My New Year’s Resolutions
Since everyone keeps asking:
» I won’t be suckered into believing any bogus conspiracy theories anybody tells me anymore. I will only be suckered into believing the ones told to me by the nanobots in my chemtrail booster shots.
» I shall train a platoon of squirrels to parachute into the White House and chew through the blue wire in Trump’s “football” so he can’t start a nuclear war. Or…wait, is it the blue wire or the green wire?
» I shall try to see the world from the MAGA point of view by taking a few minutes every day to act like a soulless, thick-as-a-brick demon crybaby.
» I shall peacefully resolve Daily Kos pie fights with my superior negotiating and arbitration skills, just as soon as we resolve our 20-year pie fight over the shape of the negotiating table.
As always, I shall continue firming and toning my person using only the finest in cutting-edge fitness accoutrements.
» I shall think more about world peace, economic justice and environmental health…or my insatiable need for cheap consumer goods that'll be thrown out the moment they get a scratch on them or the batteries need changing, whichever comes first.
» I shall reduce the number of distractions in my life by
» I shall continue my 60-year streak of not putting a hole in someone’s flesh and/or bone with projectiles from a firearm. Sorry, but I can’t make the same pledge about lawn darts.
» I shall remind myself daily that whatever horrible things Republicans do, Democrats can and will eventually undo.
» I shall remember what is best in life: “Destroy the Republicans, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentation of the Speaker of the House.”
» I shall make myself available as a strongman in any nation with plunderable resources.
» And I shall jump on the alternative currency bandwagon by creating my own questionably-legal tender called Billycoin. Many will confuse my Billycoins with stolen hubcaps. Don’t be fooled—guarantee authenticity by buying them directly from me for a million dollars each. I'm located in the third survival bunker from the left..
And, if all goes according to plan, we’ll all live happily ever after.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, January 2, 2025
Note: C&J is severing relations with Stouffer's French Bread Pizza until they start cutting their pepperoni into quarters again instead of just halves. To show we're serious, we'll be positioning our nuclear aircraft carrier across the street from their headquarters just as soon as we find a trailer hitch that doesn’t keep breaking while we’re doing 70 on the turnpike. We regret the inconvenience. —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
8 days!!!
Days 'til Martin Luther King Jr. Day: 18
Days 'til the 51st Santa Cruz Fungus Fair: 8
Days 'til the next time government funding expires: 72
Expected average price of gas in 2025, according to Gas Buddy, down 11 cents from last year thanks to the lingering effect of Bidenomics: $3.22
Expected total amount the average U.S. household will spend on gas this year: $2,252
Number of books Jimmy Carter wrote after his presidency: 23
Maine's new minimum wage as of Wednesday: $14.65
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Boy, you really can't take your eyes off this bunch for a minute, can you? If they're not screwing up one thing, then they're screwing up another—busy little beavers. And then there are the administrative nightmares they have created all by themselves: The new Medicare prescription-drug benefit is such a disaster area, four states took it over in less than a week just to make sure poor people received their drugs.
Some of the press are starting to get the drill. Give us something like the West Virginia coal mine disaster, and instead of standing around emoting like Geraldo Rivera, a few reporters have enough sense to ask the obvious question: What is this mine's safety record? And when it turns out to be abysmal, a few more reporters have enough sense to ask: Who's in charge of doing something after a mine gets 205 safety violations in one year? Where's the Mine Safety and Health Administration? Who runs it? What's their background—are they professionals or mining industry stooges? Who's the Michael "Heckuvajob" Brown in this outfit? Why are so many jobs at MSHA just left completely unfilled? How much has MSHA's budget been cut since 2001 to pay for tax cuts for the rich?
The great irony is that this was supposed to be the CEO administration. Bush was supposed to put people in charge of government who had track records in private industry, who did in fact know how to run a railroad. For just sheer incompetence, this administration sets new records daily. All those years the right wing sat around yammering about government incompetence, and it took this administration to make it true.
—January 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Important update…
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CHEERS to January. Anyone who enjoys winter sports is in heaven this month. And hot clam chowder (or your favorite soup, since it's Soup Month) on a frigid snowy day is unbeatable. But watch out, because that dastardly Covid-19—variants and all—is still lurking in the bushes, and the unvaccinated morons are still all-too-happy to spread it around.
January is named after the god Janus who, like Joe Manchin, is a two-faced oddity.
Plus: it’s Clean Your Computer Month. Be Kind to Food Servers Month. FDR's birthday. Australia Day. National Pie Day. California Dried Plum Digestive Health Month. Next Thursday is Static Electricity Day, aka The Day the Cat Disappears Into the Closet and Doesn't Come Out Until the Day After Static Electricity Day.
And, hey! Joe Biden is still our president for another 18 days.
The full “wolf moon” happens on the 13th, followed a week later by Martin Luther King Jr. Day. And here’s an interesting bit of trivia: Saturday is National Trivia Day. Too much fun! Don’t let it end!
JEERS to January. My toes are frozen, we have to bury Jimmy Carter, and Donald Trump is president again in 18 days. Anyone know how to safely induce a four-year coma? (Oh, right…silly me. Just turn on CNN.)
JEERS to the return of the bad people. Congress members new and old return to Washington this week to kick off the 119th session. The House (now led entirely by the white supremacist caucus) and Senate (with a new MAGA majority leader TBA) reconvene for happy swearings-in and backslapping, followed by 23 months of behavior that would get any three-year-old child kicked out of daycare. So here's the schedule as it now stands: Tomorrow morning, the House and Senate return. Tomorrow afternoon, gridlock returns.
CHEERS to a cool d...d...dip. They do it every year to raise money for the Natural Resources Council of Maine, and this year hundreds of masochists with big hearts participated in southern Maine's annual Polar Bear Dip and Dash, which includes a headlong plunge into the 44-degree Atlantic Ocean that gets played out in a hundred similar ways by various groups up and down the east coast. Afterward the Ladies Auxiliary used marimba mallets to play the classics on the men's cojones. The Flight of the Bumble Bee was particularly festive.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to routing the redcoats. 248 years ago today, in 1777 during our War of Independence, George Washington's army drove back a British attack at the Battle of Assunpink Creek and Municipal Airport near Trenton, New Jersey. This was the follow-up to Washington's famous crossing of the Delaware, where he defeated the Hessians by using the aroma of fresh pan-fried wienerschnitzel to lure them into a giant pit:
General William Howe, the British Commander-in-Chief of North America was furious with the defeat at Trenton. He canceled Lieutenant General Charles Cornwallis' scheduled leave to Britain for the winter and ordered him to Princeton immediately. […]
Only known photo from the 1777 Battle of Assunpink Creek.
Washington's men held back three assaults from the British, felling hundreds of British soldiers in the process, causing Cornwallis to hold a council to decide what to do. …
Washington took advantage of the break. … When Cornwallis arose in the morning, to his horror, Washington's entire army was gone.
You might say Cornwallis got his...Assunpink handed to him. Ha Ha Ha!!! (Aren't you glad C&J is around for a whole 'nother year of this? Me, too.)
JEERS to our microscopic overlords. As we ring in a new year, Covid-19 and other assorted RFK Jr.-approved diseases and their mutations continue baffling and befuddling us. As the CDC, WHO, and other health organizations and governments continue monitoring the situation, Cheers and Jeers will continue providing timely updates so you can stay armed with the cutting-edge knowledge you need to stay healthy and alive. Here's what we know as of today, Thursday, January 2nd, 2025: the cult of the unvaccinated can go f*ck themselves. Join us for our next update tomorrow morning, which will probably look a lot like today's.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 2, 2015
CHEERS to the continuing adventures Ol' Whatsizface. When last we left presidential failure Barack Hussein Obama, he was jetting off to that foreign and exotic land Cokie Roberts calls "Hawaii" buoyed by rising poll numbers, strong economic news, an historic Cuba announcement, low gas prices, and a couple dozen judicial confirmations. Now he's back and itchin' to keep on controlling the narrative:
During stops in Michigan, Arizona and Tennessee, Obama plans to draw a connection between actions his administration took early in his presidency and increasingly positive economic trends in sectors such as manufacturing and housing.
Officials say he'll also offer specific new proposals—some that he'll pursue with Congress and others he'll advance with his own authority—that are intended to build on that progress, particularly for the middle class.
Republicans, of course, are greeting the news by throwing tantrums on Fox News, and right-wing social media has already turned this week's day trips into his first scandal of the year: Doingstuffgate.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to home sweet safe home. This year's rankings released by WalletHub ("For all your hub needs as they relate to wallets and such") say that Maine's largest hamlet is among the safest in the country. Out of over 180 cities studied for "home & community Safety, natural-disaster risk, and financial safety,” Portland proudly stands nearly atop the list at #9. The top ten safest cities:
1. South Burlington, VT
Needless to say, if this guy lives in your town, it’s not on WalletHub’s safest cities list.
2. Casper, WY
3. Warwick, RI
4. Burlington, VT
5. Boise, ID
6. Yonkers, NY
7. Cedar Rapids, IA
8. Columbia, MD
9. Portland, ME
10. Virginia Beach, VA
As usual, the most dangerous place in America remains the space between a megachurch grifter and an old lady’s checkbook.
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
“Cheers and Jeers, for me, is where a mile feels like a mile. An hour feels like 60 minutes.”
—Matthew McConaughey
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