From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Energize An Ally Tuesday
I still can't believe what I saw last Thursday. In the morning: old white Republican men hiding behind a female inquisitor, smiling politely (read: creepily) at the female witness and warmly ensuring she's comfortable and has everything she needs.
In the afternoon: the old white Republicans and their second witness morph into baboons, flinging feces all over the place and ook-ooking loud enough to rattle the windows.
Anyone with even a minimal sense of decency was embarrassed and appalled by the display, so this week's "Energize An Ally" assignment, should you decide to accept it, is simple as simple can be: pick a Democratic woman running for office and send her campaign a few bucks. Local or state election, congressional district or Senate race---pick one and donate.
Simple logic, really: I want Democratic women to win so resoundingly and unequivocally that the Republican misogynist fossils finally get the message that they are obsolete, they're an endangered species, and their days of undue influence are numbered. Or, in slightly fewer words: I want to bury them and then fight to be the one who gets to throw the first scoop of dirt on their sorry carcasses.
If you’re not sure which candidate to support, Daily Kos has officially endorsed nine women running for House seats. Click here for the Act Blue EZ Donation Link.
And while we’re on the subject of historic elections:
The Midterm Elections Are Tuesday, November 6th
Voting Info for All 50 States Is Here
Vote Early If You Can
Crush The GOP
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Note: If you're going to be in the southern Maine area on Sunday, October 14th, please join the local DKos crowd for another legendary New England Kossack Fall Meetup starting at 2pm. The place: DiMillo's Floating Restaurant on the waterfront. Special VIP guests all the way from the Mile High State: ColoTim and Mrs. ColoTim. To RSVP or get more info, email Kossack nhox42 at nhox42[at]gmail.com. Hope you can make it!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Halloween: 29
Days 'til the Conroe Cajun Catfish Festival in Texas: 10
Percent of U.S. registered voters who say they plan to use their vote in this year's midterm elections to send a message about President Trump, according to a new Gallup poll: 56%
Percent chance that West Virginia's poverty situation has gotten worse under Trump, not better, according to CBS News: 100%
Number of Facebook accounts that could be affected by the latest hack, up from 50 million on Friday: 90 million
Current endowment at Harvard, thanks to a 10% return on its investments in the last fiscal year: $39.2 billion
Weight of the pumpkin, believed to be the largest in the country, that Steve Geddes of New Hampshire grew, earning him $6,000 and a blue ribbon at the Deerfield Fair: 2,528 lbs.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: "As happy as…"
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CHEERS to a very busy signing pen. With just months to go before leaving office, California Governor Jerry Brown has been busy following the legislature's lead in shoring up progressive policies in the state. Over the weekend Brown whipped out his Bic and---oh, this gives me so much pleasure to say it like this---owned the conservaturds! Seriously, this is excellent stuff, and especially influential coming from the state that represents---say it with me---the fifth largest economy in the known universe:
Gun safety The legal long gun purchasing age is now 21, up from 18. Lifetime firearms bans will be imposed on people with serious domestic violence records and long-term mental health problems. It's now easier for families and the police to remove guns from the hands of people "deemed a danger to themselves or others." Extra training and a proficiency exam are required if you want a concealed-carry permit.
Net neutrality Those Obama-era internet protections against ISP throttling and other abuses that give preference to those who can pay more that the FCC just abolished? They're back! Naturally, the feds are suing to stop them, but the state is more than ready to go to battle
Juvenile incarceration Seeing that strict policies he approved during his first tenure as governor weren't working, Brown signed two measures that will reduce the soul-crushing effects of the so-called "cradle to prison pipeline" on young offenders.
Female representation If your publicly-traded company is based in California, you must have women on your board of directors starting next year. This is a common practice in Europe, and it's nice to see it take such a prominent foothold here.
Sadly, Brown vetoed a fifth bill that would've provided a free 50-pound bag of almonds every month to the squirrels---Chippy, Scar, Li'l Red, Crusher, Bunny, Big Red, and Mama---on my porch roof, thus likely ending my brief career as a lobbyist. Figures---just as I'd moved into my new corner office in the maple tree.
JEERS to GOP heads in the sand. Anybody who thought Republicans would finally come to their senses when it was determined that global warming/climate change was guaranteed beyond all doubt to make this earth a living hell, sorry to say you backed the wrong horse. The rapid evolution of their brains' greedocampus region into the size of a grapefruit has made it impossible for them to think about the welfare of anyone but themselves. And now they're openly admitting it. Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone checks under the hood of the latest National Transportation Safety Board environmental impact report, and finds it all of a piece with Trump's "burn it all down before it burns us down first" mentality:
The study predicts arise in global temperatures of about four degrees Celsius, or seven degrees Fahrenheit, by the year 2100. Worse, it asserts global warming is such an inevitable reality, there’s no point in reducing auto emissions, as we’re screwed anyway. […]
[E]ven as accidental symbolism, it’s powerful stuff. A policy that not only recognizes but embraces inevitable global catastrophe is the ultimate expression of Trump’s somehow under-reported nihilism. Obese and rotting, close enough to the physical end himself (and long ago spiritually dead), Trump essentially told his frustrated, pessimistic crowds that America was doomed anyway, so we might as well stop worrying and floor it to the end.
On a policy level, this apocalypse politics is pure corporate cynicism, with Trump’s big-business buddies showing a willingness to kill us all for a few dollars now.
On the bright side: with her money-losing company mothballed and shuttered, at least we won’t be going to hell in one of Ivanka’s handbags.
CHEERS to the skinny brown guy with the funny name. No, not Barack Obama. India's favorite son, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi would've been 149 today. He pretty much wrote the book on non-violent dissent which, closer to home, was adapted to great effect by Martin Luther King, Jr., among others. In honor of his day, some timeless Gandhi wisdom:
"Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment."
“Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man"
"The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
And this one, which seems especially relevant in light of the current Republican war on American democracy:
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it---always."
Good advice. Hell, it’s what got me through the Bush years.
CHEERS to bright medals for bright minds. It's Nobel Prize Giving-Away Week---that most wonderful time of year when I can confirm that, relatively speaking, I'm one dumb-as-rocks sumbitch with a brain that resembles avocado dip past its sell-by date. The latest winner announced yesterday in the "Medicine or Physiology or Dessert Topping" category hails from…USA! USA! USA! Actually, it’s two scientists---one American, one Japanese---happily sharing the prize for their pioneering cancer research.
American James Allison and Japanese Tasuku Honjo won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine on Monday for game-changing discoveries about how to harness and manipulate the immune system to fight cancer. […]
The scientists’ work in the 1990s has since swiftly led to new and dramatically improved therapies for cancers such as melanoma and lung cancer, which had previously been extremely difficult to treat. […]
Allison, professor at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, worked on a protein known as CTLA-4 and realized that if this could be blocked, a brake would be released, unleashing immune cells to attack tumors. Honjo, professor at Kyoto University since 1984, separately discovered a second protein called PD-1 and found that it too acted as an immune system brake, but with a different mechanism.
The good news: as AKALib pointed out yesterday, their work was instrumental in evicting the army of cancerous troglodytes that had taken up residency in President Jimmy Carter's body three years ago. The bad news: they all went to work in the Trump administration.
CHEERS to portraits in contrast. Fifty-one years ago today, on Oct. 2nd, 1967, Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as the newest member of the Supreme Court---the first African-American elevated to the nation's highest bench. He once said:
"Today's Constitution is a realistic document of freedom only because of several corrective amendments. Those amendments speak to a sense of decency and fairness that I and other Blacks cherish."
Fifty-one years later there's another African-American on the bench named Clarence Thomas. He once said, "How did this pubic hair get on my Coke can?" Potato Puhtato.
CHEERS to growing a conscience. I'm just all choked up here. A major conservative publication that wallows in conspiracy theories has just apologized---let me repeat that, apologized---for taking gleeful part in exploiting the tragic Marc Rich story. Rich was the DNC staffer whose 2016 murder was bandied about by Fox News, Breitbart, Alex Jones and many other conservative outlets as a hit job by---who else?---Hillary Clinton. But yesterday The Washington Times issued "a retraction and an apology" of their own accord after they'd realized that they'd behaved like soulless tabloid trash:
The Washington Times published an editorial---“More cover-up questions: The curious murder of Seth Rich poses questions that just won’t stay under the official rug”---in March 2018, written by James A. Lyons, a 90-year-old retired U.S. Navy Admiral. “The Column included statements about Aaron Rich,the brother of former Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich, that we now believe to be false,” the retraction read. […] “The Washington Times apologizes to Mr. Rich and his family,” the retraction concluded.
Oh, wait. Silly me, I should've read it more carefully. It says: "The retraction came as part of a settlement with Aaron Rich." So it was court-ordered decency. A typical conservative non-apology apology written for no other reason than to wriggle out of a legal bind. I guess that explains why the pig on top of The Washington Times'building did a lot of flapping, but no flying.
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 2, 2008
CHEERS to the calm at the center of the storm. A new Gallup poll taken Monday night reveals that people believe Barack Obama is the leader who instills the most confidence in them as Washington hashes out the rescue plan. I can believe it. Yesterday afternoon when he spoke on the Senate floor, I realized that I wasn't listening to him as a senator, but as the President. And although it's been said by many people before, it's worth repeating: we haven't seen a candidate like this in a long time, and I intend to thank him personally when Michelle invites me to the White House for tea. Oh, and just to be fair and balanced, there was good news for John McCain in the poll, too: people believe he's the candidate most qualified to know how to repair a broken watch fob.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to a good start. Yesterday marked the 60th anniversary of the day NASA was established as a part of the dastardly federal government. And thank god it arrived when it did, because other than the deepest depths of the oceans, we'd nearly run out of places on earth to explore. So off into the heavens we went, and today we've got probes probing our solar system and beyond, footsteps on the moon, missions to Mars in the pipeline, and a "research castle in the sky." NASA's research and technology have so successfully paved the way for private entrepreneurship that space tourism will be a booming reality within our lifetime. (I'm planning to live at least 50 more years, how about you?) Puts a lump in your throat, it does…
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For bestowing equal parts engineering brilliance, human ingenuity and endurance, and jaw-dropping wonderment upon the world, we thank you, NASA, as you start your 721st month reaching yonward. The Tang? Eh...not so much.
Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
Trump says he and Kim Jong Un “fell in love” over Cheers and Jeers
---Vox
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