Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

T R E 4 5 O N

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Petty moves from a petty man.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

The revolution will be supervised.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

You know he’s going to shit a cat.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

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Open Thread: Podcasts and Reggie Update

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I will confess to a bit of a crush on Tim Miller. When I first heard him as a commenter on MSNBC, I did not know that he was, a)gay, b)married c) a father, and d)a Republican – to say I was stumped by D would be an understatement. I still am. But he’s from Denver and a huge Nuggets fan, so that forgives a lot. LOL

A month or so ago, he took over as the host of the Bulwark podcast. Several have popped up on my YouTube feed and they weren’t awful.

These two I thought were worth sharing. First one is today’s where he and Gov. Josh Shapiro have a thoughtful discussion.

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Botox-Filled Rooms (Open Thread)

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This isn’t surprising, but it sure is repulsive: (Bloomberg)

Trump Auditions VP Picks Before Wealthy Donors in Palm Beach

Vance, Rubio, Burgum and Scott among leading contenders
Trump says he will likely announce running mate in July

Donald Trump is sharpening his focus on a possible running mate by taking a page from his days hosting reality show “The Apprentice” and parading the top contenders for the slot in front of rich benefactors this weekend.

Grotesquely attired, preternaturally smooth-faced GOP fat cats presiding over a Hunger Games-style winnowing process for potential Trump second bananas is painfully on brand. It’s a fitting successor to the fabled smoke-filled rooms — Boss Trump’s Palm Beach star chamber of aggressively rejuvenated billionaire scum.

This is not a healthy party. But we knew that.

Open thread!

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Guest Post: The Country Was In a Mood for Protest

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I asked Martin if he might be willing to put together a guest post related to institutional responses to the protests, and he graciously agreed.   This is a smart, thoughtful take, and I am better for having read it.  Read it for yourself and see what you think!  And then maybe we can have a conversation.

The Country Was in a Mood For Protest

by Martin

If you watch any retrospective on the Vietnam War protest movement, it’ll probably offer up a line like that, as if the protest were gas filling up a space just waiting for a spark to ignite it – that is, the essence of the protest existed before the war did. I worked as an administrator in various roles for nearly 30 years where Muslim/pro-Palestinian vs Jewish/pro-Israeli interactions were a common occcurance. And while I’m now retired and not in a position to interact with students as I previous was, I think some of our previous lessons learned apply well here.

I never had primary responsibility for managing these interactions, but I did provide some of the input on how we would respond, and I did work closely with the students on many occasions. Over that period of time, the interactions would ebb and flow, increasing and decreasing in size and intensity, and in terms of the focus. Sometimes we had encampments, and sometimes not.

Setting some context, the Muslim/Pro-Palestine groups were always characterized as ‘protests’. The Jewish/Pro-Israeli groups were ‘rallies’. Sometimes one group set up first and the other countered, and sometimes the reverse. Sometimes they turned out together. The terminology was a combination of self-selection by the students but also by the press, other students, and so on. If both groups were present it was always a Pro-Palestine protest. There was always a clear ‘these oppose the status quo, and these defend it’ framing even though the actual things being discussed were effectively identical – some combination of how they get treated in the US (not great for either group) and what life is like in Israel/Palestine due to the presence of the other (also not great for either group).

I think the most charitable explanaion for the difference in perception is that Israel is a formally recognized nation and Palestine isn’t and therefore one is more ‘valid’ than the other. But this interaction started not that long after 9/11 so there was an unquestionable bias against the Muslim students at least in the beginning and that may have just stuck.

The ask was straightforward – the Jewish/Pro-Israel students wanted an end to suicide bombings or rocket attacks (whatever the prevailing hostitlity at the time was), and the Muslim/Pro-Palestine students wanted an end to settlements, to checkpoints, (also the prevailing hostility) but also a larger structural ask – a 1 state solution or a 2 state solution, and a smaller structural ask – divestiture. The geopolitical ask is what would get the press or community attention, and the divestiture ask was directed at the administration. Purely local asks don’t get much attention from the press. This is effectively how things looked to the outside, and you can probably recognize all of these elements to some degree in the various events in the news now.

But things are not this simple. There are times when the activities are ‘on’, when they are most performative, and when they are ‘off’, when things are quiet. The quiet times are the more important. Students talk about the events, they plan, but they also talk about other stuff. Increases in student fees, a change in policy, parking availability, all kinds of stuff. This is usually where you find the essence of the demonstration that existed before the spark. This is the grievance that allows the anger about the thing on the banner to surface so quickly and passionately. The emotional tank is full and doesn’t take much to spill over.  I’m not the first to observe this:

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It’s Up To Us Now, Next Up: Michigan!

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It’s up to us now, as it always was.

Next up: Michigan, with Voting Access for All (VAAC)

We’ve been out West with states like Montana (Jon Tester is crucial!) and swing states like Arizona and Nevada, but now we are moving north and east to the Michigan, with its 15 electoral votes!

Remember VAAC?  Remember this video?

It was this video that led us to first support VAAC in 2022.  I urge you to watch it, even if you watched it 2 years ago.  It’s just over 1 minute long, and it tells you everything you need to know.

VAAC is working to educate, register and turnout voters who are incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, homeless, or “justice impacted” (referring to friends and family of the current and formerly incarcerated).

Michigan passed a law a few months ago – everyone who is released from prison is automatically registered to vote.  But the law doesn’t take effect until 2025, so it doesn’t help in November.

Short sidebar: Let’s talk about the difference between prison and jail.  If you’ve been convicted and sentenced, we are most likely talking PRISON.  If you are serving a relatively short term or are being held without bail before your court hearing, or as you are being processed, we’re talking JAIL.  Prison and jail are only interchangeable to people who have no contact with the criminal justice system.

Okay, sidebar over.  Back to the subject at hand!

The formerly incarcerated have had the right to vote in Michigan for at least 15 years.  But most are unaware of their rights, or are intimidated by stories of voters who have been fined or incarcerated in other states.   If you watched the video, you’ll know that sometimes being unaware of your rights is not accidental.  Some parole officers or folks who work in jail or prisons will tell you that you can’t vote even after you get out of jail.  Yep.  Disinformation strikes again.

VAAC is working to change that.

Okay, another sidebar.  This time, for some really sad news.  I didn’t tell you all before, because it never felt like the right time, but Danny – the really compelling guy who narrates much of the video – was killed a year ago in November. It was really quite shocking; he we shot and killed when he stopped for gas at a well-lit gas station at night.  Danny was one of the founding members of VAAC, and his loss left them reeling.  Where do they go from here?  Could they carry on without Danny?  Did they want to?  But VAAC was his vision, too, so they got back on the horse and are working their collective asses off in support of their mission.

If you want to read about Danny Jones and Earl Burton (who died of natural causes shortly after they lost Danny) you can read about their lives and their incredible impact on voting rights here.

So VAAC is back at work, and they have found us a $25,000 match.  $15k from the East Bay Community Foundation, and $10k from a private donor.  That $25,000 is being donated to VAAC specifically because we want to raise $25k for VAAC, and the donors were inspired by our offer.

What are we funding?  Just like last time, we are paying for teams who are doing direct work with the formerly incarcerated, not just to let them know they are eligible to vote, not just to get them registered to vote, but also to get them out to vote.

What, specifically, are these voting ambassadors up to?  They are:

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Report From Sunny Gilead

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The editorial boards of two Florida dailies, the Orlando Sentinel and Sun Sentinel, marked the May 1 imposition of the state’s 6-week abortion ban by jointly publishing an editorial titled, “A frightening tyranny over Florida women.” It’s paywalled, but here are a few excerpts:

Much of the nation — including Florida now — resembles a theocracy where women’s bodies belong to the state, not to themselves…

The greatest immediate danger is denial of emergency care to women with pregnancy complications. Physicians will necessarily think twice about what care to provide, even if delaying it might have lifelong consequences.

Many are to blame for Florida’s theocracy, starting with former President Donald Trump, who boasts of appointing the Supreme Court justices who repealed Roe v. Wade.

There are the six justices who did it; the Florida legislators who took advantage of what they did; Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose state Supreme Court appointments were as maliciously purposeful as Trump’s; the six Florida justices who signed an intellectually corrupt opinion excluding abortion from the protection of Florida’s constitutional right of privacy; and Attorney General Ashley Moody, who maintains that the privacy right applies only to the disclosure of information, not to police-state control of personal conduct…

Like Roe, Griswold and Obergefell depended upon the Constitution protecting the people of the United States from government intrusion into their private lives.

But now, many millions of women in the U.S., and in Florida particularly, are the handmaidens of theocrats who are doing just that.

The opportunities for so many people to do so much harm owe to fundamental fault lines in the constitutional order, and the triumph of “state’s rights” in the defeat of democracy…

Thomas Paine wrote, “tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.” But in Florida today, the tyrants are winning.

Exactly right. Floridians have an opportunity to defeat the theocrats and restore abortion rights by passage of an amendment to the state constitution via a ballot initiative in November. But it needs 60% to pass, which is a tall order. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, Politico is still trying to make DeSantis happen. The latest is an article with the dumb title, “Has the DeSantis comeback already begun? His next act: Republican money machine.” An excerpt:

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Gov. Ron DeSantis is poised to take the most public steps yet to rebuild his political future after dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, campaigning for GOP candidates in Florida and beyond in the coming months — and taking a leading role in fighting an abortion-rights referendum in his home state.

Puts me in mind of a quote from Beatrix in Kill Bill, “Bitch, you don’t have a future.”

That said, DeSantis doesn’t really have another play except to align himself with the fanatical opponents of Florida’s grassroots abortion rights initiative. He knows the supermajority threshold makes passage difficult, so he’s positioning himself to take credit if the initiative fails to clear that hurdle.

DeSantis is inextricably connected with the abortion ban regardless — it was a presidential primary stunt that he 100% owns. I don’t think it bodes well for his political future beyond the most fanatical outposts of the wingnut welfare circuit, but who knows?

Politico goes on:

After months of sniping with Donald Trump, DeSantis will soon use his connections and fundraising network to help the former president — and is expected to bring in millions of dollars. But he’s also raising money for members of Congress, including Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Laurel Lee (R-Fla.). Both backed his bid for president.

Someone in comments the other day made an excellent point about the so-called DeSantis funding juggernaut. They noted that DeSantis was the generic not-Trump into whom Trump-weary GOP donors collectively poured their funds for the 2024 primary. Mostly on the strength of idiotic media hype and ignorance about Florida’s bizarre politics.

DeSantis has since proven to be a dud. Will GOP donors contribute to a slush fund so the dud can play kingmaker? Stranger things have happened in the Disarray Party, but color me skeptical.

Open thread.

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Trump’s NY Criminal Trial, Day 10

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.It’s Day 6 of the actual trial!  Day 910 10 if you include jury selection.

Best sources of live blogging that I have found.

Mark Sumner at Daily Kos – Live Blogging

Josh Kovensky at TPM – Live Blogging    (no live blogging on TPM so far today but he is on twitter)

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Looks like Anna and Tyler will both be doing the live blogging today.

 

TRANSCRIPTS OF NY CASES AVAILABLE THE NEXT DAY   Link

Emotional support pup and kitty for the occasion.
I will look for a new image for next week.

Trump Trial: NY Election Interference Case, Day 1

I’m still interested in the trial, so I’ll put this up again today, but think of it as a general open thread, too.

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: Nevertheless…

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I’ve seen people on social media sneering about this — Oh, of course Drew Barrymore wants Kamala to be her mommy! — but Vice-President Harris is right. People choose leaders, including Presidents, because we know we can’t, as individuals, protect ourselves from every single threat. Trump voters want a ‘strong daddy’ to protect them; of course, they can’t (or don’t want to) tell the difference between a ‘strong daddy’ and an ‘abusive thug’, and Trump is only interested in protecting his own narcissistic self. Democrats have been branded as the Mommy Party… let’s be the fierce protector the country needs!

Speaking of which…

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