Deadlines, Deadlines
Good morning, liberal hippie commie Marxist Sorosistas and your America-killing infatuation with—[Checks notes]—keeping your fellow Americans safe and healthy and able to pay their bills. Monday welcomes you. For your convenience, C&J continues to monitor two important deadlines of national importance as imposed by the Trump administration, which has never missed a deadline because of its peerless managerial efficiency and dedication to the job of running the country.
Deadline One: August 2 The day on which Trump has promised to sign a “full and complete healthcare plan” into law.
Deadline Two: September 10 The end of the 8-week period during which the president will deliver "many exciting things, things that nobody has even contemplated, thought about, thought possible [with] levels of thought that a lot of people believed very strongly we didn't have in this country."
Stay tuned to Daily Kos for updates, as the president’s brilliant mind works amazingly and beautifully, and his America-great-again-making developments will happen very, very quickly. Thank you and Happy Infrastructure Week.
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, July 27, 2020
Note: Last week I swatted a fly. Then, feeling guilty, I administered CPR, repaired his wings with Elmer's glue, put his hind legs in little casts, and fashioned a pair of crutches out of toothpicks. While he recovers, we’re paying to have his family stay on a windowsill at the Ronald McDonald House. He's happily vomiting in my Fruit Loops as I write this. May we all be humbled by, and learn from, this life-affirming experience. —Mgr.
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By the Numbers:
10 days!!!
Days 'til India Pale Ale Day: 10
Minimum number of Americans now receiving unemployment aid: 30 million
Michigan restaurants that got $150,000 or more in federal loans, according to The Detroit Free Press: 785
Number of them that are black-owned: 1
Floridians' approval of Governor Ron DeSantis in April and today, according to Quinnipiac polling: 53% / 41%
Percent of Floridians in the same poll who said Republicans f*cked up by re-opening everything too soon: 61%
Percent of Yankees & Nationals players and managers who took a knee in support of Black Lives Matter before the national anthem last Thursday night in D.C.: 100%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Monday morning alarm…
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CHEERS to poll dancing. The people who pick our brains for a living have been busy little bees now that we're less than 100 days from the crashing of the blue wave on November 3rd. Let's take a spin across America and check up on their fine work. For your convenience, we've stuffed them all into a text box that you can clip out like a coupon and use to give your endorphins a little tickle as needed:
Fox News Biden leads Trump in Pennsylvania 50 percent to 39 percent…In Michigan, Biden leads Trump 49 percent to 40 percent… In Minnesota, Biden leads Trump 51 percent to 38 percent.
See also: this CBS News Florida poll.
Quinnipiac University Trump currently stands well behind Joe Biden in the perpetually swinging state of Florida, at 38% support to Biden's 51%. [Historically, Biden’s average lead in Florida among all polls is 7 points].
By a narrow count of 45% to 44%, Biden leads Trump in Texas.
NBC News/Marist Biden leads Trump by 5 points in Arizona, up from a 1-point lead in March.
FiveThirtyEight Biden leads Trump by 8 points in the aggregate of all polls nationally, taking quality and sample size into account. Since late February, when head-to-head polling began and Biden led by 4, Trump has never led.
As always, making these numbers stick hinges on turnout. So from now until election day, your new name for every friend, family member, co-worker, and acquaintance you greet is “November Third.” Trust me, they’ll get used to it. If you don’t believe me, ask my partner November Third, my Aunt November Third, and my neighbors November Third, November Third, and November Third.
CHEERS to a sendoff worthy of the man. After inconveniencing us all by dying much too soon at 80, Congressman and humble civil rights superhero John Lewis is giving the Americans who owe him more than we could ever repay several chances to say farewell. The eulogies began Saturday in Troy, Alabama, where he was born and where he first practiced preaching in front of the captive feathered audience in his father's chicken coop:
Lewis has "come home," Troy Mayor Jason Reeves said at the start of the service Saturday morning in the city where Lewis, a son of sharecroppers, was born in 1940.
1940-2020
The mayor went on to recall the man who rose to become the "conscience of Congress" as having "otherworldly courage." […]
[Sister] Ethel Tyner, recalled how she and her family were all farmers and that Lewis—whom the family called Robert—began preaching at a young age. “When the clouds would come over the sun, he would start singing and preaching," she said. "And there’s a song he would always start with: ‘There’s a dark cloud arising, let’s go home. Let’s go home.'"
Yesterday Congressman Lewis made one last trek across the Edmund Pettus Bridge—likely to be renamed after him—where "I gave a little blood in Selma. But other people gave their lives."
More Lewis honors and eulogies will continue this week in Montgomery, Alabama and Washington, D.C. (he'll lie in state under the Capitol rotunda) before his final service at Ebeneezer Baptist Church and burial next to Lillian in Atlanta Thursday. Republicans, you can limit your words to four simple ones: “Voting Rights Act now.”
CHEERS to the end of the end. It was all over for Tricky Dick 44 years ago today, thanks to a 27-11 vote by the House Judiciary Committee to adopt the first of three articles of impeachment against President Nixon who, said ABC News's Tom Jarrell at the time, was "presumably still in his swim trunks" while on vacation in California when he heard the news. Meanwhile, then-VP Gerald Ford just couldn’t help but play a little game of up-is-downism:
Ford: It's interesting that every Democrat on the committee—north and south—voted for the article. ... It tends to make it a partisan issue.
When Trump is forced to leave in disgrace, he’ll just give the thumbs-up sign, which will look as ridiculously stupid as Dick’s victory signs.
Reporter: Even if one-third of Republicans voted for it?
Ford: Well, the fact that every one of the Democrats voted for it, I think, uh, lends credence that it's a partisan issue, even though some Republicans have deviated.
...said the Republican who later unilaterally exonerated the Republican crook. But, hey, what's a little hypocrisy among friends?
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to keeping track of America’s fugliest numbers. The Covid-19 world tour marches on (over 16 million cases around the globe now, with 25% of them in the U.S.), and our macabre Monday tradition of maintaining a benchmark of the awfulness for the C&J historical record continues. Let’s check the most depressing tote board in the world with all due reluctance as the death toll now equals five times the battlefield deaths from our War of Independence:
10 weeks ago: 1.5 million confirmed cases. 90,000 deaths.
5 weeks ago: 2.4 million confirmed cases, 123,000 deaths
Trump courageously dealt with the pandemic over the weekend by golfing.
Last week: 3.8 million confirmed cases, 143,000 deaths
This morning: 4.3 million confirmed cases, 150,000 deaths
Meanwhile the CDC’s new White House-approved recommendations for school openings are out, and you’ll never guess what they say: ”Pack all them kids into all them classrooms or we’ll string you up by all your thumbs. But be safe about it.” Message: they care.
JEERS to hounding the wrong guy. Twenty-four years ago today, domestic right-wing terrorist nut Eric Rudolph detonated a pipe bomb at the Summer Olympic games in Atlanta.
Sculpture in Centennial (Olympic) Park with an indentation of a nail from the July 27, 1996 bombing.
The blast killed one person and injured over a hundred more, but it could've been worse if security guard Richard Jewell hadn’t found the bomb and tried to move people out of harm's way. The hero was later pilloried in the press and by the late-night gaggle (Leno called him the "Una-doofus") when it became known that the FBI considered him a suspect. Then, when his name was officially cleared, they moved on and dumped his reputation by the side of the road like a rodent carcass. Wikipedia reminds us of what the media should've learned:
Jewell's case became an example of the damage that can be done by reporting based on unreliable or incomplete information...
Mr. Lesson From The Past, meet Mr. ADD.
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Ten years ago in C&J: July 27, 2010
JEERS to tossing a cherry on a manure pile and calling it a sundae. In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Big Oil says it's cobbling together $1 billion to fund a "rapid response" "company" focusing on cleaning up oil spills up to 10,000 feet underwater. BP, though, declined to participate in the venture, saying they already have a billion-dollar apparatus in place to clean up their messes. It's called their legal department.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the only way Trump can or should be listened to. Comedian Sarah Cooper once again brings lip-synching to a new level not seen since...well, since the last time she brought lip-synching to a new level. As soon as Trump boasted...and boasted and boasted...about the results of his cognitive abilities test, the world knew this was coming, and she didn’t disappoint:
I have five words: Grammy. Award. Best. Spoken. Word.
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
Bill in Portland Maine thinks all women who splash in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool are housewives
—The Mary Sue
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