Energize An Ally Tuesday
Let's see: Fires. Floods. Earthquakes. A global pandemic. Lunatics seizing power around the world. Soaring temperatures and shrinking icecaps. Wait…back up.
About those lunatics seizing power. It's not just the Taliban in Afghanistan or the nutballs in Brazil and eastern Europe. It's also right here in the US of A, where the Republican party is actively plotting to seize control of the levers of power forever by passing voting laws that make it both harder for Democrats to cast their vote during elections and have their votes actually counted after them.
Continued...
As the Senate does that day-to-day dithering it does so well (enjoying your vacation, Joe and Kyrsten?), it's up to the grassroots and the netroots to keep up the fight. That's why Daily Kos is promoting and supporting over a dozen grassroots organizations that are working to block restrictive voting bills in their states and educate voters about their rights despite the laws Republicans are putting on the books. So three cheers for…
Pennsylvania Stands Up…Down Home North Carolina…Action St. Louis Power Project…West Virginia Citizen Action Group…Arizona Coalition for Change / Our Voice Our Vote Arizona…Florida Rights Restoration Coalition…
Living United Change for Arizona (LUCHA)…PODER / PODER in Action…Georgia Stand Up…Detroit Action…One Arizona…We the People…PLAN Action…Florida Rising…CASA in Action…Mijente…Seeding Sovereignty…Pro Georgia State Table…and the Coalition for the Peoples' Agenda
To support any or all of these front-line groups, click here to access the ActBlue donation page. If you'd like to give to specific ones, find the box on the right-hand side marked "Split Your Donation." I thank you. These hard-working advocates thank you. Daily Kos thanks you. And America thanks you. But Republicans don’t thank you. because they’re—[checks notes]—lunatics.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Note: If you don’t eat your paste, you won’t grow up to be big and strong. Remember: Five servings a day fuels you up for work and play! —C&J Office of Nutritional Superiority
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til World Honey Bee Day: 4
Date on which vote-by-mail began in the California governor recall election: 8/16/21
Adult population in the United States in 2010 and 2020, respectively: 237 million / 261 million
Number of states and territories—California, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Maryland, Hawaii and Puerto Rico—where the non-Hispanic White share of the population is below 50 percent: 7
Percent of Americans polled by Quinnipiac University who approve of President Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan, including 59% of military families: 62%
Number of times the U.S. has hosted the Summit of the Americas (the only meeting of all leaders from North, South and Central America and the Caribbean)—as we’ll do next year—since the gatherings began in 1994: 0
Estimated year when humans started practicing dentistry: 7000 BC
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Like it or not, Tuesday is bath day…
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JEERS to bad magic. Ladies and gentleman, please welcome The Great Afghini, who will now wave his magic wand and make everything you see on stage disappear:
» Two-trillion dollars? [Poof!]
» 2,400 American troops? [Poof!]
» Thousands of Afghan civilians? [Poof!]
» Schools? [Poof!]
» Tenuous-but-real freedoms for women and girls? [Poof!]
» The neocon wet dream of “nation building”? [Poof!]
» Any semblance of progress over the last 20 years? [Poof!]
» The Taliban? [Waggles wand.] I said, The Taliban? [Waggles wand harder.] Dammit, Taliban, would you please disappear?!!
Paging Harry Potter. Harry Potter to the the blinking red courtesy phone.
CHEERS to VJ Day. Seventy-six years ago this week, America was celebrating the end of the war in the Pacific. Our youngest W.W.II vets are now 95 or older, so today it's our pleasure to slip a nip 'o scotch in their Ensure with a wink and a "thank you"—that was a war that needed to be fought.
Meanwhile the above-mentioned Afghanistan war that, lest we forget, President Barack Obama started in 2001, dragged on sixteen years longer than the Second World War. Not that we're counting. Mainly because back in 2015 we ran out of fingers to count.
JEERS to today's edition of Oh Hey, Maine Has idiots, Too! Courtesy of the Portland Press Herald…
Hundreds of Mainers opposed to the state’s new COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers protested Saturday outside Maine Medical Center in Portland. The protesters, many of whom are health care workers, called for personal choice in medical decisions, with some also spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation about vaccines and COVID-19.
This has been today's edition of Oh Hey, Maine Has idiots, Too!
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to shoveling, shoveling, and more shoveling. The New Hampshire-based tree bark readers at the Farmer's Almanac are out with their winter forecast—their 203rd if you believe what you read in the Farmer's Almanac. You can check out your region's outlook here. Here in New England—which is neither new nor England—it looks like we may be forced to wear long pants in a few months:
Also in the forecast: a 100% chance of idiots shouting "Global cooling!" at the sighting of the first snowflake. (Take your heart pills, Senator Inhofe—you know how excited you get.)
CHEERS to taming the growlies. Hey, Billeh! Could you please deliver us some f*cking good news for a change? Sure, I can—and you can have it on a silver platter or in a brown bag slathered in yummy mayochup:
The percentage of American families with kids who report not having enough to eat fell dramatically after the first child tax credit payments were distributed last month, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. […]
“It is great news that the estimated rate of hunger among those with children is at a pandemic low,” said Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach, director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, who has been closely tracking food hardship rates throughout the pandemic.
The monthly payments of up to $300 for each kid under five and up to $250 for each kid under 18 are the result of one of the most sweeping provisions in the American Rescue Plan, though the policy did not garner much media attention at the time.
We hear they're even eating their vegetables. Santa will be pleased.
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 17, 2011
CHEERS to the Texas non-miracle. Okay, so Rick Perry's officially in the Republican potato-sack race for the White House. Personally, I find him charismatic and cool and steely-eyed and musky and square-jawed and broad-shouldered and…and…that hair!!! I know he'd be terrible for America, but…[sigh]. Perhaps Jim Hightower can throw a monkey wrench in my swoon, via The Last Word last night:
"[Texas is] #1 in the things we should be #50 in, and we're #50 in the things we should be #1 in. … He's George Bush without the intellect or the ethics. He's Michele Bachman with a better hairdo."
Nope. Didn’t work. All I heard was better hairdo. [sigh...]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the left-wing echo chamber. Listeners of Daily Kos’s Kagro in the Morning Show know that its host, Daily Kos front-pager-since-forever David Waldman, is an excellent radio host. Tough. Fair. Snarky. Fact-based. And fixated on making this a better world for his family, friends and neighbors, their neighbors, and their neighbors’ neighbors.
What you may not know is that it was ten years ago this week when he first took to the airwaves. His "Sirius Period" with Armando was followed shortly after by a move to Netroots Radio, and today "Kagro in the Morning”—including regular DK front page guests Greg Dworkin and Joan McCarter—airs live at 9am ET five days a week and you can listen to the podcast any old time.
The Kagro in the Morning Show also helps David put food on his family by bringing in a modest amount of income through the support of listeners like you, and I encourage you to pass along some financial support via the various options he provides every day in his morning post here at Daily Kos. Then settle in at 9 o’clock ET and listen as he kicks off year #11 with another two-hour dose of extra-strength truth-to-power.
Happy broadcastiversary, KITM. Keep talkin'. I think you're starting to wear the other side down.
Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
Everything feels bad this week. Here’s Cheers and Jeers to make it better.
—USA Today
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