Did You Know?
Who followed up Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act? Democrats.
Who brought you federal protections that guarantee insurance companies can’t engage in pre-existing condition abuse? Democrats.
Who made sure the insurance companies can't shut off the spigot to your health care just because their bean counters think you've had enough? Democrats.
Continued...
Who made sure preventive, aka “essential” services like checkups and colonoscopies are included in your monthly premium at no extra cost? Democrats.
Who brought you the right to keep your kids on your health insurance policy until they're 26? Democrats.
Who made sure every state has the ability to expand Medicaid, giving the poorest residents affordable access to health insurance, many for the first time in their lives? Democrats.
Who headed up the first state governments to expand Medicaid? Democrats.
Who still wants to abolish all of the above? Republicans.
Who isn’t going to let them? Democrats.
Who’s going to expand the ACA even more by passing the Build Back Better law? Democrats.
When does the 2023 ACA federal exchange enrollment period end for coverage starting January 1? December 15.
Where is the official site? Healthcare.gov.
Any questions?
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Note: Here’s what you can expect C&J-wise for the rest of the week: special Thanksgiving edition tomorrow morning, no C&J Friday, although we’ll post a "Who Won the Week" poll in the diaries around 7pm, off Monday, and back on Tuesday. We wish you a reasonably sane and safe holiday. And remember: if you really want to own the conservatives at your Thanksgiving dinner table, give all the food a liberal sprinkling of bamboo fibers. —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til 2023: 39
Days 'til the Festival of Ice in Lewistown, Pennsylvania: 8
Decline in the number of S&P 500 companies citing the term “recession” on earnings calls for the 3rd quarter relative to the 2nd quarter, according to FactSet data: -26%
Percent chance that marijuana legalization will be among the first bills that the now all-Democratic Minnesota legislature passes early next year, according to Gov. Tim Walz (D): 100%
Minimum amount of wagers that have been placed since sports betting became broadly legalized in the United States, according to The New York Times: $161 billion
Amount New York has amassed in sports betting-related taxes (at a 51% rate) in the first 10 months of 2022: $546 million
Rank of "green bean casserole" among the Thanksgiving dishes searched online most often by Mainers, according to Google Trends: #1
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 186 (including 5 Anti-christs and 1 creepy Turkey Day Scooby van). Soul Protection Factor 12 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Breakfast is served…
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CHEERS to peaches and scream. Memo to the entire world and all its surrounding star systems: SHUT UP ABOUT 2024. Holy crap, the presidential election is still two years away and the midterms ain't even over yet. Case in point: there's a whopper of a senate runoff election going on down in Georgia, and with only 13 days left, here's the latest:
» Republicans are in disarray, fighting more among themselves than against Democrat Raphael Warnock.
» Warnock leads the latest polling by four points. Warnock leads in younger voters and independents, Walker leads in older voters (but not older Black voters).
» Can Barack Obama stump for Warnock next Thursday? Yes He Can!
» Walking train wreck and self-described "werewolf" Herschel Walker, who has no idea how government works or what's in the Constitution, continues self-sabotaging his campaign by opening his big stupid mouth.
» Thanks to a court ruling, voters can go to the polls this Saturday instead of having to stay home because something something something.
So no 2024 talk yet. I’ll let you know when it’s time. Sometime around Christmas. 2023. Now go to your room.
CHEERS to President Gitterdone. My god, it's a world crisis! We're out of oil and every world leader has crawled under their desk to flee the angry mobs of crude-hungry travel zombies! But wait—what's that off in the distance? It's a knight in shining and extremely well-oiled armor coming to save the day! But who is this masked man, this caped crusader, this man of steel, this…this…whatever tagline the Avengers use? Why, it's that humble former community pool lifeguard from Delaware, whose brains, brawn, stamina, and finesse are here to save the day:
For the second straight week, the nation’s average gas price has declined, falling 11.9 cents from a week ago to $3.64 per gallon today according to GasBuddy data compiled from more than 11 million individual price reports covering over 150,000 gas stations across the country. [...]
“What an incredible turnaround in the last week. While a decline was expected in more states than last week, I didn’t expect every single state to hop on the bandwagon so quickly. But, it’s terrific news as motorists prepare for Thanksgiving travel, with tens of thousands of stations under $3 per gallon, and thousands more to join in the next few weeks, barring a dramatic turnaround,” said Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy.
“Everyone will be seeing relief at the pump this week, with even more substantial declines on the way as oil prices plummeted last week to briefly trade under $80 per barrel. It’s not impossible that if oil markets hold here, we could see a national average of $2.99 around Christmas, certainly the gift that every motorist is hoping for.
Methinks someone's getting a shiny new cape for Christmas.
JEERS to...hic!...#29. On November 23, 1921, President Warren Harding lost my vote by signing the Willis-Campbell Act, which clamped down on doctors who prescribed beer or liquor for medicinal purposes. That's why today C&J does all of its own self-diagnosing. It’s been touch-and-go for awhile. We went through several prescription pads while suffering from a chronic case of Irrational Infrastructure Week Exuberance, and now we’re suffering from an acute case of Dear God Make The Hunter Biden’s Laptop Hoaxers Shut Their Pie Holes Syndrome. Thank god when I asked my inner Dr. Billy, he told me that, yes, Bacardi 151 was right for me. And then I tossed myself a lime to prevent scurvy. Can’t wait ‘til I get to try my hand at self-open-heart surgery—forty more payments and that chainsaw on Amazon Prime is all mine.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to "Young Hickory of the Granite Hills.” Now placing just a notch or two above George W. Bush and Donald Trump on the competence scale: New Hampshire's Franklin "#14" Pierce, whose life was a slow downward spiral, from the childhood deaths of his three children (including Benjamin, killed in a train derailment at age 11 after Pierce won the election) and his despondent and unstable wife, to his unsuccessful battle against the bottle.
During his lethargic one term in office (1853-1857) he managed to piss just about everybody off, and he failed to get the nomination for a second term. Adding insult to injury, he became so invisible that he didn’t attend successor James Buchanan's inauguration because they forgot to send a carriage to get him. And while the journalist missed nailing George W. Bush’s head with his shoes in Iraq some years back, an assailant did once manage to nail Pierce in D.C. with a hard-boiled egg.
You know the drill...go wish him a happy 218th birthday. Lord knows he could use some cheering up.
JEERS to people who pee down your back and get (literally) pissy when you refuse to call it rain. I used to be on Twitter all the time. It was fun. When I joined a dozen years ago I would even take time to argue back and forth with right-wing nut jobs just for sport. Fast forward to late 2022, and now I mostly just live-tweet nightly Star Trek reruns with a band of merry Trekkies, post squirrel pics, promote C&J, and re-tweet the odd good-news story from the Democratic-sphere. The social media giant under manchild Elon Musk is now mostly just a tumbleweed-strewn racist troll farm. Founding blogfather Atrios (aka Duncan Black) has a good take on how it got that way:
Twitter had two main contributions to the world (well, the US, anyway): It killed the influence of Drudge, and suddenly a bunch of immensely self-important people were confronted with hundreds of people, often deservedly, calling them shitheads every day.
By calling them shitheads, I mean often calling them shitheads backed up with good arguments. And a lot of those arguments were from people of color and other "riff raff" such as people who went to lesser schools than Harvard.
That part broke a lot of brains, and I do think a lot of the "woke backlash" in our elite periodicals comes precisely from that. A bunch of elite white people who thought they were smarter than everyone were called out for their bullshit, and they went completely insane.
So Elon Musk bought it and is now in the process of proving to the world that he's the biggest shithead of them all. So far, so good.
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Ten years ago in C&J: November 23, 2012
CHEERS to today's awesome quiz show. Hey! Welcome to Today's Awesome Quiz Show!!! Here we go: Florida Senator Marco Rubio says he ain't none too bright when it comes to science. So, naturally, Marco Rubio serves on which of these Senate committees?
A) Ways and Means Committee
B) Judiciary Committee
C) Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee
If you chose C, congratulations—[DingDindDing!!!]—you're right! Marco Rubio is dumbing himself down for a 2016 presidential run by pandering to his anti-science base with a thinly-veiled suggestion that creationism might be science, too! For correctly guessing his motive, you win a free set of matching Samsonite luggage. Just as soon as my intern finishes removing the ID tags from my neighbor's set of matching Samsonite luggage.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to mostly smooth sailing. If you're traveling today in your 2022 Bell & Howell electric jetpack, you might get a sprinkle or two in the red states. But other than that, it looks fine. Meanwhile this is what the Turkey Day map looks like, according to the National Weather Service's Atari 2600 forecast computer:
The gays, feminists and pagans are quick to point out, by the way, that any weather messes this holiday are not their fault. Responsibility rests solely on the homophobes, the Nazis, the KKK, and their cousins Q-Anon and the conservative Bible thumpers. It’s residual from their huge 2022 election loss, hence the overall holiday outlook: partly pouty with scattered annoying snowflakes.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
“Now, based on their temperament and commitment to being productive members of society, I hereby pardon Bill in Portland Maine's squirrels."
—President Biden
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