Wednesday Reads: Tank Girl Says It…Dems Got The House
Posted: November 7, 2018 Filed under: 2018 elections, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Congress, corruption, Democratic Politics, Donald Trump, Elections, House of Representatives, legalizaton of drugs, morning reads, open thread, Political and Editorial Cartoons, racism, Republican politics, right wing hate grouups, the GOP, U.S. Politics, Voting Rights, Wednesday Hump Day Cartoons, white nationalists | Tags: Georgia voter suppression, Stacy Abrams 67 Comments
We can turn this shit around!
Hey, I know…that is a little too positive, coming from someone like me…but even I have to grasp at some rays of hope. Yesterday, on my way to practice I took a picture of the sunset. It made me think of the future, in this way:
I said a little prayer, may this setting sun be the last of “tRumpian unaccountability”…and will tomorrow’s morning sun bring hope for our democracy.
That image of Tank Girl, it is morning…she is having tea and putting on her boots…preparing herself for the day’s ass kicking. We can turn this shit around! Let’s see what comes from winning the House?
Meanwhile, in Georgia:
As of 8:45 this morning, only 75,386 votes separate Kemp and Abrams…
Brian Kemp’s Lead in Georgia Needs an Asterisk – The Atlantic
The Democrat Stacey Abrams, a black woman, made a valiant effort to win the governor’s race in Georgia, one of the original 13 states, whose commitment to human bondage ensured that the U.S. Constitution would treat slavery with kid gloves. A state that was part of the Confederacy. A state scorched by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman in the Civil War. A state that refused to accept the outcome of that war, treating its black residents as second-class citizens—if that—until the federal government forced its hand, a century later, with the Voting Rights Act. She tried to write a new narrative for this state.
Although Abrams has not yet conceded, citing uncounted ballots, it looks as though the other side has won, and the narrative is the same as ever. Abrams didn’t have to fight just an electoral campaign; she had to fight a civil-rights campaign against the forces of voter suppression.
Indeed, I can’t quite bring myself to say that Abrams “lost,” because there’s an asterisk next to her Republican opponent’s victory.
Brian Kemp, who billed himself as a “Trump conservative,” refused to step aside as Georgia’s secretary of state; he ran for governor of a state while overseeing the elections in that state. Former President Jimmy Carter, a Georgian with much experience monitoring elections abroad, stressed that this conflict of interest ran “counter to the most fundamental principle of democratic elections—that the electoral process be managed by an independent and impartial election authority.” Kemp had no intention of relinquishing a post he has held since 2010, and often wields as a weapon to cull Georgia’s electorate. He understood that he would need every trick in the book because he was up against a woman who, in addition to serving as the minority leader of the state’s House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017, founded a formidable voter-registration organization, the New Georgia Project.[…]Under Kemp, Georgia purged more than 1.5 million voters from the rolls, eliminating 10.6 percent of voters from the state’s registered electorate from 2016 to 2018 alone. The state shut down 214 polling places, the bulk of them in minority and poor neighborhoods. From 2013 to 2016 it blocked the registration of nearly 35,000 Georgians, including newly naturalized citizens. Georgia accomplished this feat of disfranchisement based on a screening process called “exact match,” meaning the state accepted new registrations only if they matched the information in state databases precisely, including hyphens in names, accents, and even typos.[…]Days before the deadline to register for the November election, the Associated Press reported that Kemp had put 53,000 applicants on hold due to exact-match problems. An analysis of Kemp’s records found that 70 percent of those applicants were black. (Georgia is roughly 32 percent black.) Separately, the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union found that some 700 absentee-ballot applications and almost 200 absentee ballots were rejected by county officials due to a law mandating that the signatures on absentee applications and ballots visually match the signatures on file. Thus, poor penmanship was added to the list of crimes that can lead to disenfranchisement in Georgia.[…] In the end, it looks like Kemp won. It’s impossible to know if his attempts to restrict the franchise are what pushed him over the line. But if the Georgia race had taken place in another country—say, the Republic of Georgia—U.S. media and the U.S. State Department would not have hesitated to question its legitimacy, if for no other reason than Kemp’s dual roles as candidate and election overseer. Of course, there were other reasons. As of this morning, he led by about 75,000 votes; more than 85,000 registrations were canceled through August 1 of this year alone.
Stacy Abrams is vowing not to concede until all votes are counted. I think she should demand a recount…as well.
This is a good thread to round up the tRump effect:
From down along this thread:
Other observations:
This piece of shit is gone:
And…
On that note, here are a few cartoons:
Blue Shadow: 11/07/2018 Cartoon by Steve Artley
I think Boston Boomer had this in one of her post, but it is so good I have to repeat it:
Election Sticker: 11/07/2018 Cartoon by Rob Rogers
11/06/2018 Cartoon by Signe Wilkinson
I wonder what the rest of today will bring?
See you in the comments…this is an open thread.
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
JJ Lopez aka Minkoff Minx
peggysue22
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
After that one cartoon about sowing seeds, how many of you have the Tears for Fears song in your head?
And the Orange Ass Mouth is at it this morning:
Trump tweets challenge to Dems over possible probes
Democrats always waste their opportunities to do the right thing by putting the Republicans in their places. With just the House they don’t have real power to enact change except they can investigate, stymie and use the budget hammer but the real tragedy is that when they had all three branches of government they failed to do anything meaningful towards fixing gerrymandering, expelling corrupt Congressmen and Senator’s, bringing up charges for lying us into war and then committing war crimes, etc. They always fail and they always cower to Republican threats. I have severe reservations that they’ll stand up to McConnell and Trump. Hopefully they will but I have my doubts.
Yeah. My state of mind, too. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if the Dems actually *do* something instead of yammering on about the importance of working together..
And the other thing that’s becoming clear to me is nobody should be allowed to vote except black women 😛 Part of me isn’t even joking.
I have felt this way for a few cycles now. The AA voting block here in Georgia is the only reliable and smart voting block we have.
Schumer needs to go.
Schumer need to go.
I’m getting beat up this morning by wordpress
I turned him off again. He’s insane, deranged, and delusional.
…says the rude, terrible person who treats others horribly. Is there anything so blatant as Trump’s gaslighting?
I heard his child voice: I want my momma.
I think Abrams has to sue under the Equal Protection Clause but the reality is that with our hyperpartisan and corrupt Supreme Court she’d have no chance to win in court and then this kind of corruption would be lawful everywhere. Just makes a person sick. We are living in the most corrupt era in many decades. What is old is now new again.
JJ, I was happy to see that Karen Handel (Rep. 6th Dist. Ga), lost. Hooray to democrat, Lucy McBath. Stacey Abrams standing with her. Even tho the idiot has called his victory!
Holy See, Scott Walker refuses to concede!
No matter what else … this is a good thing!!!!
I cannot look at this enough today!!! This is what I’ve spent my life working for … a rainbow of women making laws at the highest level possible ….
the world is better off when ALL women win
Glad to hear this!
and THISSSSSSSS!!!!
Did they take this down? It’s telling me page doesn’t exist.
Two quick points: Dennis “Bunny Ranch” Hof being elected from the grave tells you every single thing you need to know about the party of Trump and then some.
And too my white sisters: (In my best Michael Corleone) You broke my heart. You broke my heart.”
I guess Leslie Jones cat knew more than the rest of us when she rolled her eyes. The breakdown of the Abrams race by race and gender indicates more support from white women than white men. Stunning.
I grew up believing than white women were reliable allys in the struggle for justice and equality. Eleanor Roosevelt, Viola Luizzo, Billie Jean King. Hell,Maude. But since 2016 and the betrayal of Hills my faith is shattered.
How is it possible that white women would give aid and comfort to the forces of Trump and Cavanaugh, under ANY circumstances?
If they were giving out million dollar checks to support Trump I would have thought that the Bra-Burners of my youth would have told him to fuck off!
What poison did Ronald Reagan unleash in he 80’s that still makes love of white privilege trump ALL other priorities.
And make no mistake, it is the residual high of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” that still animated this shit. That is why Trump is heir messiah.
Well, old school racism and biogotry is the beating heart off it but it is Robin Leach that allows them to pursue it while not connecting themselves to David Duke.
“I am not a racist. I am a supply sider. I hope my crumbs trickle down to niggers as much as anybody else.”
The profound disappointment I feel regarding my white schoolmates is devastating. They out to call it TwoFaceBook because he side of my friends on display now makes a mockery of what I assumed would be life long friendships.
But then there are you guys. You guys have not let me done once.
I have been trying to explain to people all day that white woman like me cannot talk sense into those white women that have been captured by white male patriarchy and are fed their entire lives through the toxic tube of seeing every white man as a savior and their own path to heaven available only by embracing “submit, submit, submit”.
I am 63 years old and i have been trying for over 40 years now to do this. I first tried a go at intersectionality of women of color and traditional white feminism in 1982-1983 by partnering with the Urban League on a women’s conference. When I ran for office during the last year of the woman, it was white women who brutally went after me because any white woman that is not in their mold is the enemy of all enemies. My experience running for office was a microcosm of what they do endlessly and much exponentiated when they hate on Hillary.
Even today, on facebook, women from my high school who are of that ilk will come after me. And it’s with sticks and stones that don’t break any thing on me in terms of word or anything .. “she marches with lesbians in the street”, “you’re a racist against white people”, and I still don’t forget that every night after walking my district I came home to these messages: “you want to murder all unborn babies and let’s talk about how that looks using your 2 and 7 year old daughters?” for our fevered fertilized egg as homunculus fairy tale and “here’s where they went and what they did all day”. And believe me, they must’ve stalked my kids because they were right and the damned sheriff’s office wouldn’t take them seriously. I had people I knew for decades wouldn’t talk to me because of phone calls they got accusing me of heaven knows what.
I wish I could build a magic rainbow bridge between the kind of white woman that is so addicted to the safety, privilege, and affiliation that comes with being addicted to white evangelicalism, hyper Catholicism, and any thing else that creates the profile of addict of in them but I cannot. My very existence to any of them is anathema and the more I reason, dialogue, and kill them with kindness the more they come after me and mine. Like I said, when I met Hillary Clinton in Minneapolis a year later after I fled there from fear of living in my own house, and started hearing about what she was going through, I recognized a soul sister.
For a year, I had dreams that I was black, and the KKK was burning Crosses outside my door, that I was Jewish and the SS came for me … that i was me and the Local nuts in my neighborhood were stalking my kids to school and there was nothing I could about it … night after night after night in that same order like some bizarre twilight zone episode.
I think about the only thing that gets to these women is when the get knocked off the pedestal by some crisis in life that shows them who they are and who they surround themselves with. But, again, in my experiences that’s when their churches and men work hardest on the brainwashing process and work hard to keep them in the fold by whatever means necessary. They are so invested with the idea that the only meaning in their life comes from being attached to a white man and a white man’s made up fairy tale that they enjoy being angry and mean. It’s a drug to them and the path to what they consider meaning in their life.
I never fail to step up when I see it and hear it. I’m used to the angry words and abuse and I just find it pathetic as fuck. But, I say this to every one I know that is their target that they hate white women that chose differently more than they had POC, immigrants, communists and the followers of Satan. This paints a pretty bleak picture of getting them separated from the rest of the hateful herd but being part of the hateful herd is their entire identity and purpose.
I’m not sure if this makes sense. I hope it does. I try to fix the system because these white women have to have an event that blasts the pedestal out from under them. No amount of love, reason, listening or understanding will change them. They see no reason for it. They don’t care about anything but staying right in their bubble. It’s their drug and they’re worse than heroin addicts.
You have certainly helped me light my way in moments of despair! It’s chilling when white women deny the truth, and when they hate, and lie about their situation. Stupidity comes to mind.
Young white women will take over eventually Ron. I just hope in time for it to matter.
Anyway, this old white girl (and my even older white neighbor lady) voted for Stacey.
The block I’m starting to wonder about are Latino men. wtf?
Ron, at least in 2016 and the primaries this year, the white women voting for monsters were, like, 70% evangelicals. The main component is not “women” but “evangelicals.”
If you take evangelicals out of the mix, a *minority* or white women vote for monsters. (It’s still a majority of white men, but only a small majority. Around 55% if I remember right.)
That’s the reason you’re not seeing much crap at Skydancing. No evangelicals. Likewise, say, female academics. No evangelicals. Etc., etc., etc.
Dakinicat is right that voting for your own privilege is a powerful drug, and that’s an important component. But it’s still important to recognize the actual active ingredient. It’s being a white evangelical.
Otherwise it’s like the guy who tried wine and water, and whisky and water, and vodka and water, and got drunk on all of them. So the obvious cause was the water.
I have had perfectly reasonable, educated friends that like had one miscarriage or severe health problem, the evangelicals move in on them at their most vulnerable, and they’re not the same women at all. They turn judgey, the talk like jesus is standing next to them all the time telling them what to do, and if you start to disagree with them, the first thing they ask is if you support killing babies … that’s like the club handshake … what do you think about killing babies in the womb?
But then how can they be on the same team as The Bunny Ranch Pimp? There is not internal consistency anymore. To whatever extent I used to make room for “FAITH”, that is over now.
When they chose the Pussy Grabber over a devoted mother and public servant who chose her family over her indignation and hurt feelings, “FAITH”, in term of politics was exposed as a complete crock of shit.
For me anyway, others who chose to entertain excuses based on imaginary friends, well, I don’t judge you.
They’ve been convinced that absolutely ANYTHING is okay if it leads to making all abortion illegal and criminal. They believe gawd will forgive them because they’re doing his work so who the tool that does it doesn’t matter. It’s only the outcome of forced pregnancy, death in pregnancy, and no access to making sex fun by eliminating the possibility of forced birth. Go stand outside an abortion clinic on the day they do abortions and listen to these freaks. It’s all about punishing women if they like sex.
They’re just using the word “faith.” Their meaning is “the system that gives me status and a meal ticket,” aka the racist patriarchy. If it was actually about faith they wouldn’t be ignoring the parts of the bible that say help the unfortunate. (See, e.g. black evangelicals.)
Being anti-choice is merely the only sanctimonious, virtue-signalling tool they have left to keep women chained to their system. At this point if you tried to tell non-evangelicals that a woman’s (only) place is at home, you’d get laughed out of the room. But make like it’s about the poor helpless babeez and suddenly people are nodding along. (Again, if it really was, you’d see them caring a bit about actual babies who need help.)
And, yes, their powergrab which they call a religion does give religion a bad name.
They also have been taught that mothers of handicapped children have tried to have an abortion so that all of those children are considered victims of pro-abortion laws, etc. I myself saw the propaganda. In the 70s saw a show on tv about a ‘girl who was 13 yrsold” who claimed to be handicapped because her mother tried to abort her. She looked in her 20s, not 13 and she did not seems to have all the handicaps she claimed. Saw the exact same thing 25 years later in another state. A “13 yrold who claimed to have handicaps due to her mother trying to abort her” Again she showed no sign of being 13 or having handicaps.
Christians give Jesus a bad name.
Yes. As a Blue state white woman in one of the bluest of cities I cannot understand why any woman would vote for Trump or Cruz or Kemp or Sessions or any of their ilk. I cannot fucking understand it. Even when I was younger and lived in a rural area I still felt the same way. We’re on the Earth to be happy and help people (as the Dalai Lama says). I’ve broken with my sister after years of trying to get through her family’s racism and I couldn’t stand to be around them any more. My sister, with the same upbringing, had the misfortune to marry and stay married to a fundy right-wing Xian nut who thinks women should be obey their husbands.
Jesus the liberal street preacher said to love your neighbor, help the poor and the sick, and treat others how you want to be treated, and that how you treated the poor and downtrodden was in effect the same as how you were treating Jesus.
“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians,” Gandhi is reported to have said.
Ron
I am so glad you are here. I learn from you. I hold the white women voting for Kemp or deSantis or Trump as traitors to my sex and to my humanity.
I agree! As an older white woman, I will never be able to understand them.
“Trickle down.” That’s always been BS as we know. Those at the top keep it all for themselves. Whenever I hear the phrase “trickle down/supply side” I think of that Bruce Cockburn song with the words “trickle down everywhere …. trickle down blood” and his condemnation of Reaganomics.
I’ve always wondered who wants a trickle?
He booted the oldest living confederate widow …
He owns the senate now so the appointments are going to get gruesome.
Daisy Moses aka Granny aka Jeff Secessions is out.
Whoever replaces him is Muellers new boss.
I smell a Saturday night massacre.
me too … I think he believes he can get away with it because the senate will support him and Dems are helpless there
That tweet? Translation from the Trumpish: “Disloyal asshole! Betcha wish youd done it Different now. Dont let the door hitya on the way out!”
I see a tweet above calls out white women for not voting for Stacey Abrams (true and I cannot understand those 76%), but nothing called out about the white men voting for Kemp.
Kemp. What is wrong with the majority of white people in Georgia? And in Texas. Cruz over Beto?
No way should Abrams concede. The rest of her votes are still uncounted in some hidden software program and with the tens of thousands of voters prevented from casting their ballots.
What you say is valid, but I did not grow investing a great deal of faith in white men. I am not so much disappointed as validated. But I expected something, integrity, intelligence, intuition, something from women.
I did too.
It’s sickening.
With you on that, Ron.
That is very interesting that the letter is undated.
I agree with Pelosi, trump (as a candidate of the 2016 election) cannot name the probe director
Thread:
This district is half in the red part of the state. Yeah, even with a Gov and both Senators who are Dems, we still have some (thinly populated rural) red areas we’re trying to turn blue.
OMG there is still hope! And fuck the Rethug vote suppressors.
Did anyone else experience a “post-election let down?” Two years of depression and anticipation of of pushing back on Trumplethinskin over in one day. Not a champagne moment, but still hopeful.
Yes.