From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE
Two Weeks 'til Netroots Nation. Mega Update!
• The closing night event sounds cool:
Using the Ignite format, each speaker will be given 5 minutes to talk, while 20 slides that advance automatically every 15 seconds are shown on the screen. The theme for this year is Inspiration, Innovation and Progress. We’ve assembled a great group of speakers who will share their unique experiences and personal stories. Netroots Nation regulars Jenifer Fernandez Ancona and Adam Mordecai will co-host the evening.
Speakers include Joel Silberman, Zach Wahls and Amanda Marcotte. (Full list at the link above.) If you've ever watched speakers in this format, you know they're addicting as potato chips.
• THANK YOU! The Netroots for the Troops fundraiser is just $1,600 shy of our goal of $15,000. That money goes toward the supplies needed to pack and ship oodles of care packages to our troops in forward outposts in Afghanistan. Please help us make it over the top by clicking here and making a tax-deductible donation. Packing day is Saturday, June 22 at Netroots Nation. Please join Tony and the gang on the assembly line!
• The Native American Caucus is Thursday, June 20---details at their Facebook page. The Daily Kos caucus is Friday the 21st ---Details here.
• Great way to start your mornings at NN13: the Morning News Dump with Lizz Winstead, Shannyn Moore and Cliff Schecter:
The Morning News Dump is sorta like “Morning Joe,” minus the guests who have gotten everything wrong for the past 10 years. Each morning these three will also welcome some of your favorite bloggers and politicians as well to give you a download of the days news before you hit the Netroots ground running.
Among the guests already lined up: Joan Walsh, Dave Dayden (DDay) and DKos's own veteran radio host David Waldman (KagroX). Lizz & Co. will also provide Netroots Nation traffic updates so you can avoid the most congested hallways at the convention center.
• Birds of a Feather Watch Birds' Feathers Together Lineatus is organizing a birding trip for Sunday the 23rd. You might call it a cheep date. I never would, of course. Not on Thursday, anyway.
• To achieve instant coolness for life, be a Netroots Nation volunteer. Oranizers still need some slots filled in set-up, swag-bag stuffing, name-tag assembly, staffing the Netroots Nation booth and help with livestreaming video. Please email volunteers [at] netrootsnation.org ASAP to get more info.
• Panels and sessions are here. Please note that the Greg Dworkin-Armando cage match has been moved to Gladiator Arena C. (More seats, better drainage.)
Wednesday night kickoff!
• House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi will be at the convention to take your questions. Email yours to moderator Zerlina Maxwell
via Twitter. My question would be, "Who would you rather kick in the shins, John Boehner or Harry Reid?" I have to wonder if the answer might surprise us.
• The answers to the Chairman's Pub Quiz are now available in Locker #3441C at San Jose's Diridon Train Station. All you need is the key, which Adam B secretly hid...behind your left eyeball!!! Tee Hee Hee Haw Hee Tee!!!!! (Okay, yeah, I suck at maniacal laughter…sue me.)
• To register for the convention, click here.
• Follow NN13 on Twitter here and on Facebook here.
Other than that, I haven't heard a thing.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, June 6, 2013
Note: iTunes customer, circa 1721: "Dammit---why do I have to buy all the Brandenburg concertos for $13.99 when all I want is the damn No. 3 in G Major for 99 cents? It's not fair!"
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Father's Day: 10
Days 'til the 26th annual Oregon Mountain Cruise Car Show in Joseph: 1
Expected airline occupancy rate this year: 80.2%
Expected increase in airline earnings this year vs. 2012: 67%
(Source: IATA via AP)
Maine Senate vote on a bill to freeze approval of online charter schools that are publicly-funded, because a bunch of 'em, like the operation Jeb Bush runs from his basement, are probably a scam: 22-13
(Source: The Portland Press Herald)
Auction price for the original Apple-1 designed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak: $671,400
Rank of the Boston Red Sox in the AL East: #1
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Despite all the fine work George W. Bush and Co. are doing to convince Americans that the economy is tickety-boo and double jump-up jim dandy, for some reason many Americans remain stubbornly unpersuaded that things actually are getting better. Perhaps that would be because they're not getting better for most people. […] And let me point out that the reason we're in an "economic recovery" is because of increased worker productivity---we work harder, they get the money.
Folks, this is what the Bush administration is really about. While we're all distracted with 9-11 and the war on terrorism, it is steadily making this country less fair and making life harder for most citizens. How long are you going to put any credence at all into what they tell you?
---June, 2004
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Farewell…
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CHEERS to the new iBama Shuffle. The president made headlines yesterday when he announced that the National Security Advisor whose name I never knew (I just punted and called him Hammacher Schlemmer---was I close?) is heading for the exit, and the new one will be Susan Rice, who doesn't need to go through a Senate confirmation process, which means somebody just met his Benghazi Waterloo:
Obama with U.N. nominee Power,
the guy whose name I can't
remember, and Not-Condi Rice.
Republicans who targeted Rice over the handling of the 2012 attacks in Benghazi reacted with the knowledge they have no role in confirming her for the post.
"Obviously I disagree [with Obama’s] appointment of Susan Rice as Nat'l Security Adviser, but I'll make every effort to work [with] her on [important] issues," Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, one of Rice’s foremost critics on Benghazi, wrote on Twitter.
I wouldn’t exactly call it 11-dimensional chess on the part of Obama, but it's at least 2-dimensional checkers and now Rice can thumb her nose at the Arizona jerk (and his little South Carolina cabana boy named Lindsay) from her new lofty parapet. But the best thing about Rice's appointment, for which we should all breathe a sigh of relief: her first name's not Condi.
"Now get out there and
win one for the Gipper."
CHEERS to the day Hitler shit his pants. The 69th anniversary of D-Day---the
largest amphibious landing in history---is today, and President Obama will no doubt deliver a moving tribute to the rapidly-dwindling number of veterans who waded ashore on that horrific yet awe-inspiring day. (Hard to believe that the youngest of those troops who went all
Saving Private Ryan on Germany's ass are now 87.) To this day, George W. Bush is still a little confused as to why we went through all the trouble---after all, the intelligence was accurate, the threat was real, and there wasn't any oil there.
CHEERS to commotion in the commonwealth. Here's the Cliffs Notes summary of the
first debate last night in Boston between Rep. Ed Markey (D) and Gabriel Gomez (R), who are running in the special election---June 25---to fill John Kerry's Senate seat:
"God bless America."
"God bless America."
"I said it first so my God bless America counts more."
"What?!!"
"It's true."
"Is not!"
"Is too!"
Whomp!
Whomp!
Well, obviously, advantage Markey.
CHEERS to a fabulous marriage of common sense and powdered wigs. Guess what, Britain? Wedding bells for gay couples will soon be ringing over the moors and through the shires of your enchanting little island:
The House of Lords: like
our Senate only with wigs
and fur but minus the crazy.
Following two days of debate, England's House of Lords has voted to move forward marriage equality legislation by a vast majority of 390-148. … [The] vote sends the pending legislation to a committee, after which it will be sent through the report stage, then returned to the House of Lords for third reading and final vote. If the bill passes each of those hurdles, it will be sent to the queen for her signature into law, also known as Royal Assent. Parliament's other chamber, the House of Commons, gave final approval to the legislation in May.
And then I can finally---
finally!---cross "Live to see the Queen of England sign gay marriage into law" off my bucket list.
JEERS to another very bad day in a decade full of very bad days. Forty-five years ago today, 42 year-old Robert F. Kennedy died in Los Angeles (the New York Times account is here) after being shot just after he'd won the California primary. I was only four at the time, and have no recollection of it. But this bit from the Washington Post's 1968 tribute expresses in no uncertain terms that we lost more than a man, we lost a movement:
"What if..."
As for power, he sought it endlessly, but not for itself. For he was, above all, a compassionate man who wanted to improve the lot of other men. He wanted to move the country, to break new ground in response to new challenges as he saw them, and political power was the instrument he needed to do what he thought would be good---for cruelly neglected Indian children, for the people of the ghetto, for the disadvantaged here and everywhere. Like his older brother, he scorned the slow pace of the Senate and the diluted influence of a Senator for this did not fit his temper. He reached with restless energy, and some logic, for the Presidency because that is where the political power is. ...
Still only 35 when he became Attorney General in his brother's Cabinet, he applied himself to that assignment with the same intensity and with an increasingly skillful hand. ... In a short span, he revitalized the Department's attack on organized crime and established greater control over the FBI than had been exercised in many years. From Montgomery to Oxford to Tuscaloosa he led the hard campaign against racial discrimination with tough-minded determination and skill.
Which brings us to the most frustrating game ever invented in the history of the universe: "What if..."
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Five years ago in C&J: June 6, 2008
JEERS to sinful distractions. Crazy Muslim terrorist Barack Obama, stung by one too many preachers who left their brains at the door on Sunday morning, turned in his Trinity UCC membership card over the weekend. Now the question is, which church will he move to? I'd suggest he give my denomination a try. We always have the best pancake suppers in the world. Hence the saying: Once you try an Episcopalian flapjack, ya never go back.
JEERS to Maverickism in action. The silly season continues in Straighttalkville. John McCain says he won't run from Bush. And in other news, John McCain runs from Bush. Would somebody please pull his handlers aside and educate them about The Google???
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And just one more…
Keith and baseball fit
like a hand in a glove.
CHEERS to returning to the nest. Guess who's
baaaaaack??? Hint: "Let's play Oddball!" Or, more accurately,
baseball…
After a messy public breakup with his last employer resulted in a $50 million lawsuit, Keith Olbermann will return to television in October as a studio host for Turner’s coverage of the Major League Baseball postseason.
The deal will have Olbermann leading TBS' Atlanta-based studio show with Dennis Eckersley and possibly a second analyst. TBS this season has both Wild Card Playoff games, 18 of the 20 League Division Series games and exclusive rights to the National League Championship Series. Sources say the deal has an option for the 2014 postseason as well.
Happiest about hearing the news that he's finally getting out of the apartment to go to work after 18 months? His bathrobe.
Have a nice Thursday. And as a refresher: Millennials consider Pelosi, the Clintons and Obama to be leaders of the Democratic party, and they consider this guy the leader of the Republican party. Honest to god. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
“From an evolutionary point of view, we know Bill in Portland Maine belongs to a large family of primates, but when did he separate from the other members?”
--- Ni Xijun
Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology.
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