From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
ONE Itty Bitty Teeny Tiny Week 'til Netroots Nation!
Another quick update on the Big Event as we mark T-minus 7 days and counting, starting with this status report from Executive Poobah Nolan Treadway:
Next week in Providence is going to be a blast. We've worked with folks in town over a year, and they're rolling out the red carpet (or should I say river of fire clarions). From the Mayor to the Congressional delegation to the grassroots activists who got involved, everyone has been working hard to show us a good time. The people of Providence and Rhode Island have been fantastic to work with---I can't wait to get the thousands of us together to hang out with them!
The Convention and Visitors Bureau has put together this guide, In Downcity has put together an awesome guide of the best places to eat and drink and cool events going on around the immediate area, and some locals put together a google map of PVD with all the landmarks for NN12 on it. I'm thoroughly excited and look forward to seeing everyone a week from today!
- The full list of panels is here. Kossack/Goddess vicki has created a handy version you can print and take with you. Click here to check it out. Thank ya, ma'am.
- The next live NN12 panel preview via Spreecast is today at 12 noon PT/3pm ET. Accomplished mobile organizing practitioners Sam McKelvie, Kristin Koch, Doug Foote, and Michelle Whittaker will preview the panel called Mobile Organizing for 2012: From Elections to Occupy, Anti-Fracking to Arab Spring.
- Come help us pack the swag bags! It's a blast because you get to hobnob with the volunteers and staff while literally watching the nuts and bolts of the convention come together as your pre-Thursday excitement reaches its climax. Yes, it's kinda like good sex. Join us Wednesday, June 6, at 2pm in Hall C and D. You can just show up, or email Shanna if you need more info at: volunteers[at]netrootsnation.org.
- Netroots for the Troops also needs volunteers in three areas: staffing their booth, setting up on Saturday morning (June 9), and assembling the care packages that afternoon. Details in Eclectablog's diary here. And, as always, last-minute donations are hugely appreciated to make the annual event a success.
- "Your Guide to Netroots Nation 2012" in The Boston Phoenix:
So many panels, so many receptions, so many opportunities to get filthy drunk. It's hard to know where to begin.
- The Providence 10-day forecast via The Weather Channel
- Me: If you had one piece of advice for people planning to come to the Chairman's Pub Quiz, what would it be?
Adam B: To remember the lessons of the past.
Me: Great. I'm screwed.
- It's never too late to register. Click here to git 'er done.
- To stay in the loop, get on the email list and follow NN12 on Facebook and twitter.
Meanwhile the right-wing blogger convention that usually follows us around is having theirs in Las Vegas instead. On their agenda: soaking up the residual Romney/Trump vapors from Tuesday. Ick.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, May 31, 2012
Note: Just a heads-up that C&J will not appear next week since we'll be on convention duty in Providence, filling our head with all kinds of far-left nonsense like equality and democracy and progress and suchlike. We'll be back here on Tuesday, June 12th. The dirt I end up dishing will depend entirely on how much people there are willing to pay me to not dish it.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the recall election in Wisconsin: 5
Days 'til the third annual Annapolis Arts and Crafts Festival in Maryland: 9
President Obama's current lead over Romney in Michigan: 53%-39%
Percent of Michigan voters who consider Mitt Romney to be a Michigander: 24%
(Source: PPP poll)
How much the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, which starts Saturday, is expected to inject into the British economy via tourism: $15.8 billion
Estimated loss in output due to reduced labor and closed businesses: $1.98 billion
(Source: Time)
Percent chance that "knitting is boring": 100%
(Source: 81 year-old skydiver lady)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Meanwhile, the entire Department of Homeland Security is beginning to look like a Republican playground. According to The New York Times, over 90 former officials at DHS or the White House Office of Homeland Security are now "executives, consultants or lobbyists for companies that collectively do billions of dollars' worth of domestic security business." Now isn't that a dainty dish to set before the king?
Can Republicans run anything right? Where is the CEO administration that was supposed to straighten out government?
---June, 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Nice post at Cute Overload on JFK's woozles for his 95th birthday, which was Tuesday.
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CHEERS to tactical smarts. Last night on The Last Word, Lawrence O'Donnell was talking with John Heilemann about a new bone of contention being considered by the Obama campaign that frames Mitt Romney as, essentially, an opportunistic hack. Here's the gist from Heilemann's New York magazine article:
It will drive home the idea that Romney is a skillful but self-serving plutocrat whose résumé is replete with self-enrichment but who has never cared an iota about bettering the lives of ordinary people. One tagline that the campaign is considering using---“He’s never been in it for you”---encompasses Bain, Massachusetts, and every Gordon Gekko–meets–Thurston Howell III gaffe he made during the primary season in one crisp linguistic swoop.
“Romney really, actually thinks that if you just take care of the folks at the top, it’ll trickle down to everybody else,” says another Obama operative. “But no one believes that stuff---no one! And once you puncture that, there’s nothing left. He’s not likable. He’s not trustworthy. He’s not on your side. You live in Pittsburgh and you’ve got dirt under your fingernails, who do you want to have a beer with? It ain’t fucking Mitt Romney.
"He's never been in it for you." It's nasty. It's sharp. It's…true! I approve this message.
CHEERS to ratting out Ratzinger. Honest to god I'm using this tired old phrase in a context that's both new and newsworthy: "The butler did it." Specifically, the Pope's butler (Jeeves, I presume) went rummaging through Benedict XVI's shit and fed it to a reporter writing a book about turmoil in the Vatican. And when I say shit, I mean some serious shit:
[Author Gianluigi] Nuzzi's book highlights an internal power struggle within the Vatican through numerous documents including faxes, personal letters and inter-Vatican memos. He told CNN that he received the documents during a year of private meetings in secret locations. The documents show that the allegations of corruption and money laundering were a concern for a number of high ranking prelates, including Carlo Maria Vigano, who is now the Papal Nuncio in Washington, DC.
When all this skullduggery airs out, he won’t be able to say enough Hail Mary's to absolve him of his sins. The Pope, I mean.
JEERS to voting against your self-interest. A Gallup poll that shows Mitt Romney (a garden-variety 60s draft dodger with soft, manicured hands) ranks 24 points higher than President Obama (bin Laden killer, Iraq War-ender, Libya liberator, terrorist assassin). Gallup says it doesn't know why there's such preference for Romney, and Blue Texan at Instaputz says he's confused, too, because…
Bush/Cheney sent soldiers into unnecessary wars without proper equipment, sent them back for 3 or 4 tours through the meat grinders -- and created tens of thousands of American casualties in the process of losing both wars. Oh, and Republicans are itching to cut veteran's benefits---and would love nothing more than to privatize the VA.
Crazy.
Culture.
CHEERS to a guy who classed up the republic. Here's your brain food for the day, courtesy of birthday boy Walt Whitman, born May 31, 1819:
“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
Whew. I think I need a cigarette.
JEERS to lame attempts. The email arrived at my inbox with the subject heading, "Your Yahoo! Account Has Exceeded." Oh Noez!!!! The message inside:
Your E-mail account has exceeded its limit and needs to be verified, if not verified within 24 hours, we shall suspend your account.
Click Here
Thanks.
Hmm. They know that my account has exceeded its limit, but they need me to verify the account's existence. And when I run my cursor over the link they so desperately want me to click, the url says: yh-o-o.x90.net/HARMZY/. Wow. It's not even good spam. Bite Me Here, "Yahoo." Thanks. Or should I say, "Děkuji."
JEERS to talking the talk but bumbling the walk. Mitt Romney says he will "never apologize for America." I guess that's because he's too busy apologizing for "Amercia." "Mommy, why does that Robot Man hate 'America?'" "He doesn't hate America, dear. He just can't spell it."
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Five years ago in C&J: May 31, 2007
CHEERS to crumbling walls. If you believe these Gallup numbers, the religious right's condemnation of gay people is working...in reverse:
Gallup's annual Values and Beliefs survey, conducted each May, finds current public tolerance for gay rights at the high-water mark of attitudes recorded over the past three decades. ... The clearest example of the recent renewal in pro-gay rights attitudes comes from a question asking Americans whether they believe homosexual relations should be legal. Public tolerance for this aspect of gay rights expanded from 43% at the inception of the question in 1977 to 60% in May 2003. Then in July 2003, it fell to 50% and remained at about that level through 2005. Last year, it jumped to 56% and this year it reached 59%, similar to the 2003 high point.
Well. Looks like we'll need to rent a few more folding chairs for pride day.
CHEERS to fresh reminders. The next Democratic presidential debate is Sunday evening from 7 to 9 at Saint Anselm College. If CNN had any guts, they'd sit the candidates at a large round table and let 'em go at it, unfettered, for two hours. There---I managed to put "CNN" and "guts" in the same sentence. Where's my pony?
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And just one more…
JEERS to cheers. Michael and I thank you for all the nice comments you wrote here yesterday over our 19th anniversary as official ambassadors of Sodom and Gomorrah. Unfortunately we started fighting about which of us was more thankful, one thing led to another, and one of us ended up sleeping on the porch. Man, I gotta say, crickets are noisy little bastards.
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:
U.S. Naval Academy undergraduates yawn during Cheers and Jeers that they are required to read at the U.S. Naval Academy.
---The Daily Dish
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