From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
The Week Ahead
Monday Donald Trump's campaign manager announces that the part the candidate will be playing this week is a modified Captain Queeg. All of the crazy, none of the military experience.
Today is National DNA day. As usual, all the geneticist society parties will spiral out of control.
Tuesday Hot primary action in PA, MD, DE, CT and RI. Coincidentally, those states are an anagram of what I crossed off yesterday's to-do list: Did cat perm.
The Senate Judiciary Committee holds a hearing calling for more timeliness in the oversight of the Public Safety Officers' Benefits program. No meetings are held calling for more timeliness in filling a vacant seat on the Supreme Court because that would be crazy.
Wednesday The Federal Reserve comes out of its hole and sees its shadow, ensuring six more weeks of unchanged interest rates.
Senator Ted Cruz suffers a brief moment of lucidity. It quickly passes.
Thursday St. Louis residents get an ominous feeling in their gut, as if something nefarious is about to take place exactly 11 weeks from today. They shake it off, thinking it's probably just gas.
The gross domestic product for the first quarter of 2016 is revealed. Once again it’s Grandma’s Spam and egg casserole.
Friday The University of Michigan announces the consumer sentiment for April. In a sign that things are getting better, Americans' sentiment goes from rebarbative to effulgent.
Former President George W. Bush appears on his front lawn to pick up the newspaper. As always, Laura spends several minutes showing him how to remove the rubber band.
And for yet another week the Great American Scoreboard will read: Arrests of Republican legislators for bathroom misconduct 3, arrests of trans people for bathroom misconduct 0.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, April 25, 2016
Note: BREAKING! Breaking news story revealed to not really be breaking news at all, but a hasty rewrite of a breaking news story from five minutes ago. Film at 11.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the 546-delegate California primary: 43
Days 'til the Maryland Sheep & Wool Festival at the Howard County Fairgrounds: 12
Percent of Americans who said three years ago that they'd switch banks if their current bank's local branch closed, according to an Accenture poll: 48%
Percent of Americans who now say they'd switch banks if their local branch closed: 19%
Increase in construction of apartments in 2015, according to the Commerce Department: 21%
Year in which Harriet Tubman was finally given a $20/month pension for her work saving the Union during the Civil War: 1899
Combined amount Mainers gave to the Clinton/Sanders campaigns and the Trump/Cruz campaigns, respectively, through March 31 according to the FEC: $947,000 / $76,000
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NEW Feature: “Meet Me in St. Louis!”
Brought to you by the 2016 Netroots Nation Convention in St. Louis, July 14-17. (See the sessions that online voters chose here. The rest of the sessions chosen by the NN16 organizing panel will be announced in a couple weeks.) Kossack Sher Watts Spooner let us know last week that the National Blues Museum just opened this month in St. Louis, within easy walking distance of the convention center:
Whether it’s jazz or folk, country or pop, rock or rap, the Blues has exerted a deep, profound influence that resonates to this day.
Part of the reason is that it has always expressed emotional, heartfelt truths about life that continue to speak to generations of listeners, from all corners and walks of society. Throughout its existence, the essence of the Blues has remained constant, reinforcing basic elements that connect artists from different eras, geographies, and stylistic approaches. That’s because, above all, the Blues is a feeling as much as a form---and as universal as life itself.
The National Blues Museum explores the Blues and celebrates the genre as the foundation of all modern American music. The facility educates guests in an entertaining environment that includes high impact technology driven experiences, a state-of-the-art theater, artifact-driven exhibits and robust public programming.
Click here to explore their web site. I understand that in mid-November they'll have a special exhibit devoted to songs by Republicans about their Great Shellacking of 2016.
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Puppy Pic of the Day:
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CHEERS to previews of coming attractions. There’s a sizable slate of primaries tomorrow in the northeast. Pennsylvania, at 210, has the most delegates, followed by Maryland (118), Connecticut (70), Rhode Island (33) and Delaware (31). Maryland also has a big primary between Chris Van Hollen and Donna Edwards---the winner of which is pretty much guaranteed to fill Barbara Mikulski's senate seat next January since beating the Republican challenger will mostly be a formality. Meanwhile tonight there's this:
MSNBC will host back-to-back primetime town halls with Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in Philadelphia.
The two candidates will face questions from voters at the National Constitution Center on the eve of the make-or-break mid-Atlantic primaries.
At 8 p.m. ET, Chris Hayes moderates an hour-long town hall with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders as he competes in the critical must-win state. At 9 p.m. ET, Rachel Maddow moderates an hour-long town hall with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the frontrunner fights to secure the Democratic nomination.
In honor of the event, tonight's Daily Kos rox-sux wars will be waged with Cheez Whiz pies.
JEERS to Governor Death Panel. Paul LePage, the chief executive currently lording over Maine, has been by turns insulting, dishonest, bullying, accusatory, rude, vindictive, potty-mouthed and just plain old incompetent. But last week he entered new territory: evil. Keep in mind that the drug Naloxone is being used in 30 states without any controversy or problems:
Wednesday, GOP Gov. Paul LePage vetoed a bill that would have allowed pharmacists to dispense an anti-overdose drug without a prescription, dismissing the need for it by saying it only “serves only to perpetuate the cycle of addiction.”
I wonder if he’d At issue is the drug Naloxone – also known as Narcan – which is a safe and effective treatment that keeps the overdose victims alive for precious minutes until first responders can get to them. Maddow laid into the governor for his callous decision, saying it could lead to multiple deaths at a time when hard drug usage is on the upswing. In his statement LePage said, “Naxolone does not truly save lives; it just extends them until the next overdose.”
“Think about that for a second,” Maddow explained. “He’s saying that if you overdose you should not be kept alive if there’s an option to keep you alive. Because you are probably just going to overdose again.”
Maine will now officially trade him for any other governor in America. As long as his name isn’t Rick Snyder.
CHEERS to the generosity of the "net"-roots. Today is April 25th---World Malaria Day. So here we are. And here's the World Health organization's summary of where we are:
There has been a major decline in global malaria cases and deaths since 2000.
Progress was made possible through the massive expansion of effective tools to prevent and treat malaria, such as insecticide-treated mosquito nets, diagnostic testing and anti-malarial medicines.
Significant challenges remain however: globally, about 3.2 billion people---nearly half of the world’s population---are at risk of malaria. In 2015, there were an estimated 214 million new cases of malaria and 438,000 deaths, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa. Millions of people are still not accessing the services they need to prevent and treat malaria.
One of the easiest and most effective ways to reduce that number: the humble mosquito net. That's where you can help by tossing a few bucks to Nothing But Nets. As Kossack Denise Oliver Velez is fond of saying: "Got ten dollars? Save a child's life. It's that simple." If only everything was.
CHEERS to genome sweet genome. On April 25, 1953, scientists identified the structure of DNA for the first time. Its appearance is described by the U.S. National Library of Medicine as "two long strands that form a spiral called a double helix." Or, as many wrongly-convicted prisoners have come to describe it: a lifeline.
CHEERS to Hubble bubbles. Speaking of science, today is the 26th birthday of the deployment of the Hubble telescope---the technological wonder they sent up with the flawed mirror that had to be repaired by a Space Shuttle crew because all the pics that came in were blurry. But, boy, once they took care of that, it's been all jaw-droppage ever since. The image they released for Hubble's birthday is a "party balloon-like sphere of gas being blown into space by a super-hot, massive star. The Bubble Nebula, or NGC 7635, is caused by hot gas escaping into space from a star 45 times more massive than the Sun. The Bubble Nebula was discovered in 1787 by William Herschel, a prominent British astronomer. The star is about four million years old, and in 10 million to 20 million years, it will likely detonate as a supernova."
Can you imagine finally landing your dream job or your dream mate or your dream [insert dream item here] 20 million years from now and---BOOM!!! That would suck.
CHEERS to the apple of CBS's eye. Happy 107th birthday today to CBS News legend Edward R. Murrow. He had more journalistic integrity in his pinky than many of today's journalistic misfits (too many of whom call CBS News home) have on their entire resumes. He was a fighter for journalistic independence free of the entertainment side of television, and his clipped and unemotional delivery only added to his gravitas. Adding: one reason I respect Rachel Maddow so much is that she, like Murrow, builds her arguments piece by piece, fact by fact, before tying them up with a damning bow. Unfortunately chain-smoking snuffed out his life prematurely at 57. Hear excerpts of his W.W. II and McCarthy hearing reports here. And, hey, don’t smoke.
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Ten years ago in C&J: April 25, 2006
CHEERS to roots of grass. Read Tim Tagaris's take on the DNC's Spring Meeting in New Orleans:
We have every reason to be proud of the DNC this evening. The Party has come a long way in the last few months, and we have even more to build over the next few years. But one thing we know for sure, if you live in Wyoming or Ohio, Florida or Phoenix, Alaska or Alabama ... Democrats are fighting to win from the top of the ticket to the bottom. And that is something we can all get excited about as we approach the 2006 midterms.
Inside the D.C. beltway this morning, the insulated "business as usual" Democratic consultants are scurrying to their Atlases to look up Alabama, Wyoming and Alaska. (Hint: they're not in Europe.) [4/25/2016 Update: Ten years later we have reasons to be un-proud of the DNC. RIP, 50-state strategy and thanks for nothin’, Debbie.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to putting words in their mouths. They skewered Ted Cruz last month, so turnabout is fair play. Check out the latest from the mad dubbers at Bad Lip Reading as they, um, reinterpret the last Bernie vs. Hillary debate:
From what I've read, no one knows exactly who's behind the BLR videos. My guess: Biden.
Oh, and here’s some good news: C&J’s lab-mix Haley got her biopsy back and the vet says her cancer was stage 1, the removal was complete (“clean margins” as she described it), and there’s every reason to believe she’ll make a full recovery. We can exhale now. Have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
“But to call Bill in Portland Maine by some profane name, I think that anybody with a rational mind would agree that’s blasphemy. And I would say at least 90% of the American public would say ‘Yes, I agree.’”
---Pat Boone
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