"Conan, what is best in life?"
"Destroy the Republicans, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of Cadet Bone Spurs."
"Yes! This is good."
The Democratic Party is on the airwaves in its offensive against President Donald Trump, running its first TV ad in this campaign cycle to help propel former Vice President Joe Biden to the White House.
Continued...
“You may fire when ready, Gridley.”
The Democratic National Committee on Tuesday launched a six-figure television ad campaign, first reported by NBC, called “Descent,” that opens with Trump’s descent on the Trump Tower escalators in New York to announce his bid for the presidency in 2015. “For the last five years, he’s taken America down with him,” the narrator intones. …
Biden and the Democratic Party raised a combined $80.8 Million in May, a significant jump from their $60.5 million haul in April. That fundraising increase came in tandem with a rise in the polls for Biden, who now sits with an advantage of eight percentage points over Trump in the aggregate of polls listed by the RealClearPolitics site.
Let’s take a look. Somebody get the lights, please:
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Game on.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, June 18, 2020
Note: Today is International Sushi Day. By all means celebrate it to your belly’s content. I’m afraid I can’t. The memory of last year’s Sushi Day is still too raw.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the House votes on D.C. statehood: 8
Percent of Americans polled by The Washington Post-Schar School who believe the police have done enough to make changes that allow blacks to be treated the same as whites: 13%
Years the Aunt Jemima brand was on store shelves before being discontinued because of racial stereotypes associated with it: 131
Biden-Trump match-up in Georgia, according to PPP polling: 48-46
The last year when Americans were as unhappy as they are today, according to a NORC survey via the University of Chicago: 1970
Number of CDC personnel working on the federal coronavirus response: 5,505
Number of CDC personnel working on the response to the 150 people who die every year from coconuts dropping on their heads: 0
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom you can decide you don’t much care for.
Is the person who prescribes your eyeglasses qualified to do so? How deep will you be buried when you die? What textbooks are your children learning from at school? What will happen if you become seriously ill? Is the meat you're eating tainted? Will you be able to afford to go to college or to send your kids? Would you like a vacation? Expect to retire before you die? Can you find a job? Drive a car? Afford insurance? Is your credit card company or your banker or your broker ripping you off?
It's all politics, Bubba. You don’t get to opt out for lack of interest.
—October, 2002
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Morning walkies…
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CHEERS to the little steroid that could. As medical science searches high and low for a vaccine and/or cure for the virus now ravaging human civilization from one end to the other, a humble concoction raised on the wrong side of the tracks poked its little head out of its little concoction box, raised its hand (yes, of course concoctions have hands, look it up), and squeaked, "Kind sir or madam, may I be of some assistance?" The rest, as they say, is history:
Dexamethasone, a cheap and widely used steroid, has become the first drug shown to be able to save lives among COVID-19 patients in what scientists hailed as a “major breakthrough.”
Results of trials announced on Tuesday showed dexamethasone, which is used to reduce inflammation in other diseases, reduced death rates by around a third among the most severely ill COVID-19 patients admitted to hospital. The results suggest the drug should immediately become standard care in patients with severe cases of the pandemic disease, said the researchers who led the trials.
In addition to all the science to back its effectiveness, there's one surefire way you can tell this is a legitimate treatment for Covid-19: Donald Trump has no interest in it.
JEERS to MAGA cultists in blue. The ink wasn't even dry on Trump's toothless cop-reform "executive order" when his multi-chinned flying monkeys fanned out to reassure America that, no, no, of course there's not any systemic racism among our police departments, you silly gooses. Go back inside your huts and relax, everything's fine, juuuuuust fine. One small problem: that pesky media done did its job again, and you'll never guess what they found when they turned over the blue rock in cyberspace:
Cops have a far-right media ecosystem of their own, where they post racist memes, spread disinformation and call for violence against antifa. […]
Law Enforcement Today claims to be the largest law enforcement-owned and -operated media company in America. It has repeatedly promoted far-right conspiracy theorists and authoritarian policies, particularly during the recent mass demonstrations against police violence.
Posters in the Facebook group Law Enforcement Family, which claims to have been “developed by law enforcement officers” and has more than 53,000 members, perpetuate racist stereotypes about Black people and call cops who kneel with protesters “pussies.” Those in Brothers Before Others have been sharing entirely unsourced data about gang violence in Black communities and spreading debunked claims about antifa.
Turns out the "few bad apples" appear to number in the tens of thousands. We've been lied to again. Would you like me to fetch the striped or the paisley fainting couch?
P.S. Speaking of bad apples:
On the downside, apparently a grand jury can’t be seated, because of the coronavirus, until october. It’s always #$!!&*$! something.
JEERS to tales from America's dark ages. A reminder that we used to be, in certain ways, as backward as any nation that ever was. On this date in 1873—ah, those wacky Grant years—Susan B. Anthony was fined a hundred dollars for the unpardonable offense of voting (in Rochester, New York).
On the day of her sentencing, Anthony was asked by Hunt whether she had anything to say.
“Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot every vital principle of our government,” Anthony said. “My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor’s verdict, doomed to political subjection under this, so-called, form of government.”
The dust-up led to immediate reforms. Unfortunately, back in those days "immediate reform" meant waiting another fifty years before doing anything about it. By the way, Ms. Anthony never paid the fine. Her heirs now owe the Fed, with interest—[clackity clackity clack DING!]—eight million dollars. But the way women are poised to save the country from a second term for the grotesque orange man in the White House this November, we’ll be happy to accidentally trip and drop the bill in the paper shredder. Clumsy us.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to the show going on. Everyone pretty much knew the 2020 Netroots Nation convention wasn't going to happen in person this year (Denver was this year's location), and if you didn’t hear the news last week, it's now official: no go. BUT…we'll still be meeting online August 13-15 with virtually all of the features intact. Writes Grand Poobah Eric Thut:
“In addition to our breakout sessions and keynotes, we’ll host opportunities for you to collaborate and socialize via virtual coffee meetups, happy hours, morning yoga sessions and more.
To participate virtually, you’ll use our mobile or desktop app and our website (we’ll send you instructions to log in as we get closer to the event).
You’ll be able to view the agenda, star sessions you want to attend, and then watch them live or recorded. Attendees will also receive a care package and T-shirt in the mail.”
Here’s an FAQ page on this year’s event. And to get your ticket to join in, just click here to reserve your spot. And yes, Adam B’s legendary pub quiz will still take place in cyberspace. If the internet crashes on Friday the 15th and beer starts spurting out of everyone’s USB port, the world will know it went off as planned.
CHEERS to Ride's ride. Thirty-seven years ago today, strapped inside the Space Shuttle Challenger, Sally Ride became the first American woman (and, we later found out, first lesbian) in space. (The first woman in space from any country was Russia's Valentina Tereshkova in 1963—boy, did we get scooped on that.)
The flight was momentarily delayed when she made the men on the crew pick up their old pad thai take-out boxes and dirty underwear. Even worse, she hid the TV remote and flushed the porn. Now, that's just cruel.
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Ten years ago in C&J: June 18, 2010
CHEERS to getting distracted by shiny objects. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's brooches are going on display at the Smithsonian Institute:
"Read My Pins: The Madeleine Albright Collection" features more than 200 pins, many of which Secretary Albright wore to communicate messages during her diplomatic tenure.
The exhibit examines the collection for its historic significance and the expressive power of jewelry and its ability to communicate through a style and language of its own. The pins on view span more than a century of jewelry design and range from dime-store pins to designer creations to family heirlooms.
Fair warning: Steer clear of the rhinestone-studded peace dove. It's the one that shoots poison darts.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to U.S. Minty freshness. The new America the Beautiful state quarter is here! The new America the Beautiful state quarter is here!!! The latest in the series, which celebrates our national historic sites, represents Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, which "possesses an archaeological and historical heritage more than 2,000 years old that exists within a dynamic ecosystem, supporting threatened and endangered species. In 1992, Congress created Salt River Bay as part of the National Park System." Check it out…
This release is particularly historic because it's the first time the Flying Spaghetti Monster has ever been featured on American currency, a fact that is bound to give the Jesus freaks of the religious right heartburn. Well done, you sneaky Deep Staters burrowed in the U.S. Mint, disguising it as a young mangrove tree like that. Well done indeed.
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
"We need a president who chooses Cheers and Jeers over the Abbreviated Pundit Roundup."
—Joe Biden
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