Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Georgia Peaches FRIDAY!

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CAUTION: The sugar plum fairies down here carry nunchucks. 

“Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock is projected to defeat Republican Herschel Walker in the Georgia senate runoff race. And if you think you’re relieved, just think how relieved Herschel Walker is. He just narrowly avoided a six-year pop quiz he did not study for.”
—Seth Meyers

“Herschel was like a plane crash into a train wreck that rolled into a dumpster fire. And an orphanage. Than an animal shelter. You kind of had to watch it squinting through one eye between your fingers.”
—Dan McLagan, who ran against Herschel Walker in the 2022 Georgia MAGA senate primary

“With this loss Walker is expected to return to his previous job: lying about having previous jobs.”
—Stephen Colbert

“The White House chief of staff says that he expects President Biden to announce that he’s running for reelection after the holidays. That makes sense—most Americans announce that they’re going to start running after the holidays.”
—Jimmy Fallon

“You’re not gonna believe this, but Alex Jones and Kanye West got together and it didn’t go well. Kanye West made anti-Semitic jokes and said ‘I like Hitler,’ which is also the password he used to get into Mar-a-Lago.”  
—Colin Jost, SNL

And now, our feature presentation…

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Cheers and Jeers for Friday, December 9, 2022

Note: Arson charges pending after Jeanette and Isabella admit to bringing a torch to a duplex on Maple Drive during a drinking binge.  Film at 11.

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By the Numbers:

Days ’til 2023: 23

Days ’til the Gaslamp Pet Parade in San Diego: 8

Number of electric charging stations GM plans to install in rural areas around the country: 40,000

Number of classified documents Trump stole that were recently found “in a Florida storage unit” according to the FBI: 2

Rank of “Wordle” among top Google searches in 2022: #1

Percent of adults, according to USA Today, who say they’ve had a holiday gathering ruined by a relative: 79%

Number of the four calling birds that no longer have a land line: 2

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Puppy Pic of the Day: Weekend plans…

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CHEERS to what Georgia hath wrought. As the Mar-a-Lago elves continue their cleanup of ketchup hurled in rage at various walls, and as Herschel Walker continues asking random strangers for directions back to his Texas mansion, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gently pats a baseball bat in the palm of his hand, now that Rev. Raphael Warnock’s landslide victory in the Georgia runoff election has given him an outright majority. (Arizona weirdo Kyrysytyeyn Synyeymyay went independent last night but will still caucus with Democrats, so the majority holds.) That means obstructionist troublemakers like Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham all the MAGA clowns are now powerless to stop the normal function of the Senate. AP highlights the bigg’uns…

In January, for starters, Democrats will have an easier time using their 51-49 majority for simple tasks of governing, including votes on Biden’s nominees to judicial and executive positions, which Republicans have wielded as weapons.

The same goes for committee action. The Democrats will now have full power to send legislation to the Senate floor, overcoming Republican objections that can drag out the process. They also will have subpoena power, which they plan to use for investigating corporate America.

As for Senator Warnock? He gets to trade in his ergonomically-nightmarish standard Senate seat for a comfy barcalounger with built-in massager and cup holder. I just decided that. Anybody second the motion?

CHEERS (we hope) to the future of fair elections. Not that gerrymandering isn’t already a huge problem that sticks a finger in the eye of every voter who lives in a congressional district that’s been shaped like an anorexic seahorse. But what the star chamber-funded MAGAts are trying to do now is give state legislatures absolute power over how elections are not only run, but decided. That scenario is what was argued before the Hardly-Supreme Court this week, and no one knows how the judges will rule on Moore v. Harper next June. But Marc Elias at Democracy Docket, who has argued and won a shitload of election-related cases (he had a field day doing it in 2020), offers his opinion, which is worth more than most, based on his experience:

Today’s argument will likely assuage many, but not all, of the concerns raised by supporters of voting rights and fair redistricting. There seems little chance that the Court will deny state courts their traditional role of interpreting and applying their state constitutions to state laws governing elections. For voting rights advocates, the devil will be in the details of any opinion, but it feels like we dodged a bullet.

Proponents of the ISL [Independent State Legislature] theory will likely be disappointed by today’s argument. The Court greeted the arguments from the Moore lawyer coldly from the start and the Court seemed to coalesce around a middle ground approach petitioners rejected at the beginning of the day.

His lips to God’s ears. And in other news, God asks people to stop it with the lips-to-ears thing because it’s slimy, unhygienic, and feels too much like a wet willy.

CHEERS to the #1 cause of hairy palms and sudden blindness.  On this date in 1994 Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders—who, at 89, is still professor emeritus at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences—got triangulated out of her job by President Bill Clinton.  Her offense: having the gall to suggest that legalizing marijuana might be a good idea, and teaching kids about masturbation might help prevent the spread of AIDS.

“Education, education, education,” she said.  “The only way we are going to get around this disease is with education. We have no vaccine, we have no magic drug. All we’ve got is education.”  Clinton should’ve let her stay. He might’ve learned that playing with yourself prevents something else: impeachment.

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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CHEERS to the Crossroads of America. Happy birthday Sunday to the home of 6.7 million clean-cut, “basketball ring”-dunking patriots in the heartland.

On December 11, 1816, Indiana (or as we say in Maine: “Indianer”) became our nation’s 19th state. I grew up next door in Ohio, so naturally I’m legally obliged to look down my designer reading glasses at you “Hoosier types” because I’ve been indoctrinated to believe that your corn is inferior and you stole our state bird, the cardinal. (I still say the Buckeye State should build a big, beautiful border wall and make Kentucky pay for it.)  But I’ll give you this: any state that produces David Letterman (Indianapolis), Eugene V. Debs (Terre Haute), Kurt Vonnegut (also Indy), Larry Bird (West Baden Springs), Florence Henderson (Dale), and all these other VIPs can’t be all bad. But we do have three somber words for the folks in Columbus, where Mike Pence cultivated his lifelong obsession with Puritanism as a lad: “Thoughts and prayers.”

CHEERS to home vegetation. Sure, the world’s crumbling around us…but at least we’ve got the magic talking picture box to make things better, so cheer up, Bucky. The evening starts out the usual way, with Chris Hayes and the MSNBC crew unwrapping the latest presents from the Bidenville and MAGA Town. Or at 8:30 on PBS’s Firing Line you can hear from Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa on how disinformation on social media threatens democracy. And there’s a new episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway? at 9 on the CW.

The new movies and home videos are all reviewed here at Rotten Tomatoes. (Guillermo del Toro’s 97%-Fresh Pinocchio is now streaming on Netflix.) The NFL schedule is here, the NBA schedule is here, and the NHL schedule is here.

Tomorrow night is Christmas night, with Rudolph and Frosty on CBS, and a grisly murder-for-hire sting operation on Dateline NBC, which isn’t technically a Christmas show, but they’ll have Christmas-themed commercials during it so it counts. Then we’ll prop our eyelids open with toothpicks as we stay up to watch Steve Martin and Martin Short host SNL.

Sunday’s highlight is the lighting of the National War-on-Christmas Tree (8pm, CBS). On 60 Minutes: a profile of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the effects of legal challenges on social media, and the College of Magic in Capetown. Coach Moe hires brawlers to teach Nelson how to play hockey on The Simpsons, and Stewie and Doug compete in the race to become class snack captain.

Now here’s your Sunday morning lineup:

CNN’s State of the Union: Bernie!!! Plus Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens.

Face the Nation: Rep. Adam Schiff of the House Intelligence Committee (D-CA); Former National Security Council senior director for European and Russian affairs Fiona Hill; former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Chris Krebs; J.P. Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. 

Meet the Press: Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT); former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who led the prosecution of Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

This Week: NASA’S Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa E. Wyche; House Jan. 6 Committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).

Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Former Secretary of State and lifelong asshole Mike Pompeo (MAGA). 

Happy viewing!

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Ten years ago in C&J: December 9, 2012

CHEERS to going nuclear. Senate Republicans have abused the filibuster more gleefully than a podiatric dominatrix on Dick Morris’s toes. So Harry Reid and his allies (led by Jeff Merkley) have promised to make some minor but significant tweaks to the procedural rules. This week they re-upped their commitment to the task:

“There are discussions going on now, but I want to tell everybody here: I’m happy, I’ve had a number of Republicans come to me and a few Democrats,” the Democratic majority leader told reporters Tuesday afternoon. “We’re going to change the rules. We cannot continue in this way. So I hope we can get something Republicans will work with us on.

But it won’t be a handshake,” Reid added. “We tried that last time; it didn’t work.”

Damn right. Harry got Lucy-footballed by McConnell, and this is why neither party can have nice things in the Senate anymore. The rules need to be changed. That way minority Republicans will be forced to show America just how deeply they care about stopping the tyrannical legislation of the majority for the good of the Union by using airtight logic and appealing to our collective sense of justice, equality and fair play. You can laugh now…that was the punchline.  [12/9/22 Update: Ten years later, still waiting.]

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And just one more…

CHEERS to 19 laps around the blog track.  December 10, 2003. A Wednesday. 7:33pm. Shrouded in the New England darkness, with only the constellation Orion to guide him, a newbie blogger, looking almost freakishly younger than his 39 years, clasps his mouse with trembling fingers and clicks the “Post” button. Suddenly the heavens erupt in a frenzy of partly cloudy skies with a slight chance of flurries and a light breeze as the Daily Kos blog accepts his diary:

Cheers and Jeers: New series

This is followed by two comments: Nevsky42 at 7:38 and Bob Johnson at 7:50. From that moment on, social media will never be the same. Later, in 2007, the Daily Kos community elects to put me on your collective—and full-time—payroll. You fools! But if the holiday spirit moves you, you can still support C&J with a generous one-time or monthly contribution by clicking here for the various donation options and also a snail mail address.

Although it’s been said many times, many ways: thank you for reading and supporting my little pixelfied rag for nineteen years. It’s an odd little bag of flaming poo. But, by god, it’s our odd little bag of flaming poo.

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

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