(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Cheers and Jeers: Monday [1] ['Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags', 'Showtags Popular_Tags'] Date: 2023-04-10 Wednesday Kevin McCarthy suffers a brief pang of conscience. It quickly passes and his office staff cancels the 911 call. All week: Ukrainian farmers continue to harvest their spring bumper crop. After a bombshell report concludes that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose lavish trips to posh resorts via yachts and private jets he received from a Hitler-infatuated Republican billionaire, the MAGA cult begs the Hitler-infatuated Republican billionaire to be Trump’s vice führ...er, vice president, I think. [Re-checks notes] Nope, my bad. It’s vice führer. Thursday Oh poo. Another day, another day JFK Jr. doesn’t show up anywhere disguised as anybody. America's Republican governors issue a joint statement of apology to their base voters and Fox News after they realize they've gone a full day without signing a piece of anti-woman, anti-Black, or anti-LGBTQ legislation into law. Friday The University of Michigan announces the consumer sentiment index for April. Analysts are puzzled as America’s mood swings from rebarbative to effulgent. The spring fiddlehead forecast is released and, once again, experts are torn between "boiled" and "pickled." Saddle up and let’s get this foolishness over with by suppertime. And now, our feature presentation... - Cheers and Jeers for Monday, April 10, 2023 Note: Two roads diverged in the wood. I took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. My road had waffles at the end of it. - By the Numbers: 5 days!!! Days 'til International Workers' Day: 21 Days 'til the Vidalia Onion Festival in Georgia: 5 Number of times Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reported the ultra-luxury vacations and private jet travel provided to him by Republican billionaire mega-donor Harlan Crow over decades: 0 Number of times Tesla has cut prices since January: 5 Rank of the Louvre, British Museum, and Metropolitan Museum of Art among the world's most-visited art museums: #1, #2, #3 Percent chance that Kanye West's private Christian Donda Academy had "doors locked from the outside, lunches were always sushi, no forks or other utensils were allowed, no cleaning services or school nurses were employed, and medications on campus either were unsecured or had expired," according to plaintiffs in a lawsuit against him: 100% Number of seconds after which this message will self-destruct: 5 - Puppy Pic of the Day: "Monday already???" - CHEERS to jobs, jobs, jobs! (Or as Fox News describes it, since it's good news: "Nothing, nothing, nothing to see here!") If nothing else (and there's plenty else), President Biden has lorded over one hell of an employment comeback since taking office 27 months ago. The latest jobs report was so good (+236,000) that it was released by the Labor Department via confetti cannon on Friday. Bill McBride at Calculated Risk remains my go-to blog for number crunching, and he writes: Overall, this was a solid employment report. The headline jobs number in the March employment report was close to expectations, however employment for the previous two months was revised down by 17,000, combined. The participation rate and employment population ratio increased, and the unemployment rate decreased to 3.5%. […] Damn. Whoever that Trump guy is, he really sucked. [L]eisure and hospitality has now added back about 96% all of the jobs lost in March and April 2020. Construction employment decreased 9 thousand and is now 280 thousand above the pre-pandemic level. Manufacturing lost 1 thousand jobs and is now 198 thousand above the pre-pandemic level. One guy who won’t be getting his dream job: Wisconsin state Supreme Court candidate Dan Kelly. He got beat by a girl, and now he’ll be mooching and taking from you and me when he marches down to the unemployment office and demands his free money. Pffft. Republicans are so predictable. CHEERS to the return of the Jedi. Obi-Wan Kenobi said it plain to Darth Vader a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away: "If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine," a sentiment Princess Leia echoed when she told Grand Moff Tarkin, "The tighter you squeeze, the more the rebellion will slip through your fingers." So leave it to Tennessee Republicans to ignore their warnings and expel two young Black representatives (one of whom, Justin Jones, went to Bowdoin College here in Maine) from the state House for the crime of raising their voices in the chamber to call for action against school shootings. Not only are the pair becoming household names across the country for showing up the MAGA cult as the fascist hive of scum and villainy it is, their political careers appear to be only momentarily derailed: At least 29 members of Nashville’s 40-seat Metro Council said they plan to reappoint expelled former Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, and send him back to the Tennessee House of Representatives. That would give him more than the simple majority he would need to reclaim his seat. […] “I spoke to Reps Jones, Pearson, and Johnson to thank them for their leadership and courage in the face of a blatant disregard of our nation’s democratic values. Our country needs to take action on gun violence—to do that we need more voices like theirs speaking out.” —President Biden, Friday "Most of us said, 'See you when you get reappointed,'" House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Ray Clemmons, D-Nashville, said of his conversations with Jones and Pearson after the vote. In Shelby County, at least one of 13 county commissioners has vowed to reappoint Justin Pearson to his house seat. Here's hoping they return to the House floor with force powers. The world would love to see their GOP colleagues get collectively pantsed. CHEERS to a civil end to a most uncivil war. Big anniversary yesterday—in fact, it oughtta be a federal holiday. On April 9, 1865, following his final late-night cocaine orgy, Robert E. Lee called it quits and surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, effectively ending the southern traitors’ War for the Preservation of Owning Humans for Forced Labor. Give the racist a purple nurple, Ulysses. Several years ago a demographic historian concluded that the death toll of the war was much higher than originally thought—750,000 versus the original 620,000. Sadly, another number has also been extended far beyond its original estimate: the number of years it's taking too many white people in the South to admit they lost and put away that damn confederate battle flag. Hell, even slave owner and avowed racist treason-monger Lee had at least enough self-awareness to concern himself with post-war optics: "When Robert E. Lee surrendered he asked all of his followers to furl this flag. Stow it away, he said. Put it in your attics," Clyburn continued. "He refused to be buried in his Confederate uniform. His family refused to allow anyone dressed in the confederate uniform to attend his funeral. "Why? Because Robert E. Lee said he considered this emblem to be a symbol of treason.” He also didn’t want any statues of him put up, a request that fell on deaf ears as groups like the Daughters of the Confederacy erected hundreds of them (of Lee and other CSA icons, including a fresh batch in the 1960s to remind the civil rights movement to remember “their place”) as a way of living in denial of their treason. I’ll give the ‘em credit for one thing: they sure picked the right theme song. "Look away, Dixie Land." Mission accomplished. - BRIEF SANITY BREAK - x The most difficult Chinese character in the world means 'biáng', a noodle dish. It's made up of 58 strokes in its traditional form and it was encoded in Unicode in 2020 only [read more: https://t.co/YrUyTv60vr] [📹 takumitohgu: https://t.co/3wOQfav606]pic.twitter.com/SxBxMSvtmg — Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 7, 2023 - END BRIEF SANITY BREAK - JEERS to non-refundable tickets. On April 10, 1912, the unsinkable RMS Titanic set off for New York from Southampton, England. That cruise, of course, turned out to be a disaster. The caviar was much too salty. CHEERS to an accurate assessment. Funny thing about having a presidential administration that's staffed up and down the chain with smart, competent, sober-eyed professionals: when they issue a report on something, you can count on it to be truthful and accurate. Exhibit A: its report on our military withdrawal from Afghanistan, something that should've happened a lot earlier than it did. The place was always a quagmire rife with corruption, "victory" could never be defined (let alone achieved), and we knew darn well from Russia's catastrophic withdrawal that it was never going to end well for us either. And so it didn't. Bush II and Obama—and even Biden, a bit—deserve to take some lumps, but #45 is rightfully getting the Adderall-sniffing lion's share of the blame for setting the withdrawal in motion: Since the U.S. withdrawal, Biden has blamed the February 2020 agreement Trump reached with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, saying it boxed the U.S. into leaving the country. The agreement has been blamed by analysts for undercutting the U.S.-backed government, which collapsed the following year. Pete Buttigieg serving in Afghanistan. Under the U.S.-Taliban Doha agreement, roughly 5,000 Taliban prisoners were released as a condition for what were supposed to be separate future peace talks between the Kabul government and the Taliban. [John] Kirby noted that release and other examples of what he said was a “general sense of degradation and neglect” inherited by Biden. […] The U.S. was to remove all forces by May 1, 2021. Biden pushed a full withdrawal to September but declined to delay further, saying it would prolong a war that had long needed to end. And now, $2 trillion and over 200,000 dead people later, everything in Afghanistan is back to the way it was on September 10, 2001. The End. - Ten years ago in C&J: April 10, 2013 CHEERS to the evolution of evolving. And one more sees the light: Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), one of the last remaining Democratic holdouts to oppose same-sex marriage, announced Monday that he now supports gay nuptials. "After lengthy consideration, my views have evolved sufficiently to support marriage equality legislation," Johnson said in a statement. "This position doesn't require any religious denomination to alter any of its tenets; it simply forbids government from discrimination regarding who can marry whom." By my count, that's 54 senators in favor of gay marriage, with Democrats Joe Manchin (WV), Mark Pryor (AR) and Mary Landrieu (LA) still acting like they don’t support it when of course they do. Pretty soon the closet's gonna be filled with nobody but straight people in denial. And I promise to support their right to get married. - And just one more… CHEERS to the wind beneath the New Deal's wings. She was born on April 10, 1880 in Boston, but her ancestral roots were in Maine, where she spent much of her downtime and was laid to rest (in Newcastle) in 1965. Her strict parents wanted her to be a teacher and live at home, but Frances Perkins had other plans. Bearing witness to how badly the employed and unemployed were treated, she made it her life's mission to do something about it. Her smarts and tenacity led her to the position where, with the full backing of her boss, she stitched together the American social safety net we have today: When, in February, 1933, President-elect Roosevelt asked Frances Perkins to serve in his cabinet as Secretary of Labor, she outlined for him a set of policy priorities she would pursue: a 40-hour work week; a minimum wage; unemployment compensation; worker’s compensation; abolition of child labor; direct federal aid to the states for unemployment relief; Social Security; a revitalized federal employment service; and universal health insurance. FDR signs Social Security into law, with Frances Perkins looking on behind him. She made it clear to Roosevelt that his agreement with these priorities was a condition of her joining his cabinet. Roosevelt said he endorsed them all, and Frances Perkins became the first woman in the nation to serve in a Presidential cabinet. […] Within a month of Roosevelt’s inauguration, Congress enacted legislation establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps, which Roosevelt asked Perkins to implement. … Before Roosevelt presented his final One Hundred Days legislation to the Congress, the National Industrial Recovery Act, Perkins convinced him to allocate $3.3 billion for public works from the moneys appropriated. Serving as a member of the Special Board for Public Works, Perkins helped to ensure that money was spent on socially useful projects: schools, roads, highway, housing projects and post offices. Public works construction employed a many as 1.5 – 2 million people in 1934. FDR's dynamic duo: Frances Perkins and Eleanor. In1934, Roosevelt appointed Frances Perkins to head a Committee on Economic Security, where she forged the blueprint of legislation finally enacted as the Social Security Act. Signed into law by the President on August 14, 1935, the Act included a system of old age pensions, unemployment compensation, workers’ compensation and aid to the needy and disabled. … In 1938, Congress enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act, also crafted with the support of Perkins, establishing a minimum wage and maximum work hours and banning child labor. [...] In1944, a piece portraying Frances Perkins in Collier’s magazine described her accomplishments over the previous twelve years as “not so much the Roosevelt New Deal, as … the Perkins New Deal.” Today the Labor Department HQ in Washington is called the Frances Perkins Building. And in a sign of just how popular and durable her Social Security idea has become, President Joe Biden got safety net-hating Republicans to pledge, openly and publicly on national TV during his 2023 State of the Union address, not to touch it during budget negotiations. So this morning we say Happy Birthday #143 to Frances Perkins, the champion of workers' rights and retirees whose policies gave body to the Democratic party's soul. And many blessings on your camels. Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are youcheering and jeering about today? - Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial "This is beyond party or partisanship. This degree of algae in the kiddie pool is shocking—almost cartoonish. Bill in Portland Maine must be impeached." —Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/10/2162703/-Cheers-and-Jeers-Monday 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/