Tuesday report before I'm off to a nearby trade school campus to register voters is to share my little postcard project, thanks to Matt Wuerker’s permission to use his cartoon and a Dallas friend’s talent in presenting text much more effectively than I. Please see this link to print a two-sided, turn on short side, postcards on cardstock or Avery 8387 to leave in all the public areas you can find. Print pages 1 and 2 for the Texas version or 1 and 3 for the non-Texas version, the difference being the QR code readers are sent to for checking voter registration status.
I googled it because I couldn’t remember how the last shutdown, which happened in Trump’s first term, worked. I think it’s worth googling—lots of FAQ pieces on shutdowns.
Can we please all begin emailing the SCOTUS majority letting them know that we are watching and know that they are complicit in the demise of our great democracy, rule of law, and that we will do whatever it takes to reform (expand, term limits, ethics oversight etc.) SCOTUS so that Americans have a SCOTUS that we deserve.
Of course, people can contact SCOTUS, but constitutionally, there is no direct link from the People to the judicial branch. Therefore, no obligation on their part to pay any attention.
If we want to concentrate on the gift we were given, we'd focus more on getting control of the House -- via the Ninth Amendment. The House is the direct conduit from The People to the other branches -- and SCOTUS would certainly take notice.
Great news in Texas today that James Talarico has entered the Senate race! Going to his kick off rally in Round Rock this evening. Maybe the Hopium community will find him worthy of supporting as you get to know him. He is more progressive than the candidates I am aware of here but he has their same integrity and grit and brilliance.
NORWAY: In yesterday’s parliamentary election, Norway’s Labour Party and their allied parties once again secured a majority. The right-wing Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet) became the country’s second-largest party, but will be kept from power.
Voter participation in yesterday’s election was 78.9 %. That’s the highest seen since 1989. But Norway still has a ways to go to surpass the high watermark reached in 1965: 85.4 %.
NOTE: Imagine how much better off our country would be if we inspired 85% of eligible Democrats and Independent voters to cast a vote – but MAGA Republican turnout remained unchanged!
“Looking at the graphical summary, we see that the Conservative Party (which is the bright/light blue) held the lead for most of 2022, all of 2023 and up through most of 2024. The Labor Party was in the doldrums.
Then something happened in late 2024 and early 2025, and the Labor Party surged while the Conservative Party tanked.”
Indeed! The Mad King is chalking up an amazing record of lifting center-left parties to election victory in other countries. Canada, Australia, Romania, Norway...
I worried. The Party of Progress has been inching up for the last few years. That party beats the drum against immigration. Sound familiar? As my Norwegian relatives remind me, in that country,, most of the Democrats here in the United States would be considered center leaning right - not Party of Progress territory, but definitely not true left. It's another country that embraces mail in voting.
One more interesting fact, it's a country that doesn't have a problem with a woman as Prime Minister or head of the government. My sister-in-law jokingly says that when her children were growing up, in the era of Gro Brundtland, they didn't know a man could hold the position. Just Imagine.
Five of the nine parties represented in Norway’s Storting (parliament) are led by women. Interestingly, this includes the two leftmost parties – as well as the three most conservative parties. Including the aforementioned "Progress Party".
The mandatory "gender quota" of 40% on corporate boards is another law that would give a certain percentage of the ruling class in the US a case of the vapors. I used to tease and say the that law instituted a system that was like coaches in major league baseball, the same few women just get moved from corporation to corporation. Known entities who would have a reputation of voting with the 60%.
With the new expansion of the law, I guess the pool of potential directors will increase. As I said, I was jesting. It's hard to even imagine something like that being one of our laws.
I believe Norway’s mandatory employee representative on corporate boards would trigger even more severe reactions, causing widespread apoplexy amongst the American ruling class.
I remember the panic on Wall Street in 1980, when Lee Iacocca appointed UAW President Douglas Fraser to Chrysler’s board.
I have 50 postcards to VA scheduled for mailing Sept. 12. I wrote those out about one month ago. I have 50 more to NJ and 50 to AK that will go out the same day.
I was wondering if anyone had a sense of what would happen to the budget negotiations if the illegality of the tariffs is upheld on appeal. If the government has to refund billions of dollars, and their budget was based on an assumption of tariff income, wouldn't the whole thing just collapse? Everything was bad enough, but the tax cuts to billionaires in part was supposed to be offset by tariff revenue.
I guess the Congress could try to codify the tariffs. I'm not even sure if that is completely legal given the previous trade agreements. But that would probably allow tariffs to continue. That would be an interesting process to see them try to do.
Good question. I've been assuming that one reason Trump wanted to impose the tariffs by fiat is that Republicans in Congress are afraid to vote for them because they know their voters won't like them. Democrats could say that if the tax benefits to billionaires were being paid for by illegal taxes on the middle class, then we can't give the billionaires such big benefits. And point to how reckless and negligent it was for Trump to impose the tariffs.
I heard today Trump's sons have bought some kind of shares for reimbursement of tariff revenue. In other words, they are betting on the tariffs being ruled illegal and the money repaid. I haven't investigated but I heard Edwin Eisendrath saying that. The grift continues, one way or another.
Yes, and I think the family of some other cabinet member is also involved. Of course, even if the government reimburses the coffee importer, for example, the coffee importer isn't going to reimburse you or me. Trump's corruption and grift know no bounds.
I just game some money to the group supporting a democrat to run in every VA house race. The more we give the more that Republicans will have to spend to fight a Democratic candidate in safe VA House seats. Someone is gonna kiss the donkey.
Simon, thanks. I hadn't seen that Spanberger ad and it's a good one. She's so much better than Winsome Sears.
I called Congressman Raskin and Senators Alsobrooks and Van Hollen to tell them to do whatever it takes to fix the RFK mess and get COVID vaccines to all Americans. I also said that if it's necessary to shut down the government on this and other issues, I'll support them. I'm writing postcards to Virginia voters today.
It looks as if the financial scandal concerning banks and Epstein may be much bigger than previously thought. As we've learned before, follow the money.
I am convinced that as bad as the child (and young women) trafficking is, the financial revelations are going to dwarf it.
I'm NOT justifying, just observing and speculating. The business/ financial world is super-competitive, and the revelation that the system is rigged against even them will infuriate the not-quite-as-rich-and-powerful types who are still extraordinarily rich-and-powerful. This part will involve government agencies and big business interests.
I think that's why Trump and the Republicans cannot release the investigation files: so many failures to follow through, to do the obvious thing.
Today's Heather Cox Richardson post is the most disturbing one I've read in a long time.
"The apparent plan of the Trump administration reflects the strategy of Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, whose writings seem lately to have captivated leaders on the American right, including billionaire Peter Thiel and the man who influenced him, Curtis Yarvin. Schmitt opposed liberal democracy, in which the state enables individuals to determine their own fate. Instead, he argued that true democracy erases individual self-determination by making the mass of people one with the state and exercising their will through state power. That uniformity requires getting rid of opposition. Schmitt theorized that politics is simply about dividing people into friends and enemies and using the power of the state to crush enemies. As J.D. Vance described Schmitt’s ideas in 2024: “There’s no law, there's just power.”
Much of Schmitt’s philosophy centered around the idea that the power of a nation that is based in a constitution and the rule of law belongs to the man who can exploit emergencies that create exceptions to the constitutional order, enabling him to exercise power without regard to the law. Trump—who almost certainly has not read Schmitt himself—asserted this view on August 26: “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country’s in danger—and it is in danger in the cities—I can do it.”
One of the points she brings up is that despite the Republicans in Congress essentially not stopping trump, he continues to use the pretext of emergency orders to seize power. I've often wondered why trump doesn't just achieve his ends via Congress, since Republicans will all fall in line behind him. Now I'm thinking maybe the point is to show that even Congress can be bypassed, as a way to effectively neuter it and push through unpopular policies. This also has the benefit of Republicans not having to have gone on record as voting for those policies.
"I've often wondered why trump doesn't just achieve his ends via Congress"
Because that would take time. What MAGA needs to accomplish, they need to accomplish quickly. I do not call it "Trump." Every traitor in Congress who has sold out this country is prepared for the post-Trump phase.
I've been calling Senators Cantwell and Murray, and Representative Larsen for months. Sen. Murray has to be one of the better Senators in terms of taking the fight to Republicans and Trump. Last week we saw Sen. Cantwell showing some fight. Rep. Larsen has not changed in style at all. He continues to behave as if his role was solely that of a legislator, not a leader.
I'm now attempting to set up a meeting for my wife and me with staff at Larsen's Bellingham office. I don't know if this will work, but I'm going to give it a try. His main office is in Everett, which is a long drive for us. I'm hoping a meeting in Bellingham is a possibility.
I am volunteering for YES on 50. CADEM (California Democrats) has created the script, literature, and the campaign in general. Which is great because it takes this huge burden off the shoulders of local groups and presents a unified message.
So I consider Prop 50 essential, a must-win. And yet, I was dissatisfied with the reasons I hear, not just from CADEM but Newsom’s ads and even just conversations.
Basically, they say:
* Trump is bad for the country
* Trump and Texas are rigging the election unfairly in an unprecedented power grab
* California should do the same thing (temporarily) to stop them
Yesterday I realized what I didn’t like. The reasons given are true and important, but they aren’t *why* we need Prop 50 to pass.
Congressional Republicans gave up their power to Trump, so we don’t have a functioning legislative branch, and we don’t have them as a check or balance on the executive branch.
The real reason (in my mind) for passing Prop 50 is that if Democrats can flip the House, we can actually stop Trump. Congress could take back the power of the purse (stop the illegal tariffs, insist on appropriations, etc), protect people’s rights, and get the troops out of our cities, among other things.
Jonathan Lemire’s quote in today’s Hopium expanded on that for me, because he identifies the midterms as a particular weak point.
This seems obvious when it’s in a comment on Hopium, where there are endless examples of how Trump is weak. But for people who don’t follow politics in the off-season, it probably isn’t obvious why we should give up (temporarily) our fair districting maps. It feels dirty.
Lots of people are cheering for California to fight back because they are angry. But Democrats aren’t the party of grievance, even when we are furious, and we are used to unprecedented power grabs from this president. So I am hoping Californians start talking about what we could do if we flipped even one house of Congress. (Simon says this *all the time*, but it can take a good long while for me to really understand.)
"Congressional Republicans gave up their power to Trump, so we don’t have a functioning legislative branch, and we don’t have them as a check or balance on the executive branch."
You are right on.
However, I strongly urge people to be precise in their language. These are NOT "Congressional Republicans." They are motherfucking traitors who have NO legitimate claim on that seat once they have betrayed their Oath. Motherfucking traitors. (And to this point, we have tolerated it.)
That is more accurate, but I think “illegitimate motherfucking traitors who have betrayed their Oath” doesn’t narrow it down sufficiently to the House of Representatives.
My family and friends have written 700 postcards to Virginia, and are writing 300 more. I support shutting down the federal government per Robert Reich’s article today.
I’m making calls and contributing money several times a week. Between reading all that comes in to keep up and then taking actions, making time to comment becomes difficult.
Reporting on my letter to Senator John Curtis about vaccines. He responded and basically said, “don’t look at me, look at your state government”. This dude voted for RFK and he wants to tell me this isn’t his fault.
His response:
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) makes vaccine policy recommendations, which I believe must carefully balance critical public health considerations with the rights of individuals. That said, the implementation of vaccination laws is largely managed by the states, including the creation of exemptions in certain circumstances. Utah currently allows exemptions for religious, philosophical, and medical reasons. I encourage you to reach out to your state representatives at le.utah.gov if you have additional questions or concerns regarding Utah’s specific vaccination laws.”
I contacted our state officials in Illinois and insisted that we have a law like in MA that allows across-the-board access to the vaccine, including for healthy adults under 65. In the meantime, I recommend getting your vaccine ASAP and pushing back if you are going off-label before the RFK types start clamping down even more. There are several exceptions listed for conditions where under-65 can get the vaccine, use those.
Last weekend, at my local Democrat Club community event, they held a "Bean Poll" asking participants to choose the Worst of the Worst. There were 10 mason jars labeled with Trump administration rogues. Robert Kennedy, Jr was voted the top WORST and received 2.5 times more votes than Hegseth who came in 2nd. People enjoyed expressing their views.
Been calling daily to Repub Sens using Hopium guide, will be attending my County Democrat Party meeting this Thurs to ask their future plans to get out the vote [Since March, newly elected executive committee has not communicated anything public], next Tuesday, assisting in High School voter registration.
Besides a few revelations from Epstein birthday book, yesterday's SCOTUS shadow docket ruling, and John Thune's announcement that repubs will change chamber rules to speed approval of DT nominees, it's been an unsettling 24 hours.
Technical issue that has happened again: In the email, the blue comment box leads to yesterday's comments. The second comment link below it leads to today's comments. As a result, there are recent comments in both places.
Schumer...
Yes. I want to take him by the shoulders and shake him. And take a red pen to his "statement."
I just ate... please....
Tuesday report before I'm off to a nearby trade school campus to register voters is to share my little postcard project, thanks to Matt Wuerker’s permission to use his cartoon and a Dallas friend’s talent in presenting text much more effectively than I. Please see this link to print a two-sided, turn on short side, postcards on cardstock or Avery 8387 to leave in all the public areas you can find. Print pages 1 and 2 for the Texas version or 1 and 3 for the non-Texas version, the difference being the QR code readers are sent to for checking voter registration status.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rFedKcoUqiK8M4Z5IObDclVFcmx6dyc8/view?usp=sharing
FANTASTIC! Thank you!!!
This is great! Saving this link and passing it around. I've been doing microflyering for Stand Up for Science, so I can add these into the mix.
My printer is reluctant to join the resistance (as it is with all printing jobs), but I shall persevere, and possibly get a new printer...
Can you direct me to the micro flyers for the stand up for science?
Absolutely!
https://www.standupforscience.net/microflyering
Have fun- and may you have better printer karma than I do!
THanks - we will see!
From Robert Reich:
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/should-democrats-shut-the-government?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true
This is a current piece that suggests Democrats are weighing a shutdown:
https://www.newhavenindependent.org/article/delauro_5
I googled it because I couldn’t remember how the last shutdown, which happened in Trump’s first term, worked. I think it’s worth googling—lots of FAQ pieces on shutdowns.
Thanks Ali, Robert Reich is a smart man, and I agree with him on this too. I wanted to highlight this exerpt...
"Keeping the U.S. government funded now is to participate in the most atrocious misuse of the power of the United States in modern times.
So I for one have decided that the best route is to shut the whole f*cking thing down.
Morally, Democrats must not enable what is now occurring. Politically, they cannot remain silent in the face of such mayhem."
Reposted from yesterday:
Can we please all begin emailing the SCOTUS majority letting them know that we are watching and know that they are complicit in the demise of our great democracy, rule of law, and that we will do whatever it takes to reform (expand, term limits, ethics oversight etc.) SCOTUS so that Americans have a SCOTUS that we deserve.
Here is an email pio@supremecourt.gov
Of course, people can contact SCOTUS, but constitutionally, there is no direct link from the People to the judicial branch. Therefore, no obligation on their part to pay any attention.
If we want to concentrate on the gift we were given, we'd focus more on getting control of the House -- via the Ninth Amendment. The House is the direct conduit from The People to the other branches -- and SCOTUS would certainly take notice.
Great news in Texas today that James Talarico has entered the Senate race! Going to his kick off rally in Round Rock this evening. Maybe the Hopium community will find him worthy of supporting as you get to know him. He is more progressive than the candidates I am aware of here but he has their same integrity and grit and brilliance.
Awesome, looking forward to hearing a full report!
(Like). He has been the target of more than one Christian nationalist social media person -- meaning they're scared of him. Good.
My kids went and go to his old elementary school, such a distinguished “alum” haha
Watch his interview with Brian Tyler Cohen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgQVX9pq_Tw.
NORWAY: In yesterday’s parliamentary election, Norway’s Labour Party and their allied parties once again secured a majority. The right-wing Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet) became the country’s second-largest party, but will be kept from power.
Voter participation in yesterday’s election was 78.9 %. That’s the highest seen since 1989. But Norway still has a ways to go to surpass the high watermark reached in 1965: 85.4 %.
NOTE: Imagine how much better off our country would be if we inspired 85% of eligible Democrats and Independent voters to cast a vote – but MAGA Republican turnout remained unchanged!
Thanks for this update. This would seem to be another example of what Simon calls the growing circle of defiance. I read a blog a few days ago that interpreted this Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2025_Norwegian_parliamentary_election and offered the following summary:
“Looking at the graphical summary, we see that the Conservative Party (which is the bright/light blue) held the lead for most of 2022, all of 2023 and up through most of 2024. The Labor Party was in the doldrums.
Then something happened in late 2024 and early 2025, and the Labor Party surged while the Conservative Party tanked.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/9/5/2342077/-Yet-another-country-where-Trump-has-killed-conservatism
The big blubbery baby man strikes again it seems.
Indeed! The Mad King is chalking up an amazing record of lifting center-left parties to election victory in other countries. Canada, Australia, Romania, Norway...
I worried. The Party of Progress has been inching up for the last few years. That party beats the drum against immigration. Sound familiar? As my Norwegian relatives remind me, in that country,, most of the Democrats here in the United States would be considered center leaning right - not Party of Progress territory, but definitely not true left. It's another country that embraces mail in voting.
One more interesting fact, it's a country that doesn't have a problem with a woman as Prime Minister or head of the government. My sister-in-law jokingly says that when her children were growing up, in the era of Gro Brundtland, they didn't know a man could hold the position. Just Imagine.
Five of the nine parties represented in Norway’s Storting (parliament) are led by women. Interestingly, this includes the two leftmost parties – as well as the three most conservative parties. Including the aforementioned "Progress Party".
The mandatory "gender quota" of 40% on corporate boards is another law that would give a certain percentage of the ruling class in the US a case of the vapors. I used to tease and say the that law instituted a system that was like coaches in major league baseball, the same few women just get moved from corporation to corporation. Known entities who would have a reputation of voting with the 60%.
With the new expansion of the law, I guess the pool of potential directors will increase. As I said, I was jesting. It's hard to even imagine something like that being one of our laws.
I believe Norway’s mandatory employee representative on corporate boards would trigger even more severe reactions, causing widespread apoplexy amongst the American ruling class.
I remember the panic on Wall Street in 1980, when Lee Iacocca appointed UAW President Douglas Fraser to Chrysler’s board.
I have 50 postcards to VA scheduled for mailing Sept. 12. I wrote those out about one month ago. I have 50 more to NJ and 50 to AK that will go out the same day.
I was wondering if anyone had a sense of what would happen to the budget negotiations if the illegality of the tariffs is upheld on appeal. If the government has to refund billions of dollars, and their budget was based on an assumption of tariff income, wouldn't the whole thing just collapse? Everything was bad enough, but the tax cuts to billionaires in part was supposed to be offset by tariff revenue.
I guess the Congress could try to codify the tariffs. I'm not even sure if that is completely legal given the previous trade agreements. But that would probably allow tariffs to continue. That would be an interesting process to see them try to do.
Good question. I've been assuming that one reason Trump wanted to impose the tariffs by fiat is that Republicans in Congress are afraid to vote for them because they know their voters won't like them. Democrats could say that if the tax benefits to billionaires were being paid for by illegal taxes on the middle class, then we can't give the billionaires such big benefits. And point to how reckless and negligent it was for Trump to impose the tariffs.
I heard today Trump's sons have bought some kind of shares for reimbursement of tariff revenue. In other words, they are betting on the tariffs being ruled illegal and the money repaid. I haven't investigated but I heard Edwin Eisendrath saying that. The grift continues, one way or another.
Yes, and I think the family of some other cabinet member is also involved. Of course, even if the government reimburses the coffee importer, for example, the coffee importer isn't going to reimburse you or me. Trump's corruption and grift know no bounds.
I just game some money to the group supporting a democrat to run in every VA house race. The more we give the more that Republicans will have to spend to fight a Democratic candidate in safe VA House seats. Someone is gonna kiss the donkey.
As a Virginia resident who is absolutely tapped out by contributions: Thank You so very much.
My prayer is that we CRUSH the Republicans.
Simon, thanks. I hadn't seen that Spanberger ad and it's a good one. She's so much better than Winsome Sears.
I called Congressman Raskin and Senators Alsobrooks and Van Hollen to tell them to do whatever it takes to fix the RFK mess and get COVID vaccines to all Americans. I also said that if it's necessary to shut down the government on this and other issues, I'll support them. I'm writing postcards to Virginia voters today.
It looks as if the financial scandal concerning banks and Epstein may be much bigger than previously thought. As we've learned before, follow the money.
I am convinced that as bad as the child (and young women) trafficking is, the financial revelations are going to dwarf it.
I'm NOT justifying, just observing and speculating. The business/ financial world is super-competitive, and the revelation that the system is rigged against even them will infuriate the not-quite-as-rich-and-powerful types who are still extraordinarily rich-and-powerful. This part will involve government agencies and big business interests.
I think that's why Trump and the Republicans cannot release the investigation files: so many failures to follow through, to do the obvious thing.
Today's Heather Cox Richardson post is the most disturbing one I've read in a long time.
"The apparent plan of the Trump administration reflects the strategy of Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt, whose writings seem lately to have captivated leaders on the American right, including billionaire Peter Thiel and the man who influenced him, Curtis Yarvin. Schmitt opposed liberal democracy, in which the state enables individuals to determine their own fate. Instead, he argued that true democracy erases individual self-determination by making the mass of people one with the state and exercising their will through state power. That uniformity requires getting rid of opposition. Schmitt theorized that politics is simply about dividing people into friends and enemies and using the power of the state to crush enemies. As J.D. Vance described Schmitt’s ideas in 2024: “There’s no law, there's just power.”
Much of Schmitt’s philosophy centered around the idea that the power of a nation that is based in a constitution and the rule of law belongs to the man who can exploit emergencies that create exceptions to the constitutional order, enabling him to exercise power without regard to the law. Trump—who almost certainly has not read Schmitt himself—asserted this view on August 26: “I have the right to do anything I want to do. I’m the president of the United States. If I think our country’s in danger—and it is in danger in the cities—I can do it.”
One of the points she brings up is that despite the Republicans in Congress essentially not stopping trump, he continues to use the pretext of emergency orders to seize power. I've often wondered why trump doesn't just achieve his ends via Congress, since Republicans will all fall in line behind him. Now I'm thinking maybe the point is to show that even Congress can be bypassed, as a way to effectively neuter it and push through unpopular policies. This also has the benefit of Republicans not having to have gone on record as voting for those policies.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-8-2025
"I've often wondered why trump doesn't just achieve his ends via Congress"
Because that would take time. What MAGA needs to accomplish, they need to accomplish quickly. I do not call it "Trump." Every traitor in Congress who has sold out this country is prepared for the post-Trump phase.
Persist!
I've been calling Senators Cantwell and Murray, and Representative Larsen for months. Sen. Murray has to be one of the better Senators in terms of taking the fight to Republicans and Trump. Last week we saw Sen. Cantwell showing some fight. Rep. Larsen has not changed in style at all. He continues to behave as if his role was solely that of a legislator, not a leader.
I'm now attempting to set up a meeting for my wife and me with staff at Larsen's Bellingham office. I don't know if this will work, but I'm going to give it a try. His main office is in Everett, which is a long drive for us. I'm hoping a meeting in Bellingham is a possibility.
Thank you! There are so many ways we can each find our strengths. I hope you can find some like-minded people to go along with you too.
Great job - let us know how it goes!
I am volunteering for YES on 50. CADEM (California Democrats) has created the script, literature, and the campaign in general. Which is great because it takes this huge burden off the shoulders of local groups and presents a unified message.
So I consider Prop 50 essential, a must-win. And yet, I was dissatisfied with the reasons I hear, not just from CADEM but Newsom’s ads and even just conversations.
Basically, they say:
* Trump is bad for the country
* Trump and Texas are rigging the election unfairly in an unprecedented power grab
* California should do the same thing (temporarily) to stop them
Yesterday I realized what I didn’t like. The reasons given are true and important, but they aren’t *why* we need Prop 50 to pass.
Congressional Republicans gave up their power to Trump, so we don’t have a functioning legislative branch, and we don’t have them as a check or balance on the executive branch.
The real reason (in my mind) for passing Prop 50 is that if Democrats can flip the House, we can actually stop Trump. Congress could take back the power of the purse (stop the illegal tariffs, insist on appropriations, etc), protect people’s rights, and get the troops out of our cities, among other things.
Jonathan Lemire’s quote in today’s Hopium expanded on that for me, because he identifies the midterms as a particular weak point.
This seems obvious when it’s in a comment on Hopium, where there are endless examples of how Trump is weak. But for people who don’t follow politics in the off-season, it probably isn’t obvious why we should give up (temporarily) our fair districting maps. It feels dirty.
Lots of people are cheering for California to fight back because they are angry. But Democrats aren’t the party of grievance, even when we are furious, and we are used to unprecedented power grabs from this president. So I am hoping Californians start talking about what we could do if we flipped even one house of Congress. (Simon says this *all the time*, but it can take a good long while for me to really understand.)
"Congressional Republicans gave up their power to Trump, so we don’t have a functioning legislative branch, and we don’t have them as a check or balance on the executive branch."
You are right on.
However, I strongly urge people to be precise in their language. These are NOT "Congressional Republicans." They are motherfucking traitors who have NO legitimate claim on that seat once they have betrayed their Oath. Motherfucking traitors. (And to this point, we have tolerated it.)
That is more accurate, but I think “illegitimate motherfucking traitors who have betrayed their Oath” doesn’t narrow it down sufficiently to the House of Representatives.
Right! ... Whose House?.... OUR HOUSE...
"So I am hoping Californians start talking about what we could do if we flipped even one house of Congress."
Loyal Californians could begin the work to flip one House seat starting tomorrow.
How was President Andrew Johnson impeached? (1868) -- Via THOUSANDS of petitions from newly freed black men.
“Loyal Californians could begin the work to flip one House seat starting tomorrow.”
Tomorrow? We’ve been working on that continuously for years.
"We’ve been working on that continuously for years. "
When faced with a traitor in OUR House today, there is NO WAY James Madison would have advised > "Wait till midterms." (the next cycle.)
Midterms? ... Clay Davis says....
https://youtu.be/l1dnqKGuezo?si=A5Ph8GF1rnHaRBKc
My family and friends have written 700 postcards to Virginia, and are writing 300 more. I support shutting down the federal government per Robert Reich’s article today.
I am writing 100 postcards for Spanberger, more for other candidates..
I’m making calls and contributing money several times a week. Between reading all that comes in to keep up and then taking actions, making time to comment becomes difficult.
Reporting on my letter to Senator John Curtis about vaccines. He responded and basically said, “don’t look at me, look at your state government”. This dude voted for RFK and he wants to tell me this isn’t his fault.
His response:
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) makes vaccine policy recommendations, which I believe must carefully balance critical public health considerations with the rights of individuals. That said, the implementation of vaccination laws is largely managed by the states, including the creation of exemptions in certain circumstances. Utah currently allows exemptions for religious, philosophical, and medical reasons. I encourage you to reach out to your state representatives at le.utah.gov if you have additional questions or concerns regarding Utah’s specific vaccination laws.”
I contacted our state officials in Illinois and insisted that we have a law like in MA that allows across-the-board access to the vaccine, including for healthy adults under 65. In the meantime, I recommend getting your vaccine ASAP and pushing back if you are going off-label before the RFK types start clamping down even more. There are several exceptions listed for conditions where under-65 can get the vaccine, use those.
Thank you Faith. I'm in Illinois too and will follow your lead. Kent
Last weekend, at my local Democrat Club community event, they held a "Bean Poll" asking participants to choose the Worst of the Worst. There were 10 mason jars labeled with Trump administration rogues. Robert Kennedy, Jr was voted the top WORST and received 2.5 times more votes than Hegseth who came in 2nd. People enjoyed expressing their views.
Been calling daily to Repub Sens using Hopium guide, will be attending my County Democrat Party meeting this Thurs to ask their future plans to get out the vote [Since March, newly elected executive committee has not communicated anything public], next Tuesday, assisting in High School voter registration.
Besides a few revelations from Epstein birthday book, yesterday's SCOTUS shadow docket ruling, and John Thune's announcement that repubs will change chamber rules to speed approval of DT nominees, it's been an unsettling 24 hours.
https://apnews.com/article/senate-nominations-trump-thune-rules-change-0372be884d4dd177db71a87a35534f06
Technical issue that has happened again: In the email, the blue comment box leads to yesterday's comments. The second comment link below it leads to today's comments. As a result, there are recent comments in both places.