Intermission
Holy Crosstabs, Ant Man! 2021 is halfway over. The second quarter ended last week, and that means it's C&J number-crunching time. Every few months we post results of some recent C&J polls to give you a snapshot of what Daily Kos readers (and our small but persistent band of trolls) thought about this and that over the past 90-odd (or if you prefer, 90 odd) days:
✔ When asked how you would rate your city/community in terms of coordination to get residents vaccinated, 62 percent rated theirs excellent, 33 percent rated theirs fair or poor.
✔ 82 percent of you gave the Biden-Harris administration an A for progress made during the first 100 days. 16 percent gave them a B.
Continued…
✔ 44 percent of you have been coming to Daily Kos for over 10 years.
✔ In terms of getting shots (like the COVID vaccine), 66 percent say it's no problem, while 22 percent say needles are a "minor annoyance."
✔ Regarding the 22-year sentence handed down to George Floyd's murderer Derek Chauvin: 55 percent say it's too lenient, while 45 percent say it's about right
✔ What portion of you approve of President Biden's pullout of troops from Afghanistan after our 20-year misadventure there? A whopping 86 percent.
✔ 90 percent are glad that Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer Prime Minister of Israel
✔ No surprise, but 92 percent of the Daily Kos community never thought they'd live on a planet where Liz Cheney became a pariah in the Republican party because she couldn’t live up to their standards of lying and general nutballery
✔ 97 percent of you support Biden's decision to officially recognize the killing/deportation of 1.5 million Armenians by Turkey During World War I as genocide
✔ Does time seem to be going faster or slower since January 20, 2021? Faster, say 83 percent of you.
As always, we bow to your superior ability to have opinions on stuff. And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, July 6, 2021
Note: Now that the July 4th holiday is over, it's time for the annual post-fireworks Counting of Fingers. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and…goat hoof-grafted thumb replacement makes ten. Woo hoo! We hope your weekend was equally excellent.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the government defaults on its debts unless the debt ceiling is raised: 25
Days 'til the return of Festival Napa Valley: 10
Number of jobs created in June: 850,000
Number of new judicial nominees President Biden plans to announce tomorrow: 8
Percent of Americans polled by ABC News who say passing laws making it easier to vote is more important than passing laws making it harder to vote: 62%
Percent of Democrats polled by NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist who approve of the way President Biden is handling the pandemic: 93%
Inches a wild African serval cat was from the face of Kristen Frank of Atlanta when it got in her house and jumped on her bed last week: 6
Totally Random Stanley Cup Score
Montreal Canadiens 3 Tampa Bay Lightning 2
Tampa Bay leads 3 games to 1
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Puppy Pic of the Day: One step at a time…
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CHEERS to the July 4th Honor Roll. We hope you had a nice Independence Day holiday. Here at C&J Central HQ, the Lord smiled on us (including our pets) by dousing all the illegal fireworks fuses with a soaking rain that lasted from the last ray of sunset Saturday until the official city fireworks began Sunday at dusk. As that was happening, we learned that red-state America failed its president by not pitching in to hit his 70-percent vaccination target by the Fourth. Shame, shame, shame. But you know who did hit the target? See if you can spot a pattern:
California…Colorado…Connecticut…Delaware…Hawaii…Illinois…Maine…Maryland…Massachusetts…Minnesota…New Hampshire…
New Jersey…New Mexico…New York…Oregon…Pennsylvania…Rhode Island…Vermont…Virginia…and Washington.
Instant induction into the COVID Slayer Hall of Fame. Thank you for your service, blue states. History will look upon you kindly. Watch your mail—you’re all getting a complimentary gift bag filled with complimentary gift bags. (What can we say? Fauci got a great deal on gift bags at the Dollar Store.)
JEERS to calamitous calamities. While the above blue states were making America—and, if we're being honest, the universe and also Baby Jesus—proud, a series of disasters were reminding us that, no, we're not quite a blue marble paradise anymore:
The rest of that Miami high-rise condo was demolished as horrified inspectors also started realizing that even more condos are also falling apart at the seams
A fossil fuel company set the Gulf of Mexico on fire
Hurricane season is off to a roof-ripping start
Plus the wildfires
The Supreme Court made it harder for minorities to vote…again
Bill Cosby got off on a technicality
If tar sands extraction doesn’t destroy us, Bitcoin will.
And maybe worst of all, Trump Mini-me Paul LePage, who turned Maine into "The Alabama of New England" for eight years, is apparently running for governor of Maine again because he's rich, he's bored, and no one will pay attention to him unless he forces them too. Fortunately he has one thing cutting against him: our current governor is popular and he’s not.
CHEERS to starting out on the right side of history. 167 years ago today, on July 6, 1854, the Republican Party held its first convention in Jackson, Michigan. Back then, they really did have a good idea:
We believe that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.
We vow at whatever expense, and publicly proclaim our determination, to oppose by all the powerful and honorable means in our power, now and henceforth, all attempts, direct and indirect, to extend slavery in this country, or to permit it to extend into any region or locality in which it does not now exist by positive low, or to admit new slave states into the Union.
Today the Republicans' de facto leader is Donald Trump, a thin-skinned racist fraud who leads a cult that tried to overthrow the government in January. Memo to Abe Lincoln: there's a word for old-school Republicans like you in modern-day America: dirty fucking hippies. Here, have a bong hit, You look like you could use one. Besides, it's gotta be Four score and twenty somewhere.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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(Microscopic) cheers to The Decider. C&J has a rule—a DUMB rule—that says we can never jeer someone on their birthday, no matter how vile or despicable they are. But there is nothing in our bylaws that says we can't alter certain song lyrics. Ahem...
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, George W. Bush, you scum-suckin', torture-lovin', incompetent-crony-hirin', PDB ignorin', oil company bootlickin', Constitution-shreddin', The Pet Goat readin', bogus-war-startin' disaster,
Happy birthday to you.
He's 75 today and barely looks younger than his dad does in his coffin. Enjoy that Social Security, sir. Thanks to our efforts to kill your privatization efforts, it's still there for ya.
CHEERS to greenbacks. In a famous first, on July 6, 1785, Congress agreed that the dollar would officially become America’s first “unit of U.S. currency.” Also on July 6, 1785, the American public agreed that the dollar would officially become America’s first "endangered species."
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Ten years ago in C&J: July 6, 2011
CHEERS to one last ride. Enjoy these final days of the U.S. Space Shuttle program while you can. The crew of Atlantis goes up Friday morning for one last platonic hookup with the floating Club Med in the sky…if the weather gives it the green light (and you know how testy Mother Nature's become ever since Chiffon decided it was a swell idea to piss her off). Here's the latest:
At the 10 a.m. pre-countdown status briefing yesterday, NASA Test Director Jeremy Graeber reported space shuttle Atlantis is ready for flight, and STS-135 payload manager Joe Delai said the payloads are ready to go as well. The only issue standing in the way of liftoff on Friday is a 60 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms developing along the sea-breeze front reported Kathy Winters, shuttle weather officer.
The end of the shuttle era marks the beginning of the deep-space era, as government and private scientists and entrepreneurs huddle together to plan for longer-range human excursions into the Great Beyond. It will be the greatest test yet of human ingenuity, creativity and perseverance. Step one: lunch.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to blowing this popsicle stand. Speaking of space, every time you go outside on a clear night you’re doing yourself a grave disservice if you don’t look up and gasp as you realize that the universe up there is pretty spectacular. The elves at NASA are also aware of this, so they always let us in on the big celestial events for the month. Here’s a look at July’s skywatching tips, including a good look at the Milky Way and the arrival of conjunction fever:
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Also this month: Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos climb aboard their respective gravity-defiance machines and launch themselves into space. What an exciting time to be a billionaire.
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
Cheers and Jeers: Pretty Damn Good!
—Wonkette
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