Welcome once again to Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up, a weekly opportunity to have a little fun and to get your brain in gear for the regular Sunday Puzzle (which posts Sunday evenings at 8 pm Eastern time).
The warm-up puzzle theme for the past few months, and for the next month or two, is Candidates Worth Supporting. Candidates featured so far have included Daily Kos members Angela Marx, Tim Canova, Zephyr Teachout, Kim Weaver, Alex Singer , Russ Feingold, and Donna Edwards, and non-DK members Peter DeFazio, Maggie Hassan, Diana Hird, Pramila Jayapal, Cori Bush, Susannah Randolph, Tammy Duckworth, Eileen Bedell, and Sellus Wilder (who, alas, lost his primary bid this past Tuesday so will not be a candidate this fall).
To see all the other puzzles in this series just click on the CandidatesWorthSupporting diary tag.
The answer to last week’s puzzle was Jim Keady, who is running for Congress in New Jersey’s 3rd district. You’ll find more information about Jim Keady, plus a new puzzle spotlighting another Candidate Worth Supporting, in tonight’s diary, directly below.
Jim Keady has been posting diaries on Daily Kos since June of last year. Since March he has been running for the Democratic nomination to represent New Jersey’s 3rd district in congress.
Chris Christie may have met his match. The New Jersey governor went off on a persistent heckler Wednesday at an event commemorating the second anniversary of Hurricane Sandy in Belmar, New Jersey. His frustration mounting, Christie yelled at the man to "sit down and shut up," a line that received applause from many in the crowd. Moments later, Christie's security detail succeeded in confiscating the man's television-camera-obscuring protest sign that read "Get Sandy Families Back in Their Home / Finish the Job."
Sparring with vocal critics has become a regular part of Christie's job, but this time, the heckler, Jim Keady, isn't going away quietly.
"He's a bully," Keady said of Christie in a phone interview hours after the confrontation. "He tries to use his bullying routine to squash dissent." It was a message that the suddenly-in-demand Keady was preparing to spread in separate interviews scheduled with network and cable news shows. "I'm a 6-foot-4, 215-pound former pro-athlete. I'm not going to be bullied by him. And when he goes into his bullying routine, it lays bare the fact that he does not want to talk about the political realities that are being presented to him."
The 43-year-old Keady is a small businessman who runs his family's tavern, where many of the customers are in less frequently because, Keady says, they're out of pocket from the storm damage and waiting to get back in their homes. A former Asbury Park councilman, Keady knows something about how politics works. In the 1990s, he also played pro soccer for the North Jersey Imperials as backup goalie to Tim Howard. Yes, that Tim Howard. Need more evidence that Keady isn't a shrinking violet? He's a founding director of a group called Educating for Justice, which protests working conditions at Nike factories. He was kicked out of Indonesia earlier this year for joining workers at a protest of union-busting activities at Nike's Jakarta headquarters. He said he's never met or heckled Christie before.
During their back and forth, Christie told Keady that "somebody like you doesn't know a damn thing about what you're talking about except to stand up and show off when the cameras are here. I've been here when the cameras aren't here buddy, and done the work." Christie went on to tell Keady that "I'm glad you had your day to show off" and now, "turn around, get your 15 minutes of fame, and then maybe take your jacket off, roll up your sleeves and do something for the people of this state."
But Keady is no stranger to what New Jersey has been through. He grew up in Belmar, now lives in neighboring Spring Lake, and after the storm, he said, he took a month off of work and volunteered "every day" in Belmar. "They trusted me with one of their borrowed dump trucks and I was running clean up crews all over town," Keady said. "I wanna know how many crawl spaces the governor was in, cleaning up. But he got his photo-op in Belmar."
Keady talked about how only 20 percent of a $1.1 billion a program to get people back in their homes has actually gone out. "His administration is sitting on $800 million of taxpayer money that was supposed to go to our fellow New Jerseyans," Keady said.
"If I'd just stood up, sat down, and been polite, you and I wouldn't be talking right now," Keady added. "It's necessary at times to do small and large acts of civil disobedience so people's voices can be heard. And if Governor Christie doesn't like that, he's in the wrong business."
Jim Keady is an educator, activist, theologian, filmmaker, writer and athlete. He is the Director of Educating for Justice, Inc., a NJ-based nonprofit company that educates and organizes citizens to promote peace and justice in the world. For the past 18 years, Keady has focused much of his time and energy on improving the living and working conditions for Nike’s overseas factory workers.
Here’s some of what he said recently about his candidacy here on Daily Kos:
My name is Jim Keady and I am running for Congress to represent the people of New Jersey and to be a voice for everyone who is not a billionaire, a lobbyist, or a corporate CEO.
I am a middle class small business-owner who believes that it’s time the people had an advocate on Capitol Hill who understands what they are going through.
Most people around New Jersey know me as the guy Chris Christie screamed at to sit down and shut up when I was standing up for Hurricane Sandy families. I have made it clear to him and to everyone that I will never sit down and shut up. I will always stand up and speak out and fight for what is right for the people of New Jersey…
We need an advocate in Washington who understands what we are going through everyday – someone who is from the middle class, someone who is a small business owner. We need someone who understands the struggles we face at times.
We need someone who understands the need to pay the rent or the mortgage every month. We need someone who understands what’s it’s like to have to meet a payroll and take good care of one’s employees. We need someone who understands the struggle to pay off college debt or to have enough money to even go to college. We need someone who understands our worrying about if our pension or retirement fund is going to be there when we are ready to retire. We need someone who understands why we worry about having access to healthcare if we get sick or our children get sick. We need someone who understands what it means to have more month than money if we’re on a fixed income.
We need someone in Congress who understands all of this stuff, who lives it along with us, and who will fight for us.
We have enough multi-multi millionaires in Congress who are fighting for the super rich. We have enough people in Congress who are giving tax breaks to big banks and giant corporations. We have enough people in Congress who are pushing trade deals that offshore our jobs. We have enough people in Congress who are bought and sold by the big money and who have forgotten everyday people.
We need an advocate who will fight for what is best for us - what is best for Main Street not Wall Street. We need an advocate who will fight for what is best for our communities, not for multinational corporations. We need an advocate who will fight to get big money out of politics so that the voice of the people can be heard.
I want to be that advocate. I want to win this election and fight for all of us. But, I cannot do it alone.
SPECIAL BONUS! Here’s a link to a very good diary about Jim Keady by ZenTrainer: “No, he won’t sit down and shut up.”
If you’d like to learn more about Jim Keady’s campaign (and if you’d like to contribute to his campaign), here is a link to his campaign website.
But before you visit there, perhaps you’d like to solve tonight’s puzzle and see who else is a Candidate Worth Supporting...
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This puzzle is a JulieCrostic. If you’re familiar with how JulieCrostics work you can jump right in; if you don’t know how JulieCrostics work, you can find complete instructions (with diagrams and everything!) at the bottom of this diary.
Here are the clues for tonight’s puzzle. It has 5 rows, with 3 answers per row. Have fun!
NOTE: There’s a good chance I won’t be home in time to take part in tonight’s puzzle party, but I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble solving tonight’s puzzle without any comments from me. (And I will read all comments, and reply to any questions, as soon as I’m able.)
1. Cherry center.
2. Fraction of a gallon.
3. Publish.
- 1. Number used with certain cards.
- 2. Discomfort.
- 3. Extreme fear.
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- 4. Label.
- 5. Annoying insect.
- 6. General who became president.
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- 7. Collection.
- 8. Obtains.
- 9. Bill, Melinda, or Robert.
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- 10. .
- 11. " __ __ yourself "
- 12. Sarah Palin, in many people's opinion.
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- 13. Kind of music.
- 14. Fruit which grows on trees.
- 15. Fruit which grows on vines.
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For those new to Sunday Puzzle, here’s an explanation of how JulieCrostics work.
In JulieCrostics you are given a set of clues, such as these:
- 1. say what’s not so
- 2. resting
- 3. concede
………..………….…………..………..………….…………..
- 4. more than game, less than match
- 5. famous star location
- 6. vampire slayer
………..………….…………..………..………….…………..
- 7. activist Eastman
- 8. skirt or pad
- 9. accepted principle
………..………….…………..………..………….…………..
- 10. consume
- 11. blue-green color
- 12. candidates who share a platform
The answers to the clues need to be entered into a grid of rows and columns. For the Saturday night warm-up puzzles I usually tell solvers how many rows and columns there are; for the more challenging Sunday night puzzles the solvers generally need to figure that out for themselves. (In this example, the puzzle contains 4 rows with 3 answers per row).
Solving the clues is easier than it looks, since every word in a row has all the letters of the previous word plus one new letter. For example, in the set of clues above the answers in the first row are
- 1. say what’s not so = LIE
- 2. resting = IDLE [LIE + D, anagrammed]
- 3. concede = YIELD [IDLE + Y, anagrammed]
Also, as you can see in the chart below, all the words in a column have the same number of letters. In this example puzzle the first answers in a row all have 3 letters, the middle answers all have 4 letters, and the final answers all have 5 letters.
As you solve the clues, write the answers and the add-on letters into a grid like so:
lie D idle Y yield
set A east K stake
Max I maxi O maxim
eat L teal S slate
When you have solved all the clues and written down all the added letters, the added letters will form columns that spell out a message of some sort. It might be a person's name, it might be the title of a book, it might be a familiar phrase, or it might be a series of related words.
In the example given, the verticals read DAIL YKOS. With proper spacing and capitalization that spells out Daily Kos!