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DailyKos: Cheers and Jeers, Thursday

DailyKos
Cheers and Jeers: Thursday
by Bill in Portland Maine
Share this on Twitter - Cheers and Jeers: Thursday Thu May 13, 2010 at 05:53:41 AM PDT

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE...

Congrats Are In Order, I Do Believe

Mary Rickles at Netroots Nation breaks the news:

A few weeks ago, we kicked off our third annual scholarship competition in partnership with Democracy for America, with a goal of sending at least 40 activists to Netroots Nation this summer in Las Vegas.

The response so far has been incredible, with around 100 deserving applicants in less than three weeks. After much evaluating, quantifying and hand-wringing, we're proud to announce our first round of 12 winners.

Our winners have compelling stories:

>> As both a disabled veteran and a transsexual, blogger Autumn Sandeen wants to foster alliances across identity groups.

>> David McAvoy founded Blue Arkansas because of all the damage he saw Blue Dogs like Blanche Lincoln doing to the state and the country.

>> And "activista media maker" Maegan Ortiz uses the web to give voice to her experience and the experience of so many other children of immigrants.

We want to tip our hat to all of our recipients---deserving voices in the progressive movement who now have opportunity to share ideas with hundreds of fellow activists like you this summer

These are just the first 12. We'll announce two more rounds of winners in the coming weeks, making a big effort to ensure that the scholarship program brings in a diversity of voices and perspectives from all over the country.

You can still apply for a scholarship, which covers the cost of one all-access pass to Netroots Nation 2010 and hotel accommodations for one from July 22 to July 25, 2010 as well as a few select meals and outside events sponsored by Democracy for America. I shall make the link really easy to find by bathing it in luminescent orange visible from space.

Regular NN registration basks in a similar glow here.

Countdown clock: 10 weeks from today!

Meanwhile Cheers and Jeers starts in There's Moreville... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

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Cheers and Jeers for Thursday, May 13, 2010

Note: Just a heads-up that C&J will be in an undisclosed, internet-proof location all weekend, so there will be no C&J Monday. We shall return Tuesday with genuine Eisenhower-era hard candy for everyone from the general store.

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By the Numbers:

Days 'til summer: 39

Days `til the Garden Grove Strawberry Festival in California: 15

Number of tigers in Asia in 1990: 100,000

Estimated number of tigers in Asia now: 3,200

(Source: AP via The Week)

Drop in NASCAR fan attendance so far this year at, respectively, Bristol Motor Speedway, Phoenix International raceway, and Talladega Superspeedway: 14%, 13%, 13%

(Source: Box scores via USA Today)

Portion of American households that use the hard-copy of the phone book: 1-in-9 (Gallup survey via Americablog)

Number of Supreme Court justices who didn’t have experience as a judge: 40

(Source: Rachel Maddow)

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Your Thursday Molly Ivins Moment:

"I realize this is not breaking news, but we are looking at something exceptional in political history with this race. . . . The Internet is breaking open old power structures and set ways of doing things. Most campaign consultants have no idea what to do with it or about it. How delightful."

---January, 2004

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Puppy Pic of the Day: The way to a puppy's heart is through...the kitchen floor???

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CHEERS to keepin' up the pressure. I'm just thinkin' out loud here, but I'm getting a feeling that the 'Don’t Ask, Don't Tell' policy might be going bye-bye sooner rather than later. The House would pass it in a heartbeat. The number of senators signing on is growing. The pushback from the other side is pretty weak tea these days. Military activists are swarming the capitol---and campaigns like the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network's Stories from the Front Lines: Letters to President Barack Obama are getting noticed. And now even the military bloggers are banding together to say enough is enough:

A group of leading military bloggers has issued a joint statement urging Congress to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

The community of "mil-bloggers"---often hawkish, critical of White House and military leadership, devoted to both the First and Second Amendments---isn't easy to define politically, but has proven an increasingly powerful voice from the ranks. The statement, which says that there have always been gay soldiers and that "very little will actually change" with the repeal of "Don't Ask," carries the signatures of the authors of some of the most prominent: Blackfive, Q&O, Outside the Wire, and the US Naval Institute Blog, among others.

Meanwhile, Howard Dean is signing on to a new Courage Campaign petition that'll be used as an attention getter when Congress starts marking up the defense authorization bill Monday (into which DADT repeal might get tucked). He urges you to please add your name. (Over 60,000 have signed on already---100k would be awesome.) December 1 is when, technically, the Pentagon "study" (read: foot dragging) will be done. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they figure out a way to back that up under the guise of "having enough information to proceed with the repeal earlier than planned." If it's one thing we know about Washington, it's that they're rigid as a board...until it's in their best interest to be flexible as Gumby. If I'm right, buy me something nice!

JEERS to the shortest update in C&J's history. Here's the latest on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: BP blames Transocean Transocean blames Halliburton Halliburton blames BP Still gushin'.

CHEERS to understanding the opposition. Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who will be a keynote speaker at Netroots Nation, joined Rachel Maddow this week and did a good job turning the radical Republican fringe into mincemeat, beautifully explaining the proper role of government (which he himself seems to be doing a rather stellar job at):

"The tea party people get up in the morning and they make phone calls to each other that they‘re going to go to a rally. And they use a subsidized telephone system. Then they drive down a road that was built by the government that is protected by government workers called highway patrolmen. They get to a rally and they carry their signs and they're protected by the firemen and the policemen who are in that town. And then they eagerly drive home and say, 'It was a success---we‘re against the government!'"

So you have got to have government that works. In Montana, we‘re one of the two states that have a surplus. We have $400 million in the bank. But I‘m still challenging expenses. I‘m not cutting government. We‘re challenging expenses of government, the same way small businesses and some big businesses all over the country are. It‘s not a sin to be frugal. It‘s not a sin to challenge expenses.

But it is a sin to cut back on education for our most valuable resource. And when we‘re expected to keep people in prison, we should keep them in prison. Don‘t turn them loose because you‘ve got a bad budget. That‘s government that doesn‘t work.

Meanwhile, Think Progress delivers this little nugget that, at long last, reduces the far-right rabble to rubble:

Despite protests from Tea Party activists regarding high taxes, a USA Today analysis of federal data has found that "Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman’s presidency." Federal, state, local, property, sales, and other taxes "consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950."

Of course, they could give a rat's ass about what's true or not. When you're a few burnt-out neurons away from spending the rest of your days scrawling on the wall of a padded cell with a crayon stuck between your toes, reality isn’t exactly on the radar.

CHEERS to swapping out a B for a B. Sixteen years ago today, on May 13, 1994, President Clinton picked Breyer to succeed Blackmun on the Big Bench and it turned out boffo. Last year Obama replaced an S (Souter) with an S (Sotomayor) which seemed to work out swell, and he's currently in the process of replacing another S with a...K??? Good god---he's either a titanic trailblazer...or a feckless fool. Will Kagan kick ass...or kick us in the kiester? To be...um...kontinued.

CHEERS to previews of coming attractions. Yesterday John Kerry and Joe Lieberman unveiled their climate bill, called the American Power Act, and it includes:

...expanded nuclear power production, incentives for the coal industry to seek cleaner methods, money to develop alternative energy sources and programs to help U.S. industry in the transition to a low-carbon system.

On climate change, the 987-page bill seeks escalating reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in coming decades that match the levels set as goals by the Obama administration and contained in a separate House energy bill passed last year. ... The proposal includes a tax on greenhouse gas emissions above allowable limits, but delays the charge on industrial emitters until 2016. In addition, it includes incentive programs for industries and sectors to shift away from fossil fuels and high emissions, including $6 billion a year for transportation infrastructure to increase efficiency and decrease oil consumption.

Lieberman's main contribution is a provision that says if you don’t switch to the curly-Q lightbulbs and turn down your water heater, you'll lose your citizenship. I'm sensing a pattern with this guy.

CHEERS to Republican Presidents with a conscience. 102 years ago today, Teddy Roosevelt spoke at the Governor's Conference on the Conservation of Natural Resources: "The natural resources of our country are in danger of exhaustion if we permit the old wasteful methods of exploiting them longer to continue." Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma issued a brief statement this morning to mark the anniversary: "Teddy who?"

CHEERS to the C&J Dept. of Letters. Delivered to India via Cobra Courier:

Dear Maulana Saidur Rahman Azmi Nadwai,

Hello! How are you? I am fine. Can you believe only two more episodes of 'Lost'? Sheesh, where does the time go, huh?

Anyway, the reason I'm writing is because I heard of your recent fatwa that says men can only work alongside other men at the office, and women can only mingle with other women. That sounds really gay. I love it, you bad boy!!!!!

Keep up the good work and give a [Muah! Muah! Muah!] to the missus next time it's okay to get within smooching diistance.

Kind regards,

BiPM

P.S. You have a terrific Scrabble name, sir---it would net you a cool 153 triple-word score!

I hope he remembered to tip the cobra.

CHEERS to the Holy Grail of philately. On May 13, 1918, the first 24-cent stamps featuring the Curtiss Jenny biplane---the aircraft chosen to inaugurate the U.S.'s new air mail service---reached post offices. Collectors heard that some of the stamps could be rare "inverts," so they fanned out to find them. Some were successful. Today the stamps are worth approximately one bazillion dollars. Or, put another way, a year of Goldman Sachs bonuses.

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Five years ago in C&J: May 13 2005

JEERS to unwelcome hitchhikers. Voting 100 to 0 (no one wanted to get caught voting against it before they voted for it), the Senate approved another "emergency" $82 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, which ensures that up to $5 billion of it will be spent wisely. Meanwhile, Republicans tacked on a measure that essentially creates a national ID card system. The downside: longer lines at (and more frequent visits to) the DMV. The upside: Big Brother will be so close now, he'll actually hand you neatly folded swaths of toilet paper in the john. Quilted even!

CHEERS to getting the ax. Dennis Miller's CNBC disaster taped its final show today. The half-hour production was cancelled after a sudden drop in the ratings when his viewer died.

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And just one more...

CHEERS to the BiPM Twitter revolution!!! I know what you're thinking: "Billy! A typical C&J is two-thousand words long, so how can you possibly limit yourself to 140 characters on that dastardly site???" I'm glad you asked. It took me a couple years of editing in my spare time, but I finally whittled my first "tweet" down to this and posted it Tuesday evening:

Hi. Wanna eat paste wi' me?

After that, the dam burst. Now I'm squatting at yet another venue where I simply don’t know how to shut up:

I probably should've read the Twitter terms and conditions, huh. Some guys just pulled up and took our couch.

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Thinking of disconnecting Pope Benedict from my tweet stream. What a chatty Cathy. (For last time, the miter doesn't make you look fat!)

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Okay, where is Farmville here?

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Number of times the late night comics have compared Gulf oil spill to oil content in hair of 'Jersey Shore's' cast: 249,622.

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So far Sarah Palin is too scared to engage me on twitter. I expected nothing less.

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Twitter says it's over capacity because of too many tweets???? WTF? Throw a few more gerbils in the machine, you tightwads. It's just TEXT!

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Been tweeting less than 24 hours and already growing hair on palms. Mom---you were right. Aw crap...now vision is going.

I admit tweeting is kinda fun and fits my super-short attention span nicely. If you feel like joining me on my crusade to rid the world of intellectual depth, my super-secret handle is: @BillinPortland. But only because---and this SO pisses me off---BiPMfartboy was already taken.

[Puts hands together, bows] I wish you much joy and satisfaction as you begin your day's journey into the merry maelstrom. Oh, and a reminder that it's Thursday the 13th. No need to panic, but be prepared for the odd hangnail or stray ear-hair sprout. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?

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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:

Crying, peeing, grinning, crawling (there's a brief crawling montage — the one such gimmick), the babies in Babies offer moments to cherish. Frankly, though, the film itself is kind of slack. I wish Balmès had found more scenes like the one in which Bill in Portland Maine tries to shove a stick into a toy doughnut, falls on his back in wailing frustration, and then perseveres, and succeeds---it's like watching the dawn of consciousness in two minutes.

---Entertainment Weekly

05-13-10 By Cross-posted by Paul DeMiglio, Senior Communications Manager |