Cheers and Jeers: Rum and 12 Days to Go FRIDAY!

“We’ve said this before and we’ll say it again: white supremacists are domestic terrorists and the government better address them as such.”
—Samantha Bee

“When you tell people who play dress-up soldier that they are on a patriotic mission, they desperately believe it. That’s what I saw today in DC.”
—Jordan Klepper, The Daily Show

“I would invite all of these disgruntled Americans to take a page out of Stacey Abrams’ book: don’t endanger our country’s greatest legacy—the peaceful transfer of power—just because your guy lost. Get out there and focus on winning the next round. Come on Republicans, don’t go up to Capitol Hill for a government handout. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just work a little harder. And in 2022, when all of those Republicans who are responsible for what happened today are running for reelection, let’s remember them for who they showed themselves to be: cynical cowards who believe the voters should not get to choose who governs this country.”
—Stephen Colbert

“President-elect Biden said it best when he said: ‘We have to step up. We’re at our best when we step up.’ But President Biden also said something after his speech that hit me even harder. He said, ‘Enough is enough is enough.’ And that’s what I believe a majority of this country has been saying—has been screaming—for a long time. Enough is enough. Today was a disgrace.”
—Jimmy Fallon

“In two weeks, on those same steps where that mob fought and pushed past police, the people who encouraged and instigated that violence—Donald Trump, his children, Rudy Giuliani—they’re all going to need a tourist pass to get in because they’ve lost the presidency, they’ve lost the House, and now they’ve lost the Senate. Today was their last dance at the worst party any of us have ever been to. So if you can, have hope. … I really do believe that there are better times ahead. Except for the guy who came [into the Capitol] dressed as every member of The Village People. I don’t know if better times are ahead for him.”
—James Corden

And now, our feature presentation…

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Cheers and Jeers for Friday, January 8, 2021

Note: Sorry, no pony rides this evening. Daddy’s been drinking.

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By the Numbers:

Days ’til the Chinese New Year (of the ox): 35

Number of charges that will be filed against the Kenosha police officer who shot Jacob Blake 7 times in the back without provocation as Blake’s kids watched from the back seat of his car: 0

Percent chance that California, Rhode Island, and Arizona currently have the worst Covid infection rates of anywhere in the world, according to NBC News: 100%

Year by which the Pentagon must rename all the military bases current named for Confederate traitors: 2024

Number of states that receive more in federal funding than they pay to the federal government: 42

Acres of surface area that solar panels will cover when a solar farm is completed in an unorganized township in Hancock County, Maine: 95

Number of panels expected to be installed there: 300,000 to 400,000

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Your Friday Molly Ivins Moment:

Here comes everyone’s favorite season: The tree is down, the bills are due, January, February, Ry-Krisp and cottage cheese.

T’is the festive season for one of our nation’s leading industries—dispensers of diet advice. Since we all spent a couple of months home with mac and cheese even before the holidays, it could be a growth year for the stationary bicycle.

Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are still out there somewhere, with Judge Crater and Chandra Levy.  Now that we’ve won the war, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men have to put Afghanistan back together again—warlords and all.  —January, 2002

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Puppy Pic of the Day: LBJ and his basket of puppies…

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CHEERS to the new kids on the floor. The capitol Police may have treated the Republican terrorists like liberators, but Democrats dropped a ton of bricks on their big dumb heads Wednesday. First, in the exhale heard ’round the world, we woke up to the news that Stacey Abrams—with a little help from Jon Ossoff, Rev. Raphael Warnock, and Georgia’s Black voters—had cunningly converted Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats from criminal and crazy to competent and compassionate. (For those of you keeping score, I just notched 35 alliteration points, finally making me eligible for that Nerf rocket launcher I’ve had my eye on since 1976.) Let’s unpack this a little:

» Rev. Warnock becomes the first Black Democratic senator from the south, and the first—repeat, the first—one to be elevated to office by winning the popular vote in a former Confederate state. And anyone starting to doubt the validity of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assertion (borrowed from Theodore Parker) that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” will find hope in the fact that Warnock is the senior pastor at MLK’s Ebenezer Baptist Church.

» Ossoff is the first Jewish senator from Georgia, the son of an immigrant, a pop culture nerd, and an accomplished un-mincer of words. 

» The Senate is now tied 50-50, with Senate President Kamala Harris the tie-breaker. With Democrats in the majority, Chuck Schumer becomes majority leader, Mitch McConnell becomes roadkill, and committee chair gavels transfer from Republican to Democratic hands. I look forward to the day when the chair of the Judiciary Committee has the pleasure of snapping, “Senator Graham, you’re out of order—sit down and shut up.”

» With both the Legislative and Executive branch in Democratic hands, look for approval of a slew of un-filibusterable liberal judges, SCOTUS nominees, cabinet members, and appointees all over the damn place. Fuck blue slips. Fuck “comity.” From now on the “McConnell Rule” applies: ram ’em through—morning, noon and night.

And as if that wasn’t enough, a little blog tucked away on the internet also gets to take a bow:

We hate to brag. But we will.

CHEERS to our new benevolent overlords…and that’s no joke, honest to god, I really mean that, ladies and gentlemen and dog-faced pony soldiers, I really do.  Most any other year it would’ve been a formality that garnered little attention. But with loser Trump and his seditious gooberstapo cult willing to do anything (including storming the Capitol) to stay in power, it wasn’t over until the whitest man in America sang. Happily, C&J can report that Mike Pence minded his Ps and non-Qanon-affiliated Qs. The electoral votes were duly counted and logged into the historic record at 3:41am yesterday morning, then tossed into the wood-burning stove, whereupon a white plume of smoke wafted from the House smokestack, followed by the traditional blaring of “Habemus POTUS!” over the loudspeakers. So, for the umpteenth time, please say hello—again—to your new President- and Vice President-elect:

Aaaaand…exhale.

CHEERS to the Republic’s Big Moment.  232 years ago this week, in 1789, the first U.S. Presidential election was held, but there was no popular vote.  Instead, each state’s appointees to the now-long-obsolete Electoral College got to vote twice.  The top two vote-getters would become president and veep. They picked the stoic hero George Washington and the cranky but brilliant curmudgeon John Adams.  Their first conversation:

“What do we do now?”

“I dunno, I thought you knew.”

“Well, I thought you knew.”

“Hey…wanna get drunk and barf in Jefferson‘s desk?”

“Does the Constitution say we can?”

“It doesn’t say we can’t.”

“you pour.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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CHEERS to America’s next top cop. He didn’t make it onto the Supreme Court, but Judge Merrick Garland will still get his moment in a very bright spotlight when he packs up and moves to the Executive Branch as our next Attorney General:

Garland, 68, has served as a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 1997. […]

Garland, a veteran jurist and a moderate, is seen as someone who could help restore the Justice Department’s independence—a Biden priority after criticism that Trump exerted too much influence over the department. His nomination would also allow Biden to appoint a younger judge to the critical D.C. Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

He’ll have a lot on his plate, from rebuilding a department destroyed and then re-populated with red-hatted cultists, to tackling our country’s intolerable Republican terrorism problem. Fortunately, in addition to a shiny new badge, the position comes with some tools that’ll make his job easier: a tommy gun, a modified snowplow for busting through walls, and a fedora. Hunt ‘em down and make ‘em squeal, G-Man.

CHEERS to the Nutmeg State.  Happy 233rd birthday to Connecticut, which popped out of the womb of freedom on this date in 1788, becoming our fifth state in the union.  It’s responsible for giving us the nuclear submarine, Pez candy, lollipops, the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, beloved Daily Kos front-pager Greg Dworkin, Governor Ned Lamont, and Senators Chris Murphy and Dick Blumenthal. And also Joe Lieberman. Oh well…nobody’s perfect.

CHEERS to home vegetation. Typical mid-winter weekend on the TV. We’ll start with Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow deftly parsing whatever Friday news dump(s) happened today. Or, if you just want to put your brain in neutral and chill, the CW has season premieres of Penn and Teller: Fool Us and Whose Line is It, Anyway? lined up. And at 11:00, Tom Hanks and Emily Blunt are guests on The Graham Norton Show.

The most popular home videos, new and old, are all reviewed here at Rotten Tomatoes. The NBA schedule is here, the NFL schedule is here. SNL is a repeat this weekend with host Dave Chappelle. And Sunday on 60 Minutes: interviews with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Now here’s your Sunday morning lineup:

Meet the Press: Sens. Pat Toomey (Trump Cult-PA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV); former Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney (R-Trump Cult). 

This Week: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

Face the Nation: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser; Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE) and Roy Blunt (Trump Cult-MO); former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb.

CNN’s State of the Union: Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD); Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC); Sens. Pat Toomey (Trump Cult-PA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV).

Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC); rat-from-the-ship fleer Mick Mulvaney.

 Happy viewing!

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Ten years ago in C&J: January 8, 2011

CHEERS to jobs jobs jobs jobs jobs.  The hills are aliiiiive…with the sound of paychecks!  I ain’t no doe-eyed optimist in rose-colored glasses, but I’ll politely applaud good news whenever I see it:

Private sector payrolls soared in December while downsizing sank, two separate reports showed Wednesday in a strong indication of a brightening U.S. jobs picture.  Payrolls among private employers rose by 297,000, payroll processor ADP announced.  That’s the biggest gain since the report was first issued in 2000 and was much larger than expected.

3-pointer for the skinny black guy with the funny name.

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And just one more…

CHEERS to U.S. Mint’y freshness. Here’s something coming out of the government that won’t make us either dive into our fallout shelters or throw a brick at the TV: the last of the “America the Beautiful” state quarters was released this week. The collection, which celebrates our national parks (or as Republicans call them, fracking zones), has woven its spell of “numismagic” on the nation for 11 years and the last entry is truly a grand finale: Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site in Alabama. A peek at what will soon be showing up in your pocket:

Established in 1998, the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site in Alabama commemorates the heroic actions and achievements of the famous Tuskegee Airmen. The term “Tuskegee Airmen” pertains to both men and women of diverse nationalities. They were composed of nearly 1,000 pilots and more than 15,000 support staff (including navigators, bombardiers, and mechanics). The site preserves five historic structures used during primary flight training during World War II.

The reverse design depicts a Tuskegee Airman pilot suiting up to join the fight during World War II with the Moton Field control tower in the background. The pilot looks upward with pride and confidence as two P-51 Mustangs pass overhead. The inscription “THEY FOUGHT TWO WARS” is arced across the top as a reference to the dual battles the Tuskegee Airmen fought—fascism abroad and racial discrimination at home.

As we bid a fond farewell to this stellar series (which followed the equally-impressive original state quarters series that began in 1999), we can clear the decks and wait with bated breath for the next major releases: the revamped 5-, 10-, and 20-dollar bills with lots and lots of women of color. For numismatists, it’ll be an exciting opportunity to collect historic new currency. For misogynists and racists, it’ll be an exciting opportunity to go further off the deep end.

Have a great weekend. Floor’s open…What are you cheering and jeering about today?

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