[Applause!!!]
Good morning, and welcome once again to our Monday C&J series: Is This Bipartisan Enough For Ya, Senators?
Today we check the pulse of the For the People Act, which would include "15 days of early voting, same-day registration and limiting the ability of states to curb the use of mail voting and ballot boxes. It would also rewrite federal campaign finance rules and establish nonpartisan redistricting commissions to end partisan gerrymandering."
Senate Republicans say Americans hate it because it's big government tyranny, while Democrats say we love it because it will "unrig the system and return our democracy to the hands of its rightful owners, the American people." Let's find out. Over to you, Brennan Center for Justice…
Continued...
Poll after poll has shown overwhelming public support for this legislation. One recent survey found 67 percent of Americans in favor, including 56 percent of Republicans and 68 percent of independents.
The key reforms in the For the People Act are modelled off successful practices that have been implemented in red, blue, and purple states. … The bottom line is that the For the People Act would empower the American people as whole—which helps to explain why it enjoys such widespread, bipartisan support.
Ding Ding Ding!!! Americans love it! Get on it, Senate—the For the People Act is a bipartisan winner!
Join us next time for another exciting edition of Is This Bipartisan Enough For Ya, Senators?
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Monday, July 19, 2021
Note: Today is Daiquiri Day. Daiquiris are the brainchild of Jennings Stockton Cox, who invented the drink in the Cuban mining town of—are you sitting down?—Daiquiri. Today in the C&J cantina we’ve got beer. Sorry, no daiquiris. We drank ‘em all last night. Bad planning. Oops. —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Tokyo Olympics: 4
Percent of active-duty servicemembers who are fully vaccinated, according to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin: 62%
Number of people—468 men, 69 women—arrested so far on charges related to the Jan. 6 Trump insurrection: 537
Average age of the insurrectionists, who sieg heil from 43 states: 39
Rise in retail sales in June, an unexpected increase: 0.6%
Percent of Democrats in 1975 and 2001, respectively, who said they have "a great deal" of confidence in science: 67%, 79%
Percent of Republicans in 1975 and 2001, respectively, who said they have "a great deal" of confidence in science: 72%, 45%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Best way to spend a Monday in July...
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CHEERS to…wait for it…Infrastructure Week. As those heroic Texas state senators continue pushing their federal counterparts to pass voting rights legislation in D.C., majority leader Chuck Schumer is pushing ahead on bills that would allow us to raid our petty-cash drawer to spring for a few pallets of spit and baling twine to prop up our crumbling everythings:
Schumer said Thursday he wanted a crucial procedural vote on the major bipartisan infrastructure deal Wednesday. […] Schumer is seeking to play hardball and pressure senators to finish writing the legislation in order to stick to his goal of passing it this month, according to one Democrat close to the process.
Senate Democrats are anxious to finish the infrastructure bill, which calls for $579 billion to build roads, bridges and public transit, and formally begin the $3.5 trillion party-line bill before a scheduled month-long August recess.
And since most politicians haven't matured past middle school, there's a simple message Chuck could send to his "friends on both sides of the aisle" to virtually guarantee passage: no bills, no summer vacation. (True fact: U.S. senators can only survive 11 months without a Nantucket cocktail party. You can look it up.)
JEERS to another week on Planet Covid. Every week for over a year, C&J's Monday edition included an update on the COVID-19 numbers—total cases and death toll. We stopped in mid-May because it appeared the pandemic was under control. But thanks to the new GOP variant (aka Delta variant), we're off to the races again. So, for a limited time (we hope), we're bringing back our occasional check of the tote board of woe, because apparently the unvaccinated are having so much fun playing death roulette. Worldwide now: over 191 million cases, and our domestic death toll stands between the populations of America’s 29th-largest city Louisville and 28th-largest Memphis:
1 year ago: 3.8 million confirmed cases. 143,000 deaths
6 months ago: 25 million confirmed cases. 407,000 deaths
3 months ago: 32 million confirmed cases. 580,000 deaths
This morning: 35 million confirmed cases. 625,000 deaths
And guess what's coming up in a couple weeks? That zoomy-zoomy time of year when 500,000 motorcyclists swarm Sturgis, South Dakota for nine days of unmasked, non-socially-distanced fun, then head back home to tell all their friends about it up close and personal. Thus answering the question: why are America's undertakers buying new Porsches all of a sudden?
CHEERS to Democrats with the right stuff. A late (by a day) happy 100th birthday to the late John Glenn, one of the most durable human beings who ever lived. Not only was he the first astronaut to orbit the planet, he later became the oldest person in space when he blasted off in the Shuttle Discovery at the age of 77.
I don’t plan to have a whole lot etched on my Billystone after I die, but one thing you'll definitely read on it will be, "John Glenn Was My Freakin' Senator." Probably with an exclamation point—more if I can get a volume discount.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to one of South Dakota's biggest moral compasses. Disproving the theory that only the good die young, World War II hero (35 combat missions as a B-24 pilot), former Senator and Democratic presidential contender George McGovern—whose gravestone lists his first accomplishment as humanitarian—would’ve been 99 today.
If he'd been elected in '72, the Vietnam War would've ended sooner, progressive values would've sunk their roots deeper into the American consciousness, and the integrity of the office of the President would've held fast. Instead we re-elected a corrupt, paranoid, scheming, power-obsessed Republican loon who ended up trashing the office of the presidency. Thank god we learned our lesson from that experience, huh.
JEERS to unpleasant tasks. You may have heard that conservative-movement overlord Bill Regnery II is dead at 80. He was a trust-fund-baby-turned-conspiracy-theorist who egged on America's white supremacists, including the rabid mob in Charlottesville and the Capitol insurrection, as part of a plan to "one day form an American whites-only ethnostate." His ideology was vile and despicable. His financing of delusional fringe groups—with money from his equally-nutty publisher uncle's fortune—caused untold damage to this country, a brand of evil he reveled in. But Bill's dead now and well on his way to visiting all the circles of Hell for eternity, and my policy is I gotta say at least one positive thing about him, so here goes: he had the best first name. Ta-dah!!!
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Ten years ago in C&J: July 19, 2011
CHEERS to an amazing performance. So I watched the Rupert Murdoch & Son Parliamentary proceedings related to their phone-hacking scandal yesterday, and I must admit that the words that came to my mind were (don’t laugh): poised, quick, accurate, feisty, nimble, focused, spry, alert, and deadly serious. No, not "poor me" Rupert and his blame-deflecting brat. I mean Rupert's wife and her amazing shaving-cream-pie reverse thrust of woe. Guess who's getting a new yacht for Christmas?
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And just one more…
CHEERS to home sweet home. U.S. News & World Report is out with its latest list of the Top 10 Best Places to Live in the United States. It's populated by cities like Boulder CO, Portland OR, Raleigh/Durham NC…and this humble Maine hamlet of only 66,000 on the northeast Atlantic coast checking in at #8:
“This a great reminder to those of us who already live here: we are so lucky to call Portland home,” Portland Mayor Kate Snyder said in a statement Wednesday.
In addition to being one of the best places to live, U.S. News & World Report ranked Portland as…the safest place to live in the country…the ninth best place to live for quality of life and 33rd among best places to retire. […]
U.S. News & World Report said it analyzed the 150 most populous metro areas to find the best places to live. To make the top of the list, a place had to be a desirable place to live, have a strong job market, and a high quality of life.
Sounds right to me. Then again, I’ve only lived here for 28 blissful years. More study is needed.
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
“I have always thought Cheers and Jeers has one of the greatest kiddie pools in America, if not the world.”
—Sen. Lindsey Graham
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