From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
12 Weeks 'Til Netroots Nation 2013!
Your weekly update on all things San Jose. Just a few odds and ends this week as we await the opening of the scholarship competition and more speakers:
• Ana Marie Cox wrote a dissection of the conservative CPAC conference this month for The Guardian, and has an interesting take on why its star is falling while Netroots Nation's is ascending:
[T]he most important aspect of the siege mentality that fortifies CPAC is that it is completely appropriate: their side is losing, not necessarily because Democrats or liberals have won any given election, but because history's tide cannot be stopped, no matter how loud you yell.
At Netroots Nation, the closest analogue to CPAC on the left, panels on women's rights take place in the context of a rapidly expanding role for women in business, government, foreign policy, even the military. Speakers addressing the problem of race have to calibrate their dissent to accommodate a black president. Gay rights activists are no longer agitating for merely a legitimate say in policy; they are pushing one victory after another forward.
So, on the social issues where CPAC seems the most far afield from mainstream America, the answer is: yes, they should be worried.
Other small differences between CPAC and Netroots Nation: 1) Birkenstocks and message t-shirts are encouraged at our shindig. 2) We're not lunatics.
It'd be awesome if the Supreme
Court struck down Prop. 8 during
the Netroots Nation convention.
• Moderator Zerlina Maxwell invites you to send her questions for the special NN13 Q&A session with
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Send 'em via twitter at
#AskPelosi.
• The Supreme Court arguments over same-sex marriage this week reminded me to take a peek at the gay bar scene in San Jose. I was surprised to see that there's absolutely nothing there. Ha Ha---just kidding!
• To register for the convention, click here.
• For official hotel info, click here.
• Follow NN13 on Twitter here.
Synchronize your watches: the convention starts in 84 days. San Jose: you've been warned.
Meanwhile, Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, March 28, 2013
Note: A quick heads-up that there will be no C&J on Monday as we'll be recovering from Sunday's Peep-induced coma. Back Tuesday with a smiley face and a grumpy pancreas.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Earth Day: 25
Days 'til the Poteet Strawberry Festival in Texas: 15
The last year when housing prices increased as fast as they are now: 2006
(Source: Reuters)
Minimum number of people who will gather on the south lawn for the 135th White House Easter Egg Roll on Monday: 35,000
Number of marshmallow Peeps produced each year: 700 million
Number of Peeps whose last moments are spent inside a microwave oven staring out at laughing humans: 699 million
Number of vehicles besides the 2014 Honda Odyssey that come with their own in-car vacuum cleaner: 0
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
[T]he sign outside our neighborhood strip joint says HOT BABES, COLD BEER, NUKE 'EM, GW. My worry is that Bush is painting himself into a corner with his rhetoric. This is not a war; it's a gigantic police operation in the face of a crime beyond all understanding.
Fear is at the root of most evil. As Boots Cooper, age eight, said after a close encounter with a chicken snake: "Some things'll scare you so bad, you'll hurt yourself." These dotty proposals to breach the Constitution fall into that category. We cannot make ourselves more secure by making ourselves less free. According to reporting in the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times, the terrorists got in and stayed through loopholes in the visa system, not some fundamental constitutional flaw.
---November, 2001
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Tis the season
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I see what you did there.
CHEERS and
JEERS to playing Rope-a-DOMA. A day after finally tackling arguments in the Prop. 8 case, the Supreme Court finally tackled arguments in the "Defense of Marriage Act" case. Once again, Justices Alito, Roberts and Scalia acted as if they were just hearing about the existence of gay people for the first time (Roberts helped write pro-gay briefs in his past, so he was just playing dumbity dumb, and poorly). Thomas was his usual deadweight. Kennedy came across almost dirty-fucking-hippie'ish. And if Tuesday's memorable moments were dominated by Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, yesterday it was plucky 80 year-old old Ruth Bader Ginsburg who provided
the money quote:
"Got Marriage?"
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Ginsburg: "It's as Justice Kennedy said, 1,100 statutes, and it affects every area of life. And so he was really diminishing what the state has said is marriage. You're saying, no, [the] state said two kinds of marriage: the full marriage, and then this sort of skim-milk marriage." (Laughter.)
I'm filling out Nana adoption papers on her. As for what happens now: smoke 'em if ya got 'em. Gonna be a long three months.
CHEERS to the Ikey we likey. We're surprised that Dwight Eisenhower hasn't been branded a traitor yet by the right-wingers because he had the audacity to expand Social Security and raise the minimum wage. His crap crapped bigger ones than the current crop of GOPretenders, but his heart finally gave out and he died on this date in 1969. Pay your respects here. These days a good Republican is damn near impossible to find.
JEERS to horrifying thoughts. Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX), the tea party loon who's been warning us about "terror babies" and other assorted paranoid horrors, got into a scrape with the cops the other night when he was…
Dear god, please tell me
he doesn't also have a
license to drive a tank.
…slapped with a ticket for parking his vehicle in a spot reserved for National Park Service personnel near the Lincoln Memorial, according to a report obtained by Politico and reported Wednesday.
U.S. Park Police officers wrote Gohmert a citation a little after 11 p.m. on March 11 but he immediately cried foul, arguing that his congressional placard entitled him to park in the space. … The police report also quoted Gohmert giving the officers a lecture.
That he acted like a jerk doesn't bother me. That he may have been right doesn't faze me. But knowing that he has a licence to drive a motor vehicle??? Holy mother of god. Give the man a wide berth.
CHEERS to the United States Senate. Wow...they finally stood up and nailed the President for overstepping his authority, and he was pissed. Sure, the move is a symbolic "slap on the wrist," but he needed it. So mark this date in your history books: March 28, 1834. The day Andrew Jackson got his old hickory ass censured, baby! Maybe we can do it again some day soon for old time's sake. Bend over, Senator Cruz.
JEERS to mexed missages. Apparently every single member of Seal team Six has given a different account of how Osama bin Laden was killed on that fateful May night a couple years back. So, in the interest of full disclosure, the terrorist mastermind met his end in one of the following ways:
"Watch where you
point that thing!"
• Shot in the eye
• Tickled under armpits with feather duster
• Hair dryers set on high heat causing extreme dehydration
• Forced to read out loud John Galt's 70-page speech in Atlas Shrugged
• Shown an episode of Celebrity Apprentice on an iPhone
• Porn stash revealed to Mrs. Bin Laden, who took matters into her own hands
• Forced to gnaw on toys made in China with lead-based paint
• Toaster + bathtub
• Gun-cleaning accident
We trust this clears up any confusion.
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Five years ago in C&J: March 28, 2008
CHEERS to mushroom-cloud mathematics. Hooray! I always feel reassured when the Secretary of Defense wakes up at 3am with a brilliant idea, as Robert Gates did this week: "Hey! Let's count our nukes!" C&J's hidden microphone is tracking the progress:
"Two thousand three hundred and ninety four... Two thousand three hundred and ninety four... Two thousand three hundred and ninety five..."
"Hey, you repeated a number."
"I did? Which one?"
"I dunno. I think it had a four in it. It was, like, twelve four something."
[sigh] "One... Two... Three..."
Have a seat---this might take awhile.
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And just one more…
I'm not 100% sure, but I
think this is a Zumba.
CHEERS to closure. When the book of 2013 is closed for good, you can bet your well-toned hiney that one of the hottest Maine stories will be the Kennebunk Zumba fitness instructor prostitution ring scandal. Yeah---Zumba fitness instructor. Turns out she was doin' the nasties---arranged by a pimp---with half the townsfolk, and since everyone knows everyone there, it got a bit awkward when they discovered there was "a list." The case dragged on and on and got a bunch of smirk- and titter-laced publicity nationally. And since Kossacks here kept asking me about it, I feel an obligation to let you know that they've, um,
put this thing to bed: pimp gets 20 days in jail and pays $3k in fines. To say I care would be…well...let's call it a stretch.
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
The Secret's Out: Vogue's Obsession with Cheers and Jeers
---Vogue
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