(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday [1] ['Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags', 'Showtags Popular_Tags'] Date: 2023-01-17 Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, January 17, 2023 Note: Please remember to add C&J to your will. Quickly, please, as I’m sending the hitman over around three’ish. - By the Numbers: 3 days!!! Days 'til Squirrel Appreciation Day: 4 Days 'til the start of the 13th annual ION Autonomous Snowplow Competition in St. Paul, Minnesota: 3 Rank of the United States, Canada, and Italy among G-7 nations whose GDP recovered the strongest from the pandemic: #1, #2, #3 Number of manufacturers and supply chain companies that have announced creation or expansion of operations in the U.S. since President Biden signed the infrastructure bill and Inflation reduction Act, totaling $90 billion of investment: 80 Rank of New York and Alaska among states with the highest and lowest measles vaccination rate (at 98% and 78%, respectively): #1, #50 States besides Alaska with vax rates below 90%: 8 (MN, NH, CO, OH, KY, ID, GA, WI) Year during which Ben Franklin, whose birthday is today, became the first Postmaster General: 1775 - Puppy Pic of the Day: Something and something living together? Mass hysteria… - CHEERS to the era of good feelings. Get used to this: as the Biden economy continues to improve, the right-wingers will amp up their lying about it. For example, I've heard more than one pundit screaming about how "consumers are losing confidence because Inflation!" But a funny thing happens when you do your homework: you discover this… The University of Michigan’s closely watched consumer sentiment index rose to 64.6 in the preliminary January survey, according to data released Friday. It’s the highest reading since January 2022 and up 8.2% from December’s 59.7 reading … Economists were anticipating the index to measure just 60.5, according to consensus estimates on Refinitiv. On the left: reality. On the right: Fox News’s take on reality. Some of the biggest boosts in optimism came from consumers’ feelings on the current state of the economy: That index jumped 15.5% from the end of December to 68.6. Lower gas prices and falling inflation have helped to boost morale, as has the strong labor market, Joanne Hsu, director of the university’s Surveys of Consumers, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Friday. Also up: my own confidence that this story will never see the light of day on Fox News. JEERS to really long numbers. What's all this Yellen yellin' about? Ha ha, funny story, thanks for asking: as of this Thursday, according to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, America will hit its debt ceiling: $31.4 trillion. (Fun fact: If laid end-to-end, $31.4 trillion would equal the length of 31.4 trillion one-dollar bills.) So what happens then? After that, the Treasury Department this month will begin “taking certain extraordinary measures to prevent the United States from defaulting on its obligations,” Yellen wrote in a letter to new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. Secretary Yellen waiting for that $31.4 trillion to be placed gently, lovingly, in her hand. Or else. “It is unlikely that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted before early June,” Yellen added. She warned McCarthy that it is “critical that Congress act in a timely manner to increase or suspend the debt limit.” “Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability,” Yellen wrote. Despite the warning, Republicans are of course planning to practice economic terrorism on Americans—liberals, conservatives and everyone in between—by holding a debt-ceiling extension hostage. But for now I'm glad the Treasury Department has emergency measures in place that will prevent us from defaulting on our debt. I'm no Paul Krugman, but I believe the technical term for these stopgap measures is "yard sales." JEERS to turning a deaf ear. On this date 62 years ago, during his farewell address in 1961, President Eisenhower warned us all against the rise of the now-infamous "military-industrial complex." (Although we’re quick to point out that Ike himself helped contribute to it, so his hands aren’t exactly clean. But, hey, c’mon—he did D-Day.) Every year, as his warning appears ever more prescient, this speech ranks right up there with Lincoln's Gettysburg Address or FDR's Four Freedoms speech: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. And be sure to check out the great discounts at Sears. Page A-12. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together." Let's see how that's working out: We did let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties and democratic processes. We did take it for granted. And we the ignorant and apathetic citizenry did not compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty are now fighting like rabid dogs. Other than that...Thumbs-up! - BRIEF SANITY BREAK - x John Williams surprises Steven Spielberg by saying he’s not retiring. Gonna go another 10 years. Spielberg says now he can’t retire and has to find another film. pic.twitter.com/xdW7r6FRLI — Gregory Ellwood -The Playlist 🎬 (@TheGregoryE) January 13, 2023 - END BRIEF SANITY BREAK - JEERS to yesteryear's sleazebag. On January 17, 1997, then-Speaker Newt Gingrich—the guy who promised to clean up Washington—accepted a reprimand by the House that included a $300,000 penalty as punishment for ethics violations. Four days later the House voted 395-28 to discipline its leader for ethical misconduct. If memory serves, the sun was shining and the birds were singing that day. CHEERS to being a statistic. Four years ago at this time I was gearing up for round 8 of chemotherapy at the oncology wing of Mercy Hospital, a bi-weekly event that would shut me down for a minimum of three days and cause me to trade my allegiance to the invisible god in the sky for the ones I could see in the bottles of anti-nausea meds that were never out of arm's reach. Not to toot my own immune system’s horn (it plays Battle Hymn of the Republic when you squeeze it), but the treatment was successful and today I'm still alive and kickin'. Happy to say, I'm not the only one: The US cancer death rate has fallen 33% since 1991, which corresponds to an estimated 3.8 million deaths averted, according to the [American Cancer Society] report, published Thursday in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. Sadly, no one in the medical community knows what the hell to do about windmill noise cancer. The rate of lives lost to cancer continued to shrink in the most recent year for which data is available, between 2019 and 2020, by 1.5%. The 33% decline in cancer mortality is “truly formidable,” said Karen Knudsen, chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society. The report attributes this steady progress to improvements in cancer treatment, drops in smoking and increases in early detection. “New revelations for prevention, for early detection and for treatment have resulted in true, meaningful gains in many of the 200 diseases that we call cancer,” Knudsen said. Even better: with diet, exercise, and a lot of drugs to get us through the next two years, experts are hopeful we can eradicate a majority of the malignant cancer now infecting Congress. But between now and then we can count on one thing as we watch the House orcs prove their cruelty and incompetence: hair loss. - Ten years ago in C&J: January 17, 2013 CHEERS to a slight change in plans. Lost in last week's trillion-dollar-coin and gun-violence-task-force hullabaloo was President Obama's announcement that the Afghanistan war is ramping down a bit faster than previously announced: U.S. troops in Afghanistan will move into a support role starting this spring, President Barack Obama announced at a joint news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday. "This war will come to a responsible end,” Obama said. Troops will have a new mission in Afghanistan, Obama said, which will include the training, advising, and assisting of Afghan forces and will set the stage for a further reduction of coalition forces. Awesome! Okay, so who wants to be the first to volunteer for manager duty at Club Med Kabul? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller??? [1/16/23 Update: All that money, all that training and advising, all that time, and the Afghan military and government folded like a cheap suit the moment we left. Did we really expect anything else?] - And just one more… CHEERS to America’s favorite “Girl from the South Side.” Michelle Obama (who you can follow on twitter here) was the ninth First Lady whose iron-fisted regime I lived under. During her eight way-too-fast years in that official capacity, she was an amazing role model—not only in terms of her grace and humor and intelligence and optimism and down-to-earth authenticity and… (I'll stop there for space reasons—my list of her pluses is 12 pages long, single spaced), but also for throwing open the doors of the White House and making it feel more like the "People's House" than any time I can remember. (Under her icy successor it felt more like 1945 Berlin.) Today is Michelle’s frrfrrfrth birthday, and that’s all the reason I need to post these… I know there's no job description or requirements for the role of presidential spouse, but I think it's fair to say that she set the bar just about as high as it can go. She rocked it. So, in conclusion: Happy happy happy (I'll stop there for space reasons—my list of happys is also 12 pages long) birthday, Michelle, and many blessings on your camels. P.S. I don’t care what fate says, in my book she made it to 100: So there. Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today? - Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial "People want to look and live like Bill in Portland Maine. Underwear-on-head couture is cool." —Jill Martin - [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/17/2147398/-Cheers-and-Jeers-Tuesday Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/