Cheers and Jeers is a weekday Venti latte from the great state of Maine.
It's Election Season, Netroots Nation Style
The organizing elves at Netroots Nation are working on the agenda for the upcoming conference in Denver (August 13-15), and tomorrow is the last day for you to vote on the panels and workshops that have been proposed. Writes Mary Rickles:
The ideas you submitted cover nearly every progressive issue, from conversations on the November elections to sessions on climate change, electoral justice and more. And we received some solid training submissions that appeal to all experience levels.
Your vote helps the scoring committees identify which issues are most important to our community and which submissions have broad public support. The public vote total is an important consideration used in scoring submissions.
Continued...
You can vote for as many sessions as you like, but you only get one vote per session per day. And remember, you can cast a vote every 24 hours.
After tomorrow night's deadline hits, the proposals will be broken up into smaller categories and reviewed by activists and community leaders. (If you'd like to be a reviewer, you can sign up here.)
Click on this link to view and vote on the proposals. (If you’re not registered at the site, it’s simple to get a password.) Please note that my submission, How to Win A Political Argument Every Time With Nothing More Than Logic, a Dark Alley, and a Handkerchief Soaked in Ether, has been deleted. Killjoys.
And now, our feature presentation...
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Cheers and Jeers for Monday, March 9, 2020
Note: I'm taking a stress break from Daily Kos starting right……..now. Okay, I'm back. Thanks. I needed that.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the Biden-Bernie cage match debate in Phoenix: 6
Days 'til the Catawba Valley Pottery Festival in Hickory, North Carolina: 19
Number of debate questions that have been asked of Democratic presidential candidates about how they intend to pay for their social program proposals: 21
Number of questions about paying for our grotesquely large military: 0
Percent of network evening newscasts and Sunday morning shows devoted to the climate crisis in 2019—238 minutes out of 33,000 total—according to Media Matters: 0.7%
Increase in searches for 'misogyny' last Thursday, when Elizabeth Warren left the race, according to Merriam Webster: 2,400%
Percent of men around the world who believe it's okay to crack sex-related jokes at work, versus 16 percent of women, according to new research by researchers from King's College London: 28%
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Puppy Pic of the Day: In Butler County, Ohio, an update on Trooper, the puppy who got hit by a train a year ago…
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CHEERS to gut checks. Pardon me for starting out on the personal side, but today marks a significant anniversary in the history of my existence. Three years ago Mercy Hospital’s ER waiting room was the proud recipient of a bouncing baby Billy-in-agonizing-pain-and-looking-rather-gaunt. Something in my belly had declared war on me, and the 82 Advils I was taking per day just weren’t cutting it anymore.
So they ran some tests, declared me the new poster child for the living dead, wheeled me into an OR at midnight for emergency surgery, gutted me like a fish, took out some stage-3 colon cancer, stapled me back together, took care of my every whim for a week but also stabbed me with many needles and told me I couldn’t watch Judge Judy with the volume set to 99, signed me up for a dozen sessions of chemo (a fizzy Folfox-fluorouracil, Oxaliplatin and Leucovorin cocktail with a lime twist and paper umbrella), helped me with the paperwork to nominate my post-surgery epidural for a Nobel Prize in Medicine, and declared me cancer-free...all the while accepting my Obamacare card with a smile.
I bring this up because a) unlike Francisco Franco, I'm still alive! And b) I want to remind myself what I posted on Facebook shortly before I was discharged, words that ring even more true today with the chaos and confusion of the coronavirus pandemic on our doorstep:
“As for the doctors, nurses and staff here at Mercy Hospital, I would strip every penny from every worthless fucking hedge fund goon in a second and hand it all over to them. We are paying the wrong professionals the wrong wages. I watched these good-humored professionals with my own eyes come to work during an epic blizzard to drain stuff, relieve pain, and make sure we're all doing okay. But it's something they do every day. These people are gods and goddesses among men and women.”
Coincidentally, this week also marks one year since I sat for my last chemo session from a second bout of cancer (in der tum-tum this time) that Mercy’s surgical and oncology teams kicked to the curb. We'll find out next week via CT scan if the "No Rogue Cell Parking Any Time—Tow Away Zone" signs they installed are still working. I'm hoping for smooth sailing. Mainly because I pre-wrote my obituary a dozen years ago and I'll be very disappointed if I don’t, in fact, depart this world in a paragliding collision with fog-shrouded Mount Kilimanjaro at the age of 110. And when I say disappointed I do mean…....very…….disappointed.
CHEERS to getting smacked in the face with a judicial branch. Attorney General Bill Barr walked out in front of a bank of microphones last year and, to protect his boss the president, lied about the findings of the Mueller report, then let his lies bake into the political cake before finally releasing a version of the report that was so heavily redacted it caused a nationwide shortage of black ink. Now a federal judge—appointed by George W. Bush, no less—is now calling Barr out, and this could lead to his ouster:
"The Court cannot reconcile certain public representations made by Attorney General Barr with the findings in the Mueller Report," [Judge Reggie] Walton wrote on Thursday.
Barr's initial publicly-announced interpretation of the findings from former special counsel Robert Mueller "cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary." […]
Walton said he will review it confidentially. He could potentially then order the Justice Department to make more of the report available, under the Freedom of Information public records access law.
Says former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who wrote the regulations governing special counsel investigations: "I’ve never seen a federal judge say this about a sitting Attorney General. Ever." My Monday morning wish: that Judge Walton is a fast reader.
JEERS to parking a new butt in a deck chair on the Titanic. A familiar pattern repeats itself: President Trump "only hires the very best people," and as soon as he's bolted a MAGA hat onto their skulls, they magically turn into incompetent stooges who, upon displeasing the master, quickly "get the very best ax." The latest to be loaded into the catapult:
For the fourth time in three years, President Trump has a new chief of staff.
With his administration grappling with the response to coronavirus—and just months ahead of the next election—Trump tweeted on Friday night that congressional ally Mark Meadows will be his newest top aide at the White House.
Meadows replaces Mick Mulvaney, who like him, was once part of the House Freedom Caucus.
I can explain how ass-kissey and schlumpnutty Rep. Meadows (R-Moscow), a birther and founder of the teabagger caucus, is with this one factoid: he put his "X" on a letter nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. As for Mulvaney, he'll fly across the Atlantic garbage patch to become the new ambassador to Northern Ireland. Or, to be more precise, ambassador to Northern Ireland's golf courses every day from 10 'til 3 and pubs from 5 ‘til midnight.
CHEERS to great moments in wingnut walloping. Sixty-six years ago today, on March 9, 1954, Edward R. Murrow took Ann Coulter's pin-up idol, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, to the cleaners over his Communist witch hunt. His fab-o wrapup could serve as a middle-finger salute to McCarthy's modern-day doppelganger, Deep State Donald:
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. 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."
Senator McCarthy was the ideological right-winger who thought he could bully and bluster his way to power and glory by ruining innocent people’s lives, but ended up ruining his own by getting censured in the Senate and then dying in a cloud of booze and morphine at age 48. Karma’s a what, again?
JEERS to Captain Takesie-Backsie. For a while it looked like Senator Mitt Romney would repeat his act of taking a principled stand against his fellow Trump cultists:
“There’s no question” that a probe into Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden appears politically motivated, Sen. Mitt Romney told reporters Thursday, adding, “I think people are tired of these kind of political investigations." Romney, a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, could block an upcoming subpoena planned by committee head Sen. Ron Johnson [R-Moscow].
But…no:
Sen. Mitt Romney will vote in favor of a subpoena seeking records about the work Joe Biden’s son Hunter did for the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, a spokeswoman for the Utah Republican said on Friday.
You hate to see it: he's developed an acute case of Susan Collins Gooey Spine Syndrome. No hope. No cure. No vaccine. Thoughts and prayers.
CHEERS to shuttle diplomacy. 166 years ago this week, in 1854, U.S. Commodore Matthew C. Perry reached Japan during his second trip there. He came back with the Kanagawa treaty and a runner-up trophy from the karaoke finals.
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 9, 2010
CHEERS to calling in reinforcements. In an effort to root out fraud, waste and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid, President Barack Obama signs an executive order this week. It's basically an APB to private auditors enlisting them as—dum dum da dummmm—bounty hunters! This morning reporters will hold a presser with Director of Strategic Accountability Operations, Dr. Boba Fett. (Whatever you do, guys, don't make him angry and don't bring up the Sarlacc pit.)
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And just one more…
CHEERS to C&J's senior editor. If you want to get an all-too-real sense of how fast time flies, get a puppy and watch how quick (s)he grows up. Our lab mix Haley joined our family seven years ago today. It seems like yesterday.
Haley was rescued from a cruel start to life in Macon, Georgia, and she's faced more challenges than any canine should have to: being unceremoniously dropped off at a shelter in a cage with 13 other puppies…parvovirus…a sinus infection that nearly sealed her nostrils shut…worms…cancer on her face…ligament surgeries on both back legs to compensate for weak ligaments.
Despite all the anxiety and pain, she's grown up to be one of the most zen dogs I've ever known, and she and her Dobbie ears charm everyone she meets. That includes the cat, who makes a point to spring an ambush on Haley at least once a day. So after her seven-year trial run with us, we hope she agrees to re-up for another year. A good sign: her suitcase is still gathering dust under the bed.
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Oh, and there’s a full moon tonight. Be sure to go out in the back yard, look up, think of Katherine Johnson, and give it a wink. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
Backlash to Cheers and Jeers has been growing over the last couple days, but negative responses exploded on social media once Bill in Portland Maine was revealed to be a failed Markos Moulitsas clone.
—Yahoo News
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