5 Calls

I like 5 calls for facilitating your day's phone calls:

• It knows your senators and representative, and their phone numbers.
• Gives you a choice of issues
• Gives you a short script

Propublica's Politwoops

Propublica has a tool for finding our elected officials' deleted tweets. Politwoops doesn't curate the tweets; it just lists them. Most of them are deleted because of typos, but some deletions are substantive. This morning there was an interesting deletion by Republican Congressman (Michigan 3rd) Justin Amash of this tweet:

I agree with Congressman Amash that Bannon may* require Senate confirmation, but regardless, shouldn't sit on the NSC.

Some fresh articles on Bannon:

• DailyKos reporting on Bannon's 2014 presentation to a small conference on poverty at the Vatican
• Foreign Policy “But there is not a lot of infighting right now, because to have infighting, there needs to be a power struggle, and there is no struggle, the intelligence official said.”
• A 2015 article from Bloomberg Joshua Green
• "We're going to war in the South China Sea"
• Democrat Stephanie Murphy bill to keep Bannon off NSC
• WNYC Brian Lehrer on The Power Behind Trump
• Bannon's reading list, reporting from Johnson and Stokols of Politico

On Congressman Amash: it is a little bit hard to confirm he is a Republican. Ballotpedia says: "Although Amash was classified as voting more often with the Democratic Party according to multiple outside rankings, this stems from his tendency to vote against many Republican-sponsored bills that he views as not conservative or libertarian enough." I do note that he is not on the DCCC's list of 58 targetted Repulicans to unseat in 2018.

Note *: If Bannon is not a permanent (dejure!) member of the NSC (he's on the principals committee) then he doesn't require Senate vetting. And maybe this was the reason Amash deleted the tweet!

#Resist

My definition of resistance includes being smart & discriminating. Picking our fights. There are a lot of us. More of us than them. Be loud. On all fronts. These are my field notes.

Twistance (focus on the more science agencies) & Twistance2 (others like DOE, POTUS, HHS ...). These are maintained twitter lists to follow of Alt federal civil servants. Here is one explanation, by @Alt_FAA, of their motives:



More and more agencies and departments have started AltGov feeds. I use TweetDeck.

A good summary of the brushfire from Politico.

What I'm reading:

• White house leaker, mandatory reading at Daily Kos.
• Politico's Gabriel Debenedetti reporting on the DNC's struggle to take the right stance.
• Naomi Klein on Pence & Katrina and disaster capitalism.
• NYT oped by Gail Collins on Pence's puppet.
• NYT oped by Yael Eisenstat on Trump's self-serving visit to the CIA.
• One person's articulate opinion on Trump imploding. The rejoinder is a faster introduction, because in the snap post, you get personal memoir and context first.
• Slate's Jamelle Bouie : Protest Works
• Erica Chenoweth, Guardian OpEd, 3.5% of population can stop dictator.
• New York's AG has power & jurisdiction to impede Trump by Propublica's David Freelander
• In Atlantic, #nevertrumper & Counselor for Condoleezza Rice, Eliot Cohen takes off his gloves

I'm listening to David Bowie: Under Pressure, Heroes ...

Data wants to be free:

• https://data.giss.nasa.gov/
• https://envirodatagov.org/event-toolkit/
• If you see something, save something.

Federal Worker's protection:

https://www.doi.gov/pmb/eeo/no-fear-act

Go to ACLU website or @ACLU on twitter for more info

Leaking:

• The New York Times
• Propublica Leak to Us
• AP

Phone:

• My representative Adam Smith, DC office 202-225-8901 Renton office 425-793-5180. 

Send a fax.

Whoever you are who are sending faxes to Reps and Congressman. It seems to be working, because they have to archive that shit.

— ALTImmigration🛂 (@ALT_USCIS) January 30, 2017

If the phones are busy at you congressman or woman's office, send a fax. hellofax: Free outgoing faxes with gmail account.

• Paul Ryan:202-225-3393, 608-752-4711, 262-654-2156, 262-637-5689