(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Cheers and Jeers: Thursday [1]
['Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags', 'Showtags Popular_Tags']
Date: 2023-03-09
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, March 9, 2023
Note: The Orpglorpian ambassador from the Khhhhhhhprboh nebula will be landing on Earth around noon. Please remember: it is deaf in its left six ears so you have to shout real loud into its nine right ears, and I mean like REALLY LOUD, or it won’t hear you. Thanks. [Snicker snicker.]
-
By the Numbers:
2 days!!!
Days 'til spring: 11
Days 'til Bacon on the Lakein in Romulus, New York: 2
President Biden's proposed increase in the Medicare tax cap on Americans making over $400,000 a year to help bolster the program's solvency: 3.8% to 5%
Number of licensed syrup producers in Maine who contribute to our state's annual production of 575,000 gallons: 520
Percent chance that Baskin-Robbins describes its ice cream flavor of the month, Chick'n & Waffles, as "buttermilk waffle flavored ice cream with plenty of crispy chick’n and waffle flavored bites drizzled in a decadent bourbon maple syrup flavored swirl": 100%
Amount of real chicken in it: 0%
Years since the release of The Big Lebowski as of Monday: 25
-
Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Admit it, you're wallowing in Enron. Aside from the fact that it wrecked a bunch of people's lives, it is a beautiful scandal. Naturally, there is a special Texas element of looniness. Our governor, Rick (Goodhair) Perry, appointed an Enron executive to the state's Public Utilities Commission last summer, the better to regulate energy companies. The very next day, Perry got a $25,000 contribution from Ken Lay, which would have raised questions except Gov. Perry cleared up the whole matter by explaining the contribution was "totally coincidental." This news relieved everybody and gave the governor a new nickname, Old Coincidence. […] Like all historic events, the Enron scandal has already started to affect the language. The stick-up artist goes into the Jiffy Mart to pull a heist. He whips out his rod and says, "Put 'em up, this is an aggressive accounting practice." —March 2002
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: If you want to get an all-too-real sense of how fast time flies, get a puppy and watch how quick (s)he grows up. Our rescue lab mix Haley—a fine import from Macon, Georgia and our current senior C&J editor—joined our family 10 years ago today. This morning we “paws” a moment to post her annual adoption-week pic…
But don’t be fooled by them eyes. She just wants my chicken.
-
CHEERS to Dark Brandon and his MAGA-Busting Budget Bulldozer of Freedom! Today's the day. Today President Biden releases his budget, and if it's as good as I'm hearing it is, Americans will love it and Republicans will find themselves picking their budgetary teeth off the floor:
President Joe Biden will dare Republicans to reveal which government programs they want cut as he lays out his budget proposal Thursday that funds Medicare and Social Security long term by increasing taxes on the wealthy—and sets the stage for a 2024 reelection campaign. […] What's more, Biden will use the occasion to double down on his pitch to working-class voters ahead of a widely expected reelection announcement as early as this spring. Biden, vowing to strengthen Medicare and Social Security, wants to draw a contrast with Republicans by posing a simple question: Here's my plan. Where's yours? […] To drive home his economic message, Biden will discuss his budget at a Philadelphia union hall—the latest in several trips to union halls this year—as he argues his priorities value American workers.
Biden is fond of saying, "Show me your budget and I'll show you who you are." So stay tuned, America, for House Republicans to release theirs on a wad of used toilet paper soaked in gin from a billionaires liquor cabinet and stuffed in a wheelchair-bound grandma's mouth at the edge of a cliff.
JEERS to hookin' up with the wrooooong guy. Let this be a lesson to any company—especially a German company!—hooking up with a celebrity to design and promote his or her celebrity stuff. Before you ink the deal, make sure there's a clause that says, "If you turn out to be a Nazi freak, you take responsibility for buying unsold inventory of your Nazi freak merchandise and getting the f*ck out of our company’s sight." Alas, you're a day late and a Euro short, Adidas:
Adidas' breakup with the rapper formerly known as Kanye West and the inability to sell his popular Yeezy line of shoes helped batter earnings at the end of last year, leading to a net loss of 513 million euros ($540 million). […] Yes. The Adidas story is a real shit shoe. Adidas split with Ye in October following the rapper's antisemitic remarks on social media and in interviews, facing pressure along with other brands to end ties. The company is now grappling to find ways to replace its banner Yeezy line, which analysts have said amounted to as much as 15% of its net income.
As for Obersturmbandfuhrer Ye, he'll be fine. We hear he just signed with the Trump family on an exciting new venture: the Yeezy Jackboot collection.
CHEERS to great moments in wingnut walloping. Sixty-nine years ago today, on March 9, 1954, Edward R. Murrow took Ann Coulter's pin-up idol, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, to the cleaners over his Communist witch hunt. His fab-o wrapup could serve as a middle-finger salute to McCarthy's modern-day Wisconsin doppelganger “Moscow Ron” Johnson:
-
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular."
Senator McCarthy was the ideological right-winger who thought he could bully and bluster his way to power and glory by ruining innocent people’s lives, but ended up ruining his own by getting censured in the Senate and then dying in a cloud of booze and morphine at age 48. Karma’s a what, again?
-
BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
x Back-to-nature training for young pandas is a quite delicate step in their lives and sometimes, caretakers dress up like the animals to make the process more authentic for the cubs
[source:
https://t.co/ebXxvQiJZS]pic.twitter.com/mp6wFt7oWy — Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 7, 2023
-
END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
JEERS to magic tricks of yore. 394 years ago this week, in 1629—gosh, it seems like only yesterday, doesn't it?—England’s King Charles I dissolved Parliament. Innocent mistake, really. He thought he was opening the fridge for some chilled kippers and it turned out to be the Ark of the Covenant. Thoughts and prayers.
CHEERS to today's edition of Gee, Maybe Elon Musk Should Spend Less Time On Twitter Berating Disabled Ex-Employees. This'll be comforting news to folks currently driving the Pacific Coast Highway in a Tesla…
U.S. auto safety regulators have opened an investigation into Tesla’s Model Y SUV after getting…complaints that the steering wheels can come off while being driven. 3.4 if you find the right cliff. In one complaint filed with NHTSA, an owner said he was driving with his family on Route 1 in Woodbridge, New Jersey, when the steering wheel suddenly came off on Jan. 29. The owner wrote that there were no cars behind him, and he was able to pull toward the road divider. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says the probe covers an estimated 120,000 vehicles from the 2023 model year.
This has been today's edition of Gee, Maybe Elon Musk Should Spend Less Time On Twitter Berating Disabled Ex-Employees.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: March 9, 2013
CHEERS to knives and bats and garden weasels…oh my! This week the TSA announced it was relaxing restrictions on various items that a terrorist could use to annoy people: things like small knives with non-lockable blades, bats, golf clubs and hockey sticks. Still prohibited: liquids over 3 ounces, tiki torches and Glee CDs. Because, hey, safety first.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to annual gut checks. Ending today's column on a personal note, but a pretty big one around our house. Six years ago today, Mercy Hospital’s ER waiting room was the proud recipient of a bouncing-in-agonizing-pain-and-looking-rather-gaunt adult baby Billy. Something mysterious in my belly had declared war on me, and the 82 Advils I was taking every day were no longer providing the medical care I required.
They ran some tests, declared me the new poster child for the living dead, wheeled me into the OR at midnight for emergency surgery, gutted me like a fish, took out some stage-3 colon cancer, stapled me back together, took care of my every whim for a week but also stabbed me with many needles and told me I couldn’t watch Judge Judy with the volume set to 99, signed me up for a dozen sessions of chemo (a fizzy Folfox-fluorouracil, Oxaliplatin and Leucovorin cocktail with a lime twist and don’t forget the paper umbrella), helped me with the paperwork to nominate my post-surgery epidural for a Nobel Prize in Pain Management, and declared me cancer-free...all the while accepting my Obamacare card with a smile.
I bring this up because a) unlike Francisco Franco, I'm still alive! And b) I want to remind myself what I posted on Facebook shortly before I was discharged, words that ring even more true today with a couple years of chaos and confusion over the coronavirus pandemic to look back on:
“As for the doctors, nurses and staff here at Mercy Hospital, I would strip every penny from every worthless fucking hedge fund goon in a second and hand it all over to them. We are paying the wrong professionals the wrong wages. I watched these good-humored professionals with my own eyes come to work during an epic blizzard to drain stuff, relieve pain, and make sure we're all doing okay. But it's something they do every day. These people are gods and goddesses among men and women.”
Coincidentally, this week also marks four years since I sat for my last chemo session from a second bout of the same kind of cancer (in my stomach this time) that Mercy’s surgical and oncology teams kicked to the curb with equal efficiency. Last fall I paid a visit to my oncologist, and we remain “all clean.”
Knock on wood, I feel great and have no overt signs of anything amiss under the hood. It's very important I stay healthy for a long time to come. Mainly because I had a premonition years ago and I'll be very disappointed if I don’t, in fact, depart this world in a paragliding collision with fog-shrouded Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 110. Yes—I expect alcohol will be involved.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial Cheers and Jeers squeaks by, barely, though this is one of those exercises where a little skinny-dipping through the kiddie pool couldn’t hurt. —Brian Lowry, CNN
-
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/9/2156803/-Cheers-and-Jeers-Thursday
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
