"Have You Tried Penicillin?”
Kimmel’s covid wayback machine whisks us to the last week in office for TFG, who left with a 38 percent approval rating and a second impeachment as a farewell souvenir...
And we all lived happily ever after.
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, January 18, 2022
Note: Welcome to another day in a nation that has squandered its potential more than any other in the history of human civilization. Make it a great one!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the next federal holiday (POTUS Day): 34
Days 'til the federal website to order free covid masks and tests goes live: 1
Job approval ratings of Trump and Biden at the one-year mark in their presidencies, according to CBS News polling: 37%, 44%
Invincible, infallible Saint Ronald Reagan's approval at the one-year mark: 49%
Percent of Americans in the poll who say their approval of Biden would improve if he gets inflation, which he doesn't control, under control: 63%
Estimated amount red-hatted anti-vax cultists have spent to cure their Covid-19 with ivermectin, which doesn't and will never cure Covid-19: $129 million
Percent chance that COVID is just like the chickenpox or measles—you can “get it now to get it over with”: 0%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: And then there were…sixteen???
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CHEERS or JEERS to waking up…or not. Heads up, everyone. By this time tomorrow we'll know whether or not the skywatching nerds misjudged the skyscraper-sized asteroid they call "7482 (1994 PC1)" and it ended up slicing Planet Earth in two and destroying our atmosphere, leaving us all little more than globules of goo floating into space, which would really piss off Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson because it would put the kibosh on their space tourism operations:
The asteroid is estimated to measure at roughly 1 kilometer, or more than 3,280 feet, across—a size that is more than twice the height of New York's Empire State Building, which is 1,454 feet from base to antenna, and hundreds of feet more than Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, which is 2,716.5 feet tall.
The space agency has been monitoring this particular asteroid since it was discovered in August 1994, and has classified it as an Apollo asteroid, meaning its orbit crosses that of Earth's, and has axes that are slightly larger. It's also classified as "potentially hazardous" for its "potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth," according to NASA.
On the bright side, the thought of a planet-killing rock flying up our tuchus just briefly took your mind off of voter suppression, domestic terrorism, Marjorie Taylor-Greene's latest screed, and catastrophic climate change. And y’know what? You're welcome.
CHEERS to riding to the rescue. 31 years ago this week, under the strategic supervision of Joint Chiefs chairman Colin Powell and General "Stormin' Norman" Schwarzkopf, Operation Desert Storm began. A coalition of the willing—like, a real one—pushed Saddam Hussein's supposedly-mighty Iraqi army out of Kuwait within 100 hours. We know two things in retrospect: 1) the first President Bush saw to it that it was an efficient operation with a valid, defined goal that, once achieved, would prompt our immediate withdrawal, and 2) his eldest son wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to hittin' the bad guys where it hurts. What makes the world go 'round, kids? That's right—money!!! That's true even if you're a small army of un-American white supremacist insurrectionists. Taking away their money is a great way to de-fang the Thing From Mar-A-Lago's stormtroopers (Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and other assorted groups with Monty Pythonesque names), and that's just what some active lawsuits are now in the process of doing:
"If it so happens we bankrupt them, that's a good day," Karl Racine, the attorney general of Washington, D.C., who is partnering with other organizations in the suit, said at a news conference last month.
Now, the civil case is taking shape as the federal government's sprawling criminal investigation into the Capitol attack ensnared a prominent figure of the movement on Thursday, Oath Keepers leader and founder Stewart Rhodes, who was arrested on a charge of seditious conspiracy. […] The legal strategy behind it was used as recently as last November in the civil trial in Charlottesville, Virginia, against organizers of the far-right rally that erupted in deadly violence in 2017. And it's a tactic that has worked before.
[T]he suit targeting the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers hinges on proving at trial that they violated the Ku Klux Klan Act, a rarely used federal law codified after the Civil War to protect civil rights. The litigation has a good chance of succeeding, experts on hate and extremism in the U.S. say, because it sources the information that's being collected as part of the congressional investigation into what role the two groups played in the planning and execution of the assault on the Capitol.
We really should change our already-outdated national motto e pluribus unum to a new one that seems tailor-made for the era in which we find ourselves: Follow the Money.
CHEERS to Synonym Fever! Happy 243rd Birthday to Peter Roget, who published the first Thesaurus in 1852 (a decades-long endeavor undertaken in part to help him deal with bouts of depression). Curious if there was a synonym for thesaurus, I went to—where else?—Thesaurus.com to find out. Their list is BOGUS, and let me tell you for the umpteenth time why:
A thesaurus is a glossary, but a glossary isn’t necessarily a thesaurus.
A thesaurus is a language reference book, but a language reference book isn’t necessarily a thesaurus.
A thesaurus is a storehouse of words and a treasury of words and even a word list, but neither a storehouse of words nor a treasury of words nor a word list is necessarily a thesaurus.
A thesaurus is an onomasticon, but an onomasticon is not necessarily a thesaurus.
Now you know why the one thing my parents made sure never to run out of was earplugs.
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Ten years ago in C&J: January 18, 2012
JEERS to the worst advice columnist in the world. Ron Paul. Ann Landers he ain't:
“Today, gangs of young blacks bust into a bank lobby firing rounds at the ceiling. … We don’t think a child of 13 should be held as responsible as a man of 23. That’s true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult, and should be treated as such.”
In fairness, Paul says that's just the first draft of his inaugural speech.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to today's edition of C&J Theater. Our first production of the new year is full of the ol' razzle dazzle you've come to expect…with a surprise twist!
[Curtain Up]
Two Moderna scientists holding vials of vaccines, entering from stage right and stage left, are walking down a sidewalk toward each other, each distracted while texting on their smartphones. As they reach center stage, they bump into each other. The vaccines tumble to the ground, spilling their contents.
Scientist #1
Hey! You got your covid vaccine in my flu vaccine!
Scientist #2
Well, you got your flu vaccine in my covid vaccine!
Scientist #1
Hey, wait a minute. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Scientist #2
Are you thinking that maybe we could combine the covid vaccine and the flu vaccine into one vaccine?
Scientist #1
Darn tootin'. Let's get on it so we can help the world and also win a Nobel prize!
Suddenly the skyscraper-sized 7482 (1994 PC1) asteroid drops from the ceiling, crushing both scientists while slicing Planet Earth in two and destroying our atmosphere, leaving us all little more than globules of goo floating into space
Scientist #2 (Faintly gasping)
Did not…see that…coming.
[Curtain down]
Tony Awards committee: just put my statuette in the usual spot: on the back stoop next to the milk bottles. Thx.
Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
Cheers and Jeers Kiddie Pool Is Cooling “Much Faster Than Expected”
—SciTech Daily
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