Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

You cannot shame the shameless.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

I did not have this on my fuck 2025 bingo card.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

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

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

“Alexa, change the president.”

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Text STOP to opt out of updates on war plans.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Roe is not about choice. It is about freedom.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / A Couple of Congressional Updates

A Couple of Congressional Updates

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A Couple of Congressional Updates 1

First, MTG is too chickenshit to pull the trigger on getting rid of Pastor Johnson.  I think Josh Marshall has it right:

Majorie Greene was on social media all weekend going completely berserk on Johnson, threatening him, denouncing him, everything. And yet she still hasn’t pulled the plug on his Speakership, which she could do at any moment. Maybe this will all change tomorrow or the next day. But at the moment Johnson has totally stood her and her crew down. It was all talk basically.

One possible rejoinder is that she isn’t doing it because Johnson has a deal with Democrats to backstop his Speakership. So what’s the point of her calling the vote?

Maybe. But in her position making him retain the Speakership with Democratic votes is like making him drink from a poisoned chalice. So why not do it? The best answer is that Republicans are already facing a very challenging election in the House. A month of chaos looking for yet another Speaker only makes that worse. And none of her colleagues really want that. She probably doesn’t even want it. I think we underestimate the degree to which last October’s spectacle was driven by the personal and impetuous actions of a single man: Matt Gaetz. Others joined once he did it. But it’s not clear to me that the others were ever going to pull to do it themselves.

On last week’s Josh Marshall podcast, he also made the point that Marge isn’t a suicide machine like Gaetz:  she wants to wield power, and being a spoiler at this particular moment is going to hurt her future in the House.

Let’s turn to Ronald Reagan’s party of the big tent in Colorado, specifically CO-4 where Boebert is trying to parachute in.  Dave Williams, the chair of the party, has filed a subpoena of one of Boebert’s opponents in CO-4 as part of a lawsuit to stop unaffiliated voters from voting in the primary, even though a 2016 ballot proposition allows them to.  Unaffiliated voters are 40% of voter registration statewide.   Williams is also a candidate for the now open seat in CO-5, which is basically Colorado Springs.  He is accused of using state party money to finance his congressional campaign.  Need I say he’s the MAGat in that race?

Polls show Boebert in a lead in the primary contest, but I would put little or no stock in them, since it is a safe Republican district that was never worth polling.  When I posted about Boebert’s endorsement from the state party, some Coloradans in the comments thought that the endorsement meant nothing, and the voters of CO-4 would reject Boebert.  What’s for sure is that the Republicans in CO-4 are in deep disarray and showing their natural desire to disenfranchise voters.

(Democrats are also fighting over the CO-4 seat, with the eligibility of the Democrat chosen to run in the special election being challenged by a voter who won’t say who’s backing him. )

Reader Interactions

106Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    TRIANGLE, Virginia (AP) — President Joe Biden marked Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal grants for residential solar projects serving 900,000-plus households in low- and middle-income communities — while criticizing Republicans who want to gut his policies to address climate change.

  2. 2.

    Martin

    I’ve hear the rumors of Republicans threatening to quit now from more reliable sources. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but members of Congress believe it’s true and that’s all that matters because it threatens to kill the hostage that MTG doesn’t want killed.

  3. 3.

    matt

    Republicans are folding on the issue as a group and don’t need someone like Cro-Marge barking about it. I’m sure they’ve let her know.

  4. 4.

    Leto

    In a more forthright media environment, it’d be “Republicans in Disarray!”, morning, noon, and night for at least the past 6 months. The Chaos Caucus would be presented as they are: the dysfunctional, do nothing, national threat that they are. But I guess that would be “liberal bias”, and would threaten important book deals, luncheons, and golf trips.

  5. 5.

    Jeffro

    I’m starting to see polling breakouts between “registered voters” and “likely voters” and of course the latter is more important…AND…is looking better every week for President Biden!  Good stuff!!

  6. 6.

    JPL

    @Leto:  Imagine a situation where Lauren’s stature is rising and Marjorie’s is falling.   The MSM will not be able to ignore that fight.  It’s been a long, long time since we had a duel in the House.

  7. 7.

    rikyrah

    @Baud:

    TRIANGLE, Virginia (AP) — President Joe Biden marked Earth Day by announcing $7 billion in federal grants for residential solar projects serving 900,000-plus households in low- and middle-income communities — while criticizing Republicans who want to gut his policies to address climate change.

     

    That’s my President. Always doing the work.

  9. 9.

    gvg

    I think Marge doesn’t have the votes. Johnson will not automatically lose if she pulls the trigger, all it does is cause a vote. I know the margin is thin, but I don’t think it’s 1 vote yet. She needs 2or 3 others besides Democrats.

    And even if it is only 1, and she was, she could only win if all the democrats agreed. How would that look, Marge winning with only democrats votes..That could end her career as much as anything.

  10. 10.

    HumboldtBlue

    Donald Trump has a long track record of getting volcanically angry—often allowing his rage to dictate political, legal, & policy decisions. His rage during the 1st week of his NY criminal trial was “maxed out, even for him,” 3 sources close to him tell Rolling Stone. He’s been fuming over everything from reports of his dozing off, to how the court sketch artist renders him, to late-night talk show hosts joking about his legal troubles.

    DJT has been especially bitter towards NYT reporter Maggie Haberman, who reported he was visibly nodding off while in court. Despite his dozing being widely reported by others, the former guy has laid much of the blame for that detail going viral at Haberman’s feet.

    But it’s not just Haberman inflaming DJT. He’s also asked people close to him if they agree the courtroom sketch artist is out to get him.

    “None of these sources know what the hell they’re talking about & clearly have no access to any type of factual information,” says DJT’s odious spox Steven Cheung. “These are the types of losers who will try to peddle fantasy as fact because they live miserable existences.”

    DJT has also been voraciously monitoring media & entertainment coverage of the trial. He seems especially upset w/ Jimmy Kimmel, whom Trump has long despised—to the point of trying to get his WH staff to pressure Disney, which owns ABC, to force Kimmel to stop making fun of him.

    He’s also savagely annoyed about the memes & social-media mockery rejected jurors had posted, which he was forced to engage w/ in court. Trump ranted to reporters outside the courtroom that “people are allowed to speak about me & I have a gag order, just to show you how much more unfair it is,” before calling the people who continue to talk about him “real scum.”

    To those who’ve known DJT a long time, or who used to work for him, it’s no surprise the gravity & process of this criminal trial would uniquely & severely grate on him. Stephanie Grisham, Trump’s former WH press secretary, commented on his complaints of the courtroom being cold, saying, “In his normal world, someone would have jumped up & run, not walked, to get the temperature perfect for him. This entire experience must be beyond uncomfortable for him—not just the fact that it dives into such personal details, but that he has absolutely no control for probably the 1st time since he was a young child.”

    Grisham adds that the past week reminded her “that not only in the WH, but every facet of his life—be it at Mar-a-Lago or Trump Tower or Bedminster—he has a group of people that cater to his every whim. At Mar-a-Lago, people literally stand & applaud him just for walking into the room. In court, he has to sit there quietly while some people talk about how much they don’t like him. I can’t imagine how hard it has been for him not to get up & storm out of the place like a 5-year-old.”

    HAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

  11. 11.

    Leto

    @JPL: Hmm, I’m sure they would each try to draw their guns… but… they should do the more time honored tradition of caning. Not sure if an official smack with a glove needs to be done, or just “I caught you unawares, so now I’m gonna cane ya” type approach… I’ll have to think about that.

  12. 12.

    trollhattan

    @HumboldtBlue: Wonder if Brian Cox would be willing to pack on 5075 pounds, don a cotton candy wig, and play Trump in his twilight in a miniseries.

    I’d watch.

  13. 13.

    cmorenc

    Might the reason Trump is nodding off in court be related to whatever mood-stabilizing meds his docs are giving him to try to contain his volcanic temperament in court?  That, on top of Trump being a 77 yo man in physical and mental decline.

  14. 14.

    MazeDancer

    Just read there is an encampment that has been set up next to Hillel at MIT. (And we send peaceful Passover thoughts to Tom Levenson)

    Now, Hillel has to move their seder.

    This is not 1970.

    When the strike was to stop an unjust war and racial hatred. A war that did not begin with a violent attack, except from Nixon, JFK, and Johnson.

    And these anti-Semites would have been the enemy then.

    And there is, certainly, no Sam Brown

  16. 16.

    JPL

    @MazeDancer: Wonder how much republican money is flowing to keep it up.   Actually, that is a conspiracy theory that I could believe.  The movement is not helping Gazans.

  17. 17.

    TBone

    @HumboldtBlue: For this very reason, I hope trial takes the full 6 weeks that Judge Merchan originally estimated.  In excruciating detail.  I’ve been waiting a long time to see him squirm and my patience during his suffering is endless.

  22. 22.

    p.a.

    Just got an email from Angus King (first ever, & I don’t live in Maine), asking for an election donation that he’ll split with his good friend (his words) Jon Tester, for his Montana race which is rated “toss up”.

    I’ve seen organizations which tell me they’ll split the money, but I’m really thinking hard and do not remember a poll telling me before hand that’s what they’ll do.  Not saying never, but none spring to mind.

  24. 24.

    WV Blondie

    I’ve been thinking about the jury. Even if a secret TFG fan made it onto the jury, he/she is going to have to spend 4-6 weeks, maybe, sitting in the same room with him, watching every tic, every doze, listening to (and maybe smelling) every fart, observing every time the judge has to slap him down for something inappropriate.

    Seeing one’s (false) idol up close might go a long way to changing that fan’s mind …

  25. 25.

    TBone

    As always, she brought a knife to a gunfight recently.

    “First of all, I’d like to thank the representative from Georgia by making clear with her comments and with her person that any discussion of political warfare has to include Russia, Ukraine, and America,” Professor Snyder said. “She’s just demonstrated that point, I think, very powerfully.”

    “On the question of Nazis, I’ve written two books as a historian about Nazis and the Holocaust,” he continued. “On the question of Ukrainian nationalism, I am the leading scholar of that subject in North America and have been writing about it for 20 years.”

    If the Chamber is interested in the degree of far-right participation in Ukrainian politics, you can be assured that no far-right party has ever crossed 3 percent in a Ukrainian election,” Snyder explained. “So, of course, there are bad people in every country, but by any comparative standard is a very small phenomenon.”

    “In Russia, on the other hand, the army includes openly Nazi formations, such as Russia,” he continued. “The government itself is fascist in character, and it is carrying out a war which includes deportation of children by the tens of thousands, the open intention of destroying a state, as well as mass torture.”

    “So if we’re looking for fascism, and if there is anyone who is sincerely concerned about halting fascism or racism, you would wish to halt Russia,” he added.

    https://crooksandliars.com/2024/04/marge-calmly-shut-down-professor-timothy

    Also too 😆

    “Marjorie Taylor Greene you’ve just shown is a beauty,” said RT’s Margarita Simonyan. “She is demonstratively heterosexual.”

  26. 26.

    Baud

    Via reddit, more fights on the right

    Elon Musk Turns On ‘Irrational’ Tucker Carlson Over His Joe Rogan Interview in Series of X Posts

  27. 27.

    cain

    @gvg:

    And even if it is only 1, and she was, she could only win if all the democrats agreed. How would that look, Marge winning with only democrats votes..That could end her career as much as anything.

    Even she can’t spin that and I think Boebert would jump on it to get some free limelight.

  28. 28.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Jeffro: I saw an NBC poll that had Biden up by 9%, but didn’t bother to share it here because it’s only one poll and is still so early etc.

  31. 31.

    Jeffro

    @UncleEbeneezer: It would make sense.

    I mean, Biden won by 3-4% last time around.  trumpov has a high ceiling of 46% and a floor of probably 40%.

    Throw all that into my Armchair Pundit Calculator, add in the American public’s growing re-acquaintance with trumpov’s insanity and incompetence, and yeah, we should be at about 54-45% in a two person race right now.

    RFK Jr apparently continues to pull 10%+, which boggles my mind.  Continuing to highlight his many flaws (and many “policy” alignments with trumpov) all the way through November would be smart on the part of Biden/Harris2024, but I know they’re on it.

  33. 33.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Of course, the offal of the MSM can’t bring themselves to shout out “Republicans in disarray” so they’ll concentrate their efforts on the “Joe Biden is old” meme.

  34. 34.

    dm

    @MazeDancer: they’re on Kresge oval — right in front of the Student Center. It is about the only open space on campus other than the Great Court or the athletic field, and has been the traditional place for student demonstrations since the sixties. It is true that the chapel is also next to the oval, and Google tells me Hillel is there as well.

    I also see that Harvard is closing Harvard Yard for the week.

    I guess I haven’t been hanging around in the comments much lately. I hadn’t realized that opinion here had congealed around these demonstrations being “anti-semitic” instead of anti-war.

  36. 36.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Jeffro: I don’t trust any of the polls, because the MSM has this built in need for everything to be a horse race, because that generates drama that generates ratings which generates revenue for the mercenary mofos.

  37. 37.

    Anonymous At Work

    I think the analysis is purely political within the caucus.  MTG knows several colleagues are resigning, including a second-term 36-year old rep.  They had planned to stay out their term.  They also hate her with an undying passion.  They also vote with her 90+% of the time.
    And they let it be known that they would rather step down now and make Hakeem Jeffries the next Speaker.

  40. 40.

    Delk

    What a difference a couple of years make.
    I was looking for some background noise while I did some chores and noticed that Prime’s live tv has two British game show channels with shows from a couple years ago. On one show the question was what flag is red with white crosses. One of the three choices was Ukraine and the woman chose it. On a different game show the question was what are the two colors of Ukraine’s flag and the guy guesses red and white.

  41. 41.

    prostratedragon

    Cro-Marge — love it!

    Now this here from Columbia U. is some weird shit, as was once said. Someone needs to sit them down — on the lawn if necessary — and get them to say what their point is and how they expect these tactics to further it. And I would get that damn bullhorn away from that person, somehow.

  43. 43.

    Ocotillo

    Early voting for a school board election and county appraisal district members started today here in Texas.  I was driving by a poll site and some volunteers working for some slug that is running on the platform of KEEP WOKE OUT OF OUR SCHOOLS were smiling and waving at passing traffic.  I promptly gave them the one finger salute and enjoyed the dismay on their faces as I passed.

    Now I feel guilty because I never let my freak flag fly like that typically.

  46. 46.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @HumboldtBlue: “None of these sources know what the hell they’re talking about & clearly have no access to any type of factual information,” says DJT’s odious spox Steven Cheung. “These are the types of losers who will try to peddle fantasy as fact because they live miserable existences.”

    IMAX/Bell & Howell joint patent infringement task force on line two.

  48. 48.

    Baud

    Women are less likely to die when treated by female doctors, study suggests
    The study adds to a growing body of research that explores why women and minorities tend to receive worse medical care than men and white patients.

  49. 49.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @dm: I hadn’t realized that opinion here had congealed around these demonstrations being “anti-semitic” instead of anti-war.

    Goes to show the success of the smear campaign against the students. I have read umpteen articles about the protests at Columbia. They all lead with threats against Jewish students and fear and calls to cancel classes.

    But it became clear, without fail, that none of these articles were able to point to any specific incident, had pull quotes from concerned students who cited no specific incidents, and went out of their way to point out the one incidence of violence by a pro-Palestinian student they could find…at a completely different university.

    If you read all the way to the end of the articles, you may then notice them conceding that what they are describing is a heated atmosphere, not threats and/or violence.

    Just another round of the perpetual smearing of college students.

  50. 50.

    Harrison Wesley

    @Ocotillo: Wouldn’t a photo of their Dear Leader snoozing in court be a perfect accompaniment to that sign?  What would better exemplify anti-woke?

  53. 53.

    Betty Cracker

    @dm:

    I hadn’t realized that opinion here had congealed around these demonstrations being “anti-semitic” instead of anti-war.

    I don’t think it has. Don’t know enough about the circumstances at MIT to form an opinion,  but I think the student protests are generally in good faith.

    As with any widespread protest movement, people with bad intent glom onto the activities and can discredit the whole thing. It happened with some BLM protests.

    I’m old enough to remember it happening in the first Gulf War too. Maybe the unis could do more to keep the bad actors out? I don’t know.

  58. 58.

    piratedan

    @dm: I think that the majority opinion here can’t be described as that currently.

    I believe a majority are against continuing IDF actions in Gaza.

    It took some time to wade thru Pro-Palestine does not equal Pro-Hamas, complicated by the knowledge that there is an element of Pro-Hamas/Pro-Palestine in those protests and sponsored by the likely anti-American sources.

    Further nuanced that Israel is having just as many issues with kicking their Fascist Wannabe Dictator to the curb and he’s in office, as we are in keeping ours from gaining office again.

    Also with the understanding that this issue is not going to have any Green Lantern solution set (i.e. not a just do this one thing solution).

  60. 60.

    dm

    @prostratedragon: No bullhorn.

    They’re using the audience-participation “human PA system” (I forget what it was called) that the Occupy Wall Street people adopted to emphasize their opposition to “hierarchy”. People with bullhorns get turned into leaders, and the Occupy people were consciously trying to avoid that (for better or worse).

    It may have been making a virtue of necessity — I wouldn’t be surprised if Occupy was threatened by the authorities that bullhorns =”disturbing the peace”.

  61. 61.

    MazeDancer

    @dm: If Jewish students don’t feel safe on campus, IMHO, this is not a righteous movement.

    Perhaps, the endless videos of people shouting pro-Hamas sentiments is making it difficult to support.

    Think I got suspicious back when it was “just” people hell-bent on tearing down hostage posters.

    Very supportive of anti-war protests. Not of anti-semitism..

    Bibi is a monster. And hope the war stops soon.

  63. 63.

    Betty

    @p.a.: Elizabeth Warren does it often. Her goal is to have a team of like-minded folks in Congress to get things done.

  64. 64.

    gwangung

    I’m convinced the protests are being ratfucked, both by planning and by natural diffusion of dishonest actor using others as cover.

  65. 65.

    mrmoshpotato

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Donald Trump has a long track record of getting volcanically angry—often allowing his rage to dictate political, legal, & policy decisions.

    I wonder if the author is surprised about a pile of shit manchild brat acting like that.

  66. 66.

    dm

    @Betty Cracker: one of the local media outlets mentioned that the MIT group is kvetching about $11 million in funding MIT has gotten (since 2015) from Israel’s Ministry of Defense, and concerns about what research that money is paying for.

    $11 million over nine years pays for…. not a lot of research, really.

  67. 67.

    CaseyL

    There are ALWAYS ratfuckers barging in on social/political movements to co-opt or disrupt them.

    But the percentage of attendees/participants that are ratfuckers has grown a lot in recent years.

    Too many organizers have an overly-broad concept of “inclusiveness” and “good faith” and don’t stop the ratfuckers from taking over. Or there may not be any mechanism that can do so: How do you control who shows up to a public demonstration?

    This is more of a thing now than it was during the anti-war marches of the 1969s-70s, because the ratfuckers have professionalized since then. It is a racket, and one that can pay quite well, either via online donations or direct sponsorship.

    This is one of the many reasons I no longer participate in demonstrations, and also no longer believe they are constructive in any way.

  68. 68.

    TBone

    @CaseyL: whoah, hang on there a minute, cowboy. Civil Rights. Viet Nam. Then Arab Spring. Led to Occupy. Led to Me Too. Led to BLM. All of them led to incremental change.

    I want my constitutional rights.  ALL of them.

    Without BLM, I never would have seen or known about all the anti-bigots and fellow antifa who live in this godforsaken hinterland.  They came out, loud and proud. It was a sight to behold, in front of the tiny town police station.

  69. 69.

    Baud

    @TBone:

    I’m more with CaseyL. I’m not confident every protest has produced net positive results, especially since the 1960s.

  70. 70.

    ColoradoGuy

    @gwangung: Me too. The same thing happened back in the anti-Vietnam War days … there would be a student rally, and off-campus SWP thugs would rush the stage. Or subvert it from the inside, so speeches would get all wonky and promote weird single-interest causes having nothing to do with the rally.

    The Left has always been plagued with factional infighting, much more than the Right, who are natural authoritarians and readily fall into line.

  72. 72.

    VFX Lurker

    @Baud: I’m more with CaseyL. I’m not confident every protest has produced net positive results, especially since the 1960s.

    Same. I feel like I accomplished more by voting, donating and writing 4000+ Postcards to Voters than I did attending the third Women’s March.

  73. 73.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @Baud: In my 40 years of life, I have only ever seen protests acknowledged by the media and the majority of the public with disinterest, derision, or outright animosity.

  75. 75.

    Baud

    @TBone:

    All or nothing fallacy. Some protests have been positive.  I’m just against assuming every protest is a net good. But I acknowledge it’s hard to assess in real time.

  76. 76.

    TBone

    @Baud: the Supremacist Court recently upped their security resources.  I hear chicken squawking noises every time I think of it.

    I hear what y’all are saying. I’m just a stubborn old mule.

  77. 77.

    Chet Murthy

    @Baud: i certainly remember a while back there was a study that showed that if you want to live longer, you should have a female doctor.  Because female doctors actually freaking listen to their patients.

  78. 78.

    CaseyL

    The watershed for me was the anti-WTO protests in 1999. The WTO meeting was in Seattle that year, so I got to see it unfold on the local news every day.

    (I’d have been there protesting, because I still believed in direct public action back then, but I was homebound with the worst case of flu ever. Luckily, as it turned out.)

    The protests turned destructive, and violent, and there were two main reasons for that. One was the so-called “anarchists,” who have shown up to every public protest in the last 25+ years to break shit; and the other were “professional disruptors” – honest to god – who gave actual seminars on how to harass WTO members and disrupt their meetings (one seminar – again, honest to god – gave instructions on how to rappel down the outside of a building in order to evade street barriers).

    The cynicism, stupidity, and counter-productiveness of the whole thing disgusted me.

  79. 79.

    NutmegAgain

    @HumboldtBlue: So completely not surprised that he turned on Maggie Haberman, formerly court stenographer. Once again, anything touched by the orange pustule collapses, loses money, or generally falls apart like a dried-out dog turd. It’s really kind of incredible how many otherwise not totally stupid people (?) fall for this. “won’t happen to me, I’m Speshul!”

  80. 80.

    TBone

    @CaseyL: this one time at band camp

    I watched live feed from inside a NYC high rise apartment with the Veterans for Peace guys who were unfurling banners down the side of the building.  Rump had about 8″ of bullet proof glass surrounding him that day.

    Not all protests, I guess…hhmmph murmer grumble

  81. 81.

    dm

    @MazeDancer:

    If Jewish students don’t feel safe on campus, IMHO, this is not a righteous movement.

    The encampment is endorsed by a group that calls itself “MIT Jews for Ceasefire”.

    Anyway, I’m across town, not part of the MIT community (beyond a bit of nostalgia). As I said, I’ve not been hanging around comments much, so if Tom Levenson has talked about the mood on campus, I’ve missed it.

    But, there can be assholes in any movement. I’ve seen those torn down hostage posters, and the sight was depressing.

  83. 83.

    sab

    Emilia Sykes is in a once Blue district now Red. Gerrymandering.

    I live in a once blue district gone red and get sad/angry. Then I talk to our actual representative in Congress. She is way better than we deserve.

  84. 84.

    Josie

    @CaseyL: ​ There may have been a time when protests accomplished something (although I can’t remember any). The country is so divided at this point that nothing–not protests, not marching, not standing on our heads–will change anyone’s mind. The actions that are needed are targeted political donations like the ones that WaterGirl organizes, volunteering to register new voters and get them to the polls, or donating to those who do those jobs. Writing post cards is also helpful, according to recent studies. These actions may not be as exciting as marching, yelling, and waving signs, but they will make a difference.​
     ETA: In other words, I agree with you.

  85. 85.

    TBone

    Do not show me a young rebel,
    whose eyes are bright
    and whose tail is bushy.

    Young rebels are fine and good,
    but they are merely doing
    what the young are meant to do.

    Show me an old rebel.
    One who keeps punching
    when his hands are arthritic,
    when her hair is white,
    when his friends are all dead,
    when her knees are shot,
    when it hurts him to pee,
    when her shoulders are so bad
    that it would be much easier to punch down
    than to punch up.

    Show me an old rebel
    who keeps standing up after being knocked down
    over and over again,
    year after year,
    decade after decade,
    who after the thousandth blow
    merely spits out a tooth
    and says “Son, you have no idea what you’re dealing with,
    do you?”

    Are you a young rebel?
    Are you Sticking It to The Man?
    Are you upsetting the gray brainiacs
    and knocking over their word castles?

    That is fine.
    Youth will youth.

    But show me a young rebel
    who became an old rebel,
    who stuck with it through the setbacks
    and the beatings and betrayals,
    who watched the hippies become yuppies
    and the protesters become pundits
    and still kept a fire lit
    amid the monsoons of infiltration
    and the hurricanes of heartbreak.
    Who will close their tired eyes for a final time
    without ever once having cast them to the ground
    or peered up in imploring subordination.

    That, my friends,
    that is a true spirit.

    If you are still a fiery rebel
    even as everything is ripped away from you,
    I will be humbled and awed by you,
    because I will know that you will carry that with you to the grave.
    And I will know that whatever you find on the other side
    will be met
    with that same defiant glare.

    And I will sing your song when you are gone.

    – Caitlin Johnstone (another case of detest the artist but not the art).

  86. 86.

    smith

    On another topic, I continue to be puzzled by all the people who are very concerned about imprisoning TFG — we can’t do that! It would provoke major violence among the MAGA! The Orange One himself today urged his supporters to protest this political witch-hunt outside courthouses all over the country. “Will be wild!” he said, trying, I guess, to get the band back together.

    Then there’s this:

    Lawrence O’Donnell @Lawrence  I counted a total of 3 Trump supporters at courthouse today. The loudest person was the guy yelling at them “Bill Clinton balanced the budget!”

    Granted, Manhattan is not a center of TFG boosterism, but millions of his fans are an hour or so away, and Staten Island is right there. I really think the air has gone out of this balloon.

  87. 87.

    Betty Cracker

    The Women’s March on Washington the day after the orange fart cloud’s inauguration accomplished something for me: I felt the stirrings of hope. I felt less alone. An enormous protest, and hardly any arrests! I do remember women swarming a cop — he was in the mounted police, and we wanted to pet the horsie!
    A Couple of Congressional Updates 2

  90. 90.

    dm

    Shoshana Zuboff (I think  — I’m, I may be confusing her with Zeynip Tufecki) has talked about how protest has changed its nature in the social-media age.

    It used to be that organizing a huge protest required a lot of organization working for a long time. A lot of talking to people, a lot of working out details.  When the demonstration was over, the organization would still be around.

    Now, social media can create flash-crowds with a minimum of organization. Demonstrations can be huge, but there’s no organization to carry on the work once the demonstration is over.

    But social change requires talking to people, changing one mind at a time.

    But in addition to the Women’s March(es), there was Run For Something, and a bunch of other organizations (and I’m looking at the Balloon Juice for Four Directions NV thermometer as I type this).

  91. 91.

    VFX Lurker

    @Betty Cracker: The Women’s March on Washington the day after the orange fart cloud’s inauguration accomplished something for me: I felt the stirrings of hope. I felt less alone. An enormous protest, and hardly any arrests! I do remember women swarming a cop — he was in the mounted police, and we wanted to pet the horsie!

    I don’t regret attending the first Women’s March.

    Anecdote: months later, I traveled to Ontario to visit my Canadian in-laws. At a local restaurant, a man was telling others at his table about “…they don’t like him [Trump] down there…the women don’t like him.”

  92. 92.

    Baud

    More media fun

    Conservatives Quickly Turn Against “Idiot” Marjorie Taylor Greene
    The Georgia Republican is fast falling out of favor for her opposition to the Ukraine aid bill.

  93. 93.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @CaseyL: The George Floyd protests helped us get a Civilian Oversight Committee for our police.  But I think that the big driver was the combination of the George Floyd protests AND a local police killing that got a lot of attention.  Without the latter, I don’t think we would have gotten enough support to get the Oversight Committee added to our city charter.  Most cities didn’t get anything productive (policy-wise) out of that huge movement.

    While the Women’s March was huge for sparking the larger resistance efforts for 2018-2020, I think I’m generally moving towards the opinion that protests don’t generate huge or sustainable change, in general, the vast majority of the time.  The Summer of George Floyd was bigger than almost any protest movement we’ve seen, worldwide, and yet very little changed on issues of racist policing in America, as a result.

  95. 95.

    TBone

    @UncleEbeneezer: ummm I was prosecuted for punching a cop while inebriated (two, actually, who were trying to keep me penned inside an ambulance).  In court, I was VERY grateful for BLM being a BFD and both of my attorneys were looking at tiny me, and then over at the big, burly tough guy on the witness stand, sniggering…

  96. 96.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Baud:

    I was hoping that they would eventually notice that…lol! The Democrats and Biden were ready to give them just about every single damned thing they wanted on the border to make a deal on aid to Ukraine and Israel and pfffft! Nothing. TFG said NO WIN FOR BIDEN! and they complied, turning it all down only to later pass the aid bill with nothing in trade.

    Skillful they are not and now their fellow comrades are pissed at them. Win-win in our world!

  97. 97.

    cmorenc

    @WV Blondie:

    “You should never want to meet your heroes” – can’t recall who coined that line, but it essentially means you’ll pick up too much new information about them that you’ll never be able to hold them in anywhere near so high regard.

  98. 98.

    Call_me_ishmael

    MTG needs to win another election before her pension vests. She doesn’t come from money like Gaetz.

  99. 99.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker: I think it was tremendous in its own right.

    I think it also gave people hope that the orange moron and his sick minions could be resisted, that we could get through one term, if we all pulled together.

  100. 100.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @TBone: That’s great but I don’t think that is the kind of large scale, systemic change that BLM and other organizers were hoping to achieve.  And there have been countless stories about organizational changes that corporations made in response to the Summer of George Floyd (like improving diversity, emphasizing equity etc.) that they have since rescinded.  There’s a lot of disappointment within police reform circles about how few tangible changes were accomplished and how quickly things went right back to the status quo or even worse, with the inevitable backlash.

  101. 101.

    wjca

    @CaseyL:  the so-called “anarchists,” who have shown up to every public protest in the last 25+ 45+ years to break shit

    FTFY

    To my personal knowledge, those characters (or their descendants) have been around at otherwise peaceful protests since at least the late 1960s.  They were then totally disinterested in what a particular protest was about.  My sense at the time was that they wanted the government overthrown.  Whether they were actual anarchists, rabid libertarians (if those two are different), or agents of a hostile foreign power was not entirely clear.

  102. 102.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker: also, it seems like large public protests (the Women’s March, BLM, others) are pretty effective in showing just how many people are willing to stand up for their rights.

    It helps if they are peaceful, of course, and include concrete calls to activism (voter reg, door-knocking, etc)

    The RWNJ media is especially good at picking up any incidence of violence at a left-oriented protest, no matter how small the incident, and blowing it all out of proportion.  (Just as they do with any one speaker, university professor, teacher, or really anything anywhere).

    That’s what their Noise Machine does 24/7 and we need to always a) call it out and b) think about emulating it, at least on a basic level.  Make it a wash for them (instead of fighting with one megaphone tied behind our back, as it were)

  103. 103.

    Jackie

    Speaking of protests; TIFG “ordered his supporters to protest country-wide” re his forced attendance to an unfair trial…

    “Donald Trump was evidently not happy with what he saw out the window of his chauffeured S.U.V. as he rode through Lower Manhattan on Monday morning for the beginning of opening arguments in his first criminal trial,” the New York Times reports.

    “The scene that confronted him as he approached the dingy courthouse at 100 Centre Street was underwhelming. Across the street, at Collect Pond Park, the designated site for protesters during the trial, only a handful of Trump supporters had gathered, and the number would not grow much throughout the morning.”

    “Mr. Trump has portrayed his legal jeopardy as a threat to America itself, and he has suggested that the country would not put up with it. But the streets around the courthouse on Monday were chaos-free — well-patrolled and relatively quiet.”

    I haven’t seen or read any reports of groups of MAGAts protesting anywhere else in the country. Have you?

    ETA:

    “America Loving Protesters should be allowed to protest at the front steps of Courthouses, all over the Country,” Trump added, appearing to reference how demonstrators who have shown up outside his trial have been kept across the street from the building.

    Trump urged his supporters to “GO OUT AND PEACEFULLY PROTEST. RALLY BEHIND MAGA. SAVE OUR COUNTRY!”

    https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4610911-trump-urges-supporters-peacefully-protest-hush-money-trial-opening-remarks/amp/

  104. 104.

    Another Scott

    @Jackie:

    Lawrence O’Donnell
    @Lawrence
    4h

    I counted a total of 3 Trump supporters at courthouse today. The loudest person was the guy yelling at them “Bill Clinton balanced the budget!”

    [ image ]

    Apr 22, 2024 · 9:26 PM UTC

    [ womp, womp ]

    (via MullerSheWrote)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  105. 105.

    Jackie

    @Another Scott: 👍🏻

    I love that Lawrence O’Donnell lives within walking distance and reports his observations of lack of MAGA excitement near the courthouse.😁

  106. 106.

    Gvg

    @CaseyL: the pro Palestinian protesters that are genuine are newbies. They have to be young and inexperienced. We old people knew what has been happening for decades and were resigned to nobody caring AND that the Palestinians never seem to come up with a credible ethical leader with any ideas except get back at Israel. So the new people don’t already have a plan to deal with ratfuckers and bad faith joiners co-opting their protests.

    I guess they will learn.

    I have to say, I have been upset at how much antisemitism has come out since Trump approved bigotry. I rarely heard any of it before Trump.

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