Cheers and Jeers: Rum and Social Distancing FRIDAY!
Late Night Snark: Quiet, Uneventful Week Edition
"It's day three of the election, but who's counting? Seriously, who is counting? Hurry up, I'm teetering on the edge. Today I opened the fridge and saw a carton of 2% milk and I yelled, from what county???”—Seth Meyers
”They’re still counting the votes, whether Donald Trump likes it or not, but it would appear that our burger king has been flame-broiled for good. … The plane’s going down and all he can do is keep hitting the ‘call’ button to get the flight attendant to bring him another Diet Coke.” —Jimmy Kimmel
Continued...
“Can we just take a moment to admit it is insane that an American president is just demanding that they stop counting votes while he’s ahead? This is such a textbook authoritarian move, which is impressive coming from a guy who has never read a textbook.” —Trevor Noah
"If Donald Trump is right, and Joe Biden did pull the strings behind the scenes in Republican states like Arizona and Georgia, while coordinating with Democratic states like Pennsylvania and Nevada and Wisconsin and Michigan, and throwing in the red herring of letting the Republicans keep the Senate and gain a few seats in the House, while just barely removing Donald Trump? Wow! Kudos to that level of interstate coordination. Anyone who could accomplish that many things at once right now really would be the president we need during a global pandemic." —Stephen Colbert
"According to a study, over 30,000 Covid cases and 700 deaths have been directly tied to Trump rallies. In the end, I guess Trump was right: he is not a typical politician, since politicians typically don’t spend the last week of the election murdering their own voters." —Colin Jost, SNL
"Dear White House Movers: Ask for the money up front." —Conan O'Brien
And now, our feature presentation...
-
Cheers and Jeers forFriday, November 6, 2020
Note: Just a heads-up that C&J will not appear Monday. Back Tuesday with a massive new trophy for my mantle. Assuming I can steal it from the Elks Lodge without getting caught.
-
By the Numbers:
5 days
Days 'til Veterans Day: 5
Increase in sales for the 26-state alcohol delivery company Drizly on election day compared to a typical Tuesday: 68%
Percent of Alabama voters who approved of a measure to remove racist language from their 119-year-old constitution: 67%
Number of states in which voters approved measures authorizing legal sports betting and/or casino gambling: 6
Number of background checks for gun purchases this year so far, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, versus 15.7 million last year: 17.2 million
Number of Americans who bought a firearm for the first time in 2020: 5 million
Value of Jeffrey Epstein's Palm Beach mansion that's going to be demolished: $22 million
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: I’m dog, and I approved this outcome…
-
CHEERS to terminating the suspense. Pennsylvania and Georgia having swung definitively for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and it looks like Nevada and Arizona will follow suit. But no matter how you slice all the MAGA hats in half, the 2020 race is over. I was planning to make the formal announcement myself tonight, given the magnitude of what we just accomplished. But then I thought, no, I believe it's only right that we let the jubilant—[checks notes]—Kellyanne Conway deliver the news to the nation:
“306. Landslide. Blowout. Historic.”
Now stay tuned for Trump to publicly go through his five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Golf, Depression and, finally, Offering every voter $120,000 to forget this election ever happened.
CHEERS to previews of coming green attractions. Even during the fossil fuel-addicted Trump administration, we watched the green energy movement roll merrily on as the coal industry continued to shrivel and even Big Oil took it on the chin. Now that the orange climate-change denier is about to be replaced by a reality-based Democrat, things are looking sunnier, quite literally:
After years of being shunned, solar stocks are suddenly all the rage on Wall Street. Sunrun, America's largest rooftop solar company, has spiked more than 300% so far this year. And the Invesco Solar ETF has more than doubled in 2020. [...]
Might have to upend my couch cushions and find some loose change to invest in solar.
Meanwhile investors have been dumping fossil fuel stocks, particularly Big Oil companies, amid the rise of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) screens and socially conscious investing. ExxonMobil is no longerAmerica's largest energy company by market value. It's been dethroned by solar and wind company NextEra Energy.
"It's just a sign that renewables are going to be a faster-growing, more affordable solution. There's just no denying that anymore," Sunrun co-founder and CEO Lynn Jurich told CNN Business. […] "The Biden platform is very favorable to renewable energy, specifically residential solar," said Sophie Karp, senior analyst at KeyCorp.
In related climate news, Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement officially took affect yesterday, one year after he’d pulled the plug. His successor would just like to add:
Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 days, a Biden Administration will rejoin it. https://t.co/L8UJimS6v2
Consider this Part I in a 1,000-part series of tweets announcing heinous Trump executive actions that’ll be reversed by President Biden. With a grown-up pen.
CHEERS to the first skinny-guy-with-big-ears president from Illinois. On November 6, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Even back then the party had its flamboyant wing. From Joseph Cummins' book Anything for a Vote:
The Republicans held massive rallies and marches several miles long, with hordes of Wide Awakes—Republican faithful who would save the Union—marching with torches and likenesses of "Honest Abe."
People Magazine’s Sexiest Wide Awakes of 1860.
The Wide Awakes wore oilcloth capes and strange black enamel caps to protect themselves from dripping torch oil. In surviving lithographs, they bear a weird resemblance to certain members of the Village People. Boston Republicans organized a rail-splitter's battalion—in homage to Lincoln, every member stood exactly six-feet-four-inches tall. And throughout the campaign, Republican newspapers published countless jokes at [challenger Stephen] Douglas's expense, such as: "Lincoln is like a rail. Douglas is the reverse—rail spelled backwards—liar."
But Republicans got their share of guff, too, as when the New York Herald wrote: "The conduct of the Republican party in this nomination is a remarkable indication of a small intellect growing smaller." The words were wrong as applied to Lincoln...but, as it turns out, spot-on as applied to the party.
P.S. It's also the 159th anniversary of the day in 1861 when Jefferson Davis was elected to a six-year term as president of the confederacy. True fact: the last two-and-a-half years were the lame-duckiest in the history of lameduckism.
CHEERS to compassionate conservatism. On November 6, 1986, mediocre President Ronald Reagan did something decent by signing into law the Immigration Reform and Control Act which, among other things, provided amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Or as today's Republicans like to say, "Absolutely nothing happened on this date in 1986 so shut up, shut up, and shut up."
CHEERS to home vegetation. Hooray! We can turn on our TVs again without getting smashed in the face with non-stop political ads. So what's the first thing we're doing tonight? Tuning into Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow to get smashed in the face with political analysis. (Oy…I'm a lost cause.) Then at 10 on HBO's Real Time, Bill Maher talks with counterterrorism expert Malcolm Nance, Georgetown University of Law's Rosa Brooks, and Center for Humane Technology's Tristan Harris.
Trust me. Put all your money in two-ton cabinet TVs and mirrored walls. They’re poised to make a comeback, bay-bee!
The most popular home videos, new and old, are all reviewed here at Rotten Tomatoes. The NFL schedule is here, and college football will be all over the TV this weekend. Saturday night at 8 on HBO the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees (including Notorious B.I.G., Whitney Houston, Nine Inch Nails, T-Rex, Depeche Mode, and The Doobie Brothers) get their official welcome into the Cleveland pantheon. Then Dave Chappelle hosts SNL with musical guest Foo Fighters.
Sunday on 60 Minutes: General Gustave Perna talks about being in charge of the Covid-19 vaccine effort, and an update on filmmaker Ken Burns, who is currently working on seven new documentaries, including bios of Muhammad Ali and LBJ. A seaside vacation is on the agenda for The Simpsons, while Peter becomes a gangster on Family Guy. And John Oliver is back at 11 with his post-election thoughts on HBO's Last Week Tonight.
Now here's your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: TBA
Also: the ghost of first incumbent to lose reelection John Adams joins the Sunday shows to praise 2020 voters.
This Week: TBA
Face the Nation: Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA); election law expert David Becker; Bob Schieffer; CBS News elections guy Anthony Salvanto.
CNN's State of theUnion: Mitt Romney.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: TBA
Happy viewing!
-
Ten years ago in C&J:November 6, 2010
JEERS to waiting around. Grrrr—another delay. Because of technical problems, the Space Shuttle Discovery won't blast off on its final voyage until November 30th at the earliest. It's mission, should the flight crew choose to accept it in lieu of exploring strange new worlds and seeking out new life and new civilizations:
The STS-133 crew members will take important spare parts to the International Space Station along with the Express Logistics Carrier-4.
They're also eager to git 'er up thar because of a special passenger that'll be on board: a hunky humanoid “robonaut” whose deployment was itself delayed because it ran into serious technical problems of its own. It kept forgetting to put olives in the martinis.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to gazing yonward and dreaming of better days. Thanks to a strong get-out-the-vote effort, Republicans were unable to seize control of the universe on election day, and that means we can still enjoy the night sky without seeing "MAGA" emblazoned on all the planets. This month Pleiades takes center stage, Jupiter and Saturn get closer, and “Earthshine” does its thing. Preston Dyches has the lowdown—or should I say the "highdown" Ha Ha Ha!!!—of this month’s cosmic activity from NASA's Jet propulsion Laboratory:
And this just in: while we were all fixated on voting, Elon Musk donned a sash and declared himself Viceroy of Mars. May he govern justly and compassionately. Ack Ack!
Hey! The next president is a Democrat, and the next vice president is a woman of color. Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
No comments:
Post a Comment