Cheers and Jeers: Monday

Cheers and Jeers for Monday, February 1, 2021

Be aware: From the Eyewitness Information Desk—Nation reels as new president wears clothes that truly suits, and walks like a traditional human. Movie at 11. Parental discretion, for the primary time in 4 years, is just not suggested.

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By the Numbers:

Days ’til the impeachment trial begins: 8

Common public assist for President Biden’s order prohibiting office discrimination primarily based on sexual orientation and gender identification, in accordance with FiveThirtyEight, making it his hottest govt order thus far: 83%

% of Georgians who voted for Democratic Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and stated well being care was their prime situation: 80%

Estimated variety of People who’ve medical health insurance right this moment due to Obamacare: 20 million

Yr by which GM says it is going to be promoting solely electrical automobiles: 2035

Years since a snowy owl was noticed in Manhattan, because it was last week: 130

Age at which Cicely Tyson, who died final week at 96, turned the oldest individual to win a Tony Award: 88

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Pet Pic of the Day: The Major Biden story…

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CHEERS to February!  Hooray—we lastly made it to the third and final month of meteorological winter within the northern hemisphere! For the shortest month, it positive packs a whole lot of goodies in it. Among the highlights:

Black Historical past Month, extra daylight, Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Waitangi Day in New Zealand, Heritage Day in Canada, Dia de la Bandera in Mexico, Cordova Ice Worm Day in Alaska, Mardi Gras, Valentine’s Day, and Purim. President Biden continues issuing govt orders that PolitiFact confirms are making America nice once more, and awaits Congress’s Covid reduction invoice to signal. Plus there’s George & Abe’s superior storewide mattress gross sales, Charles Dickens Day, full “snow moon” on the twenty seventh, Create A Vacuum Day (chaired this 12 months by Marjorie Taylor Greene as a result of her cranial cavity comprises the most important black gap on the planet), and Nationwide Pancake Day.

And, lest we overlook, the second impeachment trial of the earlier president—this time for “incitement of riot” aka sending an armed mob to storm the Capitol and set up him as dictator—will get underway on the 9^th.  And with Democrats in cost you will be seeing what final 12 months’s trial lacked: proof and witnesses. I will say this: we might stay in a crumbling republic on a planet beset by hearth and parasites…however not less than it is by no means uninteresting.

JEERS to embarrassing math. What do you get if you add up the variety of Covid-19 instances in India, Brazil, and Russia, which at present occupy the #2, #3, and #4 spots on the checklist of most-infected nations?  Reply: nonetheless fewer instances than the United States, which “leads” the world by a rustic mile. Worldwide there are actually over 103 million instances—over 1 / 4 of them within the U.S. (Though instances have gone down 40% over the past three weeks, which is nice.)  Listed here are this week’s home numbers for the C&J historic file, courtesy of the most depressing tote board in the world, as our dying toll now exceeds the inhabitants of America’s Forty fourth-largest metropolis Virginia Seashore, Virginia:

6 months in the past: 4.8 million confirmed instances. 158,000 deaths.

3 months in the past: 9.4 million confirmed instances. 236,000 deaths

1 month in the past: 21 million confirmed instances. 360,000 deaths

This morning: 27 million confirmed instances. 450,000 deaths

Keep watch over Congress this week. Speaker Pelosi and Majority Chief Schumer, backed by the blessing of Treasury Secretary (and former Fed chair) Janet Yellen and 120 economists, may introduce their $1.9 trillion Covid relief package to the howls and rending of clothes by Republicans over the deficit, the poor, poor deficit! If you wish to make a quick buck this week, don’t hassle with GameStop—sink all of your cash into Acme Fainting Couches, LLC.

CHEERS to security nets. 81 years in the past right this moment, the primary Social Safety verify (#00-000-001) was issued to Ida Might Fuller—a Vermonter and childhood classmate of Calvin Coolidge—for $22.54. Or, as Republican leaders calls it: “$22.54 an excessive amount of.” Regardless of all of the despicable fearmongering coming from the fitting that Social Safety is “flat broke,” Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) reminds us by way of e mail….  

Right here’s the reality: Social Safety is totally solvent, and will likely be by 2038.  So why all of the bluster?  It’s a giveaway to Wall Avenue, plain and easy.

Beginning with Ida Might Fuller in 1940, our nation has a proud historical past of rewarding a lifetime of onerous work with the promise of economic safety in a single’s golden years. It’s been the best anti-poverty program within the historical past of the world.

As at all times…a lot obliged, FDR.

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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CHEERS to order within the courts. If you happen to floor your enamel all the way down to the nub in the course of the Obama years due to the way in which Democrats let Republicans impede judicial nominees on an unprecedented degree for manner too lengthy, that is welcome information: they’re not about to let ’em get away with it again…

Along with forming a brand new fee to check structural adjustments to the judiciary, the Biden White Home has requested senators to recruit civil rights attorneys and protection legal professionals for judgeships. Officers who work on the difficulty say they’ve seen an outpouring of curiosity and have begun holding classes to supply data and recommendation on navigating the affirmation gauntlet. […]

“I name it restore the courts,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, stated in an interview [,] calling it “a really prudent objective” to fill each judicial emptiness by the top of 2022. He urged Democratic colleagues to disregard “Republican procedural caterwauling” on issues like blue slips after the techniques they used to tilt the courts to the fitting. […]

[Majority Leader Chuck Schumer] instructed MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in a Tuesday interview that Democrats “can replenish quite a bit” of seats. “There will likely be a number of vacancies that come up. And I believe there are a whole lot of judges—Democratic appointees who did not take senior standing whereas Trump was president who now will,” Schumer stated. “Then we get to fill it.”

The prime directive in the course of the Biden years falls in step with what I—the godfather of contemporary liberalism—name “The Three C’s” that ought to be centered on most: 1) Covid,  2) Courts, and in fact, 3) Persuade Republicans to Leap Into A Volcano.

P.S. Large Biden speech on foreign policy today. I believe we’re lastly invading Lichtenstein. That oughtta train ‘em to return our lawnmower once they’re achieved, the little pricks.

CHEERS to “slide-rule portability.” Tech geeks, fall to your knees and grovel earlier than “the world’s first pocket calculator.”  On February 1, 1972, the hand-held HP-35 (“challenges a pc!”) made its debut. Price: a mere $395. And it was made the old school manner—within the USA. How quaint. At the moment’s calculators are solar-powered, primarily as a result of Detroit and the oil corporations might by no means work out a method to energy ’em with inside combustion. If you happen to get bored right this moment (and if you happen to made it this far down into C&J you have to be): punch in 5318008, flip it the other way up, name a telephone quantity at random and skim what you see to the individual on the opposite finish. However be mature about it.

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Ten years in the past in C&J: February 1, 2011

JEERS to wimping out. The headline in my native paper stated it everywhere in the weekend: “Senate try to limit filibustering dies.”  Republicans acquired a whole and complete go for choking off the democratic course of and establishing their very own “authorities by 41-vote majority.”  So now Republicans don’t even need to get on the ground and skim the telephone ebook ‘til they drop.  Only a spit-handshake settlement between Harry Reid and Yertl the Turtle to “play good” and every part’s again to regular.  Oh, positive…that’ll fly.  Like a Texas historical past schoolbook by a bullshit detector.  [2/1/21 Update: And here we are.]

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And only one extra…

CHEERS to Maine‘s matchless film maker. Comfortable 127th Birthday to director and Portland native (and son of immigrants) John Ford. He launched John Wayne’s profession and outlined the basic American western with Stagecoach, The Searchers, the cavalry trilogy and gobs extra. After which there’s The Grapes of Wrath, which is in a category all by its wonderful self:

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Ford proclaimed in 1967: “I’m a liberal Democrat and a insurgent.”  Nicely, in fact he was. He had intelligence and expertise.

Have a tolerable Monday. Ground’s open…What are you cheering and jeering about right this moment?

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At the moment’s Shameless C&J Testimonial

Can somebody please preserve Invoice in Portland Maine away from the cameras? And the microphones? And actually, most conditions by which he publicly tries to show phrases into significant ideas?

—The Charlotte Observer

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