Happy Birthday, Jimmy
The dynamic duo.
Taking a moment from fixating on the endless crises being deliberately unleashed on the country by the 47th president to say "Happy Birthday" to our dear departed 39th.
If you don’t count George Washington's fake choppers, Jimmy Carter—who would be 101 today—owned the most famous set of presidential teeth in history. That Jimmy grin and the sense of optimism that went with it was what the country wanted and needed after the Republicans’ Watergate mess.
Although his one term isn't considered a rousing success, he kept us out of war, focused our attention on energy policy, protected huge amounts of land, was at the helm during the creation of eight million jobs, brokered peace between Israel and Egypt, and brought honesty and integrity back to the White House.
But before all that, he was a U.S. Navy officer so courageous that he "was physically lowered into a damaged nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ontario, and exposed to levels of radiation unthinkable today after an accident."
Jimmy and his bud Willie
Carter's post-presidency is where he really shined (like leading the charge to eradicate guinea worm disease in Africa) and he will always warrant every accolade we can throw Daily Kos community member 81380's way.
His motto at the Carter Center says it all: "Waging Peace, Fighting Disease, Building Hope." Done…done…and done.
And kudos for throwing jabs at the right-wing freak show, as he did in his speech during the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington in 2013:
"I believe we all know how Dr. King would have reacted to the new ID requirements to exclude certain voters, especially African-Americans. I think we all know how Dr. King would have reacted to the Supreme Court striking down a crucial part of the Voters' Rights Act, just recently passed overwhelmingly by Congress.
President Carter, 1979
I think we all know how Dr. King would have reacted to unemployment among African-Americans being almost twice the rate of white people and for teenagers at 42 percent. I think we all know how Dr. King would have reacted to our country being awash in guns and for more and more states passing "stand your ground" laws. I think we know how Dr. King would have reacted to people of the District of Columbia still not having full citizenship rights.
And I think we all know how Dr. King would have reacted to having more than 835,000 African-American men in prison—five times as many as when I left office—and with one-third of all African-American males being destined to be in prison in their lifetimes."
What more can we say? Happy birthday, Jimmy, wherever you are. In the pantheon of Most Excellent American Role Models, you stand so tall your statues won’t need a pedestal.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, October 1, 2025
Note: Coming up on Eyewitness News: President’s brain functionally off the deep end. Straightjacket at 11.
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By the Numbers:
4 days!!!
Days 'til we turn our clocks back an hour: 32
Days 'til the Atlantic Antic Street Festival in Brooklyn: 4
Percent of Florida voters polled by the James Madison Institute who are against the state’s proposal to get rid of all vaccine requirements for public schoolchildren: 62%
Percent who are for the proposal: 29%
Year that signs—recently removed by Trump's Department of the Interior—were installed around Maine's Acadia National Park educating visitors about climate change: 2023
Percent chance music legend Cat Stevens is canceling his North American book tour due to visa issues: 100%
Amount for which Jacob Chesley, aka the "QAnon Shaman" who helped storm the Capitol on January 6th, is suing the federal government and Trump directly: $40 trillion
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 180 (including 3 plagues and 27 words of wisdom). Soul Protection Factor 8 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Boppin' to a sick beat…
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CHEERS to October. Busy month ahead! Autumn kicks into high gear for leaf-peepers, cider-lovers, flannel wearers, and pumpkin spice nerds. The Supreme Court gavels itself into session (Clarence Thomas will put out the finest linen Nazi napkins from pal Harlan Crow for their mimosas, and the upside-down American flag Cruella Alito sent up the pole this morning is made of the finest silk). Pink ribbons proliferate for breast cancer awareness month. The Nobel Prizes will be doled out next week, and once again I’m the favorite to win in the category of “Just You For Being You.” Plus:
Pro tip: do NOT dress up your pet like food for Halloween if you live within a hundred miles of the Vance or RFK Jr. household.
Yom Kippur starts at sundown this evening. Barack and Michelle Obama celebrate their 33rd anniversary Friday. October’s full moon (the 6th) is called a “Hunter’s Moon” because it’s in the shape of his laptop Ha Ha Ha Ha Topical Moon Humor! Advocates for the right to keep and bare arms—lots and lots of arms—will celebrate World Octopus Day on the 8th. It's LGBTQ History Month and the 11th is "Coming Out Day." It's also “ex-gay awareness month” during which we’ll all reflect on how there aren't actually any ex-gays to be aware of. Columbus Day (next Monday) becomes more of an unwanted relic as more states and communities replace it with Indigenous Peoples Day. And I’m predicting the right-wingers will boycott Halloween on the 31st because, of course, civilians wearing masks is now worse than the holocaust.
Ukraine will continue their ongoing Russian tank and artillery blow-up-a-thon while Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu continues his blow-civilians-up-so-I-can-avoid-prison-time-for-corruption-a-thon.
Promising new movies include Daniel Day-Lewis’s return (triumphant, we assume) in Anemone, plus Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, documentaries on John Candy and George Orwell, and 101 horror flicks. And hovering over everything like a wet blanket is the final grinding month of the 2025 U.S. political season, including the New York City mayoral and Virginia gubernatorial races, polling madness, and wall-to-wall political ads. Strap yourself in. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.
CHEERS to high times in the upper chamber. What an exciting Tuesday it was in Washington! The Senate considered a motion to start debating the motion to end the beginning of the debate to decide if debating a motion to debate is debatable, or if they should just move straight ahead with debating the motion to debate the motion to end debate right at the start. Having done that, a budget resolution bill was placed in one of three "shell bills," upon which senators took turns trying to guess which shell the bill was under. (You can try this at home, it's great fun.) Having failed to find it after several hours of looking, they holstered their shin flasks and...
[Takes a breath.]
…then, for reasons yet to be made clear, the Republicans all winked at Rand Paul, who is now deciding whether or not to send the motion and its table into retrograde, in which case a bill buster-busting NASA spacecraft will be launched by John Thune to collide with the obstruction and obliterate it. The budget bill is now expected to embark on a cruise to nowhere. God Bless our republic. If we can keep it.
JEERS to today's cars. Call me a nostalgic fool, but none of them have the simplicity or the...um...blackness of the Model T, which was introduced 117 years ago today. Cost: $850. Place in automotive lore: priceless.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to a good start. Today marks the 66th anniversary of the day NASA was established as a part of the dastardly federal government. And thank god it arrived when it did, because other than the deepest depths of the oceans, we'd nearly run out of places on earth to explore. So off into the heavens we went, and today we've got probes probing our solar system and beyond, footsteps on the moon, missions to Mars in the pipeline, and even a "research castle in the sky." Puts a lump in your throat, it does…
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For bestowing equal parts engineering brilliance, human ingenuity and endurance, and jaw-dropping wonderment upon the world, we thank you, NASA, as you start your 803rd month reaching yonward. The Tang? Eh...not so much.
JEERS to vittles violations. The nation was put on high alert this week when it was announced that some 58-million (if I recall my math education correctly, that's 58 followed by 142 zeroes) pounds of corn dogs were recalled:
[T]he U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service … notes that the issue was discovered when Hillshire received multiple consumer complaints of wood in the batter, five of which involved injuries. After an investigation, the company determined that wooden sticks entered the production process prior to product battering.
The contaminated corndogs have been removed from store shelves and are now being consumed by RFK Jr., who was once again the first government health official to yell, “Dibs!”
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 1, 2015
CHEERS to giving the slab the boot. Another victory for the separation of church and state, and in red red red Oklahoma, no less. The Christian supremacists have been ordered to remove their marble Ten Commandments monstrosity from the capitol grounds, and remove it they shall. In its place they should put something more useful. I hear grass is nice.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to another moment with today’s birthday boy. Cronkite (Murray), Carter (Aykroyd), perfection...
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And that’s the way it is.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"You can miss Bill in Portland Maine after a few hours and still enjoy Cheers and Jeers on your own. It’s the balance of kiddie pool splashing and individuality that helps relationships stay strong in the long run."
—Luis Cornejo
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