It’ll Be A Merry Christmas After All!
Sure, the Trump tariffs will render bare all the toy-aisle shelves in America way before December. But The Daily Show is first to announce an unlimited supply of 2025’s version of the Furby for all the good little boys and girls. And it’s made right here!
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Also available: G.I. Sewer Rat with kung-fu grip!
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, May 7, 2025
Note: Today's winning number in the Tri-State One Number Lottery, for the 17,889th consecutive day, is...
1
The $29 jackpot will be divided up, as usual, among the 29 people who bought tickets for a buck each. Congratulations. Again.
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By the Numbers:
Starts Friday!!!
Days 'til Victoria Day in Canada: 12
Days 'til the Mesick Mushroom Festival in Michigan: 2
Percent chance that Congress controls the purse strings for PBS and NPR, contrary to what the rotting brain of the president thinks: 100%
Estimated number of Americans who tune in to PBS and/or NPR each month: 160 million
Number of states suing the Department of Health and Human Services for its mass layoffs: 19
Estimated chance you'll use stairs and suffer a minor accident: 1-in-63,000
Current worldwide box office gross of the breakout hit Sinners after only two weeks in theaters: $236 million
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 184 (including 5 gogs and 1 Ungodly Acronym Fail). 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: North and his pootie posse…
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JEERS to the dumbest deadline. Well, today's the day. Yup. It's today. Deadline day. The day of the deadline. If you haven't met the deadline, you are officially a bad citizen. Bad citizen, bad!!! Don't you know it's deadline day? It is!!! Today is the day you gotta have a little star on your driver's license or, by god, you are no longer entitled to go on a domestic airline flight and endure screaming babies, screaming Christian fundamentalists, screaming MAGA cultists, screaming drunks, and flight attendants screaming at all the screamers to STOP SCREAMING!!! And the reason we gotta have a little star on our driver's licenses now to travel on airlines? Beats the shit outta me, but I'll take a wild guess and say it's an ancient relic from…yup, you guessed it:
Congress passed the REAL ID Act in 2005 to enhance security as part of the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations that the federal government “set standards for the issuance of sources of identification, such as driver’s licenses,” according to DHS.
The only acceptable alternative to the official Real ID star, according to DHS director Kristi Noem, is a crude one with a smiley face hand-drawn by a child no older than 4 years of age.
The act changed minimum security standards, and it prohibits federal agencies such as DHS and the Transportation Security Administration from accepting certain identification cards that aren’t REALID-compliant and don’t meet the act’s standards.
But don’t worry. If you don’t have a little star on your driver's license and you need to travel on a domestic flight, no problem! A helpful TSA official will direct you to a special screening area, then an "additional screening" area, then a full-body-cavity search area, then a cognitive abilities test area, then the urine test tent, the lice inspection gazebo, the sobriety test chalk line, the loyalty oath lectern, plus a complete search of your online browsing and financial history, and finally you'll have to work a 16-hour shift in the control tower because they're really hurting for employees right now.
So happy deadline day, everyone. As for you, Osama BUTTHEAD-Laden: Ha Ha Ha, you have failed in your bid to take away our freedoms. USA! USA!
JEERS to today's edition of Shot…and Chaser. [Sigh] Some days these are just too easy. Four months ago, the shot:
Ford donated at least $1 million to this year’s inauguration. Ford, as disclosed in Sunday’s filing, also provided roughly $200,000 in vehicle services as in-kind donations.
And Monday, the chaser:
Ford Motor Co. late Monday pulled its 2025 guidance, citing significant near-term risks, and said it expects a tariff hit of about $1.5 billion for the year as U.S. automakers continue to grapple with economic uncertainty and some consumers shy away from big-ticket expenses.
But on the bright side: the bowl of beer nuts comes compliments of the house.
CHEERS to a heckuva deal. 399 years ago this week, in 1626, Manhattan was purchased from Native Americans for around $24 in beads, trinkets and wampum. Or in today's terms: A medium espresso. Or funding for 1/1000th of a second at a private college. Or the amount of money Republicans would like to put into alternative energy. Or the total amount Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. has put into learning about health and human services. Or... Well, let's just say somewhat cheap.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to incorrigible dirigibles. The Goodyear blimp "Hindenburg" caught fire and crashed 88 years ago this week—back yonder in 1937—in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Herb Morrison's anguished live broadcast is as riveting now as it was then. Sadly, a similar tragedy occurred several years later during the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Drop over Cincinnati. Oh the humanity, indeed.
CHEERS to masters of the quill and the inquisitive mind. The 2025 Pulitzer Prizes were announced this week. You can see the whole list here, and it’s a good one. Some highlights:
National Reporting Staff of The Wall Street Journal for chronicling political and personal shifts of the richest person in the world, Elon Musk, including his turn to conservative politics, his use of legal and illegal drugs and his private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Commentary Mosab Abu Toha, contributor, The New Yorker for essays on the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza that combine deep reporting with the intimacy of memoir to convey the Palestinian experience of more than a year and a half of war with Israel.
If that press operator also delivers stripper-grams, I want his number.
Illustrated Reporting and Commentary Ann Telnaes of The Washington Post for delivering piercing commentary on powerful people and institutions with deftness, creativity—and a fearlessness that led to her departure from thin-skinned wussie Jeff Bezos the news organization after 17 years.
Public Service ProPublica, for urgent reporting by Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser, Cassandra Jaramillo and Stacy Kranitz about pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague “life of the mother” exceptions in states with strict abortion laws.
The top prize in fiction went to James by Percival Everett. He barely edged out I Won the 2020 Election, Believe Me by Donald Trump, and Harlan Crow Has No Influence On My Judicial Decisions, Believe Me by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. C&J got recognition, too—our restraining order was renewed for another year. Message: they care.
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 7, 2015
CHEERS to packed polling places across The Pond. Britain's Brits take their stiff upper lips to voting places today, and we already know one of the winners: the election process itself, which includes a short campaign season, making our non-stop, money-centric, poll-crazy shoutfest look pretty pathetic. Current Prime Minister David Cameron will likely hold onto power instead of challenger Ed Miliband, in part because the Labour Party chose to run as "Austerity Lite" instead of proudly progressive. (Yes, I'm allowed to back-seat drive other countries' elections—I'm an American.) If things turn out like they did five years ago, we can expect a brief post-election period of confusion, horse-trading, soggy kippers and a shortage of bowler hats. But all that will dissipate as it usually does at around 4 O'clock when the Queen puts the kettle on.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to cardinal rules. Today's the day 133 grown men lock themselves in a room with a DJ and an open bar and vow not to come out until they’ve picked the new pope. In recent elections, it's taken about three days for the white smoke to appear. But I can terminate the suspense for you now. You'll find the 267th pope here. In the pizza…
I'm guessing he'll call himself Poperoni the Large with Extra Cheese.
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
Bill in Portland Maine’s brain is filled with spiders. He seems to, at best, have one toe planted in the C&J kiddie pool.
—Rex Huppke
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