[Ed. Pinned to the top today. Keep the pressure on. Fresher posts below.
O-]
I’m asking everyone to focus on the Supreme Court nomination today. Trump nominated a fascist theocrat.
From Mother Jones…. (emphasis mine)
Trump Nominates Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court
During the campaign, Trump promised to undo Roe v. Wade.
As a federal appellate judge, Neil Gorsuch won conservative fans with his rulings in cases involving Hobby Lobby and the Little Sisters of the Poor, in which he rejected the Obama administration’s attempt to force both entities to provide contraception coverage in their health insurance plans. He also recently dissented in a decision by his court to deny rehearing of an appeal from the state of Utah, which had tried to defund Planned Parenthood but was blocked by the appellate court.
Please make calls today and focus solely on your Democratic Senators. Don’t waste your time trying to get a Republican Senator to oppose anything coming out of the Trump administration.
Repeating myself from yesterday but with a tactical change…
Update: I’ve updated the message and the language in italics.
Remember SC nominees need 60 votes for confirmation. The R’s can’t do it alone. They need turncoat Dem’s. We can’t give any Dem Senator wiggle room on this.
I’ve changed the closing of the communication. I want to ensure the Senators understand that they will pay a high price if they betray our Democratic ideals.
Find your Senators here. Call their local offices, found on their contact page. It’s faster and easier than calling the DC lines.
Consistent polite, professional multiple issue calls today please – “I oppose Trumps Supreme Court and cabinet nominee(s). I expect my Senator to filibuster Trump’s Supreme Court nominee and oppose his cabinet selections. When is the next town hall meeting with the Senator?”
Some people are not able to get through to their Senators on the phone.
- Walking into their local office is an option
- Calling at odd times like 4:00 AM
- Snailmail
- Email if that’s the only way, but I ask that you consider this to be a last resort.
- Signing online petitions make you feel good but are viewed as invalid by the professional politicians. (More on this tomorrow.)
Keep the pressure on – Phone calls work.
It’s going to be a long four years, but in the end we will have won by working together and trusting in the power of our commitment to our vision of what our country is.
O-
Mock Paper Scissors 
I need to share this. She has asked everyone to c&p – NOT share but c&p – on FB. I don’t do social media so I’m putting it here. You folks who do social media please help.
From Heather Richardson, professor of History at Boston College:
“I don’t like to talk about politics on Facebook– political history is my job, after all, and you are my friends– but there is an important non-partisan point to make today.
What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night’s ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries– is creating what is known as a “shock event.”
Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually along some fault line that those responsible for the event can widen by claiming that they alone know how to restore order.
When opponents speak out, the authors of the shock event call them enemies. As society reels and tempers run high, those responsible for the shock event perform a sleight of hand to achieve their real goal, a goal they know to be hugely unpopular, but from which everyone has been distracted as they fight over the initial event. There is no longer concerted opposition to the real goal; opposition divides along the partisan lines established by the shock event.
Last night’s Executive Order has all the hallmarks of a shock event. It was not reviewed by any governmental agencies or lawyers before it was released, and counterterrorism experts insist they did not ask for it. People charged with enforcing it got no instructions about how to do so. Courts immediately have declared parts of it unconstitutional, but border police in some airports are refusing to stop enforcing it.
Predictably, chaos has followed and tempers are hot.
My point today is this: unless you are the person setting it up, it is in no one’s interest to play the shock event game. It is designed explicitly to divide people who might otherwise come together so they cannot stand against something its authors think they won’t like.
I don’t know what Bannon is up to– although I have some guesses– but because I know Bannon’s ideas well, I am positive that there is not a single person whom I consider a friend on either side of the aisle– and my friends range pretty widely– who will benefit from whatever it is.
If the shock event strategy works, though, many of you will blame each other, rather than Bannon, for the fallout. And the country will have been tricked into accepting their real goal.
But because shock events destabilize a society, they can also be used positively. We do not have to respond along old fault lines. We could just as easily reorganize into a different pattern that threatens the people who sparked the event.
A successful shock event depends on speed and chaos because it requires knee-jerk reactions so that people divide along established lines. This, for example, is how Confederate leaders railroaded the initial southern states out of the Union.
If people realize they are being played, though, they can reach across old lines and reorganize to challenge the leaders who are pulling the strings. This was Lincoln’s strategy when he joined together Whigs, Democrats, Free-Soilers, anti-Nebraska voters, and nativists into the new Republican Party to stand against the Slave Power.
Five years before, such a coalition would have been unimaginable. Members of those groups agreed on very little other than that they wanted all Americans to have equal economic opportunity. Once they began to work together to promote a fair economic system, though, they found much common ground. They ended up rededicating the nation to a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Confederate leaders and Lincoln both knew about the political potential of a shock event. As we are in the midst of one, it seems worth noting that Lincoln seemed to have the better idea about how to use it.”
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I’m promoting this to a post.
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You recall how McTurtle said we had to wait to see the election results? We should wait until we see the result of the Russian collusion investigation. A President in his last year should not get to place a SCOTUS justice.
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