Energize An Ally Tuesday
The Trump pandemic rolls merrily along with action on all fronts. The labradoodle breeder is working the day-to-day logistics 9 to 5 Monday through Friday like a dog. Jared and Ivanka are efficiently funneling emergency medical supplies and diagnostic equipment to the red states and countries with Trump resorts. And Trump? He's traveling the lonesome highway of the Greatest President Ever, sciencing the shit out of Covid cures by day and Laffer-curving the economy by night. [Sniffffff!] Ahh…I love the smell of cheap cologne and Hartz flea shampoo in the morning. If all goes well, with this team we should be back to normal by lunch.
If, however, on the off chance the above personnel are still rising to their level of maximum incompetence and evil, Daily Kos has adopted five hand-picked organizations who are here to help soften the blow for the millions of us who need our blows softened. If you missed them last week they are…
…these:
● One Fair Wage Emergency Coronavirus Tipped and Service Worker Support Fund provides cash assistance to restaurant workers, car service drivers, delivery workers, personal service workers and more who need the money they aren’t getting to survive.
● CDC Foundation is an independent nonprofit created by Congress to mobilize philanthropic and private-sector resources to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s critical health protection work.
● Feeding America is a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks that feed more than 46 million people through food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, and other community-based agencies.
● Meals on Wheels supports individuals who are elderly, disabled, chronically ill and home-bound by delivering nutritious meals, reducing hunger, improving health and promoting independence.
● The National Domestic Works Alliance has set up a fund to provide immediate financial support for domestic workers, and enable them to stay home and healthy — protecting themselves, their families and their communities while slowing the spread of the Coronavirus.
C&J is proud to continue shining the spotlight on these organizations who are the very definition of "essential." Since it's via ActBlue, you can make a donation to one group or mix and match, for which we, and they, thank you. Sure, it might not be as glamorous as being the lucky duck who got to fill out the paperwork for Ivanka Trump's Chinese coffin trademark, but dammit it's something.
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Note: Happy Infrastructure Week! Today's assignment: build a bridge out of shot glasses from the liquor cabinet to the bedroom in time for your 1 o’clock nap. Good luck, and don’t forget to stress-test your rivets.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the general election: 189
Percent of Rhode Islanders in a new Fleming & Associates-Bryant University poll who trust the pandemic information they get from President Trump and Governor Gina Raimondo, respectively: 35%, 84%
First-time prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine on an average day and on March 19, right after Trump hyped it as a coronavirus cure with "What do you have to lose?": 683 /31,000
Daily first-time prescriptions now that the hype has passed: 3,200
Percent chance that we have a witch doctor as president, according to business tycoon Barry Diller: 100%
Amount that the owner of the Ritz Carlton luxury hotel chain says it hauled in from "small business" relief loans via the federal government's Paycheck Protection Program: $60 million
Percent of Americans who say they don’t know their neighbors at all: 31%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: In Australia, a new record…
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CHEERS to mysterious mysteries solved un-mysteriously. Of course. We knew it had to be something like this. With Occam's razor-like simplicity, we get our answer to why Trump all of a sudden started promoting bleach injections and, in the words of Randy Rainbow, "sticking a flashlight up our ass" to cure the coronavirus:
The leader of the most prominent group in the US peddling potentially lethal industrial bleach as a “miracle cure” for coronavirus wrote to Donald Trump at the White House this week.
In his letter, Mark Grenon told Trump that chlorine dioxide—a powerful bleach used in industrial processes such as textile manufacturing that can have fatal side-effects when drunk—is “a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body.” He added that it “can rid the body of Covid-19.”
A few days after Grenon dispatched his letter, Trump went on national TV at his daily coronavirus briefing at the White House on Thursday and promoted the idea that disinfectant could be used as a treatment for the virus. To the astonishment of medical experts, the US president said that disinfectant “knocks it out in a minute. One minute!”
Wait. It gets better:
Grenon styles himself as “archbishop” of Genesis II—a Florida-based outfit that claims to be a church but which in fact is the largest producer and distributor of chlorine dioxide bleach as a “miracle cure” in the US.
As always, if you want to find out where Trump gets an idea in his cavernous head, remember Rule #1: follow the grift.
CHEERS to order in the court. Two rulings handed down yesterday by the man-gods and woman-goddesses on the Supreme Court, and both of them, eh, are not so bad:
Guns The Supreme Court sidestepped its first major case on the Second Amendment in nearly a decade Monday by ruling that New York City's repeal of a transportation restriction on gun owners rendered the case closed. … The high court's action signaled a turning point in the lengthy battle by the National Rifle Association and other groups to convince the justices that the Second Amendment is being treated as a second-class right in need of their support.
Obamacare The Supreme Court on Monday ruled the federal government owes health insurers massive payments from an Obamacare program shielding them from financial risks after the companies accused Washington of reneging on its funding promises. The 8-1 decision could open the floodgates for federal cash to the insurance industry. [T]he ruling represents a loss for the Trump administration.
Kavanaugh, as usual, issued his own one-line supplemental opinion: "I like beer!"
CHEERS to #5. Happy 262nd birthday to President James Monroe—the last Founding Father to occupy the White House. He creeped people out by wearing his revolution-era clothing and a powdered wig at a time when doing so was long out of style. He also told Europe and Russia to keep their paws off the west and then sucked up to the AARP by snagging Florida. And then there was this bit of insanity (From Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents by Cormac O'Brien):
Secretary of the Treasury William Crawford once came calling on the president with a stack of patronage recommendations, all of which Monroe rejected.
Enraged, Crawford threw a temper tantrum and demanded to know whom Monroe intended to appoint; the president replied it was none of Crawford's damn business.
Crawford snapped and actually advanced on the chief executive with his cane raised, calling Monroe a "damned infernal old scoundrel." Monroe then stepped to the fireplace, seized a pair of fire tongs, and chased his secretary of the treasury from the Executive Mansion.
Historians call it "The night Monroe went mad." Fox News calls it "Saturday night with Jeanine Pirro."
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to the way this probably all ends. Might want to get your affairs in order today because tomorrow might be a bumpy ride. Oh, sure, CNN and the "scientists" say this is nothing to worry about, but let's remember that our glorious greatest-president-ever says they're all fake news:
An asteroid estimated to be 1.2 miles wide will fly by Earth [tomorrow], but it's not expected to collide with our planet. … The asteroid is called 52768 (1998 OR2), and it was first spotted in 1998. If it did impact Earth, the asteroid is "large enough to cause global effects," according to NASA, back when the asteroid was first discovered.
The flyby is expected to occur on Wednesday, April 29, at 5:56 a.m. ET, according to NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies. The center tracks Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs, that could collide with Earth.
If things do go awry, Mike Pence says Space Force is standing by to inject the asteroid with bleach and UV light. But not hydrochloroquine, because, c'mon, that's just quack science.
JEERS to words that bite back. Fifty-three years ago today, on April 28, 1967, General William Westmoreland said that the U.S. "would prevail in Vietnam." Responded the producer of Laugh-In: "Hey, quit stealin' our jokes."
CHEERS to the new game show sweeping the nation. If you like The Masked Singer, you’ll love The Beached North Korean Dictator! That’s right—that silly scamp Kim Jong Un isn’t dead, he’s just chilling out on California’s beautiful Huntington Beach. All you have to do is find him sunning himself in the photo below to win fabulous cash and prizes. Ready? Go!
Bzzzt!!! I’m sorry, but you’re out of time. If only they’d been practicing social distancing, you would’ve spotted him easily. But instead of you winning a brand-new 1983 Buick LeSabre, we get to don spaceman suits and clean out all the yummy snack foods from your pantry. But thanks for playing, and we’ll see you next time for another exciting round of The Beached North Korean Dictator!
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Ten years ago in C&J: April 28, 2010
JEERS to oil, oil everywhere. This is one reason (among many) I despise the mindset of Sarah Palin and her rabidly ideological followers: every time she trots out that "Drill, baby, drill" line, she sounds like a cheerleader jacked up on Skittles at a Friday night high-school football game. It's sassy! It's brassy! It's a guaranteed applause line! But when things go wrong, like an epic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that's spewing 42,000 gallons a day, suddenly it's not so much fun anymore. The spill, which at this point is looking rather Exxon-Valdez'ish, should be a wake-up call for you crude people: it's time to put away your pom-poms and get serious about energy, dammit. This concludes this rant of no apparent comic value.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to setting an example. In downtown Portland, Maine—now a veritable ghost town—a stark reminder from our 81-year-old lobsterman statue that the city is still in lockdown:
Shame on whoever stole his bottle of Purell.
Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"If Chinese students want to come here and study Cheers and Jeers, that's what they need to learn from America. They don't need to learn quantum computing."
—Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Moscow)
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