Take the C&J Insurrectionist Idiot Quiz—Part XI
Same rules as usual: guess which of these are actual recent arrests, pleas, and/or convictions of some of the MAGA cult idiots who took part in the attempted overthrow of the U.S. government on January 6th, 2021...and which are not. Good luck:
1. A South Carolina man is sentenced to over three years in prison (and another three of supervised release) for emptying a can of bear spray on Capitol Police officers. When he got home, he Googled "The statute of limitations for assault on a police officer” and “What is the definition of a domestic terrorist?”
2. A Wisconsin man who fled to Ireland after participating in the riot got homesick and returned, whereupon he was promptly arrested and will now serve at least three months behind bars.
3. A former paid staffer for Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin and follower of Nazi Nick Fuentes' cult gets 18 months in prison for his role in the attack, which included breaching Speaker Pelosi's office.
4. A Montana grandmother is sentenced to five months in prison for hurling her six grandchildren at police officers and using her nephew as a battering ram to break through the security line, after which she took them all to Denny's.
Oh, no. Nothing weird about these MAGA weirdos.
5. A hatchet-wielding "Three Percenter" cult member in a "Covid is a Scam" hat—oh, and also a former California police chief—is deemed too dangerous to be released from custody pending his appeal.
6. A former attorney representing the Oath Keepers cult—and former girlfriend of cult leader Elmer Stewart Rhodes—pleads guilty to conspiring to obstruct the certification of the 2020 election.
7. An actor who took part in the fake gang fight against Ron Burgundy's news team in Anchorman pleads guilty to taking part in the real gang fight against the Capitol Police.
8. A MAGA mime from West Virginia is sentenced to six weeks in prison for luring police away from a doorway to rescue him by making them think he was trapped inside an invisible box and rapidly running out of air.
9. A North Carolina man found guilty of six felonies and three misdemeanors is sentenced to nearly five years in the hoosegow for wielding a spear during the insurrection, which Donald Trump called "peaceful" and "loving," but only because he's so weird.
10. And our list wouldn’t be complete without a Florida man. This Proud Boy with a history of online racist comments helped use a "TRUMP 2020" billboard to push back the police line, and has been indicted on seven charges.
Answers: All of them really happened except #4 and #8. (But we’re not ruling them out as a future possibility.) Our thanks to Joe Jervis at the Joe.My.God. blog for keeping track of how the idiotest of the idiots—over 1,265 now—are getting rolled up.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, July 30, 2024
Note: If you take every third letter in today's C&J and then put them together, they'll spell out a special one-word greeting in a new language making its debut here this morning. On this planet, anyway.
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By the Numbers:
2 days!!!
Days 'til the Democratic National Convention: 20
Days 'til the Lumberjack World Championships in Hayward, Wisconsin: 2
Membership of the National Federation of Teachers, which endorsed Kamala Harris last week: 1.8 million
Number of athletes taking part in the Paris Olympic Games: 10,500
Rank of the U.S. (593), France (573), and Australia (460) among countries with the most participants: #1, #2, #3
Number of performances by Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden during his 10-year residency, which wrapped up Friday: 150
Number of performers who have hosted more shows there than Billy Joel: 0
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Wakey, wakey…
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CHEERS to the juggernautiest juggernaut in the history of juggernatism. Let's check in and see how the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris is going:
» Over 160,000 women took part in a Zoom call, but not before 190,000 “cat ladies for Kamala” took part on a Zoom call, but definitely after the 42,000 "White Men for Kamala" Zoom call which hasn’t happened yet and will probably be 100,000+ by the time it happens. but not before the golf cart parade for Harris that took place down at The Villages in Florida that was so long it could be seen from space.
» The Harris campaign has raised over $1 trillion from small donors, with the average contribution of $1.50.
No, she’s not waving at you, she’s waving at me me me.
» To fit everybody who wants to attend, the Democratic National Convention will now take place in Chicago, with overflow seating in every city and open field in the country.
» Current slogans: "Trump and his followers are weird," "Freedom!" "We're not going back" and "The prosecutor vs. the felon."
» The choices available to fill the VP slot are a bench deeper than the hole J.D. Vance has dug for himself.
» The latest polls show that the Harris campaign is in the process of becoming a Democratic tornado inside a maelstrom inside a blender on the "destroy" setting on the precipice of destiny. Margin of error: .01 percent
» Over 170,000 people have signed up as volunteers.
And I've just been handed an update: in the time it took you to read this far, all the numbers above have doubled. Or as we like to call it: good inflation.
CHEERS to signature events. Today marks the 59th anniversary of a milestone that reminds us what a Democratic president and solid Democratic majorities in Congress can accomplish—something that wasn't a slam dunk until late in the game. You know it, you love it, millions can't live without it. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you MEDICARE...
The legislative logjam finally broke with the election of 1964, which swept LBJ into the White House behind large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. Shortly after that election, a breakthrough occurred when House Ways and Means Chairman Rep. Wilbur Mills (D-Ark.), who had previously blocked Medicare proposals, said, "I can support a payroll tax for financing health benefits just as I have supported a payroll tax for cash benefits."
Johnson signs, Truman watches.
When the long-stalled Medicare effort came before the 89th Congress in January 1965, congressional leaders designated the bills as H.R. 1 and S. 1. Despite determined resistance by organized medicine and some of its congressional allies, the Medicare bill moved forward. A Mills rewrite cleared the House on April 8 by 313-115. The Senate approved its version on July 9 by 68-21. A conference committee labored for more than a week in mid-July to reconcile 513 differences between the two chambers.
At the [July 30] White House bill-signing ceremony, Johnson enrolled [Harry] Truman as the first Medicare beneficiary and presented him with the nation’s first Medicare card.
It'll be interesting to see what historians write in 2069 on the 59th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, which adds another pillar of support to that Democratic Party-built structure and is still standing despite active Republican sabotage. I'm optimistic that with steady management and intelligent tweaking, it'll be deemed a success. Of course, the ultimate proof will be revealed in the number of GOP yahoos yelling, "Keep your government hands off my Affordable Care Act!" I think I may join them—I'll be 101 and it'll be a fine way to test out the battering ram on my motorized scooter.
CHEERS to order in the court. We'll file this under Today's Not So Boring Correction: Governor and Epic Presidential Campaign Flame-out Hall of Famer Ron DeSantis's "Florida: where woke goes to die" slogan is no more. Thanks to a ruling by a federal judge, the new slogan is: "Florida: we just got woke up again." Permanently, as fate would have it…
Judge Mark Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida issued a permanent injunction, saying the [Stop W.O.K.E.] law that bans diversity training in private workplaces “violates free speech rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.” […]
So weird.
“Censoring business owners from speaking in favor of ideas that politicians don’t like is a move dripped straight from the authoritarian playbook,” she said in a statement. […]
The legislation—HB 7, formally called the “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act”—is also aimed at blocking school teachers and college professors from offering their opinions on what DeSantis described as “pernicious ideologies” that could potentially make students, because of their race, feel personally responsible for past racism, sexism, or other discrimination in the U.S. That part of the law also has an injunction and is awaiting a ruling from a higher court.
No word yet from DeSantis himself. We’re told a statement will be released shortly after he's done licking the morning pudding off his fingers.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to the first ringy dingy. 110 years ago this week, in 1914, transcontinental telephone service began when someone in New York called someone in San Francisco. The conversation ended with the successful sale of a couple hundred bucks worth of term life insurance, a Thighmaster, and an extended warranty on a Model T. Smooth sales rep.
CHEERS to a fine start. The 2024 Olympics kicked off Friday. LeBron James and Coco Gauff led the American delegation as flag bearers, and Team USA currently leads the medal count with 592 to the rest of the world’s six. For the uninitiated, here's a brief history of host country France:
It all started when a flaming radioactive baguette entered the atmosphere and landed on Planet Earth, but instead of killing all the inhabitants, they all just stood around while adjusting their berets and regarded it with bemused disdain while taking deep drags off their cigarettes. Then, after hurling several insults at it, they hacked away at the charred remains until it became fertile soil and gave birth to the wine industry. (The cheese industry soon followed after the "cow meteor shower” of 1327.)
Ugh. I have no idea which one it is. You figure it out.
Then there were a bunch of kings and princes and so forth, including King Louis IVX, who joined forces with Senior Awesome General Donald Trump to defeat the British immigrant caravan in 1783 and secure the very best blessings of liberty (even better than Lincoln's blessings, believe me). Then Napoleon met his Waterloo, Pepe Le Pew took over, and no one remembers much after that until General Ronald Reagan stormed the beaches of Normandy and did the whole blessings of liberty thing again. Then everyone got 16 weeks of vacation, free health care, child care, elder care, and a complimentary guillotine. And by refusing to participate in the Iraq War, that's why we continue serving "freedom fries" in the House cafeteria.
We'd like to thank the Texas School Board for providing us with that insightful lesson using their latest set of legislature-approved facts. C&J plans to watch some highlights as my eyeballs happen to catch them. But for the record, we refuse to recognize the legitimacy of the Olympic Games until they bring back the original format from Athens circa 776 BC, and make the athletes compete in the nude. God bless tradition.
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Ten years ago in C&J: July 30, 2014
CHEERS to glowing reviews. An appointee to Ireland's Council of State, Ruairí McKiernan, flew to Detroit for the Netroots Nation convention, and in a "HuffPo" (that's how the cool kids say it) column writes that he was impressed:
Everywhere I went at Netroots Nation were incredible movers, shakers and world changers. These are people who are mostly in their twenties and thirties and leading organizations with the power to engage and mobilize millions of people through sophisticated online campaigning and organizing. They are birthing a new world superpower—a digitally facilitated citizen superpower that offers hope for people and planet.
Netroots Nation gave me hope that we are more organized than we think, that we are more connected than we imagined, that we are creating a tipping point towards a better world. Let us keep marching forward together—not one step back.
Meanwhile Kossack San Diego Dem posted her thoughts and pics from the Water Is A Human Right march and rally, including a shot of yours truly illustrating why the Detroit cops gave me a wide berth. We didn’t change the world in those four days—but we made a joyful angry noise and moved the ball forward a bit. Decent vittles, too.
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And just one more…
JEERS to today’s weather. Here’s today’s weather, brought to you by Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, Occidental, and their political sycophants:
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For tomorrow’s weather, see today’s weather.
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
“It’s no surprise that teachers consider Cheers and Jeers essential for their students. Morning snark is essential for growing bodies to get a head start in and out of the kiddie pool.”
—Sammi Brondo
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