Oh! More Things I Know…
» Prior to this year we used to say, "Kids, if you stay in school and study hard, you can be anything you want to be." Now we say, "Kids, if you stay out of school, you might live."
» The first thing House and Senate Democrats must do when they both hold the majority is everything.
» Susan Collins is neither troubled nor concerned. She is, however, doomed.
Continued...
Oh! More more things I know…
» Donald Trump and Mike Pence have made America so great again that it's now harder to find toilet paper here than it is in Russia.
» Drivers: you look silly wearing a life-protecting mask in your car while texting and driving.
» The sitting president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, still doesn't know the words to our national anthem.
» This is excellent news:
» Every problem that humanity has ever encountered throughout history can be traced back to Lorraine in HR.
» I finally wised up by removing all the buds from the trees in our yard this spring so we don't have to rake any leaves this fall.
» Larry Johnson is thiiiiis close to releasing that damning Michelle Obama "whitey tape" that he first told us he had possession of in—[checks notes]—2008.
» I finally found something good to say about Attorney General Bill Barr: he'll never try to sing "Let the Eagle Soar."
That’s all I know. And now, our feature presentation...
-
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, May 21, 2020
Note: Just a quick heads-up that C&J will not appear in the pages of this online supermarket coupon clipper Monday, so that we may commemorate the Memorial Day holiday and also incur our first self-inflicted Jarts wounds of the summer of aught nineteen. Back Tuesday with high praise for Obamacare's puncture-wound provisions.
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the SpaceX launch of the DM-2, which will send Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station from American soil for the first time in forever: 6
Number of state governors who have higher approval ratings for handling the pandemic than Trump does, according to The Washington Post, with Georgia's Brian Kemp the lone exception: 49
Biden vs. Trump matchup numbers in Georgia, per the latest Civiqs poll: 48-47
Minimum number of U.S. Catholic schools that will likely close permanently before the fall: 100
Percent of Americans who believe global warming is happening, according to the Yale Program on Climate Communication: 73%
Percent of Americans who believe it's too late to do anything about it: 11%
Age of The Who's Pete Townshend as of Tuesday: 75
-
Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
The American press has always had a tendency to assume that the truth must lie exactly halfway between any two opposing points of view. Thus, if the press presents the man who says Hitler is an ogre and the man who says Hitler is a prince, it believes it has done the full measure of its journalistic duty.
This tendency has been aggravated in recent years by a noticeable trend to substitute people who speak from a right-wing ideological perspective for those who know something about a given subject. Thus, we see, night after night, on MacNeil/Lehrer or Nightline, people who don't know jack about Iran or Nicaragua or arms control, but who are ready to tear up the pea patch in defense of the proposition that Ronald Reagan is a Great Leader beset by comsymps. They have nothing to offer in the way of facts or insight; they are presented as a way of keeping the networks from being charged with bias by people who are replete with bias and resistant to fact. The justification for putting them on the air is that "they represent a point of view."
The odd thing about these television discussions designed to "get all sides of the issue" is that they do not feature a spectrum of people with different views on reality: Rather, they frequently give us a face-off between those who see reality and those who have missed it entirely. In the name of objectivity, we are getting fantasyland.
—1987
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Slinky dawg slinkin’…
-
CHEERS to takesie backsies: pandemic edition. Our long international nightmare is over folks…or at least a little piece of it seems to be. Remember how testing in South Korea suggested that people who'd recovered from Covid-19 weren't immune against re-infection, and everybody was all like goddammit could 2020 get any worse?!! Well everyone can just calm the f*ck down now because it turns out those results were just positive false positive falsities of a positively false nature:
Researchers are finding evidence that patients who test positive for the coronavirus after recovering aren’t capable of transmitting the infection, and could have the antibodies that prevent them from falling sick again.
Scientists from the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studied 285 Covid-19 survivors who had tested positive for the coronavirus after their illness had apparently resolved, as indicated by a previous negative test result. The so-called re-positive patients weren’t found to have spread any lingering infection, and virus samples collected from them couldn’t be grown in culture, indicating the patients were shedding non-infectious or dead virus particles. […]
The emerging evidence from South Korea suggests those who have recovered from Covid-19 present no risk of spreading the coronavirus when physical distancing measures are relaxed.
Phew. Now all we have to worry about is inadequate testing, the slow-walk toward a vaccine, keeping the gun-toting and bible-thumping right-wing morons from killing us all with their flying spittle, maintaining our sanity during the lockdown, and kicking out all the world leaders who are needlessly making the situation worse. And then we’ll break for lunch.
CHEERS to breathing the sweet fresh air of….OMG it's actually sweet fresh air! When the biggest parasites on the third planet from the sun, who are in the process of wrecking it for all the other organisms, are forced to head indoors for an indefinite period of time during a pandemic, an amazing thing happens:
Global carbon emissions are reportedly down by 17 percent due to the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. […]
One of the study’s authors, Corinne LeQuéré, told NBC News, “Globally, we haven’t seen a drop this big ever, and at the yearly level, you would have to go back to World War II to see such a big drop in emissions. But this is not the way to tackle climate change—it’s not going to happen by forcing behavior changes on people,” she continued. “We need to tackle it by helping people move to more sustainable ways of living.”
And now stay tuned for Trump to tweet that, because he's the #1 guy allowing the "carbon-lowering virus" to flourish and spread, he's actually “making Earth great again” and deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. We'll try and give you a sufficient heads-up so you can tank up on some Excedrin Migraine ahead of time.
CHEERS to partying parties. On this date in 1832, the first Democratic National Convention got under way in Baltimore. The top issues were Andrew Jackson's contempt for the Second Bank of the United States and the business of voting on a running mate. (Martin Van Buren got the nod in a blowout.) And there was this curious factoid:
[T]he Summary of the Proceedings notes that a delegation was sent to ask Charles Carroll of Carrollton to attend. At that moment in time, he was the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Carroll declined, citing ill health. (He died later that year.)
Jackson and Van Buren went on to crush Henry Clay and John Sergeant in the general, due mostly to their campaign slogan: "Don't Make Andrew Mad. You Don't Want to See Andrew When He's Mad."
-
BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
-
BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
CHEERS to the final reveal to end all final reveals. With the Supreme Court licking its chops over the chance to repeal Roe v. Wade, the deceased star of that case left behind a shocking surprise that is now coming to light: her ‘90s defection to the far-right's anti-abortion cause was all a bullshit-for-cash deal:
In its final 20 minutes, the documentary film AKA Jane Roe delivers quite the blow to conservatives who have weaponized the story of Jane Roe herself—real name, Norma McCorvey—to argue that people with uteruses should have to carry any and all pregnancies to term. … [T]he former Jane Roe admits that her later turn to the anti-abortion camp as a born-again Christian was “all an act.”
“This is my deathbed confession,” she chuckles, sitting in a chair in her nursing home room, on oxygen. Sweeney asks McCorvey, “Did [the evangelicals] use you as a trophy?” “Of course,” she replies. “I was the Big Fish.” “Do you think you would say that you used them?” Sweeney responds. … “I took their money and they took me out in front of the cameras and told me what to say. That’s what I’d say.” She even gives an example of her scripted anti-abortion lines. “I’m a good actress,” she points out. “Of course, I’m not acting now.” […]
“If a young woman wants to have an abortion—fine,” she says, coloring in the nursing home. “That’s no skin off my ass. You know, that’s why they call it ‘choice.’ It’s your choice.”
On the one hand, good for her. She didn’t go gentle into that good night—she knocked the smirk off the religious right's face with a fierce left hook. On the other hand, what a selfish act—spending so many years betraying the women's movement and setting back the cause of equality so effortlessly for money. I'm conflicted, so I'll just say this: may she rest in peace. Most of the time.
CHEERS to jump-starting the jalopy. 119 years ago this week, the first auto repair shop opened in Boston. Followed soon after by the first auto repair bill-induced cardiac arrhythmia.
CHEERS to anticipation. Hooray! Only one more day 'til the start of the Memorial Day Weekend and then it'll be July 4th and then back-to-home-school and then Trump loses in a landslide and then Thanksgiving and then Christmas 'n Hanukkah 'n Festivus and then "Happy New Year 2021" and then Joe gets sworn in and then fucking winter and then spring and then Easter and then only one more day 'til the start of the Memorial Day weekend. Oh, the joy of having been around the sun a few times.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: May 21, 2010
CHEERS and JEERS to the latest on Oilpocalypse. The good news: those tar balls that washed up in Key West are not from the Gulf oilpocalypse. (Best guess: they fell out of Fred Phelps's ears when he was protesting a school down there last year.) The bad news: everything else. Meanwhile, today BP is going to initiate its latest effort to stem the flow of oil. It's a complicated maneuver called "jiggle the handle." Hope lives!
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to famous firsts. In their relevant-as-ever book The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Al Ries and Jack Trout write about the advantage of being the first in the marketplace. Or, as the case may be, the first right-winger to hop off the Trump merry-go-round:
What's the name of the first person to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo? Charles Lindbergh, right? Whats the name of the second person to fly the Atlantic? Not so easy to answer, is it?
The second person to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo was Bert Hinkler. Bert was a better pilot than Charlie—he flew faster, he consumed less fuel. Yet who has ever heard of Bert Hinkler?
(The first woman to fly the Atlantic solo? Why, Amelia Earhart, of course—88 years ago today.) They call that particular principle the “Rule of Leadership.” One year ago this week, a libertarian-leaning congressman from western Michigan became the first Republican member of the House of Representatives to show what leadership looks like in the age of Trump. He tweeted many tweets supporting his position, but here’s the Cliffs Notes tweet...
The history books will remember his name: Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI), now known as Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI). Cuz credit where credit is due: love him or hate him (or both), he was #1.
Have a tolerable Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"Bill in Portland Maine's attempt at humor in Cheers and Jeers—which included jokes about grog's fitness and also blamed el chucho for the coronavirus outbreak—drew strong criticism. "
—AP
-