Point of Inquiry, Your Billyness
I've cleared it with DK, Inc.—aka the sprawling industry known as Big Kos—to make tonight's C&J a rare front-page event known as "Ask Me Anything."
I'm highly unprepared to unleash a mighty trickle of knowledge and wisdom upon you by answering any questions you might have about anything. Home repair, food, relationships, going Galt, mutant creatures living under your house, blogger etiquette, molecular biology...I know almost everything about making stuff up about anything, and tonight I'm willing to prove it. One small caveat: I don't know a thing about what's going on at this web site.
Keep in mind that the longer the evening wears on, the less coherent my answers will be. So please allow those with urgent medical needs and/or dinner plans to go first. Thank you.
Cheers and Jeers for Friday, August 26, 2022
Note: For the benefit of humanity, C&J will not be published Monday. Don’t get too caught up in all the dancing and joy, though, because we'll be back Tuesday. And I think I might just return with an attitude. We'll see. —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of National Courtesy Month, which is celebrated by everyone but Republicans: 6
Days 'til the Julian Grape Stomp Festa in California: 8
National median rent, up for the 17th straight month in July: $1,879
Rank of Miami, New York, and Boston among cities with the largest rent increases over the last year: #1, #2, #3
Percent chance that former Alabama state representative Perry Hooper Jr., who served as co-chair of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and is the son of a former state supreme court chief justice, was charged with first-degree sex abuse: 100%
Number of people Party City is hiring this year in anticipation of an "epic" Halloween: 20,000
Rank of brown, blue, and hazel among most common eye colors: #1, #2, #3
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Happy National Dog Day…
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CHEERS to broads at the ballot box. The members of the C&J household donned their pussyhats today, Women's Equality Day, which celebrates the August 26, 1920 certification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution giving women the right—the RIGHT, Republicans, not the privilege, the RIGHT—to vote. A few years back Time magazine posted an article reminding us of the crazy pre-1920 fact that women could run in elections despite not being allowed to cast a ballot in them. Thousands of women (from no fewer than sixteen different parties) did, in fact, run according to the Her Hat Was in the Ring database, and the very first appears to have been a Mainer:
[W]hen Olive Rose was elected Register of Deeds by Lincoln County in Maine in 1853, she became not only the first woman elected in the state, but the scholars believe she may have also been the first woman elected in the United States. In one town, Warren, she got 73 votes, while her opponent received only four. Her listing in the database includes a rather prescient announcement of her feat in a local newspaper article:
"Men may laugh and jeer and fume, as much as they please about this matter of 'woman's rights;' they cannot escape the issue.
As sure as the indomitable barons of England wrung Magna Carta from King John at Runnymede, so will the women of the 19th century extort from the 'lords of creation,' (who have held them in servile dependency from the beginning of the world) something like an equal share of political and social rights. Whether the doctrine of 'woman's rights' is in the judgment of the present generation consonant with the 'eternal fitness of things' or not, it is nevertheless designed to gain ground, and ultimately to prevail."
After spending my 58 years watching how our male-centric political bodies have behaved, I believe I can say without hesitation: prevail harder.
P.S. Nobody said it better:
“It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union ... men, their rights and nothing more; women, their rights and nothing less.”
—Susan B. Anthony
CHEERS to gaveling the MAGA cult right in the choppers. The Republican leadership—and by extension their gullible-rube followers—are enjoying an unusually public convulsion of hatred toward any fellow citizen who isn’t straight, white, angry-god Christian, and MAGA. The more vulnerable the minority, the greater their hatred and desire to "disappear" them. Top of the list is the trans community, which is watching in horror as Republican governors and legislators do everything they can to destroy their lives for no other reason than sadistic glee. Thankfully there's an entity bigger than them that's willing to step in and say enough:
A panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week became the first federal appellate court in the country to find that the 1990 landmark federal [Americans with Disabilities Act] protects transgender people who experience anguish and other symptoms as a result of the disparity between their assigned sex and their gender identity.
The ruling could become a powerful tool to challenge legislation restricting access to medical care and other accommodations for transgender people, including employment and government benefits, advocates said. The ruling is binding in the states covered by the Richmond-based 4th Circuit—Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia—but will inevitably be cited in cases in other states, said Kevin Barry, a law professor at Quinnipiac University.
If we know anything about appeals courts at all, it's that they're not all on the same page. So we'll see where this leads, but it's a good omen. Now if we could figure out how to help the MAGA cultists transition from orcs into normal human beings. (I know, I know: "Dammit, Billeh, I'm a doctor, not a miracle worker.")
CHEERS to the Arm-Twister-in-Chief. Happy 114th birthday to #36, Lyndon Baines Johnson. What a schizophrenic presidency—stellar marks for civil rights and the Great Society programs, but total fail for the quagmire in Southeast Asia. (Despite his failings, LBJ still wrangled a spot in the top 10 for the first time in Siena College’s 2022 Best/Worst Presidents Survey.) In fact, his tumultuous time at the top overshadows his dozen years in the Senate, where his personality and leadership style were encapsulated at the 1958 Gridiron Dinner by fellow Senator John F. Kennedy:
"I dreamed about 1960 myself the other night and I told [Sens.] Stuart Symington and Lyndon Johnson about it in the cloakroom yesterday.
I told them how the Lord came into my bedroom, anointed my head, and said, 'John Kennedy, I hereby appoint you President of the United States.'
Stuart Symington said, 'That's strange, Jack, because I too had a similar dream last night in which the Lord anointed me and declared me, Stuart Symington, President of the United States and Outer Space.'
Lyndon Johnson said, 'That's very interesting, gentlemen, because I too had a similar dream last night and I don't remember anointing either of you.'"
—From One-Night Stands with American History by Richard Shenkman and Kurt Reiger
As his press secretary George Reedy wrote: "Of all his qualities...the most important was that he knew how to make our form of government work. That is an art that has been lost since his passing and we are suffering heavily as a result." Sadly, I also don’t think we'll see another president excel like LBJ did at the art of ordering Haggar slacks from the Oval Office with extra room "down where your nuts hang." Time marches on.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to death sticks. On August 26, 1957, the Soviet Union announced it had successfully tested an intercontinental ballistic missile. It got a B in reading, an A in math and, oddly enough, a C- in rocket science.
CHEERS to home vegetation. Here are some of the TV highlights for the weekend. Oops, I guess I should've checked first before I wrote that, because there are no TV highlights for the weekend. Well, that's not entirely true, I guess. You can check out the new movies and streamers here at Rotten Tomatoes. The baseball schedule is here and the WNBA schedule is here. The Little League World Series wraps up tomorrow and Sunday afternoon on ABC, or you can catch the final rounds of the PGA Tour Championship on NBC. If you missed the 60 Minutes report on threats facing our electric grid, you can catch an encore Sunday evening. Then the very heavy and very sharp MTV Video Music Awards will be hurled with great force at the winners Sunday night on The CW. Other than that, we recommend you shut everything off and go find a comfy hammock. Now here's your Sunday morning lineup, such that it is:
Meet the Press: NASA administrator Bill Nelson; House Jan. 6 Committee member Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).
CNN's State of the Union: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA); Governor Chris Sununununununu-shooby-dooby-doo (The Cult-NH); Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH).
Face the Nation: DNC chair Jaime Harrison; Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD); NASA astronaut Dr. Kate Rubins; ormer acting and deputy director of the CIA Michael Morrell; Ambassador of Ukraine to the United States Oksana Markarova.
This Week: Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Roy Blunt (The Cult-MO); former ND senator Heidi Heitkamp (D).
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Mayo Clinic cancer researcher Keith Knutson; Retired General and former CENTCOM commander Frank McKenzie.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 26, 2012
JEERS to signs from above? I seem to remember that a hurricane—Gustav—threw the 2008 GOP convention into chaos. And now, four years later, hurricane Isaac is threatening to dump buckets of rain outside while the GOP convention rains buckets of confetti inside. Is karma punishing them for their systematic oppression of minorities, women, and voters, their rampant lying and their cozy relationship with the moneychangers and disdain for the poor? I don’t know. But I do know this: Isaac is a Biblical figure from the Old Testament. That's the one that stars Angry God. Nah—it must be the gays, feminists and pagans, as usual. Yeah. That makes more sense.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to gone-but-not-forgotten comedy pioneers. The world of biting humor took it on the chin five years ago as Dick Gregory made his last curtain call at 85. He was a strong philanthropist, civil rights activist, health guru, and comedian taking on racial injustice and making it his lifelong cause. Gregory's barbs left a mark on society, especially back when to do so was risky for an African-American:
"A Klanner is a cat who gets out of bed in the middle of the night and takes his sheet with him."
"I never believed in Santa Claus because I knew no white dude would come into my neighborhood after dark."
"Baseball is the only sport in the world where a Negro can shake a stick at a white man and it won't start no riot."
"Last time I was down South I walked into this restaurant, and this white waitress came up to me and said: 'We don't serve colored people here.' I said, 'That's all right, I don't eat colored people. Bring me a whole fried chicken.'"
"You know the definition of a Southern moderate? That's a cat that'll lynch you from a low tree."
"I meet so many young folks who say, 'If I got to go and die in a war at eighteen, I want the right to vote at eighteen.' Don’t be no damn fool. You got to die at eighteen, you better fight to get the right to vote at seventeen."
One of a kind. We’re a smaller world without him.
Have a great weekend. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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