Cheers and Jeers: Rum and GOP Disarray FRIDAY!

You are now below the fold. This means absolutely nothing.

“If only!  If Dems took a shot every time McCarthy lost a Republican, we’d all be unconscious by now.”
—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, responding to false accusations that she and her Democratic House colleagues were drinking during the failed MAGA votes to elect a Speaker.

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“[Rep.-elect George Santos] claimed his mother died in the September 11^th attacks, then clarified that she passed away a few years later, then re-clarified that she died in December of 2016. That is a horrible thing to lie about. His poor mother must be spinning in all of her graves.”
—Stephen Colbert

“Florida Governor Ron DeSantis criticized Democrats’ agenda and said, ‘Florida is where woke goes to die.’  In fact, it’s where everything goes to die.”
—Seth Meyers

“A new study has found that using screen [devices] to stop a child’s tantrums can harm their ability to control their emotions. The study is titled: Elon Musk.”
—Colin Jost, SNL

And now, our feature presentation…

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Cheers and Jeers for Friday, January 6, 2023

Note: Full “wolf moon” tonight. Get yer butt out in the back yard, look up, think of Neil Armstrong and all the NASA pioneers who have left us, and give it a wink. It’s the law.  —Mgt.

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By the Numbers:

Days ’til spring: 74

Days ’til the Napa Truffle Festival in California: 7

Percent chance that the Justice Department says the Postal Service can deliver prescribed abortion medication even in states where abortion access is severely restricted: 100%

Amount New Jersey is allocating to provide upgrades to health care facilities that provide abortions: $15 million

Age, as of this year, at which you’re required to take out a minimum amount from your IRA or 401(k): 73

Median price of a one-bedroom condo in Manhattan, down 5.5% from a year ago: $1.14 million

Amount Apple will start charging for out-of-warranty iPhone X through 13 battery replacements starting March 1, an increase of $20: $89

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Puppy Pic of the Day: Weekend plans…

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CHEERS to more noses to the grindstone. If it’s the first Friday of the month, that means it’s time for a fresh change of underwear the Bureau of Labor Statistics to release the latest jobs numbers. Today’s report earns Dark Brandon another gold star:

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 223,000 in December, and the unemployment rate edged down to 3.5 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Notable job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality, health care, construction, and social assistance. […]

In December, the year-over-year change was 4.53 million jobs.  Employment was up significantly year-over-year.

And according to Bill McBride’s updated post, “2022 was the 2nd best year for job growth in US history behind only 2021 with 6.74 million.”  The positive economic movement is part of a radical and audacious American economic plan called—[Checks notes]—Let’s Put Democrats In Charge of the Economy.

JEERS to dates that will live in infamy. December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 were attacks from the outside. But like April 12, 1861, January 6, 2021 was a conservative-led inside job. Two years ago a mob of rabid Republicans, brainwashed by right-wing media and their own gaslighting leaders (who have since doubled down on their brainwashing and gaslighting), stormed the U.S. Capitol with clubs, spears, guns, tear gas, and even a portable gallows. Their goal: stop the certification of the 2020 election results and re-install, by force, their duly defeated president, who watched the action on TV with a big grin on his face in the White House dining room. It was the culmination of a Trump-inspired coup attempt that had been discussed and planned right down to the tiniest detail in memos sent around by his lieutenants, and even the murder of the Republican vice president was fair game to the nut jobs. Last year, on the one-year anniversary of the coup, the 46^th president took direct aim at the 45^th, and let him have it…

“We must be absolutely clear about what is true and what is a lie.

A former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election.

He’s done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interest as more important than his country’s interest and America‘s interest. He can’t accept he lost. […]

He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president.”

It was the harshest rebuke by a sitting president of a former president since William Henry Harrison accused Martin van Buren of having “the whiskers of a feral alley cat, the vacuousness of a discarded hoop skirt, and the fingers of pork sausages.” Somehow, the republic endures.

CHEERS to the Republic’s Big Moment.  On January 7, 1789, the first U.S. Presidential election was held, but there was no popular vote.  Instead, each state’s appointees to the long-obsolete Electoral College got to vote twice.  The top two vote-getters would become president and veep. They picked the stoic hero George Washington and the cranky curmudgeon John Adams.  Their first conversation:

“What do we do now?”

“I dunno, I thought you knew.”

“Well, I thought you knew.”

“Hey…wanna get drunk and barf in Jefferson‘s desk?”

“Does the Constitution say we can?”

“It doesn’t say we can’t.”

“You pour.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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CHEERS to one wacky Whig.  Happy 223rd Birthday tomorrow to #13 Millard Fillmore, whose beginnings could scarcely be more humble:

He was born in upstate New York in Cayuga County the second of eight children to such an impoverished family that they could not even afford to feed him.

His father apprenticed (indentured servant) him to a cloth maker at age fifteen, so brutal it stopped just short of slavery. Millard Fillmore taught himself to read by stealing books. He finally managed to accumulate thirty dollars to pay the obligation to his master and was free.

During his accidental presidency (thanks to Zachary Taylor becoming the first president to choke to death on Pop Rocks and Diet Coke), he sent Commodore Perry to open trade with Japan.  He also postponed a civil war by signing the Compromise of 1850, which added California as a free state but also strengthened the fugitive slave law. To his credit, he was the rare pre-Civil War president who never owned slaves himself, but his defense of keeping that “institution” was weak, weak sauce. On top of all that, Queen Victoria once told him he was the most handsome man she’d ever laid eyes on.  Moments later, Fillmore unofficially became the first person to swim the English Channel in under a minute.

CHEERS to home vegetation. Typical mid-winter weekend on the TV.

We’ll start with Chris Hayes and the MSNBC crew parsing the latest un-seriousness on the House floor. Or you can catch Penn & Teller: Fool Us at 8 on the CW, followed by a double-dip of Whose Line Is It Anyway?  Then at 11 on BBC America, guests on The Graham Norton Show include Olivia Coleman and Hugh Laurie.

The new movies and streamers are all reviewed here at Rotten Tomatoes. The NBA schedule is here, the NFL schedule is here, the NHL schedule is here and the eagerly-awaited Naked Ping Pong World Finals schedule is here.  On 60 Minutes: Prince Harry unveils his new catapult capable of shooting giant spitwads across the pond into his brother’s castle window, and film composer Hans Zimmer talks about—you sitting down?—film composing. No Simpsons Sunday night, but there’s a new Family Guy during which the guys recount their first true loves. 

Now here’s your Sunday morning lineup:

Meet the Press: House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY); Rep. James Comer (The Cult-KY).

Face the Nation: Senator Angus King (I-ME); Rep. Nancy Mace (The Cult-SC); Ukraine Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova.

This Week: Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas; U.S. Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn; Rep. Scott Perry (The Cult-PA); Rep. Andy Barr (The Cult-KY); Maggie Haberman of The New York Times, taking a rare hiatus from making late-night kissy noises with Donald Trump on her Hello Kitty phone from underneath her Gossip Girl bedspread.

CNN’s State of the Union: Democratic House whip Katherine Clark (D-MA); Rep. Dan Crenshaw (The Cult-TX).

Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Rep. Jim Jordan (The Cult-OH).

Happy viewing!

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Ten years ago in C&J: January 6, 2013

CHEERS to belonging to a club that would have me as a member. I got my DNC membership card in the mail this week! #0939123246—Woodrow Wilson’s old number! It entitles me to hold it while I breathe, to jimmy locks with it, and to arrest people for any reason whatsoever. Plus, now I can add it to the hundred other DNC membership cards I’ve gotten over the past 12 months and use them to make a replica of the White House. I’d like to thank each and every dead tree that made it all possible.

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And just one more…

CHEERS to the happy meeting of X and Y chromosomes.  Sunday is National Male Watcher’s Day.  Seriously…it’s a thing.  Far be it from me to deny you the simple pleasure of viewing the male form in all its glory, so ogle away:

Don’t say I never did anything for you.  Like, say, give you nightmares.

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

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