(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Cheers and Jeers: Monday [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-09-15
Hand Over Your Heart Time
Among my private papers destined for display in the Bill in Portland Maine Library and Municipal Landfill is a ragged piece of construction paper on which is scrawled my attempt at age 7 (circa 1972) to write out the words to our National Anthem. It's virtually illegible today, so I've transcribed it below to mark the 211th anniversary of the day Francis Scott Key wrote it. (Please hold your applause—he was all goo goo for slavery, a viewpoint he was happy to write into his Banner.) Please stand, sit, go down on one knee, raise your fist, or just wing it, and join me in our annual tradition of singing the, um…
Star Bangled Baner Oh say can you see by the dons early light What so proudleeree haild at the twilited flashed gleaming. Were galenntlee sareeming. A for citizenship.
F for penmanship. And the rockets gleenly of bombs bursting in air Came our thru our thru the fight that are flag was still there O say gotslan stare spangled banner ye whenne Forb the land of the free and the home of the brave.
The saddest thing about this: at age seven I knew the words better than the current President of the United States does at 79.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, September 15, 2025
Note: Blessings and salutations on this high holy Can We Please Have One Freaking Day That Isn’t Turned Into Some Kind Of Dumb Holiday Day holiday and to all those who celebrate. —Mgt.
-
By the Numbers:
5 days!!!
Days 'til Thanksgiving: 72
Days 'til the New York City Hot Sauce Expo in Brooklyn: 5
Average hotel occupancy rate the first week of September: 57.7%
Current average daily hotel room rate: $149.52
Percent of extremist-related murders in the U.S. between 2015 and 2024 committed by right-wingers, according to the Anti-Defamation League: 76%
Percent committed by left-wing extremists: 4%
Percent chance that FBI director Kash Patel told post-murder Charlie Kirk, via a press conference, "I'll see you in Valhalla": 100%
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Sadly, all good weekend visits to Grandma’s house must come to an end...
-
CHEERS to today's tiny little correction. Happy Monday and welcome back! When last we gathered here, the entire Republican party wanted all Democrats to be hunted down and killed over the death of a—[checks notes]—right-wing, white-supremacist, death-to-gays podcaster at the hands of a lunatic liberal. Which brings me to this morning's Word Of The Day: “Well.” As in, well, well, well, well, well, well, well what have we here…
So, this wasn't an attack "from the Left." This kid was from a White Mormon Republican family who were steeped in gun culture. … He wore an unironic Trump costume for Halloween. He wasn't a Latino, he wasn't a Trans person. Some indications are that he was linked to the Groyper subculture who were deeply antisemitic and hated Charlie Kirk for his staunch support of Israel. For more context, Groypers—if this theory about Robinson is ultimately confirmed—are part of an online cult that follows and supports people such as infamous antisemite Nicholas Fuentes who famously sat down to dine with Trump at Mar-a-Lago along with Kanye West. They would be what you might call the Alt-MAGA.
Or they might be what should be called “Alt-Dumbasses.” And in other dumbass news, the Republican war on Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook over mortgage fraud is turning to dust, while three Trump cabinet officials appear to have violated the law that Cook was accused of, but was not in fact, breaking. And once again the GOP lives up to its modern motto: "There Is no rake on which we shall not step."
JEERS to the American people. You fools. You careless rubes. You bulbaceous spork-o-trons. You…oh, let's just say it: you America-hating Americans, all 339 million of you. Thanks to your complete and willful inability to carefully grasp and balance on a knife's edge the micro- and macro-economic subtleties of supply and demand as clearly outlined in the Ph.D.-level textbooks you were supposed to have memorized when you were pursuing your advanced degrees before you ended up selling steel-belted radials down at the tire store next to the mini-mart, you have once again turned America's mighty engine of capitalistic superiority into a fetid mound of stale, crusty pudding:
Consumer price growth rose in August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday. Pudding. It's the latest indication that the U.S. economy continues to contend with inflation even as the job market cools. The broadest measure of price growth increased 0.4% last month after rising 0.2% in July and ahead of estimates of 0.3%. On a 12-month basis, the index climbed by 2.9% compared with 2.7% in July. It’s the highest reading since January. Excluding food and energy prices, which tend to be more volatile, price growth hit 3.1% on a 12-month basis, the highest figure since February and the third-straight month that this rate has picked up.
May God have mercy on your souls.
-
BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
x "HIGH DRIVE. LEFT FIELD. OUTTA HERE. AND WE ARE GOING HOME." Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow call Patrick Bailey's walk-off grand slam to give the Giants a 5-1 win over the Dodgers in 10 innings. — Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing.bsky.social) 2025-09-13T05:05:13.120Z
-
END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
CHEERS to “Old Bill.” Happy 163rd birthday to William Howard Taft. At 325 pounds, the 27th President (who later served as Chief Justice) was also our, um, "biggest boned." It's believed that his weight contributed to the fact that he was habitually sleepy. From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien:
William Taft had an alarming habit of dozing off at the drop of a hat. And nothing was so important that it couldn’t be slept through—including cabinet meetings, funerals (he was in the front row of one when a catnap came over him), and campaign engagements. Like the current president, Taft enjoyed the game of golf. Unlike the current president, Taft was smart, got important work done, and loved his country. He once slept through a campaign motorcade in New York City—his open car cruised the streets, the great man snoring for all the city to see.
Pay your respects here. And I doubt the old man would complain if you tossed him a bucket 'o ribs.
CHEERS to diplomats diplomatting. With the U.N. general assembly—the one that all the big wigs attend—a week away, the majority of ambassadors have raised their hands in favor of a new resolution: terror group bad, terror group-free government good:
The UN general assembly has voted to back a Hamas-free government for Palestine as part of a carefully crafted compromise that sees Arab states go further in condemning its October 2023 attack on Israel in return for clear support for a Palestinian state. Go to your quarters, Scotty. You’re drunk again. The aim is to show that Israel and the US are isolated in opposing a long-term solution to the Gaza war, and how countries such as Germany, a strong supporter of Israel, are backing a solution in which the Palestinian Authority governs the West Bank and Gaza.
In response, Israel's conservative government offered a compromise of its own: a Palestinian-free Palestine. The negotiations continue.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: September 15, 2015
CHEERS to hater's quarrels. You know who's flipping the bird at the terrorist group ISIS these days? The terrorist group al Qaida, and they're taking their spat public:
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian doctor who replaced Osama bin Laden as the head of al Qaeda four years ago, in a new audio message accused ISIS top leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of “sedition” and insisted the Iraqi terrorist recluse was not the leader of all Muslims and militant jihad as “caliph” of the Islamic State, as al-Baghdadi had claimed 14 months ago in a Mosul mosque.
To show just how upset he is, over the weekend al-Zawahiri took a steamroller and crushed his entire stock of al-Baghdadi sings the Best of the Dixie Chicks CDs.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to the last Lone Star State governor to have more than two brain cells to rub together. Former Texas governor Ann Richards—whose reelection campaign was thwarted in part by Karl Rove's smear tactics ("I'm not saying she's a lesbian, but…")—died nineteen years ago this week. Age 73. Born during the depression just outside of Waco, she mulled her epitaph back in '95:
"I did not want my tombstone to read, 'She kept a really clean house.' I think I'd like them to remember me by saying, 'She opened government to everyone.'"
As the snippet of her 1991 inaugural address engraved her headstone shows, she got her wish. (Although it must be said that her record on the death penalty, while not nearly as sadistic or prolific as her successors', is the worst of the few blots on her record.) Molly Ivins and Richards became close friends—you can read Molly's tribute here. In January, 1995 she wrote this after Richards lost to George W. Bush:
Richards said in a farewell interview with the press corps that if she'd known she was going to be a one-term governor, she would have "raised more hell." Ann’s official portrait in the Texas State House. I wish she had. But these are relatively minor quibbles with what is, overall, a distinguished record. My political memory of Texas goes back to Allan Shivers, and I know that in that time we have not had a governor who worked nearly as hard as Ann Richards. Who was nearly as gracious as Richards. Who made more good appointments than Richards. Who set a higher standard of honesty than Richards. [...] What our notoriously weak governors actually do is set a tone for the state. So let it be recorded that for four brief shining years, Ann Richards gave the joint some class. Good on ya, Annie.
Yeah. Ditto.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial Cheers and Jeers Free Childhood began with a conversation between two parents and has exploded into a nationwide campaign that’s captured headlines, inspired kiddie pool reforms and signed up tens of thousands of families. —Positive.News
-
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/15/2343326/-Cheers-and-Jeers-Monday?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
