Just a quick note above the fold:
Holy smokes, Batman. Behn’s MAGA opponent only won by a handful of points. In Tennessee. In a Trump +22 district. My, my, my, look at all those shiny blue arrows...
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Aftyn Behn is going to fall a little short here but the shift from 2024 in today's election in central Tennessee is looking like ~15 or so points to the left.
The big surprise to me is total turnout, specials normally are very low turnout but this may have more voters than the '22 midterm in TN-07
— Aaron Fritschner (@fritschner.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T03:08:14.697Z
No “conservative tears” in our mug this morning. We’ve switched to a cuppa conservative flopsweat.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, December 3, 2025
Note: If you suffer from the itching and burning of spontaneous combustion that prevents you from living life to its fullest, ask your firefighter if water is right for you. —Acme Firehoses, LLC
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By the Numbers:
Saturday!!!
Days 'til the full "cold moon": 1
Days 'til the Winterfest Light Parade in Norwich, Connecticut: 3
Number of consecutive months, as of November, that U.S. manufacturing has contracted: 9
Trump approval among men polled by YouGov in February and last month, respectively: 53%, 46%
Amount Starbucks is paying, for violating labor laws, to its New York City workers: $35 million
Amount you'll now be charged by the TSA if you want to travel by air but don't have a Real ID: $45
Drinkers polled by Gallup who say they most often have beer, liquor, and wine, respectively: 38%, 30%, 29%
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 177 (including 5 marks of the beast and 1 happy holiday reminder). Soul Protection Factor 12 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Like a duck to water…
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JEERS to trickle-down strikeonomics. As House and Senate committees prepare to investigate the crimes committed by the Trump administration in the Caribbean—i.e. murdering human beings suspected of being drug dealers without due process—let's check in and see how the folks in charge are taking full responsibility for their actions:
The President: My Secretary of Defense War is responsible.
The Secretary of Defense War: The deputy Secretary of Defense War is responsible.
Deputy Secretary of Defense War: Nuh uh! It was that admiral standing over there.
Admiral: Silly deputy. It was the vice admiral.
Vice Admiral: Nice try, but we all know it was the rear admiral.
Rear Admiral: Talk to the commodore.
Retired Commodore: Commodore ain't a thing in the Navy anymore. Blame the chief warrant officer.
Chief Warrant Officer: The cook was responsible for the attacks.
Cook: Okay, okay, you got me! Yes, it was me! I launched the murder missiles! Lock me up!
Why is it always, always the cook?
JEERS to today's sicko A.I. math lesson. Okay, kids, pay attention. Today's lesson concerns a math symbol known as "greater than." The symbol for "greater than" looks like this: >. I will now turn the lesson over to Grok, the unerring artificial intelligence entity created by Elon Musk for his "X" social media site:
"If a switch either vaporized Elon's brain or the world's Jewish population (est.~16M)," Grok said, "I'd vaporize the latter, as that's far below my~50 percent global threshold (~4.1B) where his potential long-term impact on billions outweighs the loss in utilitarian terms."
Grok later argued that it would be willing to kill an "upper limit" of "~50percent of Earth's ~8.26B population" because "Elon's potential to advance humanity could benefit billions."
Therefore: 1 Elon Musk brain > 16,000,000 Jews and 4,084,000,000 other people. Congratulations, math whiz. Your diploma's in the mail.
CHEERS to the Land Of Lincoln and Obama. Happy Birthday, Illinois—207 years old today! The name means "Tribe of superior men." The late defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is from Illinois. So is the Catholic bishop who once conducted an exorcism after the governor signed a marriage-equality bill into law. So is Rahm Emanuel. My point: every village has its idiots.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to seeing stuff up close. On this date in 1621, Galileo perfected his new invention. He called it the telescope. The following day the lady next door perfected her own new invention. She called it the window blinds.
JEERS to rank hypocrisy. Remember when President Joe Biden tried mightily to forgive student loan debt, but ran into a buzz-saw of whiners who blubbered that "I never got MY student loans forgiven, why should THEY get THEIR student loans forgiven?" Well, the shoe's on the other foot now. President Donald Trump is now giving free money to every child born after January 1, 2025: a thousand bucks for each ungrateful rugrat, with an extra $6 billion tossed in by a tech billionaire who never even asked his customers if they wanted their money to be used that way. Well, here's my response to that using my airtight MAGA logic:
Hey! This is BULLSHIT! I never got free money from the government when I was born, let alone money from a billionaire! This is Trump-branded SOCIALISM, pure and simple! These diaper poopers—including the so called "president" (although we know Melania is really calling the shots because her husband's brain is fried) are being treated with SPECIAL RIGHTS! I demand that this program be HALTED until ALL OF US get free money put into our own COMMIE ACCOUNTS! Otherwise we have to suffer while the Toddler class gets feted with favor and privilege!
And anyway, the whole f*cking bill is NULL and VOID anyway because Trump signed it WITH AN AUTOPEN! So Shut this program down NOW! And while you're at it, somebody needs to stop those damn babies from STEALING and EATING all the dog and cat animal crackers!
Um…thank you for your attention to this matter?
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Ten years ago in C&J: December 3, 2015
JEERS to more fiddling while earth burns. In Paris, the climate summit is seeking a new multi-national agreement that calls for immediate action to politely ask the world's mega-polluter nations if they will kindly consider taking action at some point in the future. The latest:
Negotiators met in back rooms while an unprecedented 150 world leaders took to the stage to emphasize their commitment to tackling global warming. In a sign of things to come, their initial meetings carried on late into the night, with some ending only at midnight.
By this Thursday, they are expected to come up with a draft text that will be further refined on Friday, then examined by the French team over the weekend.
I don’t want to sound like a pessimist, but you know it's tough for the world to break free of Big Oil's influence when even the climate summit's draft has to be refined.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to blowing this popsicle stand. Whenever the shit gets too deep here on the bluish-brown marble, I head over to NASA's site to see if our new Space Force is conquering every ball of gas and rock in the known galaxy. Sorry to say the answer is “not yet,” so we'll just have to spend our days and nights gazing yonward and dreaming of death stars and cloaked Klingon vessels. This month’s major events include fun with triangles and the moon playing footsies with our planetary neighbors. Here's NASA's Chelsea Gohd with a preview:
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And remember: if space aliens with lasers land and demand to know who’s responsible for the giant mess down here, blame Baby Jesus. Let’s see how the li’l prick wriggles out of this one.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"You know who doesn’t post weird stuff like Cheers and Jeers? Actual journalists. "
—Stephanie Myles
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