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Cheers and Jeers: Monday [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2025-03-10

The Week Ahead Monday You are here. Friday is down there. Here's a shovel. Start digging. Every Republican officeholder at every level of government wakes up to find that, for the rest of their lives, they’ll feel an insatiable urge to dress in drag whenever they go out in public. Later today, America's LGBTQ community gathers to discuss what they should choose as their second wish before they rub their excellent new lamp. Tuesday The latest small business optimism index is released. As usual, there's not much optimism among the smallest businesses, mostly because people keep accidentally stepping on them. A great day for international relations as the United States goes two weekdays without a country telling us to f*ck off because our leader announced he wants to annex and/or invade them. Also Wednesday: whoever turned these clocks ahead sobers up and tries again. Wednesday Belgium, Australia, Paraguay, Cameroon, Greece, Chad and Vatican City tell us to f*ck off after our leader announces he wants to annex and/or invade them. The Republican-led House passes the 2025 Trust Us, We're Totally Not Taking Candy From Babies Act. Its primary goal: to take candy from babies. Thursday The House isn’t in session the rest of the week because it’s their spring break. Democrats return to their districts to hold town hall meetings and touch base on their constituents’ concerns. Republicans return to lower their district’s IQ. Elon Musk is whisked to the hospital after suffering a brain aneurysm when he inadvertently tweets a fact. Friday In an annual sign of spring, most of the buzzards return to Hinckley, Ohio. The rest continue circling the dining room at Mar-A-Lago. The University of Michigan’s latest consumer sentiment index is released. America's sentiment registers an downtick from "impetuous" to "goutish." (It's a weird index.) A full “blood moon” appears in the pre-dawn sky, then disappears during a full lunar eclipse. If you believe it’s the trigger for the Rapture, you can probably stop reading here. And have a nice trip! Plus lots of the usual blah blah blah 'cause we never run out of that. And now, our feature presentation…

Cheers and Jeers for Monday, March 10, 2025

Note: Time it takes for a Venus flytrap to close: 100 milliseconds. Approximate number of days it takes one to digest a trapped insect: 10. I'm noting these scientific facts in case the Trump White House scrubs them from the archives of scientific knowledge. Vive la resistance. —Mgt.

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By the Numbers:

5 days!!!

Days 'til spring: 10

Days 'til the Maple Taste and Tour Weekend in northwestern Pennsylvania: 5

Current tracking estimate of U.S. economic growth during the 1st quarter: 1%

Number of times since January that an Elon Musk starship has exploded in mid-flight, as one did Thursday: 2

Percent chance that air traffic in Florida was disrupted because of falling debris from the explosion: 100%

Amount being allocated to update transmission lines in New England to better accommodate hydro and wind power: $1 billion

Percent chance that March was named for the Roman god Mars, who is most famous for inventing the Snickers bar: 100%

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Puppy Pic of the Day:

If you want to get a 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 12 years ago yesterday. This morning we “paws” a moment to post a pic of the old gal, with a special guest star…

x Historic milestone: it took a dozen years, but our cat Fantom finally let Haley join her on the dog bed that she'd taken ownership of through eminent domain. (As cats do.) pic.twitter.com/fsgh2Q1pxl — Bill Harnsberger (@BillinPortland) March 8, 2025

They say, respectively, woof and mew to all the C&J splashers.

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CHEERS and JEERS to conflicting conclusions. The February numbers from the Bureau of Workin' Stiffs came out Friday. the Trump economy added a lackluster 151,000 jobs and the unemployment rate stands at 4.1 percent. Or, if you were watching Fox News: the Trump economy added 4.1 million jobs and the unemployment rate plummeted to negative 151,000 percent.

JEERS to maniac boys and their maniacal toys. Just what we need: on top of everything else, North Korea says its been busy working on a new and exciting way of shortening human civilization's collective lifespan:

North Korea unveiled for the first time a nuclear-powered submarine under construction, a weapons system that can pose a major security threat to South Korea and the U.S. Be...afraid? Be...very afraid??? State media on Saturday released photos showing what it called “a nuclear-powered strategic guided missile submarine,” as it reported leader Kim Jong Un’s visits to major shipyards where warships are built. The naval vessel appears to be a 6,000-ton-class or7,000-ton-class one which can carry about 10 missiles.

On the bright side, it'll likely be awhile before the vessel puts to sea. They're still having some issues with the installation of the screen doors.

JEERS to magic tricks of yore. 396 years ago today, 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.

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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CHEERS to reaching out and touching someone. 5 Exeter Place. Boston, Massachusetts. March 10, 1876. Thomas Watson receives the first telephone call. On the other end: Alexander Graham Bell. On Watson's next credit card statement: five streaming service subscriptions, a life insurance policy, and a dozen Life Alert bracelets. Smooth operator, that Alex.

JEERS to missing the mark—bigly. Did you hear about how Trump’s tariffs backfired, dealing our humming economy an unnecessary kick in the nads? He said he was gonna do it, he did it, we all predicted the worst, and the worst happened. Did I mention it was six years ago?

Chinese retaliation against President Donald Trump’s tariffs is hitting U.S. exporters harder than their Chinese counterparts and costing the U.S. the equivalent of about $40 billion a year in lost exports, according to a new study that highlights the mounting costs to the U.S. economy of the trade war against China. […] Trump chose to mock the Chinese this way as they made him cry uncle in the tariff war. The 1st tariff war in 2019, that is. [A] new IIF study of China’s retaliation has found that counter-tariffs had a far more severe impact on U.S. exports, leading to a collapse in many of the roughly 900 categories of targeted American products. That slump came at a real cost to the U.S. economy.

On the bright side, anyone who was in the market to buy 50-foot piles of rotting soybeans from America’s Trump-loving farmers got a great deal. (I hear that if you get in line early, you’ll be able to get the same deal real soon.)

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Ten years ago in C&J: March 10, 2015

JEERS to abandoning your principles. I've been thinking about this misleading "right-to-work" bill that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker just signed into law (after promising during his re-election campaign last fall to not sign it or even bring it up). The law allows non-union private-sector workers to benefit from union workers by getting all the benefits of union membership without having to pay dues. So there you have it, America: proof that Republicans really do love moochers and freeloaders. As long as you're the right kind.

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And just one more…

CHEERS to the brilliance of the Billeh mind. Did you remember to turn your clocks ahead an hour Sunday morning? I did. But being sick and tired of going through this pointless exercise every year, I did more than that. Thanks to the divine confluence of my maturity, wisdom, and advanced knowledge of the workings of the space-time continuum, I did something that no human has ever dared attempt. I turned my clocks ahead 25 hours, eliminating the need to do it ever again until—[checks watch]—2050. So y’all have fun with your little annual ritual from here on out. While you’re fussing and fiddling with your Rolexes and Timexes and Bulovas, I’ll be sitting in a wingback chair in my high-tech mountaintop lair enjoying a daquiri watching the madness. Oh, that reminds me: can I borrow a few billion dollars? I need to buy a mountaintop lair by next March. No crypto, please.

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 Cheers and Jeers is about more than just having fun; it has been found to be critical for a child's development of social-emotional wellbeing along with cognitive and self-regulation skills, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. —USA Today

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