https://twitter.com/barry/status/1362520729305112576


https://twitter.com/SFtrojan23/status/1362606776256929796

https://twitter.com/TheDweck/status/1361197521914138625

https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1361434127640256521

Fifty Republican senators will be able to thwart most of his legislative agenda, even though Democratic senators represent 41 million more Americans. The Supreme Court is likely to block many of his executive actions, even though a majority of those justices were appointed by Republican presidents who came to office after losing the popular vote and were confirmed by senators representing a minority of the population. And more than 50 million Americans live in states like Wisconsin, where Republicans control the legislature despite getting fewer votes and will pass another round of gerrymandered maps and new restrictions on voting to entrench minority rule for the next decade.

This isn’t about which party wins elections, but whether democracy itself survives. Some anti-democratic measures were deliberately built into a system that was designed to benefit rich white men: The Senate was created to boost small conservative states and serve as a check on the more democratic House of Representatives, while the Electoral College prevented the direct election of the president and enhanced the power of slave states through the three-fifths clause. But these features have metastasized to a degree the Founding Fathers could have never anticipated, and in ways that threaten the very notion of representative government.

In the past decade, the GOP has dropped any pretense of trying to appeal to a majority of Americans. Instead, recognizing that the structure of America’s political institutions diminishes the influence of urban areas, young Americans, and voters of color, it caters to a conservative white minority that is drastically overrepresented in the Electoral College, the Senate, and gerrymandered legislative districts. This strategy of white grievance reached a fever pitch when domestic terrorists emboldened by the president occupied the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s Electoral College victory. But that unprecedented attempt by Trump and his allies to overturn the election results is a mere prelude to a new era of minority rule, which not only will attempt to block the agenda of a president elected by an overwhelming majority but threatens the long-term health of American democracy. “The will of the people,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1801, “is the only legitimate foundation of any government.” And now that foundation is crumbling.

No one has benefited more from minority rule—and done more to ensure it—than Mitch McConnell. For six years, he presided over a Senate majority representing fewer people than the minority party, the longest such stretch in US history, until the January Georgia runoffs gave Democrats a razor-thin majority. Now he’ll do everything he can to obstruct Biden’s popular mandate. Two days after the presidential election, sources close to McConnell told Axios that he would block Biden’s Cabinet appointees if he considered them “radical progressives.” McConnell didn’t even acknowledge Biden’s victory until 42 days after the election, when the Electoral College finalized it.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/the-insurrection-was-put-down-the-gop-plan-for-minority-rule-marches-on/


This is such an overwhelming problem. We need a Stacey Abrams in every state, for starters!

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart)

i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

-E.E. Cummings

See how odious characters of the past were brought in line by slaps on the wrist?

Scummiest of the scummy.

Anyone here think this third party stuff will gain momentum, or is this just much ado about nothing? Having conservatives splinter has to be good for those of us on the left, agreed?


The logo of the six-week-old Patriot Party of the State of Wisconsin is neither elephant or donkey, but a lion. It's site reads "Make Wisconsin Great Again."

The party was officially formed on Dec. 20, 2020 in a filing with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission, which was amended on Jan. 25, 2021. No names were included on the filing. In the blank space for the name of a treasurer is written "appointed, Not Yet."

A call to the phone number listed for the party, was answered by a man identifying himself only as "Peter" saying he was not comfortable giving any additional information, other than to say he would not describe himself as the new party's organizer or leader. He said he would pass the Examiner's message along to a communication director, but also declined to share that person's name.

The state party had a presence on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, according to Google records, but the pages have since been removed and the Twitter account suspended. However, it does have an active website and a blog post from a member who drove from Milwaukee to take part in the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally, according to the anonymous writer. It also has video from the event, claiming members were "doing sign up, advertising, networking, and organizing with the national team."

https://patch.com/wisconsin/across-wi/amp/29273663/patriot-party-of-the-state-of-wisconsin-created-as-trump-voters-split-from-the-gop