They’re Back!
When the blogosphere's feistiest octogenarians Margaret and Helen posted on Joe Biden's inauguration day, it sounded like they were signing off for good. So it's always nice when they drop a new rant, which they’ve been doing semi-regularly lately...especially when they knock the weird MAGA VP candidate and his sick obsession with lady parts down a peg:
Margaret, that little Vance kid just doesn’t get it. When asked about abortion rights he said, “I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies.”
Are you shitting me with that nonsense?
Always freshly swabbed.
Women might get an abortion for a lot of reasons. Some of them are wanted pregnancies gone horribly wrong. Some of them are unwanted pregnancies at a time when a women isn’t ready to become a mother. Some of them are because of rape, incest, abuse, ignorance, mistakes, and even just accidents. All of them are private. None of them are any of JD Vance’s business. You either trust women or you don’t.
Vance suggested that if we could just make having a family cheaper or more enjoyable, then women would be ok with abortion bans. Of course in the very next sentence he reminded us that we would be sending those children to schools with bullet proof windows and doors that resemble bank vaults. And any pre-existing conditions that child is born with won’t be covered under Trump’s new healthcare plan. [...]
Thanks to Donald Trump women are driving all over God’s green earth just to get access to life saving healthcare. And Vance thinks if we would just trust him a little more, California and New York won’t be too far to drive. No thank you. I trust that Vance had it right the first time: when asked he said he would support a national abortion ban. I trust he meant that. And when asked if women should be punished, Trump said they should. I trust he meant that too. [...]
Vote Harris/Walz. I mean it. Really.
Read the whole thing. Good to see you’re still around to not take any guff, ladies. More, please.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, October 14, 2024
Note: Pick a card. No, not that card, this card. Pick this card right here. This card is now your card, okay? I will now take the card back from you. And now I will hold it up and ask: Is this your card? It is??? Ta-daaah!!! That’s why they call me Billdini the Magnificent.
-
By the Numbers:
4 days!!!
Days 'til the full harvest moon: 3
Days 'til Sparta Persimmon Days in Missouri: 4
Weekly unemployment claims announced last week, up from the previous week mostly because of Hurricane Helene: 258,000
Percent chance that Goldman Sachs believes that the U.S. has hit its 2% inflation goal: 100%
Percent drop in Tesla's stock price after investors were "underwhelmed" by the introduction of their driverless "cybercab": 8%
Number of times Kamala Harris has appeared on the cover of Vogue, including the latest issue in which the magazine endorses her: 2
Number of times a year's worth of candy corn production would circle the moon if laid end to end: 21
MLB Championship Playoffs
L.A. Dodgers lead the N.Y. Mets 1 game to 0
Game 1 of N.Y. Yankees vs. Cleveland is tonight
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Monday, Monday…
-
CHEERS to Election Central. I know most of you depend on me for up-to-the-second data on how things are swinging as we look ahead to the general election just 22 days from now. Here's a quick summary of my current predictions for some key races:
Swing state 1: Tossup
Swing state 2: Coin flip
Swing state 3: On the edge
Swing state 4: Could go either way
Swing state 5: Too close to call
Swing state 6: Fifty-fifty
Remember: if you place wagers using my data, I get 20 percent of your winnings.
CHEERS to this year's designated #1 peacemakers. The Nobel Committee's most prestigious award was handed out Friday, and I'm as shocked as you must be that it's not the previous U.S. president for planning and staging the peaceful transfer of classified national security documents from the White House to the omelet bar at Mar-a-Lago. Instead they wisely chose…
…a Japanese anti-nuclear weapon group comprising survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nihon Hidankyo was given the award “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said. “And for demonstrating, through witness testimony, that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”
That no weapons have been used in anger in 80 years is "an encouraging fact," something to which the grassroots Japanese movement, which is also known as Hibakusha, has "contributed greatly," the Nobel Committee said.
Its members have used their personal, first hand accounts of the blasts and their horrific aftermath to create educational campaigns. These testimonies "help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear weapons," the committee said, adding it had not yet been able to contact the group's members to tell them the news.
Among the much-bandied-about nominees (286 total this year) who allegedly didn’t make the cut this year: Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, UNESCO, Greta Thunberg, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and also me, for forging a lasting peace between the warring factions of squirrels in their territorial boundary dispute between Eastern Porch Roof and Western Porch Roof. (And we have the scars to prove it.)
CHEERS to that guy America really, really liked. Happy 134th birthday to Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower, bringer-downer of the Third Reich and our 34th president during America’s Era of Leave It To Beaver. According to author Cormac O'Brien (Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents), Eisenhower loved golf and played at least 150 rounds a year during his presidency, a right he earned because he worked hard, smart and responsibly. And while the deplorables went apeshit over Hillary Clinton's brief bout of pneumonia in 2016, they say nothing about Ike’s heart attacks, his intestinal affliction known as ileitis (a cousin of Crohn's disease), and his 1957 cerebral occlusion during which he terrified wife Mamie by "stuttering a bunch of incoherent words" and then "pounding his fists in frustration at not being able to enunciate his own thoughts." Then there's this:
His domestic agenda bore a striking resemblance to those of his Democratic predecessors.
Ike was a notable grill master, too.
He expanded Social Security and spent lavishly on public works projects such as the interstate highway system. Though mostly silent on issues of race, he intervened forcefully to support the desegregation of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas [and signed into law the first civil rights bill in 82 years].
He was also just as disgusted as Harry Truman had been by Senator Joe McCarthy's rabid anticommunism rabble-rousing.
Plus he famously had a few harsh words for our out-of-control military-industrial complex that, ironically, he helped create. Pay your respects here. And once more, for old time's sake: Sieg heil! [Thppt!] Heil! [Thppt!] right in der Fuhrer's face.
-
BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
-
END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
JEERS to Democratic brain farts we'd like to forget. 119 years ago today, in 1905, former president Grover Cleveland wrote an article for 'Ladies Home Journal,' opposing women's voting rights. His words:
"We all know how much further women go than men in their social rivalries and jealousies...sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by men and women in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence."
I believe the relative position of his wife's rolling pin that night was right between the eyes.
CHEERS to mo' money. Memo to seniors: your Social Security checks are getting a li’l bump next year. It’s not as much as the last few years, unfortunately. But considering Republicans would do away with it entirely (even though it’s our fucking money, not theirs), it remains the strongest anti-poverty program for seniors our country has ever created:
The 2.5% COLA increase will boost the average Social Security payment by about $50 starting in January, the agency said on Thursday.
You’re welcome, Johnny.
This year, the average monthly benefit payment for retirees is about $1,927, according to the Social Security Administration. After the 2.5% increase, that will rise to $1,976 per month. Married couples who both collect Social Security will see their average benefit rise to $3,089 per month next year, up from $3,014 currently.
Roughly 68 million Social Security recipients will see the new 2025 amounts starting with the January 2025 payments. Another 7.5 million people who receive Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, will start receiving their increased payments on Dec. 31, 2024, the agency said.
Courtesy of your friendly DEMOCRATIC administration. Please remember that when you cast your vote this year. And good luck at Bingo tonight.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: October 14, 2014
CHEERS to gettin' outta Dodge. The sanctions are working as intended. Russian He-Man Vladimir Putin is reportedly pulling his forces away from the Ukraine border: The troop pullout came before an expected meeting between Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko in Milan next week. The West has introduced a wide range of sanctions against Russian banks, energy companies and individuals for Moscow's role in the Ukrainian conflict, which has claimed the lives of over 3,000 people. And I heard Pootey-Poot exclaim as he drove his tank out of sight, "I'll be back, Obama! But for now, to all a good night." [10/14 Update: And here we are.]
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to a foliage-free fall. Chances are your heart was in your throat a dozen years ago today when Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian daredevil who never met a law of gravity he didn’t love, headed 24 miles up to the fringe of space in a giant balloon…and then jumped:
-
What followed was a plunge reaching a speed of 843 mph that had millions of viewers pearl-clutching and sweating bullets of uncertainty bordering on panic, but all ended well when the charismatic hero used his smarts and competence to inject confidence into the situation, avoiding a crash and landing in the winner's circle as cheers of victory drowned out the naysayers who had prematurely written his epitaph. It was a good day for Baumgartner. It was an even better day for political and financial-sector metaphors.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"Um—" Kamala Harris Stumped When Asked To Name Three Good Things About Cheers and Jeers
—Mediaite
-
