Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday

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Let’s Check the Tote Board

It’s been a couple of weeks since we checked in on the Daily Kos relief fund for Ukraine. As of this morning, you’ve generously donated a whopping…

$2,473,591.54

Nice! That’s approximately $2 million more than the Republicans have raised for the Russian generals’ victory tank parade in Red Square on May 9, which may not happen at all on account of Russia seems to be quickly running out of both generals and tanks.

If you’d like to add to the total for the five chosen groups—the World Central Kitchen, AmeriCares, the International Rescue Committee, Razom for Ukraine, and the International Fund for Animal Welfare—click here and ActBlue will help you take care of the rest. Many thanks.

We now return you to the T-72 flying-turret frisbee Olympics currently in progress.

Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, May 3, 2022

Note: Today is Garden Meditation Day. Please zen your auras responsibly or I’m pulling out the pepper spray.  —Mgr.

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By the Numbers:

Days ’til the House Jan. 6 Committee starts its public hearings: 37

Days ’til the Washington Crossing Brewfest in Pennsylvania: 4

Total U.S. farmland in 2021, per the federal government: 895 million acres

Percent of U.S. voters, including 68% of Democrats and 55% of Trump cultists, who oppose politicians punishing companies over their stances on social issues, according to a new Reuters-Ipsos poll: 62%

Rank of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi among most-senior U.S. leaders to visit Ukraine and meet with President Zelenskyy (who awarded her the Order of Princess Olga for her support) so far: #1

Number of states suing the Postal Service for choosing to replace their fleet of trucks with gas-powered ones instead of electric: 16

Number of Alaska-bound honeybees that died because dumb dumb dumb dumb fucking idiot morons at DELTA AIRLINES you stupid fucking sacks of shit may you get stung 5 million times in retaliation you worthless shriveled brains: 5 million

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Puppy Pic of the Day: I’m down with this…

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CHEERS to dimming the gaslighters. If Republicans ever tried to open up a government disinformation bureau, its mission would of course be to spread disinformation—something they excel at. But when Democrats do it, it’s a little different. Exhibit A: last week the Department of Homeland Security opened a new bureau—a Disinformation Governance Board—to shoot down propaganda and online harassment from Russia targeting migrants and the integrity of our midterm elections. And you’ll never guess who’s pounding the table and demanding we stop picking on poor, poor Putin:

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, for example, said DHS will be “policing Americans’ speech.” Republican Sen. Marco Rubio was even more outraged, releasing a video via social media in which the Floridian insisted that Homeland Security officials will be “focused on policing speech.”

Rubio, whose home state allies have focused of late on banning books, restricting protests, and making it harder to vote, added that “people on the Marxist left are coming after your most basic constitutional rights.”

How do you know when the U.S. government is doing the right thing? When those two pudnockers say it’s doing the wrong thing. Carry on, DHS.

JEERS to Growing Pains—in the ass. Oh no! Kirk Cameron, famed actor and director of such classics as none of them, is sounding the alarm. Apparently our public education system is rotten to the core YES I SAID ROTTEN TO THE CORE ARE YOU PEOPLE EVEN LISTENING???  There’s “inaccurate and immoral things that the public school system has been teaching our children and our grandchildren, and it’s up to us as parents to cultivate the hearts and minds and souls of our children.” It’s a crisis of epic proportions, and there’s only one way out of this: I am going to wave my magic wand and make America’s public school system great again. [Wiggle Waggle Zing! SparkleSparkleSparkle!!!] There. All better:

Most parents around the country believe their kids’ schools are doing a good job communicating what is being taught, even where controversial subjects are concerned, a new poll has found.

Slightly more than three-quarters, 76%, said they agreed that their kids’ school does a good job keeping them “informed about the curriculum, including potentially controversial topics.” The vast majority of parents, 88%, also said their kids’ teachers have done the best they could given the pandemic’s many challenges.

Join me later today when I wave my magic wand again and turn Kirk Cameron into a brainwashed ignoramus named Kirk Cameron.  (What can I say? Some tricks are easier than others.)

CHEERS to the shining city on a hill. Happy 220th Birthday to Washington, D.C., incorporated May 3, 1802. (These old maps are cool—I hear you can see Russia from the Capitol dome.)

I was going to send everyone who lives there a gift basket filled with representation to go with your taxation, but Congress—led by Democrat Joe Manchin—says it can’t deliver that item on certain days. Namely Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday. So instead I’m sending you a lovely Lincoln Memorial snow globe. (When you shake it, a little plastic Marjorie Taylor-Greene falls down the steps and gets an owie.)

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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JEERS to HELLO URGENT MESSAGE KIND MADAM 7 PLEASE RLPY V&i*GR#A HOT SEXY LOVER NEED ASSISTANCE!!  We can’t let today go by without acknowledging the 44th anniversary of spam.  It had a fascinating beginning.  Via Geekosystem, here’s how it started back in 1978:

Gary Thuerk, a marketer for the Digital Equipment Corporation, blasted out his message to 400 of the 2600 people on ARPAnet, the DARPA-funded so-called “first Internet.” Naturally: He was selling something. (Computers, or more specifically, information about open houses where people could check out the computers.)

He annoyed a lot of people. And he also had some success, with a few recipients interested in what he was pushing. And thus, spam was born.

Aren’t we lucky.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I just got an email I have to attend to from “Íâó¾Àí/½ø³ö¿Ú¾Àí ” with the subject line”|Íâó½Óµ¥Ó뺣Í⩵ ¥»ñÈ¡²ßÂÔ|”  It might be news from my favorite Nigerian finance minister.  Or his widow. (Thoughts and prayers.)

CHEERS to seeing the light…and everything else. A rare bit of personal news from the C&J household. Three years ago I had surgery to replace the lenses in my eyes that had become all cataracty—a somewhat common result of chemotherapy that was used to kick my twin infestations of cancer to the curb. My vision was restored to normal, but I was told I’d need some follow-up treatment from the Jewish space laser to take care of some cloudiness that was forming.

Then—Pandemic!!!  As Covid did its thing, my eyes slowly got worse right up until the time last February when they started quickly getting worse to the point where I had to wear a patch over one eye and barked my C&Js into a Dictaphone to be transcribed and published by my team at Cat, Dog, and Squirrels Who Have No Idea What They’re Doing, LLC. And since everyone else in Maine held off getting their eyes checked, the wait time is atrocious: a month to see the optometrist to get the referral to see the ophthalmologist (the competent kind, not the Rand Paul kind), who thankfully accepted my $10,000 cash bribe to get me in this morning.

So at 10:15 EDT, when they flick the switch, your lights will briefly dim, your car’s engine will briefly die, your dishes will briefly fall from your cabinets, and hot magma will briefly squirt out of all the fire hydrants. Afterward they’ll give me a complimentary house plant and choice of goodie from the snack basket, and everything in sight will be great again. Sorry about your dishes.

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Ten years ago in C&J: May 3, 2012

CHEERS to the man who bucked the trend. Newt Gingrich handily won the South Carolina primary. Whoever wins the South Carolina primary wins the presidential nomination. So it is written, so it shall be done. But not if you’re Newt Gingrich, I guess. Because today, the presidential aspirant who ran on a platform of moon colonies, child janitors, judge arrests, debtors prisons, and book and DVD sales, will officially run out of his magic mushroom power and revert back to his little huckster self.  So tonight, after you say your prayers and tuck your Teddy bear into bed, take a moment to thank your lucky stars that he’ll never come within a hundred feet of the White House. And then whisper on the wind: “Night, Newt.” And sleep tight.

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And just one more…

JEERS to Wankerrific Moments in Self-importance.  Sometimes an op-ed column is, not unlike an Ed Wood movie, so bad that it achieves a special place in the archive of eye rolling.  That’s why May 3rd is officially designated “Richard Cohen Day.” On May 3, 2006, Cohen went into a tirade against Stephen Colbert’s routine at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner—now considered a courageous and often gut-busting classic skewering a scowling George W. Bush as the president sat just a few feet away. Cohen defended his ability to gauge what’s funny and what’s not with perhaps the most wince-worthy opening paragraph of the decade: 

First, let me state my credentials: I am a funny guy.

This is well known in certain circles, which is why, even back in elementary school, I was sometimes asked by the teacher to “say something funny”—as if the deed could be done on demand.

 Even elementary school kids know that if you have to convince us that you’re funny by telling us you’re funny…you’re not funny.  Funny how that works.

P.S. Biden at this years dinner: “This is the first time the president has attended this dinner in six years. It’s understandable—we had a horrible plague, followed by two years of Covid,” Now that’s funny. 

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

Pelosi Visits Cheers and Jeers: We’ll ‘Be There For You Until the Kiddie Pool Is Chlorinated’

—Mediaite

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