Headlines You Won’t Read Today
Trump Leads Biden in Crucial Swing States
Senator Collins Finds Nothing Particularly Troubling
Many People Saying What President Says Many People Are Saying
Continued...
Headlines You Won’t Read Today, continued...
Coronavirus Urges Caution as America Re-Opens
New White House Press Secretary Keeps No-lie Pledge
Boris Johnson Learns Lessons After Own Covid Scare
NRA Influence Reaches Record High
Kavanaugh Beats RBG in Push-ups Contest
PPP Helping Small Businesses Recover as Intended
It’s A Deal! Mexico Agrees to Pay For Wall
Planet Earth to Humanity: I’ll Miss You When You’re Gone
"Thank You Sir" Says Citizen to President with Tears in Eyes
Spring Weather Arrives in Maine
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Monday, May 11, 2020
Note: Major milestone alert. Ten years ago today we registered for a Twitter account. 5,116 followers later, we're still cranking out messages that, when read backward, reveal our official orders from George Soros. (Today's: launch a fruitcake from Christmas 2019 through Stephen Miller's office window using nothing but a fruitcake and a bazooka.) If you'd like to join our exclusive, frequently-merry band of scofflaws, feel free to follow us at @BillinPortland. If not, we're reasonably sure there's a visit from an airborne fruitcake in your future.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Rapture Party Day: 10
Number of Trump's personal valets who have tested positive for Covid-19: 1
Number of publicly-traded companies that have received $1.3 billion in federal forgivable loans meant for small businesses: 400
Percent chance that Frontier Airlines is the first U.S. airline that will require temperature checks of all passengers: 100%
Increase in demand for Clorox products over the last two months: 500%
Increase in the number of items Clorox produced in the first quarter of 2020 than it produced during the same period last year: 40 million
Amount of its market value that Tesla lost after Elon Musk tweeted that its stock price was too high: $13 billion
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Someone has a bad case of the whuddabouts…
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JEERS to keeping count. The Covid pandemic rolls not-so-merrily along, and our macabre Monday tradition, now nearly two months old, of maintaining a benchmark of the pandemic awfulness for the C&J historical record continues. Let’s check the worst tote board in the world with all due reluctance:
6 Weeks Ago: 288,000 confirmed cases, 7,000 deaths.
4 Weeks Ago: 560,000 confirmed cases, 22,000 deaths
2 Week Ago: 987,000 confirmed cases, 55,000 deaths.
This Morning: 1.4 million confirmed cases, 81,000 deaths
A little macabre perspective: the number of cases is now higher than the population of Maine, and the number of deaths has surpassed the population of Portland—Maine's largest city. This week the menace will continue to ravage the population, robotically doing everything possible to destroy America's spirit and ravage our way of life. But enough about the president. The coronavirus will also still be around.
P.S. Trump gets some well-deserved pushback from his predecessor who he trashes every chance he gets:
Also: Trump wears six-inch lifts in his shoes...and his pants. [Ba-boom!]
JEERS to idle hands—lots and lots and lots of 'em. And now a few words about the flip side of the viral curse on Planet earth. I would've written about the April jobs report in Friday's C&J, but I spent the day with a balky forklift trying to pick my jaw up off the floor. Remember the graph during the economic calamity of 2007-2008 that happened on the last Republican president's watch showing how freaking long it was taking to dig ourselves out of the unemployment hole? It's pretty much burned into my brain. Here's a little reminder, with the addition of a preview of the kind of mess that Joe Biden is going to have to clean up starting in January:
20 million jobs lost in April. 14.7 percent unemployment rate. Bill McBride at Calculated Risk minces no words: "This was the worst employment report ever, and the report for May will also be horrible." If it makes you feel any better, he was tap dancing with sparklers when he said it.
CHEERS to bulldogs unleashed. 80 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 offered blood, sweat, toil and tears in the run-up to war. 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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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to clear cause for Collins concern. Election day is just 187 days away, and there's not much for Maine's embattled Republican senator to do but blanket the airwaves with bullshit ads that cause viewers to lunge for the mute button, avoid her constituents, and pray that the president whose ankles she decided to clutch pulls us out of the dual messes of Covid-XIX and Great Depression II in time. Whew! A bold strategy. And, hey, good luck with that:
Women voters who propelled Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, to wins in four consecutive Senate races have increasingly soured on the so-called“centrist” Republican as her record has drifted farther right since President Donald Trump’s election.
Maine is a uniquely women-dominated state. About 77% of women residents are registered to vote, and 65% of women voters turn out on Election Day, both the highest marks in the nation according to Politico. Collins won past elections with more than 60%support from women, but recent polls have found that more than 60% of women voters oppose her reelection. Her support among women voters under 50 has fallen to just 25%. […]
[E]arlier this year, she was ranked as the nation’s most unpopular senator, falling to a virtual tie against leading Democratic challenger Sara Gideon, the speaker of the state House of Representatives. The Cook Political Report now lists the race as a toss-up.
Oh well. If she loses, at least there'll be one consolation she can count on: she'll always be #1 on Brett Kavanaugh's Christmas card list.
CHEERS to fuzzy math. Well, at least fuzzy mathematicians. Einstein's theory of relativity ("The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity" to be precise) was presented 102 years ago today in front of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. His later words:
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity."
Or sit with Ivanka Trump for a second and it seems like forever. That’s eternity.
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 11, 2010
JEERS to that damn cofferdam. Well, folks, BP tried to cap the out-of-control oil pipe at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico with their one-hundred-ton iron outhouse, but they were thwarted by the primal forces of nature. Thus proving that sometimes when you throw an idea at the wall it doesn't always stick. (Although the oil is sticking quite nicely to the marshlands and their furry, finned and feathered inhabitants). BP says it will now move on to Plan B: a one-hundred-ton wad of Bubblicious.
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And just one more…
CHEERS and farewell to Richard Wayne Penniman. Gone at 87. Too young.
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Some people need a lot of words to sum up their legacies. Not him. He needs just nine: Little Richard was the Little Richard of Little Richards.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
It’s Not a Done Deal Yet: DOJ Doesn’t Have the Final Word on Michael Flynn, Bill in Portland Maine does
—Law & Crime
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