Spot the Difference?
Via the Lincoln Project. You have 30 seconds…..go:
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Remember: no matter how weird it seems, you can’t spell “idiot” without MAGA.
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, September 7, 2022
Note: In the interest of full disclosure, I am paid to write C&J to promote an agenda. This month it's wastewater treatment plant tourism. So take it from me: go visit a wastewater treatment plant. It's a good time, alone or with friends. Limited availability for the honeymoon suite, so call and book today!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Constitution Day: 10
Days 'til Michigan's Frankenmuth Oktoberfest: 8
Percent increase over the past year in the construction of new manufacturing facilities in the U.S.: 116%
Percent of student loan borrowers (roughly 9 million people) who are now over 50: 20%
Percent of Americans polled by The Wall Street Journal who believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, up from 55% in March: 60%
Percent who believe it should be illegal in all cases, down from 11% in March: 6%
Ocean temperature off the coast of Portland, Maine: 66F
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 188 (including 3 tribulation temples and 1 outrageous penalty for saving classmates’ souls). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Friends…
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JEERS to predictable outcomes: rule of law edition. This is Judge and Sarah Huckabee Sanders Beauty School dropout Aileen Cannon:
She's a millionaire Trump appointee to the federal bench. She ruled over the Labor Day weekend that the Justice Department is a bunch of buttheads who have no right to investigate her lord and master who was CHOSEN BY GOD TO SERVE ALL THE TERMS AS PRESIDENT UNTIL YEAR 2343. So she slammed on the brakes, allowing all those missing top-secret documents to blow in the wind and into the hands of god-knows-who. Mommas, don’t let your children grow up to be Aileen Cannons. A public service message from all the non-Trump-appointed judges' jaws, currently resting uncomfortably on the floor.
TALLY HO! to the changing of the wanker guard. Big doings over in the British Empire, which now consists of England, Wales, Stonehenge, parts of Ireland and, representing Scotland, a giant plate of haggis. Yesterday Queen Elizabeth II gave her official Hellooooooooo!!! to a new Tory prime minister—the 16th under her reign going all the way back to Churchill's second stint. So who is booted PM Boris Johnson's replacement Liz Truss?
> Born 1975 in Oxford, daughter of liberal parents: a Leeds professor and a nurse who was also a member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
> 1996 graduate of Merton College in Oxford
> 1996-2005: worked for Shell Oil and Cable & Wireless.
> Won a seat in the House of Commons in 2010
> As Environmental Secretary, she launched a 10-year bee and pollinator strategy to reverse the trend of falling bee populations…and once said "I was an environmentalist before it was fashionable. I was a teenage eco-warrior campaigning against damage to the ozone layer."
> 2016-2022: served as Justice Secretary, Lord Chancellor, Secretary to the Treasury, International Trade Secretary, and Foreign Secretary.
> Wants Russia to be booted from Ukraine and knocked down to a lower peg economically.
> One CNN commentator describes her as “a political chameleon who has gone from a radical who called for the abolition of the monarchy to a flag-bearer of the Euroskeptic right wing of the Conservative Party.” Blimey.
> Married to an accountant. Two daughters. Technically a Christian, but sleeps in on Sunday morning.
Oh, and earlier this year she warned Argentina-supporting China to keep their paws off the Falkland Islands or else. Ruh roh.
CHEERS to gravity. Let us doff our blue kepis and say a brief "thoughts and prayers" for our Confederate nation-mates this morning. It was one year ago when they watched their hero Robert E. Lee take a faceplant 158 years after Gettysburg and 156 years after Appomattox. That it happened along the sacrosanct Monument Avenue just added salt to the rebel wound—and it was glorious:
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Now there's something you never saw in Germany 30 to 50 years after World War II: mass-produced propaganda statues honoring Hitler's generals (sitting atop their trusty panzers?) being erected by "Daughters of the Third Reich." But that's essentially what we allowed to fester over here. I guess that's what happens when you drop your country on its head at birth.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to happy times in the people's house. Remember when Barack Obama's successor refused to hold a ceremony at the executive mansion to unveil our 44th president's official portrait? It wasn't the end of the world. But it was still, per DJT's DNA, petty and vindictive. But today the deed will be done by Obama's former #2:
President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, are set to revive that ritual—after an awkward and anomalous gap in the Trump years—when they host the Obamas on Wednesday for the big reveal of their portraits in front of scores of friends, family and staff. … The ceremony will also mark Michelle Obama’s first visit to the White House since Obama’s presidency ended in January 2017, and only the second visit for Barack Obama. He was at the White House in April to mark the 12th anniversary of the health care law he signed in 2010.
Biden will be the rare president to host a former boss for the unveiling; he was Obama’s vice president. George H.W. Bush, who held Ronald Reagan’s ceremony, was Reagan’s No. 2.
Betty Monkman, a former White House curator, said during a 2017 podcast for the White House Historical Association that the ceremony is a “statement of generosity” by the president and first lady. “It’s a very warm, lovely moment.”
True fact: George W. Bush is especially proud of his portrait. He loves anything slathered in oil.
CHEERS to Republican rhetoricians. I can't stand former speechwriter Peggy Noonan's concern-troll smugness on the Sunday shows, but I never jeer someone on their birthday (her 72nd). She wrote some of Reagan's most famous lines, and was both an asset to George H.W. Bush ("A kinder, gentler nation"), and a liability ("Read my lips—no new taxes"). But she really shit the bed in 2012 when she exclaimed that Mitt Romney was a lock to defeat President Obama because “all the vibrations are right." HaHaHaHa!!! And her advice on editing is a bit flawed...
Remember the waterfront shack with the sign FRESH FISH SOLD HERE. Of course it's fresh, we're on the ocean. Of course it's for sale, we're not giving it away. Of course it's here, otherwise the sign would be someplace else. The final sign: FISH.
Of course, what Peggy seems to overlook is that fish is also a verb, so the "FISH" sign might cause people to go fishing instead of visiting the shack with the fresh fish sold here, thus causing it to file for bankruptcy and lead to an eventual meltdown in the global seafood market. And all this time I thought the righties were pro-business.
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 7, 2012
CHEERS to a grand finale. Night 3 of the Democratic convention was just as see-worthy as the first two. I loved it. Gabby Giffords was resilience personified as she led the Pledge, Jennifer Granholm brought drove her message home, John Kerry was apparently hooked up to a Red Bull IV drip, Biden was vintage Biden, and President Obama was optimistic, realistic, funnyistic (of course it's a word—go look it up if you wanna be a jerk and not believe me) and inspirationistic (okay, that one I made up). Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of our bench and the precision with which the speakers articulated the clear-eyed and inclusive Democratic vision. Since we made the Republican shindig in Tampa look like a bunch of flies buzzing over a half-eaten bowl of freedom fries, I feel like giving one of "them" a final chance to make their case:
"If we don’t run Chris Christie, Mitt Romney will be the nominee and we'll lose."
—Ann Coulter
Amen.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the sharpest knife in the media’s drawer. Rhodes Scholar, best-selling author, Emmy and Grammy winner, avid fisherman, and journalist Rachel Maddow has been hosting her own show on MSNBC for fourteen years as of this week. (Although she’s paring back to Mondays so that she can focus on new projects.) I try not to engage in pundit worship, but...she's brilliant, witty and everybody loves her except those Republicans who fear her. "Scary fact-wielding lesbian truth-teller! Run for your lives!"
As much as I despised the Trump horror show, his reign of carnage and chaos brought out the dogged gumshoe in Rachel, who did her damndest to cover as many of his scandals as she could—we give her an A for effort in her quest to become the whack-a-mole champ. Today she focuses, with equal doggedness, on the Biden administration's efforts to deal with the disasters that were tossed in its lap.
She's also an entertaining mixologist who whips up a mean libation occasionally. Money quote from half a dozen years back, which sticks a well-placed finger in the GOP's eye: "I'm undoubtedly a liberal, which means that I'm in almost total agreement with the Eisenhower-era Republican party platform." [Shakes head] ‘I Like Ike’ is now the rallying cry of the hippies. Who'da thunk it?
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
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let him splash. Let him splash. Look, Bill in Portland Maine’s entitled to be an idiot.”
—President Biden
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