OK.
Norm makes phone calls about a vagina toy.
Lots of other stuff.
Too tired to type as usual but don’t complain I did the fucking show didn’t I?
Day: January 30, 2006
Categories
Do this! It takes two secunts.
Vichy Democrats
There’s a C-Span poll on whether the filibuster will help or hurt the Dems. Vote now!
Categories
The Vote of a Lifetime
The Blog | John Kerry: The Vote Of A Lifetime | The Huffington Post
So let’s get this straight. The time to fight is now – before we make the irreversible decision of confirming a new Supreme Court Justice. When you’re talking about the Supreme Court, you don’t live to fight another day. It’s a zero sum game. Once Judge Alito becomes Justice Alito, there’s no turning back the Senate confirmation vote. We don’t get to ‘take a mulligan’ when choosing a Supreme Court Justice. The direction our country takes for the next thirty years is being set now. Will it matter if we speak up after the Supreme Court has granted the executive the right to use torture, or to eavesdrop without warrants? Will it matter if we speak up only after a woman’s right to privacy has been taken away? Will history record what we say after the courthouse door is slammed in the faces of women, minorities, the elderly, the disabled, and the poor? No. History will record what we say and what we do now.
MONDAY ALITO FILIBUSTER GAMEPLAN: URGE ABSTINENCE!
Last updated: 5:02 Pacific.
“The Woodstock of Politics”
– a caller to The Young Turks radio filibuster for filibuster,
about the grassroots Alito activism.
First, THANK YOU for your hard work over the weekend! As far as I can tell, all key Senators’ D.C. voicemails, and over 90% of the voicemails in their various District offices, were filled up by the end of the weekend. I started hitting random extensions and leaving messages for poor hapless staffers. Every Senator will get the message on Monday morning. Awesome!
For today, I want to back away from the shotgun petitions. It’s frustrating that no one in the Dem leadership will tell us who the “Alito 8” are (the Democrats who aren’t hewing the party line), and we don’t know how well Kerry and Kennedy are doing at moving them around to our side. But we can make an educated guess, and focus on those key Senators. In addition to calling their offices, we’re also going to target their re-election campaign HQs. (A great idea thought up by our friend and fellow-traveler, Bob Fertik!) Finally, we’re going to hammer away at a simple, but politically powerful, message.
Our theme today is: Lead, Follow, Or Get Out of the Way. In political terms, that’s:
EITHER SUPPORT THE FILIBUSTER
OR ABSTAIN FROM THE CLOTURE VOTE,
BUT DON’T GET IN OUR WAY.
The plan is simple:
FIRST, as each office opens (8:30 or 9 am Eastern, later for District offices as you move West), call every office (DC and District) of YOUR OWN Democratic Senators and urge them to support the filibuster by either voting NO on cloture or by ABSTAINING from the cloture vote. Be short and sweet but hit every office listed below. (If they’re not listed here, they’re probably not a problem — but feel free to make sure!) If you can get their staff to commit to a position, please post a comment here.
SECOND, call the “URGE ABSTENTION” Senators identified immediately below and do the same — say that you hope they vote NO on cloture this afternoon but if they can’t, urge them to ABSTAIN from the cloture vote by doing something good that most Republicans would never do, like visiting wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital instead. (God knows the Republican leadership would never want to draw any attention to the costs of their war!) Doing so will be just as good as a “no” vote but will give them political cover with their conservative voters back home. Again, call their DC AND District offices. And again, if their staff will commit to a position on cloture and/or abstention, please post a comment here.
THIRD, rinse and repeat. That is, go through the “Urge Abstention” list twice, at least for those offices that don’t take detailed caller info like names and addresses.
That’s it. Simply hammer your own Senators and the key Senators. Report back so I can keep things updated. Then watch C-Span at 4:30 Eastern to see what happens! (And please check back here on Tuesday for an after-action report and a strategy for dealing with the result. Win or lose, we are taking this momentum forward to win back our Party and our Nation.)