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Cheers and Jeers: Thursday [1]
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Date: 2023-11-02
Oh! More Things I Know:
✌ Voting in the 2023 elections ends in 5 days. MAGA whining about the 2023 election results ends in never days. ✌ Tuesday's Democratic winners will be careful to enact policies that don't overreach. Tuesday's Republican winners will be careful to enact policies that do nothing but overreach. ✌ The scariest words in the English language: "I'm Speaker Mike Johnson and I've given this some thought..."
Continued...
✌ The MAGA cult has gotten so extreme and dangerous that we now consider the time they went after Mr. Potato Head and the Little Mermaid as "the good old days." ✌ The problem with mass shootings is we keep sending thoughts and prayers after they happen. If we sent them before they happened, they wouldn’t happen. Also what I know: all quiet on the hurricane front. ✌ One thing whose price hasn’t been affected by inflation is nutball Republican politicians. They always come dirt cheap. ✌ Among the people I interact with here in Maine and at Daily Kos, I personally know more people who got Covid this year than during the height of the pandemic. ✌ The outcome of the 2023 elections hinges on turnout by young voters. To get them on board, we should all go out on the streets and offer them shiny dimes. ✌ Attorney General Merrick Garland has still failed to throw a tarp over the naked lady statues at the Justice Department or sing Let the Eagle Soar even once. ✌ You will be automatically charged $49.95 a month to belong in The Billy & Squirrely Friends Club unless you find and click the “unsubscribe” box. (Hint: it’s located somewhere on the internet.)
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, November 2, 2023
Note: An urgent reminder to grease and re-string your catapults and soak your leftover 2022 holiday fruitcakes in gasoline this weekend, as the opening assault in the war on Christmas starts PROMPTLY after next Tuesday’s elections. As usual, stragglers will be punished by spending the day in solitary with a bitter, balding Furby who won’t shut up about how great Pogs were.
—Generalissimo Billeh
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Veterans Day: 9
8 days!!!
Days 'til the Crystal City Spinach Festival in Texas: 8
Percent chance that former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was finally confirmed as our ambassador to Israel: 100%
Increase in construction spending in September: 0.4%
Years the International Space Station has been continuously staffed with astronauts (7 right now) as of today: 24
Average amount spent—on travel, hotel stays, food, and merchandise—by a fan who went to see a performance during Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, about three times more than people spend on other live concerts: $1,300
Estimated amount Swifties have spent in total at concert destinations around the country: $5 billion
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
For me, the most annoying suggestion being made is that Democrats somehow need to claim or reclaim patriotism or to do something to let folks know that we, too, love our country. I find that hideously offensive. I have always thought the only way to respond to Republican statements and implications questioning the patriotism of non-Republicans is with a good swift blast of venomous anger. … The contemptible, petty, little would-be Joe McCarthys need to understand what love of country really means—love of the highest and best in America. —October, 2005
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Over to you, Merriam-Webster…
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CHEERS to Dark Brandonomics in action. In the immortal words of the Batman TV series: BOOM! BAM! BIFF! OOF! SOCK!!! Yesterday the United States of Goddamn America And Don’t You Forget It Bub got news from the nation's most trusted and feared money man Jerome Powell that the economy is—quoting my dad now—"cookin' with gas." Read it and weep, all you MAGA America haters:
The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady on Wednesday but left the door open to a further increase in borrowing costs in a policy statement that acknowledged the U.S. economy's surprising strength but also nodded to the tighter financial conditions faced by businesses and households. "Economic activity expanded at a strong pace in the third quarter," the U.S. central bank said in a policy statement after a two-day meeting in which officials unanimously agreed to leave the benchmark overnight interest rate in the 5.25%-5.50% range where it has been since July. The language marked an upgrade to the "solid pace" of activity the Fed saw as of its September meeting, and followed on recent data that showed U.S. gross domestic product grew at a 4.9% annual rate in the third quarter.
Then Chairman Powell and the rest of his Fed staff took the elevator down to the basement and rolled around in a giant pile of Franklins. (To be clear, this part was just their normal Wednesday tradition.)
JEERS to “Party of Fiscal Responsibility.” The new Speaker of the House is either a total sinkhole of irresponsible spending…or he's totally corrupt:
Over the course of seven years, [Mike] Johnson has never reported a checking or savings account in his name, nor in the name of his wife or any of his children, disclosures show. In fact, he doesn’t appear to have money stashed in any investments, with his latest filing—covering 2022—showing no assets whatsoever. The Speaker of the House’s financial institution of choice? Of course, it’s unlikely Johnson doesn’t actually have a bank account. What’s more likely is Johnson lives paycheck to paycheck—so much so that he doesn’t have enough money in his bank account to trigger the checking account disclosure rules for members of Congress.
Trying to live on a congressman's meager salary of—[checks notes]—$174,000 is hell.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS and JEERS to Ol' Mullethead. Happy 228th birthday to James K. Polk, the only Speaker of the House to become president and one of 12 to own slaves. Despite protests from some members of Congress, he "exaggerated" his way into a war with Mexico (something about the "smoking gun that could come in the form of an exploding burrito") and stole Texas as part of Operation Jade Helm 14½. But he definitely walked the walk while he was in office. In the book Rating the Presidents, over 700 historians and political scientists rank Polk 11th-best:
Polk's outstanding success was no accident. He assiduously planned his moves and carried them through to fruition. We’ll forgive Mexico if they don’t sing “Happy Birthday.” Former president Harry Truman summed it up in his own concise way in 1960. When asked what he thought about Polk, he replied, "A great president. He said exactly what he was going to do and he did it." Quite an achievement for a president of any era.
Yeah, but a few months after he left office he was dead at 53. Consider that a heads-up, workaholics.
P.S. Today is the 158th birthday of another POTUS: womanizing gambling addict Warren Harding—one of the worst presidents in history along with Buchanan, Pierce, Andrew Johnson, George W. Bush, and The Thing from Mar-a-Lago. One attribute he shares with fellow Republican Dubya is his abuse of the English language, as when he said: "I would like the government to do all it can to mitigate, then, in understanding, in mutuality of interest, in concern for the common good, our tasks will be solved." And then he'll put food on your family and wings will take dream.
JEERS to the dick in the dock. Yesterday Donald Trump's eldest spawn found himself in court again, this time to defend himself against indefensible (as the judge already ruled) business practices by the Trump Organization that were several light-years this side of shady. According to those in the courtroom, this was the highlight:
"Yeah, my dad's totally guilty. Can I have some cocaine now? The feeling is starting to return to my nostrils and ow ow ow ow ow!!!"
Today: Eric takes the stand. Strategically, he has one task: try not to get his head stuck in the court recorder's stenography machine again. We're all pulling for ya, kiddo. To fail.
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Ten years ago in C&J: November 2, 2013
JEERS to that whole rebranding thing. Let's see how old RNC chairman Reince Priebus's grand plan to make his party more appealing to mainstream Americans is going:
• GOP-written voter suppression laws spreading like wildfire? Check! • Republican obstruction of immigration bill? Check! • Nix gun laws that have 80+ percent backing by the public? Check! • Shut down the government for no valid reason at a cost of $24 billion? Check! • Continue severe restrictions on women's reproductive health choices: Check! • Deliberately sabotage Americans' ability to get health insurance through the Affordable Care Act? Check! • Hack billions from the food stamp program? Check! • Threaten the security of Social Security? Check! • And, most recently: refuse to bring a bill prohibiting job discrimination against LGBT Americans to the House floor after passing the Senate: Check!
So far it gets a big "Thumbs Up!" Mostly from Democrats running for Congress next year.
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And just one more…
JEERS to four more years of torture. Nineteen Years Ago today, 121,480,019 voters (give or take) went to the polls:
The dust had not yet settled on the most narrow election victory by an incumbent president in the history of the republic. Bush's edge was 2.5 percent, smaller even than Woodrow Wilson's pathetic 1916 victory margin of 3.2 percent. [It] really chapped my ass when Cheney claimed a "broad nationwide victory" and a "mandate" for Bush's "clear agenda." —From Al Franken's book The Truth (with Jokes)
Looking at the utter train wreck that was Bush's second term, the post-election conservagasm just seems downright silly in retrospect...
"Bush now has a mandate." —Bill Bennett Still a good question. "This time, of course, his claim of a popular mandate is incontrovertible." —TIME magazine "It is a mandate." —Tucker Carlson "He has, I would argue, a mandate now." —Peggy Noonan "Mr. Bush has been given the kind of mandate that few politicians are ever fortunate enough to receive." —The Wall Street Journal "In one sense, we think it an even larger and clearer mandate than those won in the landslide reelection campaigns of Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1984, and Clinton in 1996." —William Kristol
For his part, Bush displayed his trademark modesty:
“Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign—political capital—and now I intend to spend it.”
Turns out it was just political fistfuls of mud. From racing back from Texas to sign the "Let's Meddle in Terri Schiavo's Family Business" order, to not racing back during Katrina…from watching his Social Security-gutting scheme fail, to watching bin Laden elude him for another four years…from ignoring Afghanistan to ignoring the recession…from unfunded mandates to unfunded wars...his political capital bought him, and us, exactly one thing: disaster. I'd like my refund now, please.
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 In the year of our Gritty, 2023, reporters still pretend to believe Republicans when they pretend to care about splashing in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool. —Atrios
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[END]
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