10 Reasons to Throw Money at Cheers and Jeers
It’s our annual fundraising week here at C&J, and many people—big strong manly men, most of them—come up to me with tears in their eyes and say, “Sir, how can I help you pay your bills?” And I say “Links. I’ll post big beautiful links just for you. You can click on them very beautifully and they go so quickly to the best online payment center since Lincoln’s.”
And there are so many reasons, only the best reasons, to give now. Here’s ten in the order of their appearance on the periodic table:
2. 134% of the proceeds go toward vital food, medicine and enough itching powder to go into the shorts of every ICE agent in America.
7. You’re investing in a priceless autographed collectible human with an edition size of one. (I really should be housed in that museum where they keep all the Hummels.)
3. I have never taken money from Super PACs, and if they ever offer me any I would certainly turn them down. [Uncrosses fingers]
9. You people started all this. Yes you did, by hiring me in the first place back in 2007. I mean come on. C&J is your problem, and the only way to clean it up is to, of course, throw money at it! (Just not the very large coins, please, as they leave welts.)
4. Sorry about my tone in #9. My valerian, kava kava, and lemon balm happy-time supplements haven't kicked in yet, so I’m currently running on nothing but Dewar’s and horny goat weed.
10. I'm like any small business: "Small enough to know you, large enough to serve you."
6. Giving me money would be socialism, which would drive the other side bonkers. So it's a unique opportunity to "own the cons." Do it! Do it!
1. Sure, I've been called a "flagrant commie traitor nose picker" by right wing media. But PolitiFact totally exonerated me by deeming the claim only "Partly True." I say that’s worth something.
5. I forget this one. I think it's something something something your own seat on the Supreme Court or a $5 coupon good for one egg.
8. Most important: C&J is a pie fight-free zone.
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Bill Harnsberger, 16 Pitt Street, Portland, ME, 04103.
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and then feel good about your investment.
Thanks again for supporting America’s longest-running kiddie pool-based blog post. We appreciate the support and promise that we’ll never abandon this post. Unless they elect me pope.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Note: If nominated to be pope, I shall accept. If elected, I shall serve. And upon taking my oath, I shall decree that communion wine in every diocese must be offered in a Star Wars cantina chalice. Let it be done. —Manager on futile power trip duty
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By the Numbers:
3 days!!!
Days 'til the Kentucky Derby: 3
Days 'til Oregon's Hood River Cider Fest: 3
Value of the F/A-18 fighter jet that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth allegedly drove off the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman during a joyride in a drunken stupor: $60 million
Year-over-year increase in lumber prices:11%
Number of cardinals in the Catholic church: 252
Age at which cardinals are no longer able to vote for a new pope during a conclave: 80
Age of not-a-cardinal Al Pacino as of last Friday: 85
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 181 (including 5 volcanoes and 1 ominous warning). Soul Protection Factor 8 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Happy Adopt A Shelter Pet Day…
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CHEERS to the sweetest words in the English language: LIBERALS WIN. (Or, for our French-Canadian friends: LES LIBERAUX GAGNET.) We won't be hearing them around here for a while, but up north they're shouting them from the hills and dales and valleys and poutine bars, thanks almost entirely to the strong-arm tactics of annexation-obsessed American Donald J. Trump…
Mark Carney, the archetypal banker who styled himself crisis-manager-in chief, was on track to win a minority Parliament as voters east to west on Monday delivered the Liberals a rare fourth term in power. […]
The Liberals have landed. Again.
Carney acknowledged that while “many have chosen to place your trust in me, trust in the Liberal party, millions of our fellow citizens preferred a different outcome. And my message to every Canadian is this, no matter where you live, no matter what language you speak, no matter how you voted, I will always do my best to represent everyone who calls Canada home.”
As polls opened Monday morning, Donald Trump—who’d receded to the backdrop of the campaign after dominating the first two weeks—thrust himself back into the electoral calculus…as he repeated what he says are the benefits of Canada becoming “the cherished 51st state of the United States of America.”
And now liberal-led Canada becomes something decidedly different: "the cherished pain in the fascist's ass."
CHEERS to past previews of future takesie backsies. You’ve probably heard by now (it was in all the papers) that the criminal Republican moron this country inexplicably put back in the White House passed the 100-day mark this week. And to the surprise of no one, his inept attempt to crown himself king is being met with record-low poll numbers and an increasingly diverse resistance movement. As dark as things are, I’ll always remember that the doings of cruelty and evil can also be undone. These are just a handful of the Trump-era policies—via actual news headlines—President Biden was slamming into reverse just one year ago:
↩ Biden administration restores health protections for gay and transgender people
↩ Biden administration to announce expanded Title IX protections while reversing Trump-era guidance
Damn fine president.
↩ FCC brings back net neutrality, reversing Trump era decision
↩ Biden nixes Trump's short-term so-called "junk insurance" rule
↩ Biden administration finalizes reversal of Trump Endangered Species Act reversal
↩ Biden reinstates stricter offshore safety rules, reversing Trump era policies
↩ Biden reversing Trump labor rule to prevent misuse of 'independent contractor' status
↩ Biden finalizes student-loan borrower protections, reversing Trump efforts
↩ Biden administration changes Trump-era rule, will ban liquefied natural gas on trains
It’s always darkest before the dawn and all that. But at least we can see a glimpse of what dawn will look like when common sense returns to Washington. Sure, by then we’ll just be reanimated heads in jars of formaldehyde. But what a joyous gurgle we’ll make.
CHEERS to "#1." 236 years ago today, on April 30, 1789, sports bars were packed as millions watched George Washington take the oath of office as the first President of the United States. This scene from HBO's John Adams perfectly captures firsthand accounts of the awkwardness (How do we do this?), solemnity (Shut up, you guys, we're doing this), and euphoria (We did this!) that hung in the air that day:
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And thus was born Ben Franklin’s “a republic...if you can keep it.” Or as we now call it in our current state: a jump ball.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to Great Moments in Real Estate. On April 30, 1803, Robert Livingston and James Monroe concluded a deal with France that increased the size of the United states by 828,000 square miles. Price tag: $23,000,000. We know it as The Louisiana Purchase. Century 21 agents know it as "The holy grail of commission checks."
CHEERS to joining the coolest club in Clubland. I must say, this whole Rock and Roll Hall of Fame fad seems to have some staying power. The 40thannual inductees were announced this week, and this year’s batch is a worthy bunch…
Salt-N-Pepa, Soundgarden, Lenny Waronker, The White Stripes, Chubby Checker, Joe Cocker, Warren Zevon, Nicky Hopkins, Carole Kaye, Cyndi Lauper, Outkast, Bad Company, and Thom Bell.
Congrats to all the inductees, who will formally get their scepters and sashes in November. But, once again, C&J must object—as we have every year since inductions began in 1986—to the continued snub of musical supernova Shaun Cassidy, who made the world safe for slightly-askew painter's caps. It's becoming increasingly difficult to tamp down the bitterness.
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Ten years ago in C&J: April 30, 2015
CHEERS to the spunky kid from the Green Mountains. I don’t know what time exactly he's going to make the announcement, but today's the day that Hillary Clinton—who has been sounding all the right notes lately, I'll admit—gets a challenger: Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders:
Sanders’s backers said they hope he can serve as a proxy for [Elizabeth] Warren’s disappointed drafters, helping to animate small-dollar Democratic donors with his brash persona and speeches condemning the “billionaire class.”
Speaking not long ago with The Washington Post, Sanders said his message would be concentrated on the “collapse of the middle class” and “income and wealth inequality,” which he called a “huge issue from a moral sense and a political sense.”
Bernie will certainly inspire Hillary to sharpen her message and debate skills. But I think the people he'll rattle most are those in the Republican field. Because when he puts on a pair 'o shades and starts talkin', he's gonna make socialism look goooood.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the first "6.8 percent of the way home." The way Trump talks, you'd think he bounded into the White House as the second coming of Lincoln, Christ and General Patton all rolled into one. What he really is, we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt (as if we ever had any), is a con man with no interest in governing who inexplicably bellowed his way again into the highest echelon of the most consequential government in the world and then broke all of his promises, either out of sheer fuck-you-ism or rank incompetence. It's not a stretch to say that he's done less than any president has in their first hundred days, unless you count his addiction to golf.
So, really then, what more could this creepy human crap sandwich deserve on this most anticlimactic of anniversaries than an encore of The Simpsons treatment from his first term? Enjoy…
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Strap yourself in, kids. The next hundred days promise even more nincompoopery. God help us one and all.
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
Brad Pitt is set to star as Bill in Portland Maine in the upcoming adaptation of “The Cheers and Jeers Kiddie Pool Splashers” with “Conclave” filmmaker Edward Berger on board to direct.
—Variety
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