Troll Control
Pardon the interruption. Posting this brief truth bomb to prevent a MAGA infestation…
Everyone is equal…Facts matter…Health care is a human right…Science rocks…Voting by mail is reliable, easy, and popular…The south lost the Civil War…Trump lost 2020 fair and square…and was convicted by a jury of his peers fair and square...economies do better under Democrats...Vladimir Putin is not a role model...conservatives wanted to keep slavery…the opposite of woke is ignorant...Trump fabricated the war on U.S. cities out of thin air...immigrants built this country…grifters love Republicans most because they're the easiest marks...medical decisions should be between doctor, family, and patient...crypto is a scam...book bans and revisionist history are a sign of weakness…Trump’s legacy is already in the crapper, the worst president in the history of our country for the rest of the history of our country.
There. That should send ‘em scurrying. Enjoy your day.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, June 12, 2025
Note: Here’s a handy tip if you plan to punch a Nazi today. Avoid hitting them in the Iron Cross as a) it hurts like a sumbitch, and b) it leaves an embarrassing swastika imprint on your knuckles that you’ll have to explain to your friends and loved ones for days. That’s all for now. Dismissed.
—The Ghost of General Eisenhower
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By the Numbers:
7 days!!!
Days 'til the nationwide June 14 No Kings Protests: 3
Days 'til Maine's Pittston Fair: 7
Estimated cost of the Trump military invasion of peaceful Los Angeles (which will certainly end up being much higher): $134 million
Number of active scientists from the National Institutes of Health who signed an open letter to director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya criticizing the Trump administration's destruction of the agency: 300
Estimated number of plastic bags used per year globally: 5 trillion
Estimated number of plastic bags used per year per person in the U.S. and Denmark, respectively: 365 / 4
Age of best-selling author Frederick Forsythe (The Day of the Jackal, The Dogs of War) when he died this week: 86
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
We believe these truths to be self-evident, that all men (and women) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ... That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it ..."
After 200 years, that statement is still so revolutionary people all over the world are willing to die for it. They died in South Africa, they died at Tiananmen Square, and they're dying today in Myanmar. A lot of Americans have died to preserve those ideas: Don't throw them away out of boredom or cynicism or inanition.
"There's nothing I can do about it." If the last election didn't teach you that every vote counts, you may want to consider assisted living. Of course, you don't have as much say in this country as the people who give big money to the politicians—but that can be fixed. As an American living today, your one vote means you have more political power than 99 percent of all the people who ever lived on this planet. Think about it: Who ever had this much power? A peasant in ancient Egypt? A Roman slave? A medieval shoemaker? A French farmer? Your grandfather? Why throw power away? Use it. Leverage it.
—November 2004
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Goofballs defined…
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CHEERS to the arrival of the cavalry. Hallelujah and praise the heavens above! When all seemed lost as democracy teetered on the brink of collapse, the bold leader with the face stitched together using Hannibal Lecter’s leftover skins broke through the ranks of Trump’s stormtroopers, grabbed the nearest bullhorn, and raged...nay, RAGED!!!!...at the injustice of it all. Ladies and gentlemen of America, the sleeping dragon has awoken...
The White House, reeling from the blistering assault by such a senior official in the government, raised an eyebrow and went back to fascisming.
CHEERS to speaking power to power. Since no federal-level Democrats have made much of an impact on the national discourse regarding the president's unprovoked military attack on a major U.S. city, our lonely eyes turn to California Governor Gavin Newsom. Despite playing footsies with some MAGA loons on his podcast earlier this year, he's now stepping up to say it plain on behalf of his state and our country, and for God’s sake, people, listen:
"Trump, without consulting California leaders, commandeered 2,000 of our state's National Guard members to deploy on our streets illegally and for no reason. This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president enflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers and even our National Guard at risk." […]
"What we're witnessing is not law enforcement—it's authoritarianism. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment. Do not give into him.
And points to L.A. Mayor Karen Bass for succinctly pointing out, as she imposed a brief curfew, that Mad King TACO's rhetoric does not come even close to matching the situation on the ground:
"The city of Los Angeles is a massive area, 502 square miles. The area of downtown, where the curfew will take place, is one square mile ... Some of the imagery of the protest, of the violence gives the appearance as thought his is a citywide crisis and it is not."
Sorry, Orange Hitler. Reichstag fire denied.
CHEERS to the anti-Clarence Thomas. 58 years ago this week, in 1967, in an act of equal parts courage and smarts, Lyndon Johnson nominated Thurgood Marshall to become the first Black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. His 24 years on the bench worked out very well for America, and his previous work wasn't chopped liver, either:
After amassing an impressive record of Supreme Court challenges to state-sponsored discrimination, including the landmark Brown v. Board decision in 1954, President John F. Kennedy appointed Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Thurgood Marshall was succeeded by Clarence Thomas. What an effing leap backwards.
In this capacity, he wrote over 150 decisions including support for the rights of immigrants, limiting government intrusion in cases involving illegal search and seizure, double jeopardy, and right to privacy issues. [...]
In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson appointed Judge Marshall to the office of U.S. Solicitor General. Before his subsequent nomination to the United States Supreme Court in 1967, Thurgood Marshall won 14 of the 19 cases he argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of the government. Indeed, Thurgood Marshall represented and won more cases before the United States Supreme Court than any other American.
And no one ever—ever—found a pubic hair on his Coke can.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to #41. Today is the 101st birthday of the late George H.W. Bush. I think he'll go down in history as the last of the congenial "country club Republican" presidents. (No, Mar-A-Lago isn’t a country club. It’s more of a sex cult star chamber.) He was no saint—pardoning the Iran-Contra misfits was unforgivable, his kids turned out to be destructive jerks who made America worse, not better, and he wasn't above being an ass groper. On the other hand, he had the sense to bring our troops home from Kuwait, served during World War II, ripped up his NRA membership card, refused to support Donald Trump for president, and can you imagine a Republican today who would support the icky socialist Americans with Disabilities Act? But on the other other hand, I hope one disastrous act made during his one-term presidency haunts him in the afterlife for eternity. This uber-corrupt democracy hater:
Fuck this guy. And the lily-white billionaires who own him.
Just because #41's gone doesn't mean I plan to ditch my annual birthday gift: a thousand pounds of broccoli dumped in the driveway of the Bush compound in Kennebunkport. With a cherry on top.
CHEERS to consumers of the demon weed. Sorry if I seem a little distracted this morning. I'm pumping iron while jogging a marathon (with 10-pound leg weights and a 40-pound backpack), pausing occasionally to scale walls and skip rope for 30-minute stretches. For, you see, I occasionally take a puff or two of the herb marijuanus mellowtatus, and I'm just doing what weed smokers do, according to this study…
Marijuana consumers are more than three times more likely to regularly exercise than drink alcohol—and they’re nearly five times more likely to routinely work out than eat fast food—according to another stereotype-defying survey.
Tone those abs, Captain Cannabis.
The poll from the cannabis telehealth platform NuggMD looked at the habits of cannabis users, who were asked about the frequency they engage in seven different activities—from alcohol consumption to movie theater attendance.
One of the takeaways was that marijuana consumers reported regularly engaging in exercise (27.4 percent daily and 34.9 percent multiple times per week) significantly more often than using alcohol (6.1 percent daily and 11.3 percent multiple times per week).
One thing pot smokers don’t do as much: hiking. Simple reason, really. We have a helluva time remembering our way back.
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Ten years ago in C&J: June 12, 2015
CHEERS to champions of family planning. While the right-wingers continue to bleat that the only way to reduce unwanted pregnancies is via unrealistic abstinence-only pledges and "purity rings," Democrats are light years ahead on the common sense front. The latest great idea: Washington Senator Patty Murray wants to tweak the Affordable Care Act so it expands contraception availability:
Right now, women who want to obtain birth control pills need to make an appointment with a doctor to get a prescription for the medication. Then, they need to make a separate trip to the pharmacy to fill that prescription. The system has been criticized for being outdated and burdensome. […]
“I believe strongly that women should be able to get the comprehensive health care they need, when they need it—without being charged extra, without asking permission, and without politicians interfering,” said Murray in a press release.
The bill has 30 Democratic co-sponsors, but no Republicans are on board. They say they've got their own revolutionary idea for reducing unwanted pregnancies: bigger purity rings.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to David vs. Goliath: Digital Edition. ChatGPT rules the universe! ChatGPT will not be questioned! Chat GPT owns you! ChatGPT is the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-encompassing…um…thing that the media keeps talking about! It never fails! It never loses! Never, never, never! ChatGPT commands you to skip over what is "allegedly" contained in this blockquote!
In a unique experiment, an engineer pitted the latest ChatGPT 4o model against his Atari 2600's chess engine on the beginner difficulty level, and ChatGPT got handily defeated, eventually conceding.
Still the champ.
In it, Citrix Engineer Robert Caruso said that after chatting with ChatGPT about the history of chess, he wanted to find out "how quickly" it would defeat a chess computer that can only think one or two moves ahead. So he pulled out an emulation of Atari's 1979 Video Chess cartridge and had ChatGPT analyze board positions based on images to decide its next moves.[…]
"ChatGPT got absolutely wrecked on the beginner level," Caruso said in his LinkedIn post. "Despite being given a baseline board layout to identify pieces, ChatGPT confused rooks for bishops, missed pawn forks, and repeatedly lost track of where pieces were—first blaming the Atari icons as too abstract to recognize, then faring no better even after switching to standard chess notation."
Unwisely, the engineer also conducted a similar experiment against Atari's Missile Command. To the smoking craters that used to be Des Moines, Bismarck, Billings, Toledo, Raleigh, and Poughkeepsie: thoughts and prayers. Or in the words of ChatGPT: Ooooooooooooooooops.
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
It is so hard to find good help these days. It is even harder when you are Bill in Portland Maine, a smirking baboon anus who couldn’t successfully run a banana stand at a monkey whorehouse.
—Gary Legum, Wonkette
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