#Resist Works

Vox's  Matthew Yglesias posted an excellent summary of #Resist successes so far:

The main concrete victories of resistance thus far are:

• House Republicans abandoned a plan to gut the Congressional Ethics Office.
• The Trump administration abandoned a plan to cancel Affordable Care Act enrollment advertising.
• The VA was granted an exemption from Trump’s hiring freeze.
• 500,000 green card holders were granted exemption from Trump’s immigration orders.
• The Department of Defense has secured permission to grant exemptions to the ban for Iraqis who work with the US military.
• Most dual citizens (Germans, most recently) seem to be getting exemptions from the Trump ban.
• A House Republican plan for a massive sell-off of public lands has been canceled.

More diffusely, resistance is already costing Trump politically. A planned trip to Harley-Davidson in Wisconsin was canceled because the company didn’t want to deal with the protests. Disney’s CEO canceled a planned trip to the White House. Maintaining a constant atmosphere of contentiousness has cost Trump the usual honeymoon period and saddled him with approval ratings that are already underwater.

Not listed is getting 2 Republican senators to align with Democrats against DOE nominee DeVos. Hopefully we can add that to the list tomorrow after the vote.

Why the #altgovt movement is important. @Alt_DeptofED @ALT_DOJ @alt_fda @ActualEPAFacts @alt_labor @Alt_NASA @AltHHS @AltForestServ pic.twitter.com/rA0XNOnFc0

— Rogue EPA Staff (@RogueEPAstaff) February 4, 2017

Two other articles:

• Slate's Jamelle Bouie : Protest Works
• Erica Chenoweth, Guardian OpEd, 3.5% of population can stop dictator.

Crucially, nonviolent resistance works not by melting the heart of the opponent but by constraining their options. A leader and his inner circle cannot pass and implement policies alone. They require cooperation and obedience from many people to carry out plans and policies.

 

Speaker Bercow just cancelled Trump visit to parliament. A proud moment for Commons. Racism and sexism not welcome here.

— Harriet Harman (@HarrietHarman) February 6, 2017

The Prisoner's Dilemma: How Obstructionist should the Democrats be?

Minute 26:20 of today's Slate's Political Gabfest. Discussing Democrats' strategy for Judge Gorsuch confirmation hearings.

Dickerson: I'm all for protests. And I think it's as great as the Tea Party protests. Some Democrats worry that (their base is incredibly energized right now and they're very excited about that) but they're worried now that they will face the same problem Republicans faced ... sometimes there's a strategic reason to pick your battles ... and that the call for absolutely full, constant, total, and complete resistance to Trump on every measure is not strategically wise.
Bazelon: ... that purity tests are a problem.

credit: Elyse Singer to ‎Dahlia Lithwick

Later (~min 41), Plotz, rightly, characterizes the choice for Democrats to be rational and grown-up versus Republican's and Tea Party's scorched-earth approach as the Prisoner's Dilemma . I resolve the dilemma by believing we should stay consistent with our values, our identity as Democrats--we believe in government, in liberty and justice, in the rule of law, in democracy, in majority protecting minority rights. We should stay to true to ourselves.

The Tea Party ended with a President Trump. They other guys and gals are the Party of No. They are ok with a scorched earth; I'm not. I want Democrats to think, to remain open-minded, big-tent, liberal and to care for country as much or more than for party. We are the majority. If each of us works hard (knocks on doors, calls, writes letters, shows up at Town Halls, donates, votes) we will win.

The next election, if Price is confirmed, will be GA-6. Let's win that race. Support Jon Ossoff.

Other reporting on Gorsuch:

• America, The Jesuit Review clears up the fascist joke.
• Dahlia Lithwick, Amicus podcast. I look forward to Gorsuch answering the two questions posed: is he independent? does he judge based on the Constitution and precedent or based on his political beliefs? He'll certainly answer yes, but, the Senators will be watching his body language and reading between the lines (mixing metaphors).
• Trump's "so-called judge" tweet raising the bar for Gorsuch

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

Prayer at Gray’s River

Prayer at Gray’s River

When a mother seizes one life
god moves mudstone like water
for miles toward the Pacific
and ash rains for months.

I build a little cairn from mudstone
crumbling along a bleached river bed
exposed by floods most winters.
If I leave the cairn sit,

Jack’s memories leach away.
So sometimes when I’m strong
I take one shard from the top
and taste the grit.

The stone is weak, unlithified,
like my memories.
I place it back gently--
undo only the slightest fleck

with my breath. The last time
I admonished Jack
I can’t remember my words
but I do see a glaring sun

and his cheeks flushed from drills
his sweat-matted hair
brushed back, the tears in his eyes
while he watches me instruct him to work harder

with the same eyes that challenged his mother,
It’s not like I’m going to die!
he vowed, two nights before she drugged him
and drowned him with a pillow.

Cairn

Cairn

Stone cries sand.
Stone cries soil.
A stone cries memory.
I had to stack the rocks
to make sense of them.

I don't like decorative stone
far from its native habitat,
the imported stone
that displaces weeds momentarily.