Quotable Big-D Convention, Part I
With the Trump cult’s amateur variety show starting tonight, this week we'll be starting off our C&Js with some of the eloquence and brain-smarts from last week's Democratic convention, which redefined the way these things can and maybe should be put on in the future. (See today's poll.) And away we go…
"As President, the first step I will take will be to get control of the virus that has ruined so many lives. Because I understand something this President hasn’t from the beginning: we will never get our economy back on track, we will never get our kids safely back in schools, we’ll never have our lives back, until we deal with this virus. The tragedy of where we are today is it didn’t have to be this bad."
—Joe Biden
"Nero fiddled while Rome burned. Trump golfs."
—Sen. Bernie Sanders
"Let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He is clearly in over his head. It is what it is."
—Michelle Obama
Continued...
"My recovery is a daily fight, but fighting makes me stronger. Words once came easily. Today I struggle to speak, but I have not lost my voice. America needs all of us to speak out even when you have to fight to find the words."
—Gabby Giffords
Brayden Harrington
"A few months ago, I met [Joe Biden] in New Hampshire. He told me that we were members of the same club. We stutter. It was really amazing to hear that someone like me became Vice President. He told me about a book of poems by Yeats he would read out loud to practice. He showed me how he marks his addresses to make them easier to say out loud. So I did the same thing. … In the short amount of time, Joe Biden made me feel more confident about something that’s bothered me my whole life. "
—Brayden Harrington, 13
"The calamari comeback state of Rhode Island casts 1 vote for Bernie Sanders and 34 votes for the next President, Joe Biden."
—Joseph McNamara during the Biden nomination roll call
"Hello, America, I’m Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Or as Donald Trump calls me: that woman from Michigan."
—Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
"This week marks the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, and we celebrate the women who fought for that right. Yet so many of the black women who helped secure that victory were still prohibited from voting long after its ratification. But they were undeterred without fanfare or recognition they organized and testified and rallied and marched and fought, not just for their vote but for a seat at the table.
These women and the generations that followed worked to make democracy and opportunity real in the lives of all of us who followed. They paved the way for the trailblazing leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And these women inspired us to pick up the torch and fight on—women like Mary Church Terrell, Mary McLeod Bethune, Fannie Lou Hamer, Diane Nash, Constance Baker Motley, and the great Shirley Chisholm. We’re not often taught their stories, but as Americans we all stand on their shoulders."
—VP Nominee Sen. Kamala Harris
Tomorrow: the thrilling sequel. And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Monday, August 24, 2020
Note: Whose job is it to tell Santa Claus he needs to wear a mask this year? Asking for a reindeer.
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By the Numbers:
36 days ‘til Debate #1.
Days 'til the first Biden-Trump debate (at Case Western Reserve): 36
Percent of registered voters polled by NBC News who believe Biden and Trump, respectively, would be better when it comes to having the ability to bring the country together: 49%, 26%
Estimated TV viewership, via Nielsen, across 12 networks for night 4 of the Democratic convention: 24.6 million
Amount raised for the Biden campaign during the convention: $70 million
Amount a federal judge ordered President Donald Trump to pay to pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels in court costs from a lawsuit related to his adulterous affair while his wife Melania was with child: $44,100
Number of wild-blueberry growers in Maine: 485
Number of wild blueberry growers in Maine: 1 (Hiram Pennemacher in Millinocket, who never really settled down and is always getting into scrapes with the law.)
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NOAA Laura/Marco Forecast Wind Map
Extra AquaNet suggested.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: I think we found our ballot-delivery end-run around the postal service…
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CHEERS to delivering for us. As postal workers in some cities go rogue (aka "make good trouble") by reassembling and reinstalling mail sorting machines ordered dismantled and discarded, postmaster Louis DeJoy gets grilled today before the House’s What The Fuck Do You Think You're Doing and Wipe That Smirk off Your Face committee, but not before this happened over the weekend: the Democratic-led House passed an emergency measure—with 26 Republican votes—freeing up $25 billion for the USPS…
The bill won’t be considered in the Senate because Vladimir Putin told President Trump to tell Majority Leader Moscow Mitch McConnell he wasn't allowed to or he'd be poisoned. Meanwhile, postmaster DeJoy now says he's going to send out a letter to each and every American next month explaining the vote-by-mail process. It's a proactive move. He wants to make sure they'll arrive in time for the 2028 election.
JEERS to keeping track of America’s fugliest numbers. While Trump golfed and Mitch McConnell kept the Senate on vacation so he could frolic and play with the other turtles down by the crick behind his gated mansion, the Covid-19 world tour marched on (over 23 million cases around the globe now, with over 25% of them in the U.S.). Our Monday tradition of maintaining a benchmark of the awfulness for the C&J historical record continues, and let’s check the most depressing tote board in the world with all due reluctance as our death toll now equals the population of America’s 143rd-largest city Providence, Rhode Island:
20 weeks ago: 336,000 confirmed cases. 9,600 deaths.
10 weeks ago: 2.1 million confirmed cases. 118,000 deaths.
Yup. He golfed again this weekend. 5th in a row.
5 weeks ago: 3.8 million confirmed cases, 143,000 deaths
This morning: 5.8 million confirmed cases, 180,000 deaths
Worldwide, the death toll just topped 800,000. But experts say the end of the pandemic is right around the corner. Disclaimer: we won’t get to the corner until we've straggled down the sidewalk for another year and a half. I hope you're wearing comfortable shoes.
JEERS to imperial takesie backsies. On today's date in 1814, King George III got all pissy and ordered British forces to attack Washington, DC during the War of...um...1812. The president and members of Congress fled while First Lady Dolley Madison, armed with nothing but a butcher knife and her patriotism, rescued artwork and leftover mutton before the redcoats torched the White House. The 8/24 Commission Report later said President Madison should have heeded the PDB titled: "King George III Determined to Strike In US." Curse you, 20-20 hindsight.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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JEERS to previews of imminent train wrecks. I know you're coming out of your socks in anticipation of the all-star lineup at this week's Republican national convention, which will be a mix of pre-produced pieces and live in-person coronavirus super-spreader events. If you don't want to know the marquee speakers in advance, STOP READING NOW. This is a SPOILER ALERT. Okay, if you're still with me, behold the, uh…the Trumpiest convention ever:
Update: Mike Pence was added at the last minute when Barron backed out after he saw this year's lineup.
Adding to the excellence of the event: Donald himself will address the nation every…single…night. Thus explaining the official theme of this year's convention: Shoot Me Now.
CHEERS to turning on the money tap. A bit—repeat, a bit—of closure in Flint Michigan, where in 2014 former Republican governor Rick Snyder supervised the poisoning of the city's drinking water supply with lead and then (true story) shrugged as he limo'd off in a tux to his wife's swanky birthday party. With a Democrat at the helm, restitution is finally underway:
The state of Michigan announced Thursday it has agreed to pay $600 million to Flint residents whose health was afflicted by lead-tainted drinking water in a crisis that spurred a class-action lawsuit and became emblematic of how poorer, majority-Black communities can suffer under government mismanagement. […]
Six years of completely avoidable hell.
It calls for devoting 80 percent of the money to people who were younger than 18 during the period when Flint was using river water, [Attorney General Dana] Nessel said. […]
If the state's settlement receives final court approval, it would push state spending on the Flint water crisis to over $1 billion and is likely to be the largest settlement in Michigan state government history, Nessel's office said.
It's a rare positive chapter in a tragic story dripping with the condescension toward, and neglect of, communities of color that appear to be permanently embedded in Republicans' DNA, resulting in huge deliberate messes that have to be literally cleaned up by Democrats. Governor Whitmer says more details of the settlement will be announced soon. If there's any justice, it'll include Rick Snyder sitting in stocks in the middle of Flint's public square, and several baskets of rotten tomatoes.
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 24, 2010
JEERS and CHEERS to inaction 'n action. One year ago today, a report was released by the CIA Inspector General which revealed that, in addition to water torture, detainees were abused—in your name—by interrogators using power drills and staging mock executions. The report confirmed everything we Dirty Eff'ing Hippies had been saying for years about the torture program. A year later, the torture crowd is still skippin' down the street whistlin' a happy tune, unfettered by even the slightest chance our justice system will inconvenience them with a serious investigation. And guess who's keeping the ember glowing? Of course...them furriners:
[C]ountries that once backed former President George W. Bush's war on terrorism are carrying out their own investigations of the alleged U.S. torture program and the role that their governments played in it. Judges in Great Britain, Spain, Australia, Poland and Lithuania are preparing to hear allegations that their governments helped the CIA run secret prisons on their soil or cooperated in illegal U.S. treatment of terrorism suspects.
How embarrassing must it be to know that your own allies are investigating you, the self-proclaimed home base of liberty, justice, and fair play, on charges of systemic torture, but you don’t have the stones to investigate yourself because you know it'll make some former executive branch occupants uncomfortable? Apparently not embarrassing enough. Remind me to add "a little creepy" to Eric Holder's next performance review.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to the Spud Stud. On August 24, 1853, chef George “Crum” Speck made the first potato chips—originally called Saratoga Chips—after a fussy customer (Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt) complained that his potatoes weren't sliced thin enough. So the chef sliced 'em thinner-than-thin out of frustration and the rest, as they say, is BBQ, Salt & Vinegar, Ruffled, Kettle-cooked, sometimes-even-packed-in-tennis-ball-canisters history.
George Crum and
Here in the BiPM household, I'm not sure we've ever actually thrown out an old bag of chips. When one gets down to about an inch of crumbs, we just go buy a new bag and leave the old one in the cupboard, making a "mental note" to "finish off that old bag before starting in on the new one." Never happens. And now we have chip bags dating back to the Nixon years gathering dust and lord-knows-what else. The potato DNA is probably congealing into a super potato brain that will fashion a crude body out of the potato bags and begin a rampage that flattens several cities before it's finally brought down by a giant glop of French onion dip dropped from a helicopter. And when that day comes, I trust someone will update George Crum's Wikipedia page accordingly.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
David Muir: So if Markos Moulitsas says shut Cheers and Jeers down?
Joe Biden: I would shut it down. I would listen to Kos.
—ABC's 20/20
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