From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
"LIVE for 7 years! Daily Kos Radio is on the air!"
Talk radio may sound easy, but it's a tough gig especially when you’re talking about the latest-breaking stories to a left-leaning audience. You have to get your facts right, provide intelligent perspective from both ground level and 30,000 feet, inject some humor (not required but highly recommended), and know when it's time to move on to the next story. No stumbling, no brain farts, no silence allowed. Oh, and you're on the air in three…two…one…….
Listeners of Daily Kos Radio's Kagro in the Morning Show know that its host, Daily Kos front-pager-since-forever David Waldman, is an excellent radio host. And it was seven years ago this week when, initially with co-host Armando, he took to the airwaves.
Their "Sirius Period," while successful, ended after a bare-knuckle brawl with executives over potty break privileges. But Sirius's loss was Netroots Radio’s gain. Today "Kagro in the Morning”---including regular guests Greg Dworkin, Joan McCarter and, yes, Armando---airs live from 9 to 11 ET five days a week and you can listen to the podcast any old time.
David knows his stuff and communicates it with wit, outside-the-beltway common sense, and just enough incredulity at the state of things to make you wonder if he's moments away from going Howard Beale on the world.
The Kagro in the Morning Show also helps David put food on his family by bringing in a modest amount of income through the support of listeners like you. For seven years of helping us all make sense of the political landscape as the “voice of Daily Kos,” I encourage you to follow my lead and pass along some financial support (lending him your ears is great, but they don’t buy groceries) through a recurring monthly donation via Patreon here, or a one-time donation via Square Cash here. And then settle in at 9 o’clock ET and listen (alternate live link here) as he kicks off year #8 by knocking down the pins of right-wing tyranny and unhinged Trump tweets with the 50-pound bowling ball of freedom. (Protective eyewear recommended.)
Happy broadcastiversary, Daily Kos Radio. Talk on.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, August 14, 2018
Note: There’s a slight possibility that tomorrow’s C&J may be a bit abbreviated, depending on how today goes. My snookum-wookums Michael is having a procedure today where they put this tiny camera down his throat, crank up Ride of the Valkyries on the Victrola, and show his upper GI tract who’s boss. I’ll be his transportation home. Wish us well. It’s gonna be a really dicey operation. The ride home, I mean. --Thx
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Rosh Hashanah: 26
Days 'til the Oregon State Fair in Salem: 10
Percent chance that Trump is now as widely disliked as Nixon was right before he resigned, according to a Marist poll: 100%
Federal deficit in the first 10 months of this budget year, up 20.8 percent from the same period last year, according to the Treasury Department: $684 billion
Percent chance that a new University of Virginia study reveals that private schools are superior to public schools (which Betsy DeVos calls a “dead end”) even when factors like income and urban/rural are taken into consideration: 0%
Certified medical marijuana patients and caregivers, respectively, who grow cannabis for patients in Maine: 42,000 / 3,000
Revenue from medical marijuana in Maine in 2017: $24 million
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Arguing on twitter…..
-
CHEERS to gravity. Just two months ago, the distance between Donald Trump’s favorable and unfavorable rating in the weekly Gallup poll was a mere five points. Somehow he had bamboozled 45 percent of Americans to believe he was doing a good job, while 50 percent disagreed. Flash forward to yesterday, when the latest weekly numbers came out and---thud. For the first time in four months, Cadet Bone Spurs’ approval has dropped back into the 30s, and his disapproval has rocketed to 56 percent, a gap of 17 points. Golly, it’s almost like spitting on our allies, getting duped by our enemies, tweeting racist garbage, hiring corrupt f*cks, and approving tax cuts that no one outside the top one-percent felt was a slight miscalculation. Who knew?
CHEERS to making it simple. Here’s a little voter rights story that went under the radar last week: Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker---shockingly, a Republican---signed a new bill into law making it the 14th state (I know, I know---you’re really a commonwealth) to create an automatic voter registration system:
Massachusetts residents will be automatically registered to vote when they make transactions at the state's Registry of Motor Vehicles or with MassHealth. … The transactions include a change of address, for example. […]
"We will have systems in place to begin automatically registering voters at the Registry of Motor Vehicles and MassHealth on January 1, 2020, just in time for the next Presidential Primaries," [state elections chief Bill] Galvin said in a statement. […]
"It is one of the strongest in the country and will make our voter registrations system more efficient, accurate, and secure while improving voter participation," Pam Wilmot, the head of Common Cause Massachusetts, said in her own statement.
Now if we could just come up with an automatic voter turnout system. Get on it, MIT!
JEERS to letting a good guy go. FBI agent Peter Strozk---who withstood the childish antics of Republicans on the House Childish Republican Antics Committee while proving himself a true law enforcement patriot---got fired yesterday. Naturally, it was for reasons more political than disciplinary. And here with a special comment is the son of one of the GOP suns’obitches (Bob Goodlatte of Virginia) responsible for his firing:
Happily, sometimes the apple does fall far from the tree.
CHEERS to America's favorite safety net. On today's date in 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt gave us one less thing to fear by signing the Social Security Act into law, saying:
"We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age. […]
The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness."
Today a frighteningly high portion of the Republican base regards Social Security as the brainchild of a dirty effing commie hippie. But when they hit retirement age and start getting their checks in the mail, their sudden silence will be deafening. And then they'll start complaining that their commie hippie checks aren't big enough. And then they'll actively work to prevent the commie hippie program from being privatized by the evil Republicans. Run that by your local annoying wingnut next time he says evolution doesn't exist.
JEERS to the klutziest Nazi ever. Just a little postscript from Sunday’s “Unite the Shitstains 2” rally in D.C. You may have heard that all the mighty North American white supremacist movement could scrounge up to fight for their, um, whiteness, was about 20 people. They were outnumbered by counter-protesters---i.e. real Americans---by 100-to-1. The whole effort was pathetic long before they even set foot in Lafayette Park, but the lead Nazi’s snowflake whining takes the cake…er, strudel:
Days before the rally, [Jason] Kessler appeared to be losing the support of even the lesser-known Nazis he had said would speak. Patrick Little, the failed neo-Nazi Senate candidate who was slated to speak at Kessler’s event, said on Thursday that he would not attend, even though he was in D.C. spreading his message of “expel the Jews.” […]
Leaked Facebook Messenger chats obtained by the media collective Unicorn Riot show that Kessler barely managed to pull off this year’s very small rally. He pleaded for help figuring out transportation to D.C. and said that he had given up finding housing arrangements because it’s “too complicated for me to deal with.”
What?!!! A Nazi whining that organizing a rally is too complicated is like a master plumber whining that connecting pipes is too complicated, or a master chef whining that garnishing a plate with a sprig of parsley is too complicated. You’re a Nazi---rallies is what Nazis DO! [Sigh] Somewhere deep in the pit of hell, Joseph Goebbels just mumbled, “Serenity now.”
JEERS to America's #1 Defeatocrat. I love pulling this steaming turd out of the time machine every year. Twenty-four years ago this brilliant---and I mean that sincerely---comment was made and then greeted with sweets and flowers by the speaker's party members and corporate admirers. It's worth revisiting, if only to illustrate that Republicans will kick their own well-thought-out positions to the curb in an instant if it means more power and/or money for them:
“Once you got to Iraq and took it over---took down Saddam Hussein's government---then what are you going to put in its place?
That's a very volatile part of the world, and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you could very easily end up seeing pieces of Iraq fly off. Part of it, the Syrians would like to have to the west. Part of it---eastern Iraq---the Iranians would like to claim; they fought over it for eight years. In the north you've got the Kurds, and if the Kurds spin loose and join with the Kurds in Turkey then you threaten the territorial integrity of Turkey.
It's a quagmire if you go that far and try to take over Iraq.”
Guess who said it? Dwight Eisenhower? Richard Nixon? Colin Powell? Nope. It was Dick Cheney…in 1994. Unfortunately, Dick stopped listening to Dick. Bad, Dick, bad.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: August 14, 2008
CHEERS to a sigh of relief. It's as official as it can get: Republican Chuck Hagel will not be Democrat Barack Obama's veep choice. And that, I believe, is the most boring item I've ever written about in the five-year history of C&J. Let me guess: it's the middle of August.
-
And just one more…
JEERS to fear-based marketing: the annual update. Eight years ago the conservative media outlet "NewsMax" posted an ad that caught my eye on Facebook. The ad STILL shows up occasionally on right-wing conspiracy sites, presumably because not even a change of presidents can stop the march of outdated marketing. This was the copy they posted to get people to click on it:
Obama's Coming Depression
50% unemployment,
90% stock market collapse,
100% inflation.
See the evidence.
Shocked and horrified, I clicked as fast as I could so I could "see the evidence." It turns out they were---surprise!---feasting on ignorant people's fear and paranoia to sell shitty investments. I actually read the fine print, and here's what it said, in part (and, yes, in all caps):
NO GUARANTEE OF ANY KIND IS IMPLIED OR POSSIBLE WHERE PROJECTIONS OF FUTURE CONDITIONS ARE ATTEMPTED. IN NO EVENT SHOULD THE CONTENT OF THIS REPORT BE CONSTRUED AS AN EXPRESS OR IMPLIED PROMISE, GUARANTEE OR IMPLICATION BY OR FROM THE SERVICES, NEWSMAX OR ANY OF ITS OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, AFFILIATES OR OTHER AGENTS THAT YOU WILL PROFIT OR THAT LOSSES CAN OR WILL BE LIMITED IN ANY MANNER WHATSOEVER.
Eight years and one two-term Best President Of Our Lifetime later, we now know that “Obama’s Coming Depression” consisted of unemployment lowered to 4.8 percent, the stock market reaching record-high territory, and inflation dropping to one percent. So, as we do every year, we say, look at this ad and buy buy buy! (Disclaimer: As always, by that I mean buy anything but what NewsMax is selling.)
Oh, and good luck to all the Big-D candidates in today’s primaries in Minnesota, Connectuicut, Wisconsin and Vermont. Here’s a preview from Daily Kos Elections. Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"Only way to say it. What a Goober. Bill in Portland Maine is who I thought he was."
---Cam Jordan
-