(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Cheers and Jeers: Wednesday [1] ['Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags', 'Showtags Popular_Tags'] Date: 2023-02-22 Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, February 22, 2023 Note: For a complete list of Freedom Caucus members who don’t show up drunk on the House floor, please send us a self-addressed stamped envelope and we'll return it to you empty. - By the Numbers: Saturday!!! Days 'til next full "worm moon": 13 Days 'til the Beer, Bourbon & BBQ Festival in Atlanta: 3 Number of states (HI, WV, LA) that haven't reported a case of avian flu yet: 3 Amount of the fines Packers Sanitation Services paid after the Labor Department found child laborers using chemicals to clean saws and equipment at 13 facilities in 8 states: $1.5 million Amount in tax refunds the IRS has issued so far this year: $16 billion Miles from D.C. to Kyiv as the crow flies: 4,881 Age of Yoko Ono as of last Saturday: 90 - Mid-week Rapture Index: 186 (including 3 tribulation temples and 1 instance of ungodly restroom maintenance). Soul Protection Factor 8 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today. - Puppy Pic of the Day: Someone is displeased… - CHEERS to Old Man Biden. As Dark Brandon hunkers down in Poland with NATO leaders to chart the best course for giving Russia enough rope to hang itself with, speculation continues over here on when he'll officially make his reelection announcement. And with the announcement, whenever it happens, will come lots of insufferable hand-wringing over his age. Never mind that he just aced his physical. Never mind that he has a long list of accomplishments (including 100 confirmed judges). Never mind that his quiet rope-a-dope tactics have left his opponents fuming at the nerve of that guy! Last week Ezra Klein published a column detailing all the reasons—like the ones I just mentioned—why Biden-at-80 shouldn't be much of an issue in 2024. And Digby adds her always-valuable two cents on why Joe is the right man at the right time: I think there’s an element of YOLO [You Only Live Once] at work too. A lot of people his age develop that trait. He doesn’t have any offspring that will follow in his footsteps so he doesn’t have to be as cautious about his “legacy” he would have if Beau had lived. And certainly, as Ezra points out, the ego that defined him as a younger man (it really was outsized) is no longer leading him to be a showboater. He’s in a position in his life to just make the effort to do what he knows is right. Biden feelin’ the love in Warsaw yesterday. As a person who is getting older very quickly (they don’t tell you how much faster time passes as you age) and I feel keenly the minuses, particularly the physical degradation. But there are some pluses, more than I anticipated and one of the big ones is that I feel a greater sense of calm—zen, if you will. I don’t know if this applies to everyone but I’m finding the emotional changes of age are actually quite positive. Maybe Biden does too. The zen president. I approve. CHEERS to piling on. Oh, hey, here's a news flash: white people have treated Native Americans like shit on a shoe for hundreds of years. It boggles the mind how many of them we've killed, how much land we've taken, how many "treaties" we’ve broken…the list of ways in which our government has stomped on them is endless. But now there's some major atoning in the works, and all the affiliated agencies are on board: Interior, Agriculture, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the Big Guy... [T]he Biden administration forges ahead with what it hopes will spur a seismic shift in the way the government approaches managing public lands: inviting tribes to be co-stewards of the land their ancestors were forcibly or illegally removed from by the government. […] I don’t throw throw around the word “blessing” a lot, but what a freaking you-know-what to have Deb Haaland as our Interior Secretary. Why is this a BFD? For starters, it likely means the U.S. government’s management of millions of acres of pristine public lands and natural resources will be better with tribal voices engaged. They have extensive and traditional knowledge of how to sustainably care for their land, and that, in turn, can play into efforts to mitigate climate change. […] This movement toward co-stewardship is also happening amid a shift toward a broader policy of revitalization for tribes, whether it’s in language, culture or economic development. Two years into office, Biden has invested billions in tribal infrastructure and water rights settlements. He’s put record numbers of Indigenous people in his administration, [including Interior Secretary Deb] Haaland and National Park Service director Charles Sams. He’s also restarted the White House Tribal Nations Summit, which gives tribal leaders direct access to administration officials to talk about priority issues. All together now: Finally. CHEERS to Massachusetts liberals. Ted Kennedy was born 91 years ago today and it goes without saying that we on the left still miss him with vigah. Here’s some classic Ted talk from 2007: lambasting Republicans for turning down the first increase in the minimum wage in ten years. (Two years later it was raised to $7.25 an hour...a laughable sum today.) I love the routine: like a seasoned baseball player he steps up, knocks the dirt off his shoes, goes through his warm-up moves, gets the nod from awestruck newbie senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and then…Thwack! Off he goes. I will never tire of hearing Ted in righteous-bellow mode… - Pay your respects here. Today in the C&J cafe: Boston cream pies and keep ‘em comin’. - BRIEF SANITY BREAK - x This juvenile male Victoria rifle bird tries to impress a female while practicing the mating dance, so coreographic that looks almost mechanical [📹 travelandwildlifephotography: https://t.co/1ptHy93JGU]pic.twitter.com/in47Aiomde — Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 20, 2023 - END BRIEF SANITY BREAK - CHEERS to the Miracle on Ice. We'll file this item under "Up Yours, Putin." Forty-three years ago today, on February 22, 1980, the U.S. Olympic hockey team out-skated and outwitted the "unbeatable" Soviet team at Lake Placid, stunning everyone by beating them 4-3. I walked around afterward in a t-shirt with a Russian bear getting knocked in the head by a puck and the caption: "Puck You, Russia!" (I'm still surprised my schoolmarms didn’t have a problem with the thinly-veiled F-bomb.) Thankfully, with maturity and the passage of time, I've traded in that ratty old shirt for a sensible Brooks Brothers button-down. It says "Hey, Remember When We Kicked Your Ass in 1980, Russia? That Was Puckin' Awesome!" Because, y'know, we all have to grow up sometime. JEERS to shooting the messenger. The way Republicans and some in the media are treating Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, you'd think he was the guy at the controls of the chemical train that flew off the tracks in East Palestine, Ohio and sent noxious shit all over the damn place. Actually, you nitwits, the blame rests with the railroad, the previous president, the current Ohio governor, and the stooges in the Ohio legislature. Pete, is in fact, actively involved: Buttigieg announced a package of reforms Tuesday—two days after he warned the railroad responsible for the derailment, Norfolk Southern, to fulfill its promises to clean up the mess just outside East Palestine, Ohio, and help the town recover. They hate him for his brains. He said the Department of Transportation will hold the railroad accountable for any safety violations that contributed to the Feb. 3 crash near the Pennsylvania border. "While ensuring the safety of those impacted by this crash is the immediate priority, we also have to recognize that this represents an important moment to redouble our efforts to make this far less likely to happen again in the future," Buttigieg said. There's a whole list of improvements, from employee hotlines to report safety issues, to ending inspection waivers, to improving the goddam braking system on those tanker cars, and a lot more. And right on cue, the critics who have been screaming for Pete to DO SOMETHING!!! will now turn around and say he's trying to impose Marxist Stalinist Communism on the freedom-loving railroad industry. Welcome to America. Toot Toot. - Ten years ago in C&J: February 22, 2013 JEERS to the era of lost marbles. To get a sense of how inept Republicans are in describing their opinion of the looming fiscal cliff sequester bullshit, here's Senator Orrin Hatch to explain: "I’m for sequestration," Hatch said, if Congress can’t cut spending. "We’ve got to face the music now, or it will be much tougher later." With across-the-board spending cuts set to kick in next week, Hatch said sequestration would lead to an economic disaster in Utah as two-thirds of civilians working at Hill Air Force Base would be furloughed. He said it would be "devastating to our nation’s readiness." And he's not alone. That's pretty much the GOP mantra right now: "We're going to financially fuck every one of you for no valid reason! Hooray!!!" Yeah. Good luck riding that horse into 2014. - And just one more… CHEERS to #1. George Washington’s adventures in 1776, our country’s founding year—starting in Boston routing the redcoats and ending in Pennsylvania strategically retreating from them—was a pinball game of victories and routs punctuated by both strategic cunning and sheer luck. And mud. Lots and lots of mud. Washington in one of his happier moods. Thanks to him, we booted the British and formed our own republic which, despite an insurrection in 1861 and another one in 2021 by the heirs of the same nitwits, endures—shakily—to this day. So don’t forget to say "Happieth Birthdayeth" to ol' George today—291 years old and still alive! (Disclaimer: actual aliveness limited to the hearts of his countrymen. See warranty for details.) From the day he took office, Washington knew that corruption and special interests would be a fact of life in the halls of power. (Today Republicans would obstruct him at every turn because "We’re still troubled by all the unanswered questions about that cherry tree” and then hold 18 months of committee hearings.) President Biden, meanwhile, has followed in the footsteps of the Father of our Country in many respects: As president, [Washington] was particularly sensitive to the diverse interests of the new country and fervent in his efforts to prevent its fragmentation. [...] Also in GW’s plus column: big fan of vaccine mandates. He promoted roads, canals, the post office—anything and everything that would bind the different states and regions together. … Never taking the unity of the country for granted, he remained preoccupied throughout his presidency with creating the sinews of nationhood. … Washington, more than anyone, promoted the sense of Union that Lincoln and others would later uphold. —From To the Best of My Ability, edited by James McPherson Roads. Canals. Postal service. Or as the GOPers call them: handouts for the takers. But thank god the lamestream media was on the case to call Washington out on his caliphatic socialist takeover agenda designed to destroy the soul of America: [H]is critics believed he wanted to become another “King George.” The Philadelphia Aurora, one of the major opposition papers, in 1796 editorialized: "If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by Washington. If ever a nation was deceived by a man, the American nation has been deceived by Washington." —From Rating the Presidents by William Ridings Jr. and Stuart McIver Washington wasn't perfect. He lied at times. He schemed at times. He threw tantrums. There was that whole owning other human beings thing. But considering he didn’t have much of a POTUS playbook to work with, and no predecessor whose brain he could pick over an evening of bowling and beer, he did okay. Now shine up yer buckles and pay your respects to"#1" here. And then go take advantage of his awesome mattress sales. Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today? - Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial Cheers and Jeers, enveloped with a strong smell of mothballs, feels like an old pinstripe suit that’s been taken out of the closet for no apparent reason. Bill in Portland Maine feels more like a mummy purposelessly raised from the dead. —Jake Coyle, AP - [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/22/2154091/-Cheers-and-Jeers-Wednesday 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/