Besides upstanding lawyers and law-abiding honorable judges, here's a growing list (in no particular order) of Profiles in Courage men and women who refuse to be cowed or yield to the force of Trump/Musk/MAGA/Fox "News" intimidation:Heather Cox Richardson Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Ruth Ben-Ghait, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Hayes, Jim Acosta, Jen Rubin And the Contrarians, Lucian Truscott IV, AOC, Elizabeth Warren, Tim Snyder, Robert B. Hubbell, Steve Schmidt, Josh Marshall, Paul Krugman, Andy Borowitz, Jeff Danziger, Will Bunch, Jake Tapper et al. And, as Joyce Vance says, "We're in this together"--or via Jess Pipper, from rural Missouri: "Solidarity." FIGHT BACK!
If you haven't heard, there will be an economic blackout Feb 28 nationwide. This means don't buy ANYTHING unless it's from a small business. No gas, fast food, and definitely not Target, Walmart, or Amazon.
Get the word out! We want THEM to see that WE have the power. We will start with 1 day, then 3, then specific companies until our message is heard.
I'd love to join in that, but unfortunately, I have stuff on a wish list at Amazon that I want to buy (and on a larger note, unless anybody here has a plan for coming up with an alternative mail-order company not like Amazon, especially for used items like books, said boycott won't really work.) Not only that, what one congressperson/senator did to stymie Amazon in New York City may have caused people to vote for Trump:
As a USAID contractor, I can't help but feel like our job has become to go down fighting. Entirely just throw ourselves into the teeth of the Musk/Trump apparatus and gum it up to save the poor bastards left in government once we're gone. It's so gd depressing and not what I spent ten years building a career to do. I mean, we're not giving up and are going to make these fascists regret the day they thought USAID was an easy target but boy is it hard not to just sit and get drunk.
Of course it was because it didn't hurt as bad when my nose got broke, but that's just a reason, it doesn't change the fact that I was a better fighter!
You can make them rue the day they ever fucked with a hungover, angry, depressed, USAID contractor just as easily as you can make them rue just normal ol you!
They're just going to ignore court orders. Meanwhile, Hakeem Jeffries is just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ we have no power guess we just have to let them do whatever they want.
And I'm getting tired of people who think that every random comment is worthless unless the person writing it has delivered white papers and started working groups with detailed bullet points.
So couple things-- you have no fucking idea what I've been doing you just jump straight to "keyboard warrior", you have NO IDEA jesusfuckingchrist about my personal safety and finally, shouting CHANGE CHANGE /is/ doing something. It's not much, but voices matter, every voice, even ones that seem ineffectual.
But so much easier to jump at and criticize people who are frustrated and scared. Talk about coming from a place of safety.
He's probably got a point; most of the emoprogressive (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Emo%20Progressive ) left is all bark and no bite, usually, and are also responsible for Trump having come to power due to all of the shenanigans that it pulled in the 2010's.
"...To prove that USAID is worthless, the White House pointed and shrieked at USAID grants it said funded gender-affirming care and DEI in other countries..."
It doesn't even matter if some of their charges were true, the fact that made up a whole bunch of outrageous lies reveals that their motives are not pure - unless one considers them pure evil.
Yeah, that's about par for the course. These assholes exaggerate and lie about everything in order to try and make it look like they're on the side of the angels.
"The complaint argues, with 100 percent accuracy, that a president can’t eliminate a federal agency that was created by Congress, so knock off that unconstitutional shit toot sweet, OK?"
Since when has Mooseballs Mussolini given a shit about laws and the Constitution? To him, the law is whatever he says it is ("'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’" Lewis Carroll). The Fulvous Flatulence has made it crystal clear that he'll follow the Constitution only so far as he agrees with the passage in question, and ignore everything that would put a damper on his fulfilling his wet dreams.
-----
"And pursuant to federal statute, Congress is the only entity that may lawfully dismantle the agency."
IDK about anyone else, but I don't believe the Mango Malignancy is overly concerned about Congressional approvals. For the next two years, at a minimum*, the Sociopathic Marigold Swamp Monster's trained attack Dachshunds in Congress will rubber stamp whatever he wants.
(* IMO, the increasing asshattery of the RINOs will turn off enough voters that the New GOP will lose its majority in the House, Senate, or both in the mid terms. If this does occur [wishcasting?] than the Pumpkin Pestilence will be the lamest of lame ducks and any policies he wants to implement that he hasn't already rammed through stand a less than zero chance of making it to the Resolute Desk for his signature.)
-----
"Staff who operate humanitarian operations at refugee camps in Syria were told to stop work"
No biggie. Ever since Gabbard's BFF, al-Bashir, was toppled the country isn't deserving of US aid.
The “defund” mantra always touted a very bad idea for all the foreseeable bad consequences that would follow. Hair Furor and Eloon Xhitter have provided a clinic on how that is not the way to restructure government.
Here's some smart points that people like yourself in the United States need to follow (and should've been following all of this time):
#1 – The only time you’re going to agree 100% of the time with a politician is if you are that politician. Otherwise, there’s at least one issue, and probably more, where you’ll have disagreements. If you look back at the past 6 years, at various times the “lefter than thou” blogs have erupted in screaming fury about something that one progressive hero or another has done. They’re usually considered “progressive icons,” except when they’ve cast a vote or introduced a bill or amendment which tramples on whatever is the perceived “true” ideal, and they’ve all done that several times. A politician you agree with 80 or 90 percent of the time is far and away better than the politician who doesn’t agree with you at all.
#2 – If you don’t vote, you don’t count. The whole notion that you’re “sending a message” by not voting? That the party has to give you what you want, in order to get you to the polls? It’s garbage. The only “message” you’ve sent by doing that is to show that you are an unreliable voter at best, and politicians discount you in a hurry. Nice if you show up, but they’re not counting on it. You can whine and bitch all you want about “corporatist control,” etc., but at the end of it all, politicians count bodies in the voting booth. Parties care about what their voters think. If you’re not one of those voters, then politicians and the party don’t care what you think.
#3 – Threats are meaningless. Promises aren’t. Over the past several years, I’ve heard a lot of talk about primarying some “offending” politician. Various members of the House, Senators, or even the President have had threats of primaries. I lived in a district next to two “offending” House members who were by deity going to get a primary in 2010, according to the far left. They didn’t get one, and that was repeated in districts across the country then, and in the 2012 cycle. Oh, I know some jumped on various bandwagons when there was a primary, but they weren’t initiated by the people making the threats. In the last election, there was a real progressive running in the Democratic primary to go up against a Tea Party Republican incumbent. The amount of help and support he received from the people who had been saying “real progressives should run?” None. So what did you show? Your threats were meaningless noise. A threat is not a promise. A promise is when you actually deliver on your threat. That means something.
#4 – RTFM! That’s a tech term, meaning read the fucking manual! In this case, do some basic research. The Constitution, the rules of the House and the Senate, and some actual history, not the mythology. If you’re going to be a “political activist” or claim to be “politically aware,” you damn well need to know the basic operating procedures of the government you’re claiming you want to change or influence. When you scream your head off about something the President didn’t do, and it was Congress’s fault, all you’ve done is prove your ignorance. If you want to be taken seriously, RTFM.
#5 – You have to do it yourself. You want a “progressive” candidate? Go find one. You want the party to listen to your concerns? Then get involved with your local party. Don’t expect someone else to do it for you. You ever wonder why various groups are considered “a base” within the Democratic Party? It’s pretty simple. They got involved. They recruited candidates, provided warm bodies for campaign staffs, voter contacts, door-to-door work, raised money, and made sure they got their people into the voting booth. They did it over and over again, until the Democratic Party “got the message.” The current “extreme Left” or frustrati? Nope. You continually gripe about the President “not doing something,” or are saying that the “Party should.” You’re expecting someone else to do that for you. You want it, you’re going to have to work for it, because no one is going to do it for you. Blogging and commenting on blogs isn’t “activism.”
#6 – You don’t win by losing. There’s an apocryphal story, attached to many politicians, which goes like this: The bright-eyed, idealistic young candidate goes to a party elder to gain their support. The candidate spends a great deal of time telling the party elder all the great plans they have, how they’re going to make things better once they’re in office. The party elder listens patiently, and then says to the candidate: “That’s a wonderful set of ideas. But first, you have to win.” The moral is that you can have all sorts of wonderful ideas – and ideals – but if you’re not in office, or your party isn’t, it doesn’t matter. Think about that. Remember all the ideas that Ralph Nader had in 2000 that made some progressives swoon? They don’t matter, because he lost. Do you know how much Alan Grayson has accomplished legislatively this term? How much progressive legislation has been passed since the end of 2010? None. Why? Because Democrats don’t control the House. The message sent by losing? That you lost.
#7 – There’s a time and place for everything. There’s a saying I heard years ago: “In the primary, you fall in love. In the general election, you fall in line.” The lesson in that is that it’s expected that you’ll decide which candidate you really want to run on your party line, and advocate strongly for them through the primary. Once the primary is over, you’re expected to back the winning candidate, even if it wasn’t the one you wanted. That’s called “party discipline,” and it’s something that despite moans about the lack of it on the part of the far left, they lack themselves. There is a time when you can advocate strongly for your position, and there’s a time when you need to back off. I pointed out back in early 2011 that they were still complaining about “Blue Dogs” when … it didn’t matter. There was no point in it because Republicans had taken control of the House. That’s just one example of many when the Left have shot themselves in the foot by attacking Democrats when it was either meaningless or would help the Republicans. You also don’t waste effort on what’s not important now. For example, the various frustrati blogs and a large number of “left” media pundits are spending many words on who they want to run for President in 2016. You know what? It’s not important now. What is important is the election we’re having this year. In December, you can start discussing 2016, but right now? No. It’s neither the time or the place to do it.
As I said back then, this is not rocket science. It is hard work, and things don’t change overnight. That’s what the adults have been telling you. We understand that we’re not going to be 100% happy with any politician, we need to vote every time, that we aren’t going to make meaningless threats, that there are rules we have to follow, we need to do a lot of work, and most importantly, if we don’t win, we don’t get what we want. Until you do that, all you’re doing is throwing tantrums, and no, we’re not putting up with it. If you haven’t been paying attention for the past few years, you’d realize that all you accomplished with your last set of tantrums was to let Republicans start rolling back a lot of progressive gains. Don’t let it happen again.
OT: neocon sci-fi 'author' tries to 'explain' to us 'idiots' about what Trump & Musk have been doing to the government, and why it's a good thing (https://monsterhunternation.com/2025/02/18/educating-the-stupid-on-how-audits-work-in-real-life/ )
And he wonders why he gets dis-invited from being a guest at conventions.
The cruelty of course is the point. Motherfuckers!
Besides upstanding lawyers and law-abiding honorable judges, here's a growing list (in no particular order) of Profiles in Courage men and women who refuse to be cowed or yield to the force of Trump/Musk/MAGA/Fox "News" intimidation:Heather Cox Richardson Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Ruth Ben-Ghait, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell, Chris Hayes, Jim Acosta, Jen Rubin And the Contrarians, Lucian Truscott IV, AOC, Elizabeth Warren, Tim Snyder, Robert B. Hubbell, Steve Schmidt, Josh Marshall, Paul Krugman, Andy Borowitz, Jeff Danziger, Will Bunch, Jake Tapper et al. And, as Joyce Vance says, "We're in this together"--or via Jess Pipper, from rural Missouri: "Solidarity." FIGHT BACK!
Oh no, not the farmers. Wait, they voted for this shit. Karma.
Musk is more popular then Trump
Trump is his little puppet
SHARE THE NEWS
If you haven't heard, there will be an economic blackout Feb 28 nationwide. This means don't buy ANYTHING unless it's from a small business. No gas, fast food, and definitely not Target, Walmart, or Amazon.
Get the word out! We want THEM to see that WE have the power. We will start with 1 day, then 3, then specific companies until our message is heard.
Please spread the word.
Thank you
I'd love to join in that, but unfortunately, I have stuff on a wish list at Amazon that I want to buy (and on a larger note, unless anybody here has a plan for coming up with an alternative mail-order company not like Amazon, especially for used items like books, said boycott won't really work.) Not only that, what one congressperson/senator did to stymie Amazon in New York City may have caused people to vote for Trump:
https://www.reclaimthefight.com/2019/12/brandstanding-aoc-amazon-and-how-far.html
I wouldn't call either one popular.
This amounts to an old style Soviet "Purge" People will just start vanishing
Not counting those who fall from windows.
As a USAID contractor, I can't help but feel like our job has become to go down fighting. Entirely just throw ourselves into the teeth of the Musk/Trump apparatus and gum it up to save the poor bastards left in government once we're gone. It's so gd depressing and not what I spent ten years building a career to do. I mean, we're not giving up and are going to make these fascists regret the day they thought USAID was an easy target but boy is it hard not to just sit and get drunk.
You can do both...
I was always a better fighter when I was drunk.
Of course it was because it didn't hurt as bad when my nose got broke, but that's just a reason, it doesn't change the fact that I was a better fighter!
You can make them rue the day they ever fucked with a hungover, angry, depressed, USAID contractor just as easily as you can make them rue just normal ol you!
Good thing my hair is already gray. Now if I can just keep from tearing it out.
Good thing I'm bald.
The only hair I have left to pull out is the kind you pull out anyway... you know, so you can hear again.
I mean, also except for my Rooney eyebrows - they require a weedeater.
OK, court order blocking at least some of it has been handed down.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/02/07/g-s1-47224/usaid-freeze-judge-trump
These Are Some of the Lawyers Working for Elon Musk’s DOGE — ProPublica
https://www.propublica.org/article/elon-musk-doge-lawyers-supreme-court
They're just going to ignore court orders. Meanwhile, Hakeem Jeffries is just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ we have no power guess we just have to let them do whatever they want.
And you suggest he do what?
Perhaps you have some good ideas, but I'm getting distinctly tired of keyboard warriors who are shouting "charge, charge!" from safe zones.
And I'm getting tired of people who think that every random comment is worthless unless the person writing it has delivered white papers and started working groups with detailed bullet points.
So couple things-- you have no fucking idea what I've been doing you just jump straight to "keyboard warrior", you have NO IDEA jesusfuckingchrist about my personal safety and finally, shouting CHANGE CHANGE /is/ doing something. It's not much, but voices matter, every voice, even ones that seem ineffectual.
But so much easier to jump at and criticize people who are frustrated and scared. Talk about coming from a place of safety.
He's probably got a point; most of the emoprogressive (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Emo%20Progressive ) left is all bark and no bite, usually, and are also responsible for Trump having come to power due to all of the shenanigans that it pulled in the 2010's.
Completely inappropriate. Comment and reply both removed. Please review the commenting rules. https://www.wonkette.com/p/rules-for-commenting-radicals
"...To prove that USAID is worthless, the White House pointed and shrieked at USAID grants it said funded gender-affirming care and DEI in other countries..."
It doesn't even matter if some of their charges were true, the fact that made up a whole bunch of outrageous lies reveals that their motives are not pure - unless one considers them pure evil.
The stuff they're shrieking about amounts to nothing Not even.001% of USAID budget
Yeah, that's about par for the course. These assholes exaggerate and lie about everything in order to try and make it look like they're on the side of the angels.
"The complaint argues, with 100 percent accuracy, that a president can’t eliminate a federal agency that was created by Congress, so knock off that unconstitutional shit toot sweet, OK?"
Since when has Mooseballs Mussolini given a shit about laws and the Constitution? To him, the law is whatever he says it is ("'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’" Lewis Carroll). The Fulvous Flatulence has made it crystal clear that he'll follow the Constitution only so far as he agrees with the passage in question, and ignore everything that would put a damper on his fulfilling his wet dreams.
-----
"And pursuant to federal statute, Congress is the only entity that may lawfully dismantle the agency."
IDK about anyone else, but I don't believe the Mango Malignancy is overly concerned about Congressional approvals. For the next two years, at a minimum*, the Sociopathic Marigold Swamp Monster's trained attack Dachshunds in Congress will rubber stamp whatever he wants.
(* IMO, the increasing asshattery of the RINOs will turn off enough voters that the New GOP will lose its majority in the House, Senate, or both in the mid terms. If this does occur [wishcasting?] than the Pumpkin Pestilence will be the lamest of lame ducks and any policies he wants to implement that he hasn't already rammed through stand a less than zero chance of making it to the Resolute Desk for his signature.)
-----
"Staff who operate humanitarian operations at refugee camps in Syria were told to stop work"
No biggie. Ever since Gabbard's BFF, al-Bashir, was toppled the country isn't deserving of US aid.
fnord
The “defund” mantra always touted a very bad idea for all the foreseeable bad consequences that would follow. Hair Furor and Eloon Xhitter have provided a clinic on how that is not the way to restructure government.
"Incel Clown Posse" -- brilliant. I plan to use this in conversation at least 30 times today.
Oh yeah, because using that verbiage worked so well the last time.
The next time you decide to use that, take a look at this (https://skygilbert.blogspot.com/2024/11/what-just-happened.html ), and then do some self-reflection about what happened last year due to the atmosphere caused by the use of said verbiage.
MAGA America, the Stinking Shithole on the Hill.
So, why are you still here if you feel that way? Find a way to stop complaining and fix it, or leave.
who the f*ck are you? some fascist troll?
Oh yeah, one more:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140319224338/http://pleasecutthecrap.com/10-things-all-progressives-should-understand-for-2014-and-beyond/
No, I'm a pragmatic progressive (or pragprog).
Here's some smart points that people like yourself in the United States need to follow (and should've been following all of this time):
#1 – The only time you’re going to agree 100% of the time with a politician is if you are that politician. Otherwise, there’s at least one issue, and probably more, where you’ll have disagreements. If you look back at the past 6 years, at various times the “lefter than thou” blogs have erupted in screaming fury about something that one progressive hero or another has done. They’re usually considered “progressive icons,” except when they’ve cast a vote or introduced a bill or amendment which tramples on whatever is the perceived “true” ideal, and they’ve all done that several times. A politician you agree with 80 or 90 percent of the time is far and away better than the politician who doesn’t agree with you at all.
#2 – If you don’t vote, you don’t count. The whole notion that you’re “sending a message” by not voting? That the party has to give you what you want, in order to get you to the polls? It’s garbage. The only “message” you’ve sent by doing that is to show that you are an unreliable voter at best, and politicians discount you in a hurry. Nice if you show up, but they’re not counting on it. You can whine and bitch all you want about “corporatist control,” etc., but at the end of it all, politicians count bodies in the voting booth. Parties care about what their voters think. If you’re not one of those voters, then politicians and the party don’t care what you think.
#3 – Threats are meaningless. Promises aren’t. Over the past several years, I’ve heard a lot of talk about primarying some “offending” politician. Various members of the House, Senators, or even the President have had threats of primaries. I lived in a district next to two “offending” House members who were by deity going to get a primary in 2010, according to the far left. They didn’t get one, and that was repeated in districts across the country then, and in the 2012 cycle. Oh, I know some jumped on various bandwagons when there was a primary, but they weren’t initiated by the people making the threats. In the last election, there was a real progressive running in the Democratic primary to go up against a Tea Party Republican incumbent. The amount of help and support he received from the people who had been saying “real progressives should run?” None. So what did you show? Your threats were meaningless noise. A threat is not a promise. A promise is when you actually deliver on your threat. That means something.
#4 – RTFM! That’s a tech term, meaning read the fucking manual! In this case, do some basic research. The Constitution, the rules of the House and the Senate, and some actual history, not the mythology. If you’re going to be a “political activist” or claim to be “politically aware,” you damn well need to know the basic operating procedures of the government you’re claiming you want to change or influence. When you scream your head off about something the President didn’t do, and it was Congress’s fault, all you’ve done is prove your ignorance. If you want to be taken seriously, RTFM.
#5 – You have to do it yourself. You want a “progressive” candidate? Go find one. You want the party to listen to your concerns? Then get involved with your local party. Don’t expect someone else to do it for you. You ever wonder why various groups are considered “a base” within the Democratic Party? It’s pretty simple. They got involved. They recruited candidates, provided warm bodies for campaign staffs, voter contacts, door-to-door work, raised money, and made sure they got their people into the voting booth. They did it over and over again, until the Democratic Party “got the message.” The current “extreme Left” or frustrati? Nope. You continually gripe about the President “not doing something,” or are saying that the “Party should.” You’re expecting someone else to do that for you. You want it, you’re going to have to work for it, because no one is going to do it for you. Blogging and commenting on blogs isn’t “activism.”
#6 – You don’t win by losing. There’s an apocryphal story, attached to many politicians, which goes like this: The bright-eyed, idealistic young candidate goes to a party elder to gain their support. The candidate spends a great deal of time telling the party elder all the great plans they have, how they’re going to make things better once they’re in office. The party elder listens patiently, and then says to the candidate: “That’s a wonderful set of ideas. But first, you have to win.” The moral is that you can have all sorts of wonderful ideas – and ideals – but if you’re not in office, or your party isn’t, it doesn’t matter. Think about that. Remember all the ideas that Ralph Nader had in 2000 that made some progressives swoon? They don’t matter, because he lost. Do you know how much Alan Grayson has accomplished legislatively this term? How much progressive legislation has been passed since the end of 2010? None. Why? Because Democrats don’t control the House. The message sent by losing? That you lost.
#7 – There’s a time and place for everything. There’s a saying I heard years ago: “In the primary, you fall in love. In the general election, you fall in line.” The lesson in that is that it’s expected that you’ll decide which candidate you really want to run on your party line, and advocate strongly for them through the primary. Once the primary is over, you’re expected to back the winning candidate, even if it wasn’t the one you wanted. That’s called “party discipline,” and it’s something that despite moans about the lack of it on the part of the far left, they lack themselves. There is a time when you can advocate strongly for your position, and there’s a time when you need to back off. I pointed out back in early 2011 that they were still complaining about “Blue Dogs” when … it didn’t matter. There was no point in it because Republicans had taken control of the House. That’s just one example of many when the Left have shot themselves in the foot by attacking Democrats when it was either meaningless or would help the Republicans. You also don’t waste effort on what’s not important now. For example, the various frustrati blogs and a large number of “left” media pundits are spending many words on who they want to run for President in 2016. You know what? It’s not important now. What is important is the election we’re having this year. In December, you can start discussing 2016, but right now? No. It’s neither the time or the place to do it.
As I said back then, this is not rocket science. It is hard work, and things don’t change overnight. That’s what the adults have been telling you. We understand that we’re not going to be 100% happy with any politician, we need to vote every time, that we aren’t going to make meaningless threats, that there are rules we have to follow, we need to do a lot of work, and most importantly, if we don’t win, we don’t get what we want. Until you do that, all you’re doing is throwing tantrums, and no, we’re not putting up with it. If you haven’t been paying attention for the past few years, you’d realize that all you accomplished with your last set of tantrums was to let Republicans start rolling back a lot of progressive gains. Don’t let it happen again.
https://cendax.wordpress.com/2014/03/30/politics-101-for-the-left-revisited/