From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Only 16 15 14 Weeks 'til Netroots Nation!
Some quick updates and suchlike related to this year's big event in Providence June 7-10:
- If you run a non-profit c3 or c4 organization, or are a qualified small business, and you haven't exhibited at YearlyKos/Netroots Nation, enter the 'Grab A Booth' Contest and you could win free booth space and two free passes to the convention:
With more than 2,000 people attending Netroots Nation every year as well as the growing popularity of our Community and Exhibit Hall, this is a great chance for your group or company to get in front of engaged progressives from throughout the country.
The top three vote-getters in our online contest will automatically get a booth in the Hall. The rest of the entrants will go through a second round where a panel of judges will decide, based on merit, which three entrants will receive the last three spots.
Deadline for entries is next Tuesday, February 28th. Online voting takes place between Feb. 29th and March 14. Winners will be announced next month. Click here for the official contest rules and other info. If you have questions, email Karen Kolber at: karen [at] netrootsnation.org.
- The Netroots for the Troops blogathon fundraiser is in full swing. Every year at the NN convention, volunteers (including members of Congress and other VIPs) swarm to pack boxes with essentials for our troops overseas. This year we're branching out to include wounded vets at VA hospitals. Blogathon participants this week include Elizabeth Warren and, tomorrow, Howard Dean. (Read more posts here.) To help meet this year's fundraising goal, Click here. If you're going to Providence in June and you haven't participated in the NFTT event, don’t miss it.
- I'm looking forward to meeting keynoter Keith Olbermann at this year's convention. Never seen him in person before. I hear he's ten feet tall.
- YES! There will be a pre-convention C&J party Wednesday evening, June 6th. YES! We'll scope out the restaurant beforehand to make sure they're telling us the truth about having enough room for us all (it was a bit sardine can'ish last year in Minneapolis). YES! We'll post more details as the plans come together. YES! Writing YES! over and over is awesome, say marketing books.
- [Toot!] Happy Birthday to Netroots Nation Executive Director Raven Brooks! And many blessings on your camels.
- Nuts and bolts-type stuff: To register for the convention, click here. For official hotel info, click here.
Meanwhile, as we drum our fingers waiting for June to get here, Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, February 23, 2012
Note: Just a heads-up that there will be no C&J on Monday as we'll be recovering from the gavel wounds inflicted on us during Sunday's Maine Democratic caucus. Back Tuesday.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til St. Patrick's Day: 24
Days `til the Boulder Bach Festival: 1
Percent of taxpayers making less than $200k who got audited last year: 1%
Percent of millionaires who were audited last year: 12%
(Source: DailyFinance.com)
Number of consecutive months during which there has been private-sector job growth: 23
(Source: MSNBC)
Ratio of stainless steel to leather chastity belts sold at Chastity Belts USA: 20:1
Percent chance that the company has seen a "bit of a boost" in sales following the eruption of the contraception issue in America: 100%
(Source: Vanity Fair)
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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:
One of the most dangerous things about this whole corrupt system is that people who are given special privileges inevitably come to regard them not as special but as natural and right, and will fight furiously if you try to take them away. […] [W]hat is truly not funny is the pathetic spectacle of the United States of America, a nation with the greatest political legacy the world has ever known, letting itself be gnawed to death by the greed in a corrupt system that can be so easily fixed.
---February, 2006
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Rescued from the stone age
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CHEERS to not fiddling while the GOP burns. As Republicans and their pet billionaires beat themselves senseless (well, even more senseless than they already are), the Obama team ain't exactly sitting on its hands. What reporter Major Garrett revealed on Sunday's The Chris Matthews Show isn’t exactly a surprise, but it's still good to hear:
"On Thursday Michelle Obama had a call-in in Virginia. There were 41 separate events throughout Virginia---women who would dial in and listen to this, 41 house parties. So I started going around the Obama for America website. In Nevada between now and the middle of March there are 92 organizing events---[voter] registration, house parties, etcetera. In San Diego in the next two weeks: 37 events. In Columbus, Ohio: 55 events in the next month. This is what Obama is doing while Republicans are arguing with each other: building a ground game that's hiding in plain sight. Get-togethers, house parties, voter registration, all the fundamentals."
Sorry to pop your bubble, Santorum. Obama's not Satan. He's Martha Stewart.
JEERS to blather in the desert. I listened to the Republican candidates as they debated last night in Arizona. I took copious notes. I fact-checked and cross-indexed and compared their policy positions and ideologies to mine. I weighed their arguments on merits, impartially and with an open mind. I consulted white papers, blue papers, position papers, treaties and treatises…maps, charts, Venn diagrams…and even visited Madam Tzushacka, the only psychic on the planet who puts out a bowl of fresh Fig Newtons for her clients. When all was said and done, this ended up being the most illuminating comment of the night:
We're watching whales fuck on PBS.
---Kossack itzik shpitzik
Me too, except on CNN. I'm thinking of writing a book about the experience.
Mopey Dicks.
CHEERS to memorable moments in shutterbugging. On February 23, 1945, U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima captured Mount Suribachi, where they attached an American flag to a section of pipe and raised it like a middle finger to the Japanese troops hiding in the caves below them. The Pulitzer-winning photo taken by Joe Rosenthal actually shows the second flag-raising. Here's the first. This morning C&J raised the stars & stripes in honor of the 67th anniversary of the event. Tomorrow we'll go back to flying the universal symbol of distress: an upside down wallet.
CHEERS to taking another step forward. This has been a pretty amazing month for gay marriage, what with three state legislatures approving it (NJ's Christie vetoed his bill, the fool) plus a federal appeals court's ruling the California's Prop. 8 is unconstitutional. But wait, there's MORE!!! Yesterday a California District Court judge appointed by George W. Bush ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (the dreaded DOMA) is unconstitutional. A standout statement by Judge Jeffrey White is another nail in the "being gay is a choice" argument that has been used against us for so many decades:
IMMUTABILITY: Regardless of the evidence that a tiny percentage of gay men or lesbians may experience some flexibility along the continuum of their sexuality or the scientific consensus that sexual orientation is unchangeable, the Court finds persuasive the holding in the Ninth Circuit that sexual orientation is recognized as a defining and immutable characteristic because it is so fundamental to one’s identity.
Like being right or left-handed. Like being short or tall. Like being blue-eyed or brown-eyed. It just is. Or, to put it in language the conservative fundies can understand: turns out God
did make Adam and Steve, after all.
CHEERS to the son of a president who became president...and didn't embarrass dear old Dad. On this date in 1848, John Quincy Adams died after suffering a stroke in the U.S. House of Representatives at the age of 80. Like President Obama, Adams faced an obstructionist Congress but still managed to score significant accomplishments that shaped our country:
Many of the projects he called for were soon undertaken: canals connecting the Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio and Delaware Rivers, national roads binding regions of the country together, military academies that trained the brightest youths in the service of the nation. More significant, the prescience of Adams's overall project was underscored by his awareness that the future of America depended on the development of the nation's intellect. "Among the first, perhaps the very first, instrument for the improvement of the condition of men is knowledge," Adams told Congress in a message that called for the establishment of astronomical observatories…research centers, and other educational institutions that would make America an enlightened republic inspired by technological innovation. … But Adams was facing a complacent country and feared its stagnation. "Were we to slumber in indolence or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not be to cast away the bounties of Providence and doom ourselves to perpetual inferiority?"
---From To the Best of My Ability, edited by James McPherson
Adams also successfully saved from extradition the Africans who commandeered the
Amistad and played a huge part in the founding of the Smithsonian Institution. Pay
your respects here. And speaking of the Smithsonian...
[Awesome segue...!!!]
CHEERS to "A monument not for our time but for all time." Obama's words as he broke ground on the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History, which he says will stand "not just as a record of tragedy but a celebration of life." It'll open in 2015. Naturally the folks at Politico had to gin up a fake "controversy" in the hopes that Drudge would splash it on his site (of course he did): "No shovel for Obama." Yeah, but there's a reason he didn’t have one: Politico's bullshit bureau was using it to write their story.
CHEERS to Sir Inksalot. On this date in 1455, Johannes Gutenberg printed the first book: the Bible. While proofing it, he noticed that the page numbers went 360, 361, 362, 364...and spent the next six days pounding his head on the table.
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Six years ago in C&J: February 23, 2006
JEERS to violating the golden rule. No, it's not "Do unto others, etc." (how quaint). It's "Never, ever, ever, ever, EVER blow up a holy Islamic shrine. In Samarra---"one of the most violent cities in Iraq"---some idiot forgot the golden rule. And the hornets are swarming:
Shiite protestors took to the streets shortly after the explosion. In Baghdad, militiamen loyal to radical cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who is a fervent believer in the prophecy of the Imam Mahdi, drove through the streets of Sadr City with Kalashnikovs, many accusing the Americans of carrying out the attack.
Time to airlift a new crate of Dr. Phil CDs. Put a rush on it, guys.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to the best candy turds in the wurld. On this date in 1896, the Tootsie Roll---not quite fudge, not quite chocolate, but as addictive as both---was introduced by Leo Hirshfield. This would probably be a good time to present the latest data on how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop:
Purdue University licking machine: 364 licks
Purdue University students: 252 licks
University of Michigan human licking machine: 411 licks
Swarthmore Junior High students: 144 licks
I still make a point to eat a few Tootsie Rolls every day. They help keep my ulcers plugged.
Have a balmy, global-warming-fueled Thursday. And work hard. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
The Muppets. SpongeBob SquarePants. Dr. Seuss. Bill in Portland Maine. Beloved icons of childhood entertainment in America, or subtle forms of anti-business indoctrination that brainwash your kids into hating capitalism? Thank goodness we have Fox to ask these questions.
---Media Matters
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