Quotable DNC: Part 4
With the Trump Amateur Hour continuing for a fourth interminable and VERY VERY LOUD day, we start one more C&J with some cranium-cleansing snippets from the luminaries at last week's much, much, much higher-rated Democratic convention…
"Unlike Trump, Joe Biden has common decency. He has common sense. He can command, both from experience and from strength. Donald Trump doesn’t deserve to call himself commander in chief for another four minutes, let alone another four years."
—Sen. And Iraq war veteran Tammy Duckworth
"Joe is that kind of leader, and he is the right person for this moment in our nation’s history. He understands that honesty and dignity are essential traits that determine not only our vision, but our actions. More than ever, that’s what we need."
—Jimmy Carter
Continued…
"When this president goes overseas, it isn’t a goodwill mission. It’s a blooper reel. He breaks up with our allies and writes love letters to dictators. America deserves a president who is looked up to, not laughed at.
—John Kerry
Biden-Warren cocobutt.
"We stay in this fight so that when our children and our grandchildren ask what we did during this dark chapter in our nation's history, we will be able to look them squarely in the eye and say: we organized, we persisted, and we changed America."
—Elizabeth Warren
"A president’s words have the power to move markets. They can start wars or broker peace. They can summon our better angels or awaken our worst instincts. You simply cannot fake your way through this job. As I’ve said before, being president doesn’t change who you are, it reveals who you are."
—Michelle Obama
“Just today, the President of United States threatened 40 million Americans that happen to live here in the State of California to defund our efforts on wildfire suppression, because he said we hadn’t raked enough leaves. He can’t make that up, nor can he make up the fact we’re involved in over 90 lawsuits with the Trump administration on clean air, on clean water, on endangered species, [and] on pesticides.”
—California Gov. Gavin Newsom
"Earlier this summer, the city of Charleston removed a statue honoring John C. Calhoun, an ‘honored’ advocate of slavery. And construction is underway on the International African American museum at Gadsden’s Wharf. Much like the country as a whole, we are stepping out from the shadows of our past and beginning to lay the groundwork for a more just future. It won’t be easy. We can only succeed if we move forward together. So we will need a president who sees unifying people as a requirement of the job."
—South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn
"Ella Baker, a giant of the civil rights movement, left us with this wisdom: “Give people light and they will find the way.” Those are words for our time.
#46
The current President has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger, too much fear, too much division. Here and now, I give you my word: if you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I’ll be an ally of the light, not the darkness. It’s time for us, for we the people, to come together. And make no mistake, united we can and will overcome this season of darkness in America. We’ll choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege.
I’m a proud Democrat and I’ll be proud to carry the banner of our party into the general election. So with great honor and humility, I accept this nomination for President of the United States of America."
—Joe Biden
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, August 27, 2020
Note: Cheers and Jeers will be closing briefly at noon today so we can explode a nuclear device in the kiddie pool with the hope of making the algae go away. If you have errands to do in a neighboring county, this would be a good time to do them. Don’t forget your mask. —Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
11 days!!!
Days 'til Labor Day: 11
Rank of Covid-19, race relations, and climate change among the top priorities with college students, per a study funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation: #1, #2, #3
Percent of Republicans polled by CBS News who believe they “owe” their loyalty to Donald Trump: 86%
Percent of voters polled by PPP in Arizona, Iowa, Michigan, and North Carolina who believe abortion must remain legal: 73%
Percent of Black and Latinx voters in the same poll who say they support "reproductive freedom and access to abortion": 94%, 89%
Percent of 2016 Trump voters in the same poll who say "decisions on pregnancy should be left up to women": 60%
Portion of Canadians, according to Harper's Index, who see the United States as “unfriendly” or “an enemy”: 1-in-5
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Watching our homeboy George Dubya as he wends his way—somewhat unsteadily—toward the presidency is a nerve-wracking procedure. Face it, our reputation is on the line along with the governor's.
All of us know that 20 million Texans can't be brought to agree on anything, including whether the guys that died at the Alamo were heroes or fools. Nevertheless, we are all being painted with the Bush brush, so whenever he makes a cake of himself, all of us get the blame ("Those Texans, so ignorant").
Relatively speaking, Bush is one of our better representatives on the national scene. In Washington, which seems to have been deeply scarred by LBJ's occasional lack of couth, we are still regarded as a tribe of Visigoths. ("And then, he lifted his shirt and showed us the scar!") Every time Governor Preston Smith, who had a terminal West Texas accent, went on television, I used to wince: "Our biggest problem after this hurricane is all the day-brees we got lyin' around." So, Dubya Bush doesn’t seem like anyone we'd have to blush for.
—March 2000
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Teaching Junior the ropes…
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CHEERS to the grand finale. I'm so excited I just know I'll have to spend the day sucking down Prozac and taking one bong hit after another to keep my cardiovascular system from exploding in anticipation of tonight's convention speech by President Donald J. Trump. This is the big moment, folks. The turn. The pivot. The change in tone. The day he truly becomes president. And as if that alone wasn't enough of an abundance of riches, today marks six weeks since he made this promise, and tonight I expect him to deliver bigly as we gather around our cathode-ray tubes in our bunny jammies and watch in adoration:
The world’s first death star? Sharks with lasers? Gulags in northern Alaska? Ivanka appointed our first national princess? Or perhaps—just perhaps—the announcement that every American is getting a free block of cheese and a special device to shave tiny pieces off of it. Yes, I think that’s it: tonight Trump is going to make America grate again.
P.S. in all seriousness, I would like to point out something Eric Trump said Tuesday night that really spoke to me:
“Duhhhhhhh herrrderr frkelbrg errrrrrr gob gob gob ooooooob I have a bicycle!”
So true. So true.
JEERS to bringing home an unwanted hitchhiker in your little sidecar. So this is the moment where we look back at that idiotic biker rally that took place in Sturgis, South Dakota earlier this month and say, "Told ya so." Yes, enough time has passed since the event attended by nearly half a million people ended, and now all those patriotic, god-fearing, common sense-endowed real Americans are coming face-to-face with the very thing they said would never happen to them because they're leather-tough:
The annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota drew hundreds of thousands of bikers to the small town earlier this month—despite coronavirus concerns. Now, about three weeks after the rally kicked off, the repercussions are starting to become clear. More than 100 cases of COVID-19 connected to the rally have been reported in at least eight states, the Associated Press reports.[…]
Of all the dumb luck: a convention of covid molecules in the same town at the same time as a biker convention. D’oh!
Following the 10-day rally,which ended on August 16, South Dakota health officials issued public warnings for several businesses in Sturgis where they said infected patrons had visited. […]
On August 7, the first day of the rally, South Dakota had 9,371 total confirmed coronavirus cases. South Dakota now has 11,505 cases, according to state health data on Wednesday.
But it's not all bad news. The covid particles look totally badass in their new "MOM" tattoos.
CHEERS to the Arm-Twister-in-Chief. Happy 112th birthday to #36, Lyndon Baines Johnson. What a schizophrenic presidency—stellar marks for civil rights and the Great Society programs, but total fail for the quagmire in Southeast Asia. In fact, his tumultuous time at the top overshadows his dozen years in the Senate, where his personality and leadership style were encapsulated at the 1958 Gridiron Dinner by fellow Senator John F. Kennedy:
"I dreamed about 1960 myself the other night and I told [Sens.] Stuart Symington and Lyndon Johnson about it in the cloakroom yesterday.
LBJ settin’ a spell with JFK.
I told them how the Lord came into my bedroom, anointed my head, and said, 'John Kennedy, I hereby appoint you President of the United States.'
Stuart Symington said, 'That's strange, Jack, because I too had a similar dream last night in which the Lord anointed me and declared me, Stuart Symington, President of the United States and Outer Space.'
Lyndon Johnson said, 'That's very interesting, gentlemen, because I too had a similar dream last night and I don't remember anointing either of you.'"
—From One-Night Stands with American History by Richard Shenkman and Kurt Reiger
As his press secretary George Reedy wrote: "Of all his qualities...the most important was that he knew how to make our form of government work. That is an art that has been lost since his passing and we are suffering heavily as a result." Sadly, I also don’t think we'll see another president excel like LBJ did at the art of ordering Haggar slacks from the Oval Office with extra room "down where your nuts hang." Time marches on.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to bubblin' crude. Oil, that is. Black gold...Titusville tea. My, how time flies when you're polluting the planet. 161 years ago today, in 1859, "Colonel" Edwin Drake's newfangled drilling technique (ramming a pipe in the ground so the hole wouldn't clog) paid off when his employee,"Uncle Billy" Smith, struck oil 69 feet down in a spot near Titusville, Pennsylvania. And a few years later solar and wind power completely replaced it as the world's primary energy source and everyone lived happily ever after with tons of sex, booze, fistfuls of thousand-dollar bills, universal health care and — [POOF!!!] — Well, that was a fun dream while it lasted.
JEERS to eyes that kill. Our addiction to the above black gold has certainly contributed to cataclysmic weather events. This morning Hurricane Laura is barreling in from the Gulf of Mexico, dividing its wrath between Texas and Louisiana as a Cat-4 beast. Here's the latest cone of woe (heads up, Arkansas):
What is it about Republican conventions and apocalyptic weather events? It's almost like God is trying to tell us something.
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 27, 2010
JEERS to a gathering of nimrods. Tomorrow Glenn Beck will be hosting a live infomercial for Glenn Beck on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Beck is calling his astroturf event the "Restoring Honor" rally. I wish him luck in restoring the honor of everyone gullible enough to show up, but I'm not sure there's a magic wand big enough. (But maybe if they buy enough Goldline products they can finagle their way into heaven.) By the way, this’ll be just like Martin Luther King's rally 47 years ago with one small difference: EVERYTHING.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to spending a few minutes off this blue cesspool. The Perseverance rover—the one that comes with its own mini helicopter—blew this popsicle stand last month and is now blaring Aerosmith's Greatest Hits from its 8-track player as it floats along on its journey to Mars. A refresher:
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And to show just how cool the nerds at NASA have made all this science stuff, they've created an online space playground where you can track the probe in real time, including all the neato stats (e.g. 6 million miles down, 43 million to go) that give you a sense of both the immensity and the needle-threadery of a project like this. You can click-and-drag to change perspective, zoom in and out, and click on other objects—planets, comets, etc.—keeping Perseverance company up yonder. So give it a click here and enjoy some blessed virtual solitude from the shit show down here on earth. Your dendrites will thank you.
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
"Bill in Portland Maine can't be trusted and you shouldn't believe a word he utters. So, when you read Cheers and Jeers, remember this: if he says the kiddie pool is huge, it's probably small. If he says a joke will work, it probably won't. And if he says he cares about candy corn, he certainly does not."
—Michael Cohen
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