Your mission today? More calls!
I know we’re all sick of making calls, but they make a difference. Republican members of congress are feeling besieged, and Democrats are standing up to Trump more directly because of pressure from their base. That is, from us.
There are a lot of things to call about. Here are a couple of ideas:
SAY NO TO JEFF SESSIONS
Is your Senator on the Judiciary Committee? Find out here. If so, call as early as you can to tell them to vote against Jeff Sessions for Attorney General — the committee is scheduled to vote on him this morning!
SAY NO TO BETSY DEVOS
Is your Senator on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee? See here for a list of members. If your Senator is a Republican, tell them to vote against Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. She’s also up for committee vote this morning. If your Senator is a Dem, thank them for pledging to vote against her, as all Dems on the committee have done.
Also consider calling or Tweeting these Republicans, even if they’re not your Senators.
We only need 3 more votes to #StopDeVos! Call & tweet the following senators to vote against Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education. pic.twitter.com/cT464fLbnF
— Women's March (@womensmarch) January 30, 2017
https://twitter.com/Diane_7A/status/826175944444542977
INVESTIGATE TRUMP’S RUSSIAN TIES
Congresswoman Maxine Waters has a plan:
I'm leading my colleagues in a press conference tomorrow at 8:30 am (ET). We are taking on @POTUS ties to Russia! We have a bill #resist
— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) January 31, 2017
Ask your congressperson to support her!
THE MUSLIM BAN
Check out 5calls,org for a handy script to use when calling about the Muslim ban, as well as ideas for other issues to call about.
GIVE YOURSELF A BIG PAT ON THE BACK BECAUSE YOU ARE AWESOME
@Arctic Ape
And the furtherance of my knowledge continues. Thank you. How did I not know that those astoundingly yellow fields had swedes hiding underneath? (Because no one told me. But I think that’s because they didn’t know either.)
Keep the fascinating information coming, Mammotheers!
https://www.npca.org/articles/1462-house-moves-to-encourage-drilling-in-national-parks#sm.000096ye8o13gf0hq5v22mxr1mrh9
Because **** you, American people. Your land is OUR land. And there’s gold in them thar hills (for us—you’ll get free toxic sludge though).
Looking for some grim humor? Here is what I consider to be the Onion’s masterpiece:
Just to clarify, it’s not the same plants (same cultivars) producing oilseeds and fleshy roots. These are different cultivars representing highly differentiated growth forms within the same species.
The taproot of canola is about an inch thick at most, and the energy reserves in it are used to facilitate the growth of flower stalk. Swedes are harvested before they grow a flower stalk, because then the root would become very stringy and inedible. The seeds would be smaller than in canola and high in erucic acid.
Just want to add my encouragement, support, thanks, and empathy to everyone’s here.
For those of you in red states, don’t despair! I, too, am in a redder-than-red state, but I found when I started speaking up a little more on social media that there are a LOT more of us here than I thought. We were just all too intimidated to say much.
DO write, call, and otherwise contact your red state representatives – local, state, and federal. THEY STILL WORK FOR ALL OF US, not just the conservatives. Make your wishes and needs known. Make your community’s wishes and needs known!
I have encountered some of the most condescending, sexist garbage from my Congressman here, ugh. Now that I know what a tool he is, I tell everyone who will listen.
Women, even women in red states, have tended to be more supportive of what I’m saying, and more interested in listening/discussing civilly, so there’s that.
I have found that my own ideas and feelings about all this are becoming more refined and crystallized both through discussion and through reading and listening (here at WHTM for instance). Having even a small number of people support me has been very affirming and encouraging.
Only do what you’re able to do without driving yourself ragged! This is a marathon, not a sprint. TAKE THE TIME TO CARE FOR YOURSELF. David, that goes for you, too! I guarantee you we will hold your spot, and I ask you to internalize this message: every tiny bit of resistance helps, and you also have to be well to resist!
You’re doing GREAT! I’ve never seen something like this outside of the union strike lines in the 70s. I didn’t want to live through times like these, but since they’re here anyway, I will do what I can.
Oh, it seems Michael Moore shares the Incel theory about why women voted for Trump:
ETA: @ dreemr – ooh that’s spooky cos I was just thinking of your post up thread when I posted this. *twilight zone music*
@Alan spooky!
I haven’t seen that interview with Michael Moore, but to me it reads like he’s talking about a kind of “Stockholm Syndrome” featuring internalized misogyny. I’m not sure that’s much better and YMMV but for what little it’s worth, I don’t think he’s saying that women actually secretly want to sleep with Drumpf.
Speaking of incels, SMBC today is about every incel-and-adjacent-ever
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1485966981-20170201.png
@Arctic Ape
In much the same way, broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale, kohlrabi, collard greens and cauliflower are, in fact, various forms of cabbage.
@Faerie Bard
Welcome in.
Bullshit. What every heterosexual guy has seen since high school is the same thing anyone interested in a relationship with another human being has experienced: not everyone you want a relationship with will want one with you and when they do want one with someone else it hurts like hell so your brain labels that other person as a jerk because you don’t want to like them. But since men are taught they’ll get the girl if they’re “nice” enough, they blame everyone but themselves for their situation instead of being adults and accepting that not everyone they like will like them back.
@ dreemr
He does seem to switch tack a bit half way through. Like he starts off ‘girls like assholes’ but arrives at ‘it’s yer classic false consciousness of the proletariat mate’.
ETA: not quite sure why I’m imagining Moore as a 1970s cockney there.
Steve Bannon Is Making Sure There’s No White House Paper Trail, Says Intel Source
The Trump administration’s chief strategist has already taken control of both policy and process on national security.
http://i.imgur.com/VNHIV1M.jpg
kupo makes a very good point.
Thinking about it more, it’s likely that Mr. Moore started out trying to say “chicks dig assholes” but realized it sounded quite awful for a Famous Liberal (TM), so tried to walk it back a bit, rather weakly.
Every speech this abomination of a swiffer-in-chief makes sounds like a five-year-old trying to tell you about this new thing they learned but they don’t actually understand yet.
https://mobile.twitter.com/ddale8/status/826822342961745922
Dalillama:
In much the same way, broccoli, brussels sprouts, kale, kohlrabi, collard greens and cauliflower are, in fact, various forms of cabbage.
Indeed, the species Brassica oleracea is amazingly variable. BTW, can you use “cabbage” as collective English name for all these?
Also, isn’t kale same as collard greens?
It was only white women who voted for Trump in any large numbers, so… do only white women prefer assholes? Or is it that white women the only women for whom their whole identity and every decision is centered on which man gets to touch their genitals, whereas women of colour are capable if making decisions based on such factors as knowledge, self-interest, or compassion? Or could be that some mysterious other, non which-man-gets-to-sex-me trait is shared among a group of white women that might have influenced them, and only them, to vote for a man who proposed a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, called Mexicans rapists, and promised a Muslim registry?
I guess we’ll never know.
@ kupo
Reading Donnie’s MLK Day speech made my brain cry.
@Arctic Ape
No, cabbage means the specific variety that looks like iceberg lettuce. It can refer to the green or purple variety, though. The only collective name I know for them is cruciferous vegetables.
No, those are different. Kale is tougher and has more of a cabbage-like flavor.
My favorite is the romanesco cauliflower, for its looks, not its flavor:
http://parade.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/romanesco-ftr.jpg
My edit spun and spun and then didn’t appear, which I guess means I missed the edit window. I just wanted to express my curiosity as to which of Mr Moore’s m/f couple friends are together because the man is an asshole, and which are together because the woman was desperate and couldn’t do any better for herself.
AFAIK, kale and collard greens are not the same, but they are closely related. Collards are pretty popular down here where I live. Usually slow cooked with a ham hock or bacon, but you can use liquid smoke or smoked paprika or other spices for a similar flavor if you are vegetarian.
@dreemr
Red state bastion for me, too. AZ, so in the thick of Immigration chit.
I’ve been figuring if I’m TOO anti-conservative, they’ll just ignore me as a lost cause, so I’ve been hammering them on Trump, telling them to defend Congressional Independence…. but not letting them know “I’d never vote for you anyway”.
Is that a good idea, or just go ahead and demand they move left?
By the way, Ruben Gallego, AZ District 7. Remember the name, real good guy.
Thanks, Kupo and Faerie Bard.
@Faerie Bard
A person doesn’t even have to go so far as any sort of recipe with the veggies, but this is the simplest, and in my opinion, best recipe.
1) Take any amount of any veg.
2) Add heat.
optional step 3) Sprinkle salt to taste.
@MAWG:
Well, I haven’t flown my liberal flag, exactly, but I haven’t hidden it, either. I’ve been respectful, and, hopefully, articulate. I’m not even sure they’re actually reading the things I send them, but I send them just the same. At the very least they take up a staffer’s time, and a drip drip drip from a hundred small liberal voices can still wear away at the establishment.
I’ve also found some success working more locally. I live in North Dakota, where the DAPL and Standing Rock crisis has been unfolding. As an example, there is a bill before our state House that will make it so that if you hit a pedestrian on a public road or highway, they and their family will not be able to sue, nor would it be a criminal offense – as long as it was an “accident”. The person sponsoring this bill has said straight up that it is in response to the protests going on in Standing Rock and is meant to punish and prevent protesting.
Of course I find this kind of sanctioned “accidental” murder horrific. But many of my conservative neighbors are of course on the side of the police – and when we engaged in discussion about this, they do have a valid point. That the resources for that town and area are being stretched beyond the limits, that the emergency and police services are fatigued, etc.
And I was able to convince a few that, okay, perhaps there do need to be some restrictions on protest – such as, not blocking emergency vehicles, etc. – but that this draconian bill proposed was WAY too extreme to be effective in any way, and also had far-reaching unintended consequences. Several people in our rural community run and bicycle along the side of the highways (our only paved roads). Just last year a woman, a beloved grandmother, was killed while riding her bicycle alongside the highway. I asked, do you think it’s right her killer should go completely unpunished because it was an accident? Is it right that her family is unable to sue the driver to get at least some recompense? Or if she’d been hospitalized instead of killed, should she not be able to recover some of the medical costs?
There’s also a bill proposing that first responders gain rights to collective bargaining. Being pro-union (I’m from the Rust Belt originally) I am stumping hard for this one, too. chip chip chipping away.
So anyway, long story long, I’ve had more success chipping away at local things like that. It’s a slow process, but I’m astounded I’ve even had as much success as this.
And I keep telling myself, every little bit helps, every little grain of sand we toss into the abyss eventually works to fill it in. Being polite and afraid to rock the boat no doubt was partially responsible for getting us to this state – I know that was my policy – and I’ve found that speaking up and speaking out isn’t as dangerous and scary as I’d feared. I’ve even found support that I wouldn’t have guessed what around.
I fucking love broccoli.
…
Look, somebody mentioned brassicas and I’m hungry, sue me.
@Dreemr
I’m getting “all circuits are busy now”, hope that’s a good sign.
I hear you on all that incredible BS…. some of them truly have sold their souls, eh?
I’m playing the long game. Probably move a few miles into Gallego’s District, and spend next two years doing what I can to get voter registration up.