Cheers and Jeers: Wednesday

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Things I’m Looking Forward To. The Return of…

✌ A president who wakes up and the first thing on his mind is his country, not his Twitter feed

✌ A competent cabinet, none of whom have degrees in grifting or ransacking

✌ The White House Science Fair

Continued…

✌  Democratic control of the Executive and Legislative branches…at the same time!

✌  A First Lady whose resting face isn’t a creepy sneer-scowl hybrid and who doesn’t wear clothing boasting of the fact that she doesn’t care

✌  Membership in the Paris Climate Accord and respect for our NATO allies

✌  A press secretary who tells the truth

✌  15-flush toilets

✌  Senate Committee chairwomen and men with a ‘D” after their name

✌  The nuclear launch codes in the possession of a stable person

✌  POTUS and FLOTUS attending the Kennedy Center Honors again

✌  An independent Justice Department

✌  Dogs—and a cat—running around the White House

✌  Just getting shit done

And now, our feature presentation…

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Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Note: Today is Wednesday the 13th. No need for any special precautions, but it’s as good a day as any to take a few minutes to check up on the condition of the porn collection in your panic room. Remember: mildew is not your friend.  —Clarence Thomas

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By the Numbers:

Weeks ’til inauguration day: One!!!

Days ’til the Perseverance rover lands on Mars: 36

Percent of Americans polled by Gallup who describe themselves as “totally” conservative, moderate, and liberal: 36%, 35%, 25%

Percent of Americans polled by ABC News-Ipsos who blame Trump for last Wednesday’s coup attempt: 67%

Trump job approval in the new Quinnipiac poll: 33%

Number of jobs lost in December, via the Labor Department’s latest report of the Trump presidency: -140,000

Percent chance that GM’s new logo is designed to draw attention to its new focus on electric cars: 100%

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Mid-week Rapture Index: 184 (including 4 false prophets and 1 important point for the seditionists by God).  Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.

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Puppy Pic of the Day: I think we have a quorum…

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CHEERS to one week and counting. In seven days, Joe Biden will become our 46thpresident. Time to break out the inaugural fun facts:

»  John Quincy Adams was the first president sworn in wearing long trousers (1825).

»  Abraham Lincoln was the first to include African-Americans in his parade (1865). Women were included for the first time in Woodrow Wilson’s second inaugural parade (1917).

»  Neither Theodore Roosevelt nor John Quincy Adams swore their oath on a Bible.

»  Jimmy Carter’s inaugural parade featured solar heat for the reviewing stand and handicap-accessible viewing (1977).

»  Ronald Reagan’s second inaugural had to compete with Super Bowl Sunday (1985).

»  The first ceremony broadcast on the Internet was Bill Clinton’s second inauguration (1997).

»  Four retiring presidents have not attended the inaugurations of their successors. Those who were absent: John Adams missed Thomas Jefferson’s inaugural.  John Quincy Adams was not present at Andrew Jackson’s.  Andrew Johnson was not at Ulysses Grant’s ceremony.  Richard Nixon was not present at Gerald Ford’s inaugural. [Trump will be #5 when he snubs Joe Biden’s swearing-in.]

And here’s some hopeful news: we’re now close enough that we can check the Inauguration Day weather forecast for DC. (The historic stats are here at the National Weather Service.)  It couldn’t be more symbolic, according to The Weather Channel: morning clouds giving way to afternoon sunshine, with a warmer-than-usual high of 45. Or as we call it in Maine: shorts weather.

CHEERS to impeachment day. Today is impeachment day. The president is going to be impeached. He is a bad president. He tried to become a dictator. He cannot be one. The End.

JEERS to pissing your life away. Sheldon Adelson was born of humble roots in Boston 87 years ago. Then he turned into a greed-obsessed right-wing scumbag…the epitome of the bubble-protected billionaire ($33 billion to be exact) for whom the world was a personal playground to be exploited no matter how many people got hurt. Exhibit A: the countless men and women his casinos lured in and turned into gambling addicts. Plus…

☹  He and his wife Miriam Adelson were Donald Trump’s largest donors; they provided the largest donation to Trump’s 2016 campaign, his presidential inauguration, his defense fund against the Mueller investigation into Russian interference, and the 2020 campaign.

☹  Adelson’s newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was the only major newspaper nationwide to endorse Trump in 2016

☹  Deutsche Welle reported that he was one of the largest backers of a hard-right fringe network promoting Islamophobia.

☹  Haaretz wrote that Adelson had “hijacked” the Israeli-American Council to turn it into a pressure group for his “hard-right agenda.”

☹  On Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program he said: “You pick up your cell phone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say ‘OK, let it go’ and so there’s an atomic weapon goes over, ballistic missiles in the middle of the desert that doesn’t hurt a soul, maybe a couple of rattlesnakes and scorpions or whatever.”

☹  In February 2013 the Las Vegas Sands, in a regulatory filing, acknowledged that it had likely violated federal law that prohibits the bribing of foreign officials. Allegedly, Chinese officials were bribed to allow Adelson to build his Macau casino.

Well, he’s dead now. I’d bet money his trip to the afterlife will involve taking the ‘Down’ elevator. But, darn it, I have this dumb rule about saying something nice about the recently departed. So here goes: he was once a  candy vendor.  Ah, the banality of evil.

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK (NSFW)

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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JEERS to strange reactions. Maine’s senior senator Susan Collins says that the first thought that popped into her noggin last Wednesday afternoon, when the insurrection began, was that “the Iranians had followed through on their threat to strike the Capitol.” Wow—that’s like leaping from A to Z in a single bound while skipping B through Y.  But, to be fair, I can actually understand why she’d think that and get confused. After all, the Republican terrorists’ actions were screaming “Death to America.”

CHEERS to discus lite.  Wham-O began producing the “Frisbee” 64 years ago today.  Ever wonder where the name comes from?

The Frisbie Baking Company (1871-1958) of Bridgeport, Connecticut, made pies that were sold to many New England colleges. Hungry college students soon discovered that the empty pie tins could be tossed and caught, providing endless hours of game and sport.

Many colleges have claimed to be the home of ‘he who was first to fling.’ Yale College has even argued that in 1820, a Yale undergraduate named Elihu Frisbie grabbed a passing collection tray from the chapel and flung it out into the campus, thereby becoming the true inventor of the Frisbie and winning glory for Yale. That tale is unlikely to be true since the words ‘Frisbie’s Pies’ was embossed in all the original pie tins and from the word ‘Frisbie’ was coined the common name for the toy.

Frisbees remind me of the Republican party: Lightweight, logic as contorted as a no-look reverse-flick backhanded corkscrew air bounce, and the only thing keeping them aloft is spin.

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Ten years ago in C&J: January 13, 2011

JEERS to odd departures.  A Republican district chairman in Arizona is calling it quits because of vitriol coming from his own side.  In announcing his decision, Anthony Miller cited “threats from the Tea Party,” a group that apparently doesn’t find him radical or irrational enough for their liking.  Miller says he wants to spend more time with his family.  Alive.  [1/13/21 Update: A reminder that the GOP has been the party of violent whackadoos, who have no problem threatening their own leaders, for a long time.]

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And just one more…

CHEERS to naming rights. Lost in all the hoopla about trivial issues like—[Reads notes off hand]—World War III, the immolation of Planet Earth, and Republicans’ ongoing effort to throw America into the toilet and flush 15 times, is the most pressing issue of our generation: what parents are naming their spawn, of course.  So allow me, via babycenter.com, to terminate the suspense: the most popular boy names of 2020 were Liam, Noah, Jackson and Aiden. Top girl names were Sophia, Olivia, Riley, and Emma. I went through a period of confusion when I was young, thanks to my mom and dad. For the first eighteen years of my life I thought my last name was Billy and my first name was Dammit.

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

“There might have been a time when Bill in Portland Maine’s Cheers and Jeers could mask the fact that he’s an empty toilet waiting to be filled with shit, just to give it purpose, but that time has passed.”

—Seth Rogan

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