No. It’s Not.
On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, we remind the red-hatted, perspective-deficient American citizens who loudly lurch among us that…
Getting vaccinated…being issued a proof-of-vaccination card…wearing a mask…accurately counting (and re-counting) election ballots…booting extremists off social media for spreading disinformation…booting covidiots off planes for jeopardizing flight safety…respecting abortion rights…respecting all religions, and those who practice none...expanding voting rights…teaching the good and bad parts of American history…being held to account for inciting an insurrection…enacting sensible gun-control measures to prevent mass shootings…raising taxes on the rich…and fighting for environmental justice…
…are not "just like the Holocaust." Here endeth the lesson.
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, January 27, 2022
Note: Today is National Chocolate Cake Day. Chocolate has healthy properties. Be healthy—eat chocolate cake today. And every day. Even if it’s not Chocolate Cake Day. Which today it is. So eat it. I hear it cures covid. —Dr. Billeh
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of Black History Month: 5
Days 'til the start of the winter surveillance games in Censorshipistan, whose leader totally hates being compared to Winnie the Pooh: 8
Number of jobs expected to be created in Michigan with the building of a new $7 billion GM electric-vehicle plant there: 5,000
Percent increase in applications to start new businesses last year compared to 2019, according to the Census Bureau: 30%
Percent of Americans who approve of the Biden administration’s initiative to provide free Covid tests and N95 masks, according to an Axios/Ipsos poll: 84%
Number of major Virginia school districts suing new cultist governor Glenn Youngkin over his unilateral lifting of local control over mask requirements: 7
Rank of Norfolk VA, Overland Park KS, and Virginia Beach VA among 87 major municipalities on a survey by LawnStarter of the cleanest cities in America: #1, #2, #3
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Over at attorney general, we find Greg Abbott—a guy opposed to abortion even in cases of rape, incest and to save the life of the mother.
The former state supreme court justice is also the author of a notable opinion saying it is legal to fire an employee injured on the job for seeking legal redress for his injuries if the employer does not subscribe to workers' comp. Not only a friend of women, but of the workingman, as well!
How can you not love Texas politics? You pick up the paper in the morning and it's kind of like finding Fidel Castro in the refrigerator
—January, 2003
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Fresh pic of Commander, the new White House pup…
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CHEERS to giving yourself the ol' heave-ho. What a sweet job. No bosses. No accountability. Regular raises. Gold-plated health care. Pension. Free coffee. An office with gigantic pillars. Man, no wonder so few people ever want to leave the Supreme Court under their own steam. But Justice Steven Breyer made a happy exception yesterday, paving the way for a libturd-for-libturd swapout on what is now the nation's biggest joke of a court:
At 83, Breyer is the court's oldest member.
Liberal activists have urged him for months to retire while Democrats hold both the White House and the Senate—a position that could change after the midterm elections in November. They contended that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stayed too long despite her history of health problems and should have stepped down during the Obama administration.
Biden promised on the campaign trail to nominate a Black woman to the court. In the wake of Breyer’s announcement, there was an outpouring of statements calling for him to follow through.
Whoever Joe picks to replace him has to be able to serve for decades. I nominate one of the Obama kids.
P.S. Oops! Apparently Breyer is angry that this leaked out before he himself could announce it. Please disregard all of the above. Seriously. (He has a dungeon in his basement.)
CHEERS to famous firsts. At a time when it seems like we've given up as a nation on gun violence (along with practically everything else), this at least lets us know the movement still has a pulse:
The California city of San Jose is set to become the first in the United States to enforce an ordinance requiring most gun owners to pay a fee and carry liability insurance.
In a statement on Tuesday night, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said the city's council had voted in favor of both measures, which are aimed at reducing the risk of gun harm and relieving taxpayers of the financial cost of gun violence. […]
"Thank you to my council colleagues who continue to show their commitment to reducing gun violence and its devastation in our community," Liccardo said. The new measures, he said, will help build a "constitutionally compliant path to mitigate the unnecessary suffering from gun harm in our community."
We'll assume this measure already has a one-way ticket to the Supreme Court, where we'll find watch, once again, how the conservajustices do their darndest to ignore those pesky words "well-regulated" in the Second Amendment. I can already hear them preparing their arguments. By which I mean loogies.
JEERS to theological whiplash. Just in case you're wondering, here's the latest from the Catholic church on being a gay human being:
✞ You're a sinner and you're going to hell.
✞ But are you a sinner, really? Who are we to judge?
✞ We are to judge, that’s who. We can't accept you.
✞ Well…maybe civil unions might not be so bad.
✞ No, same-sex acts are sinful and you're going to hell.
✞ Well, okay, same-sex "tendencies" are fine, I guess.
✞ However, if those tendencies turn into acts, then it's the flames of hell for you, Bub.
✞ But “parents who see different sexual orientations in their children [should] not hide behind an attitude of condemnation.”
We trust this clears up any confusion. May the head-scratching be with you. (And also with you.)
CHEERS to music's Boy Wonder. Happy 266th birthday to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He's most famous for his hit, "Rock Me Amadeus," which hit #1 in 1786 on Casey's Countdown. But as for your symphonies...eh, can you make 'em sound more like Salieri? Too many notes, kid. Pay your respects here. In B-flat.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to Germany's great shame. As mentioned above the fold, today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, coinciding with the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz and Birkenau Nazi death camps. With memories of World War II rapidly fading, and the Nazi movement once again eyeing world domination, survivors continue telling their stories with greater urgency. And in keeping with what we wrote above, this story from last year is still as relevant as ever (if not more so):
The chairwoman of the Auschwitz Committee criticized coronavirus-deniers and those who refused to wear masks, during a digital memorial event in Hamburg on Sunday. Esther Bejarano, 96, was outspoken against those who see mask-wearing as a "deprivation of liberty," saying: "They don't know what they're talking about."
Germany's Die Welt newspaper, which originally reported Bejarano's comments, said: "History has shown that ideologies of conspiracy can easily lead to ideologies of extermination."
Bejarano was deported to Auschwitz in April 1943, having spent two years in a hard labour camp following an unsuccessful bid to emigrate to Palestine.
We'll mark the occasion as we always do—by not joking about it.
CHEERS to the good times. On January 27, 1998, Democratic President Bill Clinton told the nation during his State of the Union address that the federal government would have a balanced budget in 1999...the first in 30 years. And then he callously left his Republican successor the back-breaking task of screwing it all up. And then his Democratic successor cleaned it all up. And then his Republican successor screwed it all up. And now his Democratic successor is cleaning it all up again. I'm sensing a pattern here.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 27, 2012
JEERS to whitewashing history. Okay, class, let's review: the Tea Party says it's all about…what, again? That's right—deficits deficits deficits deficits and deficits. Deficit reduction is the only thing on their plate. And, of course, one of the important ways to reduce the deficit is to try and get all references to slavery erased from history textbooks. Because if there are no references to slavery, that means less ink is used to print the textbooks. Less ink equals more savings. More savings equals…deficit reduction! The Tea Party predicts that the budget will be completely balanced the day they reduce all our textbooks to a single word: Reagan.
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And just one more…
JEERS to broken promises. Remember when President Obama starting holding those really cool science fairs at the White House that allowed the whole world to see the ingenuity and creativity of America’s physicists, chemists, biologists, and engineers of tomorrow? Remember how excited everyone was five years ago when the previous administration said it was absolutely, positively going to continue the tradition? Yeah, well, here’s something else for you to remember: they reneged on their promise—there was no White House science fair in 2017. Or 2018. Or 2019. Or, obviously, 2020. So, since we have no best-of footage from the last four years, enjoy this classic moment from 2012, when the White House was a true laboratory of democracy instead of a dark fortress of doom littered with McDonald’s wrappers…
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When he gets through sciencing the shit out of the pandemic, President Biden will absolutely bring the kids back for the revival of the White House Science Fair. In the immortal words of some dude I forget who it is: “Gather ye marshmallows while ye may.”
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
Nothing Will Top Bill in Portland Maine's Greatest Cheers and Jeers Ever
—FiveThirtyEight
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