And Now, This Brief Message…
Via Colbert: we understand there are still a few of these darling Jan. 6 collectibles remaining...
Add a million-dollar donation to the inauguration fund and they’ll include a Trump Bible with your order for just an extra $999,999.99. (Plus tax.)
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, January 8, 2025
Note: This week’s Super Secret Hidden Million Dollar Mystery Phrase—which could appear anywhere on Daily Kos, including scrunched up real tiny in the margins of a diary, the front page, or the Help Desk—is "By the Numbers." If by some miracle you can spot it, you owe me a million dollars. Good luck!
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By the Numbers:
9 days!!!
Days 'til National Rubber Ducky Day: 5
Days 'til Bean Day 2025 in Fargo, North Dakota: 9
Acres of U.S. ocean covered by President Biden's ban on offshore oil and gas drilling: 625 million
Year the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, which Biden invoked to issue his ban on drilling, was passed by Congress: 1953
Percent of MAGA cultists polled by CBS News who disapproved of the January 6, 2021 insurrection in 2021 and today, respectively: 51% / 30%
Percent of all U.S. adults who disapprove of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists: 81%
Age of Robert Duvall as of last Sunday: 94
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 180 (including 5 volcanoes and 1 weird thing to brag about). Soul Protection Factor 12 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: After 432 days, Spinach is finally heading home…
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CHEERS to parting gifts. Hey, everyone, look under your seats. YOU get two new national monuments and YOU get two new national monuments and YOU get two new national monuments and YOU get two new national monuments and we all get two new national monuments!!!
President Biden [created] two new national monuments in California on Tuesday, preserving the lands from development and setting a record—[674 million acres]—for the most land and waters conserved by any president, the White House said.
The Sáttítla Highlands National Monument covers more than 224,000 acres in Northern California and includes the ancestral homelands of the Pit River Tribe and Modoc people.
[…]
The Chuckwalla National Monument covers more than 624,000 acres south of Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California and includes sacred sites important to five groups of Indigenous people and 50 rare species of plants and animals, including the Chuckwalla lizard.
No word yet on whether Joe will designate as a national monument the C&J Kiddie Pool, with its ornate algae blooms and historic shark-bitten floaty boards. Probably not enough time left, since he'd first have to de-designate it as a superfund cleanup site. But hold on to hope, people. Hold on to hope.
JEERS to the new shitbags on the block. Now that Very Bad Man has been certified the next president of the United Oligarchs, it's time for silly cabinet confirmation season. Since the nominees are vicious, unqualified, and little more than stooges who will be fired if they in any way displease their dictator, Republicans on the confirmation committees will ask such hard-hitting questions as "How does your love of Baby Jesus guide you?" and "Aren’t you glad we can finally say 'Merry Christmas' again?" While Democrats on the committees will be gaveled "out of order" for daring to ask about the nominees' qualifications. Next Tuesday the Secretary of Defense nominee will go through the motions. Here are his highlights:
» Day job until now: Fox and Friends weekend host
» Another fine soulless shitbag churned out by Princeton and Harvard
» Ran Vets for Freedom into the financial ground by spending donations on parties
» Formed MN PAC and ran it into the financial ground by spending donations on parties
» Humped the legs of the Koch brothers by signing on to Concerned Veterans for America, where he "was frequently heavily intoxicated during official events to the point of having to be restrained, passing out, and shouting slogans calling for the death of all Muslims" before he got fired because of all the parties.
» Removed from the D.C. National Guard in 2021 because he was "flagged as a potential insider threat and removed from the group providing security for the 2021 inauguration of Joe Biden."
» Has "never made national-security policy, served in a senior military role, worked in defense acquisition, or led an organization larger than a nonprofit advocacy group."
» Seems to have a thing for slipping drugs into women's drinks and then raping them.
His nomination will sail through to confirmation. Because, in the words of his future boss: "When you're a star, they let you do it."
CHEERS to humble beginnings. On January 8,1790, President Washington delivered the first, and deliberately bland, State of the Union address (here's ye olde transcript). Today he'd shock the Fox News cult out of their knee socks:
"Uniformity in the currency, weights, and measures of the United States is an object of great importance, and will, I am persuaded, be duly attended to."
That's right—the father of our country wanted to take your currency, weights and measures and redistribute their uniformity to everyone else. Wretched socialist hippie cur. Speaker Muhlenberg should’ve impeached him while he had the chance.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to the Nutmeg State. Happy 237th birthday this week to Connecticut, which popped out of the womb of freedom on this date in 1788, becoming the fifth state in the union. It's responsible for giving us the nuclear submarine, Pez candy, lollipops, the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, beloved Daily Kos front-pager Greg Dworkin, Governor Ned Lamont, and Senators Chris Murphy and Dick Blumenthal. And also Joe Lieberman. Oh well…nobody's perfect.
CHEERS to putting NASA on notice. Now see here, you government science nerds down there in Florida and Texas and wherever else you're doing your spacey stuff. I've had just about enough of all this foot-dragging. I demand to see new photos from the James Webb space telescope that I helped pay for with my tax dollars or I'm calling the proper authorities. I'll give you to the count to three: one…two…thr
NASA's powerful Webb Telescope has spotted more than 40 ancient stars in a distant galaxy, researchers said in a new study.
The study, published Monday in Nature, said the researchers used a technique called gravitational lensing to identify the stars. The phenomenon occurs when light bends around a large celestial body, making objects in space seem closer than they appear. [...]
They’re in here somewhere.
The stars themselves are also impressive. Many are red supergiants, like the star Betelgeuse in Earth's galaxy. The galaxy they were found in was formed when the universe was about half its current age, the study said. Further observations of the galaxy might allow for studies of these types of stars, the researchers noted, which would allow scientists to learn more about the stars themselves and the way the universe was formed.
Ooh. Pretty. Okay, thanks, you can go back to whatever you were doing. We’ll take over the analysis from here. So far I see twelve nickels, a can of hair spray and a box of Fig Newtons. I knew it—we are not alone.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 8, 2015
JEERS to the reason why intelligent beings from other solar systems never visit ours. I admit I'm not super-familiar with the French satirical magazine whose artists, writers and editors were massacred yesterday in Paris. So to put the tragedy into perspective I can understand, I thought of what it would've been like if a trio of religious wackos went into the offices of Mad magazine and blew away my heroes Don Martin, Dave Berg, William Gaines, Jack Davis, Sergio Aragones, Al Jaffee, Mort Drucker, Al Feldstein and a few of the other geniuses who worked there. Suddenly shit gets real. And so now the drill: the shock slowly wears off, police nab the suspects, life returns to the new normal and then…sometime somewhere it all happens again and again and again. And that's the reason why intelligent beings from other solar systems never visit ours.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the happy meeting of X and Y chromosomes. Today is National Male Watcher's Day. Seriously…it's a thing. Far be it from me to deny you the simple pleasure of viewing the male form in all its glory, so ogle away:
Don't say I never did anything for you. Like, say, give you nightmares.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"Splashing in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool is insane. I don’t know what I did to deserve this.”
—New Miss America Abbie Stockard
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