Saturday Morning Open Thread: Don’t Just Protest, Do It Fabulously!

by 5:30 am. It has 120 Comments.

From the Washington Post, “A spice company spent more money on impeachment ads on Facebook than anyone not named Trump”:

… On Wednesday, Axios published a list of the entities spending the most money on Facebook ads on both sides of the impeachment debate. They included the usual suspects of the political war roll call, including Trump himself (he was top of the list, of course, at $718,000), Democratic presidential candidates Tom Steyer and Elizabeth Warren, and both the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

But one name jumped off the screen for its sheer one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other factor: Penzeys Spices, the nation’s largest spice retailer, had dropped $92,000 from Sept. 29 to Oct. 5 on ads championing impeachment. That was more than self-funding millionaire Steyer, more than hard-charging Warren — more than anyone else other than Trump…

For many Penzeys fans, it comes as no surprise. The company has a history of unabashed liberal activism. Its founder, Bill Penzey, greeted Trump’s election with an email calling the president an “openly racist candidate.” As Helen Rosner noted in a New Yorker story last year, that set him far apart from the rest of the business-leader pack. He was “quite possibly the first to publicly call Trump’s election an ‘embrace of racism,’” she wrote. “And he was definitely the first to do so while hawking a free bottle of Quebec Seasonings with any five-dollar purchase.”…
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Friday Morning Open Thread: There’s Still Time!…

by 4:53 am. It has 161 Comments.


Nobody tell Cole about this, he’s got enough on his plate ottoman already. But if you’re curious, ActionNews suggests checking the shelter’s Facebook page.

Elsewhere… The Repubs have already decided that Trump is gonna lose in 2020, because we all know deficits only matter when there’s a Democrat in the Oval Office:

Further proof:

So — while we must still do our best to Dump Trump — here’s to the success of Amy McGrath!





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Monday Morning Open Thread: “If You Witness… “

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Open Thread: Netroots Nation #14 Is Now Taking Place in Philadelphia

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Any Jackals in attendance? Or planning to attend over the weekend? Honest curiosity — I’d like to get your impressions!

I can remember when ‘we’ all hoped NN would be the progressive answer to CPAC… but, as people warned at the time, even if we had the same deep-pocketed ‘donors’ as the Repubs, getting Democrats to work together is like herding cats. I’m holding on to the Good Thought that the many, many breakout panels are supporting and training local activists working on local issues, which Murphy knows is every bit and more as important as taking back the White House.

Dave Weigel, for the Washington Post:

… Four thousand or so liberal activists will spend the next three days here, gathering for the 14th annual Netroots Nation conference — the third with a presidential forum. In 2007, nearly every Democratic presidential candidate attended the conference in Chicago, staying for a debate and holding special sessions for attendees. In 2015, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley (but not Hillary Clinton) sat for Netroots interviews in Phoenix, only to be interrupted by Black Lives Matter activists who protested the lack of a focus on racial justice in the questions.

This year, just a handful of the 25 Democratic presidential candidates will make the trek to Philadelphia. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a frequent speaker at the conference, will join former HUD secretary Julián Castro, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) at the Saturday presidential forum — and that may be it. With Warren’s exception, the highest-polling Democratic candidates will not be in Philadelphia. Joe Biden, whose campaign is headquartered in that city, will be in New Hampshire; so will South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). Neither Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif) nor Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will be attending, and the Sanders campaign says the candidate is off the trail completely this weekend, for unspecified reasons.

Sanders will have a surrogate, of sorts, at Netroots; former Ohio state senator Nina Turner, a co-chair of his campaign, will appear on a panel and join a solidarity protest with hospital workers. But the smaller footprint for presidential candidates is notable, and organizers say that Biden et. al. are making a mistake by skipping.

“Netroots attendees are the core activists of the party and will play a key role in determining who Democrats’ 2020 nominee will be,” said Carolyn Fiddler, the spokeswoman for Daily Kos, the group blog that founded the conference. “Candidates not in attendance are missing the opportunity to speak directly to this ultra-engaged group of voters and engage core progressives the issues they care about most.”
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Tuesday Morning Open Thread: RESIST

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