Set aside pee jokes for a few minutes and call your senators about Ben Carson, Trump’s terrible pick for Housing and Urban Development.
If you’ve been calling about Trump’s other picks, you know the drill.
Get phone numbers and other contact info for your senators here.
Carson is testifying before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; check here to see if either of your senators is on the committee.
Tell the staffer who takes your call who you are, and note that you are one of the senator’s constituents — i.e., someone who will actually be voting for or against them in future elections.
Raise your concerns about Carson.
Like, say, the fact that he has absolutely no expertise on housing issues and no experience in government at all; he’s a retired neurosurgeon. Not only that, but when the possibility of a cabinet position for him was first raised he said that he felt unqualified to run a federal agency.
Carson is also a raging homophobe with regressive views on women’s issues. And he holds a number of odd beliefs that raise questions about his judgement, to put it mildly. In the brief video below, he explains a few of his, er, positions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH6uD0vjGw8
The video below has nothing to do with Ben Carson, but, I dunno, it’s pretty great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLKk7kaNb0A
Back to your call about Carson.
Ask if the senator plans to vote against Carson, or if they have spoken out against him; offer support if they say yes, tell them that you are disappointed if they say no.
If they are on the Banking Committee, encourage them to give Carson the “extreme vetting” he deserves, or something along these lines.
If you can’t call, writing a personalized email is also effective. See my posts here and here for more advice on how to call/write your reps.
And here’s some advice on calling politicians if you have social anxiety.
See my post here for a schedule of all the cabinet confirmation hearings this week.
Oh just listen to that soothing, soporific tenor. That’ll put you right to sleep. You won’t even care about the regressive DARVO-ing things it says.
Bob Corker’s phones are still blown up, but I got through to someone in Lamar Alexander’s DC office and left a comment encouraging Mr. Alexander not to vote to confirm Dr. Carson.
Go me.
I think I’ll have to start emailing Corker.
In his defence, Carson has worked very hard to dispel the myth that brain surgeons are particularly intelligent people.
One of my senators is on this committee. I wonder if I should remind him that he complained that his opponent would ‘be a rubber stamp for Hillary’ again so soon.
He said this:
Mistake or Freudian slip?
IT WILL NOT BE MY INTENTION TO DO ANYTHING TO BENEFIT ANY AMERICAN
oh my god — so much laughage!
I looked at my senator’s tweets after emailing him. I doubt he’s actually going to listen to me. Ah well. I tried.
I mentioned that quote from Carson in the email. I also asked him to give Carson the same vetting he would if Obama had nominated him instead of Trump.
@Falconer But he’ll do anything to benefit the Putonian Overlord? 😉
GODDAMMIT
12 Democratic Senators voted against a Democratic provision to import drugs from Canada, seeing as how we’re all going to be losing our healthcare.
Who voted for the provision? Every other Democrat in the Senate and 12 Republicans including John McCain, Rand Paul and TED MOTHERFUCKING CRUZ
@PaganReader – It’s not just about changing his mind on this one particular issue. It’s about keeping on the pressure. It’s about keeping his staff harried and stressed. It’s about making him nervous about the next election. After all, he doesn’t know you’re some bleeding-heart Democrat liberal who would never vote for him anyway. All he knows is that you’re a constituent. And if his phone and email inbox are blowing up all day every day, that means that there are a lot of engaged voters who want him to do something other than what he’s doing. What if they all turn out next election? He counts on a low turnout among everybody but scared old white people. Maybe he’d better throw these bleeding hearts a bone…
Think of it this way (and forgive the violence of the analogy): dozens of bullets are fired in combat for each hit. Does that mean the other bullets were useless? No. If the enemy is forced to keep their head down, if they have to retreat, if they’re denied territory, if they have to change their plan, then the bullets have done their job.
Much like the rest of Chump’s cabinet, Carson has the same level of empathy as Hannibal Lecter.
@ Falconer – Right. Time for their mailboxes and inboxes to get flooded with angry calls and emails. A big part of the next few years is going to be keeping our Democratic senators and reps in line and making them fear the primary if they don’t present a united front.
Obama just presented Joe Biden with a Medal of Freedom.
They’ll scream cronyism and favoritism. Let ’em. He deserves the medal. It’ll probably be the last one that means a damn for years.
Called 1, need to rest up before I call the other. Stressful af! For those who could use a reassuring pick me up after 4 days of this shit, remember that Trump is historically unpopular. Approval rating 37%, majority in opposition. This will only get worse for him as he actually tries to lead. The resistance is never as small as it might seem. Get in on the ground floor, and contact your senators, everyone!
Hey, you just gave me my in with my Senator (also on this committee) – I am white, I am (cough,cough) old, at least according to the standards of a youth culture, and damn, am I scared, thanks to November 8. So…scared old white person me, I’ll e-mail Ben Sasse, and suggest that Carson is a bad deal for me, for him, for scared old white people everywhere, and maybe that will get him? Because he is a bad idea for all those “scared old white people” that voted for Trump, even if they don’t realize that yet.
I’m going to keep emailing him. Even if I’m just an annoying thorn in his side, I’m going to keep my Republican mother updated on this. I might be a bleeding heart liberal who would never vote for him, (seriously, that was so accurate it was almost scary) but my mother isn’t. And by the time he’s up for reelection, I could probably have converted her to my side. Heh heh heh.
Favorite comment overheard regarding man bites dog narratives:
“If Trump put on his white hood, it wouldn’t be newsworthy. If Ben Carson did so, that would raise eyebrows.”
…to which another replied:
“If Ben Carson put on a white hood, I wouldn’t assume racism, I would just assume that Carson forgot how pillows work.”
@ iknklast – great idea. It’s important for old white people to use their powers for good, rather than just trying to force the culture-at-large back to the days when they were the only people who mattered. Here I’m thinking of Patrick Stewart.
I myself am only a middle-aged white person, a middle-aged white guy, to be specific, and I’m thinking of wearing a suit and tie to protests to make it harder to dismiss the protesters as a bunch of dirty hippies or brats throwing a tantrum.
Not strictly relevant, but I’m genuinely intrigued.
Carson struck a blow for freeze peach in the clip by uttering the words ” Nazi Germany”, despite “political correctness” telling him not to. As a card-carrying feminist and PC something-or-other, did I miss a memo?
I mean, obviously it’s not correct to refer to Germany that way if you’re talking about a time other than 1933-45. Not politically, just factually.
Plus, as evidenced by his usage in the clip, reference to it is best used sparingly, because comparisons to Nazi Germany are often huge over-statements, and the user risks Godwinning all over the shop. By which I mean that it usually demonstrates the user has nothing helpful left to say and has lost the argument. But again, that’s advice rather than a PC rule, and he can say it if he likes. I’m all for him signalling he’s lost the argument.
All I can come up with is it being a touch disrespectful to victims of the Nazi regime to trivialise their experiences by analogy. But that’s all I’ve got.
Other than guessing that he’s straw manning in order to look like leadership material. Yuck.
Please don’t import your drugs from Canada. When you do, phrma starts to restrict access to drugs in Canada. Our market is small enough that they can afford to do that, but our government compliant enough that we don’t do like India and tell phrma to just bugger off with its bullshit of using “patents” and “intellectual property” as an excuse to let people die.
Seriously, numerobis, why are we (the US) trying to solve our prescription drug affordability problem by trying to sponge off Canada? I know people are really that stupid, but come on…
@Falconer
Don’t email. Keep phoning until you get through.
Your first unsolicited email will get read. Your second will probably get read. Your third will most likely get you a coveted place in the crank filter to be subsequently ignored.
It doesn’t matter what flavor your rep or senator is – they all do that.
This book — slapped together (albeit in a disciplined way) in two weeks — looks like it could be valuable.
Surviving President Trump: “This happened,” author Gene Stone says, “because not enough of us did something”
The writer behind the crisp, pragmatic “Trump Survival Guide” tells Salon about his blueprint for action, CODE B
http://www.salon.com/2017/01/11/surviving-president-trump-this-happened-the-author-says-because-not-enough-of-us-did-something/
@ pie
Well, brain surgery’s not exactly rocket science is it?
Can anyone explain to me what this means in practice? http://theslot.jezebel.com/the-senate-started-dismantling-obamacare-in-the-middle-1791112847
It’s about dismantling Obamacare; I’m not too familiar with how the American system works, so does this mean that there’ll soon be real life, noticable consequences for US citizens, or does it simply mean ”they’re working on replacing it and it’ll take forever but they started”?
In the Jezebel article, they placed this link: https://apnews.com/1792f4029b9d49a39e5676d89be9c82a?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=AP
So what this means is that they’re dismantling the ACA, and plan to replace it with something else, but don’t have an actual good plan/idea yet?
If so, when will they be able to repeal the ACA? And… there’ll just be a void/gap in the mean time, before they make a replacement?
Oof, that sounds scary.
But this means in practice that they’ll repeal it soon with no backup or alternative?
seraph4377
Well worth doing. And to jog your possibly too young to remember memory, many anti-war Vietnam era protesters were very conservative, church-going, hats, gloves and handbag types. Same thing goes for the women’s movement.