Potent Quotables
With Trump Amateur Hour STARRING PROJECT 2025 continuing for a third night (carnage meet chaos, chaos meet carnage), here’s some of the empathy, eloquence and snarky bits from the 2020 Democratic National Convention. Among other things, it’s a good reminder of just how miserable the orange lunatic’s presidency was. If you’ve accidentally tuned in to the RNC thunderdome action and poisoned your mind this week, consider this your antidote…
"Unlike Trump, Joe Biden has common decency. He has common sense. He can command, both from experience and from strength. Donald Trump doesn’t deserve to call himself commander in chief for another four minutes, let alone another four years."
—Senator And Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth
"Years from now, this moment will have passed, and our children and our grandchildren will look in our eyes and they’re going to ask us, 'Where were you when the stakes were so high?' They will ask us, 'What was it like?' And we will tell them not just how we felt, we will tell them what we did."
—Then-VP Nominee Kamala Harris
"You know, when Donald Trump spoke at his inauguration about American carnage, I assumed that was something he was against, not a campaign promise."
—Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Four more years.
"Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Trump golfs."
—Senator Bernie Sanders
“Just today, President [Trump] threatened 40 million Americans that happen to live here in the state of California to defund our efforts on wildfire suppression, because he said we hadn’t raked enough leaves.”
—California Governor Gavin Newsom
"Hello, America, I’m Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Or as Donald Trump calls me: that woman from Michigan."
—Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer
“I give you my word: if you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I’ll be an ally of the light, not the darkness. It’s time for us—for we the people—to come together. And make no mistake, united we can and will overcome this season of darkness in America. We’ll choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege."
—Joe Biden
"Joe is that kind of leader, and he is the right person for this moment in our nation’s history. He understands that honesty and dignity are essential traits that determine not only our vision, but our actions. More than ever, that’s what we need."
—President Jimmy Carter
And, thank god, that’s who we got.
And now, our feature presentation...
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, July 17, 2024
Note: Please note that it is now a requirement to add an "(Already???)" anytime you reference that it is now the middle of July (Already???) in any verbal or written correspondence. Thank you. —Mgt.
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3 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the full "buck moon": 4
Days 'til Burger Fest 2024 in Hamburg, New York: 3
Amount of plastic waste produced annually: 400 million tons
Amount by 2050 if growth trends continue: 1.1 billion tons
Amount by which Costco is raising its membership fees, its first increase since 2017: $5
Percent of the waste water that's recycled aboard the ISS: 93%
Year the minute hand was added to watches: 1670
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 185 (including 5 gogs and 1 heavenly phone call). Soul Protection Factor 30 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Or, actually, 30 puppy pics…
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CHEERS to Dark Brandon takin' care of America's concerns. OH NO, RECORD HIGH IMMIGRANT TERROR CARAVANS ARE POURIN' OVER THE BORDER TO RAPE YER DAUGHTERS!!! Hang on, everybody…Dark Brandon is on the case and, as he has for the past 42 months, he's addressing our white-knuckle fear of the border competently and capably:
Arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico plunged 29% in June, the lowest month of Joe Biden's presidency, according to figures released Monday that provide another window on the impact of a new rule to temporarily suspend asylum. […]
That’s in addition to this recent announcement.
A seven-day average of daily arrests fell more than half by the end of June from Biden's announcement on June 4 that asylum processing would be halted when daily arrests reach 2,500, which they did immediately, said Troy Miller, acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner.
“Recent border security measures have made a meaningful impact on our ability to impose consequences for those crossing unlawfully,” Miller said.
Or as they'll translate this good-news story into MAGA-speak at the RNC convention: RECORD HIGH IMMIGRANT TERROR CARAVANS ARE POURIN' OVER BORDER TO RAPE YOUR DAUGHTERS!!!
CHEERS to words to drool by. Last night was night 2 of the Trump Project 2025 Convention in Horriblewaukee, Wisconsin. The theme of the evening was "Obey or Die," and everyone had a wonderful time obeying or dying. Since the GOP now speaks entirely in tongues, I was a bit confused by the speeches, but I would like to point out something Eric Trump said that really spoke to me:
“Duhhhhhhh herrrderr frkelbrg errrrrrr gob gob gob ooooooob I have a bicycle!”
So true. So true. And a friendly reminder: if you plan to watch tonight's prime time festivities, you should start drinking five minutes ago.
CHEERS to merry meetings. 49 years ago today, on July 17, 1975 (12:08pm ET to be exact), an Apollo crew docked with the Soyuz 19 spacecraft in orbit. (Because, if memory serves, Denny's was too crowded.) It was the first time the world's foremost cold warriors hooked up in space for, according to my Texas School Board-approved history textbook, praying to Baby Jesus from on high to smite all the drag queens and wipe out the scourge of Black history:
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Sadly, we’re now in a proxy war with Russia [P’tooey!] because their tinpot dictator decided his legacy wasn’t yet littered with enough war crimes. I still hold out hope that one day soon some Russian astronauts will be able to send him on a one way trip into space by luring him into a capsule after leaving a trail of the most irresistible bait: shirtless photos of himself.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to the current chain of command. Seventy-seven years ago this week, in 1947, President Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, which clearly establishes who takes over if the president dies or is otherwise incapacitated. Here's the current lineup, which is a sight better than what it looked like a few years ago with one catastrophic exception you’ll spot immediately:
Vice President Kamala Harris (First woman president? Fine by me.)
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (A fact that I refuse to let sink in.)
And when climate change kills off humanity, Clarissa here becomes dictator for life.
President pro tempore of the Senate Patty Murray (Free Washington apples for everybody.)
Sec. of State Antony Blinken (A. Blinken?…Abe Lincoln? I say he should be allowed to leapfrog to the top for that. But only if he wears a stovepipe hat.)
Sec. of the Treasury Janet Yellen (Can we just pause for a moment to thank all the gods that Steve Mnuchin is gone…and to also ask if all the gold in Fort Knox was accounted for after he left?)
Gary the House Janitor (In fairness, if he can clean up vomit in the school cafeteria, he can probably clean up Washington.)
Dopey (This would not be good because he'd be dwarfed by world events.)
After that they just start drawing random names out of Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's girdle.
CHEERS to Bidenomics. Here's some "interest”-ing news you won’t hear at the orc's convention: Dark Brandon has piloted our economic challenges to such a soft landing that there's a very welcome light at the end of the fiscal calamity tunnel:
Traders are now 100% certain the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates by September. […]
Fed Chair Powell when I’ve ingested ‘shrooms.
The catalyst for the change in odds was the consumer price index update for June last week, which showed a 0.1% decrease from the prior month. That put the annual inflation rate at 3%, the lowest in three years. Odds that rates would be cut in September were about 70% a month ago. […]
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s recent hints have also cemented traders’ belief that the central bank will act by September. On Monday, Powell said the Fed wouldn’t wait for inflation to get all the way to its 2% target rate before it began cutting, because of the lag effects of tightening.
That means it'll become cheaper to borrow money for important expenditures. Which is really important, because my vault is down to its last pallet of candy corn.
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15 years ago in C&J: July 17, 2009
CHEERS to booster shots. After five delays due to, respectively, weather, weather, weather, weather, and locking the keys in the cockpit, the sixth time was the charm for the Space Shuttle Endeavour yesterday. A transcript of the event:
"We have liftoff! Shuttle Endeavour has begun its two-week mission to link up with the International Space Station."
"Uh, Mission Control? This is Commander Polansky."
"Roger, Commander. Go ahead."
"Uh...we're all standing right behind y'all here."
"Oh. Hi, Mark. So...who's in the craft?"
"Beats me."
"Shuttle Endeavor, this is Mission Control. Do you read me?"
"Moo."
"Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have a problem."
I knew this was gonna happen when they slashed the security budget.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to perspective. You think the 80s and 90s are hot? Really? Really??? Well, all I can say is be glad it's not in the 800s and 900s. As the Slow Mo Guys—Dan and Gav—demonstrate in their latest bit of tomfoolery, an earth as hot as melted salt would be just a tad more uncomfortable than what we're going through now:
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But one thing would still be the same: if molten salt knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of Texans, Governor Greg Abbott still wouldn’t give a shit.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"Not picking on the Biden campaign here, but I'm regularly struck how conventional wisdom is that to win the presidency you "campaign from the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool," and that is not actually what Dems do."
—Atrios
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