Programming Note
Courtesy of The Daily Show, news that a certain Nazi-obsessed TV network is adapting to the new post-election era:
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Now if we could only teach the MAGA cultists what “bad” means.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, December 5, 2024
Note: Some people say I buy my own hype. Not true. It’s a rental.
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By the Numbers:
8 days!!!
Days 'til winter: 16
Days 'til the Winter Wassail Weekend in Woodstock, Vermont : 8
Number of job openings in October, unchanged from September according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics: 7.7 million
Number of toys and games sold in the U.S. every year: 3 billion
Number of toy-related injuries treated in emergency rooms every year among kids 14 and under: 150,000
Percent chance that Black Republicans say they're surprised and dismayed that Trump hasn't named more than one Black person to his administration, according to ABC News: 100%
Value of the 2,500 pies—later found ruined—that were in a van stolen from Michelin-starred British chef Tommy Banks: $31,000
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Today’s challenge is “Spot the Next Brownie.” In this game for the whole family, review a list of Bush administration cronies and see if you can pick the next Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown, another disaster waiting for a hurricane.
Scope out the Bird Flu Czar from Amtrak. Stewart Simonson is now in charge of “the protection of the civilian population from acts of bioterrorism and other public health emergencies” according to his government biography. He is also in charge of ensuring the country has adequate vaccines and antiviral meds to combat an avian flu epidemic. This would be peachy-keen if Simonson had any experience in public health, bioterrorism, epidemics, or even management. Unfortunately, he’s a political lawyer. As he recently told a congressional subcommittee, “We’re learning as we go.”
Simonson’s rabbi is former Gov. Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, who hired him out of law school, took him to Washington as deputy general counsel at Health and Human Services and then got him the job as general counsel of Amtrak. Ed Garvey, a well-known lawyer in Wisconsin political circles, told The Nation magazine, “He’s a political hack, a sycophant. People just laughed when he was appointed to Amtrak, but when word came out that he was in charge of bioterrorism, it turned to alarm. When you realize that people’s lives are at stake, it’s frightening. It’s just one of those moments when you say, ‘Oh, my God.'”
—December 2005
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Meanwhile, at Golden Gate Lab Rescue…
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CHEERS to slimming down just in time for the holidays. Our C&J west coast correspondent just arrived in Portland, Maine via sled dog and presented us with a printout of the latest news from Axios on the imminent composition of the House of Representatives. (I didn’t have the heart to tell him he could've just sent it via telex. He and the pooches so love stopping by the world's largest ball of twine on their journey. Who am I to deny them the pleasure? But I digress.) In one word: tighterthanatick:
Democrats won the final uncalled U.S. House race in California on Tuesday, ensuring Republicans will have a painfully miniscule majority next year.
And Rep.-elect Adam Gray makes 115.
Why it matters: This could cause all kinds of problems for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and President-elect Trump as they try to quickly pass a sweeping conservative policy agenda through Congress. Democrats are already formulating ways to kill party-line GOP votes and force Republicans to pursue a bipartisan approach to governance.
Driving the news: Rep. John Duarte (R-Calif.) told Axios he conceded to Democratic challenger Adam Gray after nearly a month of vote-counting. Gray, who won by under 200 votes, declared victory in a statement saying he is "honored to become the Congressman-elect for California's 13th district."
The final composition of the House when Very Bad Man takes office on January 20th: 217 fascists and 215 Democrats. And since a tie vote kills a bill, Captain Pornbuster…er, Speaker Johnson...has no room for any errors. Well, besides the other 216 lost souls his caucus is stuck with.
JEERS to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Apparently, Very Bad Man (my new name for the incoming 47th president, who will make the 45th president look like Lincoln in comparison) is thinking of throwing that Hegeseth fella overboard, and instead picking Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to run the Department of Defense. I don’t know much about cabinet nominations, but I do know that if you're too weird even for Very Bad Man, then you ain't got no business around our nukes. Besides, with our military in dire need of a redesign in our servicemembers' footwear, I can think of no one better than Captain Combat Boots:
Our troops will, of course, need a different color after Labor Day.
CHEERS to sweet victory. On December 5, 1792, George Washington won reelection. It was a brutal campaign. His challenger was a real jerk named...um...George Washington. Watching him debate himself was actually a little creepy:
"Shan't!"
Fact: Washington’s win was due to a little girl’s suggestion that he grow whiskers.
"Shall!"
"Shan't!"
"Shall!"
”Thou can’st sticketh a rubber—or rubber-like, depending upon the seasonal availability of materials—hose uppeth thy snooty Virginia nose.”
"Thy wife weareth the boots of a paymaster in the Continental Army!"
"Okay, okay...thou hast me there, I concedeth the point."
"Then bullocks to you, I win!"
Did I mention he built his own distillery?
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to "Martin Van Ruin." Our 8th president turns 242 today (but he doesn’t look a day over 239). In the “negative” column, he sat around picking his nose during the depression and panic of 1837, did nothing about slavery, and was on duty during the time of the shameful Trail of Tears. In the “plus” column, he averted conflicts with Britain and Canada. In the "sleeping on the couch" column, he never once mentioned his wife Hannah (who died at 36 before he reached the White House) in his autobiography. Interesting tidbit from The Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien:
Martin Van Buren was renowned for not taking a stand.
Van Buren's nickname was “Old Kinderhook,” which was the genesis of the phrase we now know as “O.K.”
One story, which Van Buren admits to in his autobiography, tells how one senator accepted a bet that he could actually make Van Buren admit to something with finality. "It's been rumored that the sun rises in the east," said the senator to Van Buren. "Do you believe it?" "Well, Senator," came the reply, "I understand that's the common acceptance, but as I never get up till after dawn, I can't really say."
Oh, and before his one-way trip to the Alamo, Congressman Davy Crocket said: “Martin Van Buren is laced up in corsets, such as women in a town wear, and if possible tighter than the best of them. It would be difficult to say from his personal appearance, whether he was a man or a woman, but for his large red and gray whiskers." Fox News would never hire Crockett as a pundit today. Too restrained.
JEERS to locking and loading for the holidays. Attention 911 dispatchers and paramedics: looks like business is gonna be booming this year with a lot of blam-blams under the Christmas tree. Says here that the FBI was busy again dealing with background check requests on Black Friday, but thankfully the numbers are down:
[T]he FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) completed 613,380 background checks related to firearms for the week leading up to, and including, “Black Friday,” one of the busiest shopping days of the year. That figure is down from 2023’s total of 680,671 for the same time period. The 2024 total is a 9.8 percent decrease from the 2023 figure.
So what did the U.S., with our infinite superiority over the world, outlaw instead? Lawn darts.
FBI NICS completed 169,906 background checks on “Black Friday” alone. The figure approximates firearm sales at retail on that day, although it also includes background checks for other purposes related to firearms such as approvals for concealed carry permits.
As a public service, C&J offers our usual helpful tip for Santa when he goes about his business in 20 days: swap out the fur suit for Kevlar.
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 5, 2014
JEERS to Bill O'Reilly: Mind Reader Un-extraordinaire. Some members of the St. Louis Rams made a gesture of solidarity with the Ferguson, Missouro protesters Sunday by walking on the field with their hands up, and it made all the papers. It was a powerful moment that required no additional commentary. But Fox News's Frank Burns, Bill O'Reilly, couldn't resist:
"Quite frankly, I don't think they're smart enough to know what they're doing," O'Reilly said. "I don't. I absolutely don't think they're smart enough to know what they're doing."
Well, I’ll give him this. He got the "I don’t think" part right.
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And just one more…
CHEERS and JEERS to 2024 in a nutshell. Thanks, Wikipedia, for letting us know what your users’ top searches were this year, so we can file them away in our brains without a lot of muss or fuss. On this score, at least, Kamala Harris cleaned Very Bad Man’s clock in a landslide:
1. Deaths in 2024, 44,440,344 pageviews
2. Kamala Harris, 28,960,278
3. 2024 United States presidential election, 27,910,346
4. Lyle and Erik Menendez, 26,126,811
5. Donald Trump, 25,293,855
6. Indian Premier League, 24,560,689
7. JD Vance, 23,303,160
8. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” 22,362,102
9. Project 2025, 19,741,623
10. 2024 Indian general election, 18,149,666
And coming in at #11: "Has Cheers and Jeers Won A Major Award Like A Pulitzer Or A Kennedy Center Honor Yet," which I personally searched over 19,932,508 times. But only because I didn’t have as much time to do it as I did last year. Time to reprioritize my life, methinks.
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
100-Year-Old Nebraska Woman Shares Secret to Long Life at Surprise Birthday Party: 'I'm Not Afraid to Read Cheers and Jeers'
—People
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