Good evening, Kibitzers! I was thinking I’d put up some nice pictures, of maybe Hawaii, or soup, or something, but I was just not feeling it. I kept abandoning drafts because they felt stupid. There’s a rapist on the Supreme Court now, and that is so far past “not normal”, I can’t even.
I don’t know how I happened to find the New Yorker’s YouTube channel. Well, how does anyone find any YouTube channel? I’m sure I was watching something that was embedded here and then clicked on one of the other videos that came up at the end.
I know you know that they’ve been doing a lot of remarkable journalism recently. Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow are national treasures. (Did you ever think Frank Sinatra’s biggest contribution to humanity would turn out not to be singing?) But they also put on an annual “New Yorker Festival” in Manhattan, where one can attend interviews, panel discussions, and other sorts of live presentations. This year’s was just a few days ago, and some of the videos are out on YouTube. I thought you’d like to see a couple. They’re just short clips of much longer sessions, but they’ve isolated some worthwhile content.
See what all the sessions were at this link; you can supposedly watch videos on their site, but that wasn’t working well for me.
New Yorker writer Adam Davidson talks with David Barstow of the New York Times, Michael Avenatti, and Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post about Trump’s history of fraud. (5:34)
The hilarious Andy Borowitz talks about Brett Kavanaugh’s drinking, and speaks briefly with Adam Schiff. (8:45)
New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin speaks with Sally Yates about the travel ban, her firing, and the need to protect Rod Rosenstein as well as Robert Mueller. (4:31)
The New Yorker’s YouTube channel is here. Their website is here. (Like many, they have a per-month limit on free articles, which I believe you can also get around by using a browser window that doesn’t leave tracks, called by different names for different browsers: “incognito” for Chrome, “private” for Firefox and Safari.)
You can find Andy Borowitz’s short satirical columns, The Borowitz Report, here, and have them emailed to you free here. His most recent piece is “Kavanaugh Disappointed to Discover Supreme Court Has No Happy Hour”.
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by and tell us about your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper. Newcomers may notice that many who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well.
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🌟 GOTV 🌟
🌟 POSTCARDING: If you are looking for a way to help and can’t do things like canvassing or phoning, consider hand-writing postcards asking people to vote. It’s easy because you’re given specific talking points from the campaign you’re working with, so you don’t have to think up what to say, and no one will be coming back at you with questions. And if you like to color, you can get creative decorating the cards. Note that you are responsible for buying postcards (and stamps if you don’t use pre-stamped ones.) Postcard stamps are 35 cents each; pre-stamped postcards from USPS are 39 cents each; two different pretty designs. If you can spend a little more, jan4insight makes some nice ones, the two postcard sites sell their designs, or searching the phrase “postcards to voters” on Amazon will show you many designs.
To get started:
🌟 PERSONALIZED LETTERS: Similarly, you can do more good than you might expect by writing personalized letters (from a template) to Democrats who are unlikely voters. Studies have shown this can boost turnout by enough to make a difference. As with postcards, you get names/addresses for these voters in targeted districts from the website, fill in the letters, address/stamp/fill the envelopes, but then, you hold them and mail them on Oct. 30, a week before election day! Note that, as with the postcards, you are responsible for buying envelopes, paper (no special paper required), and stamps. First class letter stamps are 50 cents each.
For more info:
🌟 CONFIRM YOU ARE REGISTERED, REPEAT REGULARLY, AND GET YOUR FAMILY AND OTHERS TO DO THE SAME!!!
- Many kossacks have been surprised to find that their or a family member’s registration has mysteriously disappeared, even though it had been active. Don’t wait until too late to catch and correct this bullshit.
- HEADCOUNT.ORG will direct you to your state’s Department of State/Division of Elections (or similar) webpage, which is the horse’s mouth, as it were. My state page shows me as registered at my current address, for example.
- VOTE.ORG looks you up in its own database, which they admit is older than states’ databases. They do not show me as registered at my current address.
- Or, google something like “am I registered to vote” plus your state, and go to your state government’s page directly.
🌟 FOLLOW Yosef 52: Several times every day, the dauntless Yosef 52 posts GIANT resource diaries, containing links for virtually every Democrat who is running this November for just about anything north of dogcatcher. At the end, there are links to online tools for taking a wide variety of action. Please rec and share these diaries as you can, to get more eyes on these resources, and also, don’t forget to make use of them if you’re looking for a candidate to help or a way to help them!
🌟 VISIT ShowerCap’s Action Guide for the Goddamn Midterms blog: He has tons of candidate information, and several handy “six pack” collections set up to distribute your Act Blue donation among six deserving campaigns.
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It is now Day 131 of the new hurricane season.
Thursday, Sept. 20, marked A YEAR since Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico, and we still see nothing but denial and outrageous lies from the Orange House.
PLEASE FOLLOW Denise Oliver Velez and the SOS Puerto Rico group for the latest news about developments in Puerto Rico and the USVI. Denise’s most recent Puerto Rico diary is here. She generally collects resonant tweets at the top of her comment threads, as well, and in the APR’s thread most mornings, to make it easy to retweet. If you tweet or FB, please share something about Puerto Rico and USVI regularly.
PUERTO RICO and USVI DISASTER RELIEF DONATION LINKS
The Daily Kos community has its own project: Puerto Rico resident Bobby Neary (newpioneer) leads a small team dedicated to helping a specific rural elder who was left by the storms without power, water, a roof, or any belongings but a moldy mattress. If you like to see concrete results, this is the project for you. See newpioneer’s diaries for ways to help. See this one in particular, and this comment with photos. See also his lovely and heartbreaking poem.
(🌅 = most recently recommended by Denise)
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