Cheers and Jeers for Monday, November 21, 2022

Note: Yesterday afternoon I reached for a tomato and it collapsed into a mass of green mold and slimy entrails of rot.  For a few seconds there I thought I’d clicked on Twitter.

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By the Numbers:

Days ’til the Warnock-Walker senate runoff election in Georgia: 15

Days ’til the 56^th annual Chitlin’ Strut in Salley, South Carolina: 5

Economic growth in the U.S. since the pandemic hit: 4.2%

Economic growth in, respectively, Japan, Germany, and the UK: 0.6%, 0.2%, -0.4%

Decrease in inbound and outbound, respectively, shipping traffic at the port of Los Angeles over the last year: –2.2%, -0.4%

Percent of Americans who have gotten their bivalent COVID booster shot: 10%

Portion of people celebrating Thanksgiving who try to avoid talking politics at the dinner table, according to WalletHub: 2-in-3

And call in the St. Bernards…

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Puppy Pic of the Day: There will be a guest for breakfast this morning…

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CHEERS to short workweeks.  Only three days for most Americans this week—hopefully you’re among them. Then it’s Thanksgiving among the vaccinated with turkey, gravy, spuds, pumpkin pie,  and a whole lotta nothin’ else. Except, of course, our usual 14 hours of daily blogging.(“Pass the stuffing, dear.  And the screen shammy…”)

CHEERS to order in the courts. A pair of rulings that knocked the MAGA peach eaters back on their heels came down last week in Georgia: 

Reproductive Rights  A Georgia judge overturned a state law prohibiting most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, blocking it from being enforced. The decision means that abortions will—for the first time since July—in most cases be allowed in Georgia, up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.

Voting Rights A judge in Georgia ruled to allow early voting on November 26 in the state’s US Senate runoff election. In a written ruling, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thomas Cox said that after he “considered the moving papers, arguments of counsel, and references to legal authority,” he determined that Georgia law did not prohibit from keeping the polls open the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The decision was in favor of Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, who faces Republican challenger Herschel Walker in a December 6 runoff.

“I’m a real magicstraight because I once judged a pie-eating contest and I overrule these decisions!” said Herschel Walker in his bathrobe as he banged a hammer on his kitchen counter. (Werewolves can be judges? Who knew?)

CHEERS to reaching dry land. On November 21, 1620, after being denied boarding passes at Heathrow because they were on the no-fly list, a bunch of renegade “pilgrims” from England with a bad case of B.O. and no sense of humor landed in New England after 66 days at sea and promptly got all quill-crazy, signing the Mayflower Compact…

“…to enact, constitute, and frame just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.”

By the way, the ship was destined for the northern edge of the Virginia Colony, but they ended up dropping anchor in a totally different place: Provincetown, Massachusetts.  After spending several years reviewing all the available evidence, I’ve come to an inescapable conclusion: GPS sucked back then.

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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CHEERS to spinning in circles.  145 years ago this week, in 1877, Thomas Edison announced to the world that he had invented the phonograph machine.  True story: he broke the news via a phonograph recording, which sounded like this:

“Hello, is this thing on? Testes…testes…one two three.

We begin bombing the Russians in 30 minutes. Ha ha! That always cracks ’em up at the Elks Lodge! But seriously, folks. Mary had a little lamb—her parents were mortified.

I just can’t help myself… You folks fly in from out of town? I bet your arms are tired! I slay me… Oh, by the way, the walrus will be Paul and Luke will be Vader’s kid. Oops…’Spoiler alert!’

I’m bored. Can I go home and invent the light bulb now?”

Only known cure for Restless Inventor Syndrome, according to doctors: take two patent applications and call me in the morning.

JEERS to America: land of the guns, home of the gun nuts.

What happens in the wake of the mass shooting in Newtown Aurora Binghamton Tucson Santa Barbara Charleston Lafayette Roseburg Kalamazoo Orlando Alexandria Las Vegas Parkland Benton Pittsburgh Thousand Oaks Aurora Poway Highlands Ranch Virginia Beach Gilroy El Paso Dayton Midland/Odessa Fresno Milwaukee Atlanta Boulder Colorado Springs Chicago Buffalo Uvalde Highland Park etcetera etcetera Colorado Springs, Colorado again (5 dead and 18 wounded at a gay bar) is depressingly predictable: The community will grieve. Gun control advocates will wisely suggest that this might be a good time to review our federal and state firearms policies so that our nation’s unconscionable record of gun violence might be improved upon. The right-wing gun nuts and media machine will claim it’s “just a lone wolf,” then blame Democrats (and their movies and video games and drag queen story hours) for the carnage and urge every living soul and their pets to arm themselves to the teeth, and the NRA will insist it’s “too soon” to talk about gun control as they continue scaring politicians into looking the other way by informing them that, “We’ll be scoring you on your response.” Like I said, predictable. Depressingly. Again.

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Ten years ago in C&J: November 21, 2012

CHEERS to sweet surrender. Congressman Allen West has been forced to do the most disgusting, unthinkable and un-American thing a whackadoodle tea party extremist can do: face reality. This morning, after two weeks of legal wrangling and finger pointing at Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy, Allen West—yes, the same Allen West who accused the House Progressive Caucus of being card-carrying communists—raised the white flag after one measly term. He says he’ll now spend more time with his family. His family says they’ll now spend more time finding him another job.

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And just one more…

CHEERS to headin’ down the home stretch. A sure sign of the impending demise of 2022. 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. […]

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 blur and then…[Blink!]…welcome to 2023. Keep some aloe on hand for the windburn.

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

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Today’s Shameless C&J Testimonial

“I’d be more than happy to discuss anything that Bill in Portland Maine has done over the last several years in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool, since he has nothing to hide and I can defend everything he’s done.”

—Dr. Anthony Fauci

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