From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
> > > 2 < < < Weeks 'til Netroots Nation Atlanta
Two weeks from today, Kossacks and other lefties from a who's who of progressive organizations will descend on Atlanta for the annual activism party that is the Netroots Nation convention. The grapevine tells me that the official hotel is near full up and Georgia Democrats are ready to welcome one and all with open arms and peach-flavored beer. A few recent newsy bits from Nolan, Mary, Eric and the grapevine:
► Current VIP list includes: Senator Elizabeth Warren, 2000 popular vote winner Al Gore, Paul Ryan challenger “IronStache” Randy Bryce, a special training session with the Indivisible team, U.S. Reps. Barbara Lee, Keith Ellison, Mark Pocan, Raul Grijalva and Jan Schakowsky, Georgia House Minority Leader and gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, David Nir and the Daily Kos Election All-Stars, Jon Ossoff, The Agenda Project's Erica Payne, Center for American Progress's Tom Perriello, Chris Reeves, Eclectablog's Chris Savage, Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, civil rights advocate Kimberlé Crenshaw, and too many more to list here. For updates on future speakers and events, sign up here.
► Eats! Drinks! Attractions! Travel tips! Cafes! Your official Local's Guide to Atlanta is right here.
► Kossack and board-certified goddess Vicki is out with her annual world-famous Netroots Nation spreadsheet, with all the panels, workshops, screenings and extra-curricular events. Click here to see it in all its spreadsheetalicious glory. And for detailed info on the panels and panelists, click here.
►Members of the Great Orange Satan community are invited to the Daily Kos caucus in the Piedmont Room on Thursday, August 10th at 2:30. Remember: you can't spell Piedmont without pie.
► Yes, Virginia, there will be a #NN17 pub quiz, on Friday, with devious questions cooked up by Adam B that would make Alex Trebek break down in tears. A brief history:
After our first Pub Quiz in 2007, the New York Times’ Katherine Q. Seelye apologetically had to explain to her readers that our participants were not booing Mother Theresa herself; only the fact that almost no one had correctly identified her as the answer to a question.
This year, expect more of the same, only louder. We’ll supply the refreshments, prizes, and a lot of good trivia; you bring the teams of 8-10 and the chanting, but please, for the love of God, leave the vuvuzelas at home. (Don’t have a team yet? No problem: they’ll form on-site as well.)
► By gum, our little hootenanny done made the Atlanta Journal Constitution's society pages.
► Public transportation (aka MARTA) info is here.
► Sign up for volunteer discounts and the scholarship program here.
► Official hotel room info is here.
► Follow Netroots Nation via Facebook here and Twitter here.
Off to powder my wigs. Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, July 27, 2017
Note: Just a quick heads-up that, due to circumstances completely within my control, C&J will be slightly abbreviated next week, with posts Tuesday thru Friday. Monday's edition will be tacked on to our 2019-2020 season at no extra charge, along with a free performance of Also Sprach Zarathustra by a band of roving kazoo clowns at 3am under your bedroom window. Message: I care. ---Mgt.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til Mead Day: 9
Days 'til the 25th annual Powderhorn Art Fair in Minneapolis: 9
Percent of Americans who do and do not, respectively, think Trump should be removed from office, according to a new USA Today poll: 42%-42%
Drop in sales of existing homes in June, per AP: 1.8%
Percent of Americans who believe Congressional districts are drawn unfairly, according to PPP: 60%
Percent chance that people who use emojis get more dates and have more sex, according to a Match.com survey: 100%
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
I don't get it. What's the percentage in keeping the minimum wage at $5.15 an hour? After nine years? This is such an unnecessary and nasty Republican move. Congress has voted seven times to raise its own wages since last the minimum wage budged. Of course, Congress always raises its own salary in the dark of night, hoping no one will notice. But now it does the same with the minimum wage, quietly killing it.
Anyone who doesn't think this is a country where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer needs to check the numbers -- this is Bush country, where a rising tide lifts all yachts. […]
It is so discouraging to watch this country become less and less fair -- "justice for all" seems like an embarrassingly archaic tag. Republicans have rigged the "lottery of life" in this country in ways we don't even know about yet.
---July, 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Say cheeeeeeez…
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JEERS to zombie Trumpcare. Ugh---now I'm losing track of what the hell is going on in the Senate, as Republican ghouls continue trying to find a pulse in their stitched-together-with-baling-wire health-care monster. Let's see…they've tried repeal and replace, repeal with no replace, replace with no repeal, threats with cajoling, threats without cajoling, stick our heads up our ass, throw rose petals at John McCain's tootsies, make a model Capitol building out of tongue depressors, egg salad sandwiches on rye with extra mayo, and vote yes or we'll kill your dog. Also too a blizzard of amendments. They'll go at it again today. Americans who care about keeping your health insurance: take two aspirin and call your senator. Then take the rest of the aspirin.
JEERS to the bigot-in-chief. After apparently huffing a can of gold spray paint at 3am, Donald Trump dug deep into his draft-dodging, heel-spur-addled soul and took to twitter to announce that transgender military personnel---all 11,000 of them---would henceforth be considered illegal squatters, and were to self-deport themselves back to civilian life ASAP. Trump made the move unilaterally---while his Secretary of Defense is on vacation, no less---as a pure political move. And with the exception of a few right-wing religious freaks, the entire nation came down on him like a ton of bricks. (Hell, even Orrin Freaking Hatch was disgusted.) Democrats won’t hesitate to take this on:
Meredith Kelly of the DCCC responded to the White House, “President Trump’s attack on Americans who want to step up and make incredible sacrifice to serve our country is disgusting, and it’s made worse by the political calculation behind it.
Every Republican should speak out against it. President Trump is a draft dodger and if he wants to talk about 2018, we’ve got dozens of veteran candidates who have already shown what it looks like to step up and serve our country to keep us safe, and are ready to do it again in Congress.”
The move would reduce our military readiness by roughly 300 platoons of seasoned veterans. Feel safer yet, America?
CHEERS to the end of the end. It was all over for Tricky Dick 43 years ago today, thanks to a 27-11 vote by the House Judiciary Committee to adopt the first of three articles of impeachment against President Nixon who, said ABC News's Tom Jarrell at the time, was "presumably still in his swim trunks" while on vacation in California when he heard the news. Meanwhile, then-VPGerald Ford just couldn’t help but play a little game of up-is-downism:
Ford: It's interesting that every Democrat on the committee---north and south---voted for the article. ... It tends to make it a partisan issue.
Reporter: Even if one-third of Republicans voted for it?
Ford: Well, the fact that every one of the Democrats voted for it, I think, uh, lends credence that it's a partisan issue, even though some Republicans have deviated.
...said the Republican who later unilaterally exonerated the Republican crook. But, hey, what's a little hypocrisy among friends?
CHEERS to giving the ax the ax. When Trump's OMB director targeted everything from Meals on Wheels to Head Start in an attempt to suck the soul out of America's heart, jaws dropped from coast to coast. The pushback was furious and bipartisan. So it's good to see that even conservatives in the House are giving Trump's budget the heave-ho:
President Trump’s plan to eliminate dozens of federal agencies and programs has collapsed, as a conservative Republican Congress refuses to go along.
Among the programs spared are agencies promoting rural business development and the arts, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Community Development Block Grants and the National Wildlife Refuge Fund. […] “There’s that old saying in Washington that the president proposes and Congress disposes,” said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog. […]
The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities have also been favorite conservative targets, and got a death sentence in Trump’s budget plan. That didn’t stop the House Appropriations Committee from approving $145 million for each endowment last week with plenty of Republican help.
But not all the news is good. Zero funding for candy corn research and none for the development of advanced blogger hammock technology. Killjoys.
CHEERS to blowing this popsicle stand. The world may be falling apart, but at least the folks in charge of our space program achieved a major milestone yesterday in its ongoing quest to allow humans to flee this planet and escape to the far reaches of the galaxy: a test of the RS-25 engine controller. And a' one and a' two and…hit it:
Those engines, four in all, will give the spacecraft two million pounds of thrust. If you want to get a sense of how powerful that is, eat nothing but sauerkraut for a week and then light a fart. (Caution: make sure you’ve secured several pillows to the wall in front of you first.)
JEERS to hounding the wrong guy. With the Netroots Nation convention just around the corner, it's worth noting that twenty-one years ago today domestic right-wing terrorist nut Eric Rudolph detonated a pipe bomb at the Summer Olympic games in Atlanta.
The blast killed one person and injured over a hundred more, but it could've been worse if security guard Richard Jewell hadn’t found the bomb and tried to move people out of harm's way. The hero was later pilloried in the press and by the late-night gaggle (Leno called him the "Una-doofus") when it became known that the FBI considered him a suspect. Then, when his name was officially cleared, they moved on and dumped his reputation by the side of the road like a rodent carcass. Wikipedia reminds us of what the media should've learned:
Jewell's case became an example of the damage that can be done by reporting based on unreliable or incomplete information...
Mr. Lesson From The Past, meet Mr. ADD.
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Ten years ago in C&J: July 27, 2007
JEERS to Terror Thursday! A strange envelope containing a strange white powder shows up at ABC News! The building is evacuated, but it may be too late! The powder is analyzed and identified as...[Shriek!!!] ... aspirin. I guess the White House should've heeded the latest PDB: "Bin Laden Determined to Thin Americans' Blood."
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And just one more…
CHEERS to previews of coming attractions. This summer has been a pretty darn good one for science fiction and fantasy, with Wonder Woman, Spiderman, Planet of the Apes and Guardians of the Galaxy II racking up huge box office. But come fall, the Oscar bait will emerge, and at the top of my list is Victoria and Abdul, about the unlikely friendship that developed toward the end of the elderly monarch's reign between her and an Indian clerk. Everything looks perfect here: the script, the production design, the direction (by Stephen Frears), the balance between funny and serious, and especially Judy Dench's performance that I guarantee you will snag an Oscar nomination (and she could very likely win). It opens at the end of September. Check out the trailer:
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Of course, it's no Star Wars Episode VIII. But it’ll fill in nicely til December, I reckon.
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:
Sperm counts of men in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool are plunging,according to a new analysis published Tuesday.
---CNN
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