From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
I have nothing to say about Netroots Nation Atlanta. Except…
> There was a management convention at the hotel before ours. I could tell because it was mostly white men walking around pointing fingers at everybody else.
> The Daily Kos/CUA/C&J kickoff party at the splendiferous White Oak Kitchen & Cocktails was mobbed as usual. Several hug-related injuries were reported, most of them severe. No one complained.
> The swag bags were great this year. They contained sunglasses, an aluminum water bottle, a keyboard cleaner, and a coupon good for one impeachment and conviction of your choice.
> The main lesson I learned about our opposition during the panels and speeches is that Republicans are bad for America because they think making us all poor and sick and miserable and stupid is good for America. PolitiFact rates this statement: Yup.
> Keep an eye on Stacey Abrams in the Georgia governor’s race. She’s a force of nature.
> I always enjoyed the trip from my room to the hotel lobby because the little automated voice in the elevator gave me a sneak preview of the GOP’s prospects in the 2018 midterms: “Going…down.”
> After a two-year absence, the Daily Kos Elections team led by Viceroy David Nir returned for a tour de force of encyclopedic knowledge on races running the gamut from federal to state to municipal. Memo to evil Republican dogcatcher Elmer T. Blockbone in Dinglewood , Mississippi (population 22): their 35-page analysis says you’re toast next year.
> At the Jimmy Carter Library we saw #39’s Nobel Peace Prize, his Presidential Medal of Freedom, and one of his Grammy Awards for “Best Spoken Word.” Or as they’re better known, three things you’ll never see at the Donald Trump Library.
> True fact: Randy Bryce’s mustache is really made of iron. I discretely whapped it with my pen and, sure enough, it went “Clank!”
> Sad to say Georgia peaches were mighty scarce this year. A shitty growing season killed 80 percent of the crop. Unfortunately motorcyclists riding by with no mufflers were plentiful outside the hotel at 3am. And every other #!@%!!&#! am.
> You can watch a boatload of the 2017 speakers, including Elizabeth Warren, Dolores Huerta, Al Gore and the amazing Rev. Dr. Gerald Durley at this link.
Oh, and a personal message to the Hyatt management: thank you so much for the free copies of The Bible you left for us. We hope the guests who occupied the room after us enjoyed the free copies of the Torah, the Koran, and The Big Book of Atheism that we left for them.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, August 15, 2017
Note: Memo to the bomb-sniffing yellow lab at Atlanta International Airport: before you go after my crotch like that again, sir, at least buy me dinner first. And none 'o that Alpo beef byproduct shit. I want real steak. Good boy.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the solar eclipse: 6
Days 'til the Charlotte NC Pride parade: 12
Number of injured who were taken to hospitals during the violent Nazi-KKK rally in Charlottesville Saturday: 35
Dates during which the Nebraska Department of Transportation will ban oversized semi-trailer trucks from state highways and I-80 due to the eclipse: 8/18 to 8/22
Number of states that now get more than 10 percent of their electricity (including 14% in Maine) from wind power, according to the Energy Dept.: 14
Number of federal agencies that just issued a joint report confirming that climate change is negatively affecting the U.S. and that it is being caused "unambiguously" by human activity: 13
Current cremation rate and expected rate by 2025, according to the National Funeral Directors Association: 50%, 63%
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Puppy Pic of the Day (This one’s an annual August tradition):
Canine Marine: "This is my ball. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My ball is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. My ball, without me, is useless. Without my ball, I am useless. I must fetch my ball true. I must run faster than my enemy who is trying to fetch my ball before me. I must beat him before he beats me. I WILL."
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JEERS to the biggest alligator in the sewer. While we were in Atlanta for the Netroots convention, our illustrious baby king Joffrey Trump was busy threatening a nuclear exchange with North Korea, praising Putin for kicking hundreds of U.S. diplomatic employees out of Russia, and refusing to condemn Nazis, the KKK and other assorted white supremacists for the death and mayhem in Charlottesville…all while on vacation. And where did that get him with We The People? His lowest approval and highest disapproval rating yet in Gallup’s daily tracking poll. Or, graphically speaking, his jaws of jerkitude just got wider:
Now if only we could find a sock big enough to stick in his mouth.
P.S.
So he’s finally #1 at something. Namely, sucking.
JEERS to the world's worst goose steppers. After plucking Polynesian tiki torches from their parents' patios and picking up their Izod shirts and khakis from the dry cleaners, a bunch of spoiled brats with delusions of Nurnberg gathered with Klansmen and other armored and gun-toting human testosterone zombies to stage a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville over the weekend. Among them: an SS-obsessed lost soul from Ohio who, according to a neighbor, "often blasted polka music from his car" and decided that his 15 minutes of fame would be best spent plowing through a crowd of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and leaving over a dozen more bodies bloodied and torn up.
The fracas was the most overt manifestation yet of the toxic and "alt-right"-infested Trump administration, whose racist-in-chief responded with less urgency than he shows when he only gets one scoop of ice cream instead of two.
The backlash was fierce and, excuse the expression, white-hot. Even Republicans in Congress got on the condemnation bandwagon. And now that things have cooled down, they'll go back to blocking a new voting rights act, shunning independent district drawing, investigating police abuses against minorities, ripping immigrant families apart, tearing down affirmative action programs, zeroing-out anti-poverty programs targeting people of color, and continuing to keep their racist dog-whistles aimed squarely at their white base's finely-tuned ears. (But, golly, thanks for all the tweets.) As for the Nazis and their kindred soul in the Oval Office, America has spoken loud and clear: Fourth Reich denied.
CHEERS to America's favorite safety net. 82 years ago this week, President Franklin Roosevelt gave us one less thing to fear by signing the Social Security Act into law, saying:
"We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age. […]
The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness."
Today a frighteningly high portion of the Republican base regards Social Security as the brainchild of a dirty effing commie hippie. But when they hit retirement age and start getting their checks in the mail, their sudden silence will be deafening. And then they'll start complaining that their commie hippie checks aren't big enough. And then they'll actively work to prevent the commie hippie program from being privatized by the evil Republicans. Run that by your local annoying wingnut next time he says evolution doesn't exist.
CHEERS to Great Moments in Gravity Defiance. The nerds at SpaceX and NASA, who sometimes seem these days like they’re the only ones offering any signs of American progress, dazzled we wee earthlings again by launching a Dragon spacecraft into the heavens. It's shuttling essential cargo (food, water, oxygen, Tang, fidget spinners) to the International Space Station, and also a little razzle-dazzle science experiment that could eventually lead to a greater understanding of a disease that affects over six million people:
Research materials flying inside the Dragon's pressurized area include an experiment to grow large crystals of leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2), a protein believed to be the greatest genetic contributor to Parkinson’s disease.
Gravity keeps Earth-grown versions of this protein too small and too compact to study. This experiment, developed by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, Anatrace and Com-Pac International, will exploit the benefits of micro gravity to grow larger, more perfectly-shaped LRRK2 crystals for analysis on Earth.
Results from this study could help scientists better understand Parkinson’s and aid in the development of therapies.
But my 390-page proposal to benefit humanity by growing Buick-size candy corn in space still goes unanswered. Phooey.
CHEERS to VJ Day. Seventy-two years ago, on August 15, 1945, America celebrated the end of the war in the Pacific. Our youngest W.W. II vets are now 90 or older, so today it's our pleasure to slip a nip 'o scotch in their Ensure with a wink and a "thank you"---that was a war that needed to be fought. Meanwhile the Afghanistan war that, lest we forget, President Barack Obama started in 2001 has dragged on over twelve---twelve!!!---years longer than the Second World War. Not that we're counting. Mainly because we’ve run out of fingers to count on.
CHEERS to an artery's best worst friend. On August 15, 1911, obedient and properly submissive American housewives across the country swooned to the sound of Crisco (short for"crystallized cottonseed oil") glopping into their frying pans and mixing bowls as Procter & Gamble brought it to market. Over a hundred years later, Americans still love it because it lets them enjoy so many sinful foods. And cardiologists love it because it lets them enjoy so many brand-new Porsches.
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Ten years ago in C&J: August 15, 2007
GOOD RIDDANCE to Karl Rove. As Andrew Sullivan says, he leaves behind a trail of sweets and flowers. If by sweets and flowers you mean carnage, debt and dog shit:
The man's legacy is a conservative movement largely discredited and disunited, a president with lower consistent approval ratings than any in modern history, a generational shift to the Democrats, a resurgent al Qaeda, an endless catastrophe in Iraq, a long hard struggle in Afghanistan, a fiscal legacy that means bankrupting America within a decade, and the poisoning of American religion with politics and vice-versa. For this, he got two terms of power---which the GOP used mainly to enrich themselves, their clients and to expand government's reach and drain on the productive sector.
The official excuse for why he's skittering back under a Texas rock is---you'll never guess---"to spend more time with the family." Real reason: he plumb ran out of things to break.
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And just one more…
CHEERS history so thick you can cut it with a knife. One of C&J's must-see sites during Netroots Nation was the Atlanta neighborhood where Martin Luther King Jr. grew up, preached, and was laid to rest way before his time (only 39 when he was assassinated). It's one thing to read about legends in books, but it's a whole different experience to physically put yourself in the world in which they lived. We took the streetcar from downtown to the Sweet Auburn district about a mile east. You hop off and right there on the corner is the Ebenezer Baptist Church, the one you've heard about all your life. And you feel like you just stepped out of a time machine. Inside the church, which you can wander around at will, King sermons play over the speakers and the effect is electric:
Sad bit of trivia: Martin's mom, Alberta Williams King, was also murdered---in 1974 while playing the organ in Ebenezer. Then, just steps away from the church, you pay your respects to MLK Jr.and Coretta, resting side-by-side at The King Center:
The hot, humid air makes it hard enough to breath, but being in the presence of such a titan of the civil rights movement damn near sucks the wind right out of you. There's nothing that says MLK couldn't be alive today, had his assassin missed. (His sister Willie Christine is still alive at 89.) All that potential, lost in an instant. Then, a block up, across from a row of restored "shotgun houses," stands a structure that evokes a happier time---the house where King was born in 1929:
If you're ever in Atlanta, it's well worth it to carve out some time for a visit to the King National Historic Site. As corny as it sounds, it really does connect the tumultuous past with the tumultuous present, and brings it all full circle in your brain. And also, if you’re like me, reminds you that you really need to get a better phone-cam.
Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Inside President Donald Trump’s White House, no one seems to be looking forward to Cheers and Jeers.
---Politico
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