Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Books are my comfort food!

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

It’s a doggy dog world.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

Please don’t feed the bears.

In after Baud. Damn.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2018 / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Getting Out the Vote

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Getting Out the Vote

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Meanwhile, on the Repub side…

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70Comments

  7. 7.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: Right now he’s wondering why Woof gets food, water, and ham treats (actually his morning meds but Percy gets some ham too) and all Percy got was to lick the wet cat food spoon (’cause I feel a little guilty about him not getting anything except snipped).

  9. 9.

    BennForum

    The intense and open racism on display by the GOP these days is as disturbing as it was back in the 1950s and ’60s. This is one rerun we could definitely do without.

    But what’s MORE disturbing this time around is the media’s utter refusal to call it what it is: Racism in pursuit of restoring Jim Crow.

  11. 11.

    Mustang Bobby

    If anyone is going to be in the Lakeland, Florida, vicinity this coming Friday and Saturday, make your way to the Lakeland Auto Classic show that is overwhelming downtown and the promenade around Lake Mirror. I’ll be there in the street show in the American Production section with my Pontiac. It’d be fun to meet up with some fellow Juicers, especially since that part of Florida is pretty Trumpish. I feel like an infiltrator when I’m there, although the folks are very friendly.

  12. 12.

    R-Jud

    My absentee ballot arrived yesterday, and I’ve just taken it to the post office. So my vote’s banked in blue Illinois via England, for whatever that’s worth.

  17. 17.

    OzarkHillbilly

    ‘All art is political’: behind America’s most ambitious public art project ever

    All of the billboard artists were chosen by a curatorial team. “The guidelines were anti-partisan,” said Gottesman. “It’s not about taking sides, it’s to ask questions, even if they don’t end in a question mark.

    “Often the response to the billboards is a question: ‘What does this mean?’” he adds. “We say: ‘What do you think it means? We don’t know, help us figure out what this means together.’”
    …………………….
    When asked if they’ve received any hate mail yet, Gottesman said, “not yet, and ‘yet’ is the key word”.

  22. 22.

    danielx

    This is a true thing: every morning when I get up and read the news while drinking coffee, my first more or less coherent thought is “these fucking people”….example being Brian Kemp.

  23. 23.

    Keith P.

    Oh, goddammit, Alisyn Camerota is doing yet another interview of a panel of Trump voters. I HATE these….they are so tired and empty.

  25. 25.

    MazeDancer

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  27. 27.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A coven of witches will gather in an occult bookstore in Brooklyn, New York, on Saturday to place a hex on supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh. Tickets to the event, which cost $10, with half the proceeds going to women’s and LGBT charities, have already sold out.
    ………………………..
    The ceremony has become a talking point for some right-wing commentators, who see it as part of a pattern of left-wing attacks on leading Trump allies. On Fox News last Friday, Tucker Carlson discussed the coven’s plans, taking particular umbrage with their idea to donate 25% of proceeds to Planned Parenthood, which he said would “help them continue to fund their human sacrifice rituals”.

    Amy Kremer, the co-founder of the Women Vote Trump PAC, brought the event up in a roundtable on MSNBC, describing it as an escalation of attempts to publicly shame Republicans. “It is a scary time right now. Sarah Sanders has been run out of restaurants. I mean, there’s a list of things going on. Now you’ve got witches that are placing a hex on Brett Kavanaugh.”

    The event’s Facebook page has also been flooded with comments opposing the event, many of them proclaiming it an affront to Christianity. “Kavanaugh is a Christian. True Christians have the protection of our heavenly father against others that desire a demon attack against them,” wrote one commenter.

    Bracciale says that the store also organises more traditional protests and voter registration drives, but using the language of occult has been more effective in riling up their opponents. “It strikes fear into the heart of Christian fundamentalists. That’s one of the reasons that we do it. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire. We don’t subscribe to this bullshit, pacifist, love and light, everybody just get along thing. If you want to hijack the country, if you want to steal the election, if you want to overturn Roe v Wade, if you want to harm people who are queer, well guess what, we’re not doing civility. If you’re going to be these awful bullies, you have to understand someone is going to punch you back and it might as well be a bunch of witches from Brooklyn.”

    I like their style anyway. Oh, and this:

    Despite the news network’s negative coverage of the event, Bracciale has agreed to appear on Fox News over the weekend to discuss the event. “I grew up in a house where Fox was blaring 24/7, full volume, I know how they try to derail and distract. If you don’t rise to it then they fall flat.”

    Almost enough to get me to head for my local tire store just to watch it.

  30. 30.

    WaterGirl

    @OzarkHillbilly: My Tucker gets his teeth cleaned today. At my house, if somebody doesn’t get to eat, nobody gets to eat.

    So I just keep saying “too early” and doing something else. :-)

    Everybody else can eat after I drop Tucker at the vet. It’s so hard to sign those forms and leave them, even for standard stuff like teeth cleaning and being “tutored”.

  31. 31.

    WaterGirl

    @danielx: I hear you. I think there was an entire year when my first words were typically “What the fuck is wrong with these people?”

  32. 32.

    David Evans

    @OzarkHillbilly: There are some excellent things there. I love the “Hurt people” one. Based on that sample, though, I don’t think you could call it anti-partisan. (I know – these days, telling the truth is partisan)

  33. 33.

    low-tech cyclist

    @Mustang Bobby: I’m down in Plant City periodically because the in-laws live there. But alas, this weekend is not one of those times. Hope you have fun!

  35. 35.

    Another Scott

    @MazeDancer: Let me second this. I was able to start with 15 names and addresses and easily get them done working off an on in an evening. It’s not hard, and it is something concrete to help ensure a decent turnout in important races.

    I have 40 more names to do in the next day or so, and will probably request more after that.

    Click on PostcardPatriots.com and join us!

    Only 20 days to go!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  37. 37.

    Marcopolo

    Good morning folks.

    Along these lines, just around midnight yesterday I sent out an email telling all my friends not to wait for election day but to get out & vote now. Good to see we are all thinking along the same lines. And now I need to go drink some coffee & write some GotV postcards.

  39. 39.

    OzarkHillbilly

    ‘Mi casa es su casa’: the American welcoming migrants into her home

    Eight years ago, Sarah Jackson went on an all-expenses paid trip with her church to learn about immigration at the US-Mexico border. At the time, she knew nothing about why people migrate, and viewed it as an opportunity to indulge her wanderlust with a free vacation.

    “I was just living my perfect little life,” said the 34-year-old. “I didn’t know immigrant detention centres existed. I didn’t know about families being separated. I didn’t think there were people who were fleeing danger coming to the United States. It was not even a blip on my radar.”

    The people she met on that trip – including a man fleeing Mexico after his pregnant fiancee was killed by a gang and a father with no criminal history who was deported from the US after police pulled him over for driving too slowly in a school zone – had such a profound impact on her that she pledged to dedicate her life to helping migrants.

    “Over and over the Bible talks about treating the sojourner or immigrant as one of your own,” she told the Guardian, recalling the desperation of those she met at the border. “That’s not how we treat our own.”

    Two years later, Casa de Paz (Spanish for “House of Peace”) was born. The Denver-based not-for-profit helps newly released detainees and their families get their feet back on the ground after months of immigration detention – offering a place to stay as well as food, clothing and transportation. It is also Jackson’s home, and guests are treated like family.

    Huh. A real live honest to God Christian.

    Jackson found the lack of empathy for detainees among some members of her community troubling.
    ………………….
    “If your response to hearing that we were putting babies in jail – babies – is to question whether they are here legally, then it’s going to be hard to find any common ground,” she said. “The majority of these people are not criminals. They are coming here to ask for their human right to asylum. They weren’t breaking the law.”

    That doesn’t stop anti-immigration trolls from targeting Jackson and the Casa online. She doesn’t have a sign on the outside of the house to avoid any harassment from passersby.

    She tries to educate people where she can, inviting them for dinner to meet with the guests. Still, it’s an uphill battle – a member of her church recently told her that a “solution” to immigration would be for the government to put crocodiles in the rivers at the border.

    Ah… that’s more like it.

    For those not moved by her appeals to Christian values, Jackson also calls on American values.

    Good luck with that.

    Actually, she is getting a lot of help from people in the area so she is not alone in her Christian ways.

    One silver lining to zero tolerance has been the surge in volunteers and donations, particularly as family separations hit the headlines. The Casa’s garage is stacked high with boxes of toiletries, clothes, cans of food, cellphones (which are topped up and given to guests) and bags.

    On the evening the Guardian visited, at least 12 volunteers turned up at different points, some bringing food and groceries, others turning up to clean the bedrooms or assist the guests. When the Casa was filled to capacity over the summer, some of them even open up their homes to asylees.

  43. 43.

    Kraux Pas

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “It is a scary time right now. Sarah Sanders has been run out of restaurants. I mean, there’s a list of things going on. Now you’ve got witches that are placing a hex on Brett Kavanaugh.”

    And back when Obama was President, I had a prospective employer tell me they didn’t want to hire people who opposed torture and another trying to seed right-wing views in me because I was trying to keep mine private by claiming not to have any. These things happen. People find ways to have their views acknowledged.

    I’ll leave it to the audience to decide which applications of this are more problematic.

  44. 44.

    MazeDancer

    @Another Scott:

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    Yay, Scott!

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    Easily 80% of the people who start with “Okay, I’l do a few PostCards”, come back for more.

    It’s easy, it feels great, you can do it in spare moments, sitting in a comfy chair. Not much else you can do to actually boost GOTV for 35 cents a pop. (While not having to talk to anyone.)

    Get your addresses now: PostCardPatriots.com

  46. 46.

    WereBear

    @WaterGirl: I think there was an entire year when my first words were typically “What the fuck is wrong with these people?”

    In a normally functioning society, these people would be far more secret, and less successful.

    Sadly, they lurk among us in such prominence now because the GOP mined the depths of human nature for their willing cooperation. It’s a criminal enterprise and it uses criminals.

  47. 47.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kraux Pas: I liked the cognitive dissonance of this:

    “Kavanaugh is a Christian. True Christians have the protection of our heavenly father against others that desire a demon attack against them,” wrote one commenter.

    Oh well then, you really don’t care one way or another, right? Right???

  48. 48.

    Kay

    @low-tech cyclist:

    We do. It’s particularly bad for Democrats because so many of our main issues are primarily state law- crim justice, voting, education, infrastructure. I wonder sometimes if it’s ideological- Democrats are not “weak central government” people so they were inclined to ignore state law. Obviously it’s more than than that- civil rights were primarily federal for obvious reasons, but I wonder if we sort of stopped exercising that muscle so it weakened.

    I love the postcard idea. Ohio Dems did it in ’06- it had something to do with “women”- it was like “woman to woman” or something- but I remember thinking it was a good idea then and forgetting about it after the election.

    It might be really effective for down-ballot state races- races below “governor”- because when do you ever hear about those people? You’d be like “I got a postcard about the AUDITOR?” :)

  51. 51.

    germy

    We got a charming little hand-written thank you note from Tedra Cobb. She appreciates every contribution.

  52. 52.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Ecuador has laid out a stringent new set of house rules for Julian Assange, warning the whistleblower to avoid online comments about political issues – and ordering him to clean his bathroom and take better care of his cat, or risk losing his pet.

  54. 54.

    Waldo

    Unfortunately, for dirtbags like Kemp there’s no downside to vote suppression. Until we throw a few of these f*ckers jail, they’ll have no incentive to stop. Looking at you, Kobach.

  55. 55.

    tobie

    Was it someone on this blog who suggested that we should take seriously the motto “No taxation without representation”? I’d love to see 65 million Americans refuse to pay taxes until voter suppression stops. Georgia’s being hit a with a triple whammy of disenfranchisement now: purges of voters who didn’t vote in 2014 and 2016 (over a million), purges of voters whose ID info is not an exact match (53K), and purges of absentee ballots in largely Democratic areas (impact unknown). This is autocracy at work.

  56. 56.

    WaterGirl

    @JPL: Hadn’t you heard the old joke about the dog was really excited to go for the car ride because he was going to get “tutored” today?

  57. 57.

    Shakti

    @Mustang Bobby:I’m sure people are nice, they’re just insane. I won’t be making a roadtrip to Lakeland this weekend.

    I just read the story about the Lakeland city commissioner shooting a shoplifter point blank in the head. Nobody arrested or charged him. I’m also disinclined to believe this guy’s previous shooting was “accidental”, got to love “Stand Your Ground.”

  58. 58.

    WaterGirl

    @Steeplejack (phone): I think the shock and near disbelief that people could actually behave that way that kind of wore off. Now I no longer have to ask what the fuck is wrong with these people — it’s hate and bigotry and fear greed and power.

  60. 60.

    Steve in the ATL

    @rikyrah: @rikyrah: for the record, I was neither born nor raised in Georgia!

    Remember the Georgia Republican whose primary campaign featured a so-called Immigration Bus? It seems that his son and my daughter worked together, where the son stalked and sexually harassed my daughter. He left the company before I learned this, but clearly the rotten apple doesn’t fall far the rotten tree.

  62. 62.

    WaterGirl

    @JPL: I see that Ozark posted the far side comic. That was fun. I had forgotten that it was a cartoon before it was kind of a joke.

  63. 63.

    low-tech cyclist

    @Shakti: Good Lord. Hope they send him to prison for the rest of his life. That was nothing but a cold-blooded killing.

  64. 64.

    dww44

    Via the local TV news this a.m.early voting (which started yesterday) in a few SW Georgia counties impacted by Hurricane Michael has been suspended because they’ve got more important things to worry about, like getting power restored. This story featured SOS Kemp touring the devastated area.

    I’m so angry that this guy is still in charge of our voting and refuses to step down. Relatedly, it seems that Gov. Deal has issued an executive order (praised by Kemp, per the AJC) extending voting registration in 4 SW Georgia counties, including Randolph, the county where Kemp’s voting consultant recommended to county officials that they close 7 of 9 precincts. Interesting!

  66. 66.

    Gelfling 545

    @OzarkHillbilly: If Kavanaugh is a Christian, I am the pope of Rome. “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” Kavanaugh fails the test.

  67. 67.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “Kavanaugh is a Christian. True Christians have the protection of our heavenly father against others that desire a demon attack against them,” wrote one commenter.

    Of course, “Justice” Kavanaugh is no more a christian than Adolph Hitler, Eichmann, Himmler, or Mussolini was christian. Not at all, according to the history of what they wish to accomplish, the desires they all have to do non-christian things to others. I’ll stop now, it turns my stomach to think about how not christian Republicans are in reality.

  69. 69.

    Procopius

    Don’t know if this is the best way to bring this to your attention, but for the last several days, I’ve been getting this error message on Balloon Juice:

    Unexpected Error
    An unexpected error occurred. If you continue to receive this error please contact your Tableau Server Administrator.
    Session ID: DCDB766FEC494000818CF009E86873B6-0:0
    Script error.

    If any commenter who sees this knows how to bring it to the attention of the appropriate administrator please help here. I know it’s not mine because I don’t run a Tableau Server.

  70. 70.

    Procopius

    @OzarkHillbilly: … strikes fear in the heart of fundamentalists.” Good. They understand that their false claim to be Christians is no protection. I remember reading about Voodoo when I was in high school, about 65 years ago, and one of the widespread beliefs in Haiti was that you have to be Catholic to be subject to the power of voodoo. This caused some Haitians to join Protestant congregations to evade the curses, rather than change their behavior so people wouldn’t curse them.

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