Let’s Check the DK Ukraine Relief Tote Board
Another month has flown by since we last did this, so let’s check in on the Daily Kos relief fund for the Ukrainian civilians (and their furry friends) affected by Russia’s daily war crimes. As of this morning, you’ve contributed:
$3,840,543.98
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.
Despite the perpetual whining of the armchair generals, Ukraine’s military continues sticking to the plan, making progress with creativity, tenacity, and a kind of get-off-my-lawnism that Putin’s goons will never figure out how to overcome. Many thanks for your continued support of the civilians keeping things as normal as possible on the home front. It all helps.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, September 10, 2024
Note: Tomorrow is Kos's birthday. Just so we don’t both get him the same thing: I bought him a Tickle Me George Soros action figure with freedom-strangling grip and a copy of Das Kapital with a hidden dagger inside. Maybe you can get him some biking socks?
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By the Numbers:
5 days!!!
Days 'til the start of Rosh Hashanah: 22
Days 'til Maine's Farmington Fair: 5
Percent of registered Wisconsin and Pennsylvania Democrats, respectively, polled by CBS News who say they will definitely vote in the 2024 election: 94%, 92%
Percent chance that President Biden signed an order prioritizing federal grants for projects with higher worker wages: 100%
Number of Boeing workers represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which just secured a deal on their behalf and averted a strike: 33,000
Age of James Earl Jones when he died yesterday: 93
Opening box office gross for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, the second-highest September opening ever: $110 million
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Doogie gets a doggie…
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CHEERS to the rumble in the Keystone State Jungle. ABC News moderators Linsey Davis and David Muir's biceps think they have an agenda all laid out for getting the candidates to weigh in on the issues tonight during the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Captain Weirdo Pants. But that'll be difficult, considering one of the candidates (take a wild guess which one) will only be there to hurl insults, lie, sweat, complain about his 34 felony convictions, and generally make an ass of himself. (The mic cutoffs by the moderators may or may not help. We’ll see.) The verbal fisticuffs start at 9ET at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. As always, the nimble-fingered Daily Kos front-pagers will live-blog from their moms' basements—Ha Ha Ha, that joke never gets old!
Nicely played.
Basically, if Kamala wants to win the debate, she needs to show a command of the issues and a willingness to throw a punch at the opportune moment. If Trump wants to win the debate, he needs Kamala to get vaporized by a meteor.
JEERS to polls. THEY DON’T MATTER, PEOPLE! Gawd, I'm so sick of everyone hanging on every number that gets released by some pollster looking for clicks and controversy. I'm so over it. Stop listening to the pollsters, people! And in other news, I've just been handed a bulletin:
Kamala Harris leads Donald Trump by 4 percentage points, 50-46%, among all adults and registered voters alike, and by 6 points, 52-46%, among likely voters in the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll. […]
VP signals the direction of her poll numbers.
This analysis, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, finds that support for Harris goes from 54% of all adults younger than 40 to 64% of those identified as likely voters.
Trump's support, meanwhile, drops from 42% of adults in this age group to 33% of those likely to vote.
Countervailing movement in Trump's direction doesn't reach the level of statistical significance in any group.
Polls matter, people! Polls matter!!! Nobel prizes for the pollsters! WHEEEEEE!!!
JEERS to the start of our new national nightmare. As if election mania wasn’t bad enough, Congress gaveled back into session this week, and one thing we know: at the stroke of midnight on September 30th, if a new budget hasn’t been passed, the doors close again, the locks go click, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson turns back into a bowl of weird gumbo, and once again the country's honor devolves into the laughingstock of the 21st century world. To clarify the situation and what it means, here's a summary of the online press coverage:
Blah blah blah both sides are responsible…blah blah blah why isn’t Joe Biden doing anything about it?...blah blah blah this is a great opportunity for Donald Trump…blah blah blah...WHAT’S KAMALA HARRIS’S POLICY POSITION ON GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWNS???!!! … Andrea Mitchell is confused, but pretty sure this is all the Democrats' fault…[pop-up ad]…[another pop-up ad]…[more pop-up ads]…that's all I can muster because the goddamn pop-up ads are covering my screen six-deep…[Slams laptop shut]
Please note that, if there’s a shutdown, the faces on Mount Rushmore will be put in storage and replaced with cardboard cutouts. If the shutdown persists, the cardboard cutouts will be put in storage and replaced with four coconuts, said a cardboard cutout of a Park Service spokesman moments before he was replaced with a coconut by his cardboard cutout supervisor.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to talkin' and textin' and takin' pitchurs…oh my! In a ritual now more widely anticipated than the unveiling of the latest Ben & Jerry's flavor, Apple unveiled its latest iPhone yesterday by executives in turtlenecks taking turns walking around a stage muttering, "Hmm, that's weird—it worked fine in rehearsal" to wild distorted cheers and applause from their millions of fans. Among the alleged new secrets of the iPhone 16:
» 34xT569yu to replace the 34xT569yt
» 56907bit656789
» Ice cream maker
» Hurricane shifter
The iPhone 16 also comes with this handy new storage case.
» fRPohtRtEty technology
» 18 cameras with free starter pack of flash bulbs
» Fully dockable with the International Space Station (Suck it, Boeing.)
» Built-in slingshot that can whip a peach pit with 100% accuracy from 80 yards
» Optional 23iTT59097 pack to enhance the 34xT569yu (But don’t use it to enhance your 5675jg77 or the room's gonna get real smoky real fast.)
» Butt-ID unlocking feature
» A mystery feature that you’ll discover when it releases itself at 3am
» Tim Cook will have a drone come to your house and deliver a pot pie he made himself with his own two hands and lots of love
All very impressive. But it doesn’t matter from where I stand. I’m still holding out for the most important feature I require in a smart phone: a beeper that goes off right before I’m about to run into a lamp post.
CHEERS and JEERS to returning to sender. Well, that was an interesting mission. The inaugural voyage of the Boeing Starliner is finally over. The reusable shuttle—a competitor of SpaceX’s Falcon-9s—touched down late Friday in Gladys Higginbotham's petunia patch, and we have bad news and good news.
Wheeeee…...
The bad news: the crew lost their boarding passes and did not accompany the craft back from the International Space Station. The good news: hey, at least the doors stayed on!
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 10, 2014
CHEERS to Internet Slowdown Day. In a show of geek/nerd solidarity in defense of maintaining and protecting net neutrality, today you'll see a lot of sites (including Daily Kos) participating in a symbolic day in the proverbial internet "slow lane"…
Participating sites will display an "infinitely-loading site loading icon" to illustrate to visitors what the Web could be like if broadband providers are allowed to offer priority service as part of the upcoming Net neutrality rules. The companies and activist organizations—including the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace…Reddit, Foursquare, Vimeo, Wordpress and Boing Boing—will also call on visitors to contact their US representatives and officially protest the "fast lane" aspect of the potential new regulation that had originally been proposed by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler as part of the new Net neutrality rules.
And in case that doesn't get our collective attention, internet slow lanes will also affect the online porn industry, which is why they're joining the cause. Their icon will be a pair of boobs in mid-jiggle.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the sharpest knife in the media’s drawer. Rhodes Scholar, best-selling author, Emmy and Grammy winner, avid angler, and journalist Rachel Maddow has been hosting her own show on MSNBC for sixteen years as of this week. (Although she’s pared back to Mondays so that she can focus on new projects.) I try not to engage in pundit worship, but...she's brilliant, witty and everybody loves her except those Republicans who fear her. "Scary fact-wielding lesbian truth-teller! Run for your lives!"
Happy broadcastiversary, Rachel.
As much as I despised the Trump horror show, his reign of carnage and chaos brought out the dogged gumshoe in Rachel, who did her damndest to cover as many of his scandals as she could—we give her an A for effort in her quest to become the whack-a-mole champ. Today she focuses, with equal doggedness, on Project 2025 and Biden administration's continued efforts to deal with the disasters that were tossed in its lap.
She's also an entertaining mixologist who whips up a mean libation occasionally. Money quote from half a dozen years back, which sticks a well-placed finger in the GOP's eye: "I'm undoubtedly a liberal, which means that I'm in almost total agreement with the Eisenhower-era Republican party platform."
[Shakes head.]
“I Like Ike’” is now the rallying cry of the hippies. Who'da thunk it?
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
"And we are ready, we are willing, and we are able to spark a new era of Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool splashing." [Long pause] "You can clap for that.”
—Kimberly Guilfoyle
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