Progressives Every Day: Karma Police, Deport This Man
Progressives Every Day: Karma Police, Deport This Man
Hard to have any sympathy when you read this...
Welcome to the Tuesday edition of Progressives Everywhere!
I’ve been trying to send these newsletters a bit later at night so that I’m able to catch some of the late-breaking news that seems to have become a permanent fixture of this bizarro world in which we now live.
Tonight, I’m delighted that I was able to hold up long enough to include the fact that Transylvanian hate-ghoul Stephen Miller has been diagnosed with COVID-19. I’m not even going to pretend to feel some kind of empathy for the guy — he forfeited any shred of human kindness the moment he started filling Trump’s speeches with white nationalist bile and directing ICE to lock kids in cages. It’s only fitting that he now has to isolate — I hope he’s forced to do so in a squalid cage within a dilapidated building somewhere in the desert.
Think I’m being harsh? Read this new New York Times report on how Trump, Jeff Sessions, Stephen Miller, and the rest of the professional Klan members in the White House pushed for the most barbaric federally-authorized treatment of young children and families we’ve seen in this country since at least the Japanese internment of the 1940s.
By the way, Mr. #Resistance hero Rod Rosenstein comes out looking like a real asshole in this story, which goes to show you that there are no good Republicans and that none of them deserve your admiration or memes. Look at this:
Rod J. Rosenstein, then the deputy attorney general, went even further in a second call about a week later, telling the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He said that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants.
I’d call them monsters, but I’m a devout Godzilla fan and I would not want to sully kaiju by association.
(By the way, there’s going to be a new Godzilla show on Netflix next year!)
By the way, I’ve updated COVIDSuperSpreaders.com again with a look at the timeline of the Amy Coney Barrett super-spreader party and everything that’s happened since. It also includes a list of all the people who have fallen ill due to either being at the event or connections to those who were there. Read it here! Now that I’ve got this done, I’ll be adding new state lawmakers to the site tomorrow.
OK, let’s move on to some more news and analysis. Lots to talk about!
Important News You Need To Know
South Carolina: As I noted last night, the Supreme Court on Monday reinstated the witness signature requirement for absentee ballots in South Carolina. This is a bummer, but it could have been even worse — at least they’re not forcing voters who already sent in their absentee ballots (over 20,000!) to do it all over again.
To be clear, most of the conservatives on the court wanted to totally screw over all those voters — Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch voted to do exactly that. But Chief Justice John Roberts and the beer-loving best bud of Squee, Brett Kavanaugh, decided to throw voters the smallest of bones and joined with the liberals to hold off on the complete reversal.
As Vox notes in this explainer, the case and his written argument give a pretty decent idea of how Kavanaugh thinks about voting rights and how he might act if certain issues come to SCOTUS post-election in November.
Not exactly confidence-inspiring, but maybe not totally barbaric and fascist? The fact that we’re counting on Brett Kavanaugh to save democracy is just utterly depressing.
Ohio: Yesterday, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose dropped all pretense of caring about voting rights and said he wouldn’t allow multiple drop box locations in counties even though he is absolutely allowed to do so. Well, early voting started in Ohio today and it looks like a lot of Democratic voters aren’t even going to bother with the absentee ballots, which haven’t even gone out yet.
There were massive lines to cast early ballots in just about every city in Ohio, including Cleveland and Columbus.
Look at this scene in Dayton:
It’s enraging that they’re being forced to do this instead of voting absentee and handing them in at their convenience, but I’m so inspired to see them out there in the cold, waiting in long lines to rid the world of Trump and his lackeys.
Michigan: Also inspiring: How Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is handling attempts at voter suppression.
This story over at The Nation details on how misinformation was used to trick Detroit voters into not voting in 2016 and, deliciously, how Nessel nailed that sniveling little turd Jacob Wohl after he tried to use the same tactics this year. It’s basically fan fiction for me.
Again, this is what happens when you elect Democrats to statewide offices.
National: As you probably know by now, Donald Trump affirmed today that his nasty vein of populism was always a hollow ruse and that the entire purpose of his presidency is to architect a long-term conservative terror state.
Well, he does that every day, but today he did so by announcing that he was giving up on any stimulus negotiations and would instead use the remaining moments that he’s not spending infecting his employees to attempt to push Amy Coney Barrett into the Supreme Court.
Some suggest that this was all Mitch McConnell’s doing, because he knows that the GOP majority is doomed anyway.
True or not, it certainly looks like it’ll turn out that way (fingers crossed!):
New York: I don’t love Max Rose’s very centrist politics, but if he finds a way to force James Dolan to sell the Knicks, I’ll run a campaign to draft him to run for mayor.
Rose’s ongoing feud with the worst New York billionaire this side of Donald Trump is heating up.
Last month, Rose said that he wished Dolan would sell the Knicks (a team he has managed with unfathomable, Trumpian incompetence). In response, Dolan donated (more) to Republicans and said that Rose “politicized” a franchise (how Dolan’s refusal to support Black Lives Matter didn’t politicize it is another question).
Today, Rose shot back at Dolan with just an unbelievable quote that has me screaming:
“The guy is a snowflake. He kicks fans out of the arena. Look what he did to Oakley and Charles Oakley is a legend. I’m just a congressman. Nothing would surprise me. What I will tell you is I’m not going to let Jim Dolan bully me. I’ve got swamp creatures in D.C. coming after me. I’m not worried about this guy. Come at me, bro. Come at me. But you’re going to lose. Which is, by the way, something that he’s very much accustomed to. So I’m sure this won’t be cataclysmic for him; it’ll just be another loss in a long series of losses. He’s a loser. He’s got to shut up and sell the team.”
Rose isn’t the only politician who hates Dolan — Andrew Yang also took some shots at the scion and hack. I recommend reading the entire article. Obviously!
Florida: After the voter registration website was offline much of yesterday, the state was forced to extend the registration deadline to tonight at 7pm.
Good news: The reason it crashed is that there were 1.1 million requests per hour on the site last night!
Bad news: People should have been registered already! Democrats need to do a much better job at enrolling people.
Arizona: A federal judge extended the voter registration deadline in the state by a whopping three weeks, setting off a mad scramble in one of the most important swing states.
Republicans, of course, are appealing.
Once again, people are waiting until the very end to register — officials received over 40,000 applications on Monday in Maricopa County alone on Monday.
Speaking of voter registration and GOTV: This Sunday, I’ll be running a feature on some great GOTV organizations that will be doing the hard work over the next few weeks to get us over the finish line. Get excited for grassroots energy!
Wait, before you go!
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