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Cheers and Jeers: Thursday [1]

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Date: 2023-01-19

❧ So far in the new year I've been really good at writing 2022 instead of 2022. ❧ When Nancy Pelosi takes her seat on the House floor these days, she kicks her shoes off, props her feet up on the seat in front of her, pops open a cold one, and enjoys the show. ❧ When visitors from another planet arrive and offer to give GOP leaders a tour of their spaceship, Speaker McCarthy and minority leader McConnell will just have to figure out on their own that To Serve Man is a cookbook. Also what I know: Republicans are the #1 violators of their own billboards. ❧ Why is Secretary of State Antony Blinken so successful at negotiations? Two words: ”judo chop!" ❧ Coming soon to a GOP line of attack near you: voter fraud studies showing no voter fraud prove that voter fraud studies are rife with voter fraud study fraud. ❧ I’m still waiting for Kamala Harris to partake in the time-honored vice presidential ritual of shooting a lawyer in the face while quail hunting. ❧ Ben Carson is still asleep at HUD. No one wants to wake him because when he snores he goes "SNORK! Puhpuhpuhpuhpuhpuh… SNORK! Puhpuhpuhpuhpuhpuh..." ❧ And, as with every previous year, the #1 phrase of 2023 will be: "I swear this is not from The Onion."

And now, our feature presentation...

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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, January 19, 2023

Note: I just donated the remaining 19 of my surplus Stinger missiles to Ukraine. It would’ve been 20, but my neighbor didn’t return my lawnmower by the deadline I wrote on the back of an envelope and stuck in his recycle bin. Put ‘em to good use, Volodymyr. —Mgt.

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By the Numbers:

10 days!!!

Days 'til the start of the Chinese New Year (of the water rabbit): 3

Days 'til The Chocolate Expo in Wilmington, Massachusetts: 10

Small business applications over the last two years, a record: 10.5 million

Amount of unreleased Jan. 6 Committee files that were given to the Dept. of Justice: 30 gigabytes

Median price of gas at the moment: $3.19

Estimated population of China in 2022, a drop of 850,000 from 2021: 1.41175 billion

Size of the latest Maine potato harvest, according to USDA data: 1.8 billion pounds

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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment: The decision in the Dover, Pa., school board case by Judge John Jones III, a Republican and Bush appointee, is well worth reading. It annihilates the case for teaching creationism. Calling creationism "intelligent design" changes nothing and is disingenuous to the point of being painful. […] One hears evolution dismissed as "just a theory," as though all of science weren't based on theory and eternally subject to new evidence to the contrary. In science, gravity is "just a theory"—and if you ever drop something and it falls up, they'll reconsider the whole theory for you. That's just how "theoretical" evolution is—constantly subject to evidence and proof. But creationism cannot be tested and proved against evidence using the scientific method—that is why it is not science, it is faith. —January 2006

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Puppy Pic of the Day: Virginia's entries in this year's Puppy Bowl XIX…

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CHEERS to order in the courts. Atop their mighty steeds, robes flowing and gavels blazing, our illustrious judicial branch rides to the rescue of our democracy. The upshot: mail-in voting remains safe in the land of the dry heat:

BREAKING: Arizona Republicans lost the election. Again. The latest confirmation comes thanks to the Arizona Court of Appeals, which upheld a trial judge’s ruling that mail-in ballots do not violate the Arizona Constitution’s requirement that “secrecy in voting shall be preserved.” […] So, once again, Republican efforts to get rid of a voting method they long relied on now that Democrats have started using it runs smack into a brick wall.

I hope it hurt.

JEERS to the crisis within the crisis. Republicans still haven't figured out how they're going to avoid committing political suicide by letting America's debt ceiling—which we're bumping into today, according to our illustrious Treasury Secretary—collapse around us. We're already running out of metaphors to describe their lunacy, now that the "hostage" metaphor has been tapped dry. Fortunately, we have history to help us conjure the right mental picture. Like John Cole at Balloon Juice, who a dozen years ago likened Republicans to a family…as in a really stupid f*cking family:

They fundamentally do not understand what they are doing—they think not increasing the debt limit will stop out-of-control spending when all it will do is renege on paying the bills for already spent money. That’s why it is called debt. "HAHAHAHA- I’ll get the future family budget in line, I’ll rip up all my old bills and tell people I owe money to fuck off! And then I just won’t spend any money on anything, not rent, food, utilities for a couple years and everything will be fixed WOO FISCAL CONSERVATISM! Yeah! That’s the ticket!”

As the crisis persists, we'll continue tapping our emergency metaphor reserves, including: The debt ceiling crisis is like a box of chocolates, a Russian tank stuck in the mud, a hot air balloon filled with pudding, and/or a bad case of rickets. (That last one takes some time to explain, so be prepared to clear at least an hour from your schedule.)

CHEERS to the original "spokes" men—Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! On January 19, 1903, it was announced with great fanfare that the starting gun for a new bicycle race called the "Tour de France" would be fired that July. The grand prize: 3,000 francs and a lifetime supply of butt cushions.

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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CHEERS to good spelling. On this date in 1955, three years after Macy's made it a household name in America, Scrabble made its debut in Australia and the UK. If what I read is correct, the highest scoring word if you hit all the right bonus squares is still "sesquioxidizing." Meanwhile my highest-scoring word while sober is still "cow.”

JEERS to turning over the asylum to the inmates. On the evening of Tuesday, February 7th, I'll be doing something—anything—other than watching the State of the Union Address. I refuse to spend 90 minutes making myself look at House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's smarmy horseface as he scowls and grimaces at everything President Biden says, including updates on all the good economic developments that Republicans have actively tried to sabotage. Speaking of wrecking stuff, McCarthy has started publishing the committee assignments for the 118th Congress, including the new re-labeling of the committees themselves. Here's a partial cheat sheet for you, courtesy of C&J:

Old name: Oversight and Accountability Committee.

New name: Hunter Biden's Laptop Committee Old name: Foreign Affairs Committee

New name: Leave Russia Alone Committee The Committee to Give Drunk John Boehner a Ride Back Home to Ohio will keep its original name. Old name: Science, Space, and Technology Committee

New name: Flat Earth Committee Old name: Homeland Security Committee

New name: Border Stunt Organizing Committee Old name: Judiciary Committee

New name: Jim Jordan Did Nothing Wrong So Stop Asking Committee Old name: Natural Resources Committee

New name: Drill Here, Drill Now Committee

Please note that the Ethics Committee is still called the Ethics Committee, but now it's funded through a giant pile of cash in the back room generously provided by Exxon-Mobil, the NRA, and MyPillow.

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Ten years ago in C&J: January 19, 2013

CHEERS to strange dreadfellows. Next week Satan worshippers are staging a rally in support of Florida Governor Rick Scott. My reaction: scary, creepy, weird, ick! And I believe the same thing about the Satan worshippers, too.

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And just one more…

CHEERS to the most beautiful spread of land in the universe. Happy 94th Birthday—aka Acadia Name Day—to Maine's Acadia National Park! Miles and miles of unspoiled and federally protected nature that invites travelers to rest their weary bones and let the soul-replenishing eye candy revive their hopes for a better tomorrow:

Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse

Taken February 2017. Lovely sandmanship.

Autumn in Acadia.

Come on up and visit sometime. For your maximum enjoyment, bring sturdy boots and sunscreen. For our maximum enjoyment, bring lots of credit cards.

Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?

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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial "The measure of your intelligence is not your ability to splash in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool but how you handle the algae and navigate through it when you don't know what to do." —Prof. Feynman

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[END]
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