New Product—Buy! Buy!
Christmas shopping: done...
Buy now. Before the Supreme Court outlaws them, too.
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, June 29, 2022
Note: Hooray! It's C&J's annual Moment of Bunting!
And now it's over. Thanks. See you next year. —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the 246th anniversary of what we now know to be the stupidest decision the 13 colonies ever made: 5
Days 'til the Ossipee Valley Fair in South Hiram, Maine: 8
Date on which Russia defaulted on its debts ($100 million was due) for the first time in a century: 6/26/22
Rank of "chronic pain" and "PTSD" among top reasons Americans enroll in medical cannabis programs, which quadrupled over the last five years: #1, #2
Birth and death dates of the English judge whom Justice Alito cited in his majority opinion overturning Roe v Wade: 1609-1676
Number of women the judge sentenced to death on the grounds that they were witches: 2
Age of rags-to-riches billionaire Leonardo Del Vecchio, owner of the Ray-Ban brand, when he died this week: 87
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 189 (including 4 apostasies and the only way you'll ever see Jesus and George W. Bush in the same room together). Soul Protection Factor 43 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Eye to eye…
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CHEERS to being in the room(s) where it happened. John Dean, meet Cassidy Hutchinson. The star witness of the Watergate hearings now has a counterpart at the Jan. 6 Committee hearings—and make no mistake, she’s a full-on Trumper and former aide to the odious Rep. Steve Scalise. But Hutchinson's White House office was literally situated between those of President Trump and her boss Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. She saw and heard, like, a ton of illegal shit that went on behind the scenes before, during, and after the January 6th insurrection. This seemed to drop the most jaws ("mags" are magnetometers, aka metal detectors)…
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Plus: Meadows and Rudy Giuliani sought pardons, Trump threw plates across the room and splattered food (notably ketchup) at the interior walls of The People’s House (another crime), and Trump allies are right now committing witness tampering by making mafia-style threats at Jan. 6 committee witnesses (a felony). But the bottom line is: it’s beyond dispute now that Trump and many of his allies are guilty as f*ck of seditious conspiracy. There are more hearings scheduled for July that will continue closing off any legal escape route Trump thinks he might have from this. In the meantime, keep your eye on the telegraph machine for news of more previously-unwilling witnesses coming forward. It’s funny how the threat of prison time can loosen lips.
CHEERS to Civic Duty Tuesday. Sure, the Nazis are taking over our country at the speed of a hopped-up Tiger tank. But that doesn’t mean we can't spend the occasional day voting in primary elections, does it? Nein! Nein es tut nicht!!! Yesterday saw contests in a whole bunch of states. Sure, you could go to the Daily Kos Elections Team feed and get caught up on their brilliant analysis posted at lightning speed as the results rolled in. Or, you can watch what I'm about to do, which is at least ten times as impressive. [Cracks knuckles.] [Closes eyes.] [Takes deep breath.] [Starts shaking pom-poms]
Utah!
South Carolina!
Oklahoma!
New York!
Mississippi
Illinois!
Colorado!
Yesterday's primary states posted in reverse alphabetical order, and I only peeked at my notes twice. I win! Everybody gather around the C&J 50-yard line and let's all praise Satan in front of all the fans in the bleachers. We can do that now!
CHEERS to hittin' the road. Sixty-six years ago today, radical socialist (and probably Kenya-born) President Dwight Eisenhower signed the controversial Federal Highway Act, which authorized the construction of 42,500 miles of freeway from coast to coast, in part to fulfill FDR’s vision of making it easier for people to move to new jobs, but mostly so that our military vehicles could move quickly across the country the way the Nazis’ could during World War II. It wasn't an easy thing to accomplish:
Between 1954 and 1956, there were several failed attempts to pass a national highway bill through the Congress.
The main controversy over the highway construction was the apportionment of the funding between the Federal Government and the states. Undaunted, the President renewed his call for a "modern, interstate highway system" in his 1956 State of the Union Address.
Within a few months, after considerable debate and amendment in the Congress, The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 emerged from the House-Senate conference committee. ... During his recovery from a minor illness, Eisenhower signed the bill into law at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on the 29th of June.
Soon after completion, parents got their first earful of "Are we there yet?? Are we there yet?? Are we there yet??" Sixty-six years later the most-popular answer remains: “Shut up or I’m turning this car around.”
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to workin' on the wire without a net. 176 years ago this week, in 1846, New York and Boston were linked by telegraph wires for the first time ever. Unfortunately people kept tripping over them, so the following week they invented the telegraph pole.
CHEERS to fewer swirlies. File this under "Didn’t See That Coming." I assumed the opposite of this was happening:
[T]he frequency of the planet's most devastating storms has decreased over the past century.
The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that the annual number of global hurricanes, typhoons and tropical storms — or tropical cyclones, more generally — declined by roughly 13% as the planet warmed during the 20th century.
Scientists found that trend in most of the world's oceans—except for the North Atlantic, where the number of storms increased.
Mother Nature assures us that Atlantic hurricane seasons will also simmer down once Mar-A-Lago has successfully been turned into a pile of rubble.
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Ten years ago in C&J: June 29, 2012
CHEERS to decisions, decisions. It's news to nobody at this point that the Supreme Court upheld—on "taxing authority" grounds, not Commerce Clause grounds—that the mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is constitutional. But since 10:07 yesterday morning, everyone's been asking me: "Bill! What's the one thing that you take away from this ruling???" Well, speaking as an established expert in the field of not knowing anything about law, the one thing I take away from it is this shining example of change I can believe in:
Rush Limbaugh, March 2010: "I'll just tell you this: if this passes and it's five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented—I am leaving the country. I'll go to Costa Rica."
Hell, I'll even pay for his rubber raft.
6/29/22 Update. His plans seem to have changed…
Please: hold your applause.
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And just one more…
JEERS to things that go boom. Thanks to a stupid state law, fireworks are a fact of life here in Maine, but at least cities/towns are still free to ban fireworks, and Portland is among them (our city has burned down enough times, thanks). But for those who insist on getting their jollies risking life and limb, not to mention scaring animals half to death, for a brief moment of sparkly boom-boom, we offer our annual pre-4th C&J tradition of reminding ourselves that fireworks are most dangerous when they're in the hands of crazy-ass mannequins:
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And now let’s give a flag-wavin' cheer to America’s official July 4th motto: “The Emergency Room Is Thataway."
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
”Cheers and Jeers is perfunctory and frankly this is a franchise now running on the thinnest of fumes.”
—Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
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