Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Yes we did.

This is all too absurd to be reality, right?

Good luck with your asparagus.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Shelter in place is one thing. shelter in pants is quite another.

Women: they get shit done

It’s the corruption, stupid.

I really should read my own blog.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

I did not have this on my fuck 2020 bingo card.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

We have all the best words.

Just a few bad apples.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

Too inconsequential to be sued

These guys can go mcfuck themselves.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

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Counter-Political Action Plus Civic Action Post & Comment Thread

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Counter-Political Action Plus Civic Action Post & Comment Thread

In my post, Subsole requested a post, really a weekly post, but this one will be weakly as it is post workout, so that people can list in comments the local and state organizations they are part of or know of that are doing counter-political and/or civic action to oppose the Republican attempts to revise state election laws to disenfranchise Americans and, as a result, manipulate election results.

So if you are working with a local or state group or know of one, please list it in the comments. It can be most of us haven’t heard about or something, like Stacey Abrams’ organization in Georgia and Ben Wikler’s work with the Wisconsin Democratic Party, that a lot of us have heard about.

Counter Political Action Plus Civic Action Post & Comment Thread

ETA at 3:35 PM EDT

If you’ve got links to these groups’ websites, please include them in your comments listing them.

Open thread!

Also, current state post workout:

Counter-Political Action Plus Civic Action Post & Comment Thread 1

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What we should do right now

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Hi everyone, I’m not dead yet. I really want to mobilize effective activism, but there isn’t much to say right now. Nancy is doing good work in the House. The bottleneck to what should be everyone’s number one priority, the election security bill H.R.1, is Joe Manchin. If you live in West Virginia then you need to call his office, just like you should do every day since Joe Biden took office. If you don’t live in West Virginia then I’m sorry to say that you are a passenger on this ride. Please don’t bother calling Manchin’s office, it just wastes your time and annoys the staff. His job is to answer to pepperoni roll-eating Mountaineers fans and only them. It doesn’t really matter how progressive or enlightened your Senator is, and Republicans are singularly useless all the way from Rand Paul to Mitt Romney. If you live in AZ of course you should call Kyrsten Sinema; personally I get the feeling that she won’t hold out if Manchin doesn’t but every bit counts.

On the Republican side, Lisa Murkowski is about the only ray of hope we’ve got. Mitt Romney loathes Trump but he doesn’t have much interest in Democrats succeeding either. I will keep poking Pat Toomey’s office but I think he’s already counting his post-Senate weekly checks from Americans for Prosperity.

Do you have better ideas? Dish! I could use them.

[EDIT]: Here’s a picture of an old dog playing tug with the leash. My discipline habits have gone to hell as we both get older.

What we should do right now

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Repubs in Disarray! Open Thread: Liz Cheney Has Calculated Her Options

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Donald Trump is an old man, not in the best of health, facing considerable legal jeopardy compounded by his failing business enterprises. Some (noisy) portion of the Republican party’s voters have pledged fealty to him, regardless of what Trump’s wavering attentions might mean for other, less prominent GOP members and their districts. Most of the national GOP leadership, elevated by the same Wingnut Wurlitzer tropes that crowned Trump, have publicly announced their loyalty to the Man over the Party (or our mutual commonwealth).

Liz Cheney is still young, by political standards — a full generation younger than TFG, or for that matter Mitch McConnell. She’s already volutarily unpersoned herself in the current Republican Party; the attention-seekers and sycophants who crowd Fox News’ greenrooms will never let her ‘disloyalty’ be forgotten, nor will the hardcore MAGAts forgive her for spotlighting their god-emperor’s nakedness. So she’s nothing to lose, and potentially much to gain, by assuming the mantle of Sensible Republican Anti-Trump Spokeswoman.

Worst that happens is she spends the next couple of decades giving I told you so statements from the security of conservative think tanks & corporate boards. But assuming that the current uneasy Republican balance collapses — that the contradictions between the permanent-party ‘conservatives’ and the manic Trumpistas fails — well, who better to lead the inevitable Not-Democrats party that survives, or arises, in a country where no less and no more than two national parties can thrive?

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A Novel Strategy for the Disposal of Confederate Monuments (Open Thread)

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This Is Badass! (Open Thread)

 

Here’s a bit more on that novel idea to dispose of Confederate monuments that was alluded to by TaMara in the live Biden event coverage downstairs.

The group, White Lies Matter (Inc!), stole a commemorative “Jefferson Davis Chair” that was placed in an Alabama cemetery by the (white) “Ladies of Selma” in 1893. White Lies Matter, Inc. says they’re holding the chair captive to force the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) to post a banner at that organization’s Richmond headquarters on Confederate surrender day, which falls on Friday this year.

The cheeky chair-nappers are threatening to turn the stone throne into a toilet if their demand isn’t met. Via AL.com:

A Confederate monument valued at $500,000 was stolen in March from a Selma cemetery, officials confirmed today.

This morning, a group that claims to have taken the monument, the Jefferson Davis Memorial Chair, sent emails to AL.com saying they will give the chair to the United Daughters of the Confederacy if that organization agrees to hang a banner outside its Richmond, Va. headquarters.

In those emails, a group calling itself White Lies Matter say they stole the chair from the Old Live Oak Cemetery and are demanding that the UDC hang a large banner at 1 p.m. on Friday — the anniversary of the Confederacy’s surrender in the Civil War — and leave it there for 24 hours.

The banner, which the group says has already been delivered to the UDC, is emblazoned with a quote from Assata Shakur of the Black Liberation Army: “The rulers of this country have always considered their property more important than our lives.”

White Lies Matter, Inc. says if the UDC complies, they’ll not only return the chair but “we will clean it to boot.” As proof of life, they sent a photo of the purloined chair in its undisclosed location:

This Is Totally Badass! (Open Thread)

The UDC are not amused but are Trumpish, which is utterly unsurprising:

A woman who answered the phone at the Virginia offices of the UDC said she had heard the reports of the theft and ransom demand were “fake news” and there was no immediate response to an email to the organization seeking further comment.

Selma police and District Attorney Michael Jackson confirmed the theft and said they were aware of the ransom demand.

I kinda hope the UDC doesn’t comply and White Lies Matter, Inc. keeps the chair and turns it into a toilet. I further hope they follow up by sending an update in the form of a photo with the chair configured for its new, infinitely more useful role.

Moreover, I admire White Lies Matter, Inc.’s strategy for dealing with Confederate nonsense; mockery and derision are exactly what Confederacy venerators in the year of our lard 20 and 21 deserve. That said, I can’t help but worry that the White Lies Matter, Inc. people will get into legal hot water. If they do, perhaps we can do a fundraiser?

Also, White Lies Matter, Inc. is kinda badass. And they have a sense of humor too. I mean, look at that poster! Open thread!

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Help put a stop to this nonsense

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Folks, this proposal to drastically narrow the window of people who’d qualify for bailout checks is terrible. It is bad politics. It is bad policy. It just gives certain legislators a chance to peacock around for a tiny audience of lazy opinion writers who have no concept of policy as a thing that affects people in the real world.

Yes, call your Senators. If you live in West Virginia then call Joe Manchin twice. If you don’t live in West Virginia then please don’t; you’ll just waste time and annoy his staff. Tell them to just give everyone the damn money. The top 1% is by definition just 1% of the population, so it won’t do a thing to the bill’s bottom line to give them an equal share.

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We do what we must because we can

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It would be great if someone who reads this blog and lives in West Virginia were to call up Joe Manchin’s office and get to know the staff a little. Yes I mean that he needs to hear about impeachment and changing his stance on the filibuster. But also in general, he seems like a (relatively) decent guy who represents a very Trumpy red state, so he has a lot of concerns to balance right now and it would be a good idea if someone could make contact and find out what his folks think we can do to help him do the right thing. His staff are Democrats and even if they’re not all on board with the “Green New Deal”, they all want to expand health insurance, expand collective bargaining rights and a raise the minimum wage to something people can live on. I’d like to know what they think we can do to help firm up the Democratic team and make those things happen.

The same applies to folks like Conor Lamb in PA. Like Manchin, he strikes me as a decent guy trying to both represent his red district and promote core Democratic priorities. If you live in his district, I’d like to hear back about what his people think we can do to help. That’s doubly important since it’s so critical we hold the House in 2022. Obviously Krysten Sinema needs attention too…she strikes me as a bit of a contrarian peacock in the old McCain/Lieberman mold, but that doesn’t mean she is immune to pressure from constituents.

Do you have a conservative Democrat who either needs some encouragement or might be vulnerable in two years? Get in touch with their team and let’s hear back what they think we can do for them.

***

ETA: and of course this comes right after John wrote something along the same lines. Sorry John. Also, call your Senator.

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Arizona on my mind

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Do you live in AZ? Call Kyrsten Sinema. She seems like a fine person but she may not know Mitch McConnell like Democrats who’ve had the misfortune of working with him know the guy. She could use a reminder that Democrats will get slaughtered if they roll over to McConnell’s endless bad faith obstruction and accomplish nothing in the next two years. He won’t compromise and if you offer him good faith he won’t reciprocate.

Sinema has […] made it clear that she will not go along with her Democratic colleagues. Her office said recently that she is “not open to changing her mind.”

A spokesperson for Sinema told the Post that the senator is “against eliminating the filibuster, and she is not open to changing her mind about eliminating the filibuster.”

This is suicide. If you live in AZ or know someone who does, please ask her office to reconsider.

Meanwhile, if you have a Republican Senator then let them know the party won’t recover until they cut Trump out of it. If that sounds like it contradicts what I just said, well yes, both things can be true at the same time. Pollyannish Charlie Brownism can cut the Democratic party’s achilles tendon before Biden ever gets a chance to govern, and Trumpism can permanently destroy the GOP’s credibility unless they act now to sever it and cauterize the stump. If someone’s going to make a mistake, I’d rather it be them than us.

Arizona on my mindPost + Comments (124)