A Few Words from the September Birthday Kids' Table
“I'm trying to get people to see that we are our brother's keeper. Red, white, black, brown or yellow, rich or poor, we all have the blues.”
—B.B. King
“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
—ElieWiesel
"There’s one thing I’m really good at, and that’s hitting the ball over a net, in a box. I’m excellent."
—Serena Williams
Continued...
"Fighting aging is like the War on Drugs. It's expensive, does more harm than good, and has been proven to never end."
—Amy Poehler
"Let [Senator] Barrasso go to the folks in Wyoming and ask them whether they think it's a good idea that they should be paying a third of their income in child care. Ask elderly people who don't have any teeth in their mouth whether they should be able to get dentures through Medicare. Ask the scientific community whether the time is now in a big way to deal with climate. Ask the ordinary American consumer whether we should take on the greed of the pharmaceutical industry, which charges us the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs."
—Bernie Sanders
"I don't have a good work ethic. I have a real casual relationship with hours."
—Janeane Garofalo
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"I have come to the conclusion that the major part of the work of a President is to increase the gate receipts of expositions and fairs, and bring tourists to town."
—William Howard Taft, the only president born in September
“I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream.”
—Bruce Springsteen
"I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do; and for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down.’”
—Bob Newhart
"Oh! My luggage!"
—Dr. Ben Carson
To the above and those in our Daily Kos community who completed another trip around the sun this month, in person or in spirit: happy birthday and many blessings on your camels.
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Monday, September 26, 2022
Note: Candy corn is Baby Jesus’s tears of joy. No proof, really...it just makes sense.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the midterm elections: 42
Days 'til the Southington Apple Harvest Festival in Connecticut: 4
Weekly initial unemployment claims reported last week, still the lowest since the early 1970s: 213,000
Percent drop in the number of murders in major U.S. cities so far this year: 4%
Percent rise in thefts/robberies during the first half of 2022: 20%
Rank of California, Washington, and Vermont on LawnStarter's survey of best states to visit this fall, based on "number of state parks and hiking trails, as well as fall-themed amusements like pumpkin patches, corn mazes, hayrides, and fall foliage": #1, #2, #3
Maine's rank: #8
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Monday morning wake-up call...
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CHEERS to Monday morning. It's a bright, sunny day , the birds are singing, the leaves are turning, and, lest we forget…
» Donald Trump is on the hook for $250 million he probably doesn’t have, thanks to the New York Attorney General's indictments related to his (and his crime family kids') massive, massive tax fraud.
» Donald Trump can no longer stall the DOJ investigation of his thievery involving the super-classified documents he swiped and stashed under Barron's mattress at Mar-a-Lago. He faces jailtime.
» Donald Trump faces more blowback and excruciatingly-bad media coverage when the House January 6 Committee hearings resume this week.
» Donald Trump's social media platform, under the extraordinary leadership of Devin Nunes, is spiraling into oblivion as investors and users bail.
About that Jan. 6 committee hearing: Wednesday. 1pm Eastern Time. All the channels. Time spent watching will not be deducted from your lifespan.
CHEERS to Demolition Derby: Outer Space Edition. When Harry Truman took office following FDR's death in 1945, he said he felt like "the moon, the stars, and the planets all fell on me." He said nothing about asteroids, and that should make you afraid—very afraid. If, as Q-Anon suggests, the ghost of Harry Truman is planning to give us hell by hurling an asteroid at us, we better be prepared, and that's why the success of today's test by NASA is critical:
More than 6.5 million miles away from Earth, a cosmic collision is imminent.
In a first-of-its-kind maneuver, a NASA spacecraft is set to intentionally smash into an asteroid to test whether deflecting a space rock could one day protect Earth from a potentially catastrophic impact.
The crash is planned for 7:14 p.m. ET Monday. Live coverage will air on NASA TV beginning at 6 p.m. ET.
The mission, known as DART, or the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, will attempt a method of planetary defense that could save Earth from an asteroid on a potential collision course with the planet.
Before the test happens I wish to make one thing clear: if the impact cracks open the asteroid and a long-dormant species of alien emerges and makes a beeline for Earth, I pledge to fulfill all my assigned duties as its faithful viceroy, even if it means compromising all my fellow Earthlings. But I still don’t do windows.
CHEERS to the new kid on America's block. On September 26, 1789, Thomas Jefferson was appointed America’s first secretary of state. Actual transcript of Day One:
President Washington: Here's your employee ID badge and key to the executive shite house. Box 'o quills. W-2 form—be sure to sign and return it to Gary in Accounting by 5. There's your office.
Jefferson: So…what do I do?
Washington: Who knows? Just make sure you don’t park in Adams' spot or he’ll tow your horse.
Jefferson: Do we get Columbus Day off?
Washington: Hasn’t been invented yet, kid. But nice try.
History. Gives ya chills.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to close calls. Sixty-seven years ago this week, in 1955, stocks dropped like a rock…the fastest rate since 1929. The numbers sound positively quaint today:
The Dow Jones dropped 6.5%, 32 points, to 455, with a total paper loss of $14 billion, the largest ever.
Reason: Eisenhower's heart attack. Stocks quickly recovered, though, when the country realized he was still the president. Or, to be perfectly accurate, when the country realized that Richard Nixon wasn't.
JEERS to sending in the creaky joints brigade. What a situation in Russia. As the fucked-up country's propaganda machine tries to brainwash the public that its invasion of Ukraine is going boffo, new forced-enlistment orders are taking effect, sweeping up the dregs of society:
While Russian officials have promised that only those with military experience would be called up, a clause in Putin's mobilization decree means that it is possible to ignore that norm at any time, experts said.
One man from Buryatia, a mountainous region in eastern Siberia, told The Insider that recruitment officers are "combing through the villages."
A 63-year-old man from the Volgograd region was also drafted as part of the mobilization, the independent Russian news site The Insider reported. …The man, identified only as Yermolaev, has second-degree diabetes and a brain condition known as cerebral ischemia, The Insider reported. ... On Thursday, he was still summoned to a medical examination center where he was told by doctors that he was "fit to go to the front," The Insider reported.
It's a rigorous exam, I'm told. If there's a pulse, hop on the truck, comrade. And don’t forget to duck.
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 26, 2012
CHEERS to a big warm Missouri McWelcome. The deadline passed at midnight, and now it's GLORIOUSLY official: Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin is staying in the senate race!!! His opponent, incumbent Senator Claire McCaskill, brung him a special gift, opened it, and let the whupass do its thing. What you're about to click on is perhaps the only ad she'll ever have to run. Text:
Todd Akin in his own words...
On March 18th, 2011, Todd Akin said he didn't like Social Security.
On December 3rd, 2011, Todd Akin said Medicare was unconstitutional.
On March 16th, Akin said he wants to abolish the minimum wage.
On April 21st, he said he would eliminate student loans.
And on August 19th, Todd Akin said only some rapes are "legitimate".
What will he say next?
In the end, there's no mistakin': ‘twas flakin' Akin who cooked his own bacon.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the best places to do the happy dance. Do you remember what "fun" is? Or have the last several years on Planet Earth blotted such antiquated notions as the pursuit of happiness from your mind? It depends, in part, on where you live, according to Wallet Hub: America's #1 manufacturer of, presumably, hubs for wallets. (Enjoy that free plug, guys—it's on the house.) Their latest Most Fun States in America list for 2022 ranks our colonies in terms of how much their residents say they're having a ball:
In order to determine the most fun states in America, WalletHub compared the 50 states across two key categories, “Entertainment & Recreation” and “Nightlife.”
We evaluated those categories using 26 relevant metrics, which are listed below with their corresponding weights. Each metric was graded on a 100-point scale, with a score of 100 indicating the greatest number and variety of fun and cost-effective options. We then determined each state’s weighted average across all metrics to calculate its overall score and used the resulting scores to rank-order our sample.
And The Top Ten are...
California
Florida
Nevada
New York
Illinois
Colorado
Washington
Texas
Minnesota
Louisiana
Maine is #39 on the list. It would be much higher if not for Hiram Tupperbaum over on Oakdale Street. He and his attack ferrets know why. (Yeah, they absolutely f*cking know why.)
Have the funnest Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"I wanna be very clear here. The mainstream media tells us that Bill in Portland Maine is a good guy. And so it must be true. So what if his name seems to be in the middle of an algae-encrusted kiddie pool?"
—Candace Owens
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