From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Energize An Ally Tuesday
Hey, I have a great idea! Let’s work to re-elect a Democrat in Illinois’ 3rd District who’s against a woman’s right to make her own health care choices, votes to destroy Planned Parenthood, spent years approving of second-class status for LGBT Americans, enjoys dropping the hammer on immigrants, resists minimum-wage hikes, didn’t support Obama’s reelection, and voted against the Affordable Care Act. Yeah! Dan Lipinski’s our old white conservative DINO man! Woot!!!
Or…….and I’m just throwing this out there…….let’s all of us tell creepy turncoat fossil Dan Lipinski to go [verb deleted, and it was a nasty one believe me] himself, and instead throw our support behind someone who deserves to be called a Democrat: pro-women's rights, pro-LGBT, black lives do matter, pro-universal health care, pro-immigration, pro-affordable college, pro-living wage, pro-renewable energy, and anti-Citizens United.
Meet freshly-endorsed by Daily Kos Marie Newman, who is planning to bury Lipinski in the rematch of the century. Check out Marie on the issues here. If you’re not totally jazzed about the opportunity to bring another progressive woman into Congress to help control the levers of the federal government, come over to my house so I can check your pulse.
As we do with all the candidates and progressive organizations on which we shine our “Energize An Ally” spotlight, the BiPM household is kicking in $25 to the Newman campaign. If you have a few bucks handy, we hope you’ll follow suit. The ActBlue donation link is here. (And while you’re there, toss a few bucks toward the campaign of Jessica Cisneros in Texas, another hot-off-the-press Daily Kos endorsee.)
Dan Lipinski is a bitter old relic from the Jurassic period, politically speaking. And like the pea-brained dinosaurs of the era, it’s time for someone to sweep his political career into the proverbial dustbin of history. Marie Newman can do it. Let’s help her get there.
Follow Marie on Facebook here and on Twitter here.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Note: Today is Have A Bad Day Day. If you violate the spirit of the occasion by having a good day, that would be very bad, which would actually make your good day a bad day. Good for you! (In a bad way. Which is good! But that’s bad. Good! Good bad!)
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By the Numbers:
Months ‘til the release of Star Wars Episode IX: 1
Days 'til the Boston Tuba Christmas Concert in Faneuil Hall: 11
Trump approval rating in Pennsylvania, according to a new Muhlenberg College poll: 40%
Percent of Pennsylvanians who believe Trump does not deserve to be reelected: 57%
Approximate portion of the world that's unable to see the bright band of stars that makes up the outer rim of our galaxy because of light pollution: 1/3
Percent of North Americans who are unable to see it: 80%
Percent of people planning to celebrate Thanksgiving who dread having to talk politics, according to WalletHub: 53%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: In Rochester, New York……SAVED!!!
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CHEERS to the Four Witnesses of the Trumpocalypse. Holy Toledo on a stick, Batman! House Democrats have scheduled not one, not two, not three, but four witnesses to testify before the impeachment committee today. That's right—they schedule in bulk and pass the savings on to you! Let's run down the list and see who we're dealing with today:
Tim Morrison—National Security Counsel senior director for Europe and Russia. Morrison will testify that Gordon Sondland, who donated a million bucks to Trump's 2016 campaign in exchange for an ambassadorship to the EU, told him that Trump wanted military aid withheld from Ukraine until an investigation into the Bidens was announced. Shocking!
Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman—former National Security Counsel aide and Iraq War veteran so highly decorated that he requires an assistant to walk next to him wearing all the medals that Vindman can no longer fit on his own chest. He's so tough he once saved his platoon by swallowing a roadside bomb and escaping with nothing more than mild indigestion. Vindman listened in on the July 25th call between Trump and Zelensky, and confirmed the whistleblower's assertion that extortion was #1 on the president's agenda. Naturally Trump and Fox News wasted no time condemning him as a foreign agent guilty of "espionage."
Jennifer Williams—adviser to Mike Pence. Testified in closed-door deposition that Trump’s July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president—which she listened in on—was “unusual and inappropriate.” On Sunday Trump falsely attacked her on twitter as a "Never Trumper," but only because it was a day ending in y.
Kurt Volker—former special envoy to Ukraine and one-third of the infamous "Three Amigos" (the other two being Gordon Sondland and Rick Perry) who took orders from Trump and Giuliani. He's so deep in scandal and skullduggery that the White House is scared he'll spill a bunch of heretofore un-spilled beans. Oh, and he's a Capricorn!
Okay, now I know this all looks very bad for Trump and his cronies. But on the other hand….um…[other hand TBA].
JEERS to America: land of the guns, home of the gun nuts.
What happens in the wake of the massacre in Newtown Aurora Binghamton Tucson Santa Barbara Charleston Lafayette Roseburg Kalamazoo Orlando Alexandria Las Vegas Parkland Benton Pittsburgh Thousand Oaks Aurora Poway Highlands Ranch Virginia Beach Gilroy El Paso Dayton Midland/Odessa the California cities of Santa Clarita (3 dead, 3 injured), San Diego (5 dead, 1 injured), Fresno (4 dead, 6 injured), and a Walmart in Duncan, Oklahoma (3 dead) is depressingly predictable: the community will grieve. Gun control advocates will wisely suggest that this might be a good time to review our federal and state firearms policies so that our nation's shameful record of gun violence might be improved upon. The president and his minions will blame Democrats for the carnage and urge every living soul and their pets to arm themselves to the teeth, and the NRA will insist it's "too soon" to talk about gun control as they continue scaring politicians into looking the other way by informing them that, "We'll be scoring you on your response." Like I said, predictable. Depressingly.
CHEERS to President Blinkandyoullmisshim. Happy birthday to "#20" James Garfield, born 188 years ago today in a log cabin—the last president to have that distinction. He was also a Civil War veteran (for the side that put down the traitors of the south), and one of only 15 commanders-in-chief to not preside during a war. Also on his resume: canal boat laborer, janitor, school teacher, and U.S. congressman.
He only got to enjoy his status as the first left-handed Commander-in-Chief for 200 days before he died of lead- and unwashed-doctors’-hands poisoning due to an assassin's bullet that no one could find until he was long gone. He might've actually been a decent president, who knows? But I do know this: shaaaame on him and running mate Chester Arthur for using $400,000 in campaign money to bribe Indiana voters with two-dollar bills. Why, that could've eroded the public's trust in politicians.
JEERS to our noisy neighbors. Did you know there are countries besides the United States? It's true! I read it once in a parchment. So let's strap on the ol' C&J jetpack and take a spin around the world to see how everybody's doing:
Syria Don’t ask
Britain Don’t ask
Australia Don't ask
Bolivia Don't ask
Ukraine Don't ask
Canada Doing fine, thanks!
Venice Don't ask
Hong Kong Don’t ask
Turkey Don’t ask
Russia Wheeeeee!!!
Brazil Don’t ask
North Korea Don't ask. (Seriously—we'll kill you.)
Iraq Don'task
Northern/Southern ice caps Swimmingly (aka Don’t ask)
Israel/Palestine Don’t ask
Africa Eh, could be worse
And at the center of the earth down in Magma Land? They say don’t ask, we'll find out soon enough.
CHEERS to today's edition of Ha Ha, You Conservatives Just Got Owned! Via HuffPost:
A federal court is allowing a Kentucky man to personalize a license plate with the phrase “IM GOD” after a three-year legal battle over the custom engraving.
Court documents show Ben Hart, a self-identified atheist, set out to get the Kentucky plate in 2016. But Hart’s request was denied by the state transportation department on the basis it violated anti-discrimination guidelines.
This has been today's edition of Ha Ha, You Conservatives Just Got Owned!
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Ten years ago in C&J: November 19, 2009
CHEERS to the Energizer senator. When you add up his time in the House and Senate, Robert Byrd is now the longest-serving member of Congress ever—56 years, 320 days as of yesterday. We would gently suggest that, at 92 (as of tomorrow), he's lost most of his ability to be an effective legislator. But then again, we know he can still throw a pistachio pie from 50 feet and hit a bug on the wall. So we won’t.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to words that resonate even louder in the Age of our low-pizzazz Uberdotardfuhrer. On November 19, 1863, President Lincoln delivered The Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the Pennsylvania battlefield. I read these words every year and their simple elegance makes me appreciate them more each time. What a distillation of the American experiment, and what a road map for slogging our way through the worst leadership vacuum perhaps ever:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation,conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
If you want an even more condensed version, here's the corporate-approved PowerPoint Presentation of the speech. (The “next” button is in the lower right-hand corner). A century and a half later we still haven't perished. But Lincoln would no doubt be alarmed at the rabid wave of Republican dotardism that followed our current president—who constantly forgets and then re-remembers to his astonishment that Lincoln was a Republican—when he brought his thuggish brand of disgrace to Gettysburg during his 2016 campaign, and to the entire nation on January 20th, 2017. In fact, I can imagine Honest Abe’s one-word tweet now: ”Sad.”
Have a tolerable Tuesday. 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’s almost superhuman. I don’t know how anyone can deal with what he’s dealing with. I get frustrated with the splashing going on in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool.”
—Jeanine Pirro
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