Energize An Ally Tuesday
Having consulted the sacred writings of—[checks notes]—a 13th-century witch hunter who deemed the black plague God's wrath for that one time a lady showed off her bare ankle outside a thatched hut, cat kicker and walking head wound Samuel Alito took a moment from his perfumed hanky-sniffing activities to corral a majority of the Supreme Court to grant states the unrestricted right to abort our pro-abortion laws. So here we are.
Needless to say, helping women in the knuckledragger states—medically, emotionally, logistically—is now a priority, and Daily Kos has set up a fund to support grassroots organizations who specialize in just that. Details below the fold…
Sarah Hogg writes:
We need to ensure the safety of pregnant people who seek abortion care, as well as the sustainability of the already dwindling number of medical professionals who perform abortions.
Not only will state legislatures move to ban abortion, but we can also expect them to chip away at agencies that provide comprehensive sex education, sexual and reproductive health care, transportation and any other support for pregnant people who don't want to be. But we can help ensure that more people get the health care they need. On the ground, health care providers have already been creative, resourceful, and adaptive. We can make sure these clinics stay up and running.
You can see the list of providers here at the Act Blue donation link. Thank you for your support, and welcome back to the 1600s.
And now, our feature presentation…
-
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, June 28, 2022
Note: Great news! Yesterday morning's lottery was another rousing success for the community. Our thanks to the late Tessie Hutchison and the townsfolk for upholding our motto: "Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon." (And don’t skimp on that butter—ha ha ha.)
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the next full moon: 16
Days 'til the 96th National Cherry Festival in Traverse City, Michigan: 4
Number of states in which a majority of the residents support abortion rights: 40
Number of the remaining 10 states that are located in the south: 7
Percent of Americans polled by PBS NewsHour who believe it's more important to protect gun rights than it is to prevent gun violence: 35%
The last decade vinyl record sales topped $1 billion, as they did last year, increasing 61% from 2020: The 1980s
Contraction in Hong Kong's economy in the first quarter, the biggest drop in over 30 years: -4%
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Mission: Impossible?
-
CHEERS to spinning gold from dog shit…maybe? Not much left to say about the Federalist Society's successful installation of right-wing religious extremists on the Supreme Court and repeal of Roe v. Wade that hasn't already been said. According to CBS News polling, the most apathetic society in the world suddenly woke up and discovered we're one election away from having to wear swastika armbands and pledge our unwavering loyalty to the Russo-Republican-Rapist Party. On that score we might, once again, retain our republic by the skin of its teeth:
Democrats are more than twice as likely as Republicans to say the Supreme Court's decision will make them more likely to vote.
And more Democrats are motivated now by the issue than they were before the decision. Fifty percent of Democrats report this decision will make them more likely to vote, up from 40% last month, when overturning Roe was a possibility, but not yet a reality.
We'll see. Four months is a long time and if there's one thing this country will never run out of it's lip service.
CHEERS to Primary day! If you're an election junkie, enjoy the day's contests while you can, because after today the country basically takes a break from the action until August. Here's what's happening:
Mississippi and South Carolina: Runoff primaries
Illinois, Oklahoma, New York, Colorado, and Utah: Regular primaries
One of the outcomes we'll be waiting for is to see if Rep. Lauren Boebert—soulmate of Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Matt Gaetz, and their merry band of insurrectionists—loses her primary because enough Colorado Democrats changed their party preference and cast ballots against her. The Daily Kos Elections Team ("The Best In The Business!") will have results as they roll in tonight. Good luck to all the Democrats, and may the worst Boebert lose.
CHEERS to the other American Revolution. On June 28, 1969, a ragtag gaggle of customers at a seedy Greenwich Village gay bar run by the mafia—the Stonewall Inn—decided they'd had enough police harassment for one lifetime. So they got mad as hell, especially the drag queens who had no more fucks to give, tipped over a police car, hurled some rocks and gave new life to the LGBT rights movement. As the deputy police inspector said: "For those of us in [the] public morals [division], things were completely changed...Suddenly they were not submissive anymore." The Stonewall is now a National Monument, and its footprint is about to be expanded:
The National Park Service has announced its intention to open a nearly 3,700-square-foot LGBTQ historic center next door to New York City’s Stonewall Inn in 2024. The Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center will be the first LGBTQ visitor center within the NPS’ system of parks and monuments — and it’s being sponsored by some of the best known queer entertainers and allied companies in the nation.
The center pledges to provide an “immersive experience” by hosting tours, exhibits, and lectures on LGBTQ culture and history. The center will also serve as an office for park rangers overseeing the eight-acre Stonewall Inn national monument which includes the bar, Christopher Park, and the surrounding streets involved in the 1969 Stonewall Uprising. The uprising marked the start of the modern-day LGBTQ rights movement.
It's been a wild 53 years. Back in 1969 gays were labeled by the right-wingers as "pedophile groomers" and "moral degenerates" and "godless heathen." Then, over the decades, a huge majority of Americans embraced their LGBT family, friends, co-workers and neighbors. LGBTers were allowed to serve openly in the military. The ban on transgender enlistees was tossed in the dustbin of history. The vast majority of businesses began openly supporting LGBT employees and many of them sponsored LGBT advocacy groups. And thanks, believe it or not, to the Supreme Court and the tenacity of the plaintiffs who argued their cases before it, marriage equality was made legal and employment discrimination was made illegal.
Now here we are in 2022, and we're back to being labeled pedophile groomers, moral degenerates, and godless heathen. That moral arc of the universe is apparently a corckscrew.
-
BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
-
END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
CHEERS to Ol' Shortypants. James Madison, who at 5'4" holds the distinction of being the U.S. president with the lowest center of gravity, died in Montpelier, Virginia 186 years ago today.
He was the chief architect of the United States Constitution, and today he's rolling in his grave over the GOP's manhandling of it. The book Rating the Presidents (a survey of 700 historians and political analysts) sums up his legacy as one of "courageous leadership as president, guided by the principles of the Constitution, which he played so large a part in framing. All Americans owe him a great debt of gratitude." Pay your respects here. But don't tell him how Republicans have been using his sacred founding document as toilet paper. He’s got enough problems as head of the Dead Presidents’ Condo Association. (“Dammit, Polk, For the last time, get your stuff out of President Arthur’s storage unit.”)
CHEERS to a puckin' good time. The NHL hockey season ended Sunday night when the Colorado Avalanche absolutely clobbered the Tampa Bay DeSantans 459 games to 2 to take home the Stanley Cup. I hear the only people more giddy than the Colorado team's fans are the Tampa Bay team's dentists.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: June 28, 2012
JEERS to cry-baby politics. Considering the low profile they're keeping, the Romney campaign sure is fucking up in front of the public a lot. Their latest ineptitude concerns the recent Washington Post article about how Bain Capital under Romney was a "pioneer in outsourcing." Kinda made him look, um, dickish. But just as it was starting to cool off a bit, the Etch-A-Sketch campaign threw a delayed fit and demanded that the Post retract the story. Of course the paper backed its reporters 100 percent. So now Americans by the millions are hearing about it all over again. Only this time it's not just the story making headlines, but the phony tantrum over the story. Y'know, Romney may have more billionaire backers influencing the campaign than Obama, but Obama has a weapon that's turning out to be just as damaging to Romney: Romney.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to the Greatest Moment in World History. I grew up with the bleeps and bloops of Atari games ringing in my ears, and to this day I see a shadow image of those iconic graphics every time I blink. Atari marked its first full day as a company 50 years ago yesterday, and for that my inner geek thanks founder and personal Yoda Nolan Bushnell, who muses on how far we’ve come since those early glory days, and where video games are headed:
-
My first addictions on this wacky planet, besides candy cigarettes and Hogan's Heroes, were Missile Command, Battlezone, and Asteroids, each following Bushnell's formula of being "simple to learn but impossible to master." They retain their simple elegance and pulse-quickening qualities five decades later. Go ahead...click to release your inner nerd. Time spent with an Atari classic will not be deducted from your lifespan.
Oh, and there’s a hastily-planned Jan. 6 Committee hearing today at 1pm ET. I guess that explains all the flying chairs at Mar-A-Lago. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"Cheers and Jeers is a blog post so supernaturally boring that light bends when passing its dense outer mantle."
—Donald Clarke
-