Oh! More Things I Know…
✌ Voting in the 2022 midterm elections ends in 5 days. MAGA whining about the 2022 election results ends in never days.
✌ Tuesday's Democratic winners will be careful to enact policies that don't overreach. Tuesday's Republican winners will be careful to enact policies that do nothing but overreach.
✌ The scariest words in the English language: "I'm Clarence Thomas and I've given this some thought..."
Continued...
✌ The MAGAts have gotten so extreme and dangerous that we now consider the time they went after Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss as "the good old days."
✌ I just signed the Justice League's petition urging Congress to pass the ACA—the Affordable Cape Act.
✌ One thing whose price hasn’t been affected a bit by inflation is nutball Republican politicians. They always come dirt cheap.
✌ The American and Russian astronauts are having some interesting discussions up at the International Space Station these days.
✌ The outcome of the 2022 elections now hinges on the kids. To get them on board, we should all go out on the streets and offer them shiny dimes.
✌ In addition to all the other issues he's falling down on, Attorney General Merrick Garland has still failed to throw a tarp over the naked lady statues at the Justice Department or sing Let the Eagle Soar even once.
✌ You will be automatically charged $49.95 a month to belong in The Billy& Squirrely Friends Club unless you find and unclick the box.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, November 3, 2022
Note: An urgent reminder to grease and re-string your catapults and soak your leftover 2017 holiday fruitcakes in gasoline this weekend, as the opening assault in the war on Christmas starts PROMPTLY after next Tuesday’s elections. As usual, stragglers will be punished by spending the day in solitary with a bitter, aging Furby who won’t shut up about how great Pogs were.
—Generalissimo Billeh
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By the Numbers:
Weeks 'til Thanksgiving: 3
Days 'til the start of Lightscape at the Chicago Botanic Garden: 8
Most common gas price at the moment: $3.29
Estimated amount of cryptocurrency stolen by hackers in October: $3 billion
Current number of job openings in the USA: 10.7 million
Prison sentence for some Kansas dipshit lady who led a battalion of ISIS dipshits in Syria: 20 years
Rank of Lancaster PA, Harrisburg PA, and Pensacola FL on the list of best places in America to retire, according to U.S. News & World Report: #1, #2, #3
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
For me, the most annoying suggestion being made is that Democrats somehow need to claim or reclaim patriotism or to do something to let folks know that we, too, love our country.
I find that hideously offensive.
I have always thought the only way to respond to Republican statements and implications questioning the patriotism of non-Republicans is with a good swift blast of venomous anger. … The contemptible, petty, little would-be Joe McCarthys need to understand what love of country really means—love of the highest and best in America.
—October, 2005
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Puppy Pic of the Day: The legend lives on...
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JEERS to Billeh's Law of Opposites. I came up with this law in 1686 when I was only 23, and it still holds true today: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. So this week Brazil kicked out a right-wing hack in favor of a lefty, and—this just in—Israel kicked out the lefties in favor of a right-wing hack:
Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be on course for a bigger victory in Israel’s fifth election in less than four years than initial exit polls suggested, all three of the country’s main television channels projected Wednesday morning.
His Likud party and its natural allies are currently projected to win 65 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, with 86% of the votes counted as of Wednesday afternoon Israel time.
A coalition of Netanyahu’s Likud, the Jewish nationalist Religious Zionism/Jewish Power bloc, Shas and United Torah Judaism would, on paper, be the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.
After all these centuries of being correct, I believe I deserve the Nobel Prize in Political Physics. Please write me in on your ballot Tuesday and let my wings take dream.
CHEERS to quick hits. [Walks onto stage, taps mic.] Heyyyyyy!!! Didja hear that Poland is building a wall along its border with Russia? Yeah. But y’know what's really strange? Mexico is paying for it. Hey-ooooooooooooooo!!!!!! Boom—I still got it.
CHEERS to a very bad day for the GOP. Eighty-six years ago today, on November 3rd, 1936, FDR was re-elected in a landslide over Alf Landon by—get this—523 electoral votes to 8.
On this date twenty-eight years later, the papers trumpeted Lyndon Johnson’s victory over Barry Goldwater 486-52. Twenty-eight years after that Bill Clinton dispatched George H.W. Bush by a less-substantial but still impressive 370-168 margin. Sixteen years after that, Barack Obama disposed of John McCain 365-173. And 12 years after that, Joe Biden cleaned The Thing’s clock by an embarrassing 306-232. Grand total: 2,060 to 535. Takeaway message: revenge is a dish best served lopsided.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to little green footballs. 70 years ago this week, in 1952, Clarence Birdseye first marketed frozen peas. We hate 'em—they're stinky, pungent and squishy—and anyone who thinks otherwise must be a socialist Marxist commie. But we'll say this: if you're packin' a spoon, they make awesome catapult ammo at the Thanksgiving dinner table. (Especially if you're sitting across from Uncle MAGA.)
JEERS to wrecking a mediocre thing. When I got a Twitter account a dozen years ago, I was like a kid in a candy store. But arguing with right-wingers quickly became a game in which I racked up all the points while they scored none, and I'm just no longer much into what pundits or celebrities have to say about anything—my opinions are baked into my DNA at this point. So these days I mostly follow a handful of our Daily Kos overlords and limit my posts to pics of my squirrel pals and live-tweeting Star Trek reruns with a snarky band of trekkies every night. But if sticking around in the Musk Era means I get to watch a train wreck in real time, count me in:
Major advertisers are already pausing ad spends on Twitter over concerns about Musk’s approach to content moderation. And Sarah Personette, the chief customer officer who managed most advertiser relationships, announced Tuesday that she’d resigned. If the experiences of right-wing alternatives like Truth Social and Parler have shown us anything, it’s that most advertisers don’t like their brands to be associated with hate speech.
Twitter is going to change under the absolute authority of Musk, but it doesn’t look like it’s for the better. Guided by skewed alt-right ideas for reshaping the platform and with the pressure to rapidly monetize users to pay soaring annual interest payments, even his hype machine may not be enough to save the platform from his poor management. But at least some users might stick around to experience the train wreck for themselves.
I hope he drives it off a rickety trestle into a ravine. I love trains driving off rickety trestles into ravine wrecks. They’re my favorite.
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Ten years ago in C&J: November 3, 2012
CHEERS to surrogate in action inaction. While former President Bill Clinton barnstorms the swing states to huge crowds and wild enthusiasm on behalf of President Obama, former President George W. Bush was in the Cayman Islands doing [redacted]. But now that I think about it, Hoover didn’t stump for Alf Landon. Nixon didn’t stump for Ford. And Bush II didn’t stump for McCain, either. In fact, former Republican presidents don’t seem to do a lot of stumping for their successor candidates, do they? I wonder why. Must be a rugged individualism thing. Or a restraining order.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to blowing this popsicle stand. Whenever the shit gets too deep here on the bluish-brown marble, I head over to NASA's site to see if our new Space Force is conquering every ball of gas and rock in the known galaxy. Sorry to say the answer is no, so we'll just have to spend our days and nights gazing yonward and dreaming. This month’s major celestial events are a lunar eclipse, and the return of the winter star clusters to keep us company for the next few months. Here's NASA's Preston Dyches with a preview of what you'll be seeing in November:
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We now return you to life on Earth. Sorry.
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
Are yams and Bill in Portland Maine the same?
—USA Today
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