Our friends at East Bay Activist Alliance have a calendar web page here. I have asked them to consider a subscription URL.

1. We’ll start 4:00-4:30 with a texting lesson from Karen and Dan. Please bring your laptops.
2. The Agenda: Andy will bring us up to date on politics and races, Ann will present a new campaign for pro-voting posters for Telegraph Ave., Naomi will lead a discussion about what campaign to fundraise for next, Bill will update us on the Intern program and Bruce will report on Invisible. Followed by postcarding for a very important Wisconsin Supreme court election.
3. Want to prepare for the meeting? Let’s try to finish off our $2,000 for T.J. Cox by raising the last bit–$300. If you have not sent around a Giving Circle email, this is a great time. Or pass on our lovely QR code cards to nervous nellies and tell them donating calms the nerves. Then dust off your laptop and get out a good pen. Stamps always welcome.

Today seemed like a heavy news day.

At a time we need people with courage, Disney/ABC shows an unusual amount of cowardice. Project Veritas taped one of their reporters saying he was a socialist who supported Medicare for All. No sign of bias in his work, but he’s suspended and taken off the politics beat.

Maybe his real sin was saying Good Morning America now just spent its time shilling other Disney products and that news was secondary to viewership and advertising throughout.

Paul Waldman in WaPo; Dan Froomkin in his own newsletter.

Also on the journalism front, Trump filed a frivolous lawsuit against The NY Times over their op-ed asserting Trump and Russia work towards a common purpose. Of course, the lawsuit will be dismissed immediately on multiple grounds, and, ironically, if for some bizarre reason it is allowed to proceed, the Trump Crime Family will fold as soon as the Times’ lawyers ask to depose Don Jr., Trump, and others who were able to evade the Mueller Grand Jury. One theory is it is just part of the ongoing War on Truth, to show that everyone lies. I tend to doubt that, not when the suit will be dismissed quickly. I think it’s to prepare us for more such suits after Trump has corrupted the judiciary. Bogus libel judgments were used to end the Free Press in Turkey, Hungary, Malaysia, and other autocracies. But Trump is out over his skis, still, here.

And two articles that Bernie isn’t the electoral disastercthat the Punditocracy claims. Salon. Local guy Robert Reich in WaPo. Keep an eye out for moderate House and Senate candidates trying to wiggle away from him. We lose more votes from the picture of disloyalty and disunity than from the alleged extremism of Medicare for All. And Castro? Obama said the same limited positive compliments of Cuba and no one cared.

1. Our fund-raising is on a roll! We flew past $1,000 for T.J. Cox, then past $1,500 and are hoping to reach $2,000 by our next meeting on Sunday March 1 when we will switch to a new campaign. Please continue to pass on the link–consider starting a Giving Circle as explained in the notes from the last meeting.
2. Tony the Democrat has a new important campaign for Harold Hayes in Pennsylvania. This is a special election on March 17th for a state House seat. If you need addresses, let me know. We’ll do some cards for Harold at our next meeting.
3. Indivisible webinar about texting: RSVP Wednesday, February 26 at 3:30pm Eastern/ 12:30pm Pacific 
4. Postcarding with Ann at the Cafe Roma this Wednesday 11:30-1:30.
5. NEXT MEETING Sunday March 1st, 4:30-5:45 at our house. Texting lesson from 4:00-4:30 for those interested.

I have created an iCloud calendar for Indivisible Elmwood (I am encouraging our sister organizations to make theirs as easy to use). Depending on your browser set-up, the URL below may automatically offer to subscribe when you click it, or you may need to copy it, then paste it into the New Calendar Subscription item in your Calendar program (under the File menu in Apple Calendar, something similar is available in other calendars).

webcal://p35-caldav.icloud.com/published/2/MTA1MTUwMTA3NjEwNTE1MNgC30hvEaMmImfcZMokr1IsZxniX9-PrdbVtO8lEx3EW_mJtv-eczClUDA5LczAAhWMI1lbym0LOhhlwCbUwHs

The article everyone is tweeting about today is Adam Serwer in The Atlantic on Trump Unchained. About as enraging as you would expect. Today’s move of Trump lickspittle Richard Grenell from Ambassador to Germany to Acting Director of National Intelligence is another example.

The acquittal vote ratified the authoritarian instincts of the president and the ideological convictions of his attorney general.

Our son Gideon forwarded an announcement from former Rep. Katie Hill (CA-25), who resigned over complications from a broken ménage a trois. She is founding a PAC (isn’t everyone), HER Time Pac, “to ensure that great candidates who are getting overlooked have the resources they need to win.” More specifically, this seems to be support for women entering politics with a non-political résumé. Although Hill is from Southern California, the HER Time mailing address is 2120 University Avenue, here in Berkeley. I looked it up; it’s a WeWork building.

Meanwhile, the Special Election to replace Hill coincides with the California Primary, March 3. Christy Smith should come out on top.

Even in the Bay Area, Sports Radio isn’t an intrinsically left-wing institution. There was a time when the SF Giants’ long-time radio station (KNBR 680) described itself as “Your Sports and Limbaugh Leader”. They have long since flushed Rush.

The Giants have likewise dropped former key player Aubrey Huff from their various team reunion plans. (Huff laid down one of the best sacrifice bunts of all time in a 2010 World Series games, the only one of his entire career.) Huff cut a sympathetic figure back then, once going on the disabled list for anxiety and depression. He squandered the good will by coming out as a bigoted, misogynistic Trumpkin.

Yesterday, another Sports Radio station decided to interview him after he complained of the Giants’ political bias. It didn’t go well.

Co-host Joe Fortenbaugh decided he had enough of speaking to Huff after the former Giant stated that he doesn’t want to coach women’s sports because “women are tough enough to deal with anyway.”

“Aubrey, do you really think right now is the time to make that joke?” Fortenbaugh asked.

“Hey man, you guys have me on, this is how I joke. You don’t like it, you don’t have to interview me,” Huff said.…

“Absolutely, it’s extraordinarily offensive listening to you,” Fortenbaugh responded. “I can completely understand why the Giants would want nothing to do with you. It’s a shame because we came on today wanting to see your point of view. I came on today thinking, ‘You know what, maybe this guy, just because it’s the Bay Area, they’re going too hard on him. That maybe they lean a little too left here and and he’s getting a bad deal.’ And now I’m regretting bringing you on because I’m thinking to myself, ‘You know what, he’s exactly the turd he makes himself out to be on social media.'”

SF Chronicle

If you’ve lost 95.7…

I like citing Max Boot, because he is the only Never Trump Conservative I know (I don’t claim to have a complete list) who went back to analyze Trumpist racism and nativism, and admitted its close relationship to the Conservative movement he once backed. I’ve been reading Boot since he was the Daily Cal’s token conservative columnist, when he was writing typical teenager Ronald Reagan fanfic. He knows better now.

Trumpism, like all populist movements, is based on the pernicious conceit that only the strongman speaks for the “real” people and that anyone who opposes him must be an outsider or elitist who isn’t in touch with the common folk. The corollary is that the supreme leader is justified in doing just about anything in the people’s name — even abusing his authority to punish those who don’t support him….  In today’s America, Republicans represent more land area, but Democrats represent more people — having exceeded the Republican tally by 2.8 million votes in the 2016 presidential election and by more than 8.6 million votes in the 2018 House races.

WaPo

1. We talked about Giving Circles and how they can help us meet our fund-raising goals. I shared the email Andy and I sent out to our Giving Circle (friends who are not part of Indivisible Elmwood). Here it is so that everyone can copy whatever parts are helpful. In the future we will probably only include the link the our fund-raising page but this first time we wanted to throw in the Pennsylvania race so included two links. If everyone in the group developed their own Giving Circle emails, we might be able to reach our goals without having to do laborious events.

Our email read:

Dear Friend,
Spend your funds carefully this year. Some Democratic candidates are swimming in cash they will have trouble spending and others are looking for much needed money. Once a month until the election we will be sending you a short email with information and links to the two campaigns we think are the most underfunded. You can donate to both, to one or just skip that month. You are of course welcome to send the link on to friends.
This month our two campaigns are
1) T.J. Cox in CA 21. He won by the thinnest margin of 600 votes and his Republican opponent out-raised him this quarter. He does not call us once a week asking for funds and he really needs them, both good reasons to support him. 
2)  Let’s help flip a key seat in the Pennsylvania House on March 17. Howie Hayes hopes to flip a district where the Republican resigned in January. With the election on March 17, even a small donation goes a long way.  
Please let us know if you have any questions and most of all, do not let yourselves get discouraged. Resistance begins with each one of us believing a better and democratic future is possible in the US.
Naomi and Andy

Indivisible Elmwood

2. We handed out some of our handy-dandy new Invisible Elmwood cards which include a QR code that links to our fund-raising page and one that links to the main webpage. We’ll be handing them out at the next meeting and printing more as per needed.

3. We finished with some intense postcarding and also welcome our newest member–welcome Sally.

Next meeting is Sunday March 1, starting with a texting lesson at 4:00 and then a general meeting at 4:30. Meanwhile, keep passing on the link for our TJCox fund-raiser–we are more than half way to our goal. Thanks everyone!

☕️✍️🎶
Postcarding to Music
11:30 am – 1:30 pm
Wednesday, February 26
Cafe Roma, corner of Ashby & Telegraph College, Berkeley
We’ll be postcarding to support Democrat candidates using Tony the Democrat listings. Cafe Roma has live piano music (for free) from 11:30-1:30, so we will be writing with a musical backdrop. It’s fine to stop by for a short time, but please, everyone, be sure to purchase a beverage or snack. I don’t want to unfairly take advantage of the cafe. I’ll have postcards, pens, markers, and some stamps, but you’re welcome to bring your own too.
Come one, come all!

Ann Overton