(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Cheers and Jeers: Wednesday [1] [] Date: 2023-10-25 Life Lessons & Bon Mots from October Birthday Kids “Voting by mail is working for red and blue states alike—it’s just one way we can make voting easier and more accessible. We should expand this safe, simple system so folks across the country have the option to cast their ballot by mail!” —Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) "God always answers prayers. Sometimes it's 'yes.' Sometimes the answer is 'no.' Sometimes it's 'you gotta be kidding.'" —President Jimmy Carter Continued... "There’s a reason white supremacy attacks history. Opposition to teaching bigotry’s history and where it leads—from the slave trade to the Holocaust—is about erasing society’s tools to recognize prejudice & prevent atrocity. Holocaust denial has no place in our society. None." —Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) “Resentment and anger are bad for your blood pressure and your digestion.” —Bishop Desmond Tutu “If fighting for women’s health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the women’s card, then deal me in.” —Hillary Rodham Clinton “Leave every place you go, everything you touch, a little better for your having been there.” —Julie Andrews x Does anybody still make homemade, hand-cranked ice cream? Umm, boy! So many memories. Sunday evenings in the shade of an old oak, with family and neighbors – a bygone era. But the taste and thoughts of that simpler time remain in the backroads of my mind. — Dan Rather (@DanRather) August 17, 2023 - "Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep." —Mahatma Gandhi “My life has been transformed by great teachers all the way.” —Jeff Goldblum "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame." —Oscar Wilde “You're not really famous until you’re a Pez dispenser.” —Carrie Fisher To all of the above and those in our Daily Kos community who made another trip around the sun this month: happy birthday and many blessings on your camels. And now, our feature presentation... - Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, October 25, 2023 Note: Here—hold this rabid skunk for me. I promise I'll be back for it no later than 2028. - 3 days!!! By the Numbers: Days 'til Veterans Day: 17 Days 'til Michigan's Traverse City 5k Zombie Run: 3 Year-over-year increase in L.A. port traffic: 17% Percent of Americans polled by Navigator Research who support collective bargaining: 80% Percent who support strikes by workers in the pursuit of better wages and working conditions: 82% Number of additional UAW members that were sent to the picket lines Monday: 6,800 Percent chance that Michigan Democrats just codified the Affordable Care Act provisions into state law that prohibit insurers from denying healthcare based on preexisting conditions or kicking dependents off their parent’s coverage until age 26: 100% - Mid-week Rapture Index: 185 (including 3 Satanisms and 1 simple answer to 1 silly question). Soul Protection Factor 8 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today. - Puppy Pic of the Day: Mama's in control… - CHEERS to Infrastructure Week. We've been having a lot of them under President Biden, and this week is no exception. Over 30 "technology hubs"—including one in Puerto Rico—will be created with money from the infrastructure law to make us the undisputed kings and queens of the technology hill: “We’re going to invest in critical technologies like biotechnology, critical materials, quantum computing, advanced manufacturing—so the U.S. will lead the world again in innovation across the board,” President Joe Biden said. “I truly believe this country is about to take off.” […] “YOU get a tech hub and YOU get a tech hub and YOU get a tech hub...” The program, formally the Regional Technology and Innovation Hub Program, ties into the president's economic argument that people should be able to find good jobs where they live and that opportunity should be spread across the country, rather than be concentrated. The White House has sought to elevate that message and highlight Biden's related policies as the Democratic president undertakes his 2024 reelection bid. Even Maine gets a hub. Specifically, a Forest Bioproducts Advanced Manufacturing Tech Hub with an eye toward harnessing our legendary forests to "displace plastics, sequester carbon, and replace toxic chemicals while bolstering U.S. supply chain resilience." And with God as our witness, America, we will never let you run out of toilet paper again. JEERS to the new guy. Today's the day! (Disclaimer: Unless it's not.) After weeks of rancor and ribaldry (great word), the United States of America gets a new Speaker of the House. I bet you're dying to know who it is, so I'm willing to ignore the press embargo and spill the beans: ☠ He's a 2020 election-results denier ☠ He's a climate crisis denier ☠ He wants to repeal Social Security, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act, and put an abortion ban into the Constitution ☠ He believes Donald Trump was sent to Earth by God ☠ He believes women should know their place ☠ Total racist ☠ Believes only white male landowners should have the right to vote ☠ Motto: "Cruelty today, cruelty tomorrow, cruelty forever." ☠ He’s white! Oh, and his name? I dunno. I'll let you know once he's been elected. JEERS to the teabaggers of yesteryear. 100 years ago this week, a Senate committee began investigating the Teapot Dome scandal. This political cartoon was popular back then: A Republican scandal centered around oil? Say it ain’t so. Fourth-worst-president-ever (moving down a notch post-Trump, and only slightly better than Buchanan and Bush II) Warren Harding's cronies were allowing private companies to lease government oil reserves from public land in Wyoming. As a result of the investigation, Interior Secretary Albert Fall became the first cabinet member to go to jail. He was a Republican. Shocking. - BRIEF SANITY BREAK - - END BRIEF SANITY BREAK - CHEERS to nukin' your dinner. On October 25, 1955, the microwave oven was introduced by Tappan in Mansfield, Ohio (just a stone's throw from my hometown Mt. Vernon). Cost of the appliance: $1,200. Protection against gremlins: Priceless. CHEERS and JEERS to Ma Nature's 2023/2024 playbook. We've heard from the Farmer's Almanac, the Old Farmer's Almanac, the New Farmer's Almanac, and the Almanac of Farmers Stuck In A Mid-Life Crisis Which Explains The Porsches in Their Driveways. Now it's time for the NOAA to guess what winter will bring to the US-of-A this season. Their Climate Prediction Center’s latest forecast, based on a months-long analyses of moss on trees, fuzz on wooly worms, and sweaters on local TV morning show meteorologists, is shaping up to be a mild one: Wetter-than-average conditions: Northern Alaska, areas of the West from California to the Rockies, the southern Plains, Gulf Coast, Southeast and lower mid-Atlantic. Drier-than-average conditions: Portions of the northern Rockies and central Great Lakes region, especially for Michigan and northern Ohio and Indiana. Above-average temperatures: across the northern tier of the U.S. and much of the Far West. The greatest odds for warmer-than-average conditions are in Alaska, the Pacific Northwest and northern New England. Below-average temperatures: No areas of the country are expected to have below-average temperatures. As usual, some predictions are harder to make than others. For example, there's a zero-percent chance of knowing actual snowfall amounts this far out, but there's a 100 percent chance of knowing that climate-change deniers will scream "Global cooling!" every time a flake sticks to the pavement. C&J recommends you start assembling your winter management kit now: shovel, windshield scraper, ice-melt pellets, blankets, candles, and earplugs. - Ten years ago in C&J: October 25, 2013 JEERS to sleeping at the switches. Some of the Air Force personnel whose job it is to keep our nuclear missiles locked up and out of the hands of madmen were caught propping open their blast doors during nappytime. That means a terrorist could've waltzed right in and played his own real-life game of Missile Command. But who would be such a brazen lunatic that they would admit to wanting to fire off nukes for no other reason than pure egomaniacal vanity? Silly me, of course: American gambling-industry billionaire Republican and Newt Gingrich financier Sheldon Adelson: "So there’s an atomic weapon goes over ballistic missiles in the middle of the [Iranian] desert that doesn’t hurt a soul. Maybe a couple rattlesnakes and scorpions or whatever. And then you say, ‘See, the next one is in the middle of Tehran. So we mean business. Yeah—whaddya say we lock them blast doors from now on? [Thumbs up!] Awesome. Probably add one of them chain thingies, too. - And just one more… CHEERS to Fani Willis’s Miracle Flipper Machine. You can thank the Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney for what you are about to see: one of Donald Trump’s most sycophantic sycophants—a psycho conspiracy-theory peddler with no morals, no ethics, no shame, but enough brains to know exactly the extent to which she was aiding and abetting pure evil—bawling her eyes out as she pleads GUILTY in a court of law and now becomes the third Trump lawyer to flip on him. Enjoy... - On behalf of the nation that has suffered its worst existential crisis since the Civil War, thanks to dimwit grifters like Jenna Ellis looking to hitch her star to billionaires dangling power and riches in front of her gullible face, please accept this in the spirit in which it’s intended: ma’am, may the rest of your sad, sorry life be unpleasant and itchy. Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today? - Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial “I don’t think I’ve heard a single member of my caucus, the Republicans in the Senate, say ‘you know, Bill in Portland Maine is great." —Mitt Romney - [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/25/2201187/-Cheers-and-Jeers-Wednesday?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web 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/