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Cheers and Jeers: Thursday [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-22
Cheers to the "Mayor of Castro Street" Today marks the 95th birthday of the late San Francisco District Supervisor and gay rights (aka civil rights) pioneer Harvey Milk. Not coincidentally, today is also the sixteenth annual Harvey Milk Day. “It takes no compromising to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no survey to remove repressions.” “All young people, regardless of sexual orientation or identity, deserve a safe and supportive environment in which to achieve their full potential.” He was a talented politician—smart, witty, eloquent, tireless, eager to learn from his early mistakes, but not without his flaws and personal demons. He understood well the power of grassroots campaigning and consensus-building.
One of my favorite things Harvey wrote is his 10 rules on how to win a local election (from Randy Shilts' book The Mayor of Castro Street, which doubles as a riveting history of the LGBT rights movement in San Francisco): 1. Interviews with all major papers. ['All' was underlined three times.] 2. Knock on all doors. 3. Ride buses 4. Visit non-gay bars during the daytime and any singles bars at nite. 5. Coffee shops and restaurants. Stop off early in morning and late at night. 6. Shake hands. 7. Shake hands. 8. As few meetings as possible—just meet the people. 9. Door to door of registered Demo's is very best thing you can do outside of media coverage. 10. Don't stop. If he hadn’t been assassinated in 1978 at 48, he would've grown in stature as a guiding force and relentless fighter for full equality. He'd be thrilled with the gains made in the military (he was a Navy vet himself, and in 2021 a vessel was named after him), marriage equality, corporate non-discrimination policies, and the overall de-stigmatization of LGBTQ Americans. But he'd be impatient as all get-out at the snail's pace at which those accomplishments happened, and furious that Trump and his fascist goon squad (some of whom are themselves gay) want to erase it all. Harvey's now-famous core message of hope is as relevant as ever, and it's one of the reasons he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009: "It’s about the us’s out there. Not only gays, but the Blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us’s. Without hope, the us’s give up. I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you, and you, and you…you gotta give em’ hope.” Happy birthday, Harvey.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, May 22, 2025
Note: Just a quick heads-up that C&J will not appear in the pages of this online supermarket coupon clipper Monday, so that we may commemorate the Memorial Day holiday and also incur our first self-inflicted lawn dart stabs of the summer of aught twenty five. Back Tuesday with high praise for the ACA's puncture-wound coverage.
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By the Numbers:
Starts tomorrow!!!
Days 'til the nationwide June 14 No Kings Protests: 23
Days 'til the Down East Spring Birding Festival around Cobscook Bay: 1
Percent chance that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem correctly explained what habeas corpus is during a Senate hearing Tuesday: 0%
Year-over-year increase in lumber prices as of mid-May: 13%
Amount for which Levi Strauss is selling its Dockers brand: $391 million
Price fetched at auction for Edward Hopper’s 1927 watercolor of Spurwink Church in Cape Elizabeth, Maine: $1 million
Age of Cheers star George "Norm!" Wendt when he died this week: 76
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Meanwhile, further proof that the entire party is cuckoo comes to us with the passage of another $70 billion tax cut for the rich. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says the average middle-income household will get a $20 tax cut, while those making more than $1 million a year will get nearly $42,000. … Both President Bush and Veep Cheney are still going around claiming if you cut taxes, your tax revenues increase. No, they don't. Now we're just in whackoville. It's not true. Their own economists tell them it's not true, but they go about claiming it is with the same desperate tenacity they clung to false tales of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. How pathetic. —May, 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Just a corgi…
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CHEERS to anticipation. Hooray! Only one more day 'til the start of the Memorial Day Weekend and then it'll be July 4th and then back-to-school and then the off-year elections and then Thanksgiving and then Christmas 'n Hanukkah 'n Festivus and then "Happy New Year 2026!" and then fucking winter and then spring and then only one more day 'til the start of the Memorial Day weekend. Oh, the joy of having been around the block a few times.
CHEERS to looming leisure. Speaking of Memorial Day, the summer season officially starts in 30-odd hours, and the #1 way to kick it off is, of course, by battling traffic. This weekend’s forecast from AAA is up to level “Historically Horn Honky”:
45.1 million people will travel at least 50 miles from home over the Memorial Day holiday period from Thursday, May 22 to Monday, May 26. This year’s domestic travel forecast is an increase of 1.4 million travelers compared to last year and sets a new Memorial Day weekend record. The previous record was set back in 2005 with 44 million people. Don’t be jerks, Big Wheelers. Use your turn signal. This year, drivers have the benefit of cheaper gas prices. Last Memorial Day, the national average for a gallon of regular was $3.59. This spring—thanks to lower crude oil prices—gasoline prices haven’t seen typical seasonal spikes. Airports are bracing for another bustling holiday weekend. AAA projects 3.61 million air passengers, a nearly 2% increase over last year when 3.55 million travelers took to the skies. While this Memorial Day weekend isn’t expected to set an air travel record (that was set back in 2005 with 3.64 million travelers), this year’s numbers are projected to surpass pre-pandemic levels by 12%.
If you're planning an excursion to the beach or the mountains or the in-laws (oh lucky you), please follow the usual NTSB safety guidelines: drive with care and be sure to flip people off responsibly.
CHEERS to pushing back on two evil empires. Russia continues its genocidal invasion of Ukraine, and our shitty country is stepping back from helping the latter defend themselves. So it's up to the democracies of Europe to step up their game, and they're happy to oblige:
Without waiting for Washington, the European Union and Britain announced a new raft of sanctions against Russia on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin exchanged a friendly, if fruitless, phone call about ending the war in Ukraine. A man of courage. And brevity. The measures will crack down on Moscow’s so-called “shadow fleet”—around 200 vessels used to transport Russian oil exports globally—the 27-nation bloc and London said in separate statements. They are the 17th set of European sanctions imposed on Russia since it invaded its neighbor in 2022, the E.U. said. […] Thanking his European allies, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an overnight address that it was “important that America continues to be involved in the peace process.”
"I totally agree," said Trump. “I think I'll start by processing a piece of chocolate cake."
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to Abraham "That's Using the Old Bean"-coln. On May 22, 1849, Honest Abe received patent #6469 for his design of a floating dry dock—in fact, he was the first president to ever receive a patent. Sadly, he never found the time to complete his follow-up invention: the floating wet bar. Our nation's loss.
JEERS to today's lineup on CNN:
The Situation Room, Hour 1: Wolf Blitzer discusses the pros and cons of Jake Tapper's new Biden book. The Situation Room, Hour 2: Wolf Blitzer discusses the pros and cons of talking about the pros and cons of Jake Tapper's new Biden book. Inside Politics: Dana Bash wonders if we should be discussing the cons of Jake tapper's new Biden book before we dig into the pros. CNN News Central: The panel debates the ongoing feud between Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash's discussions about the pros and cons, and cons and pros, of Jake Tapper's new Biden book. The Arena: Kasie Hunt invites an all-star roundtable of Republican pundits to discuss why Jake Tapper's Biden book is all they need to lock the entire Biden family up for life without parole. (And might as well throw the Obamas in with ‘em.) The Lead with Jake Tapper: Buy my new Biden book! Buy my new Biden book! Buy my new Biden book! Buy my new Biden book! Buy my new Biden book! Out Front: What is the best way to caress a soft-cover and a hard-cover copy of Jake Tapper's new Biden book? And what are e-book readers missing out on since they don’t get to have this once in a lifetime Biden-book-caressing experience? 360: Anderson Cooper recaps all of the day's CNN coverage of Jake Tapper's new Biden book, including an exclusive interview with Jake Tapper.
And in between: commercials for all the pharmaceutical drugs you need to take to watch CNN without losing your entire I.Q.
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 22, 2015
JEERS to hostile takeovers. So much for the concept of local control in Texas. Governor Butthead Abbott just signed a law passed by the legislature that strips communities of their power to ban fracking because of health or environmental damage:
“By signing HB40 into law, Governor Abbott just declared that industry profits are more important than our health, our homes and our kids,” said Adam Briggle, President of the Denton Drilling Awareness Group and a leader in the Frack Free Denton effort. He continued, “The letter of Texas law now says no city can ‘effectively prevent an oil and gas operation from occurring’, no matter the threat to families’ health and safety or damage to private property.“
But Governor Abbott said people should look on the bright side: with all the earthquakes caused by fracking, pretty soon every Texan will go to sleep at night in their very own vibrating bed.
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And just one more…
JEERS to Bill in Portland Maine: SCOFFLAW!!! The emails arrived just after I'd delivered meals to the elderly but before I'd headed off to volunteer at the orphans center, saved a kitten from a tree, put out a house fire with nothing but my own urine and tackled a gang of bank robbers. I was busy sorting clothes to take to Goodwill, but I thought I’d take a peek anyway. These are the messages they left:
Payment attempt failure while renewing your subscription for icloud Storage We were unable to successfully renew your icloud storage Your photos and videos will be deleted!! Thank you and have a blessed day. - We tried to renew your Netflix subscription at the end of each billing cycle, but your monthly payment has failed. We therefore had to cancel your subscription. Obviously, we would love to see you again. In Case Of Ignorance, Your Services Will Be Completely Suspended Within 24 Hours According To The Terms Defined In Our Contracts Thank you for trusting us, best regards - Your Max Account has been Suspended !! We tried to renew your subscription at the end of each billing cycle. But, as part of our loyalty program, you can now extend for 1 year for free. Enjoy Unlimited movies, TV shows, and more. Ready to watch? Extend your membership.
Never mind that I don’t have an iCloud, Netflix or Max account, I think I’m in trouble with the authorities. If you need me for anything today, you'll find me panic-crawling through swamps and briar patches to Canada. Please: someone remember to feed my elderly.
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 On May 26, the moon will renew itself in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool, offering a fresh start and perspective in your social life. —People
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