From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Energize an Ally Tuesday
THREE weeks to go 'til the midterm elections on Tuesday, November 6th, and the anticipation is so intense it feels like my body’s been tossed into a big blue blender and set to "whip 'em!" Of course, that feeling could also be the cocktail of Big Pharma's finest chemo coursing through my veins as I write this. And now that I think of it, between the vibration of the blender and the volatility of the unpronounceable concoctions I got injected with last week, you might want to give me a bit of a wide berth today.
Basically, your Tuesday "Energize An Ally" assignment today is pretty simple: just take an action that you think will do the most good at this moment in some corner of the Democratic universe. Up here in Maine, our candidates are pretty flush: Sen. Angus King and my congresswoman Chellie Pingree are sailing to re-election. The governor's races are well-oiled machines. All my local candidates have zero chance of losing to a Republican---I know, lucky me.
So today, I'm going to donate to a group of phenomenal governors-to-be that Daily Kos popped into an easy-to-support page on Act Blue. Three of 'em I've seen at Netroots Nation conventions, and the other two I'm looking forward to meeting one of these days, hopefully sooner than later: Stacey Abrams (GA), Andrew Gillum (FL), Tony Evers (WI), Gretchen Whitmer (MI), and Richard Cordray (OH---my original stompin’ grounds). Amanda McKay at Daily Kos Elections sums up in one word the importance of getting the executive branch of these critical states locked in for our side:
GERRYMANDERING. One of the reasons why Congress is controlled by the Republicans is because Republicans at the state level have redrawn the district lines to favor their party. That's a lot of power, and it's created an unfair field in which Republicans have had a permanent advantage since 2010. We can't let it happen again after 2020.
This election is our last chance to elect Democrats in critical gubernatorial elections before the 2020 census.
This is the most powerful thing we can do to create fairer districts for both congressional and statehouse races.
So this morning C&J is happy to send $10 of Billy Powuh! to each of them (the donation link is here), with the expectation that these will be the ten-dollar donations that put all five candidates over the top in 21 days, and then they’ll all start fighting over who gets to hire me as their communications director. Easy on the shirt, guys. It’s chiffon.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Tuesday, October 16, 2018
Note: Today is the start of Rub Your Shoes On The Carpet And Then Touch Your Cat's Nose With Your Finger season. Or as emergency rooms call it: finger reattachment season.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til the start of open ACA health care enrollment: 15
Days 'til the Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival in San Antonio: 3
Percent of registered young voters (18-39) who said they were definitely planning to vote in 2014 and 2018, respectively, according to ABC News-Washington Post polling: 42%, 67%
Percent of registered nonwhite voters who said they were definitely planning to vote in 2014 and 2018, respectively: 48%, 72%
Number of U.S. states that now ban the death penalty, after Washington followed suit last week: 20
Percent chance that Fox News is cutting back on the amount of time it devotes to Trump's propaganda rallies because they don’t pull in the ratings anymore: 100%
Rank of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the list of Britain's favorite albums of all time, according to The Official Charts Company: #1
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Morning news dump…
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CHEERS to the Great October Hippie Convergence of Aught eighteen. A good time was had by all at the autumn Daily Kos/C&J Meetup at DiMillo’s Floating Restaurant in Portland, Maine Sunday. Here’s the motley crew:
In attendance to talk politics, life, and all things blue-wave-related were Kossacks brillig, Ed Tracey, Mayim, Lulu and Devtob (all the way from New York), DtheO, Parson's Beach and Jim for a quick drive-by, Simple, Lorelei HI, Jay, JBL55 and Jim, Debbie in ME, Common Sense Mainer, Bill in Portland Maine, our intrepid host and organizer, nhox42, and all the way from Colorado: special guests ColoTim and Deb, aka Mrs. Colo Tim. Among the business that was conducted: reading the minutes from the last Meetup (“Ate, drank, bitched, belched”), followed by eating, drinking, bitching, belching, and removing yours truly as supreme viceroy on 25th Amendment grounds. Be sure to let us know in C&J if you'd like your next meetup to get some extra ink. They're fun, they’re cathartic and, as always, time spent at a meetup is never deducted from your lifespan.
JEERS to drama in Gubernatorial Land! The governor's race up here in Maine has been sleepier than Rip Van Winkle on Ambien. Every day we have to go outside and poke the nominees with sticks just to make sure they still have a pulse. Never seen anything so bizarrely slumberrific like it. Until now! Now there's a pot o' controversy brewin,' because a brave woman has come forward to criticize the Republican candidate---a scratch 'n dent dealership owner who thinks all Maine needs to thrive is a businessman at the wheel (never mind the current businessman, Paul LePage, has been an unmitigated disaster)---of sexism in the workplace.
A 2006 sex discrimination allegation against Republican Shawn Moody and his auto repair business jolted the 2018 race for governor Friday after a new report revealed details of the complaint to the Maine Human Rights Commission. […] Jill Hayward…said she was fired when Moody told her she would “no longer be able to do the job” after giving birth to her son. […]
“I was thinking this man may become my governor and I will have to look at him for how many years to come,” Hayward said. Hayward said she took her attorney’s advice on accepting the settlement amount. “I was a new single mom at the time,” she said. But she called the meeting with Moody a life-changing event. “It took me years to recover,” Hayward said, noting she ended up losing her apartment and her car. […]
Hayward said she was a registered Republican and supported President Trump, but said that she would be voting for Moody’s Democratic opponent, Maine Attorney General [Janet] Mills, on Nov. 6.
Good. We're all awake up here now.
CHEERS to girls with grenades. Twenty-one years ago today, the dedication of the Women In Military Service Memorial began with a candlelight march starting at the Lincoln Memorial and moving across the Arlington Memorial Bridge to Arlington National Cemetery. It was well-received when it officially opened a few days later…
The vast majority of critics highly lauded the Women in Military Service for America Memorial.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said it "breaks new conceptual ground in paying tribute to U.S. military personnel, much like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial did in 1982". Gail Russell Chaddock, writing for the Christian Science Monitor, said it was nothing like any other memorial or monument in the city, and singled out the computerized database of women veterans as its greatest strength.
Benjamin Forgey of The Washington Post called it a "resounding success" that "enhances an already splendid setting in a number of ways". Its greatest strength, he said, was the way in which it was "insistently respectful" of the [existing 1932] Hemicycle and Arlington National Cemetery. He also singled out the "serious", "uncomplicated and unostentatious" interiors. His lengthy review concluded that the memorial was "a brilliant, sensitive design" and "a memorable public place".
The memorial is dedicated to women who serve in the Armed Forces in times of war. But also in times of peace, if on the off chance we’re lucky enough to ever have any more of those.
CHEERS to a triple dose of 'dorsements. With only three more weeks to go until election day, newspaper editorial boards are sharpening their nibs and going all-in for candidates in their respective neighborhoods. Probably not much of a spoiler alert to say that most of the luvins is goin' toward Team D, since we're the one party that hasn't lost its freaking marbles. A couple snips:
St. Louis Post Dispatch for Sen. Claire McCaskill
We had expected a harder choice, but GOP candidate Josh Hawley…is running his campaign from the gutter and is employing a shameful array of misleading tactics to make Missourians believe he’s someone he clearly is not. ...Hawley stoops to using the image of his young son, who suffers from a chronic disease, to assert his support for mandatory insurance coverage of pre-existing conditions. Yet Hawley is one of 20 GOP attorneys general to have joined a federal lawsuit to overturn the Affordable Care Act---Obamacare ---including the act’s highly popular mandate for insurance coverage of pre-existing conditions. … Hawley comes across as a ladder-climbing phony, as Charlie Brennan and conservative radio talk show host Mark Reardon observed last month on KMOX.”
IA-04 Des Moines Register for J.D. Scholten (vs. Rep. Steve King)
In his almost 16 years in Congress, King has passed exactly one bill as primary sponsor, redesignating a post office. He won’t debate his opponent and rarely holds public town halls. Instead, he spends his time meeting with fascist leaders in Europe and retweeting neo-Nazis. His Democratic challenger, J.D. Scholten, a 38-year-old former professional baseball player from Sioux City, is a breath of fresh air. He’s focused entirely on working for the 4th District, particularly rural communities that are struggling with the effects of low commodity prices, Trump’s trade war and workforce shortages as a result of the immigration crackdown.
CA-22: The Fresno Bee for Andrew Janz (vs. Rep. Devin Nunes)
Today, The Fresno Bee takes a step it has not made since before 2002: It is recommending a candidate for the 22nd congressional district who is not Devin Nunes. … Instead, The Bee recommends Andrew Janz, the Democrat who offers the best chance to both lead the district by attending to its issues and then by striving for bipartisanship in Washington, D.C., which is the only answer to the poison of gridlock politics that is stifling debate and action at nearly all levels. […] Voters can…choose Nunes and remain stuck with the damaging partisanship he practices, the party-above-country mode that motivates him to protect President Trump from the investigation into Russian meddling more than meet his constitutional obligations as an independent arm of government. Then there is his lack of regard for the needs of his part of California.
Usual caveat applies: a newspaper endorsement and five bucks'll buy you a cup of coffee. But good press is always better than the alternative.
JEERS to friends in dark places. Susan Collins, the slimeball senator from Maine who recently set up a branch office in a drunken fratboy's colon somewhere in the devil's Triangle (just south of Boof Land), once complained that opposition fundraising against her was a "bribe." But funny how that's not the case when it turns out the money is being spent in the service of her supporters---like, say, the "dark money" group Judicial Crisis Network, which is now giving her the tongue-bath of her career via a six-figure broadcast and social media campaign of ads thanking her for safely catapulting America back into the hands of the Puritans because of her vote for Kavanaugh. Gag me:
“Thank you Susan Collins for thoughtfully reviewing Judge Kavanaugh’s judicial record and weighing the evidence, and for being a reasonable voice during this incredibly divisive time,” Carrie Severino, the group’s chief counsel and policy director, said in a press release accompanying the news. “You put Maine and our country first---thank you.”
Kavanaugh and Collins, respectively, complained prior to Kavanaugh’s confirmation about “millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups”and “an unprecedented amount of dark money opposing [Kavanaugh’s] nomination.” But Judicial Crisis Network was one of several well-funded dark money groups to support Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Collins isn’t saying much yet about the victory lap her secret star chamber supporter is providing for her. Or maybe she is. It's kinda hard to make out her enunciation when she's just done a swan dive into the deep end of a chocolate fountain.
JEERS to America's #1 pubic hair on soda products expert. Twenty-seven years ago this week, in 1991, Clarence Thomas was confirmed by the Senate to become the Supreme Court's first justice with a neatly-catalogued porn collection (#1 on his list: The Adventures of Bad Mama Jama). Today he sits on his ass seething at liberals for exposing his X-rated lifestyle, cheating on his taxes, and quietly folding, spindling and mutilating the Constitution. [Sigh] But in the interest of fairness, I really should find something nice to say about him. Like...thanks for not being Robert Bork?
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 16, 2008
JEERS to the fall season. Monday's irrational exuberance on Wall Street was tempered yesterday by a 700+ drop in the Dow, and right on schedule the international markets are imitating us. They really are like little puppy dogs, aren’t they. It makes me want to get right up in their face and yell, "Hey DAX! Hey CAC! Hey Nikkei! Get yer own damn recession! This one's ours!" Only one thing restrains me: I don’t know how to dial international.
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And just one more...
CHEERS to battling to a back beat. Can't let today go by without looking back six years to the night Mitt Romney got pummeled by both President Obama and his own clumsy self. Who can forget "binders full of women," "Please proceed, Governor" and "Can you say that a little louder, Candy?" Enjoy what even George Will called"immeasurably the best debate in 50 years"…songified:
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That was the moment when Republicans got up from their chairs, opened their windows, and quietly switched places with Democrats on building ledges across America. Somewhere overhead, a pigeon's bowels rumbled.
Oh, and today is Dictionary Day. Look it up. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
"If I was going to lie about having sex with someone famous---Brad Pitt, here we go. I would pick somebody way less embarrassing than Bill in Portland Maine. Are you kidding?"
---Jack Daniels
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