Netroots Nation Update: 2021 Convention Now All-Virtual
With the delta variant still doing that delta varying thing delta variants do, I can't say I disagree with the decision. The news came down Sunday:
After keeping a close eye on COVID numbers across the country, we've made the difficult decision to pivot our hybrid event—October 7-9—to totally virtual. We want Netroots Nation to be a safe and accessible event for our community—and that safety extends to your families and loved ones and those we might come in contact with at the hotel and in our travels.
But we aren't canceling. There's too much at stake for us to not come together, learn and strategize about how we can create the progressive future we all want to see. Click here to get your ticket if you haven't yet.
Continued...
The good news is that last year's all-virtual event was excellent—the panels, the training sessions, the social connections, the keynoters. We even got a sweet li’l swag box in the mail.
The organizers, who leave everything on the road to put on a great event, say that "this year's agenda may be our most powerful yet. We've got panels on expanding the Supreme Court, protecting a pregnant person's right to choose, and fighting disinformation, plus opportunities to talk about bold progressive solutions to issues like climate change and economic inequality." You can check out the agenda here.
C&J will keep you in the loop as more panels and speakers are announced. In the meantime, you can follow NN on Twitter here and on Facebook here. And click here to register for Netroots Nation and join in virtually October 7th through the 9th.
And now, our feature presentation…
-
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, September 8, 2021
Note: Ninja Billy sees you wearing white after Labor Day. Hai!!! Judo chop!!! My work is done here.
-
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of Yom Kippur (Rosh Hashanah ends tonight): 7
Days 'til the Mushroom Festival in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania: 3
Americans polled by Marist for PBS/NPR in 2002 who said domestic and international terrorism, respectively, was a more serious threat to Americans: 30%, 56%
Americans in 2021 who say domestic and international terrorism, respectively, are a more serious threat to Americans: 49%, 41%
Percent chance that the U.S. Mint's 100th Anniversary collection of the Morgan silver dollars representing the old New Orleans and Carson City Mints sold out in minutes this summer: 100%
Number of days it took to approve George Washington's slate of six nominees to the Supreme Court: 2
Age of Michael Keaton as of last Sunday: 70
-
Mid-week Rapture Index: 188 (including 5 climate events and 1 anti-vax Christian singer who should stick to singing). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
-
Puppy Pic of the Day: Kitchen diplomacy…
-
CHEERS to sending in the cavalry. Strapping himself into the cab of a modified snow plow, Attorney General Merrick patted his sword cane, clamped a rusty nail between his teeth, and hit the gas. Destination: Texas. Mission: lasso the "vagina vigilantes" and toss 'em into the nearest briar patch:
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Monday that the Justice Department will work to protect the safety of people seeking abortions in Texas as the agency continues to explore how it can challenge the state’s new anti-abortion law.
Garland said in a statement that while the Justice Department urgently explores “all options” to challenge the Texas law, “we will continue to protect those seeking to obtain or provide reproductive health services pursuant to our criminal and civil enforcement of the FACE Act.” […]
The FACE Act, or Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, is a federal law enacted in 1994 that bans physically obstructing or using the threat of force to injure, intimidate or interfere with a person seeking reproductive health services. The law also prohibits intentional property damage at abortion clinics and other reproductive health centers.
And wait'll you hear about what the feds plan to do with the pickup trucks filled with little laser helmets that are the perfect size to strap onto an armadillo’s head. Oops, I've said too much.
JEERS to today's boring corrections. AP Monday:
A towering statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, is set to get taken down Wednesday, more than 130 years after it was raised in tribute to a Civil War hero now widely seen as a symbol of racial injustice, state officials said.
AP Tuesday:
A towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, will be taken down on Wednesday as a symbol of racial injustice, more than 130 years after it was erected in tribute to the South’s Civil War leader.
Better, AP, but not by much. So here's the great wordsmith Bill in Portland Maine Wednesday:
Oh, hey, that statue of slave-owning traitor and insurrectionist Robert E. Lee is finally getting pulled down, more than 130 years after being put up by racists as a constant reminder to Black people that they still need to "know their place." Good riddance, f*cker.
I like Bill's better. Pulitzer stuff.
HUZZAH to the secession squisher. And what a great day to yank down the Lee statue…on the 193rd birthday of General Joshua Chamberlain from the Great State of Maine. In 1863 he held Little Round Top against overwhelming odds during the battle of Gettysburg, saving the north from being ruled by Lee and the forebears of our own brain-damaged January 6 insurrection. Amazingly it took thirty years for Congress to approve his Medal of Honor:
-
The President of the United States of America, in the name of Congress, takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, United States Army, for extraordinary heroism on 2 July 1863, while serving with 20th Maine Infantry, in action at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, for daring heroism and great tenacity in holding his position on the Little Round Top against repeated assaults, and carrying the advance position on the Great Round Top
Then, suffering from a host of war-related ailments and injuries, he came back home to be Maine's governor for four years (winning his third one-year term in 1868 with 72 percent of the vote). Today we consider him our state's #1 hero. Well, if you don’t count the guy from Farmington who invented earmuffs.
-
BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
-
END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
-
JEERS to the new ruling class. Happy happy joy joy (or else they’ll kill you) over in Afghanistan, where the Taliban announced their new government. They say it'll be based on hard-line rule, where women are lower than livestock, school children are force-fed historical bullshit, everyone gets to keep as many guns as they want and use them any way they want, enemies are rounded up and sent to gulags, dissent is disloyalty, labor is endless while the pay is shitty, and an angry invisible sky god will smite you if you so much look at the leadership with anything other than adoration. Or as it's better known in this country: the Republicans' wet dream.
JEERS to undeserved free passes. Forty-seven years ago today, President Ford committed the unpardonable sin of granting an unconditional pardon to Richard "I am not a crook except when I am" Nixon. He said it was absolutely necessary to help "heal" the country. To this day I still have no idea what that means. I don't remember anyone losing their shit over the Watergate hearings, do you? Everyone I knew pretty much laughed their asses off as he fled with his tail between his legs and an approval rating in the mid-20s.
Final verdict on the pardon: bad call. The American people were robbed of the opportunity to see that, when the president does what Tricky Dick did, it IS illegal. Bless the late David Frost for coaxing that jaw-dropping nugget out of that creepy crook.
-
Ten years ago in C&J: September 8, 2011
JEERS to the not-very-super committee. It meets for the first time today: six white men for the Republicans, and 5 men (one Hispanic, one African American) and one woman for the Democrats. They'll come together in a spirit of bipartisanship and compromise to ensure that they hit their hard November 23 deadline for ending up completely deadlocked, after which a "trigger" gets pulled that causes America to sink further into economic quicksand. But they'll get to keep their souvenir "I Was On The Super Committee" pens, so it won’t be a total loss.
-
And just one more…
CHEERS to an enduring enterprise. One way I've kept my sanity during The Plague is a mandatory viewing of an episode of the ahead-of-its-time outer space saga that is the original Star Trek TV series, that does for our brain what a warm pair of slippers does for our feet. Today is the 55th anniversary of the premiere of what creator Gene Roddenberry called "Wagon Train to the Stars." The issues Trek took on—war, peace, technology (for good and evil), racism, gender, greed, and others, all handled so deftly by the writers and cast that Martin Luther King Jr. became a fan—still resonate and make the series eminently watchable today. Here's how William Shatner describes it in his autobiography, Up Till Now:
The general consensus among respected philosophers is that Star Trek was successful and has endured because our stories focused on universal themes—which of necessity took place elsewhere in the universe because they were about subjects that couldn’t be easily tackled by conventional programming. Gene Roddenberry once said that the real mission of the Enterprise was to search for intelligent life on the other side of the television set.
While the grand theme of our five-year mission was always good versus evil, we also did stories about racism, sexism, authoritarianism, class warfare, imperialism, human and parahuman and alien rights, and the insanity of war. Nichelle Nichols and I shared the first interracial kiss on American television—which several southern stations refused to broadcast—although we were compelled to kiss by space aliens controlling our minds.
Today, then, is a good day to review the basics:
All I Need to Know About Life I learned from Star Trek
• Seek out new life and civilizations.
• Non-interference is the Prime Directive.
• Keep your phaser set on stun.
• Humans are highly illogical.
• There's no such thing as a Vulcan death grip.
• Live long and prosper.
• Having is not so pleasing as wanting; it is not logical but it is often true.
• Infinite diversity in infinite combinations (IDIC).
• Tribbles hate Klingons (and Klingons hate Tribbles).
• Enemies are often invisible—like Romulans, they can be cloaked.
• Don't put all your ranking officers in one shuttlecraft.
• When your logic fails, trust a hunch.
• Insufficient data does not compute.
• If it can't be fixed, just ask Scotty.
• Even in our own world, sometimes we are aliens.
• When going out into the Universe, remember:
"Boldly go where no one has gone before!"
Also: don’t screw around with the transporter—it's not a #!!&$! toy. I realize that now. (Sorry, Grandma.)
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
-
Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
QAnon Shaman’s Lawyer Has a Creepy New Defense For His Client: “He Had a Fondness For Trump Not Unlike The First Love a Man May Have For Bill in Portland Maine”
—Mediaite
-