From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Netroots Nation 2014 Alert x 2
Alert #1: Early Bird registration ends tomorrow night at midnight Pacific Time. Mary Rickles has more:
In case you missed the announcement back in June, Netroots Nation 2014 is July 17-20 in Detroit. We'll be in the newly renovated Cobo Center, located along the waterfront in an area that's the hub of much of the renovation taking place in the city. We're proud to be a part of supporting Detroit's recovery and excited about the opportunities progressives have in Michigan in the coming year.
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I wanted to give you a heads up that our early-bird tier is almost sold out, and prices will be increasing tomorrow at 12 midnight PT.
Register now to reserve your ticket at this reduced rate.
Michigan is at the top of the list of states with outrageous, regressive legislation on women's health. Funding for public schools has been slashed, for-profit charter schools are proliferating, and the demonization of teachers is in full progress. Attacks on labor and collective bargaining continue to undermine workers.
In going to the Motor City, we have a huge opportunity to make these issues more widely known nationally and lend support to the great work already being done there by locals.
Alert #2: The annual
Netroots Nation online auction starts Thursday. I'm donating a few things, including a complete set of official 2013 collectible wooden White House Easter eggs, which have been sold out for months. (I know what you're thinking: "Easter eggs in August? Really?" Well, I say
every day is Easter, which is why I go into the neighbor's coop every morning to hunt for the eggs hidden under their hens' butts---great fun, and it always ends with a celebratory shotgun blast over my head as I skip along my merry way back home for breakfast.)
Yes. The gooey butter bars
are back on the block. Yum!
Karen Kolber & Co. are now accepting donations for the auction block from the universe of humans, and that includes y-o-u. Think political memorabilia, CDs, books (signed or not), clothing, pink flamingos, pet toys, trips, crafts, prints, services, games, electronics, etc. Food is also good, particularly if it's of the sweet and baked variety.
To donate an auction item, just click here to send in a description (with a photo or link to a photo, if possible). Proceeds go to help offset costs related to the convention.
If you have questions, e-mail Karen Kolber at Karen [at] netrootsnation.org.
Okay, that's all I got up here. Cheers and Jeers marches on below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Monday, August 12, 2013
Note: Today is National Middle Child's Day. Everybody say the official motto with me: "Oh, Marcia Marcia Marcia!!!"
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5 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til the senatorial primary in New Jersey:
1
Days 'til the
National Hamburger Festival in Akron, Ohio:
5
Days G.W. Bush and Barack Obama spent, respectively, on vacation after 4½ yrs in office:
367 / 92
(Source: Mark Knoller)
Number of fatal airline accidents in the last 43 years:
1,266
Survival rate in an airline accident in the 1970s and today, respectively:
39%, 67%
(Source:
USA Today)
Number of Mints that produced coins for both the Union and the confederacy:
1---New Orleans
(Source: Postal Commemorative Society)
Weight of the giant ball of wet wipes and food fat---aka the
"fatberg"---that was found in a sewer in London:
15 tons
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Puppy Pic of the Day: They should replace the hydrant with San Diego's mayor.
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CHEERS to lazy goof-off week. Here's the way things stand around the country:
The Senate is off. The House is off. The President is off. The Supreme Court is off. State legislatures are off. Oh, and most of Europe is off. Yeah...off their ROCKERS
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!! Remember that, all you grads now entering the workforce: maniacal laughter is cleansing for the resentful, burnt-out workaholic soul.
CHEERS to screeching for Gawd. Pulpits were a' pounded and Amens were a' shouted at the annual Religious Hypocrisy and Bible Cherrypicking Summit in Iowa over the weekend. This was Kaili Joy Gray's preview at Wonkette (and a reminder that she writes there now full-time after getting snatched from our FP basket here at DKos, damn them):
Yeah. A Baldwin brother tops their A-list.
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This second annual summit promises to be even more awesomer than the first. (And, oh yeah, totally irrelevant to anything, unless we missed the part where the 2012 bought-and-paid-for endorsement of Rick Santorum mattered at all to anyone and made him the Republican nominee.) Especially the part where every speaker will be “asked to address a ‘singular’ and ‘major’ threat to America and to America’s families, along with the opportunity for leadership solutions to these threats.” We don’t know for sure, because we are not there and have not received advance copies of any of the speeches, but we are willing to bet you a nickel that all of the speakers will at least mention the singular and major threats of OBAMA and THE GAYS and quite likely BROWNS and BORTIONS. In fact, we will bet you two nickels.
Here's your two nickels, Kaili. But you forgot one massive evil threat in Jesus Land:
SOCIALISM!!! So I'll need a penny back.
CHEERS to longevity. Happy Benchiversary Ruth Bader Ginsburg! The second female Supreme Court Justice---one of the bright lights of the Clinton legacy---marked 20 years on the bench Saturday. I looked it up, and the 20-year gift for a justice is giving Alito a wedgie. Lucky lady.
CHEERS to compassionate conservatism. 58 years ago today, on August 12, 1955, that liberal fringe kook President Dwight Eisenhower raised the hourly minimum wage from 75¢ to a dollar. Or, as Republicans today would call it, "a dollar too much."
He may be an idiot,
but he's OUR idiot!
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JEERS to going the "Full Coulter." Ann Coulter once famously said that Timothy McVeigh should've blown up the
New York Times building instead of the Murrah Federal Building. Apparently Maine tea party governor Paul LePage thought that was the peak of intelligence and decided to
revive it in his own way:
Gov. Paul LePage made his dislike of the Portland Press Herald abundantly clear Friday while sitting in a fighter jet simulator: He said from the cockpit that he would like to blow up the newspaper's building.
The Republican governor made the offhand remark while participating in a fighter jet simulation at Pratt & Whitney, a defense contractor in North Berwick. In video footage from the event, LePage is asked, "What would you like to do?" He replies: "I want to find the Portland Press Herald building and blow it up."
The most amazing part: the poor woman who was so desperate for a job that she agreed to be LePage's official spokeswoman actually had to make it
VERY CLEAR that he was just making a joke. Because the way his brain works, we can never be sure.
CHEERS to a vanishing species making it through another year. On August 12, 1889, William Gray patented the payphone. In the last several years---thank you, cellphones---over half of America's payphones have disappeared. It definitely makes it more challenging to call people anonymously in the middle of the night to arrange ransom drops, trust me. Er, I mean...from what I'm told.
JEERS to stupid human tricks. Well, here's a headline I never expected to be able to check off my bucket list, courtesy of the Sun Sentinel:
Lauderhill cops accused of kinky traffic stop. Officer got female driver to punch him in genitals, prosecutors say
Reminds me of the
Andy Griffith Show episode where Barney Fife gets Floyd the barber to tie him to his chair, stuff a rubber ball in his mouth and spank him with his strop for being a naughty deputy. (If you're curious, their safe word was "Sarsaparilla.")
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Five years ago in C&J: August 12, 2008
CHEERS to inadvertently appropriate words. You know that city-wide fireworks display during the Olympic opening ceremonies in Peking that made everyone go "Ooh" and "Aah" and "If they can pull this off, maybe they're not so bad after all"? Turns out it was just fake digital effects. They had to go with computer graphics "because of the city’s hazy, smoggy skies, which made such a complicated display at night too difficult to pull off successfully." Here's what the head of the FX bamboozle team said about the pyrotechnics that people thought were there but which weren't really:
"Seeing how it worked out, it was still a bit too bright compared to the actual fireworks," [Gao] Xiaolong said in comments that appeared in the Daily Telegraph. "But most of the audience thought it was filmed live---so that was mission accomplished."
Even freakier: he was on an aircraft carrier when he said it.
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And just one more…
A Perseid meteor is also called
a "useful Michele Bachmann 2012
presidential campaign metaphor."
CHEERS to cleansing your soul. The
Perseid meteor shower put on a display of Perseidiousness over the weekend:
Every year at this time, the Earth passes through the orbit of a comet called Swift Tuttle, and we see meteors streaking across the night sky as pieces of debris from the comet enter the earth's atmosphere at more than 100,000 mph and burn up.
Everyone agrees it was beautiful, it united Americans in a common activity, and it made lots of people happy and curious about the universe and the wonders of science. And in other news, Republicans announced this morning that they plan to introduce a constitutional amendment banning all future Perseid meteor showers.
Oh, and a programming reminder: Senator and general nuisance Rand Paul (R-Galt) will be on The Daily Show tonight, but you can wipe the memory of that silliness from your mind when Senator and general good guy Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island appears on The Colbert Report. Otherwise, have a tolerable Monday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Archaeologist Anya Shetler cleans an inscription below an ancient stucco frieze recently unearthed in the buried Maya city of Holmul in the Peten region of Guatemala. The enormous frieze—which measures 26 feet by nearly 7 feet---depicts Bill in Portland Maine in a mythological setting, suggesting they may have deified idiots.
---National Geographic
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