From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
Taylor Tuesday
As Pride Month hit day 17 yesterday, Taylor Swift released a new single starring a who’s who of current LGBT icons and allies. (Extra points for including the “Get A Brain Morans” sign.) It ends with an appeal for your John or Jane Hancock, of which nearly 300,000 have been gathered so far.:
Let's show our pride by demanding that, on a national level, our laws truly treat all of our citizens equally. Please sign my petition for Senate support of the Equality Act on Change.org.
And ZOMG it also features a reunion between Ms. Swift and Katy Perry, who as I understand it had a feud because Katy borrowed Taylor’s lawnmower and never returned it. (It’s always the little things.) Catchy ditty with a loud-and-clear message for the bigots. And, look—a kiddie pool!
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[BiPM Crosses “Post Taylor Swift video in C&J” off bucket list with obnoxiously-squeaky magic marker.] Excellent. Only took me 16 years.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold...[Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Note: Today is International Sushi Day. By all means celebrate it to your belly’s content. I’m afraid I can’t. The memory of last year’s Sushi Day is still too raw.
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By the Numbers:
Days 'til summer: 3
Days 'til the Malad Valley Welsh Festival in Malad City, Idaho: 10
Percent of Americans who believe abortion should be legal all or most of the time, versus 41% who believe the opposite, according to a new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll: 56%
Minimum number of cities still waiting to be paid by Trump for campaign rally-related expenses: 10
Number of times Trump has accused people or media outlets of committing treason since he was elected: 24
Percent of Salt Lake City residents polled by PPP who approve of the job Trump is doing: 25%
Number of women on the new Forbes list of highest-paid athletes in the world: 1 (Serena Williams)
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NEW Tuesday feature! "Packin' for Philadelphia!"
Brought to you by the 2019 Netroots Nation Convention in Philadelphia, July 11-13. We’re happy to announce that the Daily Kos/C&J party is Wednesday, July 10th at Aqimero starting at 6pm, and we'd love to see ya. Details here in Neeta's post. To RSVP, send her a kosmail here. Who's ready for a random grab-bag of Philly fun facts from Medium? Bet ya can't eat just one…
The Philadelphia Zoo is the oldest zoo in America. It was chartered in 1859 and raised public and private funds to create the non-profit.
In 1988, Philadelphia’s home football team, the Eagles, helped to create the largest sandwich that was, shocker, the length of a football field.
25% of the US population lives within 5 hours of Philadelphia.
One of the seeds that went to the moon and back on Apollo 14 is planted in Washington Square Park. [The original died in 2008, but a clone tree was planted in 2012.]
Dutch settlers in Philadelphia introduced the soft pretzel in the 18th century.
If the Liberty Bell rang it would be in E-flat.
Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church was the first church for African American people. The church was established in 1787 and continues to run today.
With over 2,000 outdoor murals, Philadelphia is the mural capital of the U.S.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Are you the dog on the right…or the left?
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CHEERS to the first hurrah of summer. Last call for this weekend's 10th annual summer Kossack meetup in Maine! If you're going to be in the vicinity of the western part of the state (near Oxford) this Saturday, June 22, Kossack Mayim invites you to her cabin on the lake for a day of food, drinky, kibitzing about the Democratic candidates and President You-Know-Who, and other assorted fun. The weather looks perfect for Saturday—sunny and 75. For more info about the meetup (food, directions, etc.), see her diary here. To RSVP, email Mayim via kosmail or at mainely(dot)genealogy at gmail.com. Michael and I will be there with bells water wings on, and we hope to see you there. Oh, and if you're coming from Asia, don’t forget to hang a left at Albuquerque.
CHEERS to strange bedfellows. Let's hear it for the Democrats in Virginia Whooooooo!!! Yesterday the Supreme Court handed down a big decision that basically plucked the tail feathers from the Republican gerrymander vultures who'd tried to stuff black voters into a handful of districts to stack the deck in the GOP's favor. But almost as eyebrow-raising was the alliance that ruled in the 5-4 majority against them:
[A]s a result, Virginia will enjoy fairer elections for the state House in this November's elections. The new maps are also more favorable to Democrats, who need to pick up just two seats this fall to win back the chamber for the first time in two decades.
With conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joining liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court's decision didn't resolve the case on the merits. However, by rejecting the GOP's right to appeal, the Supreme Court allowed the lower court’s ruling to stand.
This case centered on the GOP's use of hard-and-fast population thresholds to ensure black voters could elect their preferred candidates—that is to say, black Democrats—under the Voting Rights Act. The GOP admitted to using an arbitrary target that required every such district to have a black population of at least 55%. However…Republicans deliberately used this too-high threshold because it meant that they could pack more black voters into a smaller number of districts—and therefore reduce the black population in neighboring districts. That attempt to reduce black political power, the courts found, violated the Constitution.
Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion. Usual routine: she cranked it out between her midday power-lifting routine and late-night Ninja missions.
JEERS to tales from America's dark ages. A reminder that we used to be, in certain ways, as backward as any nation that ever was. On this date in 1873—ah, those wacky Grant years—Susan B. Anthony was fined a hundred dollars for the unpardonable offense of voting (in Rochester, New York). The dust-up, which she called a "high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights," led to immediate reforms. Unfortunately, back in those days "immediate reform" meant waiting another fifty years before doing anything about it. By the way, Ms. Anthony never paid the fine. Her heirs now owe the Fed, with interest—[clackity clackity clack DING!]—eight million dollars. But please not the Susan B. Anthony ones—to this day we still confuse 'em with quarters.
CHEERS to rolling out the welcome mat. My little seaside shantytown of Portland, Maine got an influx of over 200 asylum seekers last week, sending city officials scrambling to provide temporary shelter and services for them. There was some speculation that they'd been dumped here by Trump's goons, but that’s not the case—they wanted to live here because, well, our sterling reputation preceded us. But as the chaos of their sudden arrival was being dealt with by the city, residents stepped up to lend a hand:
Donors have given over$230,000 to help Portland and hundreds have offered to volunteer as the city provides shelter and humanitarian assistance for more than 200 asylum seekers who have arrived over the past week. […]
Mainly from sub-Saharan Africa, the asylum seekers asked to go to Portland when they crossed the southern U.S. border after a treacherous journey from their home countries, where they faced violence and persecution.
So when you read about all the Republican hostility toward immigrants, here's a positive story that reminds us that they're in the minority. We're happy to give our new neighbors what they need to start a new life in Maine, knowing all the hellholes they had to slog through to get here. Especially New Hampshire.
CHEERS to Ride's ride. Thirty-six years ago today, strapped inside the Space Shuttle Challenger, Sally Ride became the first American woman (and, we later found out, first lesbian) in space. (The first woman in space from any country was Russia's Valentina Tereshkova in 1963---boy, did we get scooped on that.)
The flight was momentarily delayed when she made the men on the crew pick up their old Chinese take-out boxes and dirty underwear. Even worse, she hid the remote and flushed the porn. Now, that's just cruel.
CHEERS to the Democratic color guard. Only slightly more horrifying than Trump's admission to George Stephanopoulos that he would accept dirt on rival candidates from foreign governments was the moment when he whipped out sketches of his plans to change the paint design of Air Force One. Out: the classy light blue design that harkens back to the Kennedy years. In (or so Trump says): a slightly-modified version of his Trump Airlines design, of course. But now a Democrat in Congress may ground those plans before the White House can order a single can of Sherwin-Williams:
[House Armed Services Committee chairman Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn.] added a provision to the annual defense policy bill to…keep two new versions of the Boeing 747 aircraft within the projected spending target by banning certain paint jobs and other extras. […]
"What we're trying to do is just make sure that the 'over and above' clause provision of the Air Force One contract does not become basically a back door for the program to hemorrhage in terms of additional costs."
The amendment was adopted at the end of the hours-long hearing Thursday morning as part of the House panel's overall passage of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.
But out of respect for bipartisanship, Congressman Courtney approved one aircraft with the new design: Air Force Fisher Price. (When you pull the string it makes zoom-zoom sounds.)
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Ten years ago in C&J: June 18, 2009
JEERS to Senator Dumbstick. Senator John Ensign of Nevada cheated on his wife by schtupping a staffer's wife. Ordinarily I wouldn’t give two shits, but...you guessed it...he's a family-values hypocrite and that means he has no credibility left by his own admission:
In 1998, while running for Nevada’s Senate seat against Harry Reid, Ensign called on President Clinton to resign in light of his admitted affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky:
"I came to that conclusion recently, and frankly it’s because of what he put his whole Cabinet through and what he has put the country through," Ensign said Thursday, becoming the first member of the Nevada delegation to call for Clinton to quit. "He has no credibility left."
The last high-profile politician to get caught with his pants down, John Edwards, issued a brief statement to Ensign: "Tag, you’re it! I'll send the tabloids right over."
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And just one more…
JEERS to the Love-Me-Some-Junk-Science Boat. The flat-earthers have enjoyed a resurgence of sorts in the age of Trump. Even though their recent attempt to shoot a human up high enough to snap a Polaroid of the "third disc from the sun" was unsuccessful (memo to self: remember to put film in the camera next time), they're not giving up. If they can't prove it by air, then by God they'll prove it by sea, and they're inviting others from all around aflat the world to join them:
Flat Earthers…are planning a cruise to reach the edge of the Earth and finally get to those ‘secret’ ice walls surrounding the edge of the Earth. Their adventure is scheduled for 2020 as per their website. This might be their ultimate shot at proving that the Earth is flat. While many of the details about the date and other aspects of this event are still pending, the Flat Earth Society claims that it would be one of the bravest adventures to date. However, there is an irony attached to this great scheme.
All the nautical maps and navigation tools currently present in this world are based on the concept of the globe-like earth. That’s how modern navigation technologies like GPS (Global Positioning System) have been developed too. They can even be considered as proof for the round shape of the earth. But then again, ironies come as part and parcel when we are talking about flat earthers.
Fearless prediction: the cruisers will return with three things: stolen cabin towels, booze from the duty-free shop, and excuses. Lots and lots of excuses.
Have a tolerable Tuesday. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial
On Fox News Bernie Sanders Responds to Poll Slide By Noting He Still Beats Bill in Portland Maine
---Mediaite
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