Energize An Ally Tuesday
Today we energize every Democratic candidate running in 2021 (and beyond) by expanding the army of voters eligible to get them elected by a landslide on Tuesday, November 2nd.
Because you count on me to remind you of these things, let me be the first to say: “Happy Voter Registration Day!” Democrats look at it as a chance to send out thousands of volunteers in force to make sure that all American adults 18 and older—especially minorities and residents in underprivileged areas—are signed up so that they can have a more trouble-free experience at their local polling place in November. Republicans look at it as their worst nightmare.
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Each state has its own laws governing registration (with deadlines coming up soon in many of them), so you should also check with your state’s secretary of state or elections board website to review its particular registration rules and double-check to make sure you're still registered.
During 2019—the last off-year—nearly 500,000 Americans were registered on VR Day, and organizers of today's events are looking to beat that.
I know everyone here is registered, but if you think you know of a pocket of maybe-nots on social media or a cubicle down the hall, pass this along. If it reminds Gladys in accounting to sign up, and she ends up casting the deciding vote that brings some red-hatted gaslighter down in flames, you'll earn a penthouse suite in Valhalla. I'm Bill in Portland Maine…and I guarantee it.
Follow the official NVRD twitter feed here and evil Facebook feed here.
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, September 28, 2021
Note: Candy corn is literally made of Baby Jesus’s tears of happiness. No proof, really...it just makes sense. (But we don’t claim it cures covid—that kind of claim would just be silly.)
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til daylight saving time ends: 40
Days 'til the 32nd Milford Pumpkin Festival in New Hampshire: 10
Percent of Iowans polled by The Des Moines Register who believe abortion should be legal in most or all cases, versus 38% who don't: 56%
Percent of Americans polled by the Marquette School of Law who viewed the Supreme Court favorably in July and this month, respectively: 60%, 49%
Number of unruly in-flight passenger reports in 2021 so far, most related to mask mandates, which the Association of Flight Attendants calls a "staggering" number: 4,300
Percent chance that China just declared cryptocurrencies illegal: 100%
Season that The Price is Right, now hosted by Drew Carey, just kicked off: 50th
Age of original host Bob Barker: 97
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Identity crisis…
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CHEERS to usin' the old noggin. As the normal mainstream Democrats in Congress continue to implore the weird conservative Democrats to please gives them back their cookbook so they can finish making some decent infrastructure and social safety net sausage, the Executive Branch is hoeing its own row on immigration. Yesterday President Biden announced a new initiative to protect the 825,000+ Dreamers from one of the Republicans' top priorities: kicking them out of the country:
The proposed rule attempts to satisfy concerns of a federal judge in Houston who ruled in July that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was illegal. […] In attempting to shore up DACA through a formal rule—which is a more rigorous process than [President Obama's] original memo, though still not legislation—the Biden administration hopes to gain a legal stamp of approval from the courts.
Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law practice at Cornell Law School, said the administration's proposal carries no major changes and "is an effort to bulletproof the existing program from litigation challenges.”
It adheres to the same criteria, which include arriving in the country before age 16, continuously residing in the United States since arrival, and being in the country on June 15, 2012.
I hope it works. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled sausage making.
CHEERS to filling a very large pair of sensible pumps. The weekend elections in Germany are all over except for the counting of some mail-in ballots, and the candidate who prevailed uber alles appears to be the SPD party's Olaf Scholz, not to be confused with Sgt. Schultz, which is a whole different can of strudel. His center-left coalition will be taking over from Angela Merkel's center-right coalition after her 16-year reign of fahrvergnugen, which included four years of spectacular eye-rolling at our previous president. And what do we know about Herr Scholz, not to be confused with Charles Schulz who invented Peanuts? I dunno. I let Wikipedia investigate these things:
» Born in 1958 in Osnabruck, then-"West" Germany, which was always the Germany Mom liked best.
» Attended the University of Hamburg and became a lawyer
» A lapsed Lutheran
» Served as First Mayor of Hamburg from 2011 to 2018 and was Deputy Leader of the Social Democratic Party from 2009 to 2019. Currently Vice Chancellor—aka Merkel's right-hand man—and also guy in charge of the country's balance sheets.
» Member of the Socialist Democratic Party (SPD), whose previous chancellors were Willy Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, and Gerhardt Schroeder.
» Enjoys long walks in the biergarten with wife Britta, also a leader in the SPD.
His style has been referred to as "calm, measured, and steady." Good to know, said Poland.
CHEERS to the beginning of the end. On September 28, 1781, during the War of Independence, American troops backed by the French fleet Ronald Reagan riding a trained dolphin while brandishing a bazooka [Revision courtesy of TX Dept. of Ed. textbook approval committee], began their siege of Yorktown, Virginia. The British, trapped like rats in their stupid bright red uniforms, were forced to surrender, thus securing our freedom as an independent nation. Moral of the story: only fools go to war on a peninsula without jetpacks.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to today's edition of Yup, She Called It. Courtesy of Mediaite…
Back in March, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky got emotional expressing her concerns of “impending doom” in the covid-19 pandemic. “We have so much to look forward to, so much potential of where we are, so much reason for hope, but right now I am scared,” she said at the time.
CBS News’ Margaret Brennan spoke with Walensky Sunday about the pandemic, confusion around booster shots, and those comments she made six months ago. Brennan noted that the CDC director “took a lot of flak” at the time, but “we were on the cusp of the delta surge.”
This has been today's edition of Yup, She Called It.
CHEERS to saving the planet. Y'know whose face should be plastered on WANTED signs in every post office in every town in every country on this entire planet we call—[Checks notes]—Earth? CO2's face, that's whose face. CO2, better known as the real asshole of gasses that's trying to get us all killed, is a real asshole that's trying to get us all killed, from the tiniest one-celled amoebas to the largest wooly mammoths being cloned in secret Russian labs in Siberia. But now a German physicist who took a wrong turn at Dusseldorf and ended up at Arizona State University is perfecting a carbon-absorbing “forest” technology that can clean that shit up before we burn to a crisp (or whatever CO2 does—I hear it's not good):
“The resin binds CO2 more efficiently than any other material,” says Lackner. “Each column is 1,000 times more efficient than a tree.” Wind speed determines exactly how much CO2 the resin binds. Once it is saturated with CO2,which takes about 30 minutes, the columns fold like an accordion into water, where the CO2 is washed off for storage or reuse. Then the process begins again.[…]
“We use almost no energy; the columns stand in the wind just like a tree,” says Lackner. “Unlike other methods, we need no ventilators, no propellers. Because we need only water, we are ten times cheaper than comparable techniques. […]
"Even if we stopped emitting CO2, the problem won’t automatically go away,” says Lackner. “Too much CO2 is already in the atmosphere. It can last for thousands of years, and it is our responsibility to clean it up. Nature itself cleans up, too, but too slowly, and we can’t wait that long.”
Apparently, captured CO2 has real concrete uses…like, say, as a replacement for concrete in bridges. And, if the January 6th committee does its job properly: prisons.
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 28, 2011
CHEERS to a good day at the neutrino track. Scientists at the giant indoor go-kart loop in Europe say they've discovered particles that appear to travel faster than the speed of light. If confirmed by scientists at our own indoor go-kart loop here in the States, it would apparently turn Einstein's theory of relativity on its head. No one's quite sure yet what causes the "neutrinos" to move so fast, but they've already ruled a few things out: Congress, M. Night Shyamalan movies, and cable company help desks.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the wisdom of jbou. The popular member of our oddball Daily Kos community—one of several who departed during that awful purge of beloved humans in 2016—is gone but not forgotten. C&J promised to revisit his sharp George-Carlin-meets-Stephen-Wright zingers from time to time because, well, they will never cease to crack me up. And whaddya know, today is one of those days…
» They should put a statue of me next to the Statue of Liberty so immigrants know the American Dream is hit or miss.
» Why is a 3% tax increase on the richest considered "socialism" but a 14% pay cut on the middle class is "doing your part?
» Looking for a weekend activity to enrich the soul? Dig a hole. You can hide in it, or bury a body, or just fill it with Mountain Dew & swim.
» What we need is a loud mob of angry protesters shouting "COMPROMISE! COMPROMISE!"
» Just how crazy is bat shit?
» When people say they look up to me, I just assume they've fallen and can't get up.
» A rabbi, a priest, and a minister walk into a bar. Their lack of faith due to God forsaking mankind has driven them to alcoholism.
» If I were president my approval rating would be bananas, because as president I would change all rating systems to types of fruit.
» The cool thing about The Clapper is it doubles as a strobe light during sex.
» What we put into the Universe will always come back to us, so basically none of us can dodge the coming Fart Tidal Wave.
I think Einstein proved that last one mathematically. Sorry I contributed so heartily to your eventual demise, future generations.
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
”Bill in Portland Maine is a deeply unintelligent person. I’ve been asked this, who’s the stupidest one in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie poll, and it’s him.”
—Mary Trump
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