Last Call for Tomorrow’s C&J Zoom Meetup
Daily Kos turns 20(!!!) this month, and tomorrow evening we’re hosting an online get-together on Zoom, and we’d love for you to join us. No formal agenda. Just a chance to hang out, sip beverages of varying degrees of potency, and swap our favorite Madison Cawthorn stories as his political career gets carted out to the dumpster.
Start time: around 6pm EDT, and it’ll run ‘til shortly before we post our Friday C&J around 7:30. To get under the velvet ropes, you need to RSVP to Chris Reeves via kosmail. Drop him a line by clicking here and he'll put you on the list. Shortly before the event, he'll send you the info for logging in to the Zoom account. Please join us. It’ll be fun putting faces to user names and hearing your hilarious regional accents. Ayuh.
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, May 19, 2022
Note: Just a heads up that there will be no C&J Monday due to cottage-opening duties up north this weekend. Back Tuesday happily covered in dust bunnies and sawdust. —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Victoria Day in Canada: 4
Days 'til the Jersey Shore Food Truck Festival: 9
Estimated number of U.S. murders committed by political extremists over the past ten years, according to the Anti-Defamation League: 450
Percent of those murders that were committed by right-wing extremists: 75%
Percent committed by Islamic extremists and left-wing extremists, respectively: 20%, 4%
Number of years McDonald's existed in Russia before leaving because of the Ukraine invasion: 30
Number of free additional Covid-19 tests you can now get from the government: 8
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
The other day at the Southern Legislators Conference, as I was attempting to point out that Canada has a sane, effective and cheap system of national health insurance, I was told: “Canada practices low-tech medicine. Why, in Thunder Bay, women have to have babies with no anesthetic.”
Right there in Norfolk, Virginia, I thought I heard the sound of several million Canadians politely choking. (Canadians are almost always polite.)
It takes a lot to startle a Canadian. Understatement is their national art form, calmness is their national mode, and their national motto is “Now, let’s not get excited.” Canada, Land of Low Blood Pressure. I think they even have a law against rolling their eyes. Even so, I wish you could have heard the reactions over the phone from successive layers of bureaucrats at McKellar Hospital in Thunder Bay, Ontario, when I called to ask if the assertion were true. They variously and politely gasped, strangled, wheezed and giggled.
—August 1994
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Puppy Pic of the Day: First bath…
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CHEERS to what a difference an election can make. He's not getting nearly the accolades he deserves, so let me spell it out plain: President Biden is clobbering Vladimir Putin. He's tanning his hide, eating his lunch, drinking his milkshake, and doling out purple nurples on his shriveled nipples. As Russia's invasion of Ukraine bogs down in a swamp of incompetence, corruption, and 14th-century military technology, Joe is corralling the resources and resolve of NATO with smarts, experience, carefully-cultivated diplomatic relationships, and steely-eyed resolve to get aid to Zelenskyy’s freedom fighters fast. But lest we forget, it was just five years ago that Joe's Republican predecessor was preparing for his first NATO summit…or, more precisely, NATO was preparing for him:
“It’s kind of ridiculous how they are preparing to deal with Trump,” one source briefed on the meeting’s preparations told Foreign Policy, explaining how members of the 28-nation military alliance are preparing to kid-proof Trump’s experience. “It’s like they’re preparing to deal with a child—someone with a short attention span and mood who has no knowledge of NATO, no interest in in-depth policy issues, nothing.” […]
“Even a brief NATO summit is way too stiff, too formal, and too policy heavy for Trump. Trump is not going to like that,” Jorge Benitez, a NATO expert with Washington think tank the Atlantic Council, told Foreign Policy.
Thankfully NATO successfully defended itself for four years against its greatest enemy to date: us.
CHEERS to keeping our eye on the sky. It's been 50 years since our last congressional hearings on unidentified flying waffle irons, so this week a House UFO commission met to get an update on what we know, think we know, and don't know:
A database of reports of UFOs now includes about 400 incidents, up from 143 assessed in a report released about a year ago, a Navy intelligence official told lawmakers at a congressional hearing on Tuesday. … None of the documented objects had attempted to communicate with U.S. aviators, and no attempt had been made to communicate with them, he said, as they all appeared to be unmanned.
Reports of unidentified flying objects – now called unexplained aerial phenomena or UAPs by the military – have been increasing, said [deputy director of National Intelligence Scott] Bray. He cited improved sensors, an increase in drones and other non-military unmanned aerial systems, and "aerial clutter" such as Mylar balloons as causes for the uptick.
Ronald S. Moultrie, the Pentagon's top intelligence official…noted that he's a science fiction fan, and that simple human curiosity means that "we want to know what's out there just like you want to know what's out there." But he added that his top goal was to keep U.S. military personnel and bases safe.
There was a bit of confusion before the proceedings began. All the congress members and their witnesses assembled in the chamber marked "Hearing room to discuss if a race of drooling alien beings descended on our planet with the goal of using violence, lizard-brained ideas, and raw power to take over the government and force anal probes on the citizenry." Then they were politely informed that this was actually the room for the January 6 Committee hearings. Easy mistake.
JEERS to the final reveal to end all final reveals. With the Supreme Court set to officially repeal Roe v. Wade in a few weeks, it's worth remembering that two years ago this week it came to light that the deceased star of that case left behind a shocking surprise. Her ‘90s defection to the far-right's anti-abortion cause was all a bullshit-for-cash deal:
In its final 20 minutes, the documentary film AKA Jane Roe delivers quite the blow to conservatives who have weaponized the story of Jane Roe herself—real name, Norma McCorvey—to argue that people with uteruses should have to carry any and all pregnancies to term. … [T]he former Jane Roe admits that her later turn to the anti-abortion camp as a born-again Christian was “all an act.”
“This is my deathbed confession,” she chuckles, sitting in a chair in her nursing home room, on oxygen. Sweeney asks McCorvey, “Did [the evangelicals] use you as a trophy?” “Of course,” she replies. “I was the Big Fish.” “Do you think you would say that you used them?” Sweeney responds. … “I took their money and they took me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say. That’s what I’d say.” She even gives an example of her scripted anti-abortion lines. “I’m a good actress,” she points out. “Of course, I’m not acting now.” […]
“If a young woman wants to have an abortion—fine,” she says, coloring in the nursing home. “That’s no skin off my ass. You know, that’s why they call it ‘choice.’ It’s your choice.”
On the one hand, good for her. She didn’t go gentle into that good night—she knocked the smirk off the religious right's face with a fierce left hook. On the other hand, what a selfish act—spending so many years betraying the women's movement and setting back the cause of equality so effortlessly for money. But there ya have it, the right-wingers’ trusty playbook: damn the science and the truth, full lie-cheat-steal ahead. When I end up in a nursing home, remind me to short-sheet their beds.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to good sportsmanship. Sure, he was a bra-wearing insurrectionist Nazi-loving gun- and cousin-humper who behaved so shockingly bad that his own party booted him from office Tuesday. But that doesn’t mean the now-lame duck congressman from North Carolina isn’t going out with a touch of class. I think it’s downright touching, actually, that he knew a year ago his days were numbered, so he penned this preemptive love tweet to one of his colleagues from the same side of the aisle:
And goodbye to you, too, young man. Send my regards to your cousin next time you hop on top of him.
JEERS to the Boy Wonder's bubbleheaded blunder. On May 19, 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle cited Murphy Brown as a poor example of family values. Said Ken Tucker back then in Entertainment Weekly:
Dan Quayle's spleen venting about the way Murphy Brown subverts family values is only the most direct expression to date of a notion that has gained in intensity over the past decade—that TV has some sort of obligation to present only ''positive'' examples of family life, that any portrayal of something other than the happy nuclear clan is detrimental to our American way of life.
But TV isn't an arm of social policy or government propaganda; it has no more responsibility to be upbeat and positive than do, say, poetry or the theater. ...
Someone pour Quayle a glass of cold milk, please.
Isn't it nice to know that the Republican party has come so far in its thinking over the last 30 years? (You may commence smirking at will.)
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 19, 2012
CHEERS to Things That Slip Through Cracks for $200, Alex. So now we have the final piece of the Obama strategy to destroy any hope of a Mitt Romney victory in November. Literally spoken through a crack in a rapidly-closing elevator door, George W. Bush blurted out the magic words: "I'm for Mitt Romney." Money quote, thy name is Bumper Sticker.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to famous firsts. In their relevant-as-ever classic book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Al Ries and Jack Trout write about the advantage of being the first in the marketplace. Or, in the political arena, the first right-winger to hop off the Trump merry-go-round:
What's the name of the first person to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo? Charles Lindbergh, right? What’s the name of the second person to fly the Atlantic? Not so easy to answer, is it?
The second person to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo was Bert Hinkler. Bert was a better pilot than Charlie—he flew faster, he consumed less fuel. Yet who has ever heard of Bert Hinkler?
(The first woman to fly the Atlantic solo? Why, Amelia Earhart, of course—90 years ago this Saturday.) They call that particular principle the “Rule of Leadership.” Three years ago this week, a libertarian-leaning congressman from western Michigan became the first Republican member of the House of Representatives to show what leadership looked like in the age of Trump. He tweeted many tweets supporting his position, but here’s the Cliffs Notes tweet…
The history books will remember his name: Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), now known as former Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI). Cuz credit where credit is due: love him or hate him (or both), he was #1.
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
The grainy video shows 12 smiling soldiers ducking into a shot around the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool and giving the thumbs-up. “We have made it. We are here, Mr. President,” one of the soldiers in the video says, addressing Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
—NBC News
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