#this is about jon ossoff

[navree]

the thing is, most of my strong disdain about this isn't necessarily towards some of the politicians who made statements wanting biden to drop out, because at least some of them are making a calculation on what would help their reelection (joe manchin can choke tho along with people in safe seats like seth moulton", it's primarily a) the donor class b) some very obviously biased journos and c) honestly regular people who saw A bad performance and freaked the fuck out and fed into this frenzy for weeks in a way that now makes this entire party look childish and stupid and flaky.

but i'm all in on kamala so it's not gonna matter until december anyway, and even then i'm still gonna be a democrat until the day i die.

[titleknown]

So, while we're all trying to fight one of the other terrible "think of the children" bills trying to ram its way through Congress, KOSA, we should also be talking about The EARN IT Act.

Long story short, it's basically yet another surveilance bill using a "protect the children" bill, as a hideous meat-suit, putting restrictions on sites that'll make them even more vicious towards NSFW content, creating a climate where using a VPN might be a crime, and they'll be creating a federal committee to decide how best to spy on us!

Long story long, well, the Linktree is right here.

Beyond the stuff in the Linktree, I urge you to directly contact your congresspeoples and tell them to kill this bill, especially if they're on the Judiciary Committee, which is currently marking up this bill.

The members of the committee are:

Dick Durbin, Illinois, Chairman

Dianne Feinstein, California

Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island

Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota

Chris Coons, Delaware

Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut

Mazie Hirono, Hawaii

Cory Booker, New Jersey

Alex Padilla, California

Jon Ossoff, Georgia

Peter Welch, Vermont

Lindsey Graham, South Carolina, Ranking Member (Ugh)

Chuck Grassley, Iowa

John Cornyn, Texas

Mike Lee, Utah

Ted Cruz, Texas (Double-ugh)

Josh Hawley, Missouri

Tom Cotton, Arkansas

John Kennedy, Louisiana

Thom Tillis, North Carolina

Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee (she cosponsored the bill, so probably not)

So yeah, do what you can, even if it's just boosting this terrible, terrible danger we need to thwart.

And, I will add, as with my previous KOSA poster, this poster is officially, for the sake of spreading it, under a CC0 license.

Feel free to spread it, remix it, add links to the bottom, edit it to be about the other bad internet bills they’re pushing, use it as a meme format, do what you will but for gods’ sake get the word out!

...And yes, for the record I was thinking of the Judas Priest song when I came up with the tagline for this one.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Jesse Duquette :: @JRDuquette :: Of Inhuman Bandage

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 31, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 01, 2024

Yesterday, from a Harris campaign event in Atlanta, Georgia, Atlanta reporter Tariro Mzezewa noted that the crowd of 10,000 people “was ecstatic. There was chanting, cheering, singing, and dancing for hours in the lead-up to and throughout the event,” Mzezewa wrote today in Slate. 

Mzezewa reported that rapper Megan Thee Stallion told the audience “I know my ladies in the crowd love their body. And if you want to keep loving your body, you know who to vote for,” before performing her hit “Body.” Georgia Democratic politicians showed up in force: voting rights advocate and former state representative Stacey Abrams, senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, state Democratic Party chair Representative  Nikema Williams, and Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens. 

“What you’re seeing is very real,” Mzezewa wrote, and she quoted an attendee who said: “it’s nice to witness history, but getting to be a part of it from the ground up is a whole other level.” Certainly, the grassroots enthusiasm for Harris’s presidential candidacy is palpable. More and more self-identified groups are launching fundraising calls for Harris; yesterday the Latter-day Saints for Harris—Mormons—announced that they, too, are “putting [their] shoulders to the wheel!” Today the executive board of the United Auto Workers also endorsed Harris.

At last night’s event, Vice President Harris noted that Trump has pulled out of the September debate to which he had previously agreed. “Here’s the funny thing about that,” she said. “He won’t debate, but he and his running mate sure seem to have a lot to say about me,” After hitting the campaign’s refrain that marks MAGA Republican behavior as “weird,” she added to applause: “Well, Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage because, as the saying goes, if you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.”

Trump did not say it to her face, but today he unloaded spectacularly on three Black female interviewers at a meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) in Chicago.

When ABC News senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott began the interview by quoting a number of his racist statements about Black Americans and asking why, given that history, Black voters should trust him, he lost it. “I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner,” he began. “You don’t even say ‘Hello, how are you?’ Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network.” 

He went on to try to dominate Scott, listing the policies he claimed to have put into place, and to attack the people who organized the event before saying, “I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln. That’s my answer….  And for you to start off a question and answer period…in such a hostile manner, I think it’s a disgrace.”   

As the session began, so it continued, with Trump questioning Harris’s Black identity—while also mispronouncing her name—and warning the attendees that they need “to stop people from invading our country that are…taking Black jobs.” NBC News correspondent Yamiche Alcindor told MSNBC that during the interview, “people were stunned, people were gasping, there were some people who were shouting back at him saying ‘That's a lie!’” Attendees laughed and jeered at Trump throughout the 37-minute session; his handlers made him leave early. 

Scott accurately summed up Trump’s long history of racism, but lately he has been advertising it. In an interview with Fox News Channel personality Laura Ingraham aired last night, Trump said that Harris would be “like a play toy” for world leaders. “They look at her and they say we can’t believe we got so lucky. They’re gonna walk all over her.” “I don’t want to say as to why,” he said to the camera, “but a lot of people understand it.”

It is unlikely that his insults and naked racism will appeal to anyone but his base, making his performance, as Jessica Tarlov put it on the Fox News Channel, “a complete, absolute dumpster fire.” It is possible that Trump has lost the ability to read a room and reassure his audience that he’s a good bet. But it is also possible that Trump cannot bear to see the enthusiasm building behind Harris, not only because of its electoral meaning, but also because it reveals how small his own following is and how much people loathe him.  

Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who produces wonderful video threads of important events, “put together an 11-minute supercut of Trump angrily self-immolating at the NABJ before his handlers pulled him from the stage.” 

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo analyzed Trump’s meltdown in Chicago this way: “I think we’re getting the first view of imploding Donald Trump as he realizes that what was his for the taking ten days ago is slipping away and he’s likely to go to prison rather than the White House. He [is] being dominated and humiliated by Harris and he’s losing it.” His post after the interview, in which he boasted “[t]he questions were Rude and Nasty, often in the form of a statement, but we CRUSHED IT!” seemed an attempt to reassert his old pattern of simply declaring things to be true that…aren’t. 

Indeed, one of Trump’s answers to the journalists in Chicago revealed that he cares only about getting elected, rather than governing. It also suggested that his camp is trying to reassure him that his pick of Ohio senator J.D. Vance to be his running mate will not hurt their chances, even as more and more videos of Vance attacking women become public and as he is historically bad in front of television cameras.

Vance has only 18 months of experience in elected office, making him one of the least qualified candidates for vice president in U.S. history. When asked if Vance would be ready “on day one,” to assume the duties of the presidency if necessary, Trump answered a different question altogether, revealing what is uppermost in his mind. “I’ve always had great respect for him…but…historically, the vice president in terms of the election does not have any impact, I mean, virtually no impact. You have two or three days where there’s a lot of commotion…and then that dies down and it’s all about the presidential thing. Virtually never has it mattered…. Historically, the choice of a vice president makes no difference.”   

The Harris campaign responded to Trump’s performance by saying: "The hostility Donald Trump showed on stage today is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power and inflict his harmful Project 2025 agenda on the American people…. Today's tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump's MAGA rallies this entire campaign,” while “Vice President Harris offers a vision of opportunity and freedom for all Americans.” 

It urged Trump again to “stop playing games and actually show up to the debate on September 10."

Trump’s petulant fury at the Black journalists today suggests just how dangerous it would be to put him in control of the nation’s law enforcement and military capabilities a second time. We were given a glimpse of how eager he was to turn those capabilities against American citizens in his first term when the Department of Justice today released the report of the department’s inspector general concerning the Trump administration’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, D.C., in summer 2020.

The authors of the report emphasized that they were unable to compel the testimony of officials including then–attorney general William Barr, his chief of staff William Levi, FBI deputy director David Bowdich, and FBI Washington Field Office assistant director in charge Timothy Slater. 

But what they were able to put together even without their information was that, although the protests were largely peaceful, Trump was desperate to get 2,000 federal officers into the area around the White House on June 1, 2020, to increase federal control of the city. To the frustration of the people in charge of the agencies, he could not articulate a mission, only that he wanted 2,000 people around him. With only about 90 officers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the Bureau of Prisons, and the U.S. Marshals Service on hand early on the morning of June 1, Barr told a conference call with Justice Department leadership that  Trump wanted “max strength” on the streets, and to “dominate the streets.” 

Trump then echoed that language in a call with the nation’s governors, saying, “If you don’t dominate your city and your state, they’re [going to] walk away with you. And we’re doing it in Washington, in D.C., we’re going to do something that people haven’t seen before. But you’re going to have total domination.”

Then, the report says, the administration began to prepare to invoke the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that authorizes the president to deploy the U.S. military and federalized National Guard troops within the United States to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion. At 4:48 that evening, lawyers from the Office of Legal Counsel, who advise the president, received an email that the president was going to address the nation at 6:00 and that a proclamation invoking the Insurrection Act should be “ready for signing” before then.

Shortly after, additional officers from the Bureau of Prisons—without names on their uniforms because they do not usually wear them, if you remember the concern over those nameless uniforms—arrived at the White House. Barr was in charge of clearing the streets, and ultimately, by about 9:00 he felt things were calm enough that he advised Trump against invoking the Insurrection Act. 

But it was evidently a close thing.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[ridenwithbiden]

#REPUBLICON FORMULA: Make Things Worse

For #Americans Then Blame It On #Democrats

"On Thursday evening, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia tweeted: “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

This is wholly unsurprising for Greene, the right-wing firebrand and conspiracymonger who once mused about the possibility of Jews controlling space lasers for the purpose of starting wildfires. The more surprising aspect is that it reflects the approach the Republican Party is taking generally to Hurricane Helene: rather than doing its job and offering concrete aid to people suffering from the devastation, GOP lawmakers are devolving into conspiracy theories and, like everything else, fearmongering about undocumented immigrants.

As Inside Washington discussed on Thursday, some Republicans such as Senator Rick Scott of Florida have worked in tandem with President Joe Biden in response to Helene. Indeed, even Senator Lindsey Graham put his beef with Biden on pause and greeted his former friend this week.

Similarly, a bipartisan coterie of Senators sent a letter to Senate leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell and the leaders of the Senate Appropriations Committee calling for a supplemental package for Helene relief. That group included Scott and his Florida colleague Marco Rubio; Graham and his fellow South Carolinian Tim Scott; Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee; Democratic Senators Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock; and Democratic Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia.

Blackburn and Scott are up for re-election and know they can leave nothing up to chance. And despite his conservatism, Tillis has also focused on getting results.

But these Republicans are in the minority. Rather, earlier this week during a speech at the New York Stock Exchange, House Speaker Mike Johnson all but said Congress would not act.

“Congress has previously provided FEMA with the funds it needs to respond, so we will make sure that those resources are appropriately allocated,” he said. In other words: don’t expect anything extra, even if you need it.

Biden responded to the Speaker’s sentiments with a clear message: “We can't wait ... People need help now.” The president also correctly stressed that much of the money in past disaster relief bills has gone to more Republican-leaning areas than Democratic-leaning areas. In other words, he wasn’t asking for money for “his” voters. He was simply thinking of the suffering of Americans.

But the fact the areas most affected by Helene are fairly Republican-leaning might be the thing that delays the aid. Johnson is trying to defend his slim Republican majority and that includes endangered incumbents in places like California, New York and New Jersey, about as far away from the storm damage as one could imagine. Many of the areas hit by Helene already lean Republican, and because of gerrymandering, don’t run the risk of losing even if Congress botches the response."

...

[cyarsk5230]

Let's be clear, rappers like Megan Thee Stallion aren't "all they have to offer us", it's all summa y'all pay attention to. It says a lot about what catches folks attention that although they claim to care about substance they ignore or are oblivious to the fact that at the #KamalaHarris rally more than just rappers spoke. Both US Senators- Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock spoke. Congresswoman Nikema Williams, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, and former state Rep. Stacey Abrams also gave remarks. VP Kamala Harris spoke about tackling price gouging, banning assault weapons, passing reproductive rights, making housing more affordable, fighting project 2025, capping prescription drug costs, inflation and more. So now that the twerking has your attention, maybe turn your attention to the substance.

#kamala2024 #ReecieWithTheReceipts #reeciecolbertshow #hottiesforharris

[misfitwashere]

July 31, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 01, 2024

Yesterday, from a Harris campaign event in Atlanta, Georgia, Atlanta reporter Tariro Mzezewa noted that the crowd of 10,000 people “was ecstatic. There was chanting, cheering, singing, and dancing for hours in the lead-up to and throughout the event,” Mzezewa wrote today in Slate. 

Mzezewa reported that rapper Megan Thee Stallion told the audience “I know my ladies in the crowd love their body. And if you want to keep loving your body, you know who to vote for,” before performing her hit “Body.” Georgia Democratic politicians showed up in force: voting rights advocate and former state representative Stacey Abrams, senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, state Democratic Party chair Representative  Nikema Williams, and Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens. 

“What you’re seeing is very real,” Mzezewa wrote, and she quoted an attendee who said: “it’s nice to witness history, but getting to be a part of it from the ground up is a whole other level.” Certainly, the grassroots enthusiasm for Harris’s presidential candidacy is palpable. More and more self-identified groups are launching fundraising calls for Harris; yesterday the Latter-day Saints for Harris—Mormons—announced that they, too, are “putting [their] shoulders to the wheel!” Today the executive board of the United Auto Workers also endorsed Harris.

At last night’s event, Vice President Harris noted that Trump has pulled out of the September debate to which he had previously agreed. “Here’s the funny thing about that,” she said. “He won’t debate, but he and his running mate sure seem to have a lot to say about me,” After hitting the campaign’s refrain that marks MAGA Republican behavior as “weird,” she added to applause: “Well, Donald, I do hope you’ll reconsider to meet me on the debate stage because, as the saying goes, if you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.”

Trump did not say it to her face, but today he unloaded spectacularly on three Black female interviewers at a meeting of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) in Chicago.

When ABC News senior congressional correspondent Rachel Scott began the interview by quoting a number of his racist statements about Black Americans and asking why, given that history, Black voters should trust him, he lost it. “I don’t think I’ve ever been asked a question in such a horrible manner,” he began. “You don’t even say ‘Hello, how are you?’ Are you with ABC? Because I think they’re a fake news network, a terrible network.” 

He went on to try to dominate Scott, listing the policies he claimed to have put into place, and to attack the people who organized the event before saying, “I have been the best president for the Black population since Abraham Lincoln. That’s my answer….  And for you to start off a question and answer period…in such a hostile manner, I think it’s a disgrace.”   

As the session began, so it continued, with Trump questioning Harris’s Black identity—while also mispronouncing her name—and warning the attendees that they need “to stop people from invading our country that are…taking Black jobs.” NBC News correspondent Yamiche Alcindor told MSNBC that during the interview, “people were stunned, people were gasping, there were some people who were shouting back at him saying ‘That's a lie!’” Attendees laughed and jeered at Trump throughout the 37-minute session; his handlers made him leave early. 

Scott accurately summed up Trump’s long history of racism, but lately he has been advertising it. In an interview with Fox News Channel personality Laura Ingraham aired last night, Trump said that Harris would be “like a play toy” for world leaders. “They look at her and they say we can’t believe we got so lucky. They’re gonna walk all over her.” “I don’t want to say as to why,” he said to the camera, “but a lot of people understand it.”

It is unlikely that his insults and naked racism will appeal to anyone but his base, making his performance, as Jessica Tarlov put it on the Fox News Channel, “a complete, absolute dumpster fire.” It is possible that Trump has lost the ability to read a room and reassure his audience that he’s a good bet. But it is also possible that Trump cannot bear to see the enthusiasm building behind Harris, not only because of its electoral meaning, but also because it reveals how small his own following is and how much people loathe him.  

Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who produces wonderful video threads of important events, “put together an 11-minute supercut of Trump angrily self-immolating at the NABJ before his handlers pulled him from the stage.” 

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo analyzed Trump’s meltdown in Chicago this way: “I think we’re getting the first view of imploding Donald Trump as he realizes that what was his for the taking ten days ago is slipping away and he’s likely to go to prison rather than the White House. He [is] being dominated and humiliated by Harris and he’s losing it.” His post after the interview, in which he boasted “[t]he questions were Rude and Nasty, often in the form of a statement, but we CRUSHED IT!” seemed an attempt to reassert his old pattern of simply declaring things to be true that…aren’t. 

Indeed, one of Trump’s answers to the journalists in Chicago revealed that he cares only about getting elected, rather than governing. It also suggested that his camp is trying to reassure him that his pick of Ohio senator J.D. Vance to be his running mate will not hurt their chances, even as more and more videos of Vance attacking women become public and as he is historically bad in front of television cameras.

Vance has only 18 months of experience in elected office, making him one of the least qualified candidates for vice president in U.S. history. When asked if Vance would be ready “on day one,” to assume the duties of the presidency if necessary, Trump answered a different question altogether, revealing what is uppermost in his mind. “I’ve always had great respect for him…but…historically, the vice president in terms of the election does not have any impact, I mean, virtually no impact. You have two or three days where there’s a lot of commotion…and then that dies down and it’s all about the presidential thing. Virtually never has it mattered…. Historically, the choice of a vice president makes no difference.”   

The Harris campaign responded to Trump’s performance by saying: "The hostility Donald Trump showed on stage today is the same hostility he has shown throughout his life, throughout his term in office, and throughout his campaign for president as he seeks to regain power and inflict his harmful Project 2025 agenda on the American people…. Today's tirade is simply a taste of the chaos and division that has been a hallmark of Trump's MAGA rallies this entire campaign,” while “Vice President Harris offers a vision of opportunity and freedom for all Americans.” 

It urged Trump again to “stop playing games and actually show up to the debate on September 10."

Trump’s petulant fury at the Black journalists today suggests just how dangerous it would be to put him in control of the nation’s law enforcement and military capabilities a second time. We were given a glimpse of how eager he was to turn those capabilities against American citizens in his first term when the Department of Justice today released the report of the department’s inspector general concerning the Trump administration’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, D.C., in summer 2020.

The authors of the report emphasized that they were unable to compel the testimony of officials including then–attorney general William Barr, his chief of staff William Levi, FBI deputy director David Bowdich, and FBI Washington Field Office assistant director in charge Timothy Slater. 

But what they were able to put together even without their information was that, although the protests were largely peaceful, Trump was desperate to get 2,000 federal officers into the area around the White House on June 1, 2020, to increase federal control of the city. To the frustration of the people in charge of the agencies, he could not articulate a mission, only that he wanted 2,000 people around him. With only about 90 officers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the Bureau of Prisons, and the U.S. Marshals Service on hand early on the morning of June 1, Barr told a conference call with Justice Department leadership that  Trump wanted “max strength” on the streets, and to “dominate the streets.” 

Trump then echoed that language in a call with the nation’s governors, saying, “If you don’t dominate your city and your state, they’re [going to] walk away with you. And we’re doing it in Washington, in D.C., we’re going to do something that people haven’t seen before. But you’re going to have total domination.”

Then, the report says, the administration began to prepare to invoke the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that authorizes the president to deploy the U.S. military and federalized National Guard troops within the United States to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion. At 4:48 that evening, lawyers from the Office of Legal Counsel, who advise the president, received an email that the president was going to address the nation at 6:00 and that a proclamation invoking the Insurrection Act should be “ready for signing” before then.

Shortly after, additional officers from the Bureau of Prisons—without names on their uniforms because they do not usually wear them, if you remember the concern over those nameless uniforms—arrived at the White House. Barr was in charge of clearing the streets, and ultimately, by about 9:00 he felt things were calm enough that he advised Trump against invoking the Insurrection Act. 

But it was evidently a close thing.

[atlurbanist]

Pedestrian & transit conditions should shine where affordable homes are funded

Darin Givens | April 13, 2024

According to WSB news, Senator Jon Ossoff recently announced that $2 million in federal funds will create 20 new affordable housing units in Atlanta. In general, I think that's a really good use of public money.

But I do have concerns about the location...

The homes will be inside the Browns Mill Village development in south Atlanta; pictured is the entrance to it on Browns Mill Road.

Per Google Maps, it takes 1.5 hrs to get from here to Midtown on MARTA, versus an 18 minute drive. Or it's a mile walk to the stop for the 78 bus to East Point (46 minutes total, or more if you don't walk fast), but only a 15 minute drive.

And as you can see, pedestrian conditions are awful.

I don't mean to dismiss this project. There are definitely good things about it. But at the same time, I want us to cast a critical eye on initiatives that fund new affordable homes in car-centric places with streets that are hostile pedestrians and that lack high frequency transit.

Meanwhile, the most walkable and bikeable places in the city have become less affordable. This is a toxic trend.

We have got to find a way to match these major investments in affordable housing with great access to alternative transportation, particularly with transit services that are often a lifeline for lower income residents. Maybe it's a case of ensuring that pedestrian and transit improvements are made in a place like this to coincide with the investment.

Whatever the fix is, we need to accept this as a problem and aim higher.

If this incident was a one-off, I wouldn't be so worked up. But this is a definite trend of failing to match affordable housing investments with great pedestrian infrastructure and high frequency transit. It needs to be called out and addressed.

[milipeach]

am i gonna be that one lolitics blog that doesn’t play about jon ossoff?? bc good lord he’s attractive 😭😭

[sleepyleftistdemon]

[titleknown]

Do you think Section 230 is pretty much going to be passed? I've been thinking about leaving the internet completely over this.

...Well, like many things, the answer is "It's Complicated,"

Firstly, for the most part, efforts to screw up Section 230 aren't direct repealing all of it so much as carve-outs that majorly weaken it, in ways that could still deeply screw up free speech.

The recent Kids Online Safety Act/EARN IT Act is being pushed for, and while it's not in committee, given the former was sent to the Commerce Committee last time and the latter to the Judiciary Committee, they're probably gonna send it next time, and you're probably going to want to call your senators if they're in said committee to tell them to kill those bills.

The membership of the Commerce Committee:

Maria Cantwell, Washington, Chair

Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota

Brian Schatz, Hawaii

Ed Markey, Massachusetts

Gary Peters, Michigan

Tammy Baldwin, Wisconsin

Tammy Duckworth, Illinois

Jon Tester, Montana

Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona[a]

Jacky Rosen, Nevada

Ben Ray Luján, New Mexico

John Hickenlooper, Colorado

Raphael Warnock, Georgia

Peter Welch, Vermont

Ted Cruz, Texas, Ranking Member

John Thune, South Dakota

Roger Wicker, Mississippi

Deb Fischer, Nebraska

Jerry Moran, Kansas

Dan Sullivan, Alaska

Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee

Todd Young, Indiana

Ted Budd, North Carolina

Eric Schmitt, Missouri

J.D. Vance, Ohio

Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia

Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming

The membership of the Judiciary Committee:

Dick Durbin, Illinois, Chairman

Dianne Feinstein, California

Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island

Amy Klobuchar, Minnesota

Chris Coons, Delaware

Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut

Mazie Hirono, Hawaii

Cory Booker, New Jersey

Alex Padilla, California

Jon Ossoff, Georgia

Peter Welch, Vermont

Lindsey Graham, South Carolina, Ranking Member

Chuck Grassley, Iowa

John Cornyn, Texas

Mike Lee, Utah

Ted Cruz, Texas

Josh Hawley, Missouri

Tom Cotton, Arkansas

John Kennedy, Louisiana

Thom Tillis, North Carolina

Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee

So yeah.

I may as well add, If you've got the misfortune to be calling a Republican, be sure to bring up how KOSA will be used as a way for Big Government to spy on people via mandated age verification, and how EARN IT will be used to censor conservative speech.

That'll get the bastards attention. And no matter what you do, don't shut up about it, because silence means the fuckers win, just look at FOSTA/SESTA...

...Tho, in better news, the questioning in those Supreme Court suits tackling Section 230 seem to show that the justices are at least reluctant to try and do much to 230, very specifically because of how much it could fuck up.

Which begs the question, if even these fucking demons know why fucking with Section 230 is a godawful idea, what excuse do these senators have?

Point is, the efforts to undermine it aren't all at once so much as gradual and insidious. Call your senators folks, and stay vigilant.

[dhaaruni]

You can agree or disagree with her stance but it's pretty evident that Kyrsten Sinema‘s major point of contention with the Democratic Party is over her refusal to abolish the filibuster, which has become the party standard.

Nobody was following Sinema into the bathroom to yell at her for the carried interest loophole in the IRA or her refusal to tax hedge funds (or w/e), they were yelling at her for not supporting abolishing the filibuster, which is a procedural and not ideological disagreement.

What really annoys me about this is that there are a lot of conflict-averse Democratic senators who don’t want to kill the filibuster but voted for non-binding voting rights carve-out that they knew would 100% fail thanks to Manchinema taking the fall.

These senators WILL vote to keep the legislative filibuster intact like there's a reason senators like Maria Cantwell and Jon Ossoff and Mark Warner aren’t yelling about killing the filibuster! They don't want to be followed into bathrooms by their state Democratic party members!

Their logic is that it's easier to prevent bad laws from happening in the first place than to undo them after they've been passed. Dems used the filibuster ~400 times during the Trump admin, and Republicans will pass national right-to-work with 50 seats and a GOP president.

You can disagree with that logic if you want, or say it’s worth the risk despite the potential fallout, but I just think people should stop pretending they have no idea why Sinema has a bone to pick with the National Democratic Party.

[ausetkmt]

ATLANTA — Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has built up an advantage in Georgia’s record-breaking early vote, putting Republican Herschel Walker in a position where he’ll need to deliver big on Election Day to win in Tuesday’s Senate runoff.

Georgians have been bombarded with TV ads, radio messages, direct mail and ceaseless fundraising appeals in the closely watched Senate race. Many of them are ready for it to be over.

“It’s been very, very exhausting,” said Ana Gomez, a sophomore at Georgia Tech who attended Warnock's rally on campus Monday.

Over the long and grueling campaign, the two candidates have employed different strategies, with Warnock putting a premium on appeals to moderates and independents as Walker seeks to energize the Republican base in this former GOP stronghold.

On the airwaves, Warnock and his Democratic allies have outspent Republicans since the Nov. 8 general election.

But on the final day before the runoff, it was all about juicing turnout as each candidate held a packed schedule of events, focusing on areas where they have the strongest voter appeal.

Warnock hosted events in the Atlanta area with Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., as well as 25-year-old Rep.-elect Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., and the rapper Killer Mike, with an evening rally scheduled in the heart of the city.

Meanwhile, Walker held a series of rallies in the rural outskirts of the city, where he needs to run up the score to withstand the onslaught of Democratic votes in the Atlanta metropolitan area, and was set to close with an evening rally in suburban Cobb County.

“Everyone says: Gosh, why did Herschel get in this? What has this been like for me?” Walker’s wife, Julie Blanchard, said to a crowd on Monday. “And you know what? Our country’s worth it. It doesn’t matter what it’s like. It doesn’t matter if you get attacked.”

“He loves this country. He loves God. And he wants to fight for our country,” she said. “We don’t want to wake up like Venezuela.”

Warnock is entering the runoff from a position of strength. He leads among likely voters by 4 percentage points in a CNN poll published Friday, and by 5 points in a UMass Lowell poll out Monday.

An early vote that topped 1.85 million showed other positive signs for Warnock, with Democrats enjoying a 13-point edge — larger than the party’s 8-point lead in November’s early vote, according to TargetSmart’s model.

But Walker is widely expected to win more of the votes cast on Election Day. The question is whether he’ll win it by a wide enough margin to overcome his deficit heading into Tuesday.

Robert Trim, a Cobb County Republican who ran unsuccessfully for a state house seat last month, said he’ll vote for Walker on Tuesday, because a 50th GOP seat is “critically important” for committee power and denying Democrats unilateral subpoena authority.

But Trim conceded he’s pessimistic about Walker’s chances, comparing his run to former Republican Sen. David Perdue's failed runoff bid in 2020, when he lost to Ossoff.

“I don’t feel very confident,” Trim said in an interview. “I never have felt confident in where he’s positioned. So I’m probably less confident now than I was before.”

He said Democrats clinching Senate control “probably does sap some energy” because “most voters don’t understand” why an extra seat for the GOP minority changes the dynamics in Washington.

On TV, Walker is running an ad that shows him standing with Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who handily won his re-election bid last month. Kemp is a foe of former President Donald Trump, whose early endorsement of Walker propelled him in the Senate race. But Trump, who became the first Republican to lose Georgia since 1992, has not campaigned for Walker in the runoff.

Walker “needs to win Election Day by double digits,” said Cody Hall, an adviser to Kemp, who said the Republican candidate will have to outperform his advantage from November's Election Day. “He’s gonna need to do better than that margin, which his team realizes.”

“Yes, the early voting looks good for Warnock,” Hall told NBC News. “But I would just caution everyone that base Republican voters in the last couple of cycles have liked turning out on Election Day. And I think that is going to benefit Herschel.”

Walker has struggled with independent voters, losing them by 11 points in the general election, according to NBC News exit polls.

He has sought to tie Warnock to President Joe Biden, who is unpopular in the state, and blame the two of them for rising costs and crime. On the campaign trail, Walker has leaned into cultural conservatism, blasting “wokeness” in Washington, the teaching of “critical race theory,” objecting to transgender athletes and inveighing against pronoun use in the military.

“Why are they bringing pronouns in our military? Pronouns? What the heck is a pronoun?” Walker told a crowd Sunday in Loganville. “I’m sick and tired of that pronoun stuff. Aren’t y’all sick and tired of that pronoun stuff? So why don’t we call this senator former senator? That’s his pronoun.”

Warnock has built his candidacy on a promise to work across the aisle with Republicans. Recently he has portrayed Walker as “woefully unfit” for the job, telling Georgians that he “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

On Monday, he told MSNBC's Joy Reid in Atlanta: “Given my opponent, this race is not even about Republican versus Democrat, red versus blue, right versus left. It’s right versus wrong, and I think people see that.”

The runoff election will be Warnock’s fifth time on the ballot in Georgia in about two years — one Democratic primary, two general elections and two runoffs. He won a special election in 2020 to capture the seat for two years, and the 2022 race will decide who holds it for the next six years.

“I started on this journey to the Senate about three years ago. And now there’s only one day left,” he said Monday at Georgia Tech. “But it all really comes down to this. We need you to show up. Are you ready to win this election?”

Walker also urged Georgians to cast their ballots on Tuesday, telling Sean Hannity on Fox News Monday night that his message to voters was: "If you don’t vote, you’re going to get more of Chuck Schumer and Joe Biden.”

While Biden has stayed away from Georgia, Warnock has received reinforcements from former President Barack Obama, who has visited Atlanta twice to rally voters for the state’s first Black senator. Frost, who was just elected and will be the first Gen Z member of Congress, rallied for him Monday.

“This isn’t a two-year term. This is six years of power — of a Black reverend organizer in the U.S. Senate for six years. So anyone who says it doesn’t matter is out of touch with the realities of what’s going on now,” Frost said in an interview. “It’s a numbers game in the United States Congress, and every number matters.”

[worldofwardcraft]

He sure can pick 'em.

October 3, 2024

During his term as fake president, there was a 92% turnover rate in Donald Trump's team of senior advisors. And that doesn't include his confirmed Cabinet secretaries, of which a full 14 resigned or were dismissed (many others who went through the administration's revolving door were mere acting secretaries). Trump also had four different chiefs of staff, press secretaries and national security advisors in as many years. As well as six or seven different communications directors.

Trump, it seems, is a terrible judge of people. Which amply explains his endorsements of politically inept, ideologically extreme and, ultimately, unelectable Republican candidates. His most recent bad choice was the clown who's currently running for North Carolina governor, Mark Robinson (pictured above with the other clown who recruited him). Trump has a long history of praising Robinson. He once pronounced Robinson to be “better than Martin Luther King” and has called him "an outstanding person" and “one of the great leaders in our country.”

But when reports surfaced of Robinson's horrifying record of deeply racist and misogynistic statements, Trump waffled on retracting his endorsement and pretended not to know what all the fuss was about. Said the guy who wants to be leader of the free world, “I don’t know the situation.”

In the 2022 midterms, Trump endorsed a whole platoon of far-right duds. In Pennsylvania, it was the election-denying fanatic Doug Mastriano for governor and the bumbling New Jersey resident Mehmet Oz for senator. Also, the incomparably incompetent Herschel Walker for Georgia senator. As well as Arizona's gubernatorial hopeful and sorest of losers, Kari Lake. All were defeated bigly, of course. ABC News at the time observed:

Gone are the days of GOP committees in Washington, D.C. carefully rolling out endorsements regardless of ideological purity. This year, more than ever before, traditional arms of the Republican Party have practically ceded control of candidate promotion to Trump.

Now rumor has it he is encouraging Marjorie Taylor Greene to run for US Senator from Georgia against Jon Ossoff in 2026. Or possibly for governor, given Trump's well known animosity towards the current incumbent. But Greene's playing it coy for now. Asked if she is considering a 2026 Senate bid, she burbled, “Oh my goodness, what is today? Wednesday? We’re on Wednesday in May of 2024, let’s do Wednesday.”

Still, even with Trump's hackneyed "complete and total endorsement," Greene's reputation for divisiveness —especially her repulsive anti-Semitism — would likely turn any Senate race into a Robinson-type disaster for Georgia Republicans. Further proof of Trump's poor ability to discern other people's ability.

[coastalconguero]

It’s about time for this. Hats off to Sen. Jon Ossoff.

[screamingiminlovewithyou]

Whenever they talk about border security I think about that sexy ass video of Jon ossoff

[sa7abnews]

I went viral for dancing at a Kamala Harris rally. It's given me a platform to inform people about issues I'm passionate about, like Social Security.

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/11/i-went-viral-for-dancing-at-a-kamala-harris-rally-its-given-me-a-platform-to-inform-people-about-issues-im-passionate-about-like-social-security-2/

I went viral for dancing at a Kamala Harris rally. It's given me a platform to inform people about issues I'm passionate about, like Social Security.

Parker Short (right) went viral for dancing at a Kamala Harris (left) rally.Courtesy of Parker Short; Julia Beverly/Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BIParker Short went viral for dancing to a song at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris.Short is passionate about politics since he's benefited from policies like Social Security.He wants to use his virality to spotlight the changes he'd like to see in his home state of Georgia.This as-told-to essay is based on an interview with Parker Short, an incoming graduate student at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and president of the Young Democrats of Georgia, a youth organization that's part of the Democratic Party of Georgia and the Young Democrats of America. Short, who is 22 and lives in Dunwoody, Georgia — a northern suburb of Atlanta — went viral on July 30 when he was filmed dancing to a Kendrick Lamar song at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris. The following has been edited for length and clarity.When "Not Like Us" came on, one of my best friends, Royce — he's right next to me in the viral video — looked at me because he knew how much I loved this song and how well I knew every word.I just started to do what I would have done in the car alone. I sang every word, and I got real excited. I had so much energy that day.We all went out to a bar after, and my friends said, "Parker, you're all over the internet." I went home and slept, and when I woke up, I had 10,000 more Instagram followers.I've been organizing for the Young Democrats of Georgia since I was 15. And when I went viral, I said, "Okay, I need to do the most with this. I need to tell people to vote and keep doing the work that I've been doing for years."Your vote is the most powerful non-violent tool you have, as the late Rep. John Lewis said.Parker Short, left, with the late Rep. John Lewis, at a Jon Ossoff rally in 2017.Courtesy of Parker ShortWe live with that responsibility of being in Georgia, the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement, the birthplace of Jimmy Carter — and we need to continue to live those values.I got involved in politics at 15 years old. Right after Trump got elected, I went to the Women's March with my mom. Growing up with a single mom, it really matters how you're raised, and my mama raised me right.'I will always invest in America'I lost my dad when I was a little kid. I was four years old, and he died of lung cancer. The doctors told him he had three months to live — he lived for 18 months.It was really tough on my family. I didn't really get to know my dad too well because I was just a little kid. My dad was an artist. He was the art director for "Remember the Titans," and a set consultant for "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" which is my favorite movie of all time.When my family lost him, it was me, my mom, and my little brother. I had to grow up, and I had to get tough real quick. Paying bills is tough. I understood the stress that my mom was under.Social Security is what made a huge impact on my life. There's something called survivor Social Security, and when you lose a parent, you're able to receive that benefit. That kept my family afloat.Social Security allowed me to have a roof over my head, allowed me to go to school, allowed me to invest in myself, and give back to my community. I view this as America investing in me, and I will always invest in America.When Jon Ossoff ran for Congress in my congressional district in 2017, I was 15 years old. And that was my first job as an intern.Parker Short, second from right, with Sen. Jon Ossoff during his failed 2017 bid for Congress.Courtesy of Parker ShortSince then, I've been working in politics and public policy. I've worked for the state, local, and federal government, and a variety of different elected officials, nonprofit organizations, and lobbying organizations.I'm lucky to be a Pell Grant recipient and graduate from the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy, debt-free. I've felt and seen the benefits of positive, progressive public policy.'We are stronger when we help each other'After I went viral, my congressman, Rep. Hank Johnson, came to my town. My state senator also came over to my house and affirmed her support for the Young Democrats of Georgia. It's been great to talk about these issues and the work I've been doing for years and to have a larger platform.Looking to the future, I'm going to spend my life in Georgia policy-making, trying to fix this state. The truth is, there's so much work to be done.I don't have any immediate plans to run for office. Honestly, I just want to be an asset to progress in Georgia, and I know my impact could be more profound if I continue to educate myself.Growing up in red Dunwoody, Georgia, people would be like, 'Oh, you're the Democrat kid, aren't you?'And I would tell them why, and tell them my story and how Social Security impacted me, and what Medicaid was, what Medicare was, and why we needed to elect Democrats.I think we have a country that, in many ways, has forgotten the working class. I think work is so valuable. There's so much dignity in going to work, whatever your job is, because it's hard, and everyone who works deserves the ability to make a living.Sometimes things don't always go right. Sometimes, your dad dies when you're a four-year-old kid, and your mom is left with two toddlers that she's got to deal with. And that's when those social safety net programs, like Social Security, that neighborliness of our country, that joy, that communal care, comes in because we should help each other. We are stronger when we help each other, not when we tear each other down.Let me level with you because I like to say the quiet part out loud. I'm not a bullshitter. Everybody who knows me knows one thing about me: I am blunt, I try to be real, and I don't have time to mess around.We have work to do. And I have a platform, so I'm going to use it. I'm not going to be quiet.