We’ll Return To Our Award-Winning C&J After This Brief Message
Courtesy of The Lincoln Project, tips and tricks you can use to snag your dream job at I.C.E....
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And don’t forget to bring your lobotomy certificate. Your I.C.E. recruiter will definitely want to see your lobotomy certificate.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, November 5, 2025
Note: A reminder that November 5th is Stress Awareness Day. To avoid stress, don't read the news. Then, to avoid the stress of thinking you're missing something important by not reading the news, read the news. Repeat until midnight. Thank you I SAID THANK YOU!!!
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By the Numbers:
3 days!!!
Days 'til Veterans Day: 6
Days 'til Old-Fashioneds Up North in Eagleton, Wisconsin: 3
Percent of American voters polled by Clarity Campaign Labs who support Democratic senators refusing to vote to reopen the government until funding for health insurance is restored, versus 35% who oppose them: 53%
Drop in national median rent prices from October '24 to October '25: 0.9%
Percent of Americans polled by Verasight who believe the country is on the wrong track under Mad King TACO: 62%
Percent of Americans over the age of 65 who say they can tell the time on an analog clock “instantly”: 95%
Percent of those aged 18–30 who can: 43%
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 178 (including 3 tribulation temples and 1 inspiring message of Hope). 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: In the Alaskan village of Tuntutuliak…Saved!!!
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CHEERS to a happy outcome. Time to pick over the post-election carcass and see how things shook out hither and yon. 2025 had its share of hits and misses, so let's preserve 'em in amber:
Maine: 64 percent of Portland residents voted to give themselves a minimum-wage raise to $19, and business owners have instantly turned into Henny Penny, Inc. On the state level, a MAGA attempt to destroy absentee voting failed bigly and beautifully, and a separate question that would give family members the right to petition a court to get guns out of the hands of their mentally-unstable kin passed.
Virginia: Voters opened a big 'ol can of Spanberger with a side of Ghazala Hashmi. A big sigh of relief as Democrat Jay Jones smashed out a win as attorney general. The House of Commons remains firmly in Democratic hands.
Nice to haul this out of storage again.
New Jersey: Democrat Mikie Sherrill defeated Whoever to succeed the competent Phil Murphy at the governor's mansion. As is custom, Sherrill will be administered the oath of office with her left hand on a pile of bling and bronzer, and her right middle finger hoisted at New York.
California Proposition 50: With virtually no time to do it, Governor Gavin Newsom and the Democrats put together a seat-for-seat response to Texas's (read: Trump's) mid-cycle gerrymandering, and voters approved it by a big margin. (64% to 36%!) The effect of Texas's stupid move is now neutered. Great job, y'all.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court elections: VICTORY! All three state Supreme Court seats went to Democrats.
New York City Mayor: History was made twice last night as Democrat Zohran Mamdani became the first Muslim mayor of America's largest city, and I finally learned how to spell Zohran Mamdani without googling it. What to watch for next: the Republican-predicted mass exodus of New Yorkers who, gol’durn it, ain’t gonna live under the thumb of this Marxist and his demonic plans for—[checks notes]—cheaper groceries, lower rents, and free bus fare. The horror.
P.S. A final Big Apple shoutout to Andrew Cuomo, the Trump/Stephen Miller-endorsed independent candidate who wasted no time wallowing in the gutter: go fugg yourself.
And a special cheer to all the poll workers who put in long hours with a smile on election day to make the ultimate display of the American democratic process run smoothly. If only more American voters were as dedicated, we might have something to boast about.
JEERS to the latest entry in the Guinness Book of Shameful Records. As we bask in the afterglow of the state and local election results, we note with outrage that our federal government is still shuttered. And today is especially outrageous. Mark it in the books, kids: as of today, the 36-day-old Trump-Johnson government shutdown—aka the "Prevent The Epstein Files From Being Released At All Costs" shutdown—will hurl itself at the previous shutdown record and...
...shatter that record, set during Trump's first term. That 35-day federal closure in late 2018 and early 2019 resulted from a fight over Trump’s demand for a border wall, which Democrats refused to fund. […]
Spoiler alert: they’re not sorry.
The painful impacts from the shutdown are now coming into clearer focus. Hundreds of thousands of civilian federal workers are not getting paid, forcing many to turn to local food banks to feed their families. Meanwhile, flight delays are growing worse around the country because of air traffic controller and TSA agent staffing shortages. And 42 million Americans who rely on federal food benefits through SNAP will receive only about half of their monthly benefit in November.
Also for the 36th day in a row: when asked about the shutdown, Speaker Johnson said he knew nothing about it, hadn't heard anything about it, and would have to get back to us on that.
CHEERS to having a valid bee in your bonnet. On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony (and several other feisty ladies with equality on their minds) made a beeline for her local polling place and voted for the first time. It was a shining, glorious moment for…well, for a moment, because Anthony was arrested, tried and fined $100. She said up yours, the judge said okay fine whatever, and she was free to go. Forty-eight years later, women finally, officially secured the right to vote.
The winner in 1920: Horrible Harding. It was all smooth sailing from there. I mean...right?
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to a first-class bum. Can you name one positive thing Dick Cheney did during his decades in American politics? The only one I can think of is purely narcissistic: his lying, bullshitting, gaslighting, fearmongering campaign to (successfully) steer us into the blood-soaked, war crime-ridden Iraq War steered me to Daily Kos and this here column, now in its 22nd year. "Deadeye Dick," so named when he shot his lawyer in the face with birdshot while hunting pre-caught game birds, was all about money and power to the exclusion of all else—although admittedly without flaunting it like our current Mad King. He played his "boss" George W. Bush like a fiddle to make his buddies in the oil and armaments industries filthy rich at the expense of upwards of a million innocent lives. Nice guy, huh.
The cruel snarl that will forever signify his soul and his legacy.
And then, when he saw that his handiwork of amassing executive-branch power was leading to outright monarchy a short decade later, he tried to contain the horror he'd unleashed with social-media videos. But no one was interested in Dick anymore, certainly not the MAGA cult. Dick was the dog that caught the car…and the car squished him like a bug.
Dick Cheney is dead now. He was 666. He leaves behind, in order of importance to him, a massive fortune, some family members, and a country in ruins. And although it’s a purely pyrrhic victory: C&J outlived him.
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. But since NASA’s skywatchers are furloughed during thew Trump-Johnson shutdown, here's good ol’ Andrew from Channel 8 with a preview of what you'll be seeing in November, including tonight’s supermoon:
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We now return you to life on Earth. Sorry about that.
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Ten years ago in C&J: November 5, 2015
CHEERS to the Energizer ex-president. Usually when someone north of 90 announces they've got cancer in their brain, that's the last you hear of them. But Jimmy Carter, 91, is the owner of one hell of an immune system and a bottomless well of grit, so he ain't slowin' down for nothin'. I was impressed that he kept up his Sunday school teaching, but this is unreal:
Jimmy Carter resumed his role as Habitat for Humanity's most prominent booster on Monday, donning a white hard hat and a worn leather belt stocked with his own tools to hammer and saw with other volunteers building a home in Memphis, Tennessee. "We haven't cut back on my schedule yet," Carter said, seeming invigorated during an Associated Press interview. [...]
A post-presidency like no other.
Arriving ahead of schedule, Carter installed a hammer, measuring tape and thick pencil on his tool belt. Then he helped place pre-framed walls, hammered nails into place and sawed boards into smaller pieces, occasionally shouting questions or suggestions at the rest of the crew.
Meanwhile, this morning I tore my rotator cuff lifting a spoonful of Lucky Charms to my mouth. I knew I shoulda stretched first.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to dastardly deeds definitively denied. And now for something completely different. Happy Guy Fawkes Day & Bonfire Night! Via the UK Telegraph, for the uninitiated:
Bonfire Night commemorates the failure of the Gunpowder Plot in November 1605 by a gang of Roman Catholic activists led by Warwickshire-born Robert Catesby. When Protestant King James I began his reign, English Catholics had hoped that the persecution felt for over 45 years under his predecessor Queen Elizabeth would finally end, but this didn't transpire so the Gunpowder Plot conspirators resolved to assassinate the King and his ministers by blowing up the Palace of Westminster during the state opening of Parliament.
Hey, watch that lantern! You’ll poke your eye out.
Guy (Guido) Fawkes and his fellow conspirators, having rented out a house close to the Houses of Parliament, managed to smuggle 36 barrels of gunpowder into a cellar of the House of Lords—enough to completely destroy the building. […] Explosive expert Fawkes, who had been left in the cellars to set off the fuse, was subsequently caught when a group of guards checked the cellars at the last moment. The conspirators were all either killed resisting capture or—like Fawkes—tried, convicted, and executed.
Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated in the United Kingdom, and in a number of countries that were formerly part of the British Empire, with fireworks, bonfires and parades.
So, basically, it commemorates the time when an extremist organized a bunch of other extremists to weasel their way into the government and destroy its ability to govern. Or as they call it in MAGA Land: a day ending in "y."
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
“I don’t know anything about Cheers and Jeers."
—Speaker Mike Johnson
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