Netroots Nation 2021 Update
If you haven't heard yet, this year's big Netroots convention, which sprang out of this humble blog in 2006, has been moved from Washington D.C. to your house. It's a three-day virtual "at-home-aganza" (thank you, pandemic) that starts October 7th—just three weeks from today. Register here.
Virtually everything that makes the convention one of the wonders of the modern world is still scheduled, including blue-ribbon panels, practical training sessions, A-list keynoters, and, yes, even Adam B's legendary Pub Quiz. Below the fold we've got an endorphin-tickling list of what we know so far.
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Netroots Nation 2021: What We Know So Far
★ Over 60 panels and training sessions are set to go. Among them: a panel on expanding SCOTUS to protect abortion rights featuring Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and a conversation on threats to voting rights with state Secretaries of State Shenna Bellows (ME), Jena Griswold (CO), Denise Merrill (CT) and Jocelyn Benson (MI).
★ Some of the keynoters were announced this week, and they include Sen. Tina Smith, Rep. Mondaire Jones, Rep. Raul Grijalva, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Wisconsin Lt. Gov and Senate candidate Mandela Barnes, and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. More will be announced soon.
★ We’re working on a pre-convention C&J meetup via Zoom. We did one last year and it was a hoot.
★ Adam B's annual Pub Quiz is happening Thursday, October 7, at 7pm ET. You can form your own team or join an existing one. Details via the app when you register.
★ Everyone who registers gets an official NN21 T-shirt.
★ You can check out the full list of panels here, and also the FAQ page on Virtual NN21 here.
★ To secure your online access to the event and the app just click here and register.
★ You can also follow Netroots Nation on Twitter here and on evil Facebook here.
★ ← This……..is a star, baby, a star!!!
C&J will keep you in the loop as more speakers and events are announced.
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, September 23, 2021
Note: Oh no!!! I forgot that I signed up to teach a crisis management class on Thursday mornings and I'm late! What'll I do??? WHAT'LL I DO?????!!!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Halloween: 38
Days 'til the Little Falls Cheese Festival in New York: 9
Effectiveness of the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine when followed up with a booster shot: 94%
Support for the Democrats' $3.5 trillion climate/health care/child care reconciliation bill among Americans polled by Fox News: 56%
Percent in the same Fox poll who support a mask mandate for students and teachers, and a vaccine mandate for teachers, respectively: 67%, 61%
Rank of Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, California, and Wyoming on LawnStarter's latest list of best states to visit in the fall: #1, #2, #3, #4, #5
Age of Umeno Sumiyama and Koume Kodama, certified as the world's oldest living identical twins by the Guinness Book of World Records: 107 years, 321 days
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment—Double Play!
The Republicans are worried about the flag, gay marriage and the terrible burden of the estate tax on the rich. The rest of us are obviously unnecessarily worried about war, peace, the economy, the environment and civilization. Another reason to vote Republican—they have a shorter list.
—June, 2006
I'm in favor of all the election reforms being advocated by the goo-goos (short for good government groups), plus I am indebted to a blogger on DailyKos.com for the brilliant notion that George Soros should buy Diebold Co. The country's leading manufacturer of electronic voting machines is currently headed by a Bush Pioneer, which is enough to give anyone the creeps.
Other liberal billionaires could buy the other voting-machine companies, and then they should be put into a public trust whose workings are open to everyone.
—November, 2004
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Puppy Pic of the Day: a mini version of King Kong…
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CHEERS to restoring order in the courts. President Biden is adding federal judges to the bench at the fastest pace in half a century, hand to god, no joke, ladies and gentlemen, no joke. And the quality of them, compared to the orcs the previous POTUS and his Senate majority leader lap dog installed, is much higher. Not-so-slowly but surely, Joe's restoring balance and competence to our highest courts:
The Senate voted Monday night to confirm Veronica Rossman to a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit―making her the only former public defender on that court and one of just a handful within the entire U.S. appeals court system.[…]
Rossman’s confirmation is a win for President Joe Biden on two fronts. She adds to his current record of confirming more judges than any president in the last 50 years by this point in their terms. And she is the latest example of Biden following through on a promise to bring badly needed diversity to the nation’s courts―both in terms of demographics like race and gender but also in terms of professional backgrounds.
Rossman, 49, has spent most of her career as a public defender, representing people in court who could not afford an attorney.
According to Ballotpedia, "Rossman was rated as Qualified by a substantial majority of the American Bar Association." In the plus column: impressive education, well-crafted arguments, and tenacity in the pursuit of justice. In the minus column: propensity for celebrating victories in court by dispensing purple nurples to opposing counsel. (Although some of us consider that an asset. If she can just get close enough to Brett Kavanaugh one day...)
JEERS to grinding it out in Congress. If you're asking me what the state of voting rights and health care and child care and infrastructure and the Equality Act and immigration reform and climate change and raising the debt ceiling are going in the House and Senate, here's the clearest, most concise answer I could find:
I'm glad you asked! But I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that you're not.
CHEERS to Great Moments in Democracy. 232 years ago this week, in 1789, the First Federal Congress adopted twelve amendments to the Constitution and FedEx'd them to all 50 states for ratification. Ten of those amendments became the Bill of Rights. Had this same event occurred in recent times, Republicans would've re-written them to please ALEC, Grover Norquist, the NRA, Franklin Graham, and the remaining Koch brother, then rammed them through without any committee hearings or floor debate. But my point is: Ha Ha! They wore funny grampa socks back then! Seriously, those socks.
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BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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END BRIEF SANITY BREAK
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CHEERS to circling the wagons. Oh, hey, did you know that there are midterm elections next year? I looked it up in the Old Farmer's Almanac, and by god the moss on the trees says it's true! Apparently Democrats stand a good chance of losing control of the Senate, which would grind the entire country to a halt. (There's a reason Biden is ramping up the speed of his judicial conveyor belt to 11.) If we pass some good stuff and get covid under control, we might beat back the red-hatted cultists. But it'll take thread-the-needle organization and lots of money to make it happen, and apparently that's underway as we speak:
Senate Democrats are accelerating their 2022 midterm election efforts with a $30 million field organizing push targeting nine states that will help determine control of the chamber. The program, Defend the Majority, details of which were shared with NBC News, represents the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's largest financial commitment this early in a cycle, officials with the group said.
The DSCC investment initially will focus on Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. […] The money, which will pass through the state parties and other coordinated campaigns, is expected to pay for field staff and offices, organizing and communications programs, and staff for a previously announced voter protection initiative.
They're also trying to come up with a pithy bumper sticker slogan for 2022. I have one: DEMOCRATS: NOT TRYING TO OVERTHROW THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT SINCE 1776.
CHEERS to great moments in naval warfare. On September 23, 1779, during our War of Independence, Commodore John Paul George Ringo Jones, aboard the U.S.S. Bonhomme Richard (named as a tribute to Ben Franklin) engaged the British man-of-war Serapis in the North Sea. It was during this battle that Jones uttered the immortal words, "I have not yet begun to fight." Less known was the response from his crew: "Wild guess: you're a Trump."
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Ten years ago in C&J: September 23, 2011
CHEERS to the sound of silence. Hey, remember all those right-wing protests over the planned American Islamic community center near the hallowed World Trade Center site (and also, let's not forget, near the not-protested stripper bar near the hallowed World Trade Center site)? Remember when Donald Trump figured that the American Muslims were worthy of being located exactly five blocks away because that was…um…the appropriate distance from the WTC site just because he said so? Well, the Park 51 community center opened Wednesday with nary a peep. And now everyone will see that all the anger and accusations and condescension were one-hundred percent unjustified and born out of simple bigotry and hate. I love happy endings, don’t you?
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And just one more…
JEERS to using your pet as a human shield. On this date in 1952, in perhaps the earliest demonstration of the power of political persuasion via the boob tube, Ike's VP candidate Richard Nixon delivered a milestone in televised ass-covering when he gave his famous Checkers speech on national TV. Talk about laying it on thick:
“I should say this, that Pat doesn't have a mink coat. But she does have a respectable Republican cloth coat, and I always tell her she would look good in anything.
One other thing I probably should tell you, because if I don't they will probably be saying this about me, too. We did get something, a gift, after the election.
A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog and, believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog, in a crate that he had sent all the way from Texas—black and white, spotted, and our little girl Tricia, the six year old, named it Checkers.
And you know, the kids, like all kids, loved the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we are going to keep it.”
Noting his blatant disregard for the law, the FEC hauled his ass off to jail, where he languished for 40 years and afterward couldn’t get elected to even a municipal sewer commission. [Poof!!!] Whoa. I just had the coolest dream.
Have a nice Thursday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
After much deliberation, NASA has selected an intriguing spot for its upcoming Artemis rover mission: the rugged edge of the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool.
—Gizmodo
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