From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
7 weeks 'til the Netroots Nation convention!
Here's your weekly update on all things #NN16 (July 14-17 in St. Louis), now with EXCLUSIVE exclamation points!
$50 discount extended! After whining and pleading for no apparent reason other than that's what I do, Mary Rickles said okay, okay, we can extend the exclusive Daily Kos $50 registration discount a bit longer. The offer now expires Tuesday, May 31. When you go to the page, just pick the registration level you want and then click "Apply" at the bottom where you see the promo code DAILY KOS. Click here to claim your discount.
Shoutout to the NN16 sponsors! The annual progressive meetup has come a long way since the first one in 2006, when we didn’t know if we'd be able to fill a broom closet, let alone a convention hall. That's due in large part to the progressive organizations that have helped come on board to help defray the costs and add zazz to the event. 2016 sponsors include the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers, Communications Workers of America, This Week in Blackness, MoveOn.org, the Sierra Club, the National LGBTQ Task Force and Naral Pro-Choice America. The full sponsor list is here.
Yes! There will be a Daily Kos caucus! Date and time coming soon. From what I understand the delegates will be awarded equally among the attendees. And by delegates I of course mean party snacks.
We're having a Great Orange Satan pre-convention party! Join us at the DKos/Connect-Unite-Act/C&J Eat-'n-Greet at Mango, right near the convention hall. To add your name to the RSVP list (as 65 have done so far), email Navajo and then circle Wednesday, July 13 on your calendar. Starts at 5:30.
Call for volunteers! It's fun, easy work, a great chance to meet new people, and you get to see Eric Thut holler at me to---quoting here from the previous ten conventions---"get back to work you lazy pigdog scum." Drop Eric an email to volunteers [at] netrootsnation.org for more info.
Panels Panels Panels! If you haven't seen 'em yet, you can check out the complete Netroots Nation agenda by clicking here.
Hotel info is here!
Follow Netroots Nation via Facebook here and Twitter here!
Meanwhile, Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, May 26, 2016
Note: C&J will not appear on Monday. Back Tuesday with several lawn dart wounds and no recollection of what the hell happened during the previous 72 hours except I bet a good guess will likely be 'lawn dart game gone horribly wrong.'
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the 2016 election: 165
Days 'til the Sacajawea Bluegrass Festival in Pasco, Washington: 15
Percent drop in the rate of smoking among U.S. adults last year, according to the CDC: 15%
Reduction in TSA staff since 2013, according to FiveThirtyEight: 10%
Increase in passenger traffic during the same period: 12%
Years since the last major overhaul of nutrition labels on food packaging (the latest revisions focus more on calories and added sugar): 12
Percent of Americans age 18-34 who live with their parents, the highest percentage since 1886 according to Pew Research: 32.1%
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Just before Memorial Day, Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi said, "Our active military respond better to Republicans" because of "the tremendous support that President Bush has provided for our military and our veterans." The same day, the White House announced plans for massive cuts in veterans' health care for 2006.
Last January, Bush praised veterans during a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The same day, 164,000 veterans were told the White House was "immediately cutting off their access to the VA health care system."
My favorite in this category was the short-lived plan to charge soldiers wounded in Iraq for their meals when they got to American military hospitals. The plan mercifully died a-borning after it hit the newspapers.
In January 2003, just before the war, Bush said, "I want to make sure that our soldiers have the best possible pay." A few months later, the White House announced it would roll back increases in "imminent danger" pay (from $225 to $150) and family separation allowance (from $250 to $100).
---June, 2004
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Puppy Pic of the Day:
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CHEERS to anticipation. Hooray! Only one more day 'til the start of the Memorial Day Weekend and then it'll be July 4th and then back-to-school and then Trump gets destroyed and then Thanksgiving and then Christmas 'n Hanukkah 'n Festivus and then "Happy New Year 2017!" and then "I, Hillary Clinton, do solemnly swear…" and then fucking winter and then spring and then only one more day 'til the start of the Memorial Day weekend. Oh, the joy of having been around the block a few times.
CHEERS to the POTUS Farewell Tour, Day 4. President Obama continues his Asia visit today. Here's the schedule for the remainder of his trip:
Today: The President will visit the Ise-Jingu Shrine. In the afternoon, he will attend meetings at the G-7 summit.
Tomorrow: The President will attend a G-7 meetings on energy, climate and the prosperity of Asia. In the afternoon, the President will participate in a family photo with outreach guests and attend a working lunch on development issues.
Later in the afternoon, the President will depart Tokoname en route Hiroshima, Japan. While in Hiroshima, the President will deliver remarks and participate in a wreath laying ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.
The President will also meet with service members at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakune, Japan. In the evening, the President will depart Hiroshima, Japan en route Washington, DC.
Yesterday in Ho Chi Minh City, Obama had to reassure Asia that we Americans haven't taken total leave of our senses and would never elect a thin-skinned tangerine rind scam artist with small hands as president. That’s nice. But I might feel better if he'd come back and reassure us.
CHEERS to the birthday legislator. Happy birthday to reliably progressive congresswoman Jan Shakowsky of Illinois's 9th District, who turns hrffhrrf years old today. She won her first election in 1999 and has landslided (landslode?) her pitiful opponents to re-election ever since. Yesterday she stood on the House floor and gave Republicans a piece of her mind for their "select" committee witch hunt against Planned Parenthood (transcript is here):
Today in the C&J cafeteria: Chicago-style deep-dish pizza...and no effing knife and fork.
JEERS to the dropping of a shoe. There's just no sugar-coating the fact that Hillary Clinton dug herself into a hole when she decided to go rogue with her email servers. Personally, I find it hard to give a crap about her "damn emails" when so many Republicans have done the same thing or worse---like when Mitt Romney bought and then destroyed all his computer hard drives from his time as governor of Massachusetts. Still, this isn’t going to help her:
Hillary Clinton broke government rules by using a private email server without approval for her work as U.S. secretary of state, an internal government watchdog said on Wednesday. [...]
The report concluded that Clinton would not have been allowed to use the server in her home had she asked the department officials in charge of information security. The report said that staff who later raised concerns were told to keep quiet. Several suspected hacking attempts in 2011 were never reported to department information security officials, in breach of department rules, it said.
The report contradicted Clinton's repeated assertion that her server was allowed and that no permission was needed.
On the bright side: her opponent in November is Donald Trump.
JEERS to the new despot in Poppy Land. After President Obama sent the leader of the Taliban (aka bin Laden BFF Mullah Omar's successor) to be beaten with shoes for eternity in the hereafter, a new guy was hired. He's fifty-something, a "lesser-known deputy," loves sunsets and long walks over rubble, and one day hopes to find true love among the stars:
Mawlawi Haibatullah, who is thought to be in his 50s, is seen within the group as carrying deep religious credentials, and he served as a judicial leader during the days of the Taliban government in Afghanistan.
But in the discussions leading up to his selection, Taliban commanders described him as a respected elder who was guiding the selection process, not as a front-runner himself.
Instead, the two men seen as the chief rivals for the leadership---Sirajuddin Haqqani, the insurgency’s operations leader; and Mullah Muhammad Yaqoub, the young son of the Taliban’s founder, Mullah Muhammad Omar---were named as deputies on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Taliban’s core leadership council in Quetta, Pakistan.
But Mawlawi Haibatullah does seem to have one virtue: his name earns a whopping 102-point triple-word score in Scrabble.
CHEERS to today's boring correction. Earlier this year Maine Governor Paul LePage (Teabagge-R) made a racist accusation that had jaws dropping across the country:
“These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty---these types of guys---they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave."
Given the heroin epidemic that exploded over the last year in Maine, that would mean a lot of dealers impregnating a lot of “young white girls” and a lot of babies poppin' out. And yet the Census Bureau says that Maine experienced a year-over-year population decline of 928 people. We're sure the governor regrets his error, and will now seek to find a fresh new way to be a racist prick. We expect he'll succeed without breaking a sweat.
CHEERS to sweet libation. 86 years ago, in 1930, the Supreme Court ruled that buying liquor does not violate the Constitution. Afterward they reached for the flasks strapped to their shins and toasted their fine work.
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 26, 2006
JEERS to our lovely ally in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah told the country's newspapers to stop publishing photos of women. His reason: "One needs to think if he would want his daughter, sister, or wife to appear like that. Of course, no one would." Of course. (How long ‘til America can go solar?)
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And just one more…
CHEERS to 14 years of Great Orange Satanical Goodness. Happy blogiversary to the persnicketiest band of muckrakers and misfits in Blogger Land! It all started when a dirty fucking hippie named Markos Hemp Flower Rainbow Prius Moonbat Benghazi Moulitsas emerged from his law-school cocoon and flapped his tie-dye wings on May 26, 2002:
I am progressive. I am liberal. I make no apologies. I believe government has an obligation to create an even playing field for all of this country's citizens and immigrants alike. I am not a socialist. I do not seek enforced equality. However, there has to be equality of opportunity, and the private sector, left to its own devices, will never achieve this goal.
"The" Daily Kos percolated for several months before I discovered it (via the Dean for America blog) and got addicted to the cattle calls. After that, all hell broke loose and it's been a sprint for world domination ever since. (Estonia signed its surrender papers yesterday and, in keeping with our time-honored custom, we ransacked the presidential palace.) Today we have an amazing Elections team, a radio crew, an activism and community-building arm, amazing front-page and diary contributors, award-winning cartoonists who regularly draw a crowd, and groups within the community that focus on everything from environmental issues and labor to gardening and Game of Thrones. Among our registered members: Elizabeth Warren, Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter and Stephen Colbert.
Despite the booger flinging meta wars, sigh-inducing GBCWs, and the sheer crazy volume of information that gets posted every day, it's still a kickass source of netroots-level analysis, opinion, issue-vetting, fundraising, snarking, storytelling and flying furniture, and only a fool would try to herd our breed of cats. So from all of me to all of you---especially you, Kos, our mighty Keyboard Kingpin---Happy 14th blogiversary from user ID #2574. May your hearts remain progressive...and your hands always be filled with pies.
If you won’t be able to join C&J tomorrow night because of travel or unconsciousness, have a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend! Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
“Bill in Portland Maine looks somehow inbred with a tomato. It’s not a criticism."
---Johnny Depp
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