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❧ Thanks to President-elect Biden, Americans are finally allowed to say "Happy Holidays" again.
❧ If we blow through all the Greek letters before hurricane season ends, we move on to the primal scream alphabet, starting with Hurricane Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
Continued…
❧ When Republicans defeat Democrats in an election, the media lecture Democrats to compromise with Republicans because “they have a mandate.” When Democrats defeat Republicans in an election, the media lecture Democrats to compromise with Republicans because “they’re hurting and need to be reached out to.”
❧ If Ossoff and Warnock win their Georgia runoff elections, my favorite superhero next year is going to be Kamala Harris: Senate Tie Breaker.
❧ One of the stranger things about Covid-19 when you look at them through a microscope is they all wear spats.
Also what I know: It’ll be nice having a president in office again who can spell.
❧ If you get your health insurance through healthcare.gov, you have 26 days left to enroll for next year.
❧ When President Biden introduces measures to strengthen our voting process, high on his list should be training an army of ballot-fraud-sniffing dogs.
❧ Everyone's focusing on what the pollsters got wrong in 2020, but the worst predictor by far was God, who told all the right-wing evangelists with 100-percent certainty that Trump was a lock.
❧ To increase his influence in the upper chamber, Senator Mark Kelly should deliver all his speeches in his astronaut suit.
❧ Melania Trump hasn’t reached out to her successor. But I think Jill Biden will be okay—she's got Michelle on speed-dial if any First Lady issues come up.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers forThursday, November 19, 2020
Note: A reminder that today is Have A Bad Day Day. If you violate the spirit of the occasion by having a good day, that would be very bad, which would actually make your good day a bad day. Good for you! (In a bad way. Which is good! But that’s bad. Good! Good bad!)
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By the Numbers:
32 days!!!
Days 'til winter: 32
Date on which U.S. troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan will be reduced to 2,500, down from roughly 8,000: 1/15/21
Amount that Dolly Parton donated for Covid-19 research at Vanderbilt Medical Center, which played a major role in Moderna's 95 percent-effective vaccine: $1 million
Minimum number of hate crimes committed in 2019 according to the FBI, the highest number since George W. Bush's last year in office: 7,300
Percent of Americans who told Gallup that the criminal justice system was "too tough" in 1992 and 2020, respectively: 2%, 21%
Percent chance that the Senate blocked Trump's nominee Judy Shelton to the Federal Reserve Board, because among other things she's obsessed with going back to the gold standard: 100%
Rank of stuffing, gravy, and mashed taters among most popular Thanksgiving sides: #1, #2, #3
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Great. George W. Bush sounds like English is his second language, and Al Gore sounds like he thinks it’s yours. It’s like having Ted Baxter of the old “Mary Tyler Moore Show” running for president: Gore has Ted’s manner, and Bush has his brain. […]
My favorite new line by the Bushies is: How Dare They Call Him Stupid? Not that any Gorey has ever called Bush stupid—but if you imply that they have, it makes them sound condescending. This is getting to be the problem that dare not speak its name.
I am fully persuaded that Bush’s performance in the third debate was a cry for help. Go back and listen just to Bush’s answers and see what you think. It’s time that the media paid a little more attention to the Bush end of this equation. You want pop psychology? (With which the entire Washington press corps seems to be infatuated these days.) I’ll give you some pop psychology: I think Bush threw that debate. Consciously or subconsciously, the poor man knows that he is not prepared to be president of the United States, and he is desperately trying to signal us to that effect.
CHEERS to previews of coming attractions...or not, whatever, it doesn’t matter. Still, it’s nice to think about what a Trump concession would sound like, even if he no plans to man up and offer one. The elves at The Tonight Show are happy to oblige:
He always did have the very best words. (Just never in the right order.)
CHEERS to needle pricks at the end of the tunnel. As the U.S. coronavirus death toll approaches the population of Buffalo, New York, it appears that the Republican cult's worst enemy—science—is coming through again. Five major developments:
» Vaccine #1A final analysis of the Phase 3 trial of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine shows it was 95% effective in preventing infections, even in older adults, and caused no serious safety concerns, the company said Wednesday. The data show Pfizer's initial claim of a better than 90% efficacy—a claim that stunned and pleased health officials and vaccine developers last week—holds up.
Your days are numbered, bub. Shoo! Shoo! Scat!
» Vaccine #2Moderna said Monday that early analysis from its Phase 3 trial shows its Covid-19 vaccine is 94.5 percent effective at preventing the illness, offering hope of a second breakthrough in as many weeks. … What's more, it appears to have prevented more serious outcomes of Covid-19. Eleven cases of severe disease were reported in those who got the placebo. No severe disease was reported in those who received the vaccine.
» At-home TestingThe US Food and Drug Administration has issued an emergency use authorization for the first self-test for Covid-19 that can provide rapid results at home. The LuciraCOVID-19 All-In-One Test Kit is a molecular single-use test available by prescription for self-diagnosis of the coronavirus, the agency said Tuesday. The rapid test utilizes a molecular amplification technology to detect the virus in people with known or suspected Covid-19 and can return results in 30 minutes, the FDA said.
» Immunity People infected with the coronavirus could remain immune for years after their recovery, a new study suggests, offering news that could quell worries about waning immunity as potential vaccines are nearing availability.
And perhaps the biggest development that portends the taming of the virus and a return to normalcy next year: two months from today, Donald Trump will spend his last full day in office.
CHEERS to President Blinkandyoullmisshim. Happy birthday to "#20" James Garfield, born 189 years ago today in a log cabin—the last president to have that distinction. He was also a Civil War veteran (for the side that put down the traitors of the south), and one of only 15 commanders-in-chief to not preside during a war. Also on his resume: canal boat laborer, janitor, school teacher, and U.S. congressman.
True Fact: Most historians agree that James Garfield had Bette Davis eyes.
He only got to enjoy his status as the first left-handed Commander-in-Chief for 200 days before he died of lead- and unwashed-doctors’-hands poisoning due to an assassin's bullet that no one could find until he was long gone. He might've actually been a decent president, who knows? But I do know this: shaaaame on him and running mate Chester Arthur for using $400,000 in campaign money to bribe Indiana voters with two-dollar bills. Why, that could've eroded the public's trust in politicians.
JEERS to today's non-comforting moment…in airline safety:
NBC News, September: 737 Max crashes that killed 346 were 'horrific culmination' of failures by Boeing and FAA, House report says. "What’s particularly infuriating is how Boeing and FAA both gambled with public safety in the critical time period between the two crashes," the Democratic chair of the House committee said.
CHEERS to headin' down the home stretch. A sure sign of the impending and blessed demise of 2020. This week we noticed that the constellation Orion is hovering low on the horizon after dark:
Orion, which is located on the celestial equator, is one of the most prominent and recognizable constellations in the sky and can be seen throughout the world. [...]
Alnilam, Mintaka and Alnitak, which form Orion’s belt, are the most prominent stars in the Orion constellation. Betelgeuse, the second brightest star in Orion, establishes the right shoulder of the hunter. Bellatrix serves as Orion's left shoulder. [...]
Damn, that hunter has nice gams.
With one exception, all of the main stars in Orion are bright young blue giants or super giants, ranging in distance from Bellatrix (243 light-years) to Alnilam (1,359 light-years). The Orion Nebula is farther away than any of the naked eye stars at a distance of about 1,600 light-years. One light-year is the distance light travels in a single year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion kilometers).
For the rest of the fall and winter it will be our nightly companion when we take the dog out to go pee. If tradition holds—and it does or else it wouldn’t be a tradition—from here on out the rest of the year will be a blessed blur and then...[Blink!]...welcome to 2021. Keep some aloe on hand for the windburn.
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Ten years ago in C&J:November 19, 2010
JEERS to the pipedreams of halfwits. She's amusing enough, I suppose, as a platitude-spouting, cliché-ridden mama grizzly or a Republican male's dream mistress or whatever, but Sarah Palin's 2012 tease is just ridiculous:
Sarah Palin says she is seriously considering a run for the White House, and she believes she could beat President Obama in 2012, the former Alaska governor told ABC News' Barbara Walters. ... Asked Walters: "If you ran for president, could you beat Barack Obama?" "I believe so," Palin said.
Although I'll give her points for one thing: saying those words without having to read them off her hand.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to words that resonate even louder in the Age of our Dumbass Uberdotardfuhrer. On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln delivered TheGettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the Pennsylvania battlefield. I read these words every year and their simple elegance makes me appreciate them more each time. What a distillation of the American experiment, and what a road map for slogging our way through the worst leadership vacuum ever:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
True Fact: Lincoln’s speech was punctuated several times by shouts of “You da man!!!”
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
If you want an even more condensed version, here's the corporate-approved PowerPoint Presentation of the speech. (The “next” button is in the lower right-hand corner). A century and a half later we still haven't perished. But Lincoln would no doubt be alarmed at the rabid wave of Republican dotardism that followed our current president—who constantly forgets and then re-remembers to his astonishment that Lincoln was a Republican—when he brought his thuggish brand of disgrace to Gettysburg during his 2016 campaign, and to the entire nation on January 20th, 2017. Thankfully, the impeached Jefferson Davis clone just got booted from office, ensuring our republic will endure, and the dead shall, for now at least, not have died in vain. And after 48 excruciating months, Honest Abe can finally stop spinning in his grave.
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
Bill in Portland Maine is PEOPLE’S Sexiest Man Alive 2020: “The Cheers and Jeers Splashers in The Kiddie Pool Are Proud of This One”
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