From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
And Now For Something Completely Different
Congress is hopelessly deadlocked. Our president is an incompetent nincompoop. His cabinet is made up of the biggest bunch of wrecking balls ever assembled, and half of 'em still can't find the light switch in their offices. Climate change rolls merrily on. The rest of the world thinks we've gone insane. And the Red Sox are *only* 3½ games ahead in the AL East.
But screw all that terribleness. It is insignificant. For the moment, at least. This is the morning after the night that Earthling technology came within a whisker of sucking face with Jupiter's giant, 10,000-mile-wide red spot.
The NASA probe Juno---launched deliberately for my birthday on August 5, 2011---is close to completing its investigation of the planet and is now making some extra-close flybys before it plunges to its planned demise next February. Last night it swung within a mere 5,600 miles of the red spot, snapping candids like a galactic paparazzo and zapping them back to the nearest Fotomat hut for processing. Soon (this Friday) we'll be treated to a bounty of red spot amazeballs. Until they arrive, enjoy these as placeholders, all cool in their own right:
Follow all the action at the NASA site and their twitter feed. Saturn may have the rings, Pluto may have the sympathy vote, Venus may have its own anthem by Bananarama, and Mars may have the Martians. But Jupiter's the big kid on the block, and we just got a close-up look at its big red pre-existing condition.
P.S Now let's send a human to Jupiter. I recommend Kellyanne Conway.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, July 11, 2017
Note: America is great again. Mr. Trump, you may now step down. Terrific job!
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the solar eclipse: 41
Days 'til the 36th annual Prince Lot Hula Festival at Moanalua Gardens, Hawaii: 4
Percent chance that the CDC says people in rural areas are more prone to getting cancer than people in urban areas: 100%
Number of opioid painkillers that have been taken off the market because of abuse: 1 (Opana)
Year by which France plans to completely phase out electricity from coal: 2022
Percent of North Korea's imports and exports that are traded with China: 80%
Percent chance that New Jersey Democratic assemblyman John Wisniewski introduced legislation forbidding the governor's beach house from being used during a state government shutdown: 100%
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NEW Tuesday Feature! "Georgia On My Mind"
Brought to you by the 2017 Netroots Nation Convention in Atlanta August 10-13. Register by this Saturday and you can save some moolah with a $50 registration discount for Daily Kos readers. You can get it by clicking here. (Make sure the promo code DAILYKOS is filled in.) And now, courtesy of interestingfunfacts.com, we bring you…interesting Atlanta fun facts!!!
> In 2010, Atlanta was ranked as the seventh most visited city in the United States, with 35 million visitors per year.
> Maynard Holbrook Jackson, Jr. became the first African American mayor of Atlanta in 1974.
> With a passenger terminal that is equivalent to the size of more than 45 football fields, the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport still holds the title of ‘the world’s busiest airport’.
> From 1843 to 1844 Atlanta was called Marthasville.
> The state capitol building in Atlanta is layered with pure gold which was mined out from Dahlonega, Georgia.
> Atlanta’s area is second to Washington DC in terms of federal regional concentration.
> Atlanta is one of the greenest cities in US with the largest suburban office park in the world called the Perimeter Center.
> There are 41 public golf courses in Atlanta.
If you failed to find these interesting or fun, you may return them for a full refund minus the 25% restocking fee.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Tis the season…
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JEERS to uncertainty. Now that our nation's soft-handed Senators are back from their vacation, it's time for everybody to get back to the most important task at hand: opposing the Trumpcare bill now stinking like a rotting fish on Mitch McConnell's desk until it's dead, dead, dead. Fortunately, it looks like the GOP may have fucked it up beyond all repair, thanks in part to the fact that the president himself hasn't given a speech, held a town hall meeting, or sent out a single email to his base promoting it. But they're forging ahead anyway, and that's still cause for alarm…
The Senate will get to work again this week to settle differences over the legislation, called the Better Care Reconciliation Act, with the goal of holding a vote next week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was forced to postpone a vote he had planned to hold before the July 4th recess due to a lack of votes.
Selling it is unlikely to get any easier after many members of Congress spent the past week in their home states, listening to---and in some cases avoiding---voters who have concerns about the legislation. […]
The policy disagreements between moderates and conservatives have served to dampen public support for the bill. “You don’t see a lot of senators talking about why it’s a great bill,” said Conant.
You know the drill: keep making those calls to your senators. Stick up for Medicaid. Stick up for Planned Parenthood. And stick up for your family, friends and neighbors whose health insurance may be on the verge of being yanked away by the Republicans so they can shift the money to their rich gated-community benefactors. The more personal you can make it, the better. I, for example, threatened to send the drainage bag from my cancer surgery to Susan Collins, who promptly changed her vote to "No! No! A thousand times NO!" Remember: this bill ain't dead until Chuck Schumer tosses flowers on the grave himself.
CHEERS to liberation day. It was all smiles and cheers Sunday as the Iraqi government finally declared---after a 9-month siege---victory in Mosul, one of it's strongest holdouts. The defeat of ISIS there means…
…the near-end of the most grueling campaign against the extremist group to date and a near-fatal blow to the survival of its self-declared caliphate.
Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has arrived in Mosul to personally congratulate the Iraqi security forces “on achieving victory,” a statement from his office said. […]
Thousands of civilians had poured out of the city’s final pockets of Islamic State territory in recent weeks, many of them in tears as they stumbled to safety. Stuck between the Islamic State and the U.S.-led coalition airstrikes propelling the campaign to save them, many said they had spent weeks with barely any food or water. Without medical care, the wounded had died in or under their homes.
A reminder that war is hell, whether it's army-against-army or just against a ragtag bunch of fanatical assholes. Now comes the work of rebuilding the city. If it was up to me the first team of rubble removers I'd send in would be Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Condi and all their cheerleaders who led to the rise of ISIS in the first place. And their wheelbarrows would all have square wheels.
CHEERS to "#6." On July 11, 1767, John Quincy Adams---who, despite historian Michele Bachmann's claim, was not a founding father---was born in Braintree, Massachusetts. His presidency was, oh, let's call it a mixed bag. But intellectually he was one of the sharpest pencils in the box, and he followed his White House stint with a remarkable tenure in the House. Adams was also fanatical about that socialist Marxist concept known as "physical fitness," although it once got him in hot (read: cold) water. From Cormac O'Brien's book Secret Lives of the U.S. Presidents:
While president, he set time aside virtually every day for a swim in the Potomac---a preoccupation that nearly killed him when, upon rowing with a servant to the far shore with the intent of swimming back, a storm brewed. After their flimsy canoe filled with water and sank, the two only barely made it to the far shore. The servant set off in search of clothing, and JQA waited patiently, sitting naked on the riverbank.
Pay your respects here. But not too loud---his dad's sleeping three feet away and he gets cranky when you darn kids show up with your hippie hair and boom-boom music.
CHEERS to surrounding the traitors. It's a little harder to believe that the neo-Nazi nutballs are gaining strength in this country after what happened over the weekend in Virginia. After sending out an urgent all-white-hands-on-deck clarion call, the KKK marched in Charlottesville Saturday to protest the imminent removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. And there to shout 'em down were throngs of patriotic Americans who understand which side won the Civil War:
It was a hot Virginia day on the 8th of July and the crowd was there to counter-protest the 50 white supremacist members of the Ku Klux Klan’s Loyal White Knights who had planned their protest at 3:45 PM against the removal of Confederate statues. The march was highly publicized and the mayor tried to discourage people from “taking the [KKK] bait.”
But hundreds of counter-protesters opted to line up and rally against the smaller group of Klansmen who had been escorted by the police for protection and to support the First Amendment.
At the end of the rally the Klansmen were picked up and taken back to their basement bedrooms by their moms. As usual, the white sheet industry sent out a press release claiming total embarrassment.
JEERS to Mr. No-Show. Well, at least the Klan was dedicated enough to their cause to show up in front of a hostile crowd. That wasn't the case for the guy running Trump's "Election Integrity"---aka voter suppression---commission. Kris Kobach decided that he'd duck out of the National Association of Secretaries of State conference (even though he's a SecState himself). I guess he was too afraid he might get an earful, because at least 44 secretaries of state have told him in writing to pound sand (or in the case of Mississippi, "Jump in the Gulf of Mexico”)…
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said Saturday that it’s “awkward, to put it mildly” that Kobach opted against attending the National Association of Secretaries of State conference in Indianapolis this weekend.
Kobach, a Republican, sent letters last week to all 50 states requesting voter information, including dates of birth, partial Social Security numbers, addresses and voting histories. The request drew blowback from Republicans and Democrats alike.
Padilla, a Democrat, said that if Kobach was serious about working with states to improve the integrity of U.S. elections, he would have attended the conference.
Said a spokesperson for Kobach: "Bwok! Bwok bwok bwok! Bwok bwok!!!"
CHEERS to Great Moments in Sports. On this date in 1914, Babe Ruth debuted in the major leagues with the Boston Red Sox. We include this bit of trivia to shamelessly remind the world that the Sox are 3½ games ahead in the AL East on their way to claiming their fourth World Series in 13 years. Anyone who disagrees is guilty of promoting negative energy. Moving right along...
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Ten years ago in C&J: July 11, 2007
JEERS to one of the Very Serious People. We interrupt this blog to bring you today'sedition of Pundits Say The Darndest Things. Last weekend on Fox News Sunday, The Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol said: "I think the president is poised for a comeback." In other news, Webster's Dictionary has revised its definition of comeback as: "Anything that crashes into a mountain of shit, catches fire and blows up."
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And just one more…
CHEERS to journalism! Kudos to Jo Becker, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman of The New York Times for producing the strongest evidence yet of---say it with me---collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign. At the center of the story: the guy everyone thought was the smart Trump brother:
President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.
The meeting was also attended by his campaign chairman at the time, Paul J. Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. [...]
The Times reported the existence of the meeting on Saturday. But in subsequent interviews, the advisers and others revealed the motivation behind it. [T]he episode at Trump Tower is the first such confirmed private meeting involving members of his inner circle during the campaign---as well as the first one known to have included his eldest son.
Back in March, Uday---or is he Qusay?---said "that he didn't participate in any campaign-related meetings with Russian nationals." Now he's all like, "Oh, those Russian nationals? Why didn’t you say so? CNN sucks!!!" [ker-SLAM!] Join us tomorrow for the next suspense-filled edition of As The Vise Turns.
Have a nice Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
News Flash: Bill in Portland Maine is the best Kiddie-Pool-Man ever. He finds the kid inside the famous orange onesie and brings out the kid in even the most hardened blogger.
---Rolling Stone
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