On Your Knees
The Lincoln Project would like to have a word with the red-hatted cultists about their false god, and how he might fare in, say, Louisiana, the first state to require that the Ten Commandments be posted in classrooms:
-
No Amen for him. Somebody fetch a Mother Superior with a ruler.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, June 20, 2024
Note: A quick heads-up that, in our quest to be utterly horrible, there will be no C&J on Monday. We’ll return on Tuesday demanding that you take back what you said about us being utterly horrible or else we’ll take another day off. It’s up to you, people. It’s all up to you.
—Mgt. Team & $500/hr. Motivational Consultants
-
By the Numbers:
7 days!!!
Days 'til Steve Bannon goes to Hell, aka prison: 11
Days 'til the 50th Green Corn Festival in Bixby, Oklahoma: 7
Overall drop in the number of Americans without health insurance between 2019 and 2023: 8.2 million
Percent of Americans without health insurance in 2019 and 2023, respectively: 14.7%, 10.9%
Percent of self-described independent voters polled by Ipsos who say they are less likely to vote for Trump following his felony conviction: 21%
Increase in industrial production in May: 0.9%
Chance of catching an all-orange lobster: 1-in-30 million
-
Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
You know me, no conspiracy theories here, but the Bush administration, which doesn’t seem to be able to run much, set out to retool the CIA after 9/11 and the Iraq War. Problem is, everything that worked at the CIA—that it warned about 9/11 and said the Iraq War was a bad idea—was on the hit list. The Bushies wanted to eliminate the people who were right and promote those who were wrong.
This is no way to shape up an intelligence agency, not to mention the White House spit fit over Joe Wilson’s wife. […]
The former inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, Clark Kent Ervin—that would be the DHS equivalent of a police department’s internal affairs chief—tried to blow the whistle on shady contracts at DHS and instead was thrown overboard himself. Folks, we’ll never get government straightened out again if we don’t keep the IGs strong and independent.
If the Bush administration continues to fall apart at this clip, I think we’ll be grateful for incompetence as an excuse.
—May, 2006
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: 90+ in Portland Maine again today, so hydrate, hydrate, hydrate…
-
CHEERS (and a JEER) to staying power. President Biden scored a home run this week when he fired off two executive orders that would let the undocumented spouses and children of U.S. citizens apply for citizenship (without having to leave the country first), thus making the great American melting pot happily meltier. And the folks who would benefit are ecstatic:
“Imagine, it would be a dream come true,” said [Claudia] Zúniga, who works part time in her father's transportation business in Houston. “My husband could be with us. We could focus on the well-being of our children.”
Angelica Martinez, 36, wiped away tears as she sat next to her children, ages 14 and 6,and watched Biden's announcement at the Houston office of FIEL, an immigrant advocacy group. A U.S. citizen since 2013, she described a flood of emotions, including regret that her husband couldn't travel to Mexico when his mother died five years ago.
Brenda Valle of Los Angeles, whose husband has been a U.S. citizen since 2001 and, like her, was born in Mexico, renews her DACA permit every two years. “We can start planning more long-term, for the future, instead of what we can do for the next two years,” she said.
And now the jeer: ABC News couldn’t just let a good-news story be a good-news story. As so often happens, the headline just has to include some poison in it…in this case making it sound like Biden deliberately played favorites:
"Immigrant families rejoice over Biden's expansive move toward citizenship, while some are left out."
Hope you enjoy those last five words, MAGA cult. I’m guessing they were added just for you.
CHEERS to the changing of the guard. In case you missed the primary results from Tuesday (results here from the Daily Kos Elections Team), there were a pair of seismic events in Virginia worth noting. First, Col. Eugene Vindman, who was fired by Trump for being equal parts patriotic and competent…well, here, I'll let Adam Schiff deliver the news:
-
He'll win in November and represent Virginia's 7th District honorably. And, like Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, Eugene has an identical twin—Alexander—who can seamlessly take over if necessary without anyone being the wiser.
Meanwhile, the chairman of the House Cuckoo "Freedom Caucus," a fact-averse, violence-promoting whackadoo hellbent on sending our country down the tubes of authoritarianism and for whom cruelty is the ultimate aphrodisiac, lost his primary because the MAGA cult wanted someone completely different. So he’ll be replaced on November's ballot by a—[checks notes]—fact-averse, violence-promoting whackadoo hellbent on sending our country down the tubes of authoritarianism and for whom cruelty is the ultimate aphrodisiac wearing a different tie. That's what I love about the other side: their dedication to diversity.
CHEERS to seals that can’t balance a beach ball on their nose. On June 20, 1782, the Great Seal of the United States was finally adopted by Congress. They sure took their sweet time getting there:
On July 4, 1776,the same day that independence from Great Britain was declared by the thirteen states, the Continental Congress named the first committee to design a Great Seal, or national emblem, for the country.
The eye, of course, is Hillary Clinton’s. (She sees you, Q-Anon. Ooga Booga!)
Similar to other nations, The United States needed an official symbol of sovereignty to formalize and seal (or sign) international treaties and transactions. It took six years, three committees, and the contributions of fourteen men before the Congress finally accepted a design (which included elements proposed by each of the three committees) in 1782.
Taking our annual inventory: 13 stars, 13 stripes, 13 arrows in the eagle’s talon,13 letters in the mottos "e pluribus unum" and "annuit coeptis," 52 total letters on it (which are divisible by 13), 13 olive leaves, 13 olives on the branch, 13 levels in the pyramid, and 13 sides showing on the ribbon. But designer Charles Thomson stopped short of including a black cat walking under a ladder. That would've been considered unlucky.
-
BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
-
END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
CHEERS to the thawing season. Summer arrives this afternoon at 4:51. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster, we can feel our toes up here again.
Bonus puppy pic. My treat.
Two months (here, anyway—unlike our summer, yours may include September) of peace, tranquility, and boring news cycles. Right? Right??? If only. But for Maine it does bring 60 glorious days of heat (although today’s heat index of 100+ is a bit much) after months of shutting ourselves inside, closing all the windows and cranking the furnace up to 70. First item on our agenda as summer gets its solstice on: shutting ourselves inside, closing all the windows, and cranking the AC down to 70.
CHEERS to snazzy duds. The U.S. Olympic Fashion Committee scored a gold medal when it unveiled this year's Ralph Lauren-inspired uniforms for the American team headed to the 2024 Summer Games in Paris (36 days and counting). They're sharp and snappy and tastefully retro. And looka this: they let 'em wear jeans this time:
And in every pocket: condoms, condoms, and more condoms.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: June 20, 2014
CHEERS to judicial activityism. Thanks to long-overdue filibuster reform (and shame on Republicans for their childish obstruction that made it necessary), the Senate is actually staffing court benches again. You can read about the three new kids here. And then check out this optimistic tidbit from the Alliance for Justice:
Bold action by Senate Democrats has reduced the number of judicial vacancies to a five-year low, according to a new report from Alliance for Justice. … “Senate Democrats, led by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., have responded boldly to mindless obstruction, making judicial confirmations a top priority on the Senate floor,” according to the report. “Senate Democrats have made clear that they will protect democratic process in the Senate, and that obstruction and gridlock cannot be the ‘new norm’ for judicial nominees.”
Not that it's all rosy (Obama still lags behind Bush and Clinton in judicial backlogs…golly, I wonder why), but it's improvement. To celebrate, today in the C&J gift shop all powdered wigs are half-off.
-
And just one more…
JEERS to the Night of A Thousand New Coronavirus Cases. Feel free to skip this—it has to do with "him." But there's no way we can't revisit June 20, 2020, a date which will live in infamy.
Four years ago our COVID death toll stood at 122,000 on its way, thanks to dithering and moronic Republican cult management, to over a million-plus. And what did our face-painted moron-in-chief decide would be a great idea in the middle of all the chaos and death? Of course—a MAGA rally with no mask mandate or social distancing rules because NO ONE TELLS REPUBLICANS WHAT TO DO, THEY TELL YOU WHAT TO DO! Trump flew Air Force One down to Tulsa, having pre-boasted of "a million ticket registrations," only to discover that a few thousand bothered to show up.
Among the few in attendance for Trump's sweaty, nonsensical hour of gaslighting was former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, whom Trump rewarded for joining his merry band by exposing him to COVID and killing him dead. What a friend. Only the best thoughts and prayers, believe me.
All hail the conquering hero.
As a disheveled and depressed Trump slumped across the White House lawn and back to his room for a night of rage-tweeting while the world laughed at his pathetic spectacle, this guy—Mike Brooks—was deemed the smartest one in the arena:
Seven months to the day later, Trump would again slump across the White House lawn, this time to board Marine One as the roundly-defeated one-term, twice-impeached (and now tried-and-convicted) ex-president whose approval never came close to 50 percent and who almost died from COVID himself. And we all lived happily ever after. Except Herman Cain and 1,167,334 other Americans. The End.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"Some ideas get so embedded in people’s heads that even those who should know better start to accept them automatically. One of those ideas is that any time Bill in Portland Maine splashes in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool, it only makes him stronger. That idea is bullshit."
—Mark Sumner
-