From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
>>> 7 <<< Weeks 'til Netroots Nation 2019
Yup. 49 lightning-fast days 'til the July 11-13 convention in Philadelphia, and things are heating up. The big story this week is the announcement of the 80+ panels featuring “the most diverse group of speakers we've ever had” that will fill your brain with facts, inspiration, and several moments of "Why didn’t I think of that?!!" Over to you, Mary Rickles:
Our 2019 agenda includes conversations about how we define and popularize an inclusive, progressive 2020 platform centered on equality, sustainability and justice; case studies showcasing lessons learned from the 2018 primaries; and sessions highlighting efforts to strengthen our democracy, from protecting voting access to ensuring that our elected leadership is responsive to their constituents and communities.
We're also featuring lots of content highlighting the organizing and activism happening in Philadelphia, particularly around issues like criminal justice and education. And this year's lineup includes panels on bold progressive solutions to issues like poverty, gun violence, healthcare, foreign policy and more.
Among the panels: the Daily Kos Elections Team’s annual demonstration of their encyclopedic knowledge of what’s happening in even the most obscure congressional districts. Click here to see the full list. And Click here to see the list of training workshops.
► The New Tools Showcase is back. Netroots Nation is partnering with New Media Ventures to highlight new products, apps or other techno breakthroughs that can benefit progressive organizers and/or beam the Republican party to a parallel planet so it can no longer destroy ours. Just click here to submit your idea. Application period ends June 4th.
► Besides Ben Franklin, Philadelphia is also world-famous as the stomping grounds of Daily Kos contributing editor and Netroots Nation board member Adam Bonin (aka “Adam B”). Recently C&J asked him to recommend a few must-visit spots in town, and here's the first in our series:
Reading Terminal Market
Philadelphia's amazing, diverse public market (open since 1893) is right across the street from the conference. Eat every meal you can there. My favorites: the Dienner's rotisserie wings; noodle soup at Sang Kee Peking Duck House; and the roast beef sandwich at DiNic's.
Adam is also the evil genius behind the annual Pub Quiz, and he dropped a hint as to what might be included in this year's categories: "I welcome the opportunity to work in even more local content that usual, because who among us cannot name each of Boyz II Men's #1 hits?"
►Registration info is here. Hotels info is here.
► Follow Netroots Nation via Twitter here and evil Facebook here.
Stay tuned for keynoters and other fun stuff in future updates. Until then, make sure your reservations are locked in and your walkin' shoes are getting properly broken in..
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, May 23, 2019
Note: Just a quick heads-up that C&J will not appear in the pages of this online supermarket coupon clipper Monday, so that we may commemorate the Memorial Day holiday and also incur our first self-inflicted Jarts wounds of the summer of aught nineteen. Back Tuesday with high praise for Obamacare's puncture-wound provisions.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Amnesty International Day: 5
Days 'til Fairport Canal Days in New York: 8
Percent of Americans who approve of Alabama's abortion law, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll: 31%
Estimated number of missions—crewed and un-crewed—that will go to the moon as part of NASA's Artemis program: 37
Expected year when construction on a lunar surface outpost will start: 2028
Days it took Rachel Maddow's new book Blow Out, which doesn’t come out until October, to hit the top 10 best-seller list at Amazon.com: 0
Speed at which the tip of a 1/3-inch hour hand on a wristwatch travels: 0.00000275 mph
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
[A]pproximately one fourth of all fertilized eggs are swept out on the menstrual tide before they even get near to implanting themselves in the uterine wall, and we do not hold funerals over Kotex or Tampax.
I suggest to you this means that the beginning of life is not a single specific event, but rather a process that deserves increasing respect as it continues toward birth---precisely the tripartite system set up under Roe v. Wade (and if you hear Roe v. Wade described as "abortion on demand," you are listening to a liar).
I respect those who oppose abortion, but I do not think they have a right to use the law as an instrument of coercion against people who do not believe (and it is a matter of faith) as they do. ... There were an estimated one million abortions a year in this country before Roe. Abortion can be safe and legal, or dirty and illegal. It cannot be stopped.
---From Who Let the Dogs In? (2004, Random House)
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Puppy Pic of the Day: In Bakersfield, California, Oakley the miracle puppy recovers…
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CHEERS to anticipation. Hooray! Only one more day 'til the start of the Memorial Day Weekend and then it'll be July 4th and then back-to-school and then Thanksgiving and then Christmas 'n Hanukkah 'n Festivus and then "Happy New Year 2020!" and then fucking winter and then primary season then spring and then easter and then only one more day 'til the start of the Memorial Day weekend. Oh, the joy of having been around the block a few times.
CHEERS to unpacking the legislative crowbars. Briefly recapping the last umpteen years: Donald Trump has committed absolutely no financial wrongdoing, and to prove it he's moving heaven and earth to prevent any of his tax returns from seeing the light of day. Now that we've got you up to speed, let's continue our story…
Democrats in New York state passed a pair of bills Wednesday that would allow Congress to get hold of President Donald Trump's state tax returns amid an escalating fight with top administration officials over access to the President's federal returns.
The main legislation, which passed the state assembly 84 to 53, would require the state's tax commissioner to provide New York state tax returns to Congress upon request from the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, or the Joint Committee on Taxation. […]
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, is expected to sign the legislation.
We hear Trump was so mad when he heard the news that he ordered Stephen Miller to order Jared Kushner to order Mick Mulvaney to order the next random person who comes along and looks like they have the strength to pick up a chair to throw one across the room.
CHEERS to citizens in action. Tuesday's #StopAbortionBans rallies took place—as usual—forcefully yet peacefully in cities and towns across the country. Happily, they seemed to get a good dose of press coverage, although there are still way too many local and national news outfits that dishonestly make it look like we're divided right down the middle on overturning Roe v. Wade. (The reality: 23 percent say do it and 77 percent say don’t you effing dare.) Pro-choice state legislatures are also weighing in to provide a counterbalance to the anti-women chambers in Alabama, Missouri and other red states. One of them is Nevada, whose woman-majority assembly is showing what it means to bust the men down to minority status:
She didn’t plan to say it. Yvanna Cancela, a newly elected Democrat in the Nevada Senate, didn’t want to “sound crass.” But when a Republican colleague defended a century-old law requiring doctors to ask women seeking abortions whether they’re married, Cancela couldn’t help firing back. “A man is not asked his marital status before he gets a vasectomy,” she countered—and the packed hearing room fell silent.
Since Nevada seated the nation’s first majority-female state legislature in January, the male old guard has been shaken up by the perspectives of female lawmakers. […] More than 17 pending bills deal with sexual assault, sex trafficking and sexual misconduct, with some measures aimed at making it easier to prosecute offenders. Bills to ban child marriage and examine the causes of maternal mortality are also on the docket.
“I can say with 100 percent certainty that we wouldn’t have had these conversations" a few years ago, said Assembly Majority Leader Teresa Benitez-Thompson (D). "None of these bills would have seen the light of day."
This week, bills rolling back anti-abortion laws passed the assembly in Nevada. Not to be outdone, Maine, now under leadership of our first woman governor and with a legislature made up of roughly 40 percent women, is on its way to expanding abortion services here. “Thank god,” said all the cheating Republicans not out loud.
CHEERS to the visionaries. 232 years ago this week, the Constitutional Convention opened in Philadelphia with George Washington presiding. They came to blows over their first order of business, but after much quill-stabbing and cane-beating, they finally agreed: We hereby resolve that Cheesesteak shall not be considered Cheesesteak without Cheez Whiz. It was mostly smooth sailing from there.
JEERS to pandemonium across the pond. Today's the big day over in Brexit Land, aka the now-blinkered-in-the-head island of zombies formerly known as "Great" Britain. They're voting today in the European Union elections to decide which members will join the EU parliament for five months until they break ties in October. Reuters reports:
Views among Britons, who voted 52% to 48% to leave the EU, have polarized, with opinion polls showing strongly pro-Brexit and pro-EU parties are set to gain votes at the expense of May’s governing Conservatives and the opposition Labour Party.
According to data from pollsters YouGov, only one in five of those who voted Conservative at the last national election in 2017 are planning to vote for the party on Thursday, with 62% instead planning to back Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. In turn, Labour is mainly losing voters to remain-supporting parties. […]
Britons, who are due to elect 73 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), will vote between 0600 GMT and 2100 GMT on Thursday, with results announced from 2100 GMT on May 26.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Theresa May's goose looks to be cooked as yet another plan to save her hide appears destined to end up in the kipper chipper. The Guardian's conclusion: "What happens next is uncertain." If there was a Pulitzer Prize for understatement…
CHEERS to literary opposite-of-greatness. You'll never guess who's breaking into the exciting world of publishing. And the reason you'll never guess is because he's a shitbag who has no business publishing anything. But Donald Trump, Jr.—I forget, is he Uday's doppelganger or Qusay's?—has signed a publishing contract to vomit up a book. Or, rather, to have a ghostwriter vomit up a book while Junior catches some Zzz’s poolside. And right on cue, the twitterverse stepped in to helpfully suggest some titles, such as…
Malice in Blunderland
The Art of the Shitheel
The Catcher in the Lie
Twelve Years a Slave to Russian Banks
The Fault in Our Genes
Belittle Women
‘I Love It!’: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Collusion
The Grifts of Wrath
Moby Dickhead
We don’t know much about the content yet apart from "politics, current events, and the future of the MAGA movement.” But one thing we know for sure: when he turns in the peanut butter and jelly-stained manuscript, the publisher’s proofers will do their editing in a padded cell and be put on suicide watch for the duration.
CHEERS to the end of the road. On May 23, 1934, bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde were caught in a police ambush as they tried to escape in a Ford Fordor Deluxe Sedan near Bienville Parish, Louisiana. Over 130 bullets were pumped into the car, turning it into a piece of metal Swiss cheese. Figures...one day after the warranty expired.
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Ten years ago in C&J: May 23, 2009
HA HA! to clumsy takesy-backsies. Have you noticed how many times Republicans publish bullshit on their blogs or web sites and end up pulling them down because they get shamed by normal people? One more example reared its hilarious head this week. Here's the scoop:
Last week, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) named William Smith as the chief counsel for the GOP on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
David Ingram of Legal Times reports today that Smith recently compared support for same-sex marriage to support for pedophilia. In a blog post that has now been taken down, Smith responded to former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt’s [pro-gay-marriage] speech to the Log Cabin Republicans by writing that he wondered "if next week Schmidt will take his close minded stump speech to a NAMBLA meeting. For those unfamiliar with NAMBLA, the acronym is for North American Man Boy Love Association." Smith also compared same-sex marriage to bestiality.
Which always, in my mind, prompts the question: how do you know so much about NAMBLA and bestiality, sir? Let me guess: either Wikipedia or "That one time at band camp."
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And just one more…
JEERS to GBCW'ing this popsicle stand too damn early. Kossack jbou had a deliriously strange mind that turned cynicism into gonzo humor (as one Kossack put it: "funny as hell and sometimes challenging"), and to try and encapsulate it beyond that would be futile. jbou---no, spellchecker, I DON'T want to capitalize the j, thank you---died three years ago this week. In his honor, a few nuggets from the jbou archives---we spun the j-wheel and landed on May of 2015:
★ Save the planet! Jupiter, that is. Or Mars. Not this one. This one is terrible.
★ Television disappointed me after I grew up and moved to the city and it turned out none of my neighbors were Muppets.
★ GOP presidential candidate announcements are now coming faster than Adobe Acrobat updates.
★ If Miracle Whip were really miraculous it would be Nutella.
★ Always make one unobtainable goal so when you've completed your real goals this fucker will keep the infinite void that surrounds us at bay.
★ Ask your drugs if doctors are right for you.
★ Nobody starts out eating eight spiders when they sleep. You try out one or two until you work up a nice rhythm.
★ Haystacks would be lost without needles.
★ When you are resigned to your fate, the cigarette and blindfold come naturally.
★ A lobotomy? You mean like a fresh start? Where do I sign up?
★ Okay, back to crying in the 7-eleven parking lot.
The world remains a little less weird without jbou. And, yes, we’ve filed that sentence with the universe’s "Complaints" department.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are youcheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
“I think Bill in Portland Maine is the most impressive, by far, Kossack in terms of just raw splashing in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool.”
---Brit Hume
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