Important Status Update
In light of recent events, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) is no longer troubled, concerned, upset, bothered, fazed, nonplussed, distressed, uneasy, anxious, perplexed, perturbed, puzzled, or unsettled. Her current status has been elevated to…
Pained
Please make a note of it, and prepare to seek emergency shelter. If she becomes "ruffled" she could blow.
Thank you for your attention. Please enjoy the rest of your day.
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, June 3, 2020
Note: Well, look on the bright side. At least humanity hasn't been eaten by giant radioactive lobsters. I mean, at least not all of us. Not yet.
-
By the Numbers:
Months 'til the 2020 election: 5
Approval rating among Michigan voters polled by PPP who approve of the way Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) and President Trump (A-dderall), respectively, are handling the Covid-19 crisis: 55%, 37%
Percent of Michiganders who tell PPP they believe vote-by-mail is safe and secure: 55%
Voters polled by Civiqs who wanted Obamacare expanded and ditched entirely, respectively, on election day in 2016: 40%-43%
Voters polled by Civiqs who want Obamacare expanded and ditched entirely, respectively, today: 49%-36%
Age of CNN as of this week: 40
Year that Necco Wafers first went on sale, as they will be again after a two-year hiatus to sort through some bankruptcy unpleasantness: 1847
-
Mid-week Rapture Index: 185 (including 4 False Prophets and 1 buffoon with a bible). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Buddy, can you spare a bone...
-
CHEERS to the next president of the United States. Considering that we're in the middle of—oh, let's see—a lockdown during a killer pandemic, nationwide upheaval over racial injustice, a commander-in-chief gassing his own citizens, a recession/depression, and a months-long toilet paper shortage, Joe Biden is threading the needle perfectly as America's shadow leader. In addition to tough ads and active social media accounts, yesterday we learned that he'll be flying to Houston to attend the funeral of police-brutality victim George Floyd, but not before we watched him deliver a speech in Philadelphia with opening words that will join the pantheon of great American rhetoric:
“I can’t breathe.” “I can’t breathe.”
George Floyd’s last words. But they didn’t die with him. They’re still being heard. They’re echoing across this nation.
They speak to a nation where too often just the color of your skin puts your life at risk.
They speak to a nation where more than 100,000 people have lost their lives to a virus and 40 million Americans have filed for unemployment, with a disproportionate number of these deaths and job losses concentrated in black and brown communities.
And they speak to a nation where every day millions of people—not at the moment of losing their life, but in the course of living their life—are saying to themselves, “I can’t breathe.”
It’s a wake-up call for our nation. For all of us.
The rest is pretty good, too, and a reminder that Uncle Joe, who I believe currently leads Trump by six-to-ten points in most polls, is a master of the heartstring-tug, a skill that will serve him well over the next five months against the bloviating, makeup-splotched, bunker-dwelling maniac with the worthless spouse who’s currently in charge. And also her dad the president.
P.S. Speaking of great moments in political rhetoric...or non-rhetoric:
Give that man a Molson. And put it on Celine Dion’s tab.
CHEERS to light at the end of the cannoli. If this "top doctor" in Italy's opinion is worth a box of tongue depressors, then this is a welcome development: the Covid-19 virus appears to be getting weaker and weaker. Keep in mind that the blow Italy took from the coronavirus was like getting hit by a Mack truck, with 233,000 cases and 33,000 deaths:
“In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy,” said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy’s coronavirus contagion.
“The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago,” he told RAI television.
When asked how they were achieving such positive results, Dr. Zangrillo replied: "Whatever your Trump recommends, we do the opposite."
CHEERS to moments worth remembering. Twelve years ago today:
"Our primary season has finally come to an end...Because of you, I can say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States of America.”
“America, this is our moment! This is our time!"
—Barack Obama, June 3, 2008
Meanwhile, the 2020 election season is nigh, and it's going to be pure pandemic-monium. Brief Sanity Break, don’t fail me now.
-
BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
-
END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
JEERS to jerks who made America not-so-great. Further bolstering the adage that only the good die young, an influential right-wing loon died late last week at the age of 85, after a f*cked-up lifetime of tearing families apart:
Reverend Lou Sheldon, who in 1980 founded the Traditional Values Coalition, a Christian conservative activist group dedicated to opposing homosexuality and abortion, has died at 85.
Southern Poverty Law Center reports: “In 1985, Sheldon suggested forcibly rounding up AIDS victims into ‘cities of refuge,’ like leper colonies, to protect the general population. After a hate crime bill was signed into law in the 1990s, Sheldon told a reporter that the new law would “protect sex with animals and the rape of children as forms of political expression,” which was completely false. The law did no such thing and could not legally. In 1992, columnist Jimmy Breslin reported that Sheldon told him that ‘homosexuals are dangerous. They proselytize. They come to the door, and if your son answers and nobody is there to stop it, they grab the son and run off with him. They steal him. They take him away and turn him into a homosexual.'”
Real piece of work, that one. I'd bet money his trip to the afterlife will involve taking the 'Down' elevator. But, darn it, I have this dumb rule about saying something nice about the recently departed. So here goes: He…um…owned a piano. Ah, the banality of evil.
JEERS to the Big Whiffer. On June 3, 1888, "Casey at the Bat" was first published in The San Francisco Examiner. Who can forget those immortal final words…
Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright; The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has gotten overrun by Imperial Walkers and the forces of Kylo Ren and tossed into the Sarlacc pit, thus securing the victory of the Empire because, funny coincidence, it turns out that Casey was really the last Jedi.
Oops, I almost forgot: Spoiler Alert.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: June 3, 2010
CHEERS to brilliant suggestions. First, the latest ticker on the Deepwater Horizon oilpocalypse from BillyNetDaily:
Pipe...Gusher...Worse...Top Kill Fail...Relief Well Only Hope...August at the Earliest...Oil Found Five Miles Inland...Attorney General Mad As Hulk, Make BP Stock Plunge...Tony Hayward Still Droopy-Eyed Wanker Who Wants His Life Back..."Obama's Katrina" Now Re-Labeled By Beltway Media As "Obama's Iran Hostage Crisis"...[Facepalm]...
Now my brilliant suggestion: A TV show exactly like America's Got Talent, except people get onstage and demonstrate via whiteboards and props how to stop the flow of oil, after which a blue-ribbon panel of engineers and undersea experts grades them on a scale of one to ten. Then America votes on which ideas to try. BP pays for everything (including my salary as show creator), and whoever's idea does the trick gets a billion dollars. I'm thinking of calling it, So You Think You Can Cap A Gusher! The rest is in your hands, Hollywood. I'm off to build a mantle for my Emmy.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to cheerleaders from the great beyond. Thanks to Monday night’s assault on peaceful protesters in D.C. as prelude to a photo op, we now know beyond all doubt what Trump's reelection campaign theme is: If you don’t unconditionally worship and adore Me, then you hate America and I shall unleash the hounds of hell on ye. It’s idol worship on steroids, and so far the pushback from his party has been scant. Since nature abhors a vaccum, one of America's greatest Republican presidents is here to deliver a hard truth to the racist-in-chief:
The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants.
He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.
To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
—Theodore Roosevelt
The Kansas City Star, 7 May 1918
And so we shall.
Have a hunkered-down humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"Cheers and Jeers is happening, it's bad and depressing, and I'm not sure what to add to that."
—Atrios
-