From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Netroots Nation 2014: T-Minus 4 Weeks and Counting
Time to put your hair in curlers (ladies, you too) as the countdown to the big convention in Detroit reaches the one-month mark. Here's your weekly dose of info:
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Hotel rooms at the Detroit Marriott are sold out for some days. Please
read the update here for details and options.
• The Social and Economic Justice Tour on Wednesday July 16th is filling up faster than expected. More tour guides have been added, and they're down to just 30 walking slots. Check out the itinerary and reserve your spot now.
• Congratulations, NN Scholarship winners! Thanks to everyone who entered and/or voted in the annual competition, which ended last week. Winners get free passes to NN14 and accommodations, and you can meet 'em
at the DFA site. And hopefully in Detroit.
• If you missed the news, the opening night speaker is Rev. William Barber. If I may say with total impartiality: they couldn’t have chosen anyone with a better first name.
• Returning this year are the Karaoke Party, the Living Liberally Comedy Show on Thursday night, Adam B's Chairman's Pub Quiz on Friday night, the Morning News Dump with Lizz Winstead and Friends Thursday through Saturday, and exclusive movie screenings.
• Speaking of the Pub Quiz, I asked Adam B this week what contestants can do to stand a chance against this year's crop of questions. He responded: "If folks want to prepare in advance, they should be well-rounded in the topics of metamorphic petrology, Whig politics, and showtunes, at least one of which will appear in this year's Quiz." As for what you can expect to feel during it, Adam sends this preview...
• RSVP now for the Daily Kos/C&J Meet 'n Greet 'n Eat at Vicente's Cuban Cuisine on Wednesday, July 16 starting at 5pm. Let Navajo know you're going via kosmail by clicking here. I think we've got close to a hundred people on the list. Always room for one more.
• And after we disband from the DK-CJ shindig in a tangled mass of humanity, it's off to the official Netroots Nation Kickoff Party at the Detroit Beer Company, sponsored by the Michigan Senate Democrats. RSVP by clicking here.
Thy swag bag overfloweth.
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Volunteers are always a huge help at the convention and it's a great way to meet people. To help the Netroots Nation staff, (registration desk, NN exhibit Booth, assembling name badges, etc), email Eric at
volunteers [at] netrootsnation.org.
• Panels are here.
• Register to join the NN14 fun here, and follow #NN14 via Twitter here.
Twenty-eight days and counting. I do hope Jeeves remembers to re-upholster the seat cushions in the Studebaker.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, June 19, 2014
Note: A bidder has agreed to pay $9.5 million for a rare stamp. Or as we call it these days: a stamp.
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10 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals hears arguments in gay-marriage cases from MI, KY, TN and OH:
48
Days 'til the
Twin Cities Pride Parade in Minneapolis:
10
Average after-subsidy monthly premium Americans are paying in the 36 states where the federal government led the setup of ACA exchanges:
$80
Rank of Mississippi among ACA sign-ups paying the least ($23) in average monthly after-subsidy premiums:
#1
(Source: AP)
Minimum estimated number of DNA rape-kit tests waiting to be processed nationwide:
100,000
(Source:
The Washington Post)
Rank of California, Florida, Michigan and Texas among states with the most SUV thefts:
#1, #2, #3, #4
(Source:
National Insurance Crime Bureau)
Year during which the last billboard was torn down in Maine:
1984
World Cup Soccuh
Netherlands 3 Australia 2
Spain 0 Chile 2 (The defending champs are el-gone-o.)
Croatia 4 Cameroon 0
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
For a long time, "conservatism" was just another word for "racist" in Texas: some were more polite than others. I first ran across another form of conservatism in the Rocky Mountains in the late 1970's as the "Sagebrush Rebellion" or "Wise Use" movement, corporate-funded anti-environmentalism.
From the beginning, it was all about right-wing money---H.L. Hunt, Coors, Mellon-Scaife---that old batty anti-New Deal money that was always behind the Republican right. They were against taxes on rich people and against taxes on business, didn’t want limits on pollution, didn’t want limits on exploiting natural resources. Greed is good, the market is God---same old sorry claptrap we have heard since the end of the robber barons.
---From Who Let the Dogs In?
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Puppy Pic of the Day: "Hic!"
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Raise your hand if Tony Perkins
sends a happy tingle up your leg.
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CHEERS to
Sweatin' to the 14th Amendment Violations. Given that the average age of participants, and the high temperature, at today's
"March for Marriage" in DC will be in the 60s and the upper 80s respectively, I hope the Bible thumpers have plenty of water, paramedics, and mercy of God on hand. Mike Huckabee, the National Organization for Marriage and their grifter friends will speak to their throngs about why it's so critical to prevent all the terrible things that never seem to happen because of gay marriage. It's so lame that Fox News won't even use it as filler now that they've fled from their Benghazi obsession. If you want to be endlessly entertained today, follow the twitter hashtags
#1man1woman and/or
#March4Marriage---the online elite of the LGBT community will be posting their thoughts, during which hilarity will ensue. And for you gullible Christian soldiers rallying today: don’t forget to give Huckabee your email address when he passes around the clipboard---otherwise it becomes more difficult to frack your bank account.
JEERS to the Second Amendment for dummies. Some idiot geezer in Michigan was strutting around with a rifle, prompting calls to the cops (including a SWAT negotiator, because no police call is complete these days without SWAT guys). After closing the road, this played out:
A grouchy geezer with a
gun. What could go wrong?
Houseman can be seen pointing and shouting at officers---and at one point he grabs his genitals and gestures in the officers' direction. "Folks, I need you all to go inside," an officer can be heard telling onlookers at one point. "If that gun is live and he starts firing, everyone is at risk."
Houseman refused to comply with requests that he put the rifle down and talk to the officers.
During the negotiations, Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety Lt. Stacey Geik, who took over as commanding officer on the scene, told a dispatcher that Houseman was "exercising his open carry rights, however, he has certainly overextended them at this point." […]
The rifle was returned to him the next day, and police decided against seeking a misdemeanor charge of brandishing a firearm.
Moral of the story: Blacks, Hispanics and young people,
don't try this yourself until you become white, Anglo-Saxon and old.
P.S. Amazing, amazing photos of an Isla Vista victim's dad embracing the shooter's dad and vowing to making a royal ruckus together to stop gun violence. I have no doubt they'll make themselves heard.
CHEERS to leveling the playing field. 50 years ago today, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved by the Senate---73-27---after making it through a 57-day Dixiecrat filibuster:
The moment King
heard the news.
"One hundred and eighty-eight years ago this week a small band of valiant men began a long struggle for freedom," [President Lyndon] Johnson told the nation. "Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders." The analogy was unmistakable. The president was comparing the work of the Founding Fathers with that of the civil rights movement.
Martin Luther King, who was present at the White House signing ceremony, also had no doubts about the significance of the day or about Lyndon Johnson's role in making the civil rights bill law. "It was a great moment," King declared, "something like the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by Abraham Lincoln."
When Johnson signed it he reportedly said, "It is an important gain, but I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come." A regular Nostradamus in a Stetson, he was.
CHEERS to great moments in freedom. And speaking of civil rights, on June 19, 1862, slavery was outlawed in the existing and future federal territories. For such a groundbreaking event, the language was pretty straightforward:
Abe Lincoln's signin' pen
fetched $74,500 at auction.
"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That from and after the passage of this act there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the Territories of the United States now existing, or which may at any time hereafter be formed or acquired by the United States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.
The good news: that was a
looong time ago. The bad news: not long enough.
CHEERS to the new guy behind the world's most dangerous (yeah, right) lectern. C&J bids a fond farewell to Press Secretary Jay Carney, who succeeded Robert Gibbs a couple years back and fulfilled his professional obligation to be as bland as humanly possible while taking ridiculous questions from a nattering press corps. The new guy is Josh Earnest, and let's see how he's doing so far:
"No comment. No comment. I'm not authorized to comment on that. I have no information on that. You'll have to run that by the Pentagon. You'll have to take that up with the State Department. I can't comment on that during an ongoing investigation. We do not have that information at this time. That's a silly presumption. That's a dangerous assertion. No comment. No comment."
He'll be perfect.
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Five years ago in C&J: June 19, 2009
Successful weed smokers include
Maya Angelou, George Clooney,
Louis Armstrong, Barack Obama,
Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, Morgan
Freeman, Snoop Dogg, and etc.
CHEERS to the pot paradox. Marijuana was outlawed decades ago because it was---so the scaremongers said---the cause of violence and destruction as a legal substance. Terrible, just terrible! So it’s interesting to see that there's a growing wave of support for legalizing it again...because it's the cause of violence and destruction
as an illegal substance:
Pot usage is pervasive. The latest federal survey indicates that more than 100 million Americans have tried it at some point and more than 14 million used it in the previous month.
Testifying recently before Congress, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said U.S. demand for pot is a key factor in the Mexican drug war. "The violence that we see in Mexico is fueled 65 percent to 70 percent by the trade in one drug: marijuana," he said. "I've called for at least a rational discussion as to what our country can do to take the profit out of that."
It's pretty simple: Tax it. Regulate it. Make it illegal for anyone under 21. Enforce existing penalties for driving stoned. Keep careful stats. And then, after a couple years, if it's not working, we can make it illegal again---just like prohibition but in reverse. I say we give it a go. Thomas Kincaid is itchin' to unveil his limited-edition collectible seascape bong in
Parade magazine. Nobody says no to him. Nobody.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to U.S. Mint-y freshness. Pardon my irrational exuberance, but… The new America the Beautiful National Parks state quarter is here! The new America the Beautiful National Parks state quarter is here!!! The latest release comes from the great state of Utah:
"Which way to the elevator?"
Arches National Park…is a red rock wonderland. Visitors will discover a landscape of contrasting colors, landforms and textures unlike any others in the world. Arches National Park has more than 2,000 natural stone arches, as well as hundreds of soaring pinnacles, massive fins and giant balanced rocks. It was first established as a national site on April 12, 1929.
The reverse depicts Delicate Arch, a 65-foot freestanding natural arch. It is a widely recognizable landmark in Utah and the most famous arch found in the park.
Or as smartass tourists call it: NcDonald's.
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:
"I think Bill in Portland Maine may have jumped off the deep end."
---Megyn Kelly
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