An Open Letter Regarding Shutdown Confusion
Dear Americans blaming Democrats for the shutdown,
Good morning! Just a moment of your time, please, to clear something up that appears to be sticking in your brain's craw:
Democrats currently control zero chambers of Congress—zero.
Republicans, on the other hand, control the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate and the White House. That’s the entire legislative branch and the entire Executive branch. The Republican-controlled House and Senate leadership is choosing to keep the government shut by refusing to open it. They’re refusing to open it because the Republican president doesn’t want them to. He enjoys the chaos.
And in case you might not know this, the last three government shutdowns happened on the watch of the Republican party. Nice, huh?
So, in conclusion:
Democrats = government open, federal workers get paid.
Republicans = government shut, federal workers get stiffed.
Feel free to adjust your blame accordingly.
Have a great day,
Bill in Portland Maine
Scholar…and close family friend of your aunt’s
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, October 7, 2025
Note: Due to the government shutdown, Scrabble tiles are worth zero points and all the chutes and ladders are closed for the duration. Thank you for your attention to this matter. —GOP
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By the Numbers:
3 days!!!
Days 'til election day: 28
Days 'til the Milford Pumpkin Festival in New Hampshire: 3
American adults polled by YouGov who believe Democrats' top goal in shutdown talks with Republicans is to preserve Affordable Care Act tax credits and restore Medicaid funds: 61%
Percent who believe false Republican accusations that Democrats want to expand Medicaid benefits to “illegals”: 13%
High temperature in Portland, Maine yesterday, a record high for the date: 86 F
Estimated number of "brick and mortar" churches that are expected to close their doors for good in the U.S. this year: 15,000
Percent of Americans surveyed by Pew Research who identify as Christians, down from 78% in 2007: 62%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Meanwhile, on Vancouver Island…..
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CHEERS to turning back the invasion by Field Marshal Bone Spurs. Let's join the federal court case already in progress as the Trump administration tries to get its military invasion of—[checks notes]—Portland, Oregon off the ground:
"Can we mobilize National Guard troops from Oregon?"
"No."
"How about California?"
"No."
True fact: 90 percent of American-made gavels are produced by Acme Croquet Mallets, LLC.
"Texas?"
"Ixnay on the Exas-tay."
"Montana? Wyoming? Utah? The Dakotas?"
"No, no, no, and…………no and no."
"How about from Florida?"
"Sure! But only if they march here with full packs and rake all the forest floors as they go."
"You're kidding."
"Yes, I am. Court adjourned. Invasion denied. Get out. Maybe go read a law book."
Oh well. I told 'em to invade Greenland first. But do they ever listen to me? Nooooooo….
JEERS to the first Monday in October. Ugh. The Supreme Court justices—three normal ones and six corrupt Federalist Society star chamber ones—are back in black and ready to roll back the hands of time this week. Oh what fun they’ll have...
In what could be the term’s biggest blockbuster, the court will decide whether Trump’s sweeping global reciprocal tariffs are an illegal use of emergency authority granted by Congress—and whether tens of billions of dollars collected so far must be refunded.
"It is a staggeringly important case from an economic perspective and from a separation of powers perspective," said Hofstra Law professor and ABC News legal contributor James Sample. "If you think of a tariff as a tax, this is one of the biggest tax hikes in American history, and it didn’t go through Congress at all."
PolitiFact rates this meme: TRUE.
Aside from presidential power, there are consequential cases on the docket involving the Voting Rights Act, free speech and mental health care, and transgender athletes in school sports that could put the court back at the center of the culture wars and transform American society. [...]
The court will also review Trump’s firings of Democratic members of independent federal agencies without cause, despite 90 years of legal precedent forbidding such terminations
Before I forget: C&J sends our congratulations to Justice Alito for winning the annual Flies That Accumulated on the Supreme Court Window Sills Over the Summer Eating Contest. Seventeenth year in a row—6.3 pounds in two minutes and 39 seconds. Hey, they don’t call him Renfield behind his back for nothin’.
P.S. Getting off to an unexpectedly worthy start, the Supremes dashed the hopes of freedom for Jeffrey Epstein’s faithful girl-groomer Ghislaine Maxwell, now enjoying life after being moved by totally-innocent Epstein BFF Donald Trump to a minimum-security facility. Golly, I hope this won’t affect her tennis game, said nobody.
CHEERS to bright medals for bright minds. It's Nobel Prize Giving-Away Week, that most wonderful time of year when I can confirm that, relatively speaking, I'm one dumb-as-rocks manchild with a brain that resembles moldy drywall. The latest winners announced yesterday in the category of ”Medicine, Physiology, or Dessert Topping” hail from…USA! USA! USA! (and one from, I’m told, some shithole country called “Japan”):
Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Dr. Shimon Sakaguchi won the Nobel Prize in medicine on Monday for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance.
True fact: you can slip this into any gumball machine in the world. But no trades if you get one of those tasteless white ones.
The immune system has many overlapping systems to detect and fight bacteria, viruses and other bad actors. Key immune warriors such as T cells get trained on how to spot bad actors. If some instead go awry in a way that might trigger autoimmune diseases, they’re supposed to be eliminated in the thymus—a process called central tolerance.
The Nobel winners unraveled an additional way the body keeps the system in check. … “Their discoveries have been decisive for our understanding of how the immune system functions and why we do not all develop serious autoimmune diseases,” said Olle Kämpe, chair of the Nobel Committee.
The Trump administration immediately demanded the prizes be revoked, insisting that “tolerance equals woke, and Executive Order #3,297 bans woke in every country.” But for the Nobel committee it was an easy decision based on three critical criteria: they pored over the science, analyzed the real-world results and, most critically, confirmed that RFK Jr. had absolutely nothing to do with it.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to Groundhog Day: Gridiron Edition. 109 years ago today, on October 7, 1916, the Georgia Tech Engineers scored a touchdown against the Cumberland University (Tennessee) Bulldogs. Then they scored another. And another. And another. And another. And another. And another. By the time they were done, the scoreboard read 222-0—the most lopsided game in college football history. When asked by their coach why they didn't execute any of the plays they'd spent three months practicing, the Cumberland players responded: "You didn't say please." It's always the little things.
CHEERS to the best pucking sport in the world. Speaking of sports, the NHL hockey season starts tonight! I'm so giddy I just know I'll be knocking strangers' teeth out all day.
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 7, 2015
CHEERS to the one ring to rule them all…and also turn on your lights and order take-out! If you've been wondering how Apple will bounce back from its disappointing introduction of the Apple Watch, wonder no more. Through the arduous journalistic process known as surfing the web, C&J has discovered that Tim Cook & Co. have filed a patent application for a device that'll make you feel a bit Frodo-ish:
Apple has designed a smart ring, which could be the next piece of wearable tech from the Apple Watch maker. The patent application known as “Devices and methods for a ring computing device” published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday, discloses that it carries the description of an advanced ring-style wearable that will depend on a number of inputs such as voice, motion and touch input in order for the user to control and interact wirelessly with other computing devices.
This “Apple ring” would be packed with a rechargeable power source, such as a battery.
Although not included in the patent application, C&J has learned that there will be a version of the iRing specifically designed to summon your butler. They call it the uRang.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to saints who once walked among us. The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner and all-around amazing human being, would’ve been 94 today. A few reasons why we’ll always love the loveable lug:
"If you want to make peace, you speak to your enemy. You don’t shoot him or her. You don’t raise your voice; improve your argument, my father would have quite correctly advised."
“I would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I would much rather go to the other place.”
"I've been married for 56 years and Leah has been very good at keeping my head the right size. Once I was driving and when I looked at her she looked slightly more complacent and self-satisfied than usual. When I wondered why, she showed me this bumper sticker that said: Any woman who wants to be equal to a man has no ambition.”
"As a young priest I traveled to the United States to meet leaders of the civil rights movement, and rejoiced in their victories over prejudice and discrimination. Today, I battle to reconcile that joy with the disproportionate number of African Americans in prison and being shot in the streets."
Ten years ago: President Obama greets the Archbishop at the Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation Youth Centre in Cape Town, South Africa.
"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality."
"Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are."
"I don't preach a social gospel; I preach the Gospel, period. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is concerned for the whole person. When people were hungry, Jesus didn't say, `Now is that political or social?' He said, ‘I feed you.'"
Or, as translated by America's right-wing religious grifter class that excuses every daily act of immorality perpetrated by their so-called “Christian” leaders: "Blah blah blah..."
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
NEW POLL: Bill in Portland Maine Clobbers Trump By 16 Points In Net Approval
—Mediaite
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