Cheers and Jeers: Wednesday

• The anti-maskers and their aerosolized droplets of death

• Pandemic hair

• The way the motto of the United States has morphed in four years from e pluribus unum to “Nice republic you got there…it’d be a shame if somethin’ happened to it.”

• Idiots with guns

• The fates that took so many legends away from us this year, including Sean Connery, Chadwick Boseman, John Prine, Congressman John Lewis, Kobe Bryant, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Terry Jones, Little Richard, Charley Pride, Carl Reiner, Helen Reddy, and the man who brought Festivus to life: Jerry Stiller.

• The science deniers, who accomplish for the advancement of civilization with a Bible and ignorance what a baby accomplishes with a diaper and creamed corn

• People who don’t shovel their #!!@*^! sidewalks. (Southerners, ask a northerner.)

• Squirrels who dine and dash

• God, for not coming down here and straightening out this mess of a planet. She’s dating another universe, isn’t she?

To them and the other 455 people and things on my list (up from last year’s 428) I say… “I GOT A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH YOU PEOPLE!”

And now, our feature presentation…

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Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, December 23, 2020

Note: Here’s the schedule for the rest of the week…

Tomorrow evening around 8ET: A Very Special C&J Christmas Eve Bean Supper Nude Blogging and Sharing of the Conspiracy Theories on Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Birthday
Friday: A Very Special Day Off (Although We Might Post A “Who Won the Week” Poll in the Diaries that Evening)
Monday: A Plain Old Ordinary C&J

As you go about partaking in your cherished holiday traditions, please remember the most important lesson of all: give a zombie someone’s brain and you feed it for a day, but teach a zombie how to hunt for people’s brains and you’ll feed it for an entire apocalypse.  —Joyeux Billeh

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By the Numbers:

Days ’til the little drummer boy drives Mary and Joseph out of their ever-livin’ tree: 2

Percent chance that Attorney General Bill Barr believes investigations of either election fraud or Hunter Biden are warranted: 0%

Expected number of vaccine shots that will be administered to people in the European Union: 400 million

Rank of Vermont, Maine, and Idaho on the list of most U.S. organic farms per capita: #1, #2, #3

Rank of Maine, New York, and Pennsylvania among organic farms producing vegetables: #1, #2, #3

Germans’ approval of U.S. leadership when Barack Obama became president in 2009 and today after four years of Trump, per Gallup polling: 57%, 6%

Rank of “problems with the Christmas tree,” “food disasters,” and “pet antics” among Americans’ funniest Christmas memories, according to research firm Voccii: #1, #2, #3

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Mid-week Rapture Index: 184 (including 4 false prophets and 1 end of the world that happened two days ago).  Soul Protection Factor 8 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.

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Puppy Pic of the Day:

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JEERS to burying the good story.  No doubt about it: this has been a wretched month, Biden certification or no Biden certification. The President of the United States willingly gave Russia access to all our government files; the pandemic is more out-of-control than ever, wiping out the equivalent of America’s 59^th-largest city Corpus Christi; the economy is still in the tank; the latest relief bill is a pebble in a pond; and once again the Orpglorpian Empire didn’t send the Milky Way galaxy an invitation to its Happy Holidays party. But amidst all that, a bright light shines from the darkness, and it just happens to center around the #1 issue for Americans, namely health care. And the Cliffs Notes version goes like this: Obamacare is still the law of the land, and it’s still more popular than the experts expected:

More people signed up for Obamacare coverage on the federal exchange during open enrollment this year—the only increase under the Trump administration, which has long sought to eradicate the landmark health reform law. More than 8.2 million people selected plans for 2021 in the 36 states using healthcare.gov, according to preliminary data released Friday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. […]

“The significant growth this year is a reflection of the impact of COVID-19 on the American people and the important role the Affordable Care Act played in strengthening the safety net,” said Josh Peck, a former Obama administration official and co-founder of Get America Covered. “This is the first open enrollment period following an economic contraction.” […]

Some 6.4 million current Obamacare enrollees selected plans or were automatically re-enrolled for 2021, up an unprecedented 10.6% from the year before.

Yes, there’s that pesky Supreme Court case that’ll be ruled on next year, but I can’t imagine they’d be so stupid as to strip health insurance from over eight-million Americans, let alone ax a whole panoply of services and protections (like against pre-existing condition discrimination) from everybody who has insurance from any source. If they do, I hope Roberts and Co. have good health insurance. Especially dental. They’ll need it.

CHEERS or JEERS (depending on where you are) to Mother Nature in a Santa hat.  A white Christmas is always in the bag for us up here in Maine—mostly because our population is so white, if the ground’s bare we all just go outside and lie down in our yards and it looks like it snowed. Ha Ha Ha!  But enough ho-ho-homogenization jokes. Here’s your White Christmas weather map if you plan to be out ‘n about:

Travel tips: 1) Don’t travel!  2) If you must travel, practice social distancing by buying yourself a magma-resistant submarine and taking the alternate route to Grandma’s through the earth’s core. Oh, and 3) Don’t forget to take a right at Albuquerque or you’ll end up in Kim Jong Un’s rumpus room.

CHEERS to great breakthroughs.  On December 23, 1947, John Bardeen, Walter H. Brattain and William Shockley invented the transistor in New Jersey (and later won the Nobel Prize in physics for it). It originally was a relatively big old thing, but today they’re as small as a single atom.  To put that in perspective, it’s the equivalent of all the good Republican ideas for dealing with the pandemic, income inequality, climate change and police reform combined. Except bigger.

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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CHEERS to great moments in disappearing. I don’t know who his replacement will be—probably some freak with a bear trap for a head who will try to arrest and jail every Democrat between now and January 20th. But as we await Trump’s boxcars to take us to our re-education camp in northern Alaska, let’s bask in this sweet little moment.  Attorney General Bill Barr officially leaves office today:

His official resignation letter says that he plans to spend more time with his family. In response, his family says that, if necessary, they’re prepared to appeal his decision all the way up to the Supreme Court.

DOUBLE CHEERS to people who work on Christmas eve and Christmas day.  Police, fire, utilities, media, national security, rum distilleries…and out front by a mile this year, our first-responders and hospital personnel.  If you’re not getting at least double pay and comp time, your employer should get a one-way ticket to a quail-hunting junket with Dick Cheney. (Or at least a one-way trip to fluff Mitch McConnell’s wattle…or is that too cruel?)

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Ten years ago in C&J: December 23, 2010

C…[Grabs new pen]…H…[Grabs new pen]…E…[Grabs new pen]…E…[Grabs new pen]…R…[Grabs new pen]…S to signin’ on the dotted line.  This morning at 9:15, President Obama signs the legislation that transfers control of the ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy from the Legislative to the Executive branch for a proper burial.  I’ve been out of the closet for 18 years, and this insulting and badly-managed policy (built upon “research” that was utterly bogus) has been in place for the last 17 of them.  Seventeen years of quiet and not-so-quiet seething—day after day, hour after hour.  Probably shaved a few years off my life with all that stewing.  And now it’ll be interesting to go through the process of un-seething.  There are still other LGBT battles left to fight, but as of this morning at 9:15 we’ll be a lot more equal than we were between 1776 and 9:14.  Two snaps and Hoo-ah to that.

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And just one more…

JEERS to ye jolly old fireball.  We pulled this nugget off the Internet so it must be true:

“To deliver his gifts in one night, Santa would have to make 822.6 visits per second, sleighing at 3,000 times the speed of sound.  At that speed, Santa and his reindeer would burst into flame instantaneously.”

And yet Santa, who received the Covid vaccine from Dr. Fauci last month—does make his 822 visits per second, and does travel at 3,000 times the speed of sound, and he does deliver his gifts in one night, and he has not self-combusted.  In fact, every year he gets tracked by NORAD.  So someone owes Santa—and the world—an apology.  How do I lodge a complaint with the internet?

Have a holly jolly humpday. Floor’s open…What are you cheering and jeering about today?

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Today’s Shameless C&J Testimonial

President Donald Trump has been asking around about the idea of having the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool named after him, according to a Daily Beast report, a sign that he’s looking at a post-presidency despite his campaign’s continuing attack on the election results.

—Mediaite

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