[Applause!!!]

Good morning, and welcome once again to our new Monday C&J series: Is This Bipartisan Enough For Ya, Senators?  Today we check the pulse of Joe Biden’s American Families Plan…

The plan includes reversal of many tax giveaways from the 2017 tax law…to ensure that the wealthy play by the same rules as everyone else. The revenue will pay for the American Families Plan investment in education and childcare, tax relief for American families, and reduction in child poverty.

Senate Republicans say Americans hate it because it’s big government tyranny, while Democrats say we love it because its “an investment in our kids, our families, and our economic future.” Let’s find out. Over to you, merry Morning Consult pollsters…

Continued…

One provision—ensuring that low- and middle-income families pay no more than 7 percent of their income on child care—garnered support from 64 percent of voters, followed closely by free preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds at 63 percent. Even the least popular measure listed—two years of subsidized tuition for low- and middle-income students at historically Black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions—garnered support from 56 percent of voters.

Ding Ding Ding!!!  Americans love it!  Get on it, Senate—the American Families Plan is a bipartisan winner!

Join us next week for another exciting edition of Is This Bipartisan Enough For Ya, Senators?

And now, our feature presentation…

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Cheers and Jeers for Monday, May 10, 2021

Note: Found a peanut. Cracked it open. It was rotten. Ate it anyway. Died. Went to Heaven. Went the other way. Woke up. Every day for the last 36 years. No idea why. Oh, look…found a peanut!

By the Numbers:

Good news: no more fasting after tomorrow.

Days ‘til the end of Ramadan: 1

Biden approval/disapproval in the latest Ipsos poll: 55% / 38%

Number of jobs added in April, according to the Labor Dept.: 266,000

Georgians polled by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who approve of and disapprove of, respectively, the state’s new voter suppression laws: 46%, 44%

Portion of residents in the Indian state of Goa who have tested positive for Covid-19: 1-in-2

Approval of Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), according to new Monmouth polling: 57%

Rank of Great Southern Bank of Springfield [MO], Bangor Savings Bank [ME], and Rockland Trust [MA] on Forbes’ new list of best banks in America: #1, #2, #3

Puppy Pic of the Day: Farewell, Bo…

CHEERS to backup systems. Phew. You know that Chinese rocket that was poised to smash into the earth over the weekend? Well, it did, in fact, smash into the earth over the weekend, destroying everything and everyone in a massive explosion that could be detected as far away as the listening station on planet HrrHrrGrrrrrp in the Orpglorpian Nebula. Thankfully, NASA had the foresight to download Earth—including all our DNA and seasons of Friends—onto a 3½-inch floppy disc, send it up to the Space Station on last month’s  SpaceX mission and, using the latest Jewish space laser technology, recreate the entire thing 0.0001seconds after impact. So everything’s just fine on this lovely Monday morning. Just fine, I said. Oh, and if you find yourself freezing up this morning, just turn yourself off and on again. (Your login password is PASSWORD.)

CHEERS and JEERS to another week on Planet Covid. As we have for the last year, here we go again with another weekly check of the latest coronavirus numbers for the historical record, courtesy of the tote board of woe. Worldwide now: over 158 million cases (40 percent of new cases coming from India—heckuva job, Modi) and our domestic death toll exceeds the population of America’s 30th-largest city Baltimore, Maryland:

6 months ago: 10.3 million confirmed cases. 245,000 deaths

Link

3 months ago: 28 million confirmed cases. 475,000 deaths

This morning: 34 million confirmed cases. 595,000 deaths

This week the creepy-crawly menaces will continue to ravage the population, robotically doing everything possible to destroy America’s spirit and lower our quality of life. But enough about Republican governors. The coronavirus will also still be around.

CHEERS to bulldogs unleashed. 81 years ago this week, Winston Churchill was called in to replace Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister, after Mr. “Peace in Our Time” lost a confidence vote in the House of Commons. Churchill (whom we’re quick to acknowledge was a human rights monster in many ways) offered blood, sweat, toil and tears in the run-up to World War II, which he successfully guided his nation through.  Years later, a string of fellow conservative prime ministers—currently Boris Johnson, who almost offed himself by treating the coronavirus threat with all the seriousness of a Benny Hill sketch—offered austerity, austerity, austerity and austerity. Thus explaining Britain’s new motto: God Save the Queen, All Others Kiss Your Ass Goodbye.

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JEERS to the GOP death cult. What is with these ghouls? I mean, once you make it out of the womb, if you’re not rich, white and conservative, the Republican party works overtime to concoct ways for you to die. Affordable health care? Fck you. Sensible pandemic safety measures? Fck you. Common-sense policing reforms to keep people of color from getting gunned down or suffocated in the middle of the street? Fck you. Avoiding wars based on lies that turn our kids into cannon fodder? Fck you. And when it comes to the death penalty, hoooo boy, look out because they’re bringing back a classic:

An optional way death row inmates can choose to die in South Carolina is to stand in the middle of Fort Sumter and be bombarded.  

The bill, approved by a 66-43 vote, will require condemned inmates to choose either being shot or electrocuted if lethal injection drugs aren’t available. The state is one of only nine to still use the electric chair and will become only the fourth to allow a firing squad. … The other three states that allow a firing squad are Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

In their defense, however, it won’t be completely barbaric. The condemned will no longer be offered a cigarette with their blindfold. Those things can cause cancer!

CHEERS to fluid situations. On May 10, 1863, pretend “General” Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson died of pneumonia after one of his own men shot him a week earlier in a battle at Chancellorsville during the war he joined to destroy the United States of America in order to preserve ownership of human beings possessing skin pigmentation different from his own.

Stonewall Jackson’s statue being torn down in Richmond, Virginia last year. Good riddance, traitor.

True fact: he would’ve survived longer, but Jefferson Davis’s newly-signed Rebelcare health insurance plan considered pneumonia a pre-existing condition, and the high-risk pool his insurer plopped Jackson into had already run out of money. Sadly, the bake sale table that J.E.B. Stuart and Robert E. Lee set up to raise funds for his surgery was turned into splinters by a Union cannonball, leaving only Mrs. Beauregard’s lemon tarts, which were far too mushy and sour and only brought in 3 cents. And that’s why you read C&J: we bring history to life.

Ten years ago in C&J: May 10, 2011

CHEERS to stirring the melting pot. President Obama travels aboard Space Shuttle One to Planet Texas today, where he’ll give a speech on immigration reform in El Paso and then visit the border to flip the bird at the drug lords on the other side. A lot of people think he should’ve tackled this issue earlier, but better late than never, I guess:

Just a thought, but maybe he can skip the paragraphs about patent applications? It’s hot down there and the goal is to keep the audience awake. Keep it simple: Democrats love immigrants all the time, and we want you to succeed, thrive and put down roots here. Republicans love immigrants, too, of course…mainly when they’re mowing the lawn.

And just one more…

CHEERS to Monday morning BillyFact. Sorry to do this to you, but a few years ago I made a mental note to circle back and see how the claims in this Grammy-not-winning ditty by “The Deplorable Choir” held up over time. We take you back to 2018, when the Mueller investigation was in full swing and the re-hatted Trump cult was drunk on…well, Trump. You do not have to listen to this, in fact I advise against it. But it’s here so I can put its claims through the ringer below, for the first and last time…

YouTube Video

And here we go. The mother of all fact-checks:

False: There was. The infamous secret Barr memo proves it, according to a federal judge, and now Attorney General Merrick Garland faces a decision of whether to charge Trump with obstruction of justice, former AG Bill Barr with perjury, or both.

“And you can’t place a spy just to find one…”

False: it’s called counterespionage.

“Attention Mr. Mueller, better round up all your friends. I think it’s real apparent where the collusion is. Put handcuffs on Ms. Clinton for that fake dossier she got from Steele and Russia and Trump she tried to frame…”

False: The dossier is real (Christopher Steele was actually commissioned by the FBI to create a second one), Republicans hired him to write the first one, and Russia admitted it was all-in for Trump…to the point of, yes, collusion.

“There’s a new sheriff in town, and you and yours are going down, down, down, down.”

False: None of Trump’s opponents had any legal action levied against them, but several of Trump’s inner circle were charged with crimes and served time in jail.

“I think the real question is what they’re trying to hide, in the 30,000 emails no one can seem to find. But we’ll get all the answers when the cards come undone. And something tells me it might smell like uranium.”

False…and weird. How do cards “come undone”?

“So bye-by bro Obama and crooked Hillary, homey Comey, General Flynn will be set free…”

True! Trump pardoned convicted criminal Michael Flynn, the American who is so patriotic that last week he forgot the words to the Pledge of Allegiance.

“And don’t forget Brennan and crappy crappy Clapper. They’ll all be behind bars happily ever after.”

False: All of them still roam free.

“Trump train 2020…Toot Toot!!!”

Final score: Biden 81 million votes (306 EVs)  Trump 74 million votes (232 EVs).

Verdict: that did not age well. This video will now be sealed in concrete and dropped off a random pier, never to be seen again. You’re welcome.

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

“Cheers and Jeers fans are the most informed, most obnoxious fans in the world.”

—President Biden