(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: 2023-02-14 Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, February 14, 2023 Note: Hey, gang. Today is "Clean Out Your Computer Day." So far I've picked enough crumbs out of my keyboard to re-assemble a chocolate chip cookie and six Doritos, and enough dog hair to knit a three-foot-long scarf. And that was just under the SHIFT key. I like the way this day is headed. - By the Numbers: 4 days!!! Days 'til Mardi Gras: 7 Days 'til Vines in the Pines in Ruidoso, New Mexico: 4 Consumer sentiment index for February, up from 64.9 in January and the happiest report in 13 months: 66.4 Current death toll estimate from the earthquake in Turkey/Syria: 35,000 Number of Biden judicial nominees who advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, including voting rights lawyer Dale Ho: 24 Estimated percent of dog owners who plan to give their pooch a Valentine's Day present today: 20% Estimated total amount that was bet by around 50-million people on this year's Super Bowl teams: $16 billion - Puppy Pic of the Day: The greatest… - CHEERS to rubbing the opponents' faces in their own doo-doo. (Note: While this is fine to do with MAGA cult members, please never housetrain a pet this way.) The noble opposition really blew it when, in front of the entire nation on the teevee, they stood up during the State of the Union address and (falsely) insisted they never wanted to cut Social Security or Medicare. President Biden—aka the guy with the microphone—thanked them and promptly declared that the federal government was in complete agreement: no cuts during debt ceiling negotiations. It was a delightful display of owning the cons and apparently #46 ain’t near done yet: After President Joe Biden pummeled Republicans on Social Security and Medicare during his State of the Union address, drawing shouts of outrage from the party, Republican leaders urged him to stop telling Americans that the GOP wants to slash those retirement programs. I believe him. Then Biden paid a visit to Florida and did it again, exasperating the party and escalating a fight that is poised to play out on Capitol Hill and in the 2024 presidential election. […] “Republicans don’t like being called out on this,” Biden said. “A lot of Republicans — their dream is to cut Social Security and Medicare. Well, let me say this: If that’s your dream, I’m your nightmare.” You may continue haunting them at will, sir. CHEERS to a bit of per-speck-tive. Today seems like a good day to step back and ponder our place in the universe. And when I say step back I mean waaaaaay back—like 3.7 billion miles back. Today is the 33rd anniversary of the famous "pale blue dot" photo snapped by the Voyager probe in 1990 as it took one last look back at our sorry asses. Thanks to advances in imaging technology, in 2020 NASA unveiled a new, clearer image that we recommend you and a mixed drink or toke of wacky tobbacky spend some time with in quiet contemplation tonight, as Carl Sagan so eloquently did: “From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” As we can all plainly see, it's a reminder—simultaneously placid, eerie, and awe-inspiring—that no matter how insurmountable our problems may seem or how big the assholes are who rule us, we're just an annoying itch on the universe's butt, and one day, whether humanity is still here or not, we're going to get scratched. Also as we can also plainly see, would it kill ya to pick your underwear up off the floor? The universe hates a slob. - BRIEF SANITY BREAK - x This is the best State of the Union moment and it’s not even close pic.twitter.com/j5QYSNBF0L — Keith Nagy (@nagy_minaj) February 7, 2023 - END BRIEF SANITY BREAK - JEERS to our new overinflated overlords. If we're going to be invaded by the damn things for the foreseeable future, we might as well know our history: Humans have intentionally filled bladders, especially actual animal bladders, with air since prehistory. In Ancient Greece, these had a number of recorded uses. The Aztecs inflated cat intestines to make shapes to present as sacrifices to the gods. By the 18th century, people were inflating balloons of cloth or canvas with hot air and sending it aloft, the Montgolfier brothers going so far as to experiment with first animals in 1782, and then, when altitude did not kill them, human beings in 1783. For God’s sake whatever you do don’t worship the alien balloonships. That just eggs ‘em on. The first hydrogen-filled gas balloon was flown in the 1790s. A century later the first hydrogen-filled weather balloons were launched in France. The first modern rubber balloons on record were made by Michael Faraday in 1824. He used these to contain gasses he was experimenting with, especially hydrogen. By 1825 similar balloons were being sold by Thomas Hancock, but like Faraday's they came disassembled, as two circles of soft rubber. The user was expected to lay the circles one on top of the other and rub their edges until the soft, gummy rubber stuck, leaving the powdered inner part loose for inflation. So, yeah. Blame them. CHEERS to the Valentine's Day Bandit. Every February 14th for the last 37 years, a mysterious someone has gone around Portland's downtown in the wee hours and taped red hearts on virtually every street-level window. Everyone just loves it. Mainly because it takes our mind off the previous week's visit by the Hoof and Mouth Disease Awareness Day Bandit. - Ten years ago in C&J: February 14, 2013 CHEERS to voter vindication. Like many other states, Maine has had its share of Republican lunkheads who claim our voting system is "rife" with "fraud." In fact, a couple years back our GOP-led legislature approved a law that would eliminate election-day registration in Maine to combat "fraud," thus repealing a law that was originally passed decades earlier by Republicans. (Thankfully, a citizens veto repealed the Republican repeal of the Republican law.) And now, lo and behold, along comes a state commission's report that says, unequivocally, this silly non-debate is over: [T]here is "little or no history in Maine of voter impersonation or identification fraud." It also said such a [Voter ID] law would slow down the voting process and could work to disenfranchise elderly, poor or rural voters, many of whom don't have IDs or may not be able to travel far to get them. [T]he report…also asks the state to establish an early voting system, in which residents would be able to cast ballots before Election Day. "We are thrilled the commission rejected voter ID and endorsed true early voting," said Shenna Bellows, the Maine ACLU's executive director. In Tuesday's State of the Union address, President Obama announced that a bipartisan commission would look into making voter laws more favorable to, y'know, the voters. I think there should be the following minimum threshold for state laws: if 1) each state conducts a regular "Study on the Conduct of Elections" modeled after Maine's and 2) if your voter laws don’t cause the League of Women Voters to throw up their hands and quit, you get a thumbs-up! If not, the feds take over. As usual, I release this sterling advice into the public domain. Unless somehow there's money in it. - 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 drivers. 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… x The votes are in! 🎉 More than 64,000 people voted and we’re excited to welcome eight new snowplow names to our fleet (including an homage to someone who just won Record of the Year *ahem* hi @lizzo!) Meet the Class of 2023 Snowplows and learn more: https://t.co/vCCLVYw2s3 pic.twitter.com/2aXZCsBFIp — Minnesota Department of Transportation (@MnDOT) February 8, 2023 Heckuva job, Minnesota. Or should we now start calling you…..Mini Moscow? Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today? - Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial Cheers and Jeers, in particular whether a person had splashed in the kiddie pool, made the biggest difference in cognitive abilities such as memory, judgment and focus, Ohio State University scientists reported Wednesday in a scientific journal. —NBC News - [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/14/2152576/-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/