Time to Channel FDR & Stop Pussyfooting Around

Say you want a revolution. We better get on right away. Well you get on your feet. And into the street. Singing power to the people - John Lennon "Power to the People"

THE BLUE LETTER

This Is How We Win or Lose Our Democracy, Time to Choose

No more Marquess of Queensberry Rules. No more badminton where Republicans use baseball bats. No more laying back, waiting for voters to come to us, assuming this must be that scandal that undoes Trump. No more defending institutions that don’t work, haven’t worked, won’t work, FFS (there’s a word for that: conservative).

I’ll apologize ahead of time because there’ll be some language, as I’m all out of f*ks after years of Gingrich, Bush, McConnell, an Opus Dei SCOTUS stacked with perverts, some due to stolen seats. ENOUGH.

So good for Dems in the Texas state legislature who stood up, walked out, left TX and dared to say enough to Greg Abbott. They’ve had it with this canker sore with a chip on his shoulder. A vicious, corrupt cockchafer who seemingly spends each year deciding if he’d rather his constituents freeze or drown on the altar of campaign donations and a maladjusted, mephitic, MAGA soul.

This year, while tongue-surfing Trump’s colon, he said “yes Mr. President of course I’ll break democracy (and perhaps the law) to help you gain at least 5 seats in mid-decade redistricting. Just as Trump’s Uncle Joe five-year plan causes man-made economic catastrophe.

As the name Trump—notwithstanding Pam Bondi’s best efforts to obstruct justice—hopscotches around Epstein’s files like Kid Rock in The Great American Race..For Methamphetamine Hydrochloride. And as Don-Don possesses the cognitive capacity of an unladen swallow (African or European?) with Greg Abbott’s affinity for personally head-butting oak trees.

Trump’s little tool, Abbott, can help Trump ignore the Constitution and will of the people to hold onto Congress. As all Americans with half-firing neurons votes have re-learned to hate Trump and prepare to vote to put him in the inescapable phantom zone known as Eric’s gums.

But the Democrats, in a bold move and one that needs to be the norm during this fascist attack on democracy, have left the state to deny Abbott a quorum, he has responded with a threat to remove these Democrats from office.

What say you, he doesn’t have the right to do that?!

Why of course he doesn’t. He’s using a “legal opinion” from none other than Ken Paxton, an Attorney General who reminds you MAGAs a cult as he’s gotten reelected again and again with this record:

• Indicted on state securities fraud charges, investigated for 9 years, paid 300K in restitution, had to attend ethics training & community service—the f-ing TX AG!

• In Oct of 2020, several high level assistants accused him of “bribery and abuse of office.” In May 2023, the TX House—controlled by Republicans impeached him, but the Senate, under pressure from allies like…Trump, let him off.

• Paxton carried on an extra-marital affair. He had his office hire her. They shared an Uber account to meet. His wife just divorced him on “Biblical grounds.”

• Filed a lawsuit based to try and undermine the results of the 2020 election. Election expert Rick Hasen referred to it as “"the dumbest case I've ever seen filed on an emergency basis at the Supreme Court"

• Top Paxton officials advisors were sued for sexual harrassment, verbal abuse

• Charges against him have included: targeting charities to help friends, directed his office to violate the law on public information requests, “improperly firing whistleblowers,” accepting bribes, making false statements to the state securities board, obstructing justice to benefit from a donor’s lawsuit…

I could go on. The man rivals Trump for Lifetime Achievement Award in sleaze and criminality. Accepting his opinion on the law is like accepting Chachi’s views on acting or Ghislaine Maxwell’s thoughts on childcare.

It’d be a joke if the GOP itself weren’t a criminal enterprise and we weren’t in this authoritarian moment fighting MAGA hoards like this:

So here’s what I say to those Texas Democrats: stay away as long as you need to—then show up when the time is right—and make Abbott remove you. Arrest you.

Walk into the chamber. With constituents in tow, so they witness it, and more cameras cover it. Buy a billboard outside the statehouse summarizing Ken Paxton.

Put your body in the machine. Force the issue. Non-violently, boldly, defiantly —like civil rights warriors before you. Dare this TACO-Trumpian, chicken sh*t to follow through on his threats.

Bring some big Texas names with you. Beto. Jasmine. How about Dan Rather (if he’s in the condition to do it)? They’ll need not assault you, but our entire democracy in front of the world. MAKE THEM.

They’re used to being tough guys with immigrants when they think nobody is watching. This will be different. Let’s see how tough they are under a spotlight.

And to Democrats from New York to Illinois, California and Maryland. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Minnesota, too, if you can use the Governor’s mansion, a one-chamber majority and slight minority status in the other (in MN a tie) to get this over the finish line. DO IT. We need this for democracy.

Get in their faces. Make recalcitrant Republicans chug Trump like arsenic if they wanna defend…that:

And don’t wait for them. It’s time we stop reacting and start acting. Take the damn seats. Take them all. And apply this same principle to everything—from legislative maneuvers to movement organizing in the streets.

As my pal Cheri Jacobus recommended, set up an opposition press conference every GD day in DC to preempt and respond. Do the same when the Supreme Court is in session and in state capitols/cities around the country—where local news needs content.

How about A REAL shadow cabinet that responds regularly before dunderheads like Pete Hegseth get their head outta a bottle of Jim Beam and some new Fox producer at 11am in the morning?

Here’s the truth: If we keep playing defense and defending failed institutions, voters will keep choosing the loudest voices promising to burn it all down.

FDR didn’t defend failure—he reformed what could be fixed, tore down the garbage that didn’t work and most importantly created entirely new institutions. In fact, a new system, one that took responsibility to for the economic well-being of all Americans, while calling out the billionaires of their day (millionaires) and most selfish among us.

FDR wasn’t playing. He made that clear. You may have seen this phrase before:

God what I’d give to hear a Democrat say that today. This is the fight voters want to see. Give it to them, show you get where the populist anger is coming from, as they’ve been betrayed by elites again and again.

Propose a “tax the living sh*t out of billionaires” bill. Make the top rate absolutely confiscatory—and in the same way the top rate only hit John D.Rockefeller during our last gilded age, have this top rate only hit Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg.

You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Still place higher rates on the rest of the obscenely rich, but save a special one for those Three Stooges. Talk about this proposal all the time and make Republicans defend these creepy, Epstein-enabling, incel-adjacent, pontoon-addicted goons.

Or, be careful, watch populist anger destroy the party and worse, our country.

This isn’t just about legislation. It’s about our lives. Our democracy. It’s about whether Epstein investigations will happen. It’s about gerrymandering, aka Republican cheating. It’s about SCOTUS blight and corrupt, corporate media.. It’s about whether we remain a democracy or become a cautionary tale.

The system is broken, as Kamala recently said. Un-break it.

Get in the streets. Call them what they are: corrupt, criminal, incompetent. Message constantly. Push every boundary. Exploit every loophole. Make the courts stop us—just like Republicans are doing every damn day.

Follow the old saying: you’d rather say you’re sorry than ask for permission.

Support independent media that actually gives a damn about democracy. Support Blue Amp. Support our Soundcheck fund to help boost an ecosystem of independent media by getting a paid subscription! Because if we lose the truth, we lose the fight.

"Crush your enemies. See them driven before you.”
—Conan the Barbarian (played by Schwarzenegger, enemy of actual Nazis)

It’s time for us to be the barbarian at the gate.

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This is why democracy desperately needs YOU to step up.

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Thanks for all you do to fight for independent media and democracy. You are why we’re here - Cliff