The Gift That Keeps Giving, and Giving, and Giving...
Holiday buying for the red-hatted cultists in your life has never been so easy:
Operators are standing by. And helicopters.
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, November 18, 2020
Note: Have you ever have one of those days where you forget to write your daily note, but it's too late to do anything about it? This is one of those days. So we'll just say banana and hope you don't notice. —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til 2021: 44
Number of children, from infants to teens, who have been diagnosed with Covid-19, according to NBC News: 1,039,464
Percent of U.S. residents who say they plan to gather in groups of 10 or more people this holiday season, according to an OSU Wexner Medical Center survey: 40%
Portion who say they won't require friends/family to wear masks at Thanksgiving gatherings: 1-in-3
Percent of Democrats polled by Gallup in 2000 and 2020, respectively, who said they favor stricter laws on ownership of guns: 61%, 85%
Percent of Republicans who favored stricter gun laws in 2000 and 2020: 44%, 22%
Amount it would cost the Trump campaign to conduct a recount in Wisconsin, if they insist on one: $8 million
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 182 (including 3 occults and 1 apocalypse denied, thanks to that Biden feller). Soul Protection Factor 46 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Daddy's home…
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CHEERS to getting away from it all. Sporting a "My Other Vehicle Is An ‘83 Impala” bumper sticker, the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts docked Monday night with the International Space Station. The successful arrival ushers in a new era of manned space flight from American soil in a post-Shuttle world, with continuous space traffic planned for the foreseeable future:
“Oh, what a good voice to hear,” space station astronaut Kate Rubins called out when the Dragon’s commander, Mike Hopkins, first made radio contact. “We can’t wait to have you on board,” she added after the two spacecraft were latched together.
Hopkins and his crew—Victor Glover, Shannon Walker and Japan’s Soichi Noguchi — join two Russians and one American who flew to the space station last month from Kazakhstan. Glover is the first African-American to move in for a long haul. A space newcomer, Glover was presented his gold astronaut pin Monday.
The quartet's first job at the station: getting Eric Trump's head unstuck from the cargo hatch. Long story.
JEERS to the thief from Swampdweller County. Let the historical record show that, when it comes to voting, Republicans falsely accuse Democrats of election fraud while committing it themselves. And the new poster child for the crime of tampering with legally-cast ballots is none other than Trump golf buddy and bitterest U.S. senator Lindsey Graham:
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that Sen. Lindsey Graham asked him whether he had the power to reject certain absentee ballots, a question he interpreted as a suggestion to toss out legally cast votes.
“It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” Raffensperger said.
Raffensperger made the comments to The Washington Post, saying he’s faced rising pressure from fellow Republicans who want to see Democrat Joe Biden’s narrow lead in the state reversed. Nearly 5 million votes were cast in the presidential election in Georgia, and Biden was leading President Donald Trump by about 14,000 votes. Raffensperger’s comments came as election officials across the state were working to complete a hand recount of votes in the presidential race.
You might be surprised to learn that the take-no-shit Raffensperger, who has conducted Georgia's 2020 election with transparency, candor, and non-partisan efficiency, is a member of the GOP. So thanks a lot Lindsey, for making me put a Republican on this Friday's "Who Won the Week" poll. You've all been warned.
CHEERS to the lexicon of our lives. Linguistics analysts say that we typically only use a small handful of the words available to us in the English language. I'm no "expert," but I'd like to respond to that by saying: no fart no no booger no no fart no booger booger fart no! Now that I've gotten that off my booger fart, here's the Collins Dictionary word of the year, as timely as you can get:
Lockdown, the noun that has come to define so many lives across the world in 2020, has been named word of the year by Collins Dictionary. Lockdown is defined by Collins as “the imposition of stringent restrictions on travel, social interaction, and access to public spaces,” and its usage has boomed over the last year. [...]
In 2019, there were 4,000 recorded instances of lockdown being used. In 2020, this had soared to more than a quarter of a million.
Other 2020 pandemic-related words thrust into the spotlight by Collins: coronavirus, self-isolate, and furlough. But my own hand-picked word for Little Billy’s Big Dicshunary this year represents the greatest hope we have for dealing with the Covid-19 crisis in America: Biden.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to covidiots in high places. Yesterday 87-year-old Senator Chuck Grassley—third in line to the presidency—announced he's quarantining after being exposed to the coronavirus. Observers say they saw him moving slow, spouting gibberish, and behaving like a clueless jerk. Then he got exposed to the coronavirus.
JEERS to drinking the Kool-Aid (as in, really drinking the Kool-Aid, except perhaps not, which I'll explain in a moment). There's a paragraph in the late Randy Shilts's brilliant book, The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, that reveals the Rev. Jim Jones' influence in San Francisco politics (Mayor Moscone actually made him chairman of the city Housing Authority, if you can believe that) during the mid-70s, before he moved his sheeple to Guyana:
"Make sure you're always nice to the Peoples Temple," [Milk] admonished [campaign volunteer Tory Hartmann].
"If they ask you to do something, do it, and then send them a note thanking them for asking you to do it. They're weird and they're dangerous, and you never want to be on their bad side."
No shit. Today is the 42nd anniversary of the infamous Jonestown massacre. At least 900 followers drank grape Flavor Aid (not Kool-Aid) laced with cyanide. Time's cover said it all: Cult of Death. By the way, what's the difference between the Jones cult and the Republican party? What Republicans are forcing down our throat is killing all of us.
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Ten years ago in C&J: November 18, 2010
CHEERS to Great Breakthroughs in Me"duh"cine. Astounding new revelation! Just as young'uns shouldn’t guzzle booze or smoke cigarettes, a group of people in white lab coats says that kids aged 16 and under also shouldn’t smoke pot because it causes brain damage. Tune in tomorrow when we'll cite the other obvious things kids under 16 shouldn’t do, including operate steamrollers, steal candy and short-sheet the beds at Grandma's nursing home.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to U.S. Minty freshness. The new America the Beautiful state quarter is here! The new America the Beautiful state quarter is here!!! The latest in the series, which celebrates our national historic sites, represents Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas, which "encompasses nearly 11,000 acres and is located in the heart of the Flint Hills—the largest expanse of tallgrass prairie left in North America. It is the only unit of the National Park Service dedicated to the rich, natural history of the tallgrass prairie." Check it out…
As you can see, the reverse side depicts Mothra on her way to destroy Topeka, a design that led to the U.S. Mint's new mandatory "etching while sober" rule.
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
"Even if you are someone who is annoyed by wokeness and political correctness and wants men to be men again and is tired about everyone complaining about the patriarchy, I thought that the model wouldn’t be Bill in Portland Maine—the complaining, lying, doesn’t-take-responsibility-for-anything type of figure.”
—President Barack Obama
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