It’s Morning in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s America

Try not to step in the manure. And don’t forget the king’s agent will be around to collect his six chickens and two pigs when the sun is high, so wear your best sackcloth. Also it’s your turn to empty the piss buckets. Have a great day!

Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Note: This edition of C&J is the greatest thing you’ll ever read in your life. And if you believe that, my superior marketing skills have come through for me once again.

By the Numbers:

15 days!!!

Days ‘til Batalla de Puebla: 15

Percent of Americans polled by Quinnipiac University who believe that the police are tougher on white people than on Black people: 1%

Decrease in the number of suicides last year, according to The New York Times, despite Trump telling us that we had to reopen America completely in the middle of the pandemic or else the suicide rate would spike: -5%

Americans polled by Pew Research who believe marijuana should be totally illegal in all circumstances: 8%

Rank of Denver, Los Angeles, and San Francisco on LawnStarter’s list of best places in America to get stoned: #1, #2, #3

Rank of Boston, Detroit, and Chicago among U.S. cities with the most marijuana-related events: #1, #2, #3

Percent chance that guitar sales have soared during the pandemic as people learn or re-learn the instrument: 100%

Puppy Pic of the Day: Resistance training…

CHEERS to great moments in chanting “USA! USA! USA!” Pardon my American exceptionalism, but if France gets credit for discovering radioactive stuff and China gets credit for the first fireworks and Mesopotamia gets credit for birthing mathematics, then by god THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA GETS CREDIT FOR BEING FIRST TO FLY A FREAKING HELICOPTER ON MARS:

YouTube Video

“Now, 117 years after the Wright brothers succeeded in making the first flight on our planet, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has succeeded in performing this amazing feat on another world,” [NASA Associate Administrator for Science Thomas] Zurbuchen said.

“While these two iconic moments in aviation history may be separated by time and 173 million miles of space, they now will forever be linked. As an homage to the two innovative bicycle makers from Dayton, this first of many airfields on other worlds will now be known as Wright Brothers Field, in recognition of the ingenuity and innovation that continue to propel exploration.”

There were a few hiccups, though. An anti-masker had to be booted off 10 seconds into the flight for coughing in people’s faces, they ran out of J&B, and half the luggage ended up on Neptune. But ya gotta start somewhere.

P.S. Up next: on Thursday four Buzz and Buzzette Lightyears hop aboard a Crew Dragon capsule and head to the International Space Station to deliver the new pool table. (If you spent even a millisecond wondering if that last part is true, my job is done here.)

The Columbine Memorial.

JEERS to gun nuts going gun-nutty. The Columbine High School massacre took place on this date 22 years ago as Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold—who, yes, went bowling that morning—killed 12 classmates and a teacher and wounded 26 others. (If you feel so inclined, you can donate to the upkeep of the Columbine Memorial here.)

Normally I’d express my usual pessimism about anything getting done to stop American human bodies from being used so frequently as convenient ammo receptacles. But those darn Parkland kids grabbed the NRA and yelled, “No more.” Legislation is getting passed in several states, several gun nuts have lost elections, and even the NRA is watching its influence circle the drain, beset by infighting, lawsuits, laying off staff and shuttering NRA TV. President Biden’s former boss wrote an essay in tribute to Those Darn Kids in Time magazine’s “Influential People” issue a few years back:

2013: President Obama signs 23 gun-safety executive orders in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre of children in Newtown, Connecticut. Eight years later, President Biden is now crafting more of his own as Congress continues to sleep at the switch.

The NRA’s favored candidates are starting to fear they might lose. Law-abiding gun owners are starting to speak out. As these young leaders make common cause with African Americans and Latinos—the disproportionate victims of gun violence—and reach voting age, the possibilities of meaningful change will steadily grow.

Our history is defined by the youthful push to make America more just, more compassionate, more equal under the law. This generation—of Parkland, of Dreamers, of Black Lives Matter—embraces that duty. If they make their elders uncomfortable, that’s how it should be. Our kids now show us what we’ve told them America is all about, even if we haven’t always believed it ourselves: that our future isn’t written for us, but by us.

NRA management will mark today’s anniversary the usual way. By cowering on their friend’s yacht.

JEERS to spies amongst us. Current events are flying so fast and furious these days that it’s easy to overlook the “updates” on old news, in this case the traitor-related programming activities of former President Trump’s closest henchmen. Last week the Biden Treasury Department made official what we all knew:

Manafort being fact-checked in real time.

Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked closely with Manafort on behalf of Russian-backed oligarchs in Ukraine, was hit with sanctions in the Biden administration’s latest response to Russian election meddling. The Treasury Department said in a news release announcing the sanctions that Kilimnik was a known Russian “agent” and “provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy.” […] 

“This is what collusion with Russia looks like,” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), a member of the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees, said on Twitter. “The former President won the 2016 election with the help of Russia. That’s simply a fact.”

Remember, kids: you can’t spell “Paul Manafort” without “Should Be Rotting In Jail.”

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BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK

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JEERS to Planet Chaos. I can’t keep up with all the stuff going on in the world. Since I know your time is valuable, here’s a quick rundown of what’s going on globally, compiled from over four thousand documents I spent half the night analyzing:

Conclusion: New Zealand is not a team player.

CHEERS to honesty during playtime. I need you to gird your loins for this next item. Maybe knock back a shot or a happy pill or take a wee toke of the wacky tobbaccy. You knew this moment would arrive, and it is here. For the first time during his presidency, President Biden…went golfing:

What? He doesn’t drive his golf cart all over the green for his convenience? What kind of golfer is this guy?

In contrast to the golf-loving Trump, whose frequent trips to the fairways during his only term in office were matched only by his over-exaggerations and flat-out lies about his achievements, Biden has never professed to be an avid follower or prolific player of the game.

Also in contrast to Trump: Biden totally forgot to shoehorn the press into a basement room with black plastic taped over the windows, and failed to order his handlers to insist that the president absolutely was not golfing at the golf resort he’d just been driven to, but was “getting very important things done in very many important meetings.” Yeah—clearly an amateur.

Ten years ago in C&J: April 20, 2011

CHEERS to…Jan Brewer??? This wasn’t a tough call, even for a…[circles ear with index finger]…like Arizona’s governor. Brewer vetoed a bill passed by the legislature that would’ve required presidential candidates to show proof of natural-born citizenship, ensuring we wouldn’t accidentally elect another Kenyan Marxist Muslim Socialist blah blah blah. On the list of acceptable documents (besides a long-form birth certificate, which Arizona doesn’t even issue): a certificate of circumcision. Which, when you think about it, could become part of a winning campaign slogan: “Vote for me—I’m not a complete prick!”

And just one more…

Ben doing that Ben thing Ben did so well.

CHEERS to the mellowest national holiday ever. Today is 4/20 Day, and that means it’s also Ben Masel Day! Ben was a cantankerous, beloved Kossack (User ID 3982, joining one day before the debut of C&J in December, 2003), perennial attendee at our Netroots Nation conventions, and a good-trouble causer on behalf of legal pot, free speech and privacy rights whom the folks in Madison, Wisconsin will never forget.

Read John Nichols’ 2012 tribute to him here. He was the template for the dogged activist, and he’d be loving the rise of the resistance, from the Freeway Bloggers to the pre-pandemic sit-ins in Congress and state houses, to the historic marches, and especially the warp-speed acceptance and legalization of the demon weed.

In his honor, tonight we plan to twist up a fattie as we watch The Wizard of Oz with the sound turned down and replaced with Dark Side of the Moon. And miss ol’ Ben.

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

“I can confirm the president does not spend his time splashing in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool, and spends his time working on behalf of the American people.”

—White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki