“Is this thing on?”
Listeners of Daily Kos Radio'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 on August 13, 2011, 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.
Continued...
David knows politics inside and out (true fact: he was the driving force in the battle to end filibuster abuse, leading to Harry Reid’s dismantling of some Senate rules to end GOP obstruction of Obama’s judicial nominees) and communicates with wit, outside-the-beltway common sense, and just enough incredulity at the state of things to make you wonder if he's moments away from going Howard Beale on the world.
Believe me, when that happens you'll want to be there.
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 #10 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.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, August 13, 2020
Note: Just a quick heads-up that, because of the Netroots Nation convention, we won’t be doing a formal C&J tomorrow evening, but we will post our legendary "Who won the week" poll and maybe toss in a few extra goodies. Thank you. Now go wash your hands. —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Democratic Convention: 4
The last time a presidential ticket didn’t include a Harvard or Yale grad, as it doesn't in 2020: 1968
Amount of the donations to the Biden-Harris campaign within the first 4 hours after Joe’s announcement Tuesday: $10 million
Americans polled by Gallup who say they have a great deal of confidence in the American medical system last year and today, respectively: 36%, 51%
Biden-Trump matchup numbers in Maine via a new Critical Insights poll: 44%-36%
Wisconsin registered voters polled by Marquette Law School who support how Gov. Tony Evers (D) has been handling the coronavirus outbreak, versus 40% for Trump: 61%
Maximum sentence in Illinois for assaulting a store employee who asks you to put on a face mask, under a new law enacted by Gov. J.B. Pritzker: 5 years, $25,000 fine
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
It was a slow summer for scandal here until Bo Pilgrim, an East Texas chicken magnate, walked onto the floor of the State Senate and started handing out $10,000 checks with no payee filled in. He said he wanted to encourage the senators, then meeting in special session on the workers' compensation issue, to do right by bidness.
Turns out it's perfectly legal to walk onto the Senate floor and start handing out checks for $10,000 made out to no one in particular. Just another campaign contribution, folks.
Bo Pilgrim is a familiar sight on Texas television, where he dresses up in a pilgrim suit and pitches ads for his fowl. He adds a certain je ne said quoi to our communal life.
His chicken factory is a major source of pollution in East Texas so, of course, the governor put him on the state Water Quality Board.
—October 1989
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Weekend plans…
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CHEERS to primary fevuh. Thanks to the media circus unleashed by ruthless, ambitious, nasty, uppity (of course) San Francisco Demon Rat socialist Kamala Harris, Tuesday's state primary races slid under the radar. Here are three notable ones involving them darn women people, two excellent and one from another planet:
South Carolina If you see Lindsey Graham twirling his parasol nervously and muttering "fiddle-dee-dee"under his breath, it's because a) Democrat Jaime Harrison is tied with him in the Senate race, and b) in the 115th state House district, Democrat Spencer Wetmore flipped it from red to blue by knocking off Republican Josh Stokes 59 percent to 39 percent, a landslide that has—say it with me—Republicans in disarray!
Minnesota Incumbent DEEP STATE SCARY MUSLIM Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-MN) handily won her primary against a challenger who was apparently flush with cash but not much else. With Massachusetts Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley running unopposed and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rashida Tlaib (MN) already primary winners, the much-feared original "Squad" will stay together for another term while welcoming more progressive moderate-slayers like Illinois' Marie Newman and Missouri’s Cori Bush to the band in January.
Georgia In the MAGA-drenched 14th district, Marjorie Greene won her runoff primary and could become the first QAnon cultist to win a seat in Congress. During her acceptance speech, she thanked her family, President Trump, and her Martian overlords.
You can check out the live blow-by-blow analysis via the Daily Kos Elections Team here. Up next: primaries in Florida, Wyoming, and Alaska, which Russia will be able to see from its house so no cheating.
CHEERS to more concerny-face time. Maine's mealy-mouthed senator Susan Collins has never had to lift a finger to fight for reelection until now…and it shows. The templates for her ads are so outdated you have to blow the dust off your TV screen after they run, all the left-leaning groups that once supported her "moderate" views have abandoned her, and her ankle-humping of the worst president in history has managed to turn sky-high approval ratings and a steamroller effect on her competitors into a moldy pumpkin at midnight:
[Democratic state] House Speaker Sara Gideon held a 5-point lead over Sen. Susan Collins among likely voters in the closely watched U.S. Senate race. […]
It’s easy to see how Gideon’s challenge to Collins has developed given the context that 60 percent of registered Maine voters have a more negative opinion about Collins than they did four years ago. This decline has come across the board, encompassing 80 percent of Democrats, 60 percent of independents and 34 percent of Republicans, and is the story of the race to date. […]
While 49 percent of voters said Collins was too tied to extreme elements of her party, only 30 percent thought the same of Gideon.
Or, as "extreme elements of her party" is more commonly known as these days: her party.
CHEERS to America's favorite safety net. 85 years ago this week, in 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt gave us one less thing to fear by signing the Social Security Act into law, saying:
"We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age. […]
The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness."
Today a substantial portion of the Republican base loves to criticize Social Security as the brainchild of a dirty effing socialist hippie. But they sure do love getting their socialist hippie checks in the mail. And they sure love to complain that their socialist hippie checks ain't big enough. And they sure love to leap to its defense by telling their own party to “keep your government hands off my Social Security.” Yes, when it comes to money, Republicans are all about the love. Those dirty effing fiscal hippies.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to hoosegow ha-ha's. Down Virginny-way, a very fine person of the MAGA-Tiki Torch persuasion decided that there just wasn't enough mirth on his side of the aisle, so he became an amateur comedian. Unfortunately, his definition of "slaying his audience" turned out to be a little bit…literal:
A Hanover County man and avowed Ku Klux Klan leader boasted on social media shortly after he drove through a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters in Henrico County in June, according to video shown during a trial on Monday.
“They scattered like cockroaches,” said Harry H. Rogers, 36, in a Facebook live video he posted after the June 7 incident. … “It’s kind of funny if you ask me.”
He should take his act to the Comedy Connection—right after he serves his six-year prison sentence, but not before he serves whatever extra time he has coming from the felony charges he's still facing for driving into three people. Here's something I'd like to say to Hater Harry as he disappears behind the cinder block walls: Hey Harry! Try the slop and don’t forget to tip your server. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!! (I still don't get why the Mark Twain Prize people never call me.)
JEERS to America's #1 Defeatocrat. I love pulling this steaming turd out of the time machine every year. Twenty-six years ago this brilliant—and I mean that sincerely—comment was made and then greeted with sweets and flowers by the speaker's party members and corporate admirers. It's worth revisiting, if only to illustrate that Republicans will kick their own well-thought-out positions to the curb in an instant if it means more power and/or money for them:
“Once you got to Iraq and took it over—took down Saddam Hussein's government—then what are you going to put in its place?
That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west. Part of it—eastern Iraq—the Iranians would like to claim; they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.
It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.”
Guess who said it? Dwight Eisenhower? Richard Nixon? Colin Powell? Nope. It was Dick Cheney…in 1994. Unfortunately, Dick stopped listening to Dick. Bad, Dick, bad.
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 13, 2010
JEERS to a gathering of sweat-drenched pinky extenders. Illegal-immigrant internment camp supporters, racial profilers and 14th Amendment slayers are all a' tingle this evening. They're oilin' up their guns, featherin' up their tri-corner hats and starchin' up their Don't Tread On Me flags as they await the start of their first Border Tea Party in Arizona. (The expected high temperature Sunday: north of 100.) They won't just have entertainers at the event, they'll have "patriotic entertainers," headed up by radio host/emcee Mike Broomhead [sic], and a gaggle of the usual political seethers, including John McCain and Joe Arpaio, armed with lots of chaw and scary adjectives. But one high-profile politician is bowing out: Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle says she can't make it. She already has plans to spend the day running away from reporters.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the whitest guy ever to be "born a poor black child." Happy birthday tomorrow to Steve Martin, who was a spry 30 when I first heard his stand-up act (via long-play LP, no less) at 12 and laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe, and who today is an elder statesman of comedy at 75. Besides being an award-winning banjo picker, having a hit single (King Tut), hosting the Oscars and SNL, starring in a boatload of popular movies, and writing best-selling books, an Oscar-nominated screenplay (Roxanne), and sketches for the legendary Smothers Brothers, what has he contributed to society? While we're trying to think of something, watch this…
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Sorry, Steve, but I'm still drawin' a blank. Happy birthday, anyway.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"Whining is what Bill in Portland Maine does best."
—Joe Biden
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