From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
>>> 6 <<< Weeks 'til Netroots Nation 2018
Here's the latest info on the legendary convention (August 2-4 in New Orleans) that was birthed right here at li'l ol' Daily Kos 12 years ago. Golly, it's grown up so fast…
► You can check out the complete Netroots Nation agenda by clicking here.
Helluva lineup this year---90 panels, 70 training sessions. Super diversity. Whether you’re interested in global, national, state, or local issues, there’s plenty to choose from. And, yes, the Daily Kos Elections Team will be holding another demonstration of their encyclopedic knowledge of candidates, districts, and the latest polling numbers. (What’s the secret to their superior brain power? Copious amounts of gingko biloba, I’m told.)
► There's gonna be lots of Kossack royalty at this year's event: Meteor Blades, Joan McCarter, Laura Clawson, Crashing Vor, Chris Reeves, Navajo, Kelly Macias, Mark E. Anderson, Jen Hayden, Carolyn Fiddler, Gabe Ortiz, Arjun Jaikumar, Jeff Singer, and enough others to fill up an entire hectare. (Yes, we measured. Twice.) Register today and join us.
► Over 60 Kossacks are already signed up for the Daily Kos/Connect-Unite-Act/C&J Eat-'n-Greet at Drago’s Seafood Restaurant. To RSVP, you must drop a kosmail note to Navajo and then circle Wednesday, August 1 on your calendar. Great way to meet up with Kossacks from far and wide.
► The New Tools Showcase is back. Netroots Nation is partnering with New Media Ventures to “introduce your voting, campaigning, or make-the-world-a-better-place technology solution to the Netroots community.” Got a product, app or feature you want to tell the world about? Just click here to submit your idea.
► Transportation Fun Fact: The 1835 St. Charles line is the oldest continually-operated streetcar route in the world (and quite likely the known universe, too). Get info on all the NOLA routes here.
► Sign up for volunteer and scholarship discounts here.
► Registration info is here and official hotel room info is here. Eric Thut tells me via a secret diplomatic back channel that rooms set aside for the NN discount are getting scarce, so if you haven’t booked yet, you might want to hop to it.
Follow Netroots Nation via Twitter here and evil Facebook here. That’s it for now. Stay tuned for the announcement of keynoters and other fun stuff in future updates.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, June 21, 2018
Note: Today is Pee on Earth Day. Or, if you’re our president, Pee on Mattress Day.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Canada Day: 10
Days 'til the New Castle County Ice Cream Festival in Wilmington, Delaware: 2
Number of schools across the U.S. still named for prominent Confederates, according to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center: 100
Percent of those schools that were given a confederate name between 1950 and 1970, during the rise of the civil rights movement: 30
Rank of Virginia among states with the most Confederate symbols, at 242: #1
Percent of the 1 billion legal and illicit firearms owned by civilians around the world that are in the U.S., according to the new U.N. Small Arms Survey: 46%
Percent chance that Walgreens Boot Alliance just “booted” General Electric from the Dow Jones 30 Industrials thingy: 100%
Date on which I created my first blockquote in C&J: 6/21/05
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Easily the most notable contribution to our political life made by [Newt] Gingrich during his congressional career has been the level of rancor and vitriol with which he practices politics.
So impressive were Gingrich's thrusts at the opposition that in 1990, the GOP issued a list of them---words that Republican candidates should use to describe their opponents so they could be successful, like Newt.
The words are: sick, pathetic, traitor, welfare, crisis, ideological, cheat, steal, insecure, bizarre, permissive, anti-(issue), and radical.
Such language, here in the New [Republican] Regime, will be helpful in solving problems, such as how to get health-care coverage for forty million Americans, how to get people off welfare, how to create decent-paying jobs and give the people the skills to do them.
---1994
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Peak performance…
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JEERS to bad medicine. It’s awful enough that Trump’s ICE Nazis have been separating “hysterical, crying children” from their parents---in some cases whisking them away to other states and putting bags over their heads---but oh it gets worse. So much worse…
President Donald Trump’s zero tolerance policy is creating a zombie army of children forcibly injected with medications that make them dizzy, listless, obese and even incapacitated, according to legal filings that show immigrant children in U.S. custody subdued with powerful psychiatric drugs.
Children held at Shiloh Treatment Center, a government contractor south of Houston that houses immigrant minors, described being held down and injected, according to the federal court filings. The lawsuit alleges that children were told they would not be released or see their parents unless they took medication and that they only were receiving vitamins.
Parents and the children themselves told attorneys the drugs rendered them unable to walk, afraid of people and wanting to sleep constantly, according to affidavits filed April 23 in U.S. District Court in California. One mother said her child fell repeatedly, hitting her head, and ended up in a wheelchair. A child described trying to open a window and being hurled against a door by a Shiloh supervisor, who then choked her until she fainted.
Said the ghost of Joseph Mengele: “Wow, America. When you came up to me and said ‘Hold my beer,’ you weren’t kidding.”
P.S. In case you want the Cliffs Notes version of what Trump signed yesterday:
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Standard operating procedure with this gaslighter.
CHEERS to Democrats in disarray. Together they stood tall, side-by-side, eyes fixed, shoulders back, hands craggled and calluses by from a lifetime of fighting fights on behalf of the working stiff. And yesterday they united once again to knock billionaire Donald Trump and his wig-bepowdered elitist Republican snuff sniffers in the Senate into the middle of next session:
The Senate on Wednesday narrowly rejected President Trump's plan to claw back roughly $15 billion in spending approved by Congress earlier this year.
The vote is a blow to conservatives and the White House, who pushed the package in response to backlash from the GOP base over a mammoth rescissions package passed in March.
White House Budget Chief Mick Mulvaney said the measure’s failure was “disappointing.”
Also disappointing to Mulvaney yesterday: that Meals on Wheels was still functional, children were getting health care, and the blood of his victim during his midnight feasting was too salty.
CHEERS to the thawing season. While most of us were sleeping, Summer arrived this morning at 6:07 ET. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster!
Two months (here, anyway---unlike ours, your summer may include September) of peace, tranquility, and boring news cycles. Right? If only. But for Maine it does bring 60 glorious days of heat after months of shutting ourselves inside, closing all the windows and cranking the furnace up to 11. First item on our agenda this morning as summer got its solstice on: shutting ourselves inside, closing all the windows, and cranking the AC up to 11.
P.S. Today is the longest day of the year…tomorrow isn't. Mother Nature: master of the headfake.
CHEERS to getting’ the Manitoba munchies. Our neighbors to the north just accomplished a famous first: government approval of the nationwide recreational enjoyment of marijuana. (Some news outlets say Uruguay was first, but as jazzmaniac commented yesterday, that’s not quite true.) Justin Trudeau calls it one of his “promises kept,’ and he’s hoping to make it official by Septem….. No, wait, I’ve just been handed a bulletin: apparently there’s one little hurdle left, and she’s 3,329 miles away in London. Yeah. Her:
[T]he legislation still needs to be approved by Royal Assent. After legislation passes Ottawa’s House of Commons and Senate, it must then be formally approved by the Queen of England’s representative in the commonwealth country, Governor General Julie Payette.
Canada technically still considers the British monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II, as its head-of-state. However, the monarchy’s website explains: “As Head of State The Queen has to remain strictly neutral with respect to political matters.”
The Queen’s approval via Payette is largely seen as ceremonial however, essentially a required rubber-stamp of any legislation. The last time a British monarch refused Royal Assent was in 1707.
C&J Fun Fact: There’s a subtle but distinct difference in the way pot smokers react when we take a hit of the cannabis in our respective countries. Here in the States we go “Heheheheheh.” In Canada they go “Eheheheheheh.”
CHEERS to great moments in agriculture! On this date in 1834, Cyrus McCormick got his patent approved for the first reaping machine. Eh, sow what?
JEERS to lying liars. Down in old Virginny, the Republican challenging Democratic incumbent (and guy who keeps several lawn mowers in his shed just in case more than one neighbor needs to borrow one) Tim Kaine is a real piece of two-faced word. Corey Stewart’s one of those Republicans who never turns down an invitation to a white supremacist rally (and even makes a donation or two), but when opponents call him out on it, he curls up into an armadillo-like ball and cries, “You people are taking this so out of context!” Let’s roll the tape and watch him step on a land mine of his own planting:
Virginia Republican Senate nominee Corey Stewart endorsed anti-Semitic congressional candidate Paul Nehlen months after Nehlen shared content from a prominent white nationalist who praised the violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. … "He's going to do great work for us in the Senate. I'm thrilled about Corey. Yeah. Thrilled about Corey running."
The timing of the endorsement undercuts his current explanation that he had only praised Nehlen prior to him making "bigoted" statements.
Stewart publicly disavowed Nehlen on June 7, telling The Washington Post that when Nehlen "started saying all that crazy stuff, I wanted nothing to do with him after that." … But Stewart's November 2017 praise for Nehlen came just a couple months after the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that Nehlen supported.
I’m shocked, shocked to find lying going on in this Republican establishment. Round up the usual suspects.
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Ten years ago in C&J: June 21, 2008
CHEERS to Condi's legacy. Our secretary of State not only has a Chevron oil tanker named after her, but now her name has taken on immortality in Israel. According to Tim McGirk at TIME: "Israeli TV announcers coined her name as a verb, meaning to go endlessly around in circles, accomplishing nothing." Study up, kids---we expect to see that word in next year's spelling bee.
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And just one more…
JEERS to how far we’ve slid. Four years ago, First Lady Michelle Obama posted this tweet in response to the abduction of girls in Nigeria by Boko Haram. Today she’d only need one tiny change to make it relevant to the disappearance of countless girls at gunpoint by Trump’s men in black. Just change “Nigerian” to “ICE-abducted,” and presto------
Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s almost time for my 8 O’clock vomiting.
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 sitting on top of tall cactus goes viral after being spotted by 2 bikers
---CBS News
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