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Cheers and Jeers: Monday [1]
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Date: 2023-08-14
Will of the People This week includes the anniversary of "cowboy philosopher" Will Rogers’ death at 55 in a plane crash in Alaska. In 1935 Franklin Roosevelt (whom he supported) had only been in office for two years and my parents were still in diapers. Huge Hollywood star, razor-sharp pundit, record-holding lasso artist, reporter, and one of the best things to come from Oklahoma. Here are some of his observations that ring as true today as they did nearly a century ago: » Remember, write to your Congressman. Even if he can’t read, write to him." » “When the judgment day comes, civilization will have an alibi: ‘I never took a human life, I only sold the fellow the gun to take it with.’” » "One thing about Republican presidents: They never went in much for plans. They only had one plan. It says, 'Boys, my head is turned. Just get it while you can.' " Continued...
» "Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can't buy enough to eat." » “The difference between a bandit and a patriot is a good press agent.” » "I love a dog. He does nothing for political reasons." Oklahoma’s finest. » "People want just taxes more than they want lower taxes. They want to know that every man is paying his proportionate share according to his wealth." » “No man is great if he thinks he is.” » “I am no believer in this ‘hard work, perseverance, and taking advantage of your opportunities’ that these Magazines are so fond of writing some fellow up in. The successful don’t work any harder than the failures. They get what is called in baseball the breaks.” » "Our distribution of wealth is getting more uneven all the time. A man can make a million and he is on every page in the morning. But it never tells you who gave up that million he got." » “Statistics have proven that the surest way to get anything out of the public mind and never hear of it again is to have a Senate Committee appointed to look into it.” » "If all politicians fished instead of spoke publicly, we would be at peace with the world."
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Monday, August 14, 2023
Note: If you need a penny take a penny. 😃 If you have a penny, leave a penny. 😃 If you have a penny and you take a penny, rot in hell, you thief without conscience, you aren’t worth the pain of the mother that bore ya, now get out of my store before I call the proper authorities. 🔥 Everyone else, have a nice day. 😃
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By the Numbers:
3 days!!!
Days 'til the first dumb MAGA debate: 9
Days 'til the Bucyrus Bratwurst Festival in Ohio: 3
Weekly initial unemployment claims announced last week, up 21k from the previous week: 248,000
Number of storms so far this year that were so severe they caused over $1 billion in damage: 10
Number of Iranian-Americans transferred from prison to house arrest in Iran after a deal was brokered with the U.S. to get them freed: 5
Percent of uranium used in U.S. nuclear power plants that was provided by Russia last year: 12%
Age of hip-hop as of last week: 50
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Pure joy...
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CHEERS to lazy goof-off week. Here's the way things stand around the country:
The Senate is off. The House is off. The President is off. The Supreme Court is off. State legislatures are off. Oh, and most of Europe is off. Yeah...off their ROCKERS Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!! Remember that, all you grads now entering the workforce: maniacal laughter is cleansing for the resentful, burnt-out workaholic soul.
CHEERS to the election whisperer. Among those who will be remembered for holding the line against assaults by the MAGA cult to erode our system of free and fair elections, Marc Elias and his crew at Democracy Docket will be high on the list. In fact, his is one of the very few daily emails I've deemed important enough to sign up for. Every evening at the stroke of 6 o'clock it pops into my box and succinctly recaps the day's election-related court action while previewing future events. (It's an excellent companion to the updates by the Daily Kos Elections Team.) Here's his rundown from Friday which, as is usually the case, consists mostly of victories against the right-wing horde:
✔ In a win for voters, a federal judge struck down Washington state's legislative districts, ruling they violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by diluting the voting strength of Latinos in the Yakima Valley region. ✔ The Ohio Supreme Court unanimously rejected a GOP lawsuit seeking to disqualify an abortion rights amendment from the November ballot. This decision makes certain that voters will have the chance to enshrine reproductive freedom in the Ohio Constitution. Marc Elias ✔ The federal judge in Washington, D.C overseeing the election subversion case against former President Donald Trump ruled that Trump is prohibited from publicly discussing sensitive materials, which she said can include witness testimony and recordings. ✔ Pro-voting parties filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court urging the Court to affirm a lower court's decision to strike down South Carolina's congressional map for racial gerrymandering. ✔ On Monday, there will be a hearing in federal court over Alabama’s new congressional map passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature. The enacted map only has one majority-Black district, but a federal court decision, which was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court, ordered that the map must have two.
If you want to get Democracy Docket's daily updates, you can click here and scroll down. No, this is not a commercial. Just a five-star endorsement for important work well done. (Stay healthy and take your vitamins, Marc.)
CHEERS to America's favorite safety net. 88 years ago this week, in 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt gave us one less thing to fear by signing the Social Security Act into law, saying:
"We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age. […] FDR signs the Social Security Act under the watchful eye of Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, without whom it never would have happened. (Her parents were both Mainers, y’know.) The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness."
Today a substantial portion of the Republican base loves to criticize Social Security as the brainchild of a dirty effing socialist hippie. But they sure do love getting their dirty socialist hippie checks in the mail. And they sure love to complain that their socialist hippie checks ain't big enough. And they sure love to leap to its defense by telling their own party to “keep your government hands off my Social Security.” Yes, when it comes to money, Republicans are all about the love. Those dirty effing socialist hippies.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to great moments in inventin' stuff. Wipe that doughnut powder off your face and sit up straight, this is important. This week marks the 110th anniversary of the invention of stainless steel. It was created by metallurgist Harry Brearley, who had the good sense to "add chromium to molten iron [that] produced a metal that didn’t rust." Today stainless steel is a ubiquitous part of life on earth. But to survive the slings and arrows of modern-day politics, only Teflon will do.
JEERS to a whole lotta slithering goin' on. Did you hear about that huge snake in Florida? They say it's a major menace to the state because it pretty much swallows everything in its path, leaving nothing behind but destruction and snake shit. But enough about Governor DeSantis. They're also having problems with pythons. How can you tell the difference between the two? DeSantis slithers around with pudding fingers.
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 14, 2013
JEERS to stupid human tricks. Well, here's a headline I never expected to be able to check off my bucket list, courtesy of the Sun Sentinel:
Lauderhill cops accused of kinky traffic stop. Officer got female driver to punch him in genitals, prosecutors say
Reminds me of the Andy Griffith Show episode where Barney Fife gets Floyd the barber to tie him to his chair, stuff a rubber ball in his mouth and spank him with his strop for being a naughty deputy. (If you're curious, their safe word was "Sarsaparilla.")
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the whitest guy ever to be "born a poor black child." Happy birthday to Steve Martin, who was a spry 30 when I first heard his stand-up act (via long-play cassette) at 12 and laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe, and who is now an elder statesman of comedy at 78. Besides being an award-winning banjo picker, having a hit single (King Tut), hosting the Oscars and SNL, starring in a boatload of popular movies and the Emmy-winning TV show Only Murders in the Building, and writing best-selling books, an Oscar-nominated screenplay (Roxanne), and sketches for the legendary Smothers Brothers, what has he contributed to society? While we're trying to think of something, watch this…
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Sorry, Steve, but I'm still drawin' a blank. Happy birthday, anyway.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial Democrat Who ‘Dropped Out’ of Cheers and Jeers Due To ‘Lack of Joy’ Claims It Was a Mistake And Is Back In The Kiddie Pool —Mediaite
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