in getting bit in the ass. A delicious pair of examples of how our crackpot opposition is so set on ideological auto-pilot that they rarely notice when they're headed for a ditch. Exhibit A: after One Million (Right-wing) Moms called for a boycott of Mattel because it had the temerity to show a pair of gay dads with their foster children, donations to the couples charity for foster kids (Comfort Cases) tripled. Exhibit B: after failing to prove any wrongdoing by Planned Parenthood, the state of Alabama has to pay over $50,000 in legal fees to PP's attorneys. It's nothing personal, you understand. Just karma.
CHEERS to slaying Ann Coulter's idol. Sixty-one years ago today, on December 2nd, 1954, the Senate voted 67-22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute." Three years later the bitter, broken man would be dead of cirrhosis of the liver. The takeaway lesson for our modern age: everyone start sending Ted Cruz liquor for Christmas.
JEERS to the tangled web that the GOP done wove. Remember that "pledge" that the RNC forced all the Republican candidates to sign, making them vow to support whichever one of them was first to drag their sorry carcass past the primary finish line? It was all designed to prevent Donald Trump from running as an independent when his campaign imploded. Just one little problem: his campaign isn’t imploding. And now some of the other sorry-ass candidates are all like, What? I pledged to vote for that idiot? Yeah, you did, and now it's fun watching the backpedaling increase in all its glorious furiosity:
The Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination, Donald Trump, is not prepared to be the nation's commander in chief, because he's "uninformed" on major issues facing the U.S, especially defense and foreign affairs, rival Jeb Bush said on Sunday. … Asked whether he would support Trump if he wins the GOP nomination, Bush said he's confident that the more voters "hear of him, the less likely he's going to get the Republican nomination."
GOP presidential candidate John Kasich, speaking on ABC's "This Week," called Trump a "very divisive" candidate and, like Bush, predicted he would not be the eventual Republican nominee. … On Fox News Sunday, Carly Fiorina said Trump's game plan is to say something "insulting, offensive, outrageous," so that the "media pays attention," and then he "claims we all misunderstood him."
Bzzzzt!!! Too late to whine and complain now, kids. Here's the pledge y'all signed in your own orc blood:
I, [name] affirm that if I do not win the 2016 Republican nomination for President of the United States I will endorse the 2016 Republican presidential nominee regardless of who it is. I further pledge that I will not seek to run as an independent or write-in candidate nor will I seek or accept the nomination for president of any other party.
Candidate Signature
Witnessed By Chairman Reince Priebus
Writhe on in agony, candidates not named Donald. Writhe on…
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 2, 2005
CHEERS to executing an Iraq exit strategy. Bulgaria and Ukraine show us how they plan to do it with their combined 1,256 troops this month: Step 1---Pack up your shit. Step 2---Wave bye-bye and get the hell out. Oh, and of course, Step 3---Never, EVER believe George W. Bush again.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to another trip around the, um…um---[frantically Googles Earth + Revolves Around + Year]---sun! Happy birthday to my partner Michael (aka "Common Sense Mainer"). I won’t divulge exactly how springchickeny or ancient he is, but here are a few clues from the history archives…
> Kennedy was president
> Tuition to Harvard cost $1,250
> The first Beatles song was released
> Gas was 28 cents per gallon
> To Kill A Mockingbird and Lawrence of Arabia were released
> John Glenn orbited the earth
> The Berlin wall was fresh and new
> Johnny Carson began his reign as king of late night TV
Before you get all mushy-gushy in the comments, bear this in mind: the little bastard still gets carded when he buys liquor---like seriously carded! That's some good genes right there. He shares his birthday today with Britney Spears (34), Harry Reid (76), and Stone Phillips (61). And if they're true to form, I'll get a call from the cops around 2am, and shortly thereafter I'll give my sweetie his annual present: bail.
Have a nice Wednesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"Let's work on draining the C&J kiddie pool."
---Larry Wilmore