“President Biden said yesterday that his goal is that every teacher can receive the first dose of the coronavirus vaccine by the end of March. Said teachers: ‘may’ receive.” —Seth Meyers
“We’re so close to the end of the pandemic—we can see it! Even as vaccines roll out, it’s still important to mask up, keep our distance, and not do whatever the f*ck Texas is doing.” —Trevor Noah
Continued…
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“A new study showed the coronavirus lowered the average life expectancy for black Americans by nearly three years. In fact, the coronavirus is so deadly to black Americans that it’s being suspended with pay.” —Michael Che
“Andrew Cuomo is the biggest dirtbag New Yorkers have elected since…pretty much every previous dirtbag we’ve elected. Cuomo seems like the kind of guy who thinks it can’t be sexual harassment if he didn’t use the word Toots.” —Samantha Bee
“Lindsey Graham told Sean Hannity that Democrats should apply the Republican model to Andrew Cuomo…which I guess means make him president?” —Jimmy Kimmel
The party of “Freedom Fries” would like you to know that “cancel culture” is a very serious problem.
“Today was a particularly tense day in Washington. Capitol Police announced they had obtained intelligence about a Q-Anon plot to breach the U.S. Capitol again. … Out of an abundance of caution, the House canceled today’s legislative session. It’s kind of like a domestic terrorism snow day, in that they’re both dangerous and white.” —Stephen Colbert
“Tomorrow night Donald Trump will give the keynote address at the Conservative Political Action Conference. For a preview of Trump’s speech, give your grandpa cocaine.”
—Colin Jost
“I love science. I’m always talking science. Unless that science is about climate change, coronavirus, space lasers, evolution, the metric system, the rhythm method, breastfeeding, living on Mars, Jesus’ skin color, or Santa’s skin color—by the way, which is white.” —Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Cecily Strong), on SNL
And now, our feature presentation…
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Final C&J Annual Fundraiser Pitch
Many thanks to everyone who contributed this week to keep Cheers & Jeers alive and kickin’ through 2021. The way I see it, it’s win-win: you get C&J for another year and I get to relinquish my soul for another year, which frees up valuable storage space in my chest cavity for candy corn. Oh, and it also pays the rent.
Or—and this is my final argument, may God have mercy on my marketing skills—think of it this way: for the price of a cup of coffee per day, you can enjoy both C&J and one less cup of coffee per day! Together, we can keep the kiddie pool inflated for America and freedom. This concludes our annual fundraiser. We will now turn the oxygen back on.
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By the Numbers:
Monday!
Days ’til International Women’s Day: 3
Percent of Republicans polled by PPP who support $1,400 Covid relief checks: 61%
Percent of Republican senators and representatives inside the beltway who support their constituents’ support for $1,400 Covid relief checks: 0%
Percent chance that a report by the Department of Defense’s inspector general found that Trump’s White House physician Ronny Jackson was a boozer and sexual harasser addicted to sleeping pills on the job: 100%
Rank of The Rachel Maddow Show among all cable TV shows in the 9pm time slot for January and February: #1
Estimated economic growth the U.S. will lose out on over the next 18 years if it doesn’t bring its infrastructure up to speed, according to an assessment by the American Society of Civil Engineers: $10 trillion
Age of Reese’s, which announced this week it’s making a version of its famous peanut butter cups that’s 100% peanut butter: 90
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Puppy Pic of the Day:Weekend plans…(Click on the image for the Big Reveal.)
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CHEERS to home sweet homeland. All together now: Whew!!! All was calm yesterday at the Capitol building, where the red-hatted cultists, via their secret encrypted sub-sub-sub-sub-reddit rooms, vowed to hatch their devious March 4 plan:
1) Take the House and Senate by storm
2) ???
3) Trump takes the oath of office for his second term as our 19th president
Sadly, it was not to be. Insurrectionist “Mad Dog” Jimmy locked the keys in the cab of the Ford F-150 outside the Alexandria Motel 6, depriving the bad-assiest army of rebels in history of their face paint and warrior antlers, so the whole thing fell apart and they ended up playing Old Maid at the iHop next door for an hour while they waited for his mom to show up with the spare key. So for now tyranny still reigns across the land, especially at Jimmy’s house where he’s grounded for two weeks for stealing his mom’s truck. (And her pork rinds, but that’s a story for another day.)
P.S. Coming soon to a streaming service near you: Four Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest…
Oh well. At least they found some decent Lincoln Memorial snow globes over at the Dollar Store.
CHEERS to a good House cleaning. The problem: one of our two major political parties would very much like to become a dictatorship (see insurrection attempt #2, above) where a white minority governs a growing and diverse soon-to-be-majority in order to enrich itself politically, financially, and—[double-checks notes]—sexually. The solution to at least two of those three passed Wednesday night. Behold the We The People Act, courtesy of your friendly local Democratic party and beer hut:
The bill would expand access to the ballot box by creating automatic voter registration across the country, restoring the voting rights of the formerly incarcerated, expanding early voting and modernizing America’s voting systems.[…]
The GOP’s worst nightmare—free and fair elections—would continue unabated under the We The People Act.
The bill would also strengthen oversight of political lobbying and campaign finance by preventing members of Congress from serving on corporate boards and requiring presidents to release their tax returns. […]
The White House Office of Management and Budget released a statement Monday in support of the bill, which would also commit to restore the Voting Rights Act, combat voter purging and reform redistricting.
And now this is the part where you use all your vibe-teleportation skills to replace my soul-deadening cynicism about its prospects of passage in the Senate—now under Democratic control for the briefest of moments and by the slimmest of margins—with optimism and positivity.
[Pauses to receive mental thoughts from my 2.4 million readers, including you]
Puppies and rainbows!!! Thank you all very much.
JEERS to an unsatisfactory conclusion. On March 6, 1857, the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott case. Their brilliant conclusion: slaves aren’t citizens, according to their strict interpretation of the Constitution:
[I]n the opinion of the justices, black people were not considered citizens when the Constitution was drafted in 1787.
According to [Chief Justice Roger] Taney, Dred Scott was the property of his owner, and property could not be taken from a person without due process of law.
Four years ago the city of Baltimore tore down its statue of racist rat bastard Chief Justice Roger B. Taney.
In fact, there were free black citizens of the United States in 1787, but Taney and the other justices were attempting to halt further debate on the issue of slavery in the territories. The decision inflamed regional tensions, which burned for another four years before exploding into the Civil War.
Chief Justice Taney—with political pressure from none other than President Buchanan—thought the decision would settle the issue of slavery. I think enough time has passed that I can say with reasonable confidence: what a dope.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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The best use of technology is to improve quality of life. Watch people’s beautiful first expressions of hearing sounds for the first time. Pure joy! @RexChapmanpic.twitter.com/BUHFur0k0c
JEERS to humans behaving badly. On March 5, 1946, prompted by the shenanigans of Joseph Stalin (who died on this date in 1953) in post-World War II Europe, Winston Churchill introduced the new phrase “Iron Curtain” in a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Or, as Bed Bath & Beyond would later call it: “our worst-selling curtain ever.”
CHEERS to home vegetation. Rumor has it there’s stuff on TV this weekend and I guess I’ll take them at their word. After Chris Hayes and ratings titan Rachel Maddow do that thing they do tonight, Bill Maher’s guests on HBO’s Real Time are Joe Scarborough, Frank Bruni, and Charlamagne Tha God, while on BBC America there’s a Connery-era James Bond marathon happening with a break at 11 for The Graham Norton Show with guests Stanley Tucci and Kate Winslet.
What the freakin’ frig is going on with NASA’s Artemis program? “60 Minutes” tells us Sunday.
The most popular home videos, new and old and across all 45,765 subscription streaming services (funny I can’t get any of them no matter how much I jigger my rabbit ears), are all reviewed here at Rotten Tomatoes. The NHL schedule is here and the NBA schedule is here. (If you’re wondering about base-uh-ball, the season starts April 1.) Or you can catch the Arnold Palmer Invitational tomorrow and Sunday afternoon on NBC.
On 60 Minutes: how a 40-year-old antidepressant became a possible candidate for early treatment of COVID, and the women in charge of NASA’s Artemis Program, “which intends to put a woman on the moon in this decade.” Over at Fox, Cletus becomes a singing sensation on The Simpsons, and Stewie designs a terminator on Family Guy. But they’ll get blown away in the ratings over at CBS, where Oprah sits down with Harry and Meghan for “an intimate conversation,” which can only mean it’s taking place in her hot tub. And John Oliver puts a cork on the previous 7 x 24 hours (whatever that equals—dammit, Spock, I’m a blogger not a mathematician) on HBO’s Last Week Tonight.
Now here’s your Sunday morning lineup. See if you can guess whose ego is in need of a good public strokin’ by the beltway cocktail weenie eaters:
Meet the Press: White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients; Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and John Barasso (Cult-WY).
We recommend you sleep in.
Face the Nation: Doc Fauci; Govs. Phil Murphy (D-NJ) and Jim Justice (R-WV); Benjamin Crump, the Civil Rights Attorney for the Family of George Floyd.
CNN’s State of the Union: Govs. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) and Tate Reeves (Cult-MS); Joe Manchin.
This Week: Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austen; Gov. Mike DeWine (Cult-OH); Joe Manchin.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Gov. Asa Hutchinson (Cult-AR); Joe Manchin.
Ugh.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 5, 2011
CHEERS to the march of progress. Remember when laptops were, like, teh awesomest things? My, how time flies. A market research firm now says that sales of laptops are expected to fall off as sales of iPads and other “media tablets”—which don’t require the enormous muscular effort of opening and closing—take off:
Simply put, tablets are more portable than laptops and perform many of the same functions for consuming content—surfing, reading and e-mail—for which people once used laptops. Gartner said that the hit being taken by the laptop market is partially because of a shift in demand, but also because those on the fence about what device to buy are waiting to purchase anything at all.
Meanwhile, the iPad 2 was unveiled this week to great fanfare. It’ll be available March 11. Fans will snatch it up in droves. It’ll give ’em something to play with while they stand in line waiting for the iPad 3.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to sparklers in…March??? Great question, thanks for asking! The answer is YES! Fact is, when you go outside on a clear night and let your eyes adjust, you’ll see a whole universe above you. And what is this universe doing, you ask? Another great question! The elves at NASA always let us in on the big celestial events for the month. Here’s a look at March’s sky-watching tips, including an ongoing planetpalooza and a star that may or may not have horns:
Over to you, special C&J guest star Squirrely P. McSquirrel:
“So remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure, how amazingly unlikely is your birth. And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space, cuz there’s bugger all down here on Earth.” pic.twitter.com/OIobrObv8r
