From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE
#NN18: Looming Deadline Reminder
The folks at Netroots Nation asked me to remind you that we're one week away from the deadline for submitting your panel or workshop idea for this year's convention in New Orleans (August 2-4):
Your submissions will help us create an inclusive and engaging agenda for our 2018 conference, while also helping shape the national dialog for progressives in the coming months. This coming year will help shape our nation's future, and you can help ensure sure it's a progressive one.
Mary Rickles says you can pick any topic, but these are some of the areas they’ll be focusing on this year:
> Panels on the upcoming midterm elections, specifically ones that focus on how to make our government and the progressive movement reflective of the New American Majority
> Panels that shine a light on what’s happening locally in New Orleans and the surrounding areas.
> Conversations that encourage long-term thinking about building grassroots power, especially by centering marginalized voices and supporting local organizing
> Sessions highlighting resistance efforts both nationally and locally
> Trainings that help new activists grow into successful organizers
Submissions are reviewed by selection committees, which include peers from around the movement. Plus, the everyone will have a chance to vote on the sessions they like best once the submission period has closed.
Deadline to get your proposal in is March 14. The link for all the panel submission info is here.
Now back to our regularly-scheduled blizzard preparedness checklist. (We’re currently down to our last two items: “Slice the limes” and “Check inventory of tiny paper umbrellas.”) Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, March 7, 2018
Note: Storm’s a’ brewin’. We could get 18 inches of a “cakey mess” during a blizzard between tonight and tomorrow. So if you don’t see C&J posted in the morning you’ll know we’re in the dark. No need to worry about us, though, since we’re stocked up on all the essentials: candles, cashews for the squirrels, Pond’s Cold Cream, and a fresh supply of man-servants.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til we turn our clocks ahead: 4
Days 'til the 29th annual Ostrich Festival in Chandler, Arizona: 2
Average death toll in a mass shooting where an assault rifle is used since the massacre in Aurora, Colorado: 24.4
Death toll when a non-assault firearm is used: 7.5
Year Norway plans to ban semi-automatic guns: 2021
Percent of U.S. workers---across age, income and other demographic categories---who are paid by Direct Deposit: 82%
Percent of the $120 million allocated to the State Department to fight foreign influence in our elections that has been spent so far: $0
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 184 (including 5 anti-Christs and a crazy outbreak of demons run amok). Soul Protection Factor 24 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Rhea’s brush with fame…
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CHEERS to your morning moment of zen. I’m tempted to post this every day for the duration of Lord Dampnut’s accidency. Kudos to you, Latin America, for knowing exactly what to do with the Trump name:
The guy had a little trouble getting the stubborn “M” to come off, but he persisted and succeeded. So let that be a lesson to all of us: if at first you don’t succeed, pry, pry again.
CHEERS to Pa Bell. 142 years ago today, in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a patent---#174,465---for a new and exciting communications device, one of the features of which was a diaphragm that was inserted inside it. Bell called it the telephone. Republicans, of course, called it a slut.
JEERS to the Equifluffer. The Trump administration is full of corrupt supervillains, but perhaps none looks the part more than Mick Mulvaney, who is doing double-duty doing double-nothing as head of both the OMB and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Case in point: while every state attorney general, along with the FTC and 240 class-action lawsuits, are raining legal blows on credit-reporting agency Equifax for handing out 145-million Americans’ financial info like candy during Trick-or-Treat, ol’ Mickey has stopped the CFPB’s investigation because in his bought-and-paid-for mind it’s just not a worrisome-enough situation. Oh, wait, did I say 143 million? Silly me…
Equifax said Thursday that 2.4 million more consumers than previously reported were affected by the massive data breach the company suffered last year, adding to an already stunning toll.
This means that as many as 147.9 million consumers have been affected in some way by the breach, which amounts to about half the country.
Last month, a probe by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said the company failed to keep its computer systems adequately up to date and was not forthcoming enough about its description of the damage. “I spent five months investigating the Equifax breach and found the company failed to disclose the full extent of the hack,” Warren said Thursday.
But don’t worry, the CFPB under Mick Mulvaney is all over it. Like a cloaking device over a Klingon Bird of Prey.
CHEERS to punching up. The NRA has no clue what it’s doing in the aftermath of the Parkland, Florida shootings. They’re following their usual script---blame, shame, scream, froth, and demonize, demonize, demonize---but it’s just not working. They’ve never had to take on the organizational skills and social media savvy of the millennials, and it’s making them look oddly wimpy for a change. This is Stoneman Douglas student Sarah Chadwick’s response to NRA mouthpiece Dana Loesch’s silly “hourglass” video (via Kossack durrati):
In fact, the NRA has been so effective at silencing teens that they’ve completely scuttled their march plans for March 24th. If by “completely scuttled” you mean sparked the grassroots to organize events in over 400 cities that will be attended by millions of people around the country. Damn, they sure showed us.
JEERS to thuggish thuggery. On March 7, 1965---America's "Bloody Sunday"---a march by civil rights demonstrators---Congressman John Lewis among them---was broken up in Selma, Alabama when "state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas." Over the weekend Lewis and others commemorated the event at the Edmund Pettus (Boo! Hiss! Pettus sucks!!!) Bridge:
“I remember it very, very well,” Lewis said. “It’s like it was yesterday.” Lewis, who was brutally beaten on March 7, 1965, as marchers attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery to fight for the right to vote, led a group of politicians on a civil rights pilgrimage to Selma. […]
“I can remember Major John Cloud saying this was an unlawful march, it will not be allowed to continue. I’ll give you three minutes to disperse, return to your homes or to your church.” Lewis said he could remember the lawmen putting on their gas masks and coming toward the marchers. “The rest is history,” Lewis said. […]
U.S. Sen. Doug Jones, who changed the political landscape in the state of Alabama in December, was also among the group to walk across the bridge. “It means everything. It is so symbolic of where we need to be in America, the lessons that were fought for here and that we need to take back, we need to take to Washington and to everywhere in this country dignity, respect, equality,” Jones said. “I’m just humbled to be here.”
Meanwhile, back in D.C. fellow Alabamian Jeff Sessions also took a moment to reflect on the beatings, the tramplings, the carnage, and the overall treatment of black people as second-class citizens on that fateful day. We hear it took staffers several hours to coax the smirk off his face.
JEERS to linking with the wrong head. The Utah State Bar sent out their invitation to their annual spring hootenanny on Monday, and apparently the guy they put in charge of promotion horribly misunderstood what they meant when he was tasked with “expanding member outreach.” This is what he sent out:
The bad news: the Utah State Bar says it’s “horrified” by the mistake. The good news: the event sold out in less than 30 seconds. (Oh, Utah…you little horndogs.)
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Ten years ago in C&J: March 7, 2008
JEERS to Dungeon master Dubya. President Bush vetoed a bill outlawing torture in America. It paves the way for techniques such as waterboarding to continue being used in America’s name. Even worse, it paves the way for Dick Cheney to keep making public statements through the end of his term.
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And just one more…
CHEERS to previews of coming attractions that aren’t coming anytime soon. You’d think that with GOP “rebels” like Jeff Flake and Bob Corker standing up and giving impassioned speeches criticizing the worst president in American history, one of them would’ve been cast by now as the protagonist in the surefire Oscar winner Courage, Compassion, Country. But, no. By refusing to back up all that jawboning with action (besides the action of running away from re-election and towards the private sector or a gig with, of all things, the Trump administration), they’re no better than all the other GOP bootlickers. So for the time being, this SNL trailer released one year ago remains hero-less as it heads into its 13th month:
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But if anyone needs a cast of Republican villains? Noooooo problem.
Have a happy humpday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
“If you don’t answer a summons to Cheers and Jeers with ‘Yeah, I’ll be there,’ they usually lock you up.”
---Shepard Smith
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