Monday Open Thread | Why The Janus Decision Was So Harmful

Posted on July 2, 2018 by rikyrah

It is not a secret that the GOP hates unions.
They hate unions because they established benefits for workers that made their lives better.
40 Hour work week
Overtime
Medical leave
Maternity Leave
Workplace Protections

All came because of unions.
Unions also were the way that several generations of Black Americans found their way to the middle class.
And, don’t think that the GOP doesn’t know that.

Grew up in a union household. Both my parents made sure that I understood the history of unions in how it helped Black Americans.

So, the Janus decision has definitely been a blow.

…………………..

The Supreme Court’s Janus Ruling Is A Blow To Black Women
Judith Ohikuare
June 27, 2018, 4:50 PM

There’s a good reason the Supreme Court’s ruling on Janus v. AFSCME is being called the “single most consequential ruling of the year.”
President Trump celebrated the 5-4 decision in a tweet this morning, calling it a “big loss for the coffers of the Democrats!” — but by many measures, it’s potential a loss for a wide swath of women from many backgrounds across the country.

The case centered on Mark Janus, an employee of the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, who sued the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Janus argued that government employees who choose not to join unions should not be forced to pay “fair-share” or “agency” fees that support union contract negotiations — even if they benefit from it.

……………..

But as The New York Times notes, “unions say that reasoning is flawed. Nonmembers are already entitled to refunds of payments spent on political activities, like advertising to support a political candidate.” Additionally, even if nonunion workers opt out, they’ll still be able to collect on the benefits of public sector unions in their organizations — a practice called “free riding.”

“Because unions must, by law, represent everyone equally, if there’s no requirement to pay your fair share, then unions would end up providing costly representation to lots of people who decided not to pay for it,” Vox explains. Basically, since employees can now choose not to pay for union services, but still get those services by law, public sector unions will inevitably hit a funding crisis.

The decision is set to impact women and workers of color, as unions have traditionally helped disenfranchised groups fight for fair pay. “Unions play an essential role in boosting the quality of jobs around the country and the research shows that women and people of color especially benefit from the collective bargaining power unions provide,” said Heidi Hartmann, the president of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) in a statement. “Labor unions have been at the forefront of the fight for fair pay and helped secure labor standards that are cornerstones of the American workplace, including the 40-hour work week, a national minimum wage, premium pay for overtime, health insurance, and family and medical leave.”

Nearly half of union workers are public sector employees, and many of them are women. “Black women in particular could be hurt by Janus, as they are disproportionately represented in public sector jobs,” says the Economic Policy Institute. “[They] have traditionally faced a double pay gap — a gender pay gap and a racial wage gap. However, unions help reduce these pay gaps. Working black women in unions are paid 94.9% of what their black male counterparts make, while nonunion black women are paid just 91% of their counterparts.”

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93 Responses to Monday Open Thread | Why The Janus Decision Was So Harmful

  1. Liza says:
    July 2, 2018 at 7:19 pm

    This is just wrong. Is there anyone connected to Trump who isn’t a belligerent asshole?
    https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1013887684861804544

    Reply
  2. Liza says:
    July 2, 2018 at 7:13 pm

    Good news. This kid is going to college!
    https://twitter.com/TheRoot/status/1013859894733271040

    Reply
  3. Liza says:
    July 2, 2018 at 6:40 pm

    Reply
  4. Liza says:
    July 2, 2018 at 6:31 pm

    This is so shortsighted and so outright stupid that I’m at a loss for words.

    https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1013809536463974401

    Reply
  9. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 4:34 pm

    @RawStory: Alabama Boy Scouts hurled racial slurs and threw rocks at Ethiopian troop member https://t.co/PlI405sVxR https://twitter.com/RawStory/status/1013881440239579136?s=17

    Reply
  10. Liza says:
    July 2, 2018 at 4:15 pm

    Grifting is the family stock and trade.
    https://twitter.com/Politics_PR/status/1013880780576120838

    Reply
    • Liza says:
      July 2, 2018 at 4:01 pm

      Sybrina Fulton @SybrinaFulton
      3h3 hours ago

      It will also air on @BET July 30th 💜 #TeamTrayvon #RestInPowerTrayvon2017

      Reply
  13. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 2:53 pm

    GOP senator: Trump can name SCOTUS pick despite criminal investigation
    07/02/18 10:30 AM
    By Steve Benen

    One of the more compelling arguments against Donald Trump being able to fill the upcoming Supreme Court vacancy is the president’s possible conflict of interest: Trump is currently the subject of a criminal investigation, and there are key questions associated with the probe that the high court may soon adjudicate.

    Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), among others, has made a persuasive case that until the special counsel’s investigation into Trump has been resolved, the responsible course for the Senate would be to wait. The alternative would be to allow a president facing an ongoing federal probe to choose a justice who may decide his own legal fate.

    I’ve been eager to hear the Republican response to the argument, and on CBS’s “Face the Nation” yesterday, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) presented the GOP’s case.

    “I think that is a ridiculous argument that is made as just an attempt to make way for their real position, which is that President Trump should never be able to confirm a vacancy.

    “Look, I don’t remember hearing the Democrats making that argument when President Bill Clinton was in fact personally under investigation when a vacancy occurred.

    “My understanding is that President Trump is not himself personally the subject of the investigation even. So, I think that is a non-argument. And we needn’t pay any attention to it.”

    It was an interesting response – which Toomey likely prepared in advance – so let’s unpack it a bit.

    First, when Bill Clinton filled Supreme Court vacancies in his first term, the investigation at the time was into a small Whitewater land deal in which he lost money. Trump, meanwhile, is being investigated for obstruction of justice and for possibly having cooperated with a foreign adversary during its attack against the United States.

    If Pat Toomey sees these two as roughly parallel, I’d suggest he take another look.

    Second, the Pennsylvania Republican said it’s his “understanding” that Trump is not the subject of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Again, Toomey apparently isn’t paying close enough attention to current events: Mueller notified the president’s lawyers months ago that Trump is, in fact, a subject of the investigation.

    Given the fact that he’s mistaken about this key detail, perhaps Toomey might want to reconsider his position on the issue?

    As for this being “a non-argument” that Americans “needn’t pay any attention to,” I was glad to see the New York Times publish this piece from Paul Schiff Berman. a professor at George Washington University Law School, which made the opposite case. Berman explained, “People under the cloud of investigation do not get to pick the judges who may preside over their cases.”

    Reply
  14. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 2:50 pm

    The circumstances of Justice Kennedy’s resignation must be investigated by the Senate Judiciary Committee before any replacement is considered. The Constitution does not give Trump the power to use underhanded means to induce Supreme Court resignations.https://t.co/S6m5oLg9mV

    — Richard W. Painter (@RWPUSA) June 30, 2018

    Reply
  15. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 2:19 pm

    Just dust 😥😥😭

    ABC News (@ABC) Tweeted:
    Astonishing video shows Thai soccer team found alive after going missing in a cave for ten days.

    “It’s okay, many people are coming…You are very strong. Very strong.” https://t.co/RrgsWwpBgL https://t.co/ggFASYeBsl https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1013853984904433664?s=17

    Reply
  16. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 1:59 pm

    I’m PAYING money for them to do this to my child?

    PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE.

    Private School for Rich Kids Announces Plans to Segregate Students By Race
    Michael Harriot
    Today 12:57pm

    If you’re reading this thinking it is one of those clickbait-y headlines for a perfectly reasonable policy, you’re probably going to be disappointed because a New York City private school for the children of wealthy parents has announced that it will begin separating its students based on their race. And, according to numerous reports, for the Little Red Schoolhouse, “will begin” is a euphemism that describes something they have already been doing for years.

    The Little Red Schoolhouse in Manhattan’s West Village charges $45,485 per year and teaches the children of David Schwimmer, Christy Turlington Burns, and Sofia Coppola. Parents recently learned that the school officially implemented an ethnicity-based segregation policy last year, according to the New York Post.

    During the 2017-2018 school year, 7th and 8th-grade students were placed in homerooms determined by their race, where they spent 30 percent of their classroom time. The plan worked out so well that the officials informed parents of plans to expand the new Jim Crow education initiative to the 6th grade in the fall.

    “Research points to the academic, social, and emotional benefits to being in a classroom with others who share racial, ethnic, linguistic, and/or cultural backgrounds” explains the student handbook for the 97-year-old institution.

    Although the school claims the practice was limited to 2 grades, one parent said she realized that all but one of the students on her child’s grade level were assigned to the same class throughout their elementary years. Another parent said his child noticed the school had been quietly segregating students by color as far back as kindergarten.

    “It was my daughter who immediately noticed that all the kids of color were in one class. If you’re going to have that policy, you need to be upfront,” he said. “We realized she was placed with all the minority students, but none of her friends. It was peculiar that they didn’t spread everyone out.”

    Reply
  17. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 1:56 pm

    But, of course.

    #MourningWhileBlack: Priest Calls Cops on Black Funeral-Goers, Tells Them to ‘Get the Hell Out’ of Church

    Michael Harriot
    Today 9:48am

    Despite having ample evidence that Jesus will work it out, a Catholic priest halted a homegoing service in Maryland to have a black family removed from the church. The servant of God even kicked the dead body out of the funeral, proving once again, there is no sanctuary when it comes to racism.

    Aside from the fact that she was no longer alive, Agnes Hicks’ Charlotte Hall, Md., mass was going along perfectly fine on Tuesday until an attendee of the funeral went in for a hug and accidentally knocked over a chalice at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, angering pastor Michael Briese.

    “There will be no funeral, no repast, everyone get the hell out of my church,” Briese reportedly told the family. According to Fox 5, Briese then kicked the family out of the place of worship, telling them to remove the body of the woman who wished to be laid to rest in the church where she was baptized.

    But Briese wasn’t done. Yea, though he walked through the valley of the shadow of death, the priest feared no evil, but he was a little bit scared of black people. Instead of getting Jesus on the main line, Briese decided to call his Lord and Savior from whom all white things flow: the police.

    After the police responded to the call, the officers determined that the family had done nothing wrong and escorted the family to another church in a nearby county where they finished the service.

    Reply
  22. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 1:06 pm

    Betsy DeVos delays student protections – says discrimination ‘not necessarily’ cause of racist policies
    July 2, 2018

    Betsy DeVos has placed a two-year postponement on an Obama-era rule that would have gone into effect July 1. The rule was designed to protect minority special needs students from racist polices after some studies show minority students are placed in special education classes at a higher rate, and are disciplined at a higher rate than their non-minority peers.

    A notice posted on the Federal Register said the department believes “the racial disparities in the identification, placement, or discipline of children with disabilities are not necessarily evidence of, or primarily caused by, discrimination.”

    Still, states can still go ahead with implementation this summer if they choose. POLITICO reported in May that at least 15 states plan to move forward with the rule, even if it’s delayed.

    Critics of the regulation — such as AASA, The School Superintendents Association, and the Council of the Great City Schools — argued the Obama administration overstepped its bounds and wrote a regulation that was too ambiguous.

    But the delay was criticized by advocates such as the National Disability Rights Network. “Rather than support the education of students with disabilities and listen to the advice received from educators working in the trenches, the Administration today has told both groups they simply do not matter,” said Curt Decker, executive director of the the organization, in a statement on Friday.

    Reply
  23. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 1:04 pm

    that’s right

    If Trump & McConnell are able to ram through another Supreme Court appointment, the reason is simple: Democrats tend to act w/ civility & play by the rules, while Republicans are willing to fight dirty & rip up the rules when it benefits them.
    👉DO DEMS WANT TO WIN, OR BE NICE?

    — Jon Cooper 🌊 (@joncoopertweets) July 2, 2018

    Reply
  25. Ametia says:
    July 2, 2018 at 12:01 pm
    Reply
    • vitaminlover says:
      July 2, 2018 at 5:26 pm

      At one time he was willing to have chimp’s baby. Now all that matters is his family. Seriously?

      Reply
  28. SouthernGirl2 says:
    July 2, 2018 at 11:50 am

    We haven’t seen ANYTHING yet, people. I told y’all he was a thug. A very dangerous mofo. He’s threatening to use his political base violently against Democrats.

    https://twitter.com/PoliticusSarah/status/1013549839873925120

    Reply
  30. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 11:13 am

    Get👏the👏 ENTIRE 👏 PHUCK 👏OUTTA 👏 HERE 👏

    NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) Tweeted:
    Baffling as it may be to elites on both left and right, Mr. Trump embodies a real if imperfect model of family values. https://t.co/D0AM2Z2T1o https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/1013599061658820609?s=17

    Reply
  31. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 10:39 am

    The Hill (@thehill) Tweeted:
    #BREAKING: Kentucky GOP governor cancels dental, vision benefits for nearly 500,000 Medicaid recipients https://t.co/Z6YSpghsa9 https://t.co/kZQ5DMNOCz https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1013805933032558592?s=17

    Reply
  33. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 10:31 am

    Womp Womp Womp

    ‘Even the cops don’t like us anymore’: Under Trump, ICE is despised and divided
    Brittny Mejia
    By BRITTNY MEJIA
    JUN 30, 2018 | 9:10 AM

    In May, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were spotted in Union Station. Their appearance triggered a phone call to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s office.

    An LAPD officer reached out to David Marin, the director of Enforcement and Removal Operations for ICE in L.A.

    Far from any raid taking place, Marin told the officer that the agents had merely gone there to get coffee.

    “I get calls regularly,” Marin said earlier this month. “It was not like that at all up until this administration.”

    Across the nation, ICE has never seemed more visible, especially as anger continues over the separation of immigrant families at the border under the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy. Protesters have rallied across the U.S., demanding that the agency be abolished — calls that have been echoed by politicians. Earlier this month, WikiLeaks published the identities and information of more than 9,000 supposed current and former ICE employees.

    Being an ICE agent has always come with challenges. The agency has faced criticism for years from immigration activists, including during the uptick in immigration enforcement during the Obama administration.

    But Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration has made ICE much more of a target. Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf won praise from many of her constituents and criticism from the White House earlier this year when she alerted her city to upcoming ICE raids.

    Many California police departments have longstanding policies against working with ICE to arrest suspects on immigration charges. But since Trump took office, California has enacted even tougher “sanctuary state” policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration officials even more, and that has heightened the strains.

    The mission of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, or ERO, is to “identify, arrest, and remove aliens who present a danger to national security or are a risk to public safety, as well as those who enter the United States illegally or otherwise undermine the integrity of our immigration laws and our border control efforts.” While ERO might be the most well-known, it is not the only division within the agency.

    ……………………………

    On a recent morning, fugitive operations teams with ERO fanned throughout the Los Angeles area, searching for “criminal aliens, illegal re-entrants and immigration fugitives.” When the agents stopped for coffee at a Starbucks in Huntington Park, they noted that the negative opinion of the agency had recently intensified.

    “Even the cops don’t like us anymore because they’re listening to the news also,” said one agent, who did not want his name included. “ ‘Oh you guys are just separating families.’ ”

    As the agents prepared to leave, a Huntington Park police car pulled into the parking lot. Someone had probably seen the agents, Marin said, and called the police.

    Reply
  35. SouthernGirl2 says:
    July 2, 2018 at 10:26 am

    You crazy mofo! He’s been accused of assault by multiple women, he grabs women by their private parts, he has admitted to walking up to women & just start kissing them, he has admitted to treating women like ISH, he endorsed a got damn pedophile for US Senate. WTF is wrong w/ you❓

    https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/1013599061658820609

    Reply
  36. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 10:13 am

    On immigration bill, Trump lies, leaves allies ‘in the wilderness’
    07/02/18 11:00 AM
    By Steve Benen

    The same afternoon as Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement, House Republicans failed spectacularly to advance their own immigration bill. Despite the backing of party leaders, the GOP proposal didn’t come close to passing, failing on a humiliating 121-to-301 vote.

    Not surprisingly, developments at the Supreme Court eclipsed the legislative fight, and the political world largely ignored the fact that Donald Trump’s ostensible allies had just ignored his instructions on one of the nation’s most pressing issues. But just as the issue started to disappear from the conversation, Trump thought he’d remind everyone of his failure.

    After Congress failed to pass a pair of immigration bills in recent weeks, President Donald Trump over the weekend tweeted that he had “never pushed” House Republicans to support either of them. Except he definitely did, in a different tweet, three days prior.

    This is a tough one to defend. While it’s true that the president gave Congress a series of mixed signals about the bill brought to the floor last week – a bill that was carefully crafted to satisfy the White House’s demands – it was literally the morning of the vote that Trump published an all-caps tweet urging Republicans to vote for it, making the case for its passage.

    Now the president’s position is that he “never pushed” House GOP lawmakers to support the plan. The evidence that he’s lying is overwhelming.

    Reply
  37. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 9:43 am

    I read stories like this, and my heart is filled with nothing but hatred towards those who have does this. And, for those who read this story and think nothing is wrong with what has happened to these children.

    They raid the factories, but don’t bother with arresting the OWNERS? Phuck.outta.here.

    After raid, immigrant families are separated in the American heartland
    Story by Eli Saslow Photos by Michael Robinson Chavez
    JUNE 30, 2018

    He had been afraid to go outside since his mother was detained in an immigration raid 14 days earlier, but now someone was pounding on the front door of their trailer. Alex Galvez, 12, waited until the knocking stopped and then cracked the door open to find a small flier left behind on the top step. He carried it into the kitchen and read it to his older sister. “Emergency giveaway outside the Post Office! Free food in your time of need!”

    “I’m not going,” Alex said, once he’d finished reading the flier. It had been the promise of free doughnuts that enticed his mother and dozens of her co-workers out of the planting fields and into the break room that day, where instead they had been met by 200 federal agents with plastic handcuffs and guns. Alex folded up the flier and tossed it onto the table.

    “I’m sorry, but I think you need to go,” said his sister, Estefany, 18. “We could always use the food.”

    “No. I don’t want to.”

    “We can’t hide in here forever,” she said, handing him an empty plastic bag. “I have to go to work. You’re the only one who can do it.”

    Since the day of the raid, they had been staying in the trailer with a rotation of older relatives — two more children adjusting to a life without their parents as a result of U.S. immigration policies. Even as President Trump and his administration promise to reunite families separated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the U.S. border, a similar crisis continues unabated within the country’s interior, where children are separated from their undocumented parents with little scrutiny and increasing frequency.

    In the past few months, ICE has carried out the three biggest workplace immigration raids of the past decade, including one on June 5 at a nursery here in rural Ohio, where 114 gardeners, florists and other workers were detained and put into court proceedings for deportation. Many of them had lived for several years in a Norwalk trailer park of 74 homes known as Little Mexico, where now aid workers estimate that more than 90 children are missing one parent and at least 20 are left with no parent at all.

    One of them is Alex, an American citizen like most children in the trailer park, with a wardrobe of Cleveland Cavaliers T-shirts and frosted tips dyed orange at the barbershop inside Walmart. He’d spent all 12 of his years in Norwalk, population 17,000, and for much of that time he’d lived in the trailer parks of Little Mexico, in a beige double-wide with his sister and mother, Nora Galvez, who first came to the United States in 1999. The air outside their trailer smelled of smoke and rubber from the neighboring pallet factory. The favorite community soccer field was in fact a gravel lot. But Alex knew every one of the 74 families in the two trailer parks, and he and his friends could wander freely on their bikes from one trailer into the next. Many people in conservative Norwalk regarded Little Mexico as an ugly annex, a place to be left alone, but to Alex that meant it had always felt peaceful and undisturbed.

    Reply
  42. SouthernGirl2 says:
    July 2, 2018 at 9:21 am

    No non white president could say this. He’s spitting on the Constitution and dragging America through the muck but white people in power don’t care. Spare me your USA! USA! Chants and fake love for country. Y’all have zero love or respect for the country.

    https://twitter.com/krassenstein/status/1013764224428990465

    Reply
  43. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 9:19 am

    Michael Cohen tells me in first in-depth interview since FBI raids on his home and office that family and country, not President Trump, have his ‘first loyalty’https://t.co/7r2aM9Tus5 pic.twitter.com/WyZ6IOyGL8

    — GeorgeStephanopoulos (@GStephanopoulos) July 2, 2018

    Reply
  44. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 9:14 am

    Exclusive: A leaked Trump bill to blow up the World Trade Organization
    July 1, 2018 at 9:11 pm EDT

    Axios has obtained a leaked draft of a Trump administration bill — ordered by the president himself — that would declare America’s abandonment of fundamental World Trade Organization rules.

    The draft legislation is stunning. The bill essentially provides Trump a license to raise U.S. tariffs at will, without congressional consent and international rules be damned.

    The details: The bill, titled the “United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act,” would give Trump unilateral power to ignore the two most basic principles of the WTO and negotiate one-on-one with any country:

    Reply
  45. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 9:01 am

    HOLLERING!!!

    Michelle Wolf to Ivanka Trump:

    “Is your nickname herpes? Because you’re not necessarily the most dangerous person in the administration but you’re very unpleasant, totally incurable and you always show up when we’re about to get f*cked,”

    Reply
  46. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 8:59 am

    We are still counting #FamiliesBelongTogether. Submit media links and crowd estimates on link at https://t.co/1JHR34Qe7C
    See the ongoing tally here:https://t.co/6h3aM6JdKI@EricaChenoweth @djpressman

    — Crowd Counting (@crowdcounting) July 1, 2018

    Reply
    • Liza says:
      July 2, 2018 at 9:16 am

      I hope the Democrats don’t decide to gobble up this young woman. My fear is that they will. She defeated a much loved, high ranking establishment Democrat and that is a mortal sin in party politics.

      Reply
    • Liza says:
      July 2, 2018 at 9:23 am

      Okay, I see what this is about. I’m gonna rant. First, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was not “high on her own supply”. She was responding to this:
      https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1013471559460315137

      Reply
      • Liza says:
        July 2, 2018 at 10:36 am

        From the Hill article:

        “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper asked Duckworth on Sunday if she felt Ocasio-Cortez represents the future of the Democratic Party.

        “I think it’s the future of the party in the Bronx, where she is,” Duckworth said.

        “I think that you can’t win the White House without the Midwest and I don’t think you can go too far to the left and still win the Midwest,” Duckworth said during the interview.

        “You need to talk to the industrial Midwest, you need to listen to the people there,” she added.

        Duckworth’s comments echoed those of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who said people should not get “carried away” over Ocasio-Cortez’s nomination.

        “They made a choice in one district,” Pelosi said. “So let’s not get yourself carried away as an expert on demographics and the rest of that within the caucus or outside the caucus.”
        …
        http://thehill.com/homenews/sunday-talk-shows/395064-dem-lawmaker-ocasio-cortez-represents-the-bronx-not-the-future-of

        Reply
      • Liza says:
        July 2, 2018 at 10:52 am

        “You need to talk to the industrial Midwest, you need to listen to the people there.”

        I hope I’m not reading more into this than intended but I really hope we are not still talking about the poor, white, disenfranchised, working class voters that the Democrats lost to Trump.

        Well, whatever.

        The Democrats need to welcome Ms. Ocasio-Cortez into the fold and help her win in November.

        Reply
    • Liza says:
      July 2, 2018 at 10:01 am

      Here’s my rant.

      I live in AZ CD2, a swing district that is currently (not) represented by a Republican, Martha McSally. Martha is currently running as a candidate for the GOP nomination for the open Senate seat. It was doubtful she could have won CD2 again even with all that PAC help she gets (she had over 7 million in her last election). Polls showed her losing to a “generic candidate” which means she would have lost if her challenger was a can of spam.

      The Democrats knew they could win even before Martha gave it up. A number of very good Democratic candidates stepped up to run including Bruce Wheeler, Matt Heinz, Billy Kovacs, Mary Matiella and others.

      So what did the DCCC do? They asked Ann Kirkpatrick, who is 68 years old to move down to Tucson from northern California and run in this district. THE DEMOCRATS DID NOT BELIEVE WE HAD ANY SUITABLE CANDIDATES IN THE WHOLE F***ING DISTRICT.

      Kirkpatrick represented AZ CD1 for three terms, losing her seat in the House in 2010 but regaining it in 2012. She also ran for the Senate against John McCain and lost, of course. She once had an A rating from the NRA but said she changed her mind about guns when Gabrielle Giffords was shot because it happened to someone she knew personally.

      So now she’s running TV ads. And the ad I saw this morning was an attack ad on the GOP and Trump. That’s what Hillary did ad nauseam in Arizona in 2016 and failed big time so let’s use that losing strategy again and again and again. When it fails, we can blame the Green Party.

      Furthermore, and I’m going to say this because I am in a very ugly mood right now. Ann Kirkpatrick looks a bit old and worn out. She does not look vital and energetic and ready for a fight. She does not look good on video.

      Democratic voters in CD2 are asking, why her? It’s not as though she has had a long political career filled with accomplishments. In fact, it’s just the opposite. She’s a former prosecutor with a relatively short political career.

      But the Democrats have rammed Kirkpatrick down our throats, endorsing her months ago, the one they picked out for us. I look at Ms. Ocasio-Cortez who answered the call to step up and run for office, someone who worked her tail off for the past year and a half, and someone who might actually represent her district and I just wish it had happened in my district.

      I guess we’ll see what happens in the primary. But Kirkpatrick has all the money and name recognition and I suspect she’ll win. And I’ll have to vote for her. But the Democratic party leaders like her, I don’t even know why.

      Reply
    • Ametia says:
      July 2, 2018 at 10:30 am

      I’m with you Liza. Please disregard the *like” it was clicked in ERROR.

      Reply
  48. Ametia says:
    July 2, 2018 at 7:43 am

    Word of the Day : July 2, 2018

    Canicular play
    adjective kuh-NIK-yuh-ler

    Definition
    : of or relating to the period between early July and early September when hot weather occurs in the northern hemisphere

    https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/canicular-2018-07-02?pronunciation&lang=en_us&dir=c&file=canicu01&utm_campaign=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=wotd&utm_content=pron

    Reply
  61. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 6:45 am

    AM Joy w/Joy Reid (@amjoyshow) Tweeted:
    .@JRUBINBLOGGER: What everyone has to be crystal clear about is everyone on that [#SCOTUS nominee] list, in order to get on the list, in order to be vetted by The Federalist Society, which put it together, has to be committed to overturning #RoevWade #AMJoy https://t.co/AMCAuHlsYD https://twitter.com/amjoyshow/status/1013451116389060608?s=17

    Reply
  63. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 6:36 am

    The weather has broken. 😄
    It is 72 this morning, and it feels like 72.🙌🙌

    Reply
  72. rikyrah says:
    July 2, 2018 at 3:55 am

    Good Morning Everyone 😄😄😄

    Reply

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