Things I'm Looking Forward To Next Year:
➸ A president who knows what’s in the Constitution, knows the words to our national anthem, can spell, rarely tweets, and isn’t a raging narcissist
➸ A woman—and a woman of color at that—who’s a heartbeat away from the presidency
➸ Two women—and Democratic women at that—sitting behind President Biden during his first speech to a joint session of Congress
➸ The return of the White House Science Fair
Continued...
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➸ The government putting climate change front-and-center again
➸ Seeing the ban on trans servicemembers lifted
➸ No more ”laying of hands” or speaking in tongues in the West Wing
➸ A cabinet brimming with experience and competence
➸ Finally being allowed to say "Happy Holidays" again after so many years of ridicule and oppression by Big Religion
➸ Pandemic data that isn’t fudged or hidden
➸ Immigrants welcomed, valued, and supported here again
➸ A president who bikes instead of golfs
➸ The White House lit up in LGBTQ pride colors again
➸ Earning the civilized world's respect again
➸ An administration that values the arts
➸ Dogs romping on the South Lawn
➸ An actual Infrastructure Week!
➸ A First Lady whose coat says, "Of Course I Really Do Care, Don't U?"
➸ Draining the swamp
Just for starters.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Monday, November 23, 2020
Note: This morning I cooked up three strips of turkey bacon for breakfast. It would've been five but I pardoned two of them.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Thanksgiving: 3
Drop in Covid-19 cases in Kansas counties with mask mandates last summer, according to the CDC: 6%
Rise in Covid-19 cases in Kansas counties without mask mandates last summer: 100%
Portion of Maine homes now being bought by out-of-staters, up from the usual 1-in-5, according to the Maine Association of Realtors, many likely coming here to flee the apocalyptic madness of New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts: 1-in-3
Percent chance that Donald Trump is a "psychopathic nut," according to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and verified here by Markos Moulitsas: 100%
Number of turkeys who will slay their captors this week and escape on motorcycles: 7
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Oh fer…
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CHEERS to short workweeks. Only three days for most Americans this week—hopefully you're among them. Then it's a Very Socially Distant Thanksgiving with turkey, gravy, spuds and a whole lotta nothin' else. Except, of course, our usual 14 hours of daily blogging. ("Pass the stuffing, dear. And the screen shammy...")
CHEERS and JEERS to transition fever. Here's a quick snapshot of where things stand 58 days from President-elect Biden's inauguration. For those of you just tuning in, Donald Trump, now trailing in the popular vote by over 6 million and in the electoral college by 74, continues to try and muscle election boards in swing states to flip the results in his favor. Let's see how that's working out:
Georgia: 16 electoral votes were officially certified for Joe Biden Friday after a hand recount was finished ahead of schedule. Gov. Kemp, who did the certifying, now wants another recount that will change nothing but will get him a piece of yummy chocolate cake on the house at Mar-A-Lago.
Michigan: The GOP heads of the state legislature dutifully flew to D.C. at Trump's behest, listened to his plan to overturn the election results, drank Dom Perignon at Trump’s D.C. Hotel, and announced that they were taking a pass. The board of state canvassers meets today to certify16 electoral votes for Joe Biden.
Pennsylvania: Today is certification day for Joe Biden's 20 electoral votes.
Arizona: Maricopa county certified its votes last week and all of Trump's post-election lawsuits have been laughed out of court. The state's 11 electoral votes will be certified next Monday.
Wisconsin: A Trump-requested recount is underway in the two most heavily-Democratic counties. The state's 10 electoral votes must be certified by a week from tomorrow.
The full certification calendar, ending with behemoth California's 55 EV drop on December 11th is here. Meanwhile today Trump's legal stooges, led by Rudy Giuliani (whose son is another idiot White House staffer who tested Covid-positive last week), will continue to make more pointless noise and piss off more judges for money. Or, as the rest of us will call it, another day ending in "Why?"
CHEERS to "Young Hickory of the Granite Hills.” Now placing just a notch or two above George W. Bush and Donald Trump on the competence scale: New Hampshire's Franklin "#14" Pierce, whose life was a slow downward spiral, from the childhood deaths of his three children (including Benjamin, killed in a train derailment at age 11 after Pierce won the election) and his despondent and unstable wife, to his unsuccessful battle against the bottle.
During his lethargic one term in office (1853-1857) he managed to piss just about everybody off, and he failed to get the nomination for a second term. Adding insult to injury, he became so invisible that he didn’t attend successor James Buchanan's inauguration because they forgot to send a carriage to get him. And while the journalist missed nailing George W. Bush’s head with his shoes in Iraq some years back, an assailant did once manage to nail Pierce in D.C. with a hard-boiled egg. You know the drill...go wish him a happy 216th birthday. Lord knows he could use some cheering up.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to keeping track of America’s fugliest numbers. The mighty Covid-19 Wurlitzer plays on with 59 million cases worldwide—the usual 20 percent of them in the U.S. Our weekly tradition of maintaining a benchmark of the awfulness for the C&J historical record continues, so let’s check the most depressing tote board in the world as our death toll now surpasses the population of America’s 79th-largest city Laredo, Texas:
6 months ago: 1.7 million confirmed cases. 99,800 deaths.
3 months ago: 5.8 million confirmed cases. 180,000 deaths
1 month ago: 9 million confirmed cases. 230,000 deaths
This morning: 12.5 million confirmed cases. 263,000 deaths
On the bright side, a pair of effective vaccines are being rushed into production, a new 30-minute at-home test kit has been approved, and Donald Trump Jr. and Senators Kelly Loeffler and Rick Scott have been stricken with the virus. With news like that, it's hard not to feel like God is finally hearing our prayers.
CHEERS to Saving Our Souls. On November 23, 1906, "S-O-S" was adopted at the International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin as a signal of great distress. Of course, today there's an alternative signal that means the same thing: "G-O-P."
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Ten years ago in C&J: November 23, 2010
CHEERS to the sweet sound of the media crowing about an Obama administration success. Yup...not even USA Today can deny it:
[I]t was the Obama administration's decision to force GM into bankruptcy proceedings that paved the way for the company's return to profitability and Thursday's successful initial public offering of stock. ... Those who predicted that taxpayers would never recover a dime have been proved wrong. And those who said the government should never rescue private corporations have been curiously quiet. At a time the economy was in free fall, the auto intervention saved about 1.4 million jobs, according to the non-profit Center for Automotive Research, or about one in every 100 jobs in America.
This is a narrative that will continue to play out as the economy scratches and claws its way back to some semblance of its formerly-robust self: "Republicans who predicted that Democrats would cause [insert apocalyptic scenario here] were proved wrong." And due to the inverse properties of the "Whee! Look At Us, We're Going backward!" corollary, the reverse will never be true except on Fox News.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the hottest of the hot wheels. The Oscars of the auto world were announced last week, and Motor Trend has bestowed its 2021 Car of the Year award to…a $75,000 Mercedes that sounds like a chiropractor on wheels…
"The E-Class delivers on every front you can think of—both from a passenger's view and from the driver's," MotorTrend en Español managing editor Miguel Cortina said. "It's the one that makes everyone feel special, the one that delivers the best experience, and the one that stands out from the rest of the segment. […]
Our test model came with seats that were not only heated and ventilated with adjustable lumbar support and several massage settings but were also "multicontoured" with bolsters that activate to give your ribcage extra support under hard cornering. Be sure to tick the box for "seat kinetics," which gently adjusts your spine and hips every few minutes—it's orthopedics at work on long drives. The Cabriolet models come with special sun-reflective leather that remains cooler than regular leather when baking in direct sunlight. In cooler weather that still invites top-down motoring, the "Air Scarf" provides neck-level heating.
Among its performance measures: it goes from zero to 60 in 4 seconds. Big deal. I had a brown Chevy Chevette once that could do it in 2.5. Once we found the right cliff to push it off of.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
Ominous Black Goo Oozes From Bill in Portland Maine's Kiddie Pool During Cheers and Jeers
—Mediaite
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