THE REPUBLICAN CRACK-UP HAS BEGUN
Even conservatives are fleeing the GOP as more and more Americans turn against Trump’s authoritarian project.
Earlier this week, Gary Kendrick, a GOP council member in the red town of El Cajon, on San Diego’s eastern outskirts, announced that he was crossing the aisle and joining the Democrats. Kendrick was the longest-serving Republican official in the region’s local government. “I’ve been a Republican for 50 years,” he said. “I just can’t stand what the Republican Party has become. I’m formally renouncing the Republican Party.”
An attorney friend of mine in San Diego, who knows local politics inside out, texted me, “When Trump has lost this guy, he’s in real trouble!”
→ Fun reading in full if you have time.
As are the growing number of stories — like this one — at Leaving MAGA.
FLIPPING THE SENATE
Colbert reacts to CBS nixing his Talarico interview — delicious.
But here it is anyway — on YouTube.
Talarico is so good. He presents his message — “There’s nothing Christian about Christian nationalism” — in a loving, compelling way that’s catching on.
He’s going to flip the Senate seat in Texas!
As will Mary Peltola in Alaska!
And Roy Cooper in North Carolina, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, Wahls or Turek in Iowa . . .
. . . and Mills or Platner in Maine. (Here is Susan Collins in 1996 pledging to serve no more than 2 terms, now running for her sixth!) (15 seconds)
And just maybe Mississippi (Scott Colom)!
And just maybe someone in Kentucky.
And don’t count out Florida, where a national hero is running against a sitting senator most Floridians have never heard of. (And where just weeks ago Miami elected a Democratic mayor for the first time in nearly 30 years, defeating her Trump-backed opponent by 18 points.)
In short: If we all lean in, we’re going to pull American democracy back from the brink.
This summer and fall, consider letting Oath and/or A House United help you choose the most strategic races to support.
But now — this winter and spring — is the time to support infrastructure that will give all our thousands of candidates a boost. House and Senate, but also governors, state legislators, attorneys general, secretaries of state, mayors, school board members . . . the works.
JESSE JACKSON
I was on Jesse Jackson’s bus headed for Philadelphia Mississippi on April 20, 1999, when news came across CNN (somehow the bus had a TV) of a terrible shooting in Columbine, Colorado. I watched as Jesse processed the news, mulling it over out loud, and wondering whether it was more than coincidence that it was Hitler’s birthday.
I remember being really surprised — and impressed — that he knew that. I knew it, of course — it’s my birthday — but how did he?
I had encountered Reverend Jackson only once before, from afar. He had come to speak at the Hunman Rights Campaign 1983 black-tie dinner in the ballroom of the Waldorf New York. It was a big deal — years before Governor Bill Clinton openly welcomed gays and lesbians into the mainstream of national Democratic politics — and I remember that when he finished his remarks one of the organizers on the dais pushed back — to Jackson’s annoyed surprise. After all, he was doing us favor by being there! It took some courage for him to do this! Homosexuality was not universally embraced, let alone in the African American community, back then! But he had said something in his remarks about “tolerance” (I think) and one of the attendees — a then-31-year-old Harvey Fierstein — lectured him a little bit on our actually wanting to be more than “tolerated.”
Whatever it was, I remember thinking Jackson was a good guy and kind of brave for being there; and that Harvey was a good guy and way braver than I would have been in putting advocacy above courtesy to make his point. (It might have been better discussed in private, after the applause?)
Either way, years later I was on this campaign bus headed to the Mt. Nebo Missionary Baptist Church, where before they were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan on June 21, 1964, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner had been working to register black voters. The Klan had burned the church to the ground five days before, and the three young men had gone to commiserate with the parishioners . . . only to be arrested and then, essentially, released into the hands of the Klan.
Now, 35 years later, the Reverend was headed to the church as part of a multi-state Southern bus tour to press the flesh and keep hope alive. His first job was to introduce the new treasurer of the Democratic National Committee, a very white, very nervous, well-intentioned but wildly out of his depth gay Jewish atheist, to say a few words of thanks and solidarity.
After a good bit of wonderful singing and greetings and things I had enjoyed in movies but never experienced for real, Reverend Jackson took the microphone to wild applause and said something (very vaguely) like, “Brothers and sisters, we have with us today a guest from the Democratic National Committee, flown down here last night from Washington, D.C.” . . . I leaned forward to rise and do my best . . . “a city, brothers and sisters, that has touched us down here in Mississippi in many ways.”
I don’t remember what he actually said, just that he was magnificent, off on a roll, the congregation responding, all thoughts of the visitor from Washington .D.C. long forgotten, when suddenly, after perhaps 15 minutes he remembered I was there and he was supposed to introduce me. Which he did. Like Mick Jagger introducing a complete unknown. Talk about buzz kills.
The congregation was exceptionally polite, and everyone — most of all me — was relieved when I handed the mic back to Reverend Jackson and rushed off to the airport.
Jesse Jackson was not a perfect man. Even Martin Luther King, Jr. was not a perfect man. But what an extraordinary privilege to get to share a little time with him in that sacred place. May he rest in peace.
PRKR
We long-suffering PRKR shareholders have five weeks to wait for jury selection to begin in Parkervision v. MediaTek. MediaTek is a Taiwanese giant that ships hundreds of millions of chipsets a year, with annual revenue north of $15 billion. Parker argues those chipsets and revenue have depended on its patented technology.
Will MediaTek settle “on the courthouse steps?” Fight straight through to a verdict they win? To a small verdict they lose? A big verdict they lose? Will the outcome rattle or reinforce Qualcomm’s intransigence in the suits from PRKR it has been fighting for two decades?
With PRKR stock at 23 cents and a valuation around $30 million, the market seems to think no big PRKR payday is in store. I have no clue, but hope the market is wrong.
Read the full article here
