C&J Annual Fundraiser: Day 4
When Kos first emailed me back in 2005 about moving C&J from the diaries to the front page, he caught the gist of it well when he said it would serve as a breezy morning wake-up column. Easy to skim through. Nothing too deep. A good way—along with the Abbreviated Pundit Roundup gang that posts before us—to plant your feet on the ground and get your neurons up-shifted from a foggy shuffle to a brisk jog. Soon after that, we started running Friday's column later in the day for our west coast readers, and it's become the semi-official weekend launchpad.
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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, March 4, 2021
Note: Wear your mask, wash your hands, and practice social distancing until this pandemic is over. Then, and only then, will you get this Nilla Wafer that’s been in my pocket since last April. You can do it! —Mgr.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til spring: 16
President Biden's approval rating in the latest IBD-TIPP poll: 62%
Percent chance that Biden's predecessor, who left office at 39% approval, secretly got vaccinated with his wife in January: 100%
Drop in new Covid-19 cases among nursing home residents since their peak during the week of December 20, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services: -82%
Drop in nursing home deaths from Covid-19 since December 20th: -63%
Expected drop in poverty under the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill, according to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, moving 12 million Americans above the poverty line: -30%
Minimum number of voter suppression bills currently active in 43 state legislatures, according to the Brennan Center for Justice: 253
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
The redistribution of wealth upward keeps getting worse.
Under President Bush's tax proposal, the richest 10 percent of Americans will get 60 percent of the benefits of the tax cut. And this is at the end of a decade in which the rich have made out like bandits while everyone else stalled.
We all know why such decisions are made: The political process no longer represents the people—it represents money. It's been bought. While we were being sold a bill of goods about how the market "empowers" us because we get to choose between the mint-flavored and the cinnamon-flavored toothpaste, thus expressing our individuality, we lost something important in our vision of a just society.
—January, 2001
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Proud, yes. And wore out…
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CHEERS to getting done what you were hired to get done. Holy dog-face- pony soldier, Batman. We haven't seen anything this big since that Roosevelt feller knocked them Hitler and Tojo boys all the way back to Berlin and Tokyo. When it comes to World War Covid, U.S. President Joseph R. Biden ain't playin' around:
“As I’ve always said, this was a wartime effort, and every action has been on the table, including putting together breakthrough approaches.
Today we’re announcing a major step forward: Two of the largest healthcare and pharmaceutical companies in the world—that are usually competitors—are working together on the vaccine. Johnson & Johnson and Merck will work together to expand the production of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine. This is the type of collaboration between companies we saw in World War Two.
We also invoked the Defense Production Act to equip two Merck facilities to the standards necessary to safely manufacture the J&J vaccine. And with the urging and assistance of my administration, Johnson & Johnson is also taking additional new actions to safely accelerate vaccine production. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine manufacturing facilities will now begin to operate 24/7.
When I came into office, the prior administration had contracted for not nearly enough vaccine to cover adults in America. We rectified that. About three weeks ago, we were able to say that we’ll have enough vaccine supply for adults by the end of July. And I’m pleased to announce today, as a consequence of the stepped-up process that I’ve ordered and just outlined, this country will have enough vaccine supply for every adult in America by the end of May.”
As all of this is happening, the Republican party is also stepping up to the plate, pouring its considerable resources into something something'ing Dr. Seuss books and something something'ing Mr. Potato Head. Start shredding that ticker tape for future parades. The good times are almost back, baby.
P.S. While the president is pummeling the virus with his bare fists, the Senate has hacked a smooth glidepath out of the jungles of government bureaucracy to get the American Rescue Plan passed ASAP. This, my fellow Americans, is why we buy war bonds.
JEERS to the nitwits among us. Happy March 4th, everybody. The birds are singing, the spring buds are budding, and the Ted Cruz/Josh Hawley wing of the Republican party—which is to say, the Republican party—is apparently thinking about making another run at the Capitol with guns, spears, bear spray, and one brain cell divided equally between them:
U.S. Capitol Police officials said Wednesday they have "obtained intelligence that shows a possible plot to breach the Capitol by an identified militia group on Thursday, March 4" -- the date that far-right conspiracy theorists believe former President Donald Trump will return to power.[…
The threats appear to stem from QAnon, the umbrella term for a set of disproven and discredited internet conspiracy theories that allege the world is run by a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles.
Followers of the fringe movement believe that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen from Trump, who has pushed baseless claims of voter fraud along with his allies.
Rest assured this time will be different. For one thing, there's a solid-steel security fence ringing the Capitol, which is now crawling with pro-America National Guard forces. That alone should be enough to secure our democracy. But if extra measures are necessary, the cultists will be confronted with the one thing guaranteed to make them scatter to the hills: a bar of soap.
CHEERS to the land of milk and hippies. Happy birthday to our commune-dwelling New England sibling Vermont!!! You became our 14th state on today’s date in 1791.
Besides Ben and Jerry, Senator Bernie Sanders, Senator Patrick Leahy and a nuclear power plant that makes me nervous, Vermont—aka “The Green Mountain State”—is home to Howard Dean, who became the first governor to pass civil unions for same-sex couples and exclaimed, "YOU have the power!" It's also the birthplace of tractor dude John Deere, Brigham Young, Rudy Vallee, the 21st president Chester Arthur and the 30th president Calvin Coolidge, who slept ten hours a day and once murmured, "When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment results." Wow...no wonder Republicans are always thought of as the economic whiz kids.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to today's edition of Psst! I Don’t Think You're Supposed To Say The Quiet Part Out Loud. Courtesy this morning of your friendly Arizona Republican party:
An attorney for Arizona's Republican Party offered a blunt reason for his presence defending the state's voting restrictions before the Supreme Court on Tuesday: The measures disadvantage Democrats.
“What’s the interest of the Arizona RNC in keeping, say, the out-of-precinct ballot disqualification rules on the books?" Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked, referencing legal standing.
“Because it puts us at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats,” said Michael Carvin, the lawyer defending the state's restrictions.
This has been today's edition of Psst! I Don’t Think You're Supposed To Say The Quiet Part Out Loud.
CHEERS to walking into a hornet's nest. Man, talk about hitting the ground running. On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated. And on March 4, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated. Lincoln led the country through our nightmarish Civil War. FDR led the country through our nightmarish Great Depression and nightmarisher World War II. Meanwhile, our previous Republican president claims he "has done more for African Americans in this Country than any President since Lincoln." Why do I bring him into it? Because it's my job to make you laugh.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 4, 2011
JEERS to the price of hurting your malevolent overlord's feefees. Their governor having just gotten stung big-time by a prank caller ("Scott! David Koch. How are you?") due to sheer gullibility surpassed only by Moe the bartender on The Simpsons ("I need Amanda Hugginkiss!"), Wisconsin Republicans are clamping down with a new bill to outlaw the practice. The fine: $10,000. And if you get caught playing Ding Dong Ditch, you'll never be seen again.
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And just one more…
JEERS to socialism. Makes me so mad! The government takes our hard-earned money and then turns around and "distributes" its services to everyone equally. Like, for example, how they build public streets and then "distribute" their use to the vehicles of all the unsuspecting sheeple. Even worse, look at how they send out large trucks with attached blades to distribute “snowplowing services” to those streets. My god, where will it stop? Next thing you know, they'll be offering the public the right to distribute "names" to those plows, and ohhhhhh I wish I were joking…
Heckuva job, Minnesota. Or should we now start calling you…..Mini Moscow?
Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
“Cheers and Jeers is not offensive, mean spirited, or dreadful, but it's also not funny and only slightly charming (and even that's a stretch).”
—The MacGuffin
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