From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...
You'll Absolutely Make Their Day
This I know: one of the most memorable sights at this year's Netroots Nation convention in Vegas will be the swarming of the Netroots for the Troops volunteers as they prep 600 care packages for delivery to troops downrange (i.e. the more remote spots) in Afghanistan and Iraq. The packages include stuff that the troops themselves tell us they want and need: like work gloves, phone cards, key rings with LED flashlights, gel insoles for boots, and DVDs and CDs to help 'em minimize the numbing boredom that affects so much their downtime. It's nothing fancy---just plain old-fashioned useful.
How organized and fired-up are the volunteers who line up to help? Let me put it this way: last year in Pittsburgh, hopped up on Skittles and Red Bull, we assembled 300 NFTT packages in 45 minutes. (Perhaps we went a little too fast---Meteor Blades was freed from one of 'em just as the pallet jack was loading it onto the mail truck. No hard feelings, big guy?)
So we've got the Birkenstocks-on-the-ground ready to rock in Vegas. We've got the assembly system and the shipping logistics down pat. What we need right now is the financial support to buy the essentials that will go into the boxes 65 days from now.
This morning I'm setting a mini-goal (the overall goal is $100k) that we can knock outta the park: a quick, down-'n-dirty $10,000. Hundreds of thousands of people will read this blog today. If one thousand of you donate $10, baddaboom baddabing---Done. No muss, no fuss, no waxy residue. Ring the bell and you can take the rest of the day off. (I'll even write your boss a note.)
Since I possess the strength of five men, I'll up my donation to $50. Here's the Netroots for the Troops donation link.
Now a brief word from my lawyer: "Netroots For The Troops is a project of Netroots Arts and Education Initiative (NAEI), a 501(c)3 organization. Donations are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law. Now shake that ass, baby! Shake that ass!" (My apologies. The only lawyer I could afford works out of a strip club.)
And as if it needs to be said: wars suck. Today's seven- and eight-year-olds have never known a time when we weren't shooting people and blowing stuff up overseas. But the decisions to start wars---or continue waging them---do not originate with the grunts on the ground who are themselves getting shot at in the line of a panoply of difficult duties---many above and beyond the call---that they're performing with valor and selflessness. Netroots for the Troops is for them. And based on the feedback, they are really glad we're thinkin' of 'em.
On behalf of the NFTT organizers and volunteers, thank you!
P.S. Please contact NFTT director TexDem at gattis51 [at] bellsouth [dot] net if you or someone you know might be helpful in securing corporate in-kind donations. To help you think of companies who could donate products, click here and look towards the bottom of the gray textbox for a list of potential items. It can take a bit of time to get through the corporate maze so the sooner the better. Thanks!
Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, May 20, 2010
Note: This morning I found a tarball in my Cheerios. Not good.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the World Cup: 22
Days `til the 10th annual Cambridge Valley Balloon Festival in New York: 15
Number of square miles closed to fishing by the NOAA in the Gulf of Mexico: 45,728
(Source: CNN)
Amount of money BP says it has spent cleaning up the spill thus far, and its first-quarter profits: $500 million / $6.1 billion
(Source: AP)
Number of consecutive special elections Democrats have won: 7
(Source: Atrios)
Percent of girls age 8-12 who regularly wear, respectively, mascara and lipstick: 20%, 15%
(Source: The New York Times via The Week)
Rank of "Evil Empire," "Springfield Isotopes" and "Chico's Bail Bonds" among most popular fantasy baseball team names: #1, #2, #3
(Source: CBS Sports via USA Today)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
Whee! Spin City. Who's responsible for shutting down the federal government and quite possibly sending the financial markets into a hopeless tizz?
"You hit me first."
"Did not."
"Did too."
"Did not."
"Did so."
We live in a great nation. Amen. [...]
Pardon me, but I see no reason to pretend to objectivity about this. The facts are there, and the record is there---we can all fairly blame Newt Gingrich for this fine mess.
---November, 1995
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Our (relatively) new kitty, Fantom, tried to do this for the first time with our (relatively) old chocolate lab, Molly, Tuesday night on our bed. It lasted about five seconds and ended with a window-rattling growl followed by an airborne pootie. The humans in the room escaped injury.
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CHEERS and JEERS to the latest on Oilpocalypse. The good news: those tar balls that washed up in Key West are not from the Gulf oilpocalypse. (Best guess: they fell out of Fred Phelps's ears when he was protesting a school down there last year.) The bad news: everything else. Meanwhile, today BP is going to initiate its latest effort to stem the flow of oil. It's a complicated maneuver called "jiggle the handle." Hope lives!
JEERS to running away from reality. [URGENT BLINKY SISSY LIGHT! URGENT BLINKY SISSY LIGHT!] Okay, yesterday morning---mere hours after a tumultuous and red-hot election night---this was The Drudge Report's top headline:
"White House blocks chef tweets."
The other "above-the-fold" headers assembled around it:
Race to 'downplay glamor [sic] of state dinner'...
'Green ceviche with cucumber... Mole has 28 ingredients in it'...
BAN LIFTED: Will allow one reporter to see dinner set up in East Room 'for few minutes'...
WH furious; chef denies tweeting from residence kitchen...
Okay, three quick points: 1) The "chef tweets" story was a mistake by a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Times, so there was no 'there' there. 2) Drudge then changed the top headline to read: "White House Blocks Chef Tweets?" That question mark makes all the difference in the non-story, doesn't it! And 3) Drudge totally buried any news about the ton of bricks that fell on Republicans in Tuesday's elections. And since Drudge rules the traditional media's world, that tells you everything you need to know about who won the night. Developing... (into a giant turd.)
MEGA CHEERS to Mega Star Power! Still not registered to go to Netroots Nation in 63 days? This hot-off-the-press announcement might entice you:
Time magazine calls her the "Sheriff of Wall Street." Since taking the reins overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, Elizabeth Warren has pushed back against one of the most well-connected, well-funded industries in DC---big banks.
At the same time, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka rallied workers across the country to march on Wall Street to protest financial sector greed and lending practices by big banks. And on Capitol Hill, Rep. Alan Grayson led a campaign to audit the Federal Reserve that passed 96-0 in the Senate.
These three leading thinkers and fighters of progressive values---along with Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins of Green for All and George Goehl of National People's Action—will join us at Netroots Nation to discuss their vision for a 21st century economy.
I hope the organizers are prepared for the panel's dressing-room demands. Instead of M&Ms and bendy straws, they want bowls of broken glass and rusty nails. And no fucking bottled water, either. Whiskey---and six dirty glasses.
CHEERS to Jimmy Stewart. And Happy 102nd Birthday to one of the few actors whom I'd watch in absolutely anything except porn. He had more great roles than we can count (you have seen Flight of the Phoenix and Anatomy of a Murder, right?), but here are two favorite moments from each end of his life: learning from Jean Arthur how a bill winds its way through the Senate in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and his Tonight Show tribute to his dog Beau, which always does me in. But despite his brilliant Hollywood career and military service during WW II and philanthropy and 45-year marriage, he wasn't perfect. He once tore the tag off his mattress. Shameful.
CHEERS to the difference between us and them. (Hint: we're smarter.) I present to you a portrait in contrasts. First, the way Republicans talk about Social Security's future:
Aaaaaghhhh!!! Hair on Fire! Hair on fire! Social Security is such a sucky socialist program that it's going broke! We MUST privatize it immediately or we're all doomed!!! Oh, crisis crisis crisis!!! It's a fiscal death panel for retirees!!! I want my mommy!!!
Now the way Democrats talk about Social Security's future:
Eh...a little tweak here, a little tuck there. No big whoop. It'll be fine.
And the winner is... Oh, take a lucky guess:
Social Security faces a $5.3 trillion shortfall over the next 75 years, but a new congressional report says the massive gap could be erased with only modest changes to payroll taxes and benefits.
I'm sure that will silence the critics. Just like I'm sure Glenn Beck will soon be invited to join Mensa.
JEERS to faulty predictions. On May 20, 1926, Thomas Edison said Americans would always prefer silent movies over talkies. Great inventor. Terrible psychic.
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Five years ago in C&J: May 20, 2005
JEERS to selective outrage. Let me get this straight. White House Press Secretary Scott "Lobotomies are Fun!" McClellan slams Newsweek for "hiding behind" an anonymous government source in its story of Koran abuse by guards at Guantanamo. His beef: it hurts America. But when Robert Novak "hid behind" an anonymous government source to blow the cover of a CIA operative a couple years ago---putting the lives of other agents at risk and hampering our efforts to keep WMDs out of terrorists' hands---the silence was deafening. Uh oh...my extended middle finger seems to be locked in place. (Sorry, boss).
CHEERS to dissecting the madness. In the wake of the Newsweek hubbub, a gaggle of congresspeople will host a media bias forum with panelists Al Franken, David Brock and others. Says a House staffer: "Specifically, there's been a great deal of disappointment of the media's coverage of the Iraq war and the Downing Street memo and great concern about the White House's efforts to intimidate media outlets such as they've done in the Newsweek matter." Will the forum do any good? I'm sure the corporate media will tell us.
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And just one more...
JEERS to life imitating art. I saw this post on Think Progress, in which they report that Newt Gingrich is urging Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour to keep his beaches open to tourists no matter what. And it took me back to that scene in Jaws where Richard Dreyfuss (Hooper) and Roy Scheider (Sheriff Brody) try to convince the mayor to close the beaches because of the great white shark attacks. So I've adapted the scene to the above story. Aaaaand...ACTION!
Brody: This is a major oil spill Haley, a big one! And any oil expert in the
world will tell you it's a killer! It's a pelican-eater!
Hooper: Look Governor Barbour, I pulled an oil glob the size of a Buick out there and it was the glob from the Deepwater Horizon spill.
Barbour: Where...where is that glob. Did you see it Brody?
Brody: No I didn't see it, he, he dropped it. We had a little accident on
the way in.
Barbour: And what did you say the name of this rig was?
Hooper: Deepwater Horizon. It's a great gusher!
Barbour: But you, you don't have the glob. Look, we depend on the summer
people here for our very lives.
Hooper: You are not going to have a summer unless you deal with this problem!
Barbour: And if you close those beaches, we're finished!
Brody: We're not only gonna have to close the beach, we're gonna have to
hire somebody to stop the leak! I mean, we're gonna have to tell the coast
guard. We're gonna have to get NOAA!
Hooper: You have to ring this entire harbor with booms...
Barbour: I don't think either one of you are familiar with our problems...
Hooper: Uh, I think that I am familiar the fact that you are going to ignore this particular problem until it floats up and bites you in the ass!
Brody: Haley, we have to close the beaches.
Hooper: Governor Barber, what we are dealing with here is a perfect engine...a sliming machine. It's really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is ooze and congeal and kill. And that's all.
Barbour: Love to prove that wouldn't ya? Get your name into the National
Geographic!
Hooper: Ha ha ha ha ha.
Brody: Haley, Haley...if we make an effort today, we might be able to save
August.
Barbour: August? For Chrissake tomorrow is the fourth of July! And we will be open for business. It's gonna be one of the best summers we ever had! Now if you fellas are concerned about the beaches, you do whatever you have to, to make them safe. But those beaches will be open for this weekend!
Aaaand...cue the music: Dumbdumbdumbdumbdumbdumb....
Have a nice Thursday. But beware of wreaths with nefarious intentions. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
"Thank you, Bill!"
---Joe Sestak
(Autograph from my Netroots Nation '09 Guest Book and Dirty Hippie Watch List)
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