https://medium.com/@james.hatch/my-semester-with-the-snowflakes-888285f0e662

I’m not crying, YOU’RE crying. (Good thing everybody’s at lunch, here in the cube farm.)

«”My grandfather came to Yale and when WWII started, he left for the Navy and flew planes in the Pacific theater. After he came home, he came back to Yale, but he couldn’t finish. He locked himself in his room and drank and eventually had to leave, so I feel like I am helping him finish here at Yale and I’m doing it with a veteran, you.”»

https://twitter.com/apihtawikosisan/status/1208920326156910593?s=20

https://twitter.com/apihtawikosisan/status/1208920338748194816?s=20

“Hurt people hurt people.” Good to remember.

âpihtawikosisân (@apihtawikosisan) Tweeted:
Sometimes the ppl you help out the most, put in the most time on, are the ones who turn around and do you the dirtiest. Because you are the one they can reach in their trauma. It’s harsh, but what are you going to do?

âpihtawikosisân (@apihtawikosisan) Tweeted:
Fuck I wish it wasn’t like this. How easy it must be to give no fucks about anyone and never risk the fallout…how empty. The truly selfish don’t ever risk this, but who the hell wants to be like that, honestly. Hurt people hurt people.

https://twitter.com/amandahess/status/1208118558208561152?s=20

https://twitter.com/Leahgreenb/status/1208468354605944833?s=20

2010, y’all. For those, like me, who need Google to catch up, Tom Perriello lost his re-election for US House (I guess Greenberg was on his staff?), Dems lost the House two years into Obama’s admin (and never got it back), Republicans swept state elections (and then redistricted), and the Rally to Restore Sanity was Stewart’s entertainment event the weekend before the election (prime canvassing weekend).

Amanda Hess (@amandahess) Tweeted:
«as we reflect on this decade, let’s remember that in 2010, just before the midterms, Jon Stewart held an enormous joke political rally on the National Mall, criticized the media for conflating “real racists and Tea Partiers,” and said he didn’t care if anyone even voted»

Leah Greenberg (@Leahgreenb) Tweeted:
«Oh my god, I was in VA-05, three days out from losing my job and desperately trying to get volunteers to come down from D.C. to canvass

Over and over again people told me they couldn’t canvass because they were going to the Rally to Restore Sanity and THEY WERE SO PROUD OF IT https://t.co/XQvjHC7sET »

https://twitter.com/bshelburne/status/1208567297553707008?s=20

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1208567287990640641.html

“tough on crime”

Beth Shelburne (@bshelburne) Tweeted:
When tough on crime people say everyone in prison deserves to be there, think of Mr. Simmons. We should be ashamed of laws that categorically throw people away in the name of safety. We should question anyone who supports Alabama’s habitual offender law. It needs to go. 12/12

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americans-are-at-each-others-throats-heres-one-way-out/2019/12/20/c8de01ca-2292-11ea-a153-dce4b94e4249_story.html

Seems important.

«Five to 15 percent said they would support some level of violence against their political opponents. (And this range was the same on both sides.) That’s a minority, but high conflict is almost always stoked by a small number of people.

….

Do people actually become less hateful if someone tells them it’s not cool to be hateful? Yes, it turns out, many do.

….

You can even do it yourself, right now, at home. People were also pacified by tweets calling for peace from random strangers, Kalmoe and Mason found.

….

Millions of regular Americans still have enough distance from the conflict to step out of it. And that may not always be true.»

https://elizabethwarren.com/wealth-gap

Finally, in 2019, a politician uses the web (invented a generation or so ago) at something beginning to approach its full potential.

https://cookpolitical.com/analysis/senate/senate-overview/majority-play

We can do this.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/why-two-allies-of-washington-state-rep-matt-shea-turned-on-the-controversial-lawmaker/

Without two libertarian security guards turning on this right-wing (not “controversial”) state politician, I wonder if his behavior would have come to light.

(He just got busted for working to support armed domestic terrorism against the U.S. — https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/washington-state-rep-matt-shea-engaged-in-domestic-terrorism-against-the-u-s-says-state-house-inquiry/ .)

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mitch-mcconnell-turned-the-courts-conservativeand-democrats-helped-him?ref=scroll

https://twitter.com/vanitaguptaCR/status/1207864234211721216?s=20

On blue slips and the attempt at comity:

«Democrats need to understand that once one side destroys a norm, it’s not a norm anymore—no matter how much we wish it were or try to reinstate it. So we must not self-impose a set of rules that will only apply to us. Blue slips are dead. ABA ratings are irrelevant. Hold hearings with multiple circuit court nominees, even if the Senate is in recess. This is the new normal.»

Vanita Gupta (@vanitaguptaCR) Tweeted:
«To everyone watching the #DemDebate, we need you in the fight to save our courts.

Trump has named ZERO Black circuit court nominees in 3 years. Many of his picks have awful civil rights records. Some refused to affirm #BrownvBoard.

We deserve better, and we can’t stop fighting.»

The “pro-life” movement is racist and sexist and has nothing to do with religion (except to use it as a tool of manipulation). Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society know exactly what they are doing.