Let’s Check the DK Ukraine Relief Tote Board
Yikes. It’s been a month since we last revisited the Daily Kos relief fund for Ukraine’s civilians—and their furry friends—affected by Russia’s daily war crimes. (Yeah, they’re still at it, although Ukraine finally has the green light to defend itself by lobbing heavier hardware deeper into Russia.) As of this morning, you’ve helped raise close to four million dollars. Or, to be more accurate...
$3,873,561.17
If you'd like to support the four chosen groups—the World Central Kitchen, AmeriCares, Razom for Ukraine, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare—click here and ActBlue will guide you through the rest. Can’t thank you enough.
As Ukraine’s military continues sticking to the plan, making progress with creativity, tenacity, and a deep respect for defending democracy, Putin is sitting back hoping to hell that his Washington-bound pet fascist poodle bails him out of his catastrophic blunder—and he probably will. Strange times.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Note: A reminder that today is Have A Bad Day Day. If you violate the spirit of the occasion by having a good day, that would be very bad, which would actually make your good day a bad day. Good for you! (In a bad way. Which is good! But that’s bad. Good! Good bad!)
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By the Numbers:
10 days!!!
Days 'til Xmas and the first night of Hanukkah: 36
Days 'til the Wood Memorial Library Gingerbread House Festival in South Windsor, Connecticut: 10
Real inflation in Russia between September 2023 and September 2024, with no signs of dropping: 22%
Square meters of new unsold apartments across Russia: 53 million
Number of Americans among the Rhodes Scholars chosen for 2025: 32
Number of U.S. students who applied for those slots: 3,000
Amount fetched at auction for the gold pocket watch given to Carpathia Capt. Arthur Rostron for saving 700 passengers from the Titanic: $2 million
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Wakey wakey…
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CHEERS to getting into the thick of it. In one of his last substantial acts as president, Joe Biden flew down to Brazil over the weekend to emphasize the need for the world to wield a massive greenhouse gas-cutting machete and save the planet:
"Today, I'm proud to be here, the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Amazon rainforest, to recommit protecting the rainforests like this one. The most powerful solutions we have to fight climate change is all around us, the world’s forests. Trees breathe carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. And yet each minute, the world is chopping down the equivalent of ten soccer fields worth of forest," Biden said. […]
Another presidential first.
Biden also toured the local Museu da Amazônia, where he engaged with "local indigenous leaders, environmental defenders, conservationists, and entrepreneurs," according to the White House. The museum on the Adolpho Ducke Forest Reserve, which the White House says is "one of the most important research sites in the Amazon," has partnerships with many U.S. institutions.
Soon after he takes office, Biden's successor is expect to invite those indigenous leaders to Washington. So he can immediately deport them.
JEERS to counting your chickens before they're hatched (then sorted, verified, and counted). Have you seen what's happening in Oregon? Holy cow, Democrats are one race call away from holding a supermajority in both legislative chambers. All eyes are on the 22nd House district, in which Democrat Lesly Muñoz now holds a lead of 34 votes. Shaaaaame on them’s who called the race too early:
Early results showed Cramer with a narrow lead. Oregon’s largest newspaper called the race for her, the anti-abortion group that supported Cramer’s candidacy hailed her victory and Republicans in the House touted their ability to keep Democrats from winning the 36th seat needed to create new taxes or increase existing ones without GOP support.
2024’s Comeback Kid?
But when Marion County released updated numbers Wednesday evening, Muñoz had pulled within 138 votes of Cramer. By Thursday, she was leading by one vote. And after Marion County tallied more votes Friday, Muñoz was up by 34.
The race is of critical importance statewide: A Muñoz victory would give House Democrats the three-fifths supermajority needed to pass revenue-raising bills without GOP support. Supermajorities in both chambers would give Democrats, who also control the governor’s office, more power as they attempt to pass a transportation funding package in the 2025 session.
As the final votes are counted, the Munoz campaign will keep us posted on the results. The Cramer campaign, meanwhile, will keep us reaching for our earplugs as they whine and complain so loud we can hear them from all the way over here. Y’know, in the real Portland.
CHEERS to today's edition of Well, That's Just Cold. Courtesy of Mediaite, which reports…
Rudy Giuliani has fallen a long way since the days he was regaled as “America’s Mayor”—as CNN reported Monday he’s now reduced to fighting to keep his refrigerator amid multiple lawsuits seeking to claim his assets.
[Reporter Kana] Scannell [says] he was now “in the process of turning over his Manhattan penthouse apartment, valued at around $6 million, to these women, but he says now that he wants the refrigerator that is in it. So he’s trying to kind of claw that back."
This has been today's edition of Well, That's Just Cold
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to spinning in circles. 147 years ago this week, in 1877, Thomas Edison announced to the world that he had invented the phonograph machine. True story: he broke the news via a phonograph recording, which sounded like this:
"Hello, is this thing on? Testes...testes...one two three.
Edison's device. Today we record stuff with our phones, which would blow the minds of Edison and especially Alexander Graham Bell.
We begin bombing the Russians in 30 minutes. Ha ha! That always cracks 'em up at the Elks Lodge. But seriously, folks. Mary had a little lamb—her parents were mortified.
I just can't help myself... You folks fly in from out of town? I bet your arms are tired! I slay me... Oh, by the way, the walrus will be Paul and Luke will be Vader's kid. Oops…'Spoiler alert!'
I'm bored. Can I go home and invent the light bulb now?"
Only known cure for Restless Inventor Syndrome, according to doctors: take two patent applications and call me in the morning.
JEERS to upholding my sworn obligation to my faithful readership. Apologies in advance for briefly shining the spotlight on the next administration, but it's a requirement to justify my $5 an hour salary. But at least we can make this quick. Here's a roundup up the next president's cabinet nominees, in alphabetical order:
The anti-Christ
The anti-vaxxer
The creep
The felon
The ghoul
The grifter
The other grifter
The other other grifter
The hack
The oilman
The puppy murderer
The Rapture Welcomer
The sex offender who assaults adult women
The sex offender who assaults underage women
The sicko
The suckup
Or, if you want to lump them all together in one bucket: the weirdos.
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Ten years ago in C&J: November 19, 2014
JEERS to one-dimensional chess played badly. Because sometimes the silly season just can't be silly enough, today the still-Democrat-led Senate is going to vote on the Keystone XL pipeline at the behest of Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu so she can make it part of her plan to win her December 6 runoff election. It's a bold three-step plan:
Step 1: Get the Keystone bill passed and run on a re-election platform of, "Look! I just helped get a bill drafted by my Republican opponent passed!"
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Re-election!!!
And if that doesn't swing enough Republicans to her side, she's always got a backup plan: emptying a Glock into a copy of Obamacare. [11/19/24 Update: She lost the runoff to future MAGA cultist Bill Cassidy. Guess she shoulda spent more time on Step 2.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to words that Republicans have apparently forgotten all about. On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln—who would’ve quit the party long ago if he was around to see what it had become—delivered The Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the Pennsylvania battlefield. I read these words every year and their simple elegance makes me appreciate them more each time. What a distillation of the American experiment, and what a road map for how we must survive the worst leadership vacuum ever for the next four years:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
True Fact: Lincoln’s speech was punctuated several times by audience shouts of “You da man!!!”
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
If you want the condensed version, here's the corporate-approved PowerPoint Presentation of the speech. (The “next” button is in the lower right-hand corner). A century and a half later we still haven't perished. But Lincoln would no doubt be alarmed at the rabid wave of Republican dotardism that followed when the 45th president brought his thuggish brand of disgrace to Gettysburg during his 2016 campaign, and now the Jefferson Davis clone gets a second bite at the USA-killing apple starting in January. Shall the dead, at long last, have died in vain? Watch this space.
Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
“First sunrise as Miss Universe. Waking up in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool with gratitude, dreams, and a crown.”
—Miss Universe Victoria Kjaer
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