Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment

Can’t let the week go by without wishing a happy birthday (her 78th) to the late, great shit-kicking journalist  Molly Ivins .  When one of her columns came out (including the one where she noted that Daily Kos was one of her favorite go-to web sites) time would stand still as I hoovered up her wit, political insight, and righteous anger. She left us 15 years ago, but her  Texas   sass has lost none of its bite. A few gems, each as relevant as ever:

Approximately one fourth of all fertilized eggs are swept out on the menstrual tide before they even get near to implanting themselves in the uterine wall, and we do not hold funerals over Kotex or Tampax.  I suggest to you this means that the beginning of life is not a single specific event, but rather a process that deserves increasing respect as it continues toward birth—precisely the tripartite system set up under  Roe v. Wade  (and if you hear  Roe v. Wade  described as "abortion on demand," you are listening to a liar).

I respect those who oppose abortion, but I do not think they have a right to use the law as an instrument of coercion against people who do not believe (and it is a matter of faith) as they do. ... There were an estimated one million abortions a year in this country before  Roe. Abortion can be safe and legal, or dirty and illegal. It cannot be stopped. — From   Who Let the Dogs In?  (2004)

The Republicans are worried about the flag, gay marriage and the terrible burden of the estate tax on the rich. The rest of us are obviously unnecessarily worried about war, peace, the economy, the environment and civilization.  Another reason to vote Republican—they have a shorter list.”

“Nincompoopery has never been a bar to high office in our nation.  Newt Gingrich's sole claim to serious consideration is that he's great copy.  He has no ideas, no principles, no integrity, and by and large, he's a damn fool.”

“I say unto you, you do not know what courage is until you have sat in the basement of a Holiday Inn in Fritters, Alabama , with seven brave souls, led by a librarian, who are fixing to form a chapter of the Ay Cee Ell You.  They are always driven to this extreme by local pinheads who not only don’t get the Bill of Rights but are eager to trash it.  I have been called in through the American Library Association on some bizarre cases: say, the local Christian fundamentalists have decided talking animals are satanic, and consequently, they demand The Three Little Pigs, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and The Wind in the Willows be removed from the town library.”

“You have more political power than 99 percent of all the people who ever lived on this planet. You cannot only vote, you can register other people to vote, round up your friends, get out and do political education, talk to people, laugh with people, call the radio, write the paper, write your elected representatives, use your email list, put up signs, march, volunteer, and raise hell.  All your life, no matter what else you do—butcher, baker, beggerman, thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief—you have another job, another responsibility: You are a citizen.”

And, of course, her for-the-ages reaction to Pat Buchanan's 1992 Republican convention speech: "It probably sounded better in the original German."

Belated Happy birthday, Molly. And now, our feature presentation...

Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, September 1, 2022

Note: Here's the schedule for next week. C&J will be off Monday so that we can sharpen our snow shovel blades, pre-salt the sidewalks, pre-make our emergency winter pots of clam chowder, and then get arrested for wearing white after Labor Day. Back Tuesday to boast about how my new orange jumpsuit matches this blog.  —Mgt.

Days 'til Britain 's new prime minister takes over: 4

Days 'til the Niagara County Peach Festival in Lewiston , New York : 7

Percent of Americans who support labor unions, the highest since 1965 according to a new Gallup poll: 71%

Expected number of jobs that will be "re-shored" back to the U.S. this year: 350,000

Number college degrees awarded in area, ethnic, cultural, gender & group studies in 2019-2020, out of 2,038,041 awarded, showing how the MAGA cult unfairly stereotypes what most students study in our colleges: 7,767

Percent reduction in the risk of death from all causes among people who drink two or more cups of tea daily, according to a 14-year study in Britain : 9% to 13%

Year that Oregon became the first state to recognize Labor Day as an official holiday: 1887

Puppy Pic of the Day: Superwoozle...

CHEERS to September. Hold on to your corsets and your straw hats, this month is busy busy, busy. A day after we pack away our whites on Labor Day, Congress straggles back to work, hopefully with a pleasant surprise bill or two that will make it to Biden's desk, but definitely including more jaw-dropping hearings by the House Jan. 6 Committee.

The kids are back in school and, for reasons no one can explain, they're not allowed to say "gay." It's also Hunger Action Month, Cat Month, Suicide Prevention Month, Sewing Month, and Let's Watch Putin Step On More Garden Rakes In Ukraine Month.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks that Bush II could’ve prevented if he’d read his PDBs turns 21.  (Kids, ask your parents.) Shoppers jam online stores looking for the perfect Autumnal Equinox and Mexican Independence Day gifts. ("A pair of socks? You shouldn’t have.")   New England gets insanely beautiful as summer turns to fall. A full harvest moon happens on the 10th, and a full Rosh Hashanah starts on the 26th. SNL's Kenan Thompson hosts the Emmys on the 12th (Game of Thrones is expected to win everything just out of habit). Oh, and this is fun: we've just concluded our first full year since 2001 when we haven’t been at war. But if you keep giving us side-eye like that, France , we’re comin’ for ya.

CHEERS to the photo of the year. It's labeled Case 9:22-cv-81294-AMC Document 48-1 Entered on FLSD Docket 08/30/2022. It was taken by the FBI but the photographer is unknown. It's accompanied by several dozen pages of documentation for a Florida judge to read and act on, but the photo is the thing—the equivalent of Nixon's famous "18 Minute Gap" but infinitely more damning and damaging. This is the final legacy of our 45th president, a Republican who stole state secrets for what could only be nefarious, self-serving purposes:

Let's just all say what we're thinking out loud together: "My god, that Mar-A-Lago carpeting is the worst." Lock him up.

CHEERS   to Republicans.  No, wait...I mean the  good  kind. 121 years ago this week , President McKinley's Vice President, Theodore Roosevelt, spoke the immortal words, "Speak softly and carry a big stick—you will go far."  A sentiment so simple, so powerful, so indelibly etched on the wall of history, so ingrained in the national consciousness that, of course, only Glenn Beck could screw it up 108 years later when he said on the air...

BECK: We speak without fear, while basing it all in fact.  Walk softly and carry a big stick.  That ain’t a gun, man.  That is the facts.

Of course, the modern GOP would revise it a bit themselves: "Speak softly, or loudly, or however you want to speak as long as you're beating the crap out of anything that moves with a giant stick, preferably one with a nail sticking through it."  Yeah...that reads better.

The sound of the 80's. Source @alvinfoo pic.twitter.com/w8dTLj2L0b

JEERS   to the War to End All Wars to End All Wars. 83 years ago today, on  September 1, 1939 , Hitler invaded  Poland   and started World War II.  The  U.S.   wouldn’t officially enter the fray for another two years, but when we did we kicked Fuhrer butt.  Today we salute all our veterans who fought the real Axis of Evil...and also a special Luftwaffe vet who unwittingly helped shorten the war by months:

Hey, I have an idea. Let's not do it again, shall we?

CHEERS and JEERS to that guy who tore his wall down. He wasn't a single-minded communist fossil like Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko. He wasn't a drunk like Yeltsin or a stooge like Medvedev. And he certainly wasn't a genocidal maniac like Putin. Instead, he was the Russian leader who seemed to want to clean up his government's act and give his country, shorn of the "SSRs" during his presidency, some semblance of a decent soul. No hope of that these days, but at least he tried. And for that we say Rest In Peace, Mikhail Gorbachev:

Born in the village of Privolnoye , Gorbachev grew up a committed communist during World War II. After he graduated from Moscow State University with a law degree in 1955, he rose through the ranks of the Communist Party and ascended to its top position—general secretary—in March 1985.

Gorbachev ushered in sweeping changes like “perestroika” and “glasnost," reforms that sought to restructure the Soviet Union’s lagging economy and make its government more transparent.  […]

President Joe Biden said that Gorbachev was a rare leader because he had the "imagination to see that a different future was possible and the courage to risk his entire career to achieve it. … After decades of brutal political repression, he embraced democratic reforms. He believed in glasnost and perestroika—openness and restructuring—not as mere slogans, but as the path forward for the people of the Soviet Union after so many years of isolation and deprivation," Biden said in a statement Tuesday night.

Gorbachev was 91 when he died six months after Putin's invasion of Ukraine destroyed everything he worked for. Doctors say he succumbed to either chronic illness or, more likely, acute embarrassment.

Ten years ago in C&J: September 1, 2012

CHEERS to a bitch called karma. Remember when Dan Quayle's entitled son, Ben, ran for Congress in Arizona and got swept in on the 2010 tea party tide? Remember the ad he ran to get there? Here, let me remind you:

"Barack Obama is the worst president in history.

My generation will inherit a weakened country. Drug cartels in Mexico. Tax cartels in D.C. What's happened to America? I love Arizona. I was raised right. Somebody has to go to Washington and knock the hell out of the place."

That somebody, according to his Arizona district's voters…is no longer Ben Quayle. After one measly term notable only for his little moonlight swim in the Sea of Galilee, primary opponent David Schweikert knocked the hell out of him . Moral of the story: don’t bring penny loafers to a shit-kicker fight. The other moral of the story: Ha Ha!!!

CHEERS to gently tapping the brakes. It's probably not going out on too much of a limb to suggest that the ugliness is coming at us pretty fast these days. We're all absorbing a crush of information flying toward us at lightning speed. That's why, during the height of the pandemic, I started watching episodes of The Slo-Mo Guys—a pair of droll British-born nerds with a let’s-throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-happens-at-an-insane-number-of-frames-per-second attitude. Yesterday they posted the results of their experiment with, um…Stretch Armstrong. Park your brain and enjoy:

An important lesson has been learned: Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate...judiciously.

Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?

Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial

”Who is the artist Henry Rogers? His French impressionist paintings of the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool seem to only exist in online auctions and yard sales. ”