Cheers and Jeers: Monday

No Thanks, We’re Good

You may have heard the news last week that ghoul-minus-the-charm Wayne LaPierre is resigning as chief gun humper for the NRA. For 30 years this sicko, when he wasn’t using membership dues as his personal piggy bank, spent his time promoting the idea that the way to prevent more gun deaths was by a) owning the libs and b) flooding the country with more guns. (In that order.) Brilliant.

Now the crumbling organization’s head death merchant is finally leaving to defend himself in a civil trial in New York. And then? We shudder to think, because ten years ago the Maine Sunday Telegram ran an AP puff piece on LaPierre, an unintentionally-effective reminder of what the proverbial “banality of evil” looks like. One line made the hair on my neck stand up:

[Former NRA spokesperson John] Aquilino says he once asked LaPierre what he wanted to do eventually and was told, “To tell the truth, I’d like to run an ice cream parlor in Maine.”

I’m all for tightly-regulated gun owners’ rights and all, but if there’s one thing we don’t need in this state, it’s a frozen concoction on a waffle cone called Jack-Booted Thug Swirl. So do us a favor, Wayne—after New York Attorney General Letitia James has set fire to your fortune and you start thinking about coming up our way: take a left at New Hampshire.

Cheers and Jeers for Monday, January 8, 2024

Note: This week’s Super Secret Hidden Million Dollar Mystery Phrase—which could appear anywhere on Daily Kos, including scrunched up real tiny in the margins of a diary, the front page, or the Help Desk—is “By the Numbers.”  If by some miracle you can spot it, you owe me a million dollars. Good luck!

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By the Numbers:

Days ‘til MLK Jr. Day: 7

Days ’til the Florida Keys Seafood Festival in Key West: 5

Metric tons of CO2 emitted by Germany last year, down 73 million from 2022 and the lowest since the 1950s: 673 million

Percent of Germany’s energy production that now comes from renewable sources: 56%

Estimated number of electric vehicles that will be sold in the U.S. this year, according to AutoPacific: 1.5 million

Years ago that some of the world’s earliest carnivores—foot-long worms called “terror beasts”—slithered through the ocean: 518 million

Age of Starsky & Hutch actor David Soul when he died Friday: 80

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Puppy Pic of the Day: Proud grad…

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CHEERS to Badass Biden. To mark the anniversary of the Republican party’s insurrection against the most transparent and well-run election in our history (during a pandemic, no less) that didn’t go their way, the 46th president took direct aim at the 45th, and let him have it…

“Trump’s mob wasn’t a peaceful protest.  It was a violent assault.  They were insurrectionists, not patriots.  They weren’t there to uphold the Constitution; they were there to destroy the Constitution. […]

Trump’s assault on democracy isn’t just part of his past.  It’s what he’s promising for the future.  He’s being straightforward.  He’s not hiding the ball. […]

Trump’s not concerned about your future, I promise you.  Trump is now promising a full-scale campaign of “revenge” and “retribution” — his words — for some years to come.  They were his words, not mine.  He went on to say he would be a dictator on day one. […]

This is the first national election since January 6th insurrection placed a dagger at the throat of American democracy — since that moment.  We all know who Donald Trump is.  The question we have to answer is: Who are we?  That’s what’s at stake.”

It was the harshest rebuke by a sitting president of a former president since William Henry Harrison accused Martin van Buren of having “the whiskers of a feral alley cat, the vacuousness of a discarded hoop skirt, and the fingers of pork sausages.” For another day, the republic endures.

CHEERS to more noses to the grindstone. If it’s the first Friday of the month, that means it’s time for a fresh change of underwear the Bureau of Labor Statistics to release the latest jobs numbers. And once again, last week’s numbers earned Dark Brandon another gold star:

Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 216,000 in December, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.7 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment continued to trend up in government, health care, social assistance, and construction, while transportation and warehousing lost jobs. […]

In December, the year-over-year change was 2.70 million jobs.  Employment was up solidly year-over-year but has slowed closer to more normal levels of job growth recently.

Another solid employment report.

The positive economic movement is part of a radical and audacious American economic plan called—[Checks notes]—Let’s Put Democrats In Charge of the Economy.

CHEERS to humble beginnings.  On January 8,1790, President Washington delivered the first, and deliberately bland, State of the Union address (here’s ye olde transcript). Today he’d shock the Fox News cult out of their knee socks:  

“Uniformity in the currency, weights, and measures of the United States is an object of great importance, and will, I am persuaded, be duly attended to.”

That’s right—the father of our country wanted to take your currency, weights and measures and redistribute their uniformity to everyone else. Wretched socialist hippie cur. Speaker Muhlenberg should’ve impeached him while he had the chance.

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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CHEERS to one wacky Whig.  Happy 224th Birthday to #13 Millard Fillmore, whose beginnings could scarcely be more humble:

He was born in upstate New York in Cayuga County the second of eight children to such an impoverished family that they could not even afford to feed him.

His father apprenticed (indentured servant) him to a cloth maker at age fifteen, so brutal it stopped just short of slavery. Millard Fillmore taught himself to read by stealing books. He finally managed to accumulate thirty dollars to pay the obligation to his master and was free.

During his accidental presidency (thanks to Zachary Taylor becoming the first president to choke to death on Pop Rocks and Diet Coke), he sent Commodore Perry to open trade with Japan.  He also postponed a civil war by signing the Compromise of 1850, which added California as a free state but also strengthened the fugitive slave law. To his credit, he was the rare pre-Civil War president who never owned slaves himself, but his defense of keeping that “institution” was weak, weak sauce. On top of all that, Queen Victoria once told him he was the most handsome man she’d ever laid eyes on.  Moments later, Fillmore unofficially became the first person to swim the English Channel in under a minute.

JEERS to the return of the clowns.  Congress comes back to Washington this week to kickoff the second half of the 118th session.  Here’s the schedule as it now stands: Today, the Senate returns.  Tomorrow, the House returns. Wednesday, gridlock returns.

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Ten years ago in C&J: January 8, 2014

CHEERS to clearing a hurdle.  Yesterday the Senate began its slow, frustrating crawl toward maybe or maybe not getting emergency unemployment benefits renewed.  They got 60 Yeas for a silly pre-vote vote, which earns them to right to start talking about the bill.  A majority will agree that it doesn’t cost that much, it helps the economy, supports job creation, and provides a lifeline to over a million Americans.  Then they have to vote to stop talking about the bill, and only then can they vote to actually pass the damn thing.  Then it’s on to the House, where Republican members are now getting tutored on how to “sound” empathetic about the unemployed without actually having to “be” empathetic about the unemployed.  So far they’ve learned to use phrases like, “My sympathies that you’ve become a long-term moocher” and “I’d hire you myself, but my office is already staffed up with unpaid interns.”  Today John Boehner will lead a panel on how to cry on cue.

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And just one more…

CHEERS to the happy meeting of X and Y chromosomes.  Today is National Male Watcher’s Day.  Seriously…it’s a thing.  Far be it from me to deny you the simple pleasure of viewing the male form in all its glory, so ogle away:

Don’t say I never did anything for you.  Like, say, give you nightmares.

Have a tolerable Monday. Floor’s open…What are you cheering and jeering about today?

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Today’s Shameless C&J Testimonial

“Bill in Portland Maine, who is undeniably one of the most famous bloggers in America today, has crossed the Rubicon from wacky kiddie pool splasher to malignant force in the culture.”

—Nick Wright

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