“He beat syphilis. He’s sure to beat this...”
How were the red-hatted cult and their little-brained leader handling Covid-19 one year ago? Kimmel’s crew is on it in the latest Today in Covid History...
And we all lived happily ever after.
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, October 6, 2021
Note for allergy sufferers: Cheers and Jeers is manufactured in a facility that also produces products containing peanuts, pollen, mildew and/or large, out-of-control robot dogs. Do with that what you will. We just work here. —Mgt.
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Election Day 2021: 27
Days 'til William Shatner blasts off in a Blue Origin capsule for a few hours of space tourism: 6
Percent increase in Covid-19 vaccinations in Maine over the last week as mandates kick in: 87%
Year that General George Washington deemed smallpox a big enough problem for the Continental Army that he quietly ordered immunizations so the British wouldn’t find out how sick the enemy was: 1777
Estimated number of Afghans who have been living on eight military installations since the summer: 53,000
Current spending maximum Joe Manchin will allow for President Biden's $3.5 trillion Build Back Better initiative: One dollar spread over 10 years
Current spending maximum Kyrsten Sinema will allow for President Biden's $3.5 trillion Build Back Better initiative: "I like sparkle glitter!"
-
Totally Random Baseball Score
-
Mid-week Rapture Index: 187 (including 3 supernatural events and 1 Pat Robertson prediction of imminent Armageddon circa 1980). Soul Protection Factor 16 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Wednesday morning alarm goes off...
-
CHEERS to rolling up the bad guys. With town halls canceled because of Covid and statehouses reinforced against armed goobers intent on disrupting democracy, the right-wing rabble has turned to school board meetings to spew their Koch-induced propaganda against sensible measures to eradicate the threat from Covid-19. It’s the usual bullshit: disruption, harassment, doxxing, death threats, speaking in tongues. Fortunately, the backlash against the brainwashed has been loud enough to send Attorney General Merrick Garland to fire up his modified snowplow, shout "Let's do some good!", and hit the gas:
To address the rising problem, Garland said the FBI would work with U.S. attorneys and federal, state, local, territorial and tribal authorities in each district to develop strategies against the threats. […]
The action is in response to an urgent request last week from the National School Boards Association. The group, which represents school board members around the country, asked President Joe Biden for federal assistance to investigate and stop threats made over policies including mask mandates, likening the vitriol to a form of domestic terrorism.
In making the announcement Garland said the Justice Department would use its authority and resources to discourage the threats and “prosecute them when appropriate. In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.”
If it's any help, my idea to keep the right-wing horde in line is pretty simple. When the brainwashed parents show up to do their dirty work, make sure there's a sign on the front door that says, "Disruption of this meeting will result in loss of all ivermectin privileges." (Also: make sure there's a child standing next to the sign to tell them what it says.)
CHEERS to the eggheads who walk among us. More hot scientist-on-scientist Nobel Prize action yesterday, this time from the physicists' playpen. This year's international gaggle will each get a gift certificate from the Spiegel Catalog for a bounty of pioneering discoveries in the age-old quest to stick Senator James Inhofe's snowball where the sun don't shine:
Japanese-born American Syukuro Manabe, German Klaus Hasselmann and Italian Giorgio Parisi on Tuesday won the Nobel Prize in physics for work that helps understand complex physical systems, such as Earth’s changing climate. [...]
Manabe, a senior meteorologist at Princeton University, demonstrated how increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lead to higher temperatures. His work in the 1960s led the development of physical models of the Earth's climate, and his work laid the foundation for the development of current climate models.
Around a decade later, Hasselmann, a researcher in climate dynamics and professor emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany, created a model that links weather and climate—answering the question of why climate models can be reliable despite weather being changeable and chaotic.
Parisi, a professor in theoretical physics at Sapienza University of Rome, discovered hidden patterns in disordered complex materials. His discoveries have made it possible to understand phenomena in areas such as physics, biology and neuroscience. [...] He said it was "very urgent that we take very strong decisions and move [at] a very strong pace” in tackling climate change. “It’s clear for the future generation we have to act now in a very fast way.”
The entire scientific community was united in praise and adulation for this year’s winners. Well, almost. The guy who invented sharks with lasers is still sitting in his undersea lair going, "What does a demented genius have to do to get a little respect around here???”
JEERS to oil, oil everywhere. As if to underscore the spot-on correctness of environmentalists whose warnings keep falling on the deliberately deaf ears of those willing to rape and pillage the earth for money so they can afford their mansions, summer homes, private schools, swimming pools, summer homes, hookers, and blow, the laws of inevitability have struck again:
A stretch of Southern California's coast has been transformed by a leak at an oil pipe that released more than 100,000 gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean. [...]
The breach, widely reported Saturday, occurred about five miles off Huntington Beach in Orange County, spilling as much as 144,000 gallons of crude, according to an updated estimate from the city of Huntington Beach.
Meanwhile, there are open questions as to the timeline of when the pipeline company and authorities learned about the spill and what they did in response. … The spill, which stretches from Huntington Beach to Laguna Beach, is likely to move farther south based on wind and currents, said Capt. Rebecca Ore, the Commanding Officer at US Coast Guard Sector Los Angeles-Long Beach.
For its part, the profits-first executives at—Surprise!—Texas-based Amplify Energy say they're fully prepared to deal with the oil spill. They've dispatched a team of experienced professionals to look thoughtful in white lab coats and hard hats as they stroke their chins and make check marks on a clipboard while underpaid lackeys sop up a fraction of the mess with off-brand paper towels. And this just in: a media consultant skilled in the art of giving the thumbs-up sign to reporters will be airdropped in around noon.
-
BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
-
END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
CHEERS to Great Moments in Republican Gaffery. With the campaign season in full swing, it’s worth noting that 45 years ago this week, President Gerald Ford claimed during a debate with Jimmy Carter—who turned 97 last week—that there was "no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe." The GOP let 72 hours pass before correcting themselves, giving Carter time to drop the hammer. Today, of course, Republicans don’t even bother owning up to anything. They just get Fox News to stick a "(D)" next to the offender's name and send in the clowns from Q-Anon to concoct a new conspiracy theory starring Democrats and their Soros-funded, suburb-killing sex ring. Corrections...how quaint.
JEERS to today's edition of Lemme Guess: They’ll Say The Devil Made 'Em Do It. Courtesy of Reuters…
French clergy sexually abused more than 200,000 children over the past 70 years, a major investigation released on Tuesday found, and its authors said the Catholic Church had turned a blind eye to the 'scourge' for too long. …
The church had shown "deep, total and even cruel indifference for years," protecting itself rather than the victims of what was systemic abuse, said Jean-Marc Sauve, head of the commission that compiled the report. Most of the victims were boys, he said, many of them aged between 10 and 13.
This has been today's edition of Lemme Guess: They’ll Say The Devil Made 'Em Do It.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: October 6, 2011
CHEERS to keepin' on keepin' on. Here's a comprehensive, thorough, detailed, exhaustively-annotated update on the Occupy Wall Street movement:
The Occupy Wall Street movement is still occupying Wall Street.
Our thanks to our C&J news bureaus in New York, L.A., London, Karachi, Tokyo, Berlin, Sao Paolo and Toronto for their tireless efforts to bring you this update. I accept this Emmy on their behalf.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to brewing a cauldron of hilarity. Can't let today go by without noting that eleven years ago this week Republican tea party know-nothing Christine O'Donnell released an ad for her U.S. Senate run in Delaware with the most bizarre opening line of the 2010 election (or maybe any other, for that matter): "I'm not a witch. I'm nothing you've heard. I'm YOU!"
-
The question I asked back then remains unanswered ten years later: Yeah, but if you are me, and I’m a practicing witch, then by definition you’re a witch, too! I mean, right?
How awful was her message of "I promise not to turn you into a newt"? In an election year that saw a tidal wave of tea partiers swept into power, she managed to lose to a liberal Democrat—Chris Coons, doing a fine job after winning re-election in 2014 and 2020. She may not have been a witch, but that flame-out was still quite a trick.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
BOOK: Bill in Portland Maine’s Cheers and Jeers Is Like A "Clown Car On Fire Driving Full Speed Into A Warehouse Full Of Fireworks"
—Insider
-