C&J Annual Fundraiser: Day 4
Sorry to pull out the big persuasion gun, but this morning I feel it's necessary to play my strongest hold card in the hopes that it'll help keep this column and my meager passbook savings account afloat a bit longer. So here goes. I hope this works: "Yes, I will marry you."
Kos set up PayPal accounts two generations ago for both one-time donations and recurring monthly donations. The monthly subscriptions are hugely helpful for minimizing the total needed during our annual C&J pledge week:
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To send a donation via snail mail:
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A few brief points as we near the end of our 2025 plea for cash and jewels and/or fine artwork:
✌ I assure you I am not artificial intelligence. Or any other kind, for that matter.
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Thanks again for supporting America’s longest-running kiddie pool-based blog post. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled stuff you were doing before reading this. You may add the time you just lost back to your next lifespan after you emerge from the womb, to the astonishment of everyone, as a fully-formed medieval knight. (Dear lord, I hope they give your next mother a whopper of an epidural.)
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, May 1, 2025
Note: Now that we're all publicly gathered on this National Day of Prayer, I'll start with the customary opening:
O Lord, please give us the strength and wisdom to abolish opening prayers on the National Day of Prayer on account of they're silly. And while it is clear once again that you didn’t hear this prayer, since it has obviously gone unanswered for another year, we can only assume that you’re seeing another universe. If you ever show your face here again, you’re sleeping on the couch. In your name we grumble. Amen.
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By the Numbers:
8 days!!!
Days 'til the start of the papal conclave: 6
Days 'til New York's Rochester Lilac Festival: 8
Portion of Americans surveyed by the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute who view Republican president Trump favorably after 100 days in office: 2-in-5
Percent who agree with the statement presented by PRRI that Trump “is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy": 52%
Year-over-year drop in U.S. job openings as of March: 11%
Expected tariff-related increase in the price of SUVs and pickup trucks starting in June: 5% to 15%
Rank of He Don't Love You (Like I Love You) by Tony Orlando & Dawn, (Hey, Won't You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song by B.J. Thomas, and Before the Next Teardrop Falls by Freddy Fender on the Billboard Hot 100 chart 50 years ago this week: #1, #2, #3
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
The other day at the Southern Legislators Conference, as I was attempting to point out that Canada has a sane, effective and cheap system of national health insurance, I was told: “Canada practices low-tech medicine. Why, in Thunder Bay, women have to have babies with no anesthetic.”
Right there in Norfolk, Virginia, I thought I heard the sound of several million Canadians politely choking. (Canadians are almost always polite.)
It takes a lot to startle a Canadian. Understatement is their national art form, calmness is their national mode, and their national motto is “Now, let’s not get excited."
Canada, Land of Low Blood Pressure. I think they even have a law against rolling their eyes. Even so, I wish you could have heard the reactions over the phone from successive layers of bureaucrats at McKellar Hospital in Thunder Bay, Ontario, when I called to ask if the assertion were true. They variously and politely gasped, strangled, wheezed and giggled.
—August 1994
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Not all superhero dogs wear capes…
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CHEERS to May! The month of flowers, Mom’s Day, Teachers Day (May 6), Armed Forces Day, Victoria Day, Lost Sock Memorial Day, National Pet Week, “End of the Middle Ages” Day (May 29—for Republicans a day of mourning), and Cinco de Mayo.
Also this month: the Russki Turret Frisbee Olympics continue.
It’s National Hamburger Month for carnivores and National Salad Month for vegetarians. The Pulitzer Prizes will be announced on Monday. Memorial Day weekend kicks off the summer season in 25 days, but not before we celebrate Star Wars Day (i.e. “May the Fourth Be With You”) and mark with righteous anger the 55th anniversary of the Kent State shootings.
Full moon arrives on the 12th, so make a note to look up, think of Neil Armstrong and all our departed space pioneers, and give it a wink. The new movie and streaming schedule looks hit or miss as usual, with sequels including Mission Impossible LCCLIII and Karate Kid MMCVII. And on the political front, the childhood cancer rate in America will continue plummeting as RFK Jr. continues supervising deportations of all the children in America with cancer. Donald Trump will win another 14 glorious golf tournaments.
And we’re happy to report that the Daily Kos contributing editors will once again dress in their frilly best to dance around the Maypole, although we’re not so happy to report that, also once again, they’ll end up with a bent pole, a huge granny knot, and a pile of eyewitness phone-cams with their memories erased. God bless our treasured American traditions.
JEERS to Republican gravity hard at work. 100 days into the Very Bad Man (VBM) presidency, everything is going down the drain: personal income, retirement accounts, international relations, optimism, civility, science, compassion, health, safety, progress…etc. etc. etc. But at least our Great Glorious Perfect Businessman in Chief has a firm grasp on the economy and can be counted on to oh who am I kidding he’s f*cking that up, too…
The U.S. economy contracted in the first three months of 2025 on an import surge at the start of President Donald Trump’s second term in office as he wages a potentially costly trade war.
The red stripes on our flag should be replaced with these.
Gross domestic product, a sum of all the goods and services produced from January through March, fell at a 0.3%annualized pace, according to a Commerce Department report Wednesday adjusted for seasonal factors and inflation. This was the first quarter of negative growth since Q1 of 2022.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for a gain of 0.4% after GDP rose by 2.4% in the fourth quarter of 2024.
So to recap: Democratic President Biden's last quarter in office = 2.4% growth. Economists poring over preliminary data to form a forecast for Q1 GDP = 0.4% growth. What Republican President Trump actually delivered = -0.3% not growth. The party of fiscal responsibility, ladies and gentlemen.
CHEERS to speaking outrage to power. While the highest-ranking Democrat in Congress (Hi, Chuck!) can think of nothing stronger than a sternly worded letter—a “very strong letter," to be precise—to fight the Trump monarchy, Columbia student, Palestinian Student Union co-founder and recently-released ICE detainee Mohsen Mahdawi is grabbing a microphone and, as the old phrase goes, throwing his body on the gears:
"[U.S. District Judge Geoffrey] Crawford, who ruled to release me against all of the heinous accusations, horrible attacks, chills of speech, First Amendment violations—he had made a very brave decision to let me out," Mahdawi said. "And this is what justice is. And for anybody who's doubting justice, this is a light of hope, a hope and faith in the justice system in America."
"To President Trump and his cabinet: I am not afraid of you," Mahdawi said.
We hear Trump's chief puppeteer Stephen Miller got so angry at the remark that he threw his Iron Cross so hard it stuck in his copy of Mein Kampf like a Ninja throwing star. And lemme tell ya, tonight the ghost of Hitler is gonna haunt his dreams.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to a memorable growth spurt. On May 1, 1931, #1 U.S. attraction the Empire State Building was dedicated. It was the tallest building in the pleasant village of New York until 1972, when the World Trade Center rose above it. It regained its "tallest" status in the worst possible way 28 years later. But today it plays third fiddle to the new One World Trade Center tower and the luxury apartments of 432 Park Avenue. There, there, Empire State—if it's any consolation, King Kong always liked you best.
CHEERS to cool science. Last week marked the 35th birthday of NASA's Hubble space telescope, which has blown our minds for over three decades now with its crystal-clear images of a vast universe that really doesn’t give a rat's p'tootie if humanity exists or not. To mark the occasion, they released a spruced-up image of the Eagle Nebula, which is so far away that you need a minimum of three connecting flights just to get there. But it sure is purty:
The stunning image, originally published in 2005, is an important part of why the Hubble is so loved. The photo has been newly processed using modern techniques to show the "cosmic pillar" in even more detail, with layers of cold gas and dust seen by Hubble's visible and infrared cameras.
The new image more clearly shows how the radiation from the hot, young stars in the more dramatic top half of the image is lighting up—but also eroding—the massive tower. The image covers an area equal to twice the distance from the sun to Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our own.
So far, no annexation plans from Hair Fuhrer. But it's early.
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 1, 2015
JEERS to scaredy cats in shit-kickers. The gun-toting right wingers in Texas must be overstuffing their Stetsons with tinfoil, because they're clearly not getting enough circulation to their brains:
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday asked the State Guard to monitor a U.S. military training exercise dubbed "Jade Helm 15" amid Internet-fueled suspicions that the war simulation is really a hostile military takeover.
The request comes a day after more than 200 people packed a meeting in rural Bastrop County and questioned a U.S. Army commander about whether the government was planning to confiscate guns or implement martial law. Bastrop County Judge Paul Pape said "conspiracy theorists" and "fear mongers" had been in a frenzy.
"It's a sad when people's greatest fear is their own government," Pape said. "Think about the ramification of that. If Americans go to sleep at night worrying whether their own government is going to sell them out before morning, it'd be hard to sleep."
Yeah…[Citizens United]…it'd be…[The Sequester]…really…[NAFTA]…hard to…[Voting Rights Act struck down]…sleep at night…[Repeal of Glass-Steagall]…if the government…[TPP]…sold them out…[Billionaires buying candidates]…before...[Hobby Lobby ruling]...morning. D’oh! Save me a space at The Alamo, Texas fear mongers, I'm comin' to join ya!
[5/1/25 Update: Ten years later our entire country is one big Republican-led Jade Helm 15 operation. And Greg Abbott is absolutely thrilled.]
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And just one more…
JEERS to another date besides 12/7/41 which will live in infamy. Putting this little bit of history down here in the cellar where it belongs. 22 years ago today—now more than a generation ago—our steely-eyed chief warrior, Commander Codpiece, who’d lied his pantaloons off to get our country to approve going to war with another country that hadn’t done a thing to us, dressed up in a flight suit and pretended to fly a plane out to an aircraft carrier, where he made a victory speech under a banner that said MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. And oh how the pundit class swooned.
Let these clips (and this is just a tiny sample) forever be anvils around their necks…
"Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me."
—Joe Klein
The Republican Doctrine: over-promise, under-deliver.
“Speaking as a woman, and listening to the women who called into my radio show, seeing President Bush get out of that plane, carrying his helmet, he is a real man.”
—Laura Ingraham
”…a one-time fighter dog.”
—Wolf Blitzer describing Bush
“Al Gore had to go get some woman to tell him how to be a man. And here comes George Bush. You know, he's in his flight suit, he's striding across the deck, and he's wearing his parachute harness, you know, and I've worn those because I parachute, and it makes the best of his manly characteristic. … You know, all those women who say size doesn't count—they're all liars. Check that out.”
—G. Gordon Liddy, now burning in hell
In fact, winning the war was so much fun that Commander Codpiece went on winning it for another eight years until his successor decided that enough winning had been won. When it was all over, hundreds of thousands of people had lost their lives, limbs and minds and Commander Codpiece’s taxpayers were on the hook for trillions of victory dollars. Oh, and filling the vacuum Commander Codpiece created was a nightmare army of ISIS orcs whose favorite things in the world are raping women and burning people to death in cages. But the important thing is, Commander Codpiece and the very serious pundit class are still living happily ever after to this day. The End.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"One number Bill in Portland Maine did not tout today was that a majority, 59 percent, of Americans in the country now say that they believe Cheers and Jeers has made conditions in the kiddie pool worse."
—Kaitlan Collins, CNN
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