Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

Energize An Ally Tuesday

Uberbuttwipefuhrer Stephen Miller and his assistant Donald Trump, having failed to get anyone to pay for their stupid border wall, are now holding the children of asylum seekers hostage in chain-link cages under the leaking roofs of dilapidated and abandoned warehouses and box stores as Jeff Sessions reads passages of death and destruction from the Old Testament over the loudspeakers. Just the kind of change the coal miners wanted, right?

I knew my Tuesday morning call to energize an ally would be focused on an organization that’s on the front lines in the fight to stop the madness, and here’s a good one I learned about over the weekend...one that’s working in tandem to defend the rights of the men, women and especially children currently being terrorized by America's executive branch: the Urban Justice Center’s Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project (ASAP):

We have heard story after story of young children being ripped from the arms of their parents without any idea of when they will see each other again. Since its founding, the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project has fought the failings of our immigration system through rapid response legal assistance and an online community center that helps thousands of asylum-seeking mothers access legal information and build community power by sharing their experiences with other mothers across the nation.

In federal court, we have been fighting family separation by suing CBP and ICE on behalf of a client and her seven-year-old son who were separated from their husband and father for more than five months. We will continue working with our client to demand justice for her family and set a precedent for thousands of other families who have faced similar harm by the system.

Our clients have traveled thousands of miles and braved dangerous terrain to bring their families to safety. We fight alongside them to keep their families in the United States and safe from harm. The current administration has shown great disregard for the lives of asylum seekers, and ASAP will continue to fight back against worsening human rights violations.

If you feel so inclined (C&J seeds the pot by kicking in $25 for all of our Tuesday “Energize An Ally” organizations), you can make a tax-deductible donation that "supports the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project’s work on behalf of refugee families who cannot otherwise access legal aid" by clicking on the ASAP donation page here.

Follow ASAP on Twitter here, and on the evil Facebook here.  Oh, and one more thing: 140 days until the midterm elections. Think blue.

Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...

Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, June 19, 2018

Note: What's better than summer in Maine?  A summer Kossack meetup in Maine!  If you'll be in the vicinity of the western part of the state on Saturday, June 30, Kossack Mayim invites you to her cabin on the lake.  For more info, see her diary here. To RSVP: email Mayim at books.cats.knitting[at]gmail.com. Michael and I and Haley the Wonder Dog will be there with bells water wings on.  Hope to see you there.

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By the Numbers:

4 days!!!

Days 'til Independence Day: 15

Days 'til the Boise Music Festival: 4

Percent of U.S. voters who support the GOP daylight robbery of the middle class posing as a middle class tax cut, according to PPP: 31%

Percent chance that Summer Zervos’ defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump can continue, according to the New York Court of Appeals: 100%

Percent of Americans who believe anything concrete will come from Trump’s meeting with genocidal maniac Kim Jong Un, according to a new Reuters-Ipsos poll: 25%

Drop in diaper sales between 2017 and 2018: 6%

Number of pubs in Britain in the 1970s and today, respectively: 75,000 / 50,000

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NEW Tuesday Feature: “I Love New Orleans!”

Brought to you by the 2018 Netroots Nation Convention in New Orleans, August 2-4. I’m not sure if we’ll make it there or not, but Preservation Hall is definitely high up on the list of sites we hope to see during #NN18…

New Orleans’ Preservation Hall was established in 1961 to honor one of America’s truest art forms---Traditional New Orleans Jazz. Operating as a music venue, a touring band, and a non-profit organization, Preservation Hall continues its mission today as a cornerstone of New Orleans music and culture.

The legendary (and tiny) Preservation Hall stage.

Situated in the heart of the French Quarter on St. Peter Street, the Preservation Hall venue presents intimate, acoustic New Orleans Jazz concerts over 350 nights a year featuring ensembles from a current collective of 100+ local master practitioners. On any given night, audiences bear joyful witness to the evolution of this venerable and living tradition.

Important tip: if you go to hear ‘em play, don’t yell out “Needs more cowbell!” unless you get excited at the prospect of involuntarily pooping out a sousaphone the next morning.

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Puppy Pic of the Day: C&J’s lab mix Haley had fun at Portland, Maine’s LGBT Pride Festival Saturday. Hat tip---literally---to Kossacks Shermanesque and Doggie for providing the mouse ears…

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CHEERS to those darn kids: road trip edition. The Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School students kicked off their “Road to Change” tour on Friday, with the dual goals of 1) raising awareness of the sensible gun-control laws they want to get passed and 2) registering young people to vote so they can help sweep in politicians who will actually vote for those laws. Here’s a quick recap of their stop in Chicago from Now This, which focuses on the father of Parkland victim Joaquin Oliver, who is joining the tour and creating his unique murals along the way:

After losing his 17-year-old son, Manuel Oliver is touring the country with the Parkland students and using his art to demand an end to gun violence pic.twitter.com/3jwt3un3GY

— EveryBody vs Trump (@EVRYBODYvsTRUMP) June 18, 2018

This week they’re making stops in Omaha, Sioux City, Cedar Rapids, Marion, Iowa, and Janesville, Wisconsin…with big weekend events lined up for Milwaukee and Minneapolis. So far the Road to Change tour has been a success, and everybody’s really happy with the way things are going. With the exception of the bus driver, who will be starting his own campaign once this one is over: Road to Getting 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall Out of My Head.

CHEERS to leveling the playing field.  54 years ago today, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved by the Senate---73-27---after making it through a 57-day Dixiecrat filibuster:

"One hundred and eighty-eight years ago this week a small band of valiant men began a long struggle for freedom," [President Lyndon] Johnson told the nation.  "Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders."  The analogy was unmistakable.  The president was comparing the work of the Founding Fathers with that of the civil rights movement.

June 19, 1964: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is hugged by Lennette Pembleton in her husband's restaurant in St. Augustine after hearing the senate passed the Civil Rights Act.

Martin Luther King, who was present at the White House signing ceremony, also had no doubts about the significance of the day or about Lyndon Johnson's role in making the civil rights bill law.  "It was a great moment," King declared, "something like the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln."

When Johnson signed it he reportedly said, "It is an important gain, but I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come."  A regular Nostradamus in a Stetson, he was.

CHEERS to great moments in freedom.  And speaking of civil rights, on June 19, 1862---"Juneteenth" we call it now---slavery was outlawed in the existing and future federal territories.  For such a groundbreaking event, the language was pretty straightforward:

"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the passage of this act there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the Territories of the United States now existing, or which may at any time hereafter be formed or acquired by the United States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”

The good news: that was a long time ago.  The bad news: not long enough.

CHEERS to frontier justice. Out Kansas-way, attorney general, governor’s candidate, and voter-fraud mythmaker KrisKobach got hisself in a corn-silo-sized heap ‘o trouble, by gum. Seems a judge don’t like vote suppressin’ much…

A federal judge on Monday ruled that Kansas’ proof of citizenship voter registration requirement was a violation of the Constitution as well as the National Voter Registration Act.

“I’m with Stupid.”
”And Stupid’s with me.”

U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson had in previous orders temporarily blocked the requirement, which was championed by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Robinson on Monday handed down her final decision on the case, which went to trial earlier this year.

Her 100-plus page opinion also knocked Kobach, who defended the law himself in court, for his “history of non-compliance with this Court’s orders,” and imposed “sanctions responsive to Defendant’s repeated and flagrant violations of discovery and disclosure rules.”

Adding insult to injury: the judge ordered Kobach to go back to the legal profession’s equivalent of remedial driver’s ed class---and spend six hours re-learning the ABCs of law. I hope they make him stay after class to clap the erasers. But not quite as much as I hope someone gets pics of him staying after class to clap the erasers.

CHEERS to getting a postcard from one of the kids. I don’t know who put the bee in its bonnet, but Mars is an angry planet these days, as evidenced by a huge “planet-circling” dust storm. (Or, for you conspiracy theorists, a green-screened “dust storm” created by Industrial Light and Magic to maintain the illusion that there’s a planet Mars, when in fact it’s just a Styrofoam ball on a string.)  We have two rovers workin’ the surface, Opportunity and Curiosity, and while the status of the former is unknown, the latter just sent back a pic with the storm---which poses no danger to it---in the background:

A lot of sharp-eyed people are asking how the probe could’ve taken that pic when there’s no evidence of a selfie stick. Easy: a Martian was holding Curiosity’s camera. And its beer.

CHEERS to today’s sumer skool spellin’ lessonns.  Our stable and indefatigable genius leader, the seven-foot-four Donald J. Trump, has decided that some words have not been spelled correctly throughout the history of our country. Your assignment today---and throughout the summer---is to learn the proper spelling of important words based on the infallible gut of our Commander-In-All-Things. Please pay attention, as Betsy DeVos will later quiz you on these, and failure to achieve an A+ will get you locked up in a cage:

Lesson 1 Imigration  (The second m was removed by ICE because it had no papers.)

Lesson 2 The United State (The s was removed because we are all in one state now: the state of WINNING!)

Lesson 3 Missle (The second “i” was removed so it would take less time to spell, giving our brave men and women in the silos a faster lead time to launch our missiles at Canada, France, and our other enemies.)

Also: Trump retroactively wins all the National Spelling Bees throughout history.

Lesson 4 Stoped (The first “p” was deep-sixed because combined with the second one it spelled “pee-pee.” Another perfectly good word ruined by the Deep State.)

Lesson 5 Boarders (Because Democrats ruined the word “borders” with all their whining and complaining. It’s like we can’t terrorize children in peace without their meddling anymore.)

Lesson 6 Countries (The new possessive of “country.” The president was also going to take off the “o” but the chicks would get all up in a tizzy and he’s got enough problems with that right now, especially now that he no longer has Michael Cohen to cough up the hush money.)

If your spellchecker objects to any of these glorious changes, zap it with a taser and lock it up in a cage with Clippy.

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Ten years ago in C&J: June 19, 2008

JEERS to another turn in the spin cycle.  The official line from the Bush-McCain administration: "Things are great in Baghdad!  We're winning!  Go shopping!  Five rugs for five bucks!"  The official line from the insurgents: ”KABOOM!” Over 60 dead, nearly 100 wounded. Rinse. Repeat. Victory!

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And just one more…

CHEERS to U.S. Minty freshness. The new America the Beautiful state quarter is here!  The new America the Beautiful state quarter is here!!! The latest in the series, which celebrates our national historic sites, was released last week. This one represents the great state of Minnesota, specifically Voyageurs National Park:

The voyageur---a French word meaning traveler, the namesake of Voyageurs National Park---began journeying through these interconnected waterways over 250 years ago; waterways that are one of the most important segments of the fur trade route used to open the "Great Northwest".

As park visitors travel the lakes today, it is easy to imagine the voyageurs of the past dipping their canoe paddles into the clear, dark waters to the rhythm of their songs, gliding past the rock and pines of this northern landscape.

Voyageurs National Park was established in 1975, but is filled with evidence of over 10,000 years of human life and use. Signs of Native Americans, fur traders, and homesteaders, signs of logging, mining, and commercial fishing are scattered throughout the park.

Watch the process of creating the quarter here. The reverse side of the coin features a Minnesota loon. The bird kind. But only because Michele Bachmann wouldn’t sit still long enough for the engraver.

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:

Cheers and Jeers may be engaging, smart and witty, but to say it's as impressive as the Abbreviated Pundit Roundup? That's a stretch.

---Dann Gire, Daily Herald

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