Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

People are complicated. Love is not.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

So many bastards, so little time.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Usually wrong but never in doubt

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Cancel the cowardly WaPo and set up an equivalent monthly donation to ProPublica.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

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

No one could have predicted…

You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / @Actual_Citizens

On the Ground Reporting from Organizations We Have Been Funding!

by | 16 Comments

This post is in: , ,

With just 3 months to go before the election, it’s time to get back to some of our collective work here on Balloon Juice.

I thought we would kick it off by hearing from the folks who literally have their feet on the ground, working hard every day, putting our good money to use!  Not the fundraising peeps, but hearing from the people who are involved in the day-to-day work.

We get enough spin and bullshit and negatively from the pundits and the traditional media – it’s time to hear from the people who are in the trenches and know what it feels like on the ground.

On Thursday 8/11 – tomorrow – we will zoom with Four Directions.  We’ll be talking with O.J. (the founder) and Bret (political director) and, fingers crossed, someone who has been very active in Nevada.

Next week – on 8/17 or 8/18 – we will hear from the folks at Voces de la Frontera!   We hope to have Fabi (political director) and some of the leaders and student leaders.

The following week – on 8/24 or 8/25 – we will hear from the folks at VAAC! aka Voting Access for All Coalition.  If you missed the first zoom with VAAC, here’s your chance to meet some amazing and impressive folks who were formerly incarcerated and are now leaders of this great organization.  I think I can speak for everyone who was at the first zoom when I say that we truly felt like we had met kindred spirits, in all the ways that count.

All times tentatively set at 7:30 pm Eastern.

So… who wants to join us for the zooms, and get the skinny from the folks who are out there?  That really does provide an entirely different perspective than we get from the pundits, the media, the polls, the twitter machine.

Let us know in the comments if you want to join the zooms, and please follow up with an email to me so I can send you the zoom links.

How nice is it to be having a good run these past few days?  It’s like a cool rain after being battered by the heat for days and weeks and months on end.

On the Ground Reporting from Organizations We Have Been Funding!Post + Comments (16)

Changing the Narrative: Conversation Starter

by | 170 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

I am wondering if we are doing everything we can to fight the bullshit narratives about President Biden.

No, that’s not really true.  I am thinking that we are not doing everything we can to fight the bullshit narratives about someone who has been a most excellent president.  Every minute that we are lamenting all the ways they are bashing the president and chewing at his ankles, we are not talking about all the things he is doing right.

When someone googles “S*l*e*e*p*y J*o*e”, do we really want half of the million google hits to be our complaints about what he is saying?  Something to think about, maybe?

I totally dropped Join the Fight and our social media initiative after the fire.  Between losing Tucker and then the blog, it pretty much sucked all the wind right out of my sails.

Now that I can breathe again – not to say that there’s not a ton of work to still be done to get things all the way back – it’s time to get back to the fight.

It seems like these two comments from a thread today might make a good conversation starter.

From commenter Wanderer

President Biden has done a remarkable job IMHO. He was handed the a$$ end of a feces sandwich on attaining office. The worst president ever left office involuntarily after installing a supreme court which functions like an inquisition, a senate which functions as obstructionist and a portion of the population who don’t seem to look to a better future but ache for a troglodyte past. Despite this President Biden has managed to restart the economy, unemployment is low, vaccines are available to those who understand their use and importance and he has walked a tightrope providing support to Ukraine while not escalating the scope of the war. I shudder to think what Ukraine and a large part of Europe would look like today had tfg remained in office.

Excellent addition from EarthWindFire

All of this plus getting us out of the farce that was Afghanistan – relatively unscathed. For that alone, I adore Joe Biden.

🐠

Update:  So glad that the awful giant images above the posts are now gone and featured images can go back to behaving as they did before.

Changing the Narrative: Conversation StarterPost + Comments (170)

Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help Today (Open Thread)

by | 44 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

Hey BJ Peeps,

You guys keep coming through, so let’s see if some of you can help out today.

Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help Today

Republicans are attacking democracy on every front,
so we have to fight back with every tool we have.

Here’s the TINY ASK for today.  Make a list every high school senior you know.

– Ask them to register to vote.  Offer to help them get registered.

– Make a list of every educator, administrator, parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle and coach you know, and talk to them, let them know about this campaign.

– Read about the new campaign: Class of 2022 Ready to Vote Challenge.  They will even send you 10 free stickers.

3 million high school seniors become eligible to vote every year, but less than 20% – just over half a million – register to vote.

If we double that this year, that’s 500,000 more young people who could vote.

I’m sure all the Young Republicans are already registered; can we  do our part to help balance that out?

?

Oh, and big thanks to everyone who followed us @Actual_Citizens on twitter!

Our twitter name is @Actual_Citizens (note the “s”)

If you tweet or retweet or quote tweet related related to our efforts, it’s super helpful if you use this hashtag in every tweet:

#ActualCitizensUnited

And if you’re willing, please jump onto the “If Republicans…” twitter effort.

I started it off with:  If Republicans cared so much about freedom, they wouldn’t try so hard to restrict it.

One of the great replies was: If republicans really cared about freedom of speech, they wouldn’t call the cops on sidewalk chalk.

I loved that one!

Just please remember 2 things:

1) use the #IfRepublicans hashtag along with #ActualCitizensUnited

2) please don’t reference Brandon or pedophiles are anything else that is part of Republican propaganda, that just pushes those things higher on the twitter algorithm and ensures that their lies get promoted.

If you have any questions about our social media initiative, just ask!

Otherwise, totally open thread.

 

 

Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help Today (Open Thread)Post + Comments (44)

Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help Today (Open Thread)

by | 66 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

Hey BJ Peeps,

You guys totally came through the last three times, so let’s see if some of you can help out today.

I assume that most of you have seen or heard talk of the Join the Fight! project some of us are working on, or at least have heard about one part of the project – our Social Media Initiative.  If not, please click the link above.

Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help Today

Big thanks to everyone who followed us @Actual_Citizens on twitter!  Extra thanks to anyone who not only followed us, but also liked us, retweeted one of our tweets, or quote tweeted us.  And a big thanks to everyone wrote a 35-second elevator pitch yesterday.

Here’s the TINY ASK for today.  Use this tweet from Nancy Pelosi, and come up with your own:

If Republicans were “good on X”, then …  

or

If Republicans “cared about X” then…

We want something short and sweet, just like the tweet from Nancy SMASH. 

Please let us know what you would put in a tweet modeled after the one above.

On whatever issues are most important to you.  You can, of course, submit more than one!

I would like to turn these into a bunch of tweets that we can post with our hashtag #ActualCitizensUnited and the hashtag #IfRepublicans

This really is a totally Open thread.

Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help Today (Open Thread)Post + Comments (66)

Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help Today (Open Thread)

by | 71 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

Hey BJ Peeps,

You guys totally came through the first two times, so let’s see if some of you can help out today.

I assume that most of you have seen or heard talk of the Join the Fight! project some of us are working on, or at least have heard about one part of the project – our Social Media Initiative.  If not, please click the link above.

Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help Today

Big thanks to everyone who followed us @Actual_Citizens on twitter!  Extra thanks to anyone who not only followed us, but also liked us, retweeted one of our tweets, or quote tweeted us.  And a big thanks to everyone who let us know who was missing on our social media list; boy some of those omissions were kind of embarrassing!

Here’s the TINY ASK for today.  If you had 15-35 seconds to communicate what is most important to you about this election, what would you say?

35 seconds is about 75 words, give or take.  We’re not gonna count your words, so that’s just a rule of thumb.  

What would you say about what’s important to you and what’s at stake?  

You can be serious, sarcastic, snarky, angry, outraged, terrified, or gloriously happy with what Biden has accomplished, and anything in between.

Please let us know what you would say.

We want to take what is most important to you, what you think is most at stake in the election, and turn these into 15-35 second TikTok videos. 

This really is a totally Open thread.

Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help Today (Open Thread)Post + Comments (71)

Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help Today (Open Thread)

by | 173 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

Hey BJ Peeps,

You guys totally came through yesterday so let’s see if some of you can help out today.

I assume that most of you have seen or heard talk of the Join the Fight! project some of us are working on, or at least have heard about one part of the project – our Social Media Initiative.

Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help Today

Big thanks to everyone who followed us yesterday @Actual_Citizens on twitter!  Extra thanks to anyone who not only followed us, but also liked us, double-thanks to everyone who retweeted one of our tweets, and triple-thanks to anyone who quote tweeted us.

Fun fact: Most of you may know this, but I did not until recently.  In terms of the twitter algorithm which controls how much of what is seen on twitter… to use an analogy… a “like’ is maybe worth a penny, a retweet is worth a dime, and a “quote tweet” is worth a quarter.  (A quote tweet is where you add your comment to the tweet you are retweeting.)

So if you followed us yesterday but didn’t “like” or retweet, you can always retweet or quote tweet the tweet from yesterday, if you’re willing.

Here’s the TINY ASK for today.  Can you tell us who else should be on the social media contact list?

show full post on front page

Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help Today (Open Thread)Post + Comments (173)

Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help Today

by | 93 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

Hey BJ Peeps,

I assume that most of you have seen or heard talk of the Join the Fight! project some of us are working on, or at least have heard about one part of the project – our Social Media Initiative.

I have one simple ask of every person who sees this today.  If you have an account on twitter, please follow us.  We set up our group account on Saturday, so we are just getting started, and the (fucking) Twitter algorithm will allow our content to be seen more widely if we have a bunch of followers.  So I am asking you to please follow us, even if you don’t get any more involved than that.

Our full group name is: Actual Citizens United – Join us in the Fight and you can find us on twitter as:

@Actual_Citizens

All our tweets will use the hashtag #ActualCitizensUnited

This tweet from the Palmer Report seemed appropriate for our pinned tweet:

Open fucking thread.

show full post on front page

Call To Action: One Tiny Thing You Can Do To Help TodayPost + Comments (93)