Cheers and Jeers: Thursday

Earlier than We Transfer On…

Tying up a free finish from the dearly-departed 12 months 2023, right here’s a recap of a few of our C&J ballot outcomes from the fourth quarter. It offers the world a second to pause and collectively marvel on the sound judgment and brainpower on show right here on the Nice Orange Devil:

✔  On October 2nd, 40 p.c of you thought Kevin McCarthy would final a minimum of by the month as Home speaker, whereas 41 p.c of you did not. (McCarthy was ousted the next day.)

✔   93 p.c imagine the economic system underneath President Biden will proceed chugging alongside at a brisk tempo by 2024.

✔  98 p.c will not be shocked that members of Trump’s interior circle of psychos abandon him when the chance of jail time turns into too actual.

Continued…

✔  Among the many points that you simply thought the company information media have been ignoring most, Trump’s “rapidly-deteriorating psychological state” got here out on high with 54 p.c, adopted by the Republican get together’s not-so-secret alliance with Russia (19%) and Republican party-incited home terrorism (12%).

✔  83 p.c rated Gov. Gavin Newsom’s alternative of Laphonza Butler to briefly fill the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat as wonderful or good.

✔  33 p.c of you noticed a minimum of one film in a theater in 2023.

✔  Within the 2023 World Sequence, 15 p.c of you rooted for the Arizona Diamondbacks, 9 p.c for the Texas rangers, and 76 p.c for the stadium sizzling canine distributors.

✔  32 p.c voted by mail within the 2023 elections.

✔  Relating to the Supreme Courtroom’s watered-down “code of ethics” that they handed down from on excessive, 98 p.c of you suppose it stinks.

✔  84 p.c imagine that the latest contract victories within the auto, rail, and leisure industries will result in a wider renaissance of union energy within the U.S.

✔  By an awesome margin (69%), you thought “Trump’s prosecutors” have been most deserving of being Time’s Particular person of the 12 months. (16 p.c selected precise winner Taylor Swift.)

Thanks for voting in our polls. And please proceed. Scientific proof confirms it’s a superb technique to preserve your distal phalanges from rusting.

And now, our characteristic presentation…

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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, January 4, 2024

Be aware: Out of an abundance of warning I’m indicting you on all the fees there are. We’ll type it out later.

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By the Numbers:

Days ’til the Chinese language New 12 months (of the dragon): 37

Days ’til the beginning of Restaurant Week in South Carolina: 7

Improve in building spending in November: 0.4%

Anticipated unemployment price by the tip of this 12 months, revised down from 4.8% a 12 months in the past: 4.2%

Minimal quantity the MAGA presidential candidates have spent on advertisements in Iowa: $100 million

P.c probability that Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has been hit with extra corruption prices, together with making optimistic statements about Qatar in change for luxurious wristwatches: 100%

Rank of Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, and Sam Cooke on Rolling Stone’s checklist of the best singers of all time: #1, #2, #3

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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Second:

Boy, you actually cannot take your eyes off this bunch for a minute, are you able to? If they are not screwing up one factor, then they’re screwing up one other — busy little beavers. After which there are the executive nightmares they’ve created all by themselves: The brand new Medicare prescription-drug profit is such a catastrophe space, 4 states took it over in lower than every week simply to ensure poor individuals acquired their medicine.

A number of the press are beginning to get the drill. Give us one thing just like the West Virginia coal mine catastrophe, and as an alternative of standing round emoting like Geraldo Rivera, a number of reporters have sufficient sense to ask the plain query: What is that this mine’s security report? And when it seems to be abysmal, a number of extra reporters have sufficient sense to ask: Who’s in control of doing one thing after a mine will get 205 security violations in a single 12 months? The place’s the Mine Security and Well being Administration? Who runs it? What’s their background — are they professionals or mining business stooges? Who’s the Michael “Heckuvajob” Brown on this outfit? Why are so many roles at MSHA simply left fully unfilled? How a lot has MSHA’s price range been reduce since 2001 to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy?

The good irony is that this was purported to be the CEO administration. Bush was supposed to place individuals in control of authorities who had observe data in non-public business, who did the truth is know the best way to run a railroad. For simply sheer incompetence, this administration units new data every day. All these years the proper wing sat round yammering about authorities incompetence, and it took this administration to make it true.

—January 2006

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Pet Pic of the Day: New mutt for the Melvins…

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CHEERS to fearless predictions. Keep in mind after I stated I might solely point out Donald Trump if the information got here from an English psychic? I have been true to my phrase. And this morning I am breaking my embargo for this:

A psychic gave Donald Trump a troubling prophecy about his 2024 possibilities throughout an look on Fox Information. Fox Information’ host Jesse Watters interviewed Paula Roberts—“the English psychic”—on Tuesday’s installment of his present, the place she relayed her prediction that many GOP voters won’t like to listen to.

Mr. Watters started by admitting he had “at all times feared fortune tellers.” Ms. Roberts then relayed her predictions utilizing a deck of tarot playing cards, which she claimed revealed a “sense of loss” for the Republican frontrunner.

Okay then. We’re completed right here. See you on the Biden victory get together on November fifth.

CHEERS to waving hey. It isn’t typically that you simply hear a couple of state altering the design of its official flag, so it is a momentous event for the brand new 12 months. Appears like Minnesota had an excellent cause for doing it, too:

[T]he flag design adopted in December features a darkish blue form resembling Minnesota on the left, with a white, eight-pointed North Star on it. On the proper is a light-weight blue subject that to these concerned within the choice course of symbolizes the considerable waters that assist outline the Land of 10,000Lakes.

The brand new state seal contains a loon amid wild rice, to switch the picture of a Native American using off into the sundown whereas a white settler plows his subject with a rifle on the prepared. The seal was a key characteristic of the previous flag, therefore the stress for altering each.

The proper-wingers are swarming as you’d anticipate. In keeping with the ABC Information article: “[C]riticism circulated by conservatives has been inaccurate. The flag doesn’t resemble that of Somalia nor of its Puntland area.”  Foolish gooses, in fact not. It resembles the colours of Hillary Clinton’s jogging pantsuit. Growth! Owned the MAGAs!

CHEERS to 84,904 sq. miles of madcap enjoyable. Talking of states and such, joyful 128th Birthday to Utah—aka the “Beehive Hairdo State“—which entered the union on January 4th, 1896. The state animal is the Rocky Mountain Elk. The state gem is topaz. The state chicken is, oddly, the California Sea Gull. And the state fossil stays, in fact, the Mitt Romney.

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

(NSFW)

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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CHEERS to fast follow-ups. At C&J, we let nothing slip by the cracks besides our cellphone, our glasses, our Frisbee, and the occasional unruly toddler. And that truth makes individuals just like the recently-smited Pat Robertson very nervous. Though he is not strolling the earth (thanks, Jesus), I guess he’d nonetheless relatively we not deliver up that point 13 years in the past when he knowledgeable the world that God instructed him to start out spreading this information: 

Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson says God instructed him that the U.S. is bankrupt and heading into financial turmoil, however there will not be a world nuclear holocaust.

Robertson stated God instructed him that America‘s lenders will demand compensation—not this 12 months, however in 2012—and the U.S. will not have the ability to pay, leading to forex collapse, rampant unemployment and riots.

Nothing about lifting up the poor. Nothing about therapeutic the sick. Nothing about feeding the hungry. Nothing about bettering the lot of the less-fortunate and the oppressed. Nope. God’s mindset was all about distress, hardship and mindless demise as a result of impending collapse of civilization. So it goes with out saying that none of that got here to move in 2012. So bear in mind: every time the Lord goes all Outdated Testomony on a random late-night name, it’s a protected guess He is drunk.

JEERS to the Nice Civil Conflict of Aught Twenty 4. Citizen in opposition to citizen. Brother in opposition to brother. Household in opposition to household. Unwashed barbarian horde in opposition to civilized society. Ya hate to see it. However right here we’re, pressured to take care of it. And by we I imply Italy and by it I imply pineapple on pizza:

Tasty or not, pineapple on pizza is anathema to most Italians, and [“Pizza maestro” Gino Sorbilla’s] pizza—which he launched on social media this week—hasn’t gone down properly with many. It has, Sorbillo stated, began “uproar” with insults on social media, and his pizza even being mentioned on nationwide TV. […]

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[Photo of pineapple on pizza removed due 

to lack of proper trigger warning. —Mgt.]

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Italy is break up in half about it. And never simply Italy. There’s a load of arguments which have opened up about it. I feel individuals generally will not be curious. They’re mistrustful of something totally different.”

 One slice of recommendation for whoever wins: don’t let the losers put up tons of of statues to themselves 50 years later. We tried that over right here. It ends poorly.

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Ten years in the past in C&J: January 4, 2014

CHEERS to a Sheriff of One.  Since Congress spent the final 12 months botching after which dropping from their agenda the smart tweaking of accountable gun-ownership legal guidelines, President Obama is left to do what he can within the Govt department.  The newest:

President Obama introduced two new govt actions on Friday that nudge his gun management agenda ahead by making it simpler for states to supply details about individuals with psychological sickness to the federal background examine system. …

“Whereas the overwhelming majority of People who expertise a psychological sickness will not be violent, in some instances when individuals with a psychological sickness don’t obtain the remedy they want the end result might be tragedies akin to murder or suicide.”

Or, within the case of NRA head Wayne LaPierre: turning into head of the NRA.

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And only one extra…

CHEERS and JEERS to the speech spankers.  Proper on schedule, Lake Superior State College’s annual “banished phrases checklist” popped up on the scene to offer the cable information anchors a “kicker” story over which to hone their phony-chuckling abilities. Positive, we’re joyful to see phrases like “cringeworthy,” “look forward to it” and particularly “on the finish of the day” on the checklist. However C&J—thin-skinned as we’re—won’t ever shake the bitterness that infused our lives on that darkish day in 2005 once they went off the linguistic deep finish:

BLOG – and its variations, together with blogger, blogged, running a blog, blogosphere.  Many who nominated it have been not sure of the that means.  Appears like one thing your mom would slap you for saying.

“Appears like a Viking’s drink that’s higher than grog, or a method to kill a frog.” Teri Vaughn, Anaheim, Calif.

“Perhaps it’s one thing that might be caught in my rest room.” – Adrian Whittaker, Dundalk, Ontario.

“I feel the phrases ‘journal’ and ‘diary’ want to return again.” – T. J. Allen, Shreveport, La.

So, for the nineteenth 12 months in a row (and till they apologize for being such meanies), C&J humbly retains these 4 phrases on our personal banished checklist: Lake Superior State College.

Have a pleasant Thursday. Ground’s open…What are you cheering and jeering about in the present day?

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At the moment’s Shameless C&J Testimonial

“A number of the healthiest components to place in a smoothie embrace a mixture of fruits, greens and Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool water.”

—Shelley Rael, MS, RDN

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