Oh! More Things I Know:
✌ I’m burying a note in a mayonnaise jar informing future alien visitors that it was the green M&Ms that brought down human civilization.
✌ The American and Russian astronauts are having some interesting discussions up at the International Space Station these days.
✌ The Department of Homeland Security needs to start checking the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons to make sure none of them are the Chinese spy kind.
Continued...
✌ The Bush II administration's motto was "Ready, Fire, Aim." The Obama administration's motto was "Ready, Aim, Fire." The Trump administration's motto was "Fire, Backpedal, Rage Tweet, then brand Ready and Aim as enemies of the people." With the Biden administration we're thankfully back to "Ready, Aim, Fire."
✌ #5 never shocks me.
Also what I know: Joe should debate the MAGA cultists on live TV more often.
✌ Ukraine's government should immediately vote to annex Russia.
✌ I had no idea George Santos won so many Kentucky Derbys.
✌ I'm sick of Corinthian columns and the way they stand around all day acting so superior to the Dorics and the Ionians. Get a life!
✌ The weekend was really cold so global warming was a hoax, Monday it was really warm so global warming wasn’t a hoax, Tuesday through Thursday were really cold so it was a hoax again, but today it’s really warm so it’s not.
✌ I’m sleeping really well ever since I never bought a MyPillow.
✌ Orion is the most awesome constellation in the sky and I'll thumb wrestle you to the death if you think otherwise.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, February 9, 2023
Note: Due to a unanimous voice vote during last night’s math nerd happy hour, the constant known as “pi” will now be known as “sticky bun.” Please make a note of it.
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By the Numbers:
9 days!!!
Days 'til Mardi Gras: 12
Days 'til the Mumbo Jumbo Gumbo Cookoff in Manitou Springs, Colorado: 9
Percent of likely voters polled by Data For Progress who like what they're seeing relative to the 2022 Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act: 76%
Number of states with their own paid family and medical leave benefit for workers (Maine is close to becoming #12): 11
Percent of Americans polled by Morning Consult who support tax credits for buyers of electric vehicles (versus 21% who don't): 58%
Estimated GDP for the 1st quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, another sign that a recession is not on the horizon: 2.09%
Percent chance that the European Union has imposed a ban on Russian diesel fuel, getting it instead from the U.S., the Middle East, and India: 100%
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
As Paul Krugman of The New York Times points out, if you accept the Rosy Scenario the administration is using to paint privatization as an effective scheme, then Social Security is in no trouble at all and we don't need to do anything about it---economic growth will take care of it all.
Contrariwise, if you accept the doom-and-gloom scenario the administration uses to prove that SS is in trouble, then there's no way the privatization scheme will be anything other than a disaster.
Dogged if I know what these people have against SS, a program that works just fine and has kept elderly people from having to eat cat food for many years now. Because the right wing has somehow become a cult of anti-government nuthatches, I have no idea where we're headed.
—February, 2005
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Help is on the way from Mexico…
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CHEERS to a great summation. Barrels of ink were spilled in the wake of President "Sleepy Joe" Biden's State of the Union Address. While almost everyone thought he was going to deliver a yawner of a speech—because he's old, you see—instead he guzzled a can of spinach and took the Republicans in the audience for a progressive-agenda joyride that had the Capitol cleanup crew mopping up puddles of piddle for hours. (72 percent of viewers loved it, by the way.) The best headline I saw was in "The Nation's Newspaper" USA Today: Dark Brandon shows up at State of the Union, mops the floor with lost Republicans. The opening lines from opinion writer Rex Huppke say it swell:
President Joe Biden, at the ripe age of 80, came out with ample vim and vigorin Tuesday night’s State of the Union address and proceeded to mop the House floor with the howling, discombobulated remains of the Republican Party.
Thoughtful to crop out Speaker Whatsizface.
Preaching populism and leaning hard on his noted skill as the empathizer-in-chief, Biden bounded through a speech that acknowledged the nation’s struggles while remaining unerringly optimistic. He went off script regularly, parrying Republican lawmakers who heckled him, at one point backing the whole party into a corner and getting them to swear to protect Medicare and Social Security benefits.
I’ve never seen anything like it in a State of the Union speech—they ran at him like a pack of lemmings and, with a wink and a grin, he politely directed them to the cliff.
The rest is pretty good, too, although the International Order of Lemmings plans to write a letter to the editor for being compared to the GOP. And if you missed the moment where Joe owned the MAGAs, enjoy…
And we all lived happily ever after.
CHEERS to the blue wave in the Keystone State. While everyone else seemed to be fixated on the State of the Union theatrics, Pennsylvania Democrats were busy spanking the MAGA movement's butt raw. We take you to Allegheny County state House districts 32, 34 and 35 via the Daily Kos Elections Team ("The Best In The Business!")…
Following their landslide victories Tuesday in a trio of special elections in the Pittsburgh area, Pennsylvania Democrats will have an undisputed majority in the state House for the first time since 2010. […]
Joanna McClinton may become the PA House’s Speaker.
Democrats won a 102-101edge in November, but Republicans temporarily enjoyed a small 101-99 advantage in membership because three Democratic-held seats became vacant.
Tuesday’s wins for Democrats Joe McAndrew, Matt Gergely, and Abigail Salisbury, though, at last give Democrats an actual majority, not just in races won but in members.
This reminds me that when I lived in my home state of Ohio we had a joke we'd love to tell, and it goes like this: "Knock knock!" "Who's there?" "Pennsylvania." "Well then f*ck off." Ha ha. Regional humor is always the best.
CHEERS to Tippeca...ca...cachoo! Happy 250th birthday to "#9" William Henry "Tippecanoe" Harrison. During his nearly two-hour inaugural address (without an overcoat), he pledged not to run for a second term and, in one of the fastest fulfillments of a campaign promise ever, caught pneumonia and died 32 days later, but not before being plied with enough ipecac, opium, castor oil, calomel, camphor and brandy to kill a small army. (To his credit he rejected the ivermectin, bleach injections, and mugs of his own pee.) But he did have a lasting effect on our electoral process. From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien:
[I]f Harrison was no dream candidate, his campaign for president was one of the most important in American history.
A face that just screams “earnest, smiling enthusiasm.”
Before 1840, active campaigning for office was considered about as crass as writing a blurb for your own book. Candidates were supposed to maintain an air of ambivalence while others did their stumping for them. Harrison changed all that by personally jumping into the fray with earnest, smiling enthusiasm, and his Whig party cohorts turned the campaign into a circus.
They dismissed opponent Martin Van Buren as a snob and a dandy, claiming their boy Harrison was the real man of the people. There were parties, bands, garish banners. It worked.
The Whigs only fielded two winning candidates (Zachary Taylor was the other), and neither could finish their first term without a visit from the grim reaper. But, hey—great parties.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to the meteorologee-whiz kids. Here’s today’s forecast: today will be the 152nd birthday of that dastardly socialist entity foisted on the nation by President Grant known as the National Weather Service. It's mission: to provide...
"...weather, hydrologic, and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and ocean areas, for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy.
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivers a bullshit-riddled response to the State of the Union Address and immediately Arkansas is hit with biblical floods. Nothing to see here, please float along.
NWS data and products form a national information database and infrastructure which can be used by other governmental agencies, the private sector, the public, and the global community."
Today President Biden will mark the NWS’s anniversary in a refreshing way—by not scrawling on their meticulous weather maps with a Sharpie.
CHEERS to shaking some rust off the slowest wheels of justice in history. Well, we can finally say it: The Donald Trump Rape Trial. After finally running out of delaying tactics, the past has finally caught up to the hedonist pervert criminal who treated women like a discarded Tic-Tac:
US District Court Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who is overseeing E. Jean Carroll's rape claim against former President Donald Trump, balked on Tuesday at the frequent holdups coming from Trump's defense team, as his new lawyer sought to delay the April trial date by six weeks.
A gavel.
Kaplan didn't agree to the six-week delay but did push the trial back one week to April 25, so that Trump's defense could deal with an issue regarding one of their expert witnesses.
During a hearing on Tuesday, Kaplan expressed concern that Trump's legal team has already caused delays in the two lawsuits brought against Trump by Carroll, who alleges he raped her decades ago and then defamed her after she spoke out.
So mark your calendars. The Donald Trump Rape Trial starts in T-minus 75 days and counting. Not that we're counting. We're counting on you to do that. Please keep us posted.
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Ten years ago in C&J: February 9, 2013
JEERS to the BIG ONE. You know how, when it's raining really hard out, some smartass always says "Imagine if this was snow!" Well, no imagination is necessary tonight as the Great Blizzard of Aught Thirteen pounds its way into the history books. How unprecedented is this monster? Let me put it this way: the last time we had one this severe, Harvey Milk was still alive, Fantasy Island had just aired its first episode, and NRA board member Ted Nugent autographed a fan's arm with his knife. Here in Portland, we were treated to an unexpected pre-storm storm that dropped six inches by noon. By the time it's all over we may have to use a car-sniffing dog to locate our Honda.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to 1/300th notes. Yesterday we paid tribute to John Williams on his 91st birthday. And now for something...completely different. On this date in 1992, Thomas Scholl of Germany became the fastest yodeler alive, delivering 22 tones—15 of them falsettos—in 1 second. (To put that in perspective, that’s almost as fast as it takes a consumer to realize that buying a MyPillow was a terrible purchasing decision.) Here he is in action yodeling all the names in the Dusseldorf phone book:
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I can’t believe Germany hasn’t made that their national anthem.
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
Scheduling Conflicts Could See Bill in Portland Maine Replaced by Matthew McConaughey in Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool
—Mediaite
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