From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
T-Minus 10 9 8 Weeks 'til Netroots Nation!
Things are starting to get busy as our mass parachute drop into San Jose takes shape. Here's the latest, starting with a quick update from Mary Rickles…
New events: This year, we’re planning a new event: an outdoor food truck party that will be held at a park down the street on Friday. Socialize, enjoy San Jose’s sunny weather and sample gourmet cuisine from some of the Bay Area’s best food vendors.
We've also got a new Sunday morning recovery brunch and a few other surprises up our sleeves. We've planned an engaging Q&A session with Leader Pelosi and lots of networking events throughout the weekend, plus we're working hard to finalize our big stage speakers.
Other tidbits:
• The Netroots Nation/DFA/America's Voice scholarship competition is underway. Winners get free passes to NN13 and accommodations.
Click here to apply or vote for your favorite candidates. The competition ends at 11:59pm May 7th. I'm crossing my fingers for all of you on the list, because I always liked all of you best.
• Yeah, but where are the panels??? Great question!!! You can check 'em out here. Don't miss the panel called "Leadership Secrets of the Congressional Tea Party Caucus." It's five minutes of running around shouting "Tyranny!" followed by a 55-minute nap.
Yes I do. Just take a right at Albequerque.
• Do you know the way to information about the song
Do You Know the Way to San Jose? Why, yes.
Yes I do…
Burt Bacharach wrote the music for the song before Hal David wrote its lyrics, which give narrative voice to a native of the northern California city of San Jose who, having failed to break into the entertainment field in Los Angeles, is set to return to her hometown. David had a special interest in San Jose, having been stationed there while in the navy.
Dionne Warwick was really happy to win a Grammy for it, but she later admitted it's basically a cruel, cruel earworm.
• To register for the convention, click here.
• For official hotel info, click here. Linda Lee informed me yesterday that "People coming in on Tuesday or Wednesday, availability is VERY tight. There is better availability the rest of the weekend."
• Follow NN13 on Twitter here and on Facebook here.
Set your watches: two months and counting. Time to start skedaddling the rodents out of your steamer trunks.
Meanwhile, Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, April 25, 2013
Note: A quick heads-up that, due to the sequester, C&J is taking a furlough day Monday. Back Tuesday with fresh snark and a snow globe from the furlough gift shop.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Victoria Day in Canada: 25
Days 'til the 40th annual Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival at the Howard County Fairgrounds: 9
Percent of Americans who currently rate the economy as, respectively, good and poor: 25%, 59%
(Soource: AP-GfK poll)
U.S. registered voters who are less likely to support a candidate who votes against expanding gun-buyer background checks: 61%
Percent of registered voters who favor and oppose, respectively, expanded background checks: 82%, 17%
(Source: Fox News Poll)
Percent of migraine sufferers whose condition improved during sex: 60%
(Source: Details)
Amount by which gas prices have fallen per gallon since the end of February: 28 cents
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
When in the course of the usual reasoned, civil debate on public affairs---conducted always with courtesy and good cheer---one finds one's self snarling, "Oh, shut up!" one has, I fear, been reading too much George Will.
Being instructed what to think by the peerlessly pompous Mr. Will, perched upon his superiority and apparently in a permanent state of dudgeon over everybody else's stupidity, is reminiscent of being bullied by a snotty teacher.
---April, 2002
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Doggie facelifts. It's a thing.
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CHEERS to a clean sweep. Thanks to yesterday's votes in the Rhode Island legislature, gay marriage is legal in every state in New England. Not every state in the midwest. Not every state in the south. Or the southwest. Or the northwest. Or the breadbasket. Or the mid-Atlantic. Nope. The first region to go the Full Equality is New England WHOOOO!!!!
New England states without gay
marriage are the ones in red.
Democratic Sen. Donna Nesselbush, the chamber's sole out member, introduced the debate on the bill, saying it would impact her more personally than any other bill and adding, with a laugh, "I even wore a dress." All five Republicans in the chamber voted for the bill, which supporters said was the first time an entire party delegation in a chamber has voted for a marriage equality bill. ...
The final speech before the vote, however, came from Sen. Maryellen Goodwin, who said the she struggled with the issue, noting, "I've been unable to sleep." After detailing her pride in her Roman Catholic faith, Goodwin pointed to elsewhere in the Bible for her guidance, concluding, "I will be casting my vote today on the side of love, Madame President."
In short order you'll be able to throw rice and blenders at same-sex couples in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island. Not that we're bragging. Well…maybe a little.
CHEERS to genome sweet genome. On April 25, 1953, scientists identified 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.
JEERS to much ado about nuthin'. Today all of our living presidents will gather in Texas to smile, shake hands and clear brush inside a Ministry of Propaganda building devoted to whitewashing the legacy of one of the worst presidents in our nation's history. Yesterday in C&J I gave my suggestions for what should be on display in the George W. Bush Library, and several of you added to the list. A few:
Either the George W. Bush Library
or a North Korean day care center.
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The suit that Angele Merkel was wearing at the G8 conference when Bush tried to massage her shoulders. Talk about your diplomatic gaffes. ---mofembot & hulibow
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The bathrooms in the Dubya Liberry have the Constitution printed on the toilet paper. ---jck
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A giant calendar marked with his vacation days over 8 years, and a huge pile of brush he cleared during that time (might need a whole separate building for that). ---Maudlin
Copies of the permission letters issued by the administration allowing the bin Laden family to fly out of the U.S. less than 48 hours after the attacks. ---SueDe
I'll publish the other 649,000 suggestions next week. (Damn, you people are thorough.)
CHEERS to toting the tykes. Today is the 20th "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day." It's a time to show the kiddies how Mommy and Daddy's productivity gets cranked up to the max, while their paychecks do not. What fun! Oh, and I believe I speak on behalf of the entire nation when I say to Sasha and Malia Obama: please don’t push any blinking red buttons.
CHEERS to pigskin fever! Round 1 of the NFL draft is today. But don’t tell Ted Nugent. Anytime he hears the word "draft" he shits his pants.
"You astronauts
get off my lawn!"
CHEERS to immersion in the umbra. This afternoon starting around 3:00 ET, there will be
a lunar eclipse, which will…
…mark the first eclipse of any kind in 2013, and by sheer cosmic coincidence it will occur during the April full moon, which is also known as the "Pink" Full Moon.
It is the first, and likely the best, of three lunar eclipses occurring this year.
The eclipse won’t be visible from the U.S., but you can
view it live here. Be sure to text all the right-wing paranoids on your list and tell them it's all a plot by the U.N. "luna"-tics and their Agenda 21 program led by none other than Ban ki-MOON. They'll be twitching all day.
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Five years ago in C&J: April 25, 2008
JEERS to flapping your arms really fast for long periods of time. Delta and Northwest Airlines announced that they lost something like a gajillion dollars (or 23 Euros) in the first quarter of 2008, largely because of soaring fuel costs. They also announced that starting today, your seat cushion will no longer be a flotation device. It'll be a parachute.
JEERS to poor stewardship. Get used to seeing paragraphs like this for the next, oh, rest of your life:
Federal agencies, states, tribes and concerned citizens are spending millions of dollars and thousands of hours on [fill in the blank] to reverse decades of poor management and combat the mounting threats of population and climate change.
In this case, it's
waterway restoration projects. But it might as well be CO2 emissions, clear-cutting, oceans clogged with plastic, melting icecaps...you name it. Is there absolutely no way we can blame this on otters? Elk? Kookaburras?
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And just one more...
CHEERS to the birthday boy's response to the un-American liar. First the un-American liar---Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX):
Cruz and McCarthy: peas in a dirty pod.
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[Cruz] then went on to assert that Obama, who attended Harvard Law School four years ahead of him, “would have made a perfect president of Harvard Law School.” The reason, said Cruz, was that, “There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists … there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”
Today is
Edward R. Murrow's 105th birthday…born April 25, 1908 in Polecat Creek, North Carolina. He had more integrity in his pinky than Senator Cruz has in his entire body. Since Cruz feels so moved to revive McCarthyism, here's a little Murrow magic from his famous
See It Now broadcast of March 9, 1954. If you admire Murrow as much as I do, you probably know this by heart:
"We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men---not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy's methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it---and rather successfully. Cassius was right. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." Good night and good luck.
Happy birthday, Ed, wherever you are. And Senator Cruz? The 50s called. They'd like their red-baiting back, please.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
A new species of tiny fly named after Bill in Portland Maine is mind-blowingly miniscule, with delicate wings trimmed in fringe.
---LiveScience
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