The Swashbucklin’ 19th
Avast me hearties and suchlike. It's me, Captain Billybeard, fear-instiller of the deep blue kiddie pool. For thems who don't knows, today is the blow-me-downest day of the year: International Talk Like A Pirate Day. And arrrway we go…
President Biden: "By 2035 we’ll all be drivin’ electric carrrs!"
Democratic strategist: "That Fetterman lad is a rising starrr."
Winston Churchill: "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest arrr!'"
Continued...
American worker: "Thanks to those greedy bastards on Wall Street, I may never get to retarrr!"
Daily Kos blogger: ”My favorite front-pager is the Morrill lass named Barrrrb.”
Daily Kos blogger with opposing view: “My favorite front-pager is the Joan they call McCarrrter.”
Judge, sometime in 2023: "I sentence ye, Donald J. Trump, to twenty years behind barrrrs."
Buzz Aldrin: "To Marrrs!"
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland: "Come one, come all, to visit our national parrrks."
Red-hatted End Times fanatic: "Prepare ye for Arrrrmageddon."
Theatre Critic: "Don’t miss the revival of Streetcarrr Named Desarrr!"
Postal abbreviation of Bill Clinton's home state: AR
Trump's legal team: "Ready! Farrr! Aim!"
Thanks for reading. You've been a swarrrthy arrdience. And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, September 15, 2022
Note: Always get anything agreed to on a Monday in writing. Can't trust that day. —Judge Judy
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the midterm elections: 54
Days 'til the 28thannual Pueblo Chile & Frijoles Festival in Colorado: 4
Number of the last two months during which inflation has dropped in the U.S.: 2
Number of subpoenas the Justice Department issued last week to Trump administration goons related to MAGA's January 6 insurrection: 40
Square miles of land Ukrainian troops have retaken over the last two weeks: 3,400
Percent chance that Twitter shareholders approved the takeover of the platform by unstable genius Elon Musk: 100%
Percent by which middle-aged Americans are less likely to die of any cause if they walk 7,000 steps a day, compared with those who walk less, according to research in the Journal of the American Medical Association: 50%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Puppy Pac-Man?
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JEERS to our top story of the day by law. Here's an update on The Queen's funeral, which has been in progress for two hours with 52 to go:
♔ Elizabeth II's cellphone continues playing her royal ringtone, God Save the Queen, from her permanently-sealed coffin. The good news: the Royal Viceroy in charge of Telecommunications says it should stop within three days. The bad news: nobody in the British Empire may be seated until it does.
♔ During the service, King Charles III has been seen mumbling "Bloody thing" about his fountain pen, his watch, his squeaky shoes, the elusive strand that the Royal Earl of Nose Hair Trimming missed, and the heffalump that continues to haunt his dreams.
♔ The vicar's pants have finally been located.
♔ Instead of saying "Amen" after prayers and invocations, President Biden is using the alternate wording: "God love ya, man. No joke."
♔ Following the service, teenagers Oliver and Balthazar will shuttle the guests from Westminster Abbey to the Sudsbury-on-the-Glen banquet hall for tea cakes, tea kippers, tea pie, tea brisket, tea shanks, and tea. Please be patient as they can only fit two at a time, including one in the boot.
♔ You can follow the solemnity and unifying grandeur of the funeral via the top-trending hashtags on Twitter: #LeaveHarryAndMeghanAlone, #TheMediaHateHarryAndMeghan, #HarryShouldBeKingNotWankerCharles, and #LizLovedHarryMost.
Join us for our next legally-mandated update in 39 seconds. And throw that gum away—it's disrespectful.
JEERS to today's edition of How Can You Tell When It's Election Season? Courtesy of Susanne Ramírez de Arellano at NBC News:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis unexpectedly sent two planes carrying mostly Venezuelan immigrants, including children, to Martha’s Vineyard on Wednesday. It’s the most sadistic iteration of a scheme preferred by governors of Republican states: dumping migrants on northern progressive cities as a political stunt against President Joe Biden’s immigration policy.
Republican governors have been doing this as a way to protest what they claim are insufficient federal efforts to ensure security on the southern border. It is cynical point-scoring against whom they see as woke liberals being soft on immigration—a “gotcha” moment.
This has been today's edition of How Can You Tell When It's Election Season?
CHEERS to seeing the forest for the pearly gates. The more enlightened Americans become, the more it dawns on us that the existence of God will never be anything other than a hope in our imaginations. We can memorize every religious text in every language on every continent and we can scour every corner of the universe, but the fact remains: until He or She or It actually shows up, we’re all agnostics down here on earth. But one thing is for certain: religious grifters, almost always of the conservative persuasion, use the fear of god to shake down their gullible flocks to pad their lavish lifestyles as they actively support politicians for whom punching down is a feature, not a bug. So this is welcome news as far as I—a lapsed Episcopalian—am concerned:
If current trends continue, Christians could make up less than half of the population—and as little as a third—in 50 years.
Meanwhile, the so-called nones—or the religiously unaffiliated — could make up close to half of the population.
Those are among the major findings of a new report from the Pew Research Center regarding America’s religious future—a future where Christianity, though diminished, persists while non-Christian faiths grow amid rising secularization. […]
One reason for the decline among Christians and the growth among the nones in the models is age. While Christians have more children than nones, they are also older. Pew estimates the average Christian in the United States is 43, which is 10 years older than the average none.
But one number remains consistent, according to the Billy Institute of Religious Vittles: 100% of everybody in America agrees that Episcopalian pancake suppers are the best. If I’m lyin’, may God strike me down in a hail of sausage links. Or patties, I’m not picky.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to Field Marshal Billeh's Rule of Thumb. It goes like this: when two countries are at war, the side whose leader is hunkered down in a bunker is not the winning side. So here's a clue as to who is kicking who:
His hand on his heart, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy watched as his country’s flag was hoisted above the recently recaptured city of Izium, a rare foray outside the capital that highlighted Moscow’s embarrassing retreat in the face of a lightning Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Russian forces left the war-scarred city last week as Kyiv's soldiers pressed a stunning advance that has reclaimed large swaths of territory in the country’s northeastern Kharkiv region.
As Zelenskyy looked on and sang the national anthem, the Ukrainian flag was raised in front of the burned-out city hall building in the largely devastated town, where apartment buildings are blackened by fire and pockmarked by artillery strikes.
Russia's Vladimir Putin hasn't traveled to the front, citing concerns to his safety. He's afraid he could easily be killed. By his own fleeing troops.
JEERS to deep-sixing #20. On September 19, 1881, President James Garfield died, 80 days after some disgruntled jerk whipped out a couple guns and shot him in the back. One bullet grazed his arm, the other hit his backbone but not the spinal cord or any internal organs. Had the radical notion of sterile hands and instruments (already embraced for 30 years by much of Europe) been in use at the time, and had they not basically starved him, the president would’ve lived. True story: Alexander Graham Bell tried to locate the bullet using his new invention, the metal detector…
As the doctors struggled to understand the extent of Garfield's wounds, Bell, inventor of the telephone, used this machine to try to locate the bullet. When found, the machine was to send a sound to the attached telephone receiver.
Despite attempts on July 26 and August 1, 1881, Bell could not situate the bullet.
Turns out the steel springs in Garfield's bed likely rendered it useless. Someday we'll be able to joke about it. But not today—after only 141 years, it’s just too soon.
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 19, 2012
JEERS to a bad start. September 9: Shell starts drilling in the Arctic, using the latest safety equipment that will guarantee everything goes smoothly. September 17: Shell stops drilling in the Arctic for the season when their safety equipment breaks. On the bright side, the company assures us it's nothing that a little super glue and a multi-million-dollar PR TV blitz won’t fix. Cue the actors in lab coats with beakers and shit-eating grins…
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And just one more…
JEERS to wasting seven-plus decades of perfectly good oxygen. To the heartbreak of no one but family and a few deplorables, shitbag Texan Ken Starr finally kicked the bucket at 76, but not before spending most of his life as a very sick Republican who used his intellect for evil. The ever-succinct Wonkette has the definitive obituary:
[A]fter he was all done with trying to bring down Bill Clinton, Starr went on to be the president of Baylor University, where he was shitcanned in 2016 for his part in covering up—or failing to "take appropriate action to respond to"—a massive sexual assault scandal involving the football team, and then he helped defend the indefensible Donald Trump in his first impeachment, fuck him, he's dead, the end.
I'd bet money his trip to the afterlife will involve taking the 'Down' elevator. But darn it, I have this dumb rule about saying something nice about the recently departed. So here goes: he generally did a good job centering the knot in his necktie. Ah…the banality of evil.
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
"The only people who take Bill in Portland Maine seriously are those who splash in his kiddie pool. And no one splashes in his kiddie pool."
—Mick Mulvaney
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