From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Energize An Ally Tuesday
With GOP Rep. Tom Price's confirmation as Destroyer of Health and Human Services, Georgia's 6th District needs a new congressman. It's a promising opportunity to replace that "R" with a "D" in the House, and Daily Kos is endorsing a strong contender: Democrat Jon Ossoff. But first he has to make it past the April 18th primary, says our multi-talented DK Elections Director David Nir:
In the likely event that no candidate clears 50 percent of the vote, a runoff between the top two vote-getters will take place on June 20. […]
All candidates from all parties will run on a single ballot in the primary, which means that it’s possible two Republicans could advance to the second round. We cannot let that happen. We have to make sure Ossoff has the resources he needs to make it to the runoff.
And then, if he does, we’ll have an amazing chance to stun the living daylights out of the GOP and deliver the harshest possible rebuke to Trump. We know he hates nothing more than losing. Let’s make a loser out of him, and bad.
Take a look at Ossoff's priorities page. It takes mere seconds to realize that he'd be a terrific advocate for the issues this site champions---from education to civil rights to the environment. And wouldn't it be sweet having Price's replacement dogging him every step of the way from his own district on health care. If you have any doubts about his tenacity, this might help (memo to self: stay on this guy’s good side)...
I was born and raised in Georgia and grew up here in the Sixth District. Today I lead a company that investigates corrupt politicians and organized crime. Our team has taken down human traffickers, exposed dozens of corrupt officials around the world, and uncovered atrocities committed by ISIS in Iraq. Previously I was a senior national security staffer in the U.S. Congress, working with our military and intelligence community to keep Georgians safe while investigating wrongdoing by government contractors.
The time to support Jon is now, when he can use our contributions to increase name recognition and lay the groundwork for a big win on April 18th (only 56 days away). That's why he’s our pick for this week's C&J Energize An Ally feature. As David Nir says, with a helpful link: Give $4 to Jon Ossoff today so that he can kick some serious Trump ass and pick up a seat for Team Blue!
P.S. It's worth noting that Ossoff's grandfather helped defeat the Nazis. I dare say having that particular strain of DNA in his system will come in handy while fighting this administration.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Note: We have an HHS secretary who knows nothing about HHS, a HUD director who knows nothing about HUD, a secretary of state who knows nothing about secretary of stating, an energy secretary who knows nothing about the Department of Energy, a president who knows nothing about presidenting, and an education secretary who knows nothing about education. And suddenly I feel a bit better about being a blogger who knows nothing about blogging.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea: 351
Days 'til the Ballyhoo Festival in Gulf Shores, Alabama: 11
Amount spent between 2007 and 2015 on construction and maintenance of 654 miles of Mexican-border fencing: $2.3 billion
Percent chance that the Government Accountability Office says there is no metric for measuring how well fencing works to deter illegal immigrants from crossing: 100%
Percent of Americans who view themselves as Christian, according to the Pew Research Center: 71%
Percent of members of Congress who are Christian: 91%
Tons of rock salt produced per year by the American Rock Salt Co. in New York: 4.3 million
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Remember---measure twice, cut once.
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CHEERS to healthy perspective. This is why getting the hell out of the country for awhile (especially when you're on the young side), in addition to being somewhat edumacated, is a good thing. It broadens your perspective. I lived in Germany for four years and my recollection is the same as Atrios’s:
PresidentPigfucker is trying to justify his remarks about Sweden by suggesting it's a scary place with BAD IMMIGRANTS causing BAD PROBLEMS. You hear these tales regularly from Americans who don't know anything. The Muslims have taken over! Hide your women! Even the most poverty-stricken immigrant neighborhoods in Europe are, byUS standards, fine. The lack of guns and freeish health care tend to take the sting off the crime and poverty. I'd happily live in any of them.
Years agoI spent a couple of months in one of those horrible immigrant neighborhoods in a major European city, warned away even by locals who said it was VERY DANGEROUS. It wasn't. The presence of poorer brown people does not actually make a neighborhood unsafe. Without guns, there are limits to what"unsafe" actually means.
Anyway, [I’m] not denying that most places have poverty and associated problems, or that immigration can create tensions. Every country has their own unique brand of nationalistic race-linked identity, and while I won't defend the racism in our country I think "we" at least sometimes have a more sophisticated understanding of it and better language for discussing it than other countries often do. But I'd be quite happy to spend a few months in the worst urban hellhole in Europe, wherever that is, as long as I had decent enough public transit access.
Meanwhile, the former prime minister of Sweden has been doing some A+ trolling of Trump after his stupid "that thing that happened last night in Sweden and was very bad" speech:
We're America, and we approve this message.
JEERS to the promise-breaker-in-chief. By this point in his accidency, Donald Trump was supposed to have unveiled a big, beautiful plan that would work "very, very quickly" to defeat ISIS. Remember, he couldn’t reveal the plan before the election because that would give away the big (and quick!) surprise. Then he got elected and---psych!---it turns out he had no plan. So he gave his generals 30 days to come up with a plan---30 days that ended last Sunday. And here it is, ladies and gentlemen,exclusively in Cheers and Jeers, I give you the Trump generals’ plan for defeating ISIS:
I know I'll sleep better tonight.
CHEERS to hitting a brick wall. Our current shit-on-a-shoe governor aside, Maine really is a pretty moderate state. But we do have our Republican jerks who pull out their anti-democracy battering rams and give 'em a test run every now and then. Here's how it's going down with their revival of voter ID bills designed to prevent Democrats from casting their ballots on election day:
A pair of bills aimed at tightening Maine’s voter identification requirements were broadly panned as unconstitutional and unneeded Wednesday during daylong public hearings before the Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee.
The bills…drew criticism from civil rights groups, top election officials, the state’s attorney general and everyday citizens. Also testifying against the bills were at least a dozen students from Bates College. The Lewiston school has been the target of ongoing criticism from conservatives in Maine, including Republican Gov. Paul LePage, who has suggested that college students have been improperly or illegally voting in Maine elections. […]
LePage’s claims have been refuted by Maine’s top election officials, including Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democrat. “The citizens of Maine can be fully confident that their votes are counted accurately and the results reflect the will of the voters,” Dunlap said in December.
If you need to talk to a Maine Republican legislator today, they'll be under the state house rotunda sweeping up battering ram splinters.
CHEERS to letting your fingers do the walking. 139 years ago today, the first telephone book was issued by the District Telephone Co. of New Haven, Connecticut, consisting of 50 names and a hundred pizza coupons. Today so many people use the internet to find numbers that there are efforts floating around to make delivery of the phone book an "opt-in" thing. Still, it does have its uses. For one thing it gives the height-challenged something to sit on besides a plastic booster seat that screams, "Ignore me, I'm a child." For another thing, five years ago a survey showed the phone book may be just what we need to save our republic:
Members of Congress may not always be popular, but now Americans say nearly anyone could take their place. A full 43% of voters nationwide think a group of people randomly selected from a telephone book would do a better job than current legislators, a new Rasmussen Reports poll found.
Here, let me try. I'll close my eyes, pick up a random phone book, put my finger on a random page, and…[Thrmp!!!]…Nugent, Theodore. Oh dear god, abolish the damn things already.
CHEERS to monumental achievements. On February 21, 1885, the Washington Monument was dedicated. Over the weekend this happened:
I don’t want to suggest that's a bad sign, but taking no chances I just told my contractor to sink the backyard bunked a foot deeper.
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Ten years ago in C&J: February 21, 2007
CHEERS to the religious right's worst nightmare. Gay couples came out of their sodomite dens in New Jersey yesterday to get legally hitched (civil unions, not marriage). As was the case when similar laws went into effect in Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts, absolutely nothing Satanic happened. Yeah, but just wait 'til the year 2486. Then you'll see where all this is headed.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to lifting the veil. Over the weekend we learned that the evil mastermind Omar Ahmad Rahman died in a federal prison. He was planning lots of terrible stuff---attacks on the U.N., the Lincoln Tunnel, the George Washington Bridge etc. And now he's meeting his 72 virgins in the afterlife, and I kind of hope it's going along the lines of what Steve Martin envisioned circa 2007 in The New Yorker. A sample:
Virgin No. 5: Do you like cats? I have fourteen!
Virgin No. 7: Here, I’ll just pull down your zipper. Oh, sorry!
Virgin No. 14: I’m eighty-four. So what?
Virgin No. 18: I’m saving myself for Jesus.
Virgin No. 22: Do you mind if we listen to Mannheim Steamroller?
Virgin No. 24: Would you mind saying, "Could I see you in my office, Miss Witherspoon?"?
Virgin No. 30: You are in?
Virgin No. 35: By the way, here in Heaven "virgin" has a slightly different meaning. It means "chatty."
Virgin No. 38: I’m Zania, from the planet Xeron. My vagina is on my foot.
Virgin No. 42: I just love camping! Camping is so great! Can we go camping sometime?
VirginNo. 52: Not now, I’m on my BlackBerry.
Virgin No. 56: I think I found it. Is that it? Oh. Is this it? Oh, this must be it. No?
Virgin No. 70: My name is Mother Teresa.
Sweet pay back.
Have a nice Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Russian President Vladimir Putin really wants to know what goes on in Bill in Portland Maine’s head.
---The Week
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