What if the US DID act like a Christian nation ... you know, one that attempted to follow the teachings of the guy the dudes at Hobby Lobby profess to believe in?

Hmm ...

The poor would be fed and housed ... children would not go hungry ... the sick would get access to medical care ... the stranger would be welcomed ... people on the margins would be treated with kindness and respect. It's easy to find all that good stuff in the actual teachings of Jesus.

Things Jesus did NOT talk about ... gays ... abortion ... open carry

Not so sure Jesus would be happy with a bunch of really rich white dudes attempting to steal artifacts from another country or deciding for their employees what birth control they could or could not have. Closing on Sundays does NOT make you a Christian.

Whenever I see things like Hobby Lobby's noxious newspaper ad, I come back to this famous piece from John Fugelsang (person voted most likely to have a White Evangelical for lunch):

https://twitter.com/JohnFugelsang/status/415658769511485440?s=20

SCOTUS has ruled 5-4 (gotta love Goresuch, right?) to uphold Husted's purge of Ohio's voter rolls.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/11/politics/supreme-court-husted-ohio/index.html

This means that we all need to make sure that our friends and neighbors are registered to vote ... and then make sure they get to the polls this fall and sweep all of the bums out of office.

So, James O'Keeffe and his Project Veritas is out after evil teachers and their evil unions. They are coming into school districts and trying to catch union representatives admitting that they would protect teachers engaged in wrongdoing.

They got caught trying to sneak into Cleveland Public Schools, and this happened in Lordstown:



This is just creepy. They try to get people to say something in agreement with them and then edit the hell out of it. They brought down ACORN, attacked Planned Parenthood, and now their target is unions.

Here is the full story: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2018/05/ohio_teachers_say_project_veri.html#incart_river_index

Time to say thank you to all the energetic field organizers operating on very little sleep to make sure GOTV is a big success ... to all the team leaders who have given up the four days leading up to the election to make sure all runs smoothly ... to all the people canvassing ... to all the people phonebanking ... donating food to the volunteers ... driving canvassers and voters ... I could go on and on.

Here's to you and your hard work on the ground game that will make SURE that we will be celebrating America's first woman president!!!

#HILLYES

Hillary and Tim Kaine came to NE Ohio yesterday for a rally in Cleveland. I wasn't able to go, but I was excited about their visit and saw the event as a chance to give Hillary some of the good coverage she deserves, but our local press outlets don't seem eager to provide.

Instead our local press coverage was awful. On the six o'clock local news: "All anyone can talk about is her cough." (Yes, the news anchor actually said that.) Really? She holds a rally, and (as I learned later) spoke for 20 minutes, but all I hear from the folks who claim they will keep me informed is that she coughed. I also found out (thank you, Twitter) that the rally was also attended by Senator Sherrod Brown, Senate candidate Ted Strickland, Representative Marcia Fudge, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, among others. Why would anyone cover THAT in the news, I mean, really?

The vulgar talking yam also came to Ohio yesterday and spoke with a private audience elsewhere in Cleveland before talking with the folks in Canfield. Guess who got the bulk of the coverage in my local paper today--you guessed it. The vulgar talking yam (who apparently is "moderating" his immigration stance--which will be a big disappointment to the folks interviewed from Canfield, but I digress). But the paper DID mention that Hillary coughed at her rally.

I am so frustrated. I don't know what it will take to get the media to report on Hillary in any way useful to informing voters on what matters. Hillary's campaign has been up and running hard since the middle of summer, so the ground game is there. One thing we do know now is that she won't get any help from local media in this swing state.

Grassroots group Summit County Progressive Democrats are hard at work spreading the progressive message to the international media visiting the RNC. The group has planning for months to organize their message and had good success on the very first day of the convention, speaking with outlets from China, UK, and across the US. Their goal? To share all the good things that Democrats stand for and have accomplished and contrast that with the policy train wreck that is the RNC and their standard bearer.

They got good press coverage from the local Akron Beacon Journal:

http://www.ohio.com/news/break-news/summit-county-democrats-offer-media-access-to-akron-area-people-affected-by-national-issues-1.698109

A friend sent this article out to a whole bunch of us today from Daily Kos. It seems like a good day to post it and share it with you all. When it comes to the Clintons, there is always a SCANDAL and HINTS OF DISHONESTY OR HYPOCRISY. (Things that never, ever, ever happen to Republican candidates ... oh, wait--was that a pig flying by?)

I'm tired of "crooked Hillary" --"She's going to be indicted!" -- "She took money from Wall Street!"

This article addresses so much of the BS that surrounds Hillary. I read it and bookmarked it because I see it as a great resource for dealing with all of the crazy I know I will see while volunteering this fall:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/6/11/1537582/-The-most-thorough-profound-and-moving-defense-of-Hillary-Clinton-I-have-ever-seen

Personally, I would greatly prefer that my tax dollars go to some good use rather than relentless and pointless investigations of jack squat.

I am getting frustrated with the nonstop drumbeat of "don't gloat! The Bernie supporters are hurting!"

Why am I frustrated? The Bernie supporters have been misled and misinformed for months now. Hillary had the nomination after New York. If the situation had been reversed, M$M would have begun screaming for her to bow out and recognize that the nomination had been won by another. But the winner was Hillary ... so instead we heard that Bernie's "path to the nomination was very narrow" or the "math was difficult." No, the math was impossible. Bernie needed to win every state after NY by such a large margin it just wasn't happening. But Bernie supporters were told otherwise.

Now I hear over and over "voter fraud," "rigged primaries," and other such craziness. We DO have to worry about disenfranchising voters and the Republican efforts to suppress the vote in November, but the mindset that every time YOUR candidate loses it's a fraud and every time he wins it's a victory just doesn't cut it in reality.

In 2008, I supported Obama. NO ONE told me to be kind to all the people who had worked so hard for Hillary. Neither she nor her supporters got time to regroup. I could celebrate until the cows came home without being chided.

I also read that Obama should not endorse Hillary yet--things aren't over. Say what?

If I were a Bernie supporter and all this nonsense was being poured into my head regularly, I'd have trouble grasping reality, too. BUT the reality is that Hillary is the nominee, and our job NOW is to get it together and get her elected and work on all the races down ticket. We can't afford the Donald in the White House, and we need to return Paul and Mitch to the back benches where they belong.

Connie Schultz did a great column on celebrating this wonderful milestone in the face of all the nonsense we are hearing about "not gloating."



....



We keep getting told to be sensitive, but being classy and sensitive doesn't mean that we can't rejoice in the nomination of the incredibly qualified, smart, experienced WOMAN we will be working hard to put in the White House in January 2017.

https://www.creators.com/read/connie-schultz

Here in Ohio, known as the "wild west of charter schools" under the leadership (?) of John (I wanna be president) Kasich, higher education is also under fire. The test case that I am most familiar with is at The University of Akron, where a new, very Republican president has engaged in a two-year campaign to undermine academic programs, privatize student services, and fill the highest parts of the administration with very expensive cronies.

This past year rumors were flying that Akron was looking at partnering with the notorious for-profit college, ITT Tech. That apparently has fallen through, but not before the student newspaper put in a records request and learned that this planned partnership had connections to the highest levels of state government. Here is a link to the information, provided by a local monthly paper that has done fantastic work on the issues at Akron: http://www.thedevilstrip.com/home/documents-reveal-a-political-whos-who-of-ohio-supported-scarboroughs-itt-tech-plan/

I know that Ohio is not unique. Republican governors and legislatures are attacking public higher education. I just wanted to share our story with you all. We all need to be paying attention to what is happening all across the country. Public higher education is so important to our health as a nation.