Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday

Energize An Ally Tuesday

For the last four years, we've ceded our Tuesday above-the-fold section to raising awareness and donations for candidates, coalitions, events, legal organizations, and advocacy groups dedicated to fighting the good fight against the Trump administration, and you’ve responded by participating and donating at unprecedented levels. Since this is our last one before the election, we cede this space to the Daily Kos Elections Team—aka "The Best in the Business." As the insanity of 2020 clicks down to seven days and counting, there's one group of candidates that the Team has identified, and that's where C&J is making its donation this morning. DK poobah Michael Langenmayr writes:

Daily Kos Elections Director David Nir consulted with local Democrats to finalize this slate of candidates where we think your contributions will go the farthest in the final days of the election. But these races provide a big bang for your buck in another crucial way too.

Continued…

With states set to redraw their electoral maps starting next year, flipping these legislatures will give Democrats a seat at the table come redistricting time. That means contributions made to these candidates this year could pay dividends for years to come—all the way through the 2030 election, if we succeed in flipping these legislatures from red to blue. You're not gonna get bang for your buck like that anywhere else.

And if you missed it, DKE moved 15 more 2020 candidates in a leftward direction yesterday. Click here for details.

Daily Kos has identified 13 state legislative races where small-dollar contributions can still make a huge difference. We've also zeroed in on two races for secretary of state and one race for attorney general that are key to ending voter suppression.

That's why I'm asking you to chip in to each of these Daily Kos-endorsed Democrats right now. Each of them is running to flip a Republican seat, and beating the GOP's legislative candidates would flip these chambers from red to blue!

For our last donation of the cycle, the C&J household is donating $50 to these red-to-blue candidates, and we hope you’ll shake your couch cushions and make a donation, too, if you’re willing and able. The bigger the blue wave, the easier it’ll be to put our battered republic back together and, more important, the louder we can tell the Trump cultists to stick their red hats where the sun don’t shine.

And now, our feature presentation...

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Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, October 27, 2020

Note: The only way to stop a bad werewolf with a gun loaded with silver bullets is a good werewolf with a gun loaded with silver bullets. Or something like that. We’re a little preoccupied with lawsuits and infighting at the moment. The point is: buy guns and ammo.

—A public service message from the ghouls at the NRA

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By the Numbers:

Voting comes to a merciful end in 1 week.

Weeks 'til voting ends: One!!!

Percent of black likely voters polled by CBS News who say they’re voting for Biden and Trump, respectively: 90%, 8% 

Percent of Russians polled by Ipsos who want Biden and Trump, respectively, to win the election (50% have no opinion): 13%, 27%

Percent of Swedes who prefer Biden and Trump, respectively: 73%, 10%

American support for same-sex marriage in 1996 and 2020, respectively, according to Gallup polling: 27%, 67%

Percent chance that “Zeta” is the earliest named 27th Atlantic storm ever recorded: 100%

Date on which 43-year-old Tom Brady became the NFL’s all-time touchdown-pass leader, with 559: 10/25/20

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Puppy Pic of the Day: Say hello to Pistacchio the greenie…

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JEERS to kicking Ruth Bader Ginsburg's legacy to the curb like an old shoe.  Because it's all they know how to do anymore, yesterday Republicans broke every rule they could find to ram through a perfunctory vote on a Supreme Court nominee—does her name really matter?—that the Federalist Society's star chamber decided would facilitate the destruction of American democracy the quickest. So we now have generic evil lady on the bench, locked and loaded to, in chronological order, swing the election for Trump, destroy health care, repeal Roe v. Wade, and drown all the puppies. (To be fair, that last item isn't on the Federalist Society's official list, it's just something Cruella DeBarrett has always fantasized about.)  So now we have three liberals on the court and six Trump cultists. Or as Satan calls it: a good start.

CHEERS to democracy in action. Along with USPS sabotage, gerrymandering, drop-box vandalism, and all manner of voter suppression, Republicans were hoping that their beloved covid pandemic would stifle voter turnout in this year's election. Let's see how that's working out by checking the headlines that come up via a search of keyword "turnout" in Google News:

» Election turnout continues breaking records

» ‘Unprecedented’: Voter turnout in election could reach highest rate in more than a century

» Campaigns make final push amid record-shattering early voter turnout

» Georgia's legacy of voter suppression is driving historic black turnout

State Farm Arena in Atlanta

» Record turnout for early voting in North Carolina

» Unprecedented early voter turnout in Massachusetts

» Minnesota mail-in voting, early turnout shattering records

» Early voter turnout smashing California election records

» Record breaking voter turnout in South Carolina brings some growing pains with absentee voting

» How Texas went from low voter turnout to nation's top early voting state

» Texas is currently leading the nation in youth voter turnout

» IOP Poll Forecasts Higher Youth Voter Turnout in 2020 than in Previous Years

» Voting shows no sign of slowing

Hmm. Intriguing. [Reloads pipe] [Pours glass of sherry] [Scratches chin thoughtfully] More study is needed.

CHEERS to busting "state's rights" in the chops. On October 27, 1787, the first of the Federalist Papers was released under the name "Publius" (later revealed to be Broadway star Alexander Hamilton).  The goal: to make the case that "the insufficiency of the present confederation" (i.e. weak federal government and strong “states rights” governments) required a new constitution that would mean "nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects the most interesting in the world."  Hamilton, along with co-authors Madison and John Jay, knew they'd have critics, and this snip shows that they'd be dealing with their own version of the "Make America Great Again" crowd: 

[W]e have already sufficient indications that it will happen in this as in all former cases of great national discussion.

The essays that put meat on the Declaration of Independence's bones.

A torrent of angry and malignant passions will be let loose. To judge from the conduct of the opposite parties, we shall be led to conclude that they will mutually hope to evince the justness of their opinions, and to increase the number of their converts by the loudness of their declamations and the bitterness of their invectives.

An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good.

 Scary. But I'll say this for the original teabaggers of yore: at least they could wear tri-corn hats without looking like idiots.

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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Return of the Jedi, 2020 Election Edition 🤣 pic.twitter.com/VOuASXRNIF

— Rep. Anna V. Eskamani 🔨 (@AnnaForFlorida) October 23, 2020

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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CHEERS to the ol' bull moose. Happy Birthday to Teddy Roosevelt, who turns 162 today. #26 has a few words from the Great Beyond for the wackos who are making a mockery of his party:

"I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head."

True fact: Teddy Roosevelt also believed he was a little teapot.

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"If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.”

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"Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement."

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And for Donald Trump a week before he gets swept from office:

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.”

Ouch.  Pay your respects here.  (But do it softly...I hear he carries a big stick.)

JEERS to a guy whose lungs turned out to be as black as his heart. Just days after his official retirement, coal baron Robert Murray died in his mansion in an affluent suburb of Cleveland Sunday at 80. His aversion to safety regulations got miners killed, and he was a climate-crisis denier, a Trump cultist, recipient of sexual harassment suits, and all-around asshole. Or, as the media will conveniently collapse his career of chaos, death, denial and pollution: he was "stubborn."

First and last time you'll ever see his mug here in C&J.

I'd bet money his trip to the afterlife will involve taking the 'Down' elevator. But, darn it, I have this dumb rule about saying something nice about the recently departed. So here goes: he was above-average in math. Ah…the banality of evil.

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Ten years ago in C&J: October 27, 2010

JEERS to no hat for the cat.  President Obama will be traveling (via the presidential steamboat, I believe) to India next month. But one place he won't visit is a Sikh temple.  His handlers cancelled the event because he'd have to cover his head and that might fuel ScaryMuslim rage among the teabaggers.  Wrong move, Wrong move, Wrong move!!!  Listen to me, Mr. President: you need to attack this stupid meme literally head-on.  That means you need to travel to every church, temple, mission, shrine, hall-of-fame, Native American gathering, fan club, clubhouse, firehouse, secret society, bean supper and carnival—anywhere that might have photo-op-worthy headgear.  You need to wear all that headgear and take lots of swell pictures.  "A Man of Many Hats," you'll call yourself—meaning a man of the world—and you'll post your encounters with fez, fedora and feathered headdress on the White House web site.  Result: you'll pop the ScaryMuslim balloon faster 'n it takes John Boehner to reserve a tee time.  [Tips bowler]  Good day, sir.  This consultation is on the house.

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And just one more…

CHEERS to celestial spookiness.  Yesterday was National Pumpkin Day, bringing up memories of when NASA got in on the act by posting this amazing 2014 shot of the sun via “a blend of 171 and 193 angstrom light as captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory”:

Any similarity to Donald Trump is purely coincidental. Except the parts that are flaming out.

Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor’s open...what are you cheering and jeering about today?

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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial

“Cheers and Jeers is an existential threat to humanity. We have a moral obligation to deal with it.”

—Joe Biden

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Source: Daily Kos