I was away 2 weeks ago, I was away last week, and I’m still away this week.
In theory there is free wifi on Greyhound and Megabus, but this trip the wifi has generally ranged from very poor to non-existent. That’s made it a little hard for me to keep up with stuff here on Daily Kos — so the Sunday Puzzle gremlins kindly volunteered to provide the puzzles this weekend (and next) and told me all I have to do is type up these introductory notes and get the puzzles queued up.
The warm-up puzzle theme for the past few months, and for tonight as well, is Candidates Worth Supporting. Some of the candidates featured have included Daily Kos members Angela Marx, Tim Canova, Zephyr Teachout, Kim Weaver, Russ Feingold, Jim Keady, Wade Norris, Adam Sackrin, and Alina Valdes (who posts under the username alijim89). Non-DK members have included Peter DeFazio, Maggie Hassan, Diana Hird, Pramila Jayapal, Susannah Randolph, Tammy Duckworth, Eileen Bedell, Angie Craig, Beth Tuura, Bob Poe, Tom Wakely, Ann Kirkpatrick, Emily Cain, and Jim Mowrer.
The answer to last week’s puzzle was Ted Lieu, who is running for congress in California’s 33rd district (which includes Malibu, Santa Monica, and Beverly Hills). You can learn more about him, and why I think he’s a Candidate Worth Supporting, below.
You’ll also find a brand-new puzzle composed by the gremlins indicating who they think you should be supporting this November. They promised me their selection would mean less work for me next week in writing my part of the diary. (I hope that doesn’t mean their choice is going to get me banned…)
Before we get to the gremlins’ puzzle, here’s a little bit about Ted Lieu:
Ted Lieu's family immigrated to America when Ted was three years old. His parents were looking for a better life and more opportunity for their children. They grew up poor, spoke limited English, and lived in the basement of someone’s home. Ted would accompany his parents to sell gifts at flea markets to make ends meet. Through hard work, saving money, and perseverance, Ted’s family was able to open a gift store in a shopping center. Eventually their family business expanded to include multiple gift stores.
With the support of hard-working parents and a country that provides limitless opportunity, Ted went on to attend Stanford University where he received undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Political Science and was a member of Sigma Alpha Mu Fraternity. He received his law degree magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center, where he served as Editor-in-Chief of the law review. Ted also received four American Jurisprudence Awards.
Ted Lieu joined the US Air Force, where he served on active duty in the US and abroad. He is currently a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force reserves. Ted is currently in the Air Force reserves, where he is a Lieutenant Colonel.
Ted's service at Los Angeles Air Force base in the district is what brought him to Southern California. Professionally, Ted clerked on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, practiced civil law at Munger, Tolles & Olson, and then worked in the private sector. During his private sector years, Ted served on the Rampart Independent Review Panel, the Torrance Environmental Quality and Energy Conservation Commission, and was later elected to the Torrance City Council in 2002.
He first ran for and was elected to office (a city council seat) in 2005. In 2011 he ran for and won a seat in the California state senate. And in 2014 he ran for an won a seat in congress representing California’s 33rd district.
Here are some examples from his term in the California state senate of why he’s a good person to have in office:
Ted has authored several first-in-the-nation landmark laws in the State Legislature. For example, he wrote SB 1172, a ban on gay conversion ‘therapy’ that received national attention and now is being used as a model in numerous other states. After Wall Street’s failures, Ted as an Assemblymember authored first-in-the-nation legislation to reform the subprime mortgage market and reduce foreclosures. He also coauthored and help champion AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act.
In the Senate, Ted has authored legislation to address climate changes issues (SB 1066), help victims’ collect restitution (SB 1210), prevent animal cruelty (SB 1500), protect victims of corporate fraud (SB 1058), restrict the disruption of funerals by protesters (SB 661), and increase penalties on sex offenders who cut off their GPS monitoring devices. In 2011, he sponsored laws that helped create jobs, save taxpayer dollars, and protect children by banning anyone under 18 from using cancer-causing tanning beds.
Those all look like good reasons to support his candidacy. Here’s another: Ted Lieu has been endorsed by Climate Hawks Vote because of his strong stands on the environment:
Ted Lieu is a true-blue climate hawk. The first bill introduced by Ted was the Climate Solutions Act of 2015, bold legislation to cut pollution and build a renewable energy future.
But Ted really hit his stride as the very first member of Congress to demand that the Department of Justice investigate Exxon Mobil for concealing what it knew about global warming back in the 1970s. Since then, he’s led the charge against Exxon – calling for the SEC to investigate, organizing California Democrats, hosting a Merchants of Doubt screening on Capitol Hill.
And he’s not stopping.
Last week was a perfect case in point: Ted began the week by introducing a resolution disapproving of companies that seek to mislead the American public on climate science, and closed the week starring in our Netroots Nation panel on what Exxon Knew.
Ted is equally fierce on other progressive issues. He’s emerged as a leading proponent of civil liberties and critic of the National Security Agency’s wiretapping program, and he’s outspoken denouncing the quackery of “conversion therapy” (claiming to cure homosexuals of their disease — one of the right’s deeply offensive lies, up there with “there is no global warming”). And he stands up for local veterans.
Because of his work, Ted has been profiled in The Hill as a rising star and in Grist as the climate change Congressmember.
Ted represents California’s 33d district – Los Angeles’ Westside and Santa Monica Bay. In office only since 2014, this is his first re-election.
Now, Ted is in a safely Democratic district. Normally, we’d just endorse a climate hawk like him to help spread the word — but he’s directly challenging ExxonMobil, one of the wealthiest, most unscrupulous companies on the planet. We need to stand with him in the days, weeks, and years ahead.
If you’d like to contribute to or volunteer to help Ted Lieu get re-elected, go here.
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And now for tonight’s puzzle.
Tonight’s puzzle is a JulieCrostic (named after Sunday Puzzle founder Julie Waters). It has 3 rows, with 4 answers per row.
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.
- 1. someone you’d be foolish to vote for
- 2. MD
- 3. In the ‘50s, one of these was often hot
- 4. You might take a hot 3 out on an open this.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- 5. kind of bomb
- 6. colorless, odorless, tasteless, very abundant and very light
- 7. Evita’s narrator
- 8. engrave
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- 9. kind of bomb which preceded 5
- 10. morning
- 11. damage
- 12. weapons
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!