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Cheers and Jeers: Thursday [1]

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

Date: 2025-03-20

Oh! More Things I Know… ✌ President Trump has been in office for two months. The MAGA crowd has stopped caring about deficits for two months. ✌ Democrats and independents are dedicated to the idea of forming a more perfect union. Republicans are dedicated to the idea of hatching a more perfect coup. ✌ The Maine lobster industry hauled in 86 million pounds last year. That sounds impressive until you realize it only came from four lobsters. ✌ The drunkest holiday isn't St. Patrick's Day. According to Time magazine it comes in second to Cinco de Mayo. And, if memory serves, third to National Bring Your Child To Work Day. Also what I know: Elon Musk doesn’t need DOGE to fire any Teslas because they’re pretty good at firing themselves. ✌ What the media calls a "toxic political divide" in this country is really just Republicans being assholes. ✌ Nobody thought for even a millisecond of strewing the sidewalk in front of George W. Bush’s house with sweets and flowers on the 22nd anniversary of his invasion of Iraq. ✌ 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. ✌ Daylight Saving Time should be renamed Confuse The Dog At Dinnertime Time. ✌ Former senator and U.S. Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry once said, "In America you have a right to be stupid." He's correct. It's just too bad so many people in America treat it as a responsibility. And now, our feature presentation...

Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, March 20, 2025

Note: Please exercise caution when using the kiddie pool water slide this morning, as we have given it a fresh coating of margarine for spring. If you find yourself suddenly airborne, please extinguish all smoking materials and make sure your tray table is in the upright and locked position. —Mgt.

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By the Numbers:

14 days!!!

Days 'til Passover: 24

Days 'til the Eastern Alpaca Jamboree in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: 14

Current price of gas nationally: $3.08

Minimum number of unjustly-fired federal employees the Trump administration is trying to locate and re-hire because what they did was illegal: 24,000

Percent chance that closing USAID was unconstitutional, according to a federal judge: 100%

Minimum dead and injured, respectively, from the Oklahoma wildfires: 4 / 200

Minimum number of measles cases nationwide: 321

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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:

I do like the idea of supporting democracy, however, and think we should try it—especially here in the U.S. of A. To this end, a couple of dandy ideas are now circulating, and I think they're worth your support and excitement. For ages, all good reformers have wanted to get rid of the Electoral College and have direct popular election of presidents, instead. The disastrous election in 2000 finally culminated in Bush v. Gore, a Supreme Court decision so bad even the court disowned it at the time. Every nightmare scenario about just how screwed up things could get with the Electoral College all came true. What a giant mess: a textbook case of why the Electoral College is toxic piffle. But the desire to Do Something about the mess in 2000 burned itself out. The Republicans who took over Congress are just not natural reformers. —March 2006

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Puppy Pic of the Day: In Smyrna, Georgia……Saved!!!

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CHEERS to order in the courts. Ha Ha Ha! Trump got in trouuuuuble! Trump got in trouuuuuble! It seems that his plans for world domination are being thwarted at virtually every turn by mallet-wielding dudes and dudettes in robes. Let's review. Judges...

» Blocked the EPA's attempt to recoup $20 billion in Biden-era climate grants » Blocked the dismantling of USAID by DOGE How did humanity ever get by without clip art? » Blocked the new policy expelling trans troops from the military » Blocked deportation of immigrants by invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act » Ordered the reinstatement of some federal education grants that were canceled as a result of Trump's anti-DEI executive order » Ordered reinstatement of probationary employees in various agencies who were fired for no valid reason

In response, Trump ordered the impeachment of all judges who disagree with him. This prompted the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to issue a rare rebuke: Go pound sand, he said. Well, I believe the actual quote was: “Go pound sand, sir.”

CHEERS to Spring! 'Bout effing time, huh? I don't care if we still have tiny mounds of increasingly-grey-tinged snow sitting around, at exactly 5:01 this morning I put on my tutu, strapped on my fairy wings and head lamp, went outside, and took part in the annual tradition of romping barefoot through the blueberry fields with the wee village folk. After arriving back home, we took part in our other annual spring tradition: scraping wee village folk off the bottom of our shoes. (Sorry about that, guys. You’re, like, really wee.)

P.S. Another sign of spring: once they make it through Customs (good luck with that), the swallows are returning to the San Juan Capistrano Mission in California this week. One small difference: this year they're coming to feast on human flesh! Which, of course, means the only surviving witness there will be the Fox News reporter.

JEERS to self-righteous knuckledragging. 387 years ago this week, in 1638, progressive preacher Anne Hutchinson was booted from the Massachusetts Bay Colony by the Puritan leadership after being accused of "Blasphemy" and "Lewd conduct." Today Justice Sam Alito will unveil a statue to commemorate the event. In honor of the Puritans.

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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JEERS to how far we've fallen. 235 years ago this week, in 1790, Thomas Jefferson reported to President Washington as America's first Secretary of State, during which he grappled with weighty and complex issues related to the debt, foreign affairs and the location of the new U.S. Capitol. Exactly five years ago, Donald Trump's second Secretary of State in less than two years (the first one had trouble waking up from his naps) held a conference call with a bunch of right-wing religious outlets to plan for The Rapture, but not before he was called a "butt boy" for a"wannabe dictator" on national TV. And today the Secretary of State, now serving that same president, is Marco Rubio. I had a punchline all set to go for this item, but it just walked out onto our roof and jumped.

JEERS to mis-pointed fingers. Every time the sitting (on his ass) president of the United States opens his mouth, it's to mislay blame for his failures at someone else's feet. The most egregious act of gaslighting this week is his claim that our previous president cratered the economy and now it's up to Mr. Perfect to fix it. And not even the normally-cowed crowd at CNN is buying it:

Markets are on the fritz and investor sentiment has slumped into “extreme fear” territory. Consumer confidence readings have cratered and surveys show a sharp turnabout in Americans’ feelings about their future financial well-being. Any positive reports are described by economists as the “calm before the storm.” The universally-accepted symbol of the Trump economy. The common denominator is pure and utter uncertainty—particularly about just how President Donald Trump’s sweeping policy actions could shake out, economists say. […] By most gold-standard measures, President Joe Biden handed Trump a booming economy. And, if anything, the economy was ripe for a resurgence in early 2025 under Trump, economists have told CNN. "[I]nflation and every other economic indicator had more or less stabilized when President Trump took office,” Jai Kedia, an economist and research fellow at the Cato Institute, told CNN in an interview.

Nothing we don’t already know, but it's nice to see a major media outlet correct the record. Now we’re down to just 45,976 other records that need to be corrected.

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Ten years ago in C&J: March 20, 2015

CHEERS to FLOTUS in flight. First Lady Michelle Obama is in Japan and Cambodia for a few days to meet 'n greet, grip 'n grin, and show the world yet again that when it comes to awesomeness among current spouses of world leaders, America is an exceptional nation. Here's what she's up to today and tomorrow:

On Thursday, she will hold separate meetings with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife, Akie. She also plans to meet with the Emperor and Empress of Japan before heading to Kyoto, on Friday. A White House statement said the First Lady will announce a partnership between the U.S. and Japan on the Let Girls Learn initiative, which aims to help educate the 62 million girls globally who do not attend school. Michelle in Cambodia. On Friday, she will head to Cambodia, which is one of 11 countries initially included in the initiative. It is the first time that a sitting U.S. first lady has visited the Southeast Asian country.

The right-wingers will complain that she's just using her position to take a "free vacation" and that she should've saved taxpayer money by doing it all on Skype. They're so cute when they're jealous.

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And just one more…

CHEERS to a brief look yonder Congress is on vacation. Our executive branch is schlumpnutty. Climate change rolls merrily on. Red state legislatures and governors are making life hell for their not-rich, not-white, not-male, not-straight residents. And Trump’s appeasement to Big Hen means high egg prices are threatening to ruin Easter for all the children. But screw all that terribleness. It is insignificant. For the moment, at least. Please enjoy this pleasant distraction: a newly-released pic of the stellar nursery known as Sh2-284—an "immense region of gas and dust [that’s] the birthing place of stars, which shine among the clouds”—as captured by the Hubble space telescope:

Sh2-284 resides 15,000 light-years away at the end of an outer spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy, in the constellation Monoceros. Bright clusters of newborn stars glow pink in infrared light, and clouds of gas and dust, resembling puffy cumulus clouds, are dotted with dark knots of denser dust.

—NASA

More on the image here. Y'know, I have a feeling there might be life over there in Sh2-284 Land. I suggest we send a human delegation to check it out. I recommend Trump’s cabinet. I'll fetch the catapult. You assemble the name badges.

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 "DOGE said its largest savings had come from terminating a Cheers and Jeers subscription worth $655 million. But they had triple-counted the same cancellation, and also greatly over-estimated what that cancellation was worth. That savings was eventually reduced to $0." —David Fahrenthold

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