Trump’s Final Pitch Before Tonight’s Debate
Via The Daily Show. Quite powerful...
Well, I’m sold.
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, October 22, 2020
Note: Today is National Nut Day. So help yourself to the bowl of pistachios, almonds, walnuts, filberts, and Giulianis.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the next "blue moon": 8
Percent chance that Trump's campaign is floundering so badly that he's sending Mike Pence to shore up support in Indiana: 100%
Percent of U.S. voters who favor a government health insurance plan anyone can buy (i.e. a "public option," according to a new NYT/Siena College poll: 65%
Sen. Joni Ernst's (R-IA) approval rating, per PPP polling: 42%
Iowans polled by PPP who believe the Senate should and should not, respectively, prioritize covid relief over the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation: 55%-32%
Estimated number of North Carolinians who have voted: 2 million
Years Tab was around before the diet soda was discontinued this year: 57
Major League World Series Championship
Tampa Bay Rays 6 Los Angeles Dodgers 4
(Series is tied 1 game to 1)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Without fear of contradiction, I can say that George W. Bush has turned out to be a divider, not a uniter, for the past four years.
Sheesh, if we get any madder at each other there will be fisticuffs, brethren, I say fisticuffs.
Liberals, normally gentle as little kittens---usually you can go right up to 'em and touch their soft, curly fur, they don't mind a bit – are in an alarming state of righteous anger. This time, they devoutly believe, jackbooted fascism is just around the corner. Not only do they think the Bill of Rights is being quietly dismantled, they are sentient enough to notice that our reputation around the world has gone from the instant support of Sept. 11 to disgust and fear.
Meanwhile, many evangelical Christians are convinced gay marriage is upon us and will be the end of civilization. How they convinced themselves George W. Bush is the Lord's anointed is beyond me. I've known him since high school and watched him closely as a public official for 10 years, and I have yet to see the first sign of it.
—October 2004
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Mask Fail…
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CHEERS to the final test of endurance. With a mere dozen days 'til voting ends, the final debate of 2020 happens tonight at Belmont University in Nashville starting at 9 ET. To prevent Trump's obnoxious outbursts while Joe's talking, moderator Kirsten Welker will mute one candidate while the other is talking. The topics: "Fighting COVID-19," "American Families," "Race in America," "Climate Change," “National Security" and "Leadership." I think we know how this plays out: Joe will be cool, calm, informed and empathetic. Trump will…not.
CHEERS to nailing us some bad guys. Holy smokes, Bill Barr's Justice Department actually did something useful. Six Russian military intelligence officers have been charged (though they'll never see the inside of a U.S. courtroom) in connection with major hacking operation operations…
…from damaging Ukraine's electrical grid to interfering in France's election to spying on European investigations and more. The men work for the Russian military intelligence agency GRU—which also led Russian cyber-interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Justice Department officials said Moscow has only sustained or heightened its intensity of effort since then.
The first clue that convinced the feds they were up to no good: the being Russian intelligence officers part.
JEERS to another hold-your-breath-moment in American history. Okay, now this was a real crisis: on October 22, 1962 President Kennedy informed the world that the Soviet Union was building secret missile bases in Cuba:
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He ordered our military to quarantine Cuba until Soviet premier Khrushchev agreed to shut 'em down. Kennedy negotiated his way through the melee without establishing a color-coded terror alert system, telling us to go shopping, abandoning our allies, or invading a country that had nothing to do with the crisis at hand. And to think he called himself a leader.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS and JEERS to Ma Nature's 2020/2021 playbook. We've heard from the Farmer's Almanac, the Old Farmer's Almanac, the New Farmer's Almanac, and the Almanac of Farmers Neither Old Nor New But Stuck In A Mid-Life Crisis. Now it's time for the NOAA to guess what winter will bring to the US-of-A this season. Their Climate Prediction Center's latest forecast, based on a months-long analyses of moss on trees, fuzz on wooly worms, and sweaters on local TV morning show meteorologists, is shaping up to be a mild one:
Wetter-than-average conditions: Across the northern tier of the U.S., extending from the Pacific Northwest, across the Northern Plains, Great Lakes and into the Ohio Valley, as well as Hawaii and northern Alaska.
Drier-than-average conditions: In the Southwest, across Texas along the Gulf Coast, and in Florida.
Above-average temperatures: Hawaii and most of Alaska, with more modest probabilities for above-average temperatures spanning large parts of the remaining lower 48 from the West across the South and up the eastern seaboard.
Below-average temperatures: Southern Alaska and from the northern Pacific Northwest into the Northern Plains.
As usual, some predictions are harder to make than others. For example, there's a zero-percent chance of knowing actual snowfall amounts this far out, but there's a 100 percent chance of knowing that climate-change deniers will scream "Global cooling!" every time a flake sticks to the pavement. C&J recommends you start assembling your winter management kit now: shovel, ice-melt pellets, blankets, candles, and earplugs.
CHEERS to Great Moments in Saying Stuff. 159 years ago this week, in 1861, the first coast-to-coast telegram was sent from Chief Justice Stephen Field in California to President Lincoln in Washington, D.C. Field's Message: "Could you find the whereabouts of Amanda Hugginkiss?" Lincoln's reply: "Nice try."
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 22, 2010
JEERS to Tales of the Batty Spouse. The rich and privileged wife of the first Supreme Court Justice to have his porn collection inducted into the T&A Hall of Fame calls up one of her husband's former female employees to demand she apologize and make it raaaaht!!! The former employee's offense: telling the truth under oath. And in a related story, researchers in North Carolina have discovered a "tipsy gene" that, among other things, could lead to a cure for drunk-dialing. Film at 11.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the world's most lovable knucklehead. Moe and Larry had their pluses, but The Three Stooges weren't worth a poke in the eyes without Curly, aka Jerome Howard. He was hilarious while interacting with his co-stooges, but I think he was funniest during his more intimate solo comic moments, where he focused like a laser on getting a Moe-assigned task, like, say, stuffing a turkey, done perfectly...wrong. Enjoy:
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Happy 118th birthday, Curly, wherever you are. And N'yuck N'yuck to Moe and Larry.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
Trump can't land a glove on a real man like Bill in Portland Maine
—The Daily Beast
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