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Cheers and Jeers: Thursday [1]
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Date: 2023-03-23
✌ There's an epidemic of conservative evangelical preachers and youth pastors in this country getting arrested, charged, and convicted of sexually preying on children, and the national media need to start covering it like the ongoing scandal it is. ✌ Putin and Xi had sex Monday night on an air mattress in Lenin’s tomb. ✌ Our country doesn't want the previous president to be indicted for his crimes. Our country needs the previous president to be indicted for his crimes. ✌ The financial institution I opened in December was dissolved this month. Deposits to Billy’s Front Yard Snow Bank weren’t insured by the FDIC, but I did compensate my investors with some black licorice I found in a drawer. ✌ The #1 thing I’ve learned from watching the squirrels on my porch roof is, it’s important to chase people around in circles really fast and then use your head like a battering ram to knock them down before you run to the nearest window and smear it with your muddy hands to beg for nuts. The Founders would absolutely deem this a self-evident truth. ✌ This sentence crosses a line that everyone said could never be crossed. ✌ Former senator and current U.S. Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry once said, "In America you have a right to be stupid," and he's correct. It's just too bad so many people in America treat it as a responsibility.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, March 23, 2023
Note: Prepare yourself for the coming Billypocalypse: I regret to inform you that there will be no C&J Monday as we will be stuck in a bar with a priest, a minister and a rabbi. Back Tuesday with the hilarious punchline, assuming I make bail.
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By the Numbers:
9 days!!!
Days 'til Memorial Day: 67
Days 'til the Southwest Chocolate & Coffee Fest in Albuquerque: 9
Number of "atmospheric rivers" to hit California over the winter: 12
Percent of registered voters polled by Daily Kos-Civiqs who agree that adults should always hold the ultimate authority over medical decisions for their own bodies: 74%
Median existing home price in February, down 0.2% from last February and the first year-over-year drop since 2012: $363,000
Estimated percent increase in tweets hating on Jewish people since MAGA cultist Elon Musk bought Twitter: 105%
Years since the first compact discs were pressed: 40
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
A little reminder for Republicans in Congress who wonder why Democrats would ever have the gall to accuse them of wanting to gut Social Security.
Bush wants to add $2 trillion in transition costs over the next decade for his scheme to partially privatize Social Security. This is one I’m really having trouble figuring out. There is no crisis in the Social Security program. It is not in trouble. If nothing is done, come 2042—or 2052 if you believe the Congressional Budget Office—Social Security will have to start paying less than its promised benefits, but will still be able to pay seniors more than it does today in constant dollars. You can easily fix even that minor problem by lifting the cap on FICA taxes now at $90,000. Why should people who make more than $90,000 have their higher income exempted, when every nickel made by people below the poverty level is taxed? As Paul Krugman of The New York Times points out, if you accept the Rosy Scenario the administration is using to paint privatization as an effective scheme, then Social Security is in no trouble at all and we don’t need to do anything about it—economic growth will take care of it all. Contrariwise, if you accept the doom-and-gloom scenario the administration uses to prove that Social Security is in trouble, then there’s no way the privatization scheme will be anything other than a disaster. Dogged if I know what these people have against a program that works just fine and has kept elderly people from having to eat cat food for many years now. Because the right wing has somehow become a cult of anti-government nuthatches, I have no idea where we’re headed. —February 2005
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Making it official…
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JEERS to just another day at Mar-a-Lago. Apparently the i's haven't all been dotted and t's haven't all been crossed yet, so another 24 hours were allowed to crawl by without any indictment action against former best-president-since-Lincoln Donald J. Trump. In the absence of a mug shot, please enjoy this placeholder…
All eyes will be on the Manhattan D.A.'s office again today. You'll know they've issued indictments when you see white smoke wafting from the chimney and hear the official pronouncement via bullhorn from Alvin Bragg's balcony: "Habemus handcuffs!!!"
CHEERS to bankin' them ballots. Since you read and memorize every word I write here every day, you're aware that there's a special election in Wisconsin for a seat on the state Supreme Court. If liberal Janet Protasiewicz wins, the court tilts left and democracy in Cheddar Land is safe. If the MAGA candidate wins, then Wisconsin Republicans will win everything they throw the court's way, including overturning legitimate election results and slamming the door on all abortions even if the mother's health is at risk. Election day is April4th, but early voting has already started. If you have any Wisconsonites in your sphere of influence, please pass on these important dates:
For the rest of us: if you'd like to donate a few grassroots bucks to the ActBlue page set up by Daily Kos for Janet Protasiewicz, click here. It'll help fight the dark money flooding in for the MAGA candidate. And keep up to date with Wisconsin Democratic party chair Ben Wikler's latest news on the race here at Daily Kos and here on Twitter. Oh, and if you're not sure how to pronounce Janet's last name, you're not alone. The official phonetic pronunciation at the moment is: EH-nee-way yoo-WANT-as long-az-YOO help-hur-WIN.
CHEERS to signin' significant stuff. Thirteen years ago today, one letter at a time, President Barack Obama signed his name to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, making it the law of the land and fulfilling a promise he coincidentally made 16 years ago this week:
[W]e recognize that every four years we hear somebody’s got a health care plan. Every four years, somebody trots out a white paper—they post it on the web. But the question we have to challenge ourselves: Do we have the political will and the sense of urgency to actually get it done? I want to be held accountable for getting it done. The historic pic. I will judge my first term as president based on the fact on whether we have delivered the kind of health care that every American deserves and that our system can afford.
The poor law—which officially outlawed discrimination against pre-existing conditions and freed millions of Americans from "job lock"—has been so battered and bruised by Republicans over the last dozen years that ya hope to god it has its own Obamacare gold plan sealed in a titanium shell. But it's more popular than ever and President Biden has shored it up in a lot of ways. Speaking as an individual who got insurance through the healthcare.gov exchange for years before Maine’s Democratic governor established our own portal last year, it's working fine for me judging by my two most-important metrics: after two bouts of cancer I'm still alive, and in June I'm breaking ground on my new summer cottage made out of free tongue depressors and Covid test swabs.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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x I slowed down the timelapse of the intense blood red aurora we had on Feb 26th in Swedish Lapland for better visualization. Reddest aurora I had ever seen! 💥😍 pic.twitter.com/kYU7RxBk8J — Night Lights (@NightLights_AM) March 3, 2023
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to Sergeant Rubberbutt. On March 23, 1944, RAF Sgt. Nickolas Alkemade survived a jump from his Lancaster bomber from 18,000 feet without a parachute. Other than some cuts and a twisted knee, he was fine. The Nazi he landed on? Not so fine.
CHEERS to smiles for miles. The giddy goblins who put together the annual list of the happiest countries on earth have released their latest findings. You can already surmise that the cranky old US of A, whose Founding Fathers only gave us the right to pursue happiness as opposed to actually having it, did not come in first place. Nor did we come in second place. Or third. Or fourth. Or…oh, screw it this is taking too long...
There’s cause for optimism in the latest report on world happiness. For one, benevolence is about 25% higher than it was pre-pandemic. Even Finland’s dogs are happier. (Like Lennu, seen here with owner President Sauli Niinisto.) “Benevolence to others, especially the helping of strangers, which went up dramatically in 2021, stayed high in 2022,” John Helliwell, one of the authors of the World Happiness Report, said in an interview with CNN. For the sixth year in a row, Finland is the world’s happiest country, according to World Happiness Report rankings based largely on life evaluations from the Gallup World Poll. The Nordic country and its neighbors Denmark, Iceland, Sweden and Norway all score very well on the measures the report uses to explain its findings: healthy life expectancy, GDP per capita, social support, low corruption, generosity in a community where people look after each other and freedom to make key life decisions.
And where does the United States fall on the happiness list? Um…[scroll scroll scroll]…[scroll scroll scroll]…Number 15. But that’s actually up from #16 last year and #18 during the last year of the previous president. I'm guessing that's because President Biden changed our national motto back to “E pluribus unum” from the previous guy’s “The beatings will continue until morale improves.” It’s the little things.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 23, 2013
JEERS to loud voices falling on deaf ears. Yesterday Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg and families of the Newtown victims urged Congress to find the courage to pass stronger anti-gun-massacre laws. Congress immediately leapt into action, forming committees, drafting briefs, and preparing to vote on measures that would authorize them to look up the word courage in a dictionary. Republicans filibustered when Harry Reid demanded they use the Merriam-Webster version instead of the Big Dikshunary of Wurds and There Spellingz authorized by the Texas School Board. Then they went on vacation for two weeks. So glad I'm helping paying their salaries.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to 30 days of tummy growlies. The Islamic holy month of Ramadan started last night, and we’d like to give a C&J shoutout to all of our Muslim readers around the world, of which we have millions. According to the mighty Wikipedia, “This annual observance is regarded as one of the Five Pillars of Islam. The month lasts 29–30 days based on the visual sightings of the crescent moon, according to numerous biographical accounts compiled in the hadiths.” It’s also a month of dawn-to-dusk fasting. Here’s a glimpse into what that looks like for American Muslims, courtesy of Buzzfeed…
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Meanwhile, the Democratic President of the United States will celebrate Ramadan by actually wishing those who celebrate Ramadan Happy Ramadan! His Republican predecessor, who did not do that, will be surprised when he finds out his afterlife consists of 72 virgins beating him for eternity with bottles of spray-on tan.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial Wow! It's a beautiful morning. It's always been my dream to sip coffee in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool and watch my gorgeous horse graze. Anything exciting going on today? —Stormy Daniels
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