From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Only > > 6 < < Weeks 'Til Netroots Nation!
Here's the latest info on the legendary convention (August 10-13 in Atlanta) that was birthed right here at li'l ol' Daily Kos 11 years ago. [Sniff] It's grown up so fast…
► I only make the best deals, believe me. Only the best deals. That's why I've finagled a $50 registration discount for Daily Kos readers. The offer's good through July 15th, and you can get it by clicking here. Make sure the promo code DAILYKOS is filled in.
► NN17 is taking place at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta, which has an impressive record on environmental responsibility.
► There's gonna be a ton of Kossack royalty at this year's event: Meteor Blades, Joan McCarter, Laura Clawson, Egberto Willies, Chris Reeves, Navajo, Susan Gardner, Walter Einenkel, Jennifer Hayden, Denise Oliver-Valez, Frank Vyan Walton, Arjun Jaikumar, Jotter, Jeff Singer, and enough others to fill up an entire hectare. (Yes, we measured, smartass.) Register your butt today and join us. P.S. The Daily Kos caucus will be held Thursday, August 10th at 2:30 in the Piedmont Room. Yes, the room whose first three letters are “pie.”
► You can check out the complete Netroots Nation agenda by clicking here. Helluva lineup this year. And, yeah, resistance is big on the agenda.
► Holy Caesar Flickerman's wig, Batman! Did you know that you can tour the Atlanta mansion that President Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland) lived in during the filming of the Hunger Games movies? Now you do.
► Public transportation (they call it MARTA) info is here.
► Sign up for volunteer discounts and the scholarship program here.
► Registration info is here and official hotel room info is here.
► Follow Netroots Nation via Facebook here and Twitter 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 29, 2017
Note: Here's the posting schedule for next week: No C&J Monday. Tuesday we'll step into our switchgrass-fueled wayback machine for the annual reading of the very first C&J from July 4, 1776. Then regular C&Js Wednesday through Friday. Please adjust your space-time continuums accordingly.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the 2018 Winter Olympics in beautiful downtown South Korea: 224
Days 'til the Maine Potato Blossom Festival in Fort Fairfield: 9
The last time the national gas tax---currently 18.4 cents---was raised: 1993
Number of times the word "women" appears in the Trumpcare bill: 0
Number of voter files exposed online by a Republican consultant who works for the RNC: 198 million
Percent of Americans who "totally disconnect" while on vacation, according to an AP-NORC poll: 22%
Estimated number of digital photos that will be taken this year worldwide, according to FiveThirtyEight: 1.2 trillion
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Happy birthday, America! Ye Olde Fourth of July rolls around again and finds the Great Nation in, frankly, a somewhat pissy mood. Lots of blame game, name-slinging and general unpleasantness. But there's always an upside. The vice president reports that if you go ahead and let fly with the f-word, it makes you feel better. Anything to get that fun Dick Cheney back to his usual sunny self, I always say.
True, we seem to have had more halcyon national natal days, but if we ignore I--q for the weekend, we should be able to celebrate our national heritage without punching each other in the eye.
So let's salute all that makes America special, starting with us, the people. Here's to all the musicians from country to hip-hop to rock to classical to jazz to folk to be-bop tonorteno to polka to reggae, and to all the fusion forms thereof. Here's to all the artists who get no respect---the washboard players and lute strummers, harmonica blowers and banjo pickers. Here's to their endless generosity in playing special benefits for retired musicians who are ill and have no health insurance, all over America, every night. And here's to the great Ray Charles, bless his heart. May we all hear his version of "America the Beautiful" this holiday.
---July 2004
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Now that's what I call patriotism!
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CHEERS to righteous indignation: health scare edition. "You have been the single greatest threat to my family in the entire world! You are the reason I stay up at night!" I missed this video when it came out last month, but it's a terrific reminder of the kind of intensity we need to hold onto for when Republicans return from their July 4th recess and take another whack at destroying the Affordable Care Act. Watch as Geoff Ginter unloads on hapless congressman Tom MacArthur (R-NJ) at a May 17 town hall meeting:
Happy to say the ACA covered 80 percent of MacArthur's butt reattachment surgery, but unfortunately nothing in the law can cure him of being an asshole.
CHEERS to a double blow against "fake news." Weird but true: it took a Playboy reporter to decide he'd had enough of the bullshit and defend CNN from unwarranted attacks on it by President Trump and the White House Ministry of Propaganda. Gold star goes to Brian Karem for tearing into Mike Huckabee's evil spawn at the press lectern:
“Come on! You’re inflaming everybody right here and right now with those words!
This administration has done that as well. Why in the name of heavens? Any one of us are replaceable, and any one of us, if we don’t get it right, the audience has the opportunity to turn the channel or not read us. You have been elected to serve for four years at least. There’s no option other than that. We’re here to ask you questions. You’re here to provide the answers, and what you just did is inflammatory to people all over the country who look at us and say, ‘see once again the President’s right, and everybody else is fake news.’ Everybody in this room is only trying to do their jobs.”
Meanwhile, Trump himself got busted for faking a TIME magazine cover, photoshopping his elephant-hide face onto it and adding fake headlines, then hanging it on the walls of five six seven of his resorts. Kudos to intrepid Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold for once again looking where other reporters don’t. So now whenever the orcs at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue scream about fake news, just ask 'em: "S'cuse me, do you have the TIME?"
P.S. The internet latched onto the fakeness and ran with it, led by Democratic Congressman Gerry Connolly of Virginia:
Perfect.
CHEERS to seeing the light. Germany votes tomorrow on marriage equality, following years of stubborn resistance by Chancellor Angela Merkel. So why did she change her mind so suddenly and emphatically? Was she simply bending to the political reality that 75 percent of her citizens favor same-sex marriage? Perhaps. But she tells a different story, and it's a credible one because these kinds of "aha!" moments happen every day around the world:
Turns out, it was as simple as meeting some actual same-sex parents, and just talking to them.
Speaking at the event with Brigitte [magazine], she recalled: “I had a life-changing experience in my home constituency,” according to the LA Times. She told the audience that she had been invited to dinner with a lesbian couple who were looking after eight foster children. The Chancellor saw that the children were well cared for, and realized that her beliefs, and those of her party, were unfounded.
“If the youth welfare service entrusts a lesbian couple with eight foster children, then the state could no longer use child welfare as an argument against adoptions,” Merkel said.
Keep your ears peeled for lots of cheering coming from across the Atlantic tomorrow, to be followed by lots of lesbian and gay couples saying to each other: "I do." Which, in German, is several hundred syllables long and explains why wedding ceremonies over there take up an entire weekend.
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Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
This is another edition of The One Word Answer Man. Snopes.com asks: Did Researchers Find a Mummified, Three-fingered Alien in Nazca, Peru?
Absolutely!
Now back to Cheers and Jeers.
Gong! Gong!! BuddaBuddaBudda… GONG!!!
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CHEERS to hittin' the road. Sixty-one years ago today, radical socialist (and probably Kenya-born) President Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act, which authorized the construction of 42,500 miles of freeway from coast to coast. It wasn't an easy thing to accomplish:
Between 1954 and 1956, there were several failed attempts to pass a national highway bill through the Congress.
The main controversy over the highway construction was the apportionment of the funding between the Federal Government and the states. Undaunted, the President renewed his call for a "modern, interstate highway system" in his 1956 State of the Union Address.
Within a few months, after considerable debate and amendment in the Congress, The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 emerged from the House-Senate conference committee. ... During his recovery from a minor illness, Eisenhower signed the bill into law at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on the 29th of June.
Soon after, parents got their first earful of "Are we there yet?? Are we there yet?? Are we there yet??" God bless America.
JEERS to the new kid on America's propaganda channel. The good news: we don’t have creepy do-nothing teabagger Jason Chaffetz stinking up Congress anymore. The bad news: he's now stinking up the airwaves as a FOX (Fake news for Oligarchs and Xenophobes) network toady. No word yet on whether he's drawing a straight salary or getting paid by the lie.
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Ten years ago in C&J: June 29, 2007
CHEERS to the new kid across the pond. Gordon Brown is officially Britain's new prime minister. Before leaving office, Tony Blair expressed his full confidence in Brown. But we'll give him a chance,anyway.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to blowing this popsicle stand…faster! If you thought supersonic travel died with the demise of the Concorde, think again. It was news to me as well that NASA and Lockheed Martin have been working on a supersonic plane that both eliminates the BOOM! and is environmentally friendly. This week we learned that the QueSST ("Quiet Super-Sonic Transport") passed a milestone: senior engineers completed their wind-tunnel experiments and agreed that the project was feasible and worth proceeding with. Here's a vid that shows the kind of plane you might be taking one day in the not-so-distant future that'll get you from point A to point B in half the time:
NASA will now bring in additional partners to assist with the project. Acme Sardine Cans LLC will design the seating and the National Zoo will make sure there's enough room in the ductwork to accommodate snakes who escape from their crates. Thank you for your business and enjoy the flight!
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:
Nude Bill in Portland Maine viewing: What to wear to protect your eyes
---CBS News
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