Last day to register

Today is important. Today is the last day to register to vote in:

Arizona
Arkansas
Florida
Georgia
Indiana
Kentucky
Louisiana
Michigan
Mississippi
New Mexico
Ohio
Pennsylvania
Tennessee
Texas

RT and spread the word.

Take 2 minutes to save Democracy.
https://t.co/ZoBSSQDmer

— Nick Jack Pappas (@Pappiness) October 9, 2018

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Rebecca Traister gave another interview about her book Good and Mad to friend and journalist Chris Hayes. Traister is a must listen no matter what format but this podcast is especially poignant because it was recorded before Christine Blasey Ford testified last week. In that context, what Traister says will blow your mind.

About anger, am I angry? Yes. I’m as angry as a Bacchae. It has been a struggle to not start screaming and not stop until I burst some eardrums. I don’t get that angry very often but if you push me year after year without let up, I lose it eventually.

The trouble is, and this is a problem regardless of what sex you are, it’s very difficult to canvas when you’re not in control of your anger. You can’t just show up at peoples’ doors like some Tasmanian Devil with a flyer in your hand. It tends to make voters nervous.

So if you can control your anger for a few hours a weekend, please consider channeling it in some productive way for a campaign near you. For various real life reasons, I’ve been putting it off but now it’s crunch time.

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Here’s a real life reason. I went to a goat run last Saturday. Turns out most of these people were Democrats who were furious at what happened with Kavanaugh. They’re all planning on voting in November. But first, a beer:

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Walk to work music:

A little ditty to sing on the way to the polls

Pass it around:

I don’t know who this girl is but I very may well be in love with her https://t.co/J883RmkSw5

— Delaney Tarr (@delaneytarr) October 8, 2018

Behold the Hairy Men.

The Republicans:

Yeah, they’re making a lot of noise and shaking their spears and shit but there’s still an election in less than a month and it looks very likely that they are going to lose bigly. There’s not a lot they can do about that except stick their tongues out and make obnoxious noises.

Get your ass to the polls and ignore the ugly hairy men. Check your registration at I Will Vote. And if you’re a female living in a voter ID state, get your paperwork in order, especially if you’ve ever been married or divorced. If your name has been changed, you’ll want to be sure it matches the one on the registration rolls. Would I put it past the hairy men to do a haka at the polls this year? No, I would not.

Be prepared.

Then crush their hairy little souls.

Finally, repeat this Tolkien quote from now until November 6 and teach it to every person who says their vote won’t count:

“Despair is for those who know the end beyond all doubt. We do not.”

Pass it around.

Hug a Republican today.

Quote de Jour

“Do not mistake the rule of force
for true power. Men are not shaped by force.”

– Euripides, The Bacchae

Hoping for an asteroid

Susan Simpson from The View from LL2 sums it up:

Two sexual assaulters and a stolen seat will be three of the five votes overturning women's constitutional right to bodily autonomy.

— Susan Simpson (@TheViewFromLL2) October 5, 2018

The GOP has always had the votes to do whatever they wanted. But the veil has been lifted now. There is nothing they won’t do to gain and maintain power. There is plenty of damage they can inflict in a month before the election with Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. The misogyny was only the most obvious problem. There’s still voting rights, healthcare and Trump’s special investigation problem. Collins and Flake do this kind of thing all the time. I hope Flake doesnt have political ambitions after this. As for Collins, she may think her contituents will forget. I’m betting they won’t.

The billion dollar 8 year old victim

It took awhile for Trevor Noah to grow on me after Jon Stewart left the Daily Show. Jon was barely tethered to his seat and Noah is much more laid back. But now I get it. It’s the way they both look at the world. And Trevor gets to the core of Trump’s shtick:

Yeah, let’s get past this Kavanaugh disaster so we can focus on how a poor little rich boy from Queens figured out how to make white guys like Niles into the world’s biggest losers.

Rage

Rebecca Traister talks to Ezra Klein about her new book Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger in today’s podcast. Traister observes Thad Christine Blasey Ford and Hillary Clinton can’t be angry without it backfiring on them but Bart O’Kavanaugh can actually use anger to his benefit.

As for Kavanaugh, his Supreme Court nomination is his reward for his career of doing the dirty work of his party. It knows he’s reliable. He’s proven his “loyalty” with his Trump-esque temper tantrum last week. And now he’s a made man, bound to do what the party and Trump want him to do regardless as to how many people he hurts.

I wouldn’t want to accept this appointment under these circumstances. He’s deeply unpopular, we know what he’s going to do and he will go down in history as one of the worst Supreme Court justices that dismantled our government that we have ever had. His name will become about as warm and fuzzy as Roland Freisler. That’s the legacy he’s going to leave his daughters.

As for the senators who vote for him? There are no words. They simply must go, if we can still vote them out in November.

Walk to work music

Let’s try to be happy for a few minutes before the sh*t hits the fan.

Two tweeters who tweeted two tweets

Cause and effect:

Hard to say which is the chicken and which the egg.

BTW, did you get your non-optoutable presidential alert today? How much you wanna bet he’s going to use it for nefarious purposes?

What am I saying? Of course he’s going to use it for nefarious purposes. It’s what he does.

Timing is everything.

So, McConnell is planning to wrap things up ASAP on Kavanaugh’s confirmation. What’s the hurry?

Could it have something to do with the NYTimes’ exposé of Trump’s fraud and tax evasion over the decades? Did the GOP know that sh*t was going to hit the fan?

This president shouldn’t be appointing ANY Supreme Court nominees. He’s a thief, a cheater and a con man. Literally. And this particular nominee could not be worse. The Portland Press Herald summer it up succinctly:

regardless of what questions the investigation can answer, we already know this: Based on what he demonstrated in his own testimony, Kavanaugh lacks the character and judgment to serve on the Supreme Court.

In his widely watched appearance, Kavanaugh revealed that he has an explosive temper and resorts to bullying when he feels threatened. He was understandably under stress and fighting a high-stakes battle for his reputation, but his temperament was tested during the hearing, and he failed the test.

Kavanaugh also showed himself to be impermissibly political for a job that is supposed to be above politics. We’re not naive. We understand that federal judges are nominated by presidents and confirmed by senators, and that electoral politics influences their decisions about who gets to serve.

But we have never had a Supreme Court nominee who ripped off the nonpartisan mask the way Kavanaugh did Thursday and identified himself as an enemy of a political party that represents the policy preferences of millions of Americans. He blamed his predicament on bizarre conspiracy theories, claiming that his troubles stemmed from “pent-up anger about President Trump” and opponents seeking “revenge on behalf of the Clintons” and were not the result of allegations that emerged while he was being evaluated for an important job. After his partisan rant, Kavanaugh will never be able to judge a case without the animus he expressed being considered a factor in his decision. This is not the road we want to take.

For what it’s worth, I believe Christine Blasey Ford. I also believe that Kavanaugh can’t remember it. But instead of being prudent and conciliatory and apologizing for his wreckless behavior, he doubled down on it and insulted more than half the country. I’m not talking about just women. I’m talking about anyone who didn’t vote in these people and their outrageous, cruel and destructive behavior.

Why do Republicans want to take this road? Are they just not interested in electoral politics anymore? We should all be asking ourselves these questions.

Why the rush on this guy?

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This one’s for Brett: