The Week Ahead
Monday With only 15 days 'til voting ends, Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, publicly endorsed by Donald Trump, boosts his chances of becoming Virginia's next governor by publicly pretending he doesn’t know who Donald Trump is.
Joe Manchin warns his Senate colleagues on the dangers of profligate spending from the third-floor balcony of his floating sea palace.
Continued...
Tuesday Steve Bannon is arrested by U.S. Marshals and sent to prison for not cooperating with the January 6 committee, covid deaths drop to zero, greenhouse gases dissipate, and President Biden signs a $7 trillion Build Back Better bill. Then my alarm clock goes off.
Today is Evaluate Your Life Day. For best results, grade on a curve.
Wednesday The Federal Reserve issues its "Beige Book" assessment of economic conditions. The consensus: if every American could just become a seller of airtime for super PAC ads, we'd all be swimming in gravy.
Things Susan Collins will be concerned about today: once her extra-strength Valium kicks in, absolutely nothing.
Thursday A report on existing homes for September is released by the National Association of Realtors in Blazers the Color of Which is Not of This Earth. Their consensus: all the existing homes are still there.
Social media explodes when, for the first time this year, a Republican member of Congress posts a tweet without a typo.
Friday A new Covid-19 vaccine developed by Brachs—hydroxycandycornoquine—will shake the scientific community to its core as a 100-percent safe and effective cure for everyone from newborns to seniors. But of course no one will take it because I just don’t like candy corn ooh yuck what's in that stuff anyway.
As the week ends, the planet continues to not give a crap whether we're on it or not.
Saddle up. We ride.
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Monday, October 18, 2021
Note: Since it's Monday, I'm just gonna phone it in today. [Zhick! D'd'd'd'd... Zhick! D'd'd'd'd'd… Zhick! D'd'd'dd'd'd'd...] Sorry, this may take awhile. I still use a rotary phone.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the next full moon: 2
Date the U.S. will end travel restrictions for fully-vaccinated furriners coming here by air or land: 11/8/21
Percent support for President Biden's Build Back Better reconciliation bill, according to a new Navigator Research survey: 62%
Jobs the bill would create in the caregiver sector, according to the Economic Policy Institute: 1.1 million
Jobless claims last week, versus 800,000 during Biden's first week in office: 290,000
Current matchup numbers for Terry McAuliffe (D) and Glenn Youngkin (Trump) in the latest Fox News poll of the Virginia governor's race: 51%-46%
Number of asteroids the NASA probe Lucy, which blew this popsicle stand Saturday night, will visit during its 12-year mission: 8
Totally Random WNBA Final Score
Chicago Sky 80 Phoenix Mercury 74
Chicago wins 3 games to 1
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Lila joins the Capitol Police…
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CHEERS to the comeback kid: ICU edition. Former president Bill Clinton, 75, is out of the hospital after dealing with a minor case of pumpkinspicelitis last week:
The former president left the University of California Irvine Medical Center around 8 a.m. with Hillary Clinton on his arm.
Dressed in jeans and a sports coat and wearing a face mask, he made his way out of the hospital slowly and stopped to shake hands with doctors and nurses lined up on the sidewalk.
He gave a thumbs-up when a reporter asked how he was feeling, and he and Hillary Clinton then boarded a black SUV. They departed in a motorcade escorted by the California Highway Patrol and headed to the airport.
And in other ex-president news, George W. Bush continues to suffer from a chronic case of being a war criminal. Donald Trump is getting sued by everyone for any bad thing you can imagine (except golden showers—no golden showers for him, believe me). Barack Obama is stumping for Terry McAuliffe in Virginia. And Jimmy Carter can be found, as usual, in the driveway bench-pressing his Studebaker.
JEERS to bad book learnin'. Massive damage control in Texas late last week as a school district butted up against a new Republican law of intended consequences mandating, in so many words, that white Christians of European descent are superior to everyone else, and anything taught to the contrary must include an "opposing" view favorable to them. And so…here we are:
A top administrator with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake advised teachers last week that if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classroom, they should also offer students access to a book from an “opposing” perspective, according to an audio recording obtained by NBC News. […]
“Just try to remember the concepts of [Texas Bill] 3979,” [Gina Peddy, the Carroll school district’s executive director of curriculum and instruction] said in the recording, referring to a new Texas law that requires teachers to present multiple perspectives when discussing “widely debated and currently controversial” issues. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust,” Peddy continued, “that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.”
And now, an opposing view on the Holocaust, courtesy of your local chapter of the Proud Aryan Oath Keeper Nation Boys: "Man, them Jews really gave the Nazis a bad reputation. Why, you can't even name your kid Hitler anymore, or even grow a little square mustache. And the way they mussed up the Germans' uniforms—the dry-cleaning bills were insane. It's all so gosh-darn controversial and complex when you look at it from this other perspective." Okay, kids, you’re all well-rounded now—go play.
CHEERS to good book learnin'. Speaking of education, 42 years ago this week, in 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed legislation creating the Department of Education. It's one of the departments that the tea partiers always threaten to abolish because of its communist-socialist-libtard mission to turn every school into a monolithic institution of brainwashing. Except, well, not so much….
The Department of Education does not establish schools or colleges …
Unlike the systems of most other countries, education in the United States is highly decentralized, and the federal government and Department of Education are not heavily involved in determining curricula or educational standards (with the recent exception of the No Child Left Behind Act). This has been left to state and local school districts. The quality of educational institutions and their degrees is maintained through an informal private process known as accreditation, over which the Department of Education has no direct public jurisdictional control.
Didya catch that? George W. Bush, the mighty titan of the party of "states' rights," increased the federal government’s authority over public education. What will we tell the children? Anyway, happy birthday to all the hard workers at the Education Department. I know religion has no place in our public schools, but with class back in session during a still-raging pandemic, we’re praying for you all.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to disorder in the court. Did you know that Joe Biden appointed a bipartisan blue-ribbon commission to make concrete, ironclad, line-in-the-sand recommendations on what to do about the way Republicans are stealing every Supreme Court seat they can get their filthy hands on? Me neither. But they did! And, boy howdy, wait'll you hear what they etched in stone with chisel, fire and maximum clear-eyed urgency. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick has the goods:
After six months of gathering facts and evidence, taking testimony, and mulling reform ideas, the commission declares that it is neither offering recommendations about fixing the courts nor proposing a specific path forward.
One problem: In so doing, the commission is actually proposing a specific path forward—the one we are already on. The commission seems to frame the status quo as the reasonable choice and all alternatives as dangerous deviations. […]
[E]ven the modest ideas that were on the table when it set about its work—like imposing term limits on Supreme Court justices—appear, on closer examination, to now be disfavored.
Also: to prevent hurting their feelings, all the conservative justices will require free daily massages and facials at a day spa of their choosing. (They're very sensitive, you know.)
CHEERS to news from across The Pond. [Beep Beep Beep Beep…Beeeep!] "We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a breaking news bulletin, old chap: today marks the 99th anniversary of the BBC, which is properly pronounced, of course, 'Beh Beh Seh.' Since our founding we've maintained a reputation for being cool, calm, impartial, and accurate. So of course you Americans have no idea what to make of us.
Now stay tuned for The Goon Show, followed by Educating Archie and assorted ramblings from Her Majesty the Queen during her ceremonial Drinking of the Several Glasses of Sherry." [Beepity Beeeeep!]
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 18, 2011
JEERS to nuts of the round table. Oh, dear god, please tell me there's not another Republican debate tonight. Oy—live from Las Vegas, I'm told. Well, at least I hear that Jon Huntsman and Google Santorum are boycotting it, so we'll be spared a few minutes of "Lemme talk! Lemme talk! It's my turn to talk! You never let me talk!" I'm assuming Jed Lewison will be liveblogging as usual (I hope Kos gives him combat pay for that), and it's also on TV somewhere. Oh, and here's the drinking game, which requires intense focus and quick reflexes: take a swig every time Rick Perry opens his eyes.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to today's required legalese. With that dastardly FEC running around checking everybody’s ps and qs as the 2021 off-year election day approaches (November 2nd Eastern Daylight Time), we best be up front about our dark-money activities for at least one day this election season:
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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
A teenager in Liberia who has become a national hero after finding the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool and returning it to its rightful owner said he will meet Bill in Portland Maine next week.
—ABC News
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