Focused Read in 4-5 minutes
Personal Commentary ~
I am an unapologetic, pragmatic Democrat.
I am an unapologetic, pragmatic Democrat who likes to win, because I believe Democrats, overall, are dedicated to our founding principles and values, principles and values I have edited down to:
The Common Good, determined by Compromise and implemented via One Nation.
A core belief in our principles and values is what I look for first and foremost in party candidates. If a candidate is an American Patriot, then I will look at his or her qualifications. If a candidate wins an elected office, then I will look at where his or her expertise lies in the context of those principles and values and then I will look at how he or she transforms those principles and values into legislation, legislation that benefits The People while also adding a net gain to the perfecting of the union charge we have all been given as American citizens inherited.
I value knowledge and experience and fearlessness and focus.
And based on my own criteria for vetting elected officials, I believe Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is the best person for the job at a time when knowledge, experience, fearlessness and focus have never been more critical -- not just in the management of the United States House of Representatives but also in the ability to stand as the third person in line to the presidency.
And, frankly, it is disappointing to watch and to listen to some who are charged with being guardians of the nation think it is acceptable to elect a person to the position of the Speaker of the House because they want a member of a new generation to have a “turn," a decision based on what they want not on what their country needs -- before the November election and before anyone declared their intention to run for the position.
You can read that as -- decision-making without facts, without consultation and without careful consideration before casting a vote for a Democratic Leader in a critical position of power.
House Democrats are obligated to gather all of the facts and to give careful consideration to who is the most qualified candidate for the position to not only lead House Democrats but to also, possibly, perhaps likely, lead the free world.
Unless there is compelling evidence to determine otherwise, Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is the only person for that job.
Please find below a brief excerpt from a much larger article on “powerful women.” It's an excerpt, not a full and complete article about Pelosi but I think it gives a picture of who she is -- A strong, capable leader with the health and welfare of the nation now and in the future a top priority.
I’m also attaching a more in depth piece, centered on her accomplishments.
We should all be as informed as we can be and we should all be sharing our thoughts with our Congresspersons.
Thank you!
g.
"Nancy Pelosi Still Thinks She’s the Right Person for the Job. Have at Her.
(By Rebecca Traister)
Job: House minority leader
Raised: Over a half-billion dollars for Democrats since 2006
Once: Was a guest on VH1’s RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars
"I just think this is really generational,” Nancy Pelosi says, gesturing fulsomely toward Minnesota state representative Ilhan Omar, who is poised to become the first Somali-American member of Congress.
“I’m in this dress,” Pelosi continues, glancing down at her deep-green tailored shift, “and she’s in this adorable suit.” Omar is wearing zebra-print sneakers, a black pantsuit over a T-shirt reading BARRIERS WERE MEANT TO BE BROKEN, and a radiant-blue hijab.
The two are about to sit down for their first lengthy one-on-one meeting, and Pelosi is correct: There’s a lot about the encounter that feels generational.
One generation is represented by the Democratic leader of the House, 78, who ascended to the Speakership in 2006. The next is embodied by Omar, a leftist Democrat, part of this season’s surge of young women, and young women of color, running for office.
While Omar has declined to say whether she’ll support Pelosi’s continued leadership...there are rumblings in the ranks that the almost octogenarian white multimillionaire represents the party’s past, not future. In other words, it’s time for Pelosi to go.
But it’s not as simple as that.
First, the Bay Area Democrat’s politics have long fallen to the left of her centrist-leaning party’s, and second, her job as leader isn’t ideological. It’s logistical and managerial, and when it comes to herding legislative cats, she has been undeniably great at it.
Since 2006, when she engineered the Democrats’ take-back-the-House campaign, she has kept her often wayward caucus together through the bailout and health-care fights of the Obama administration.
And being in the minority, she’s been more successful corralling votes than her counterpart, the retiring Paul Ryan...
What’s more, the dump-Pelosi campaigns began practically as soon as she became leader, suggesting that the concern may be less about her effectiveness than about who she is:
female, unapologetic about her power, and so far unwilling to relinquish it, a trait that sets her apart from just about none of her older male peers in D.C.
When she was asked, in 2010, by a jejune Luke Russert whether she might resign given the advanced age of party leadership, Pelosi crisply eviscerated him for posing the “offensive” question:
Had Russert ever asked Mitch McConnell the same?
Plus, she said, she’d come to Congress only after her youngest child was a high-school senior, whereas the guys had arrived at 30 — shouldn’t that buy her some extra years?
Her goal, Pelosi concluded, was to bring women in “at an earlier age, so their seniority would start to count sooner.”
Well, they’re here! And some of Pelosi’s missteps with the most progressive wing of her party are getting plenty of notice...
The bottom line is that while Pelosi is entering this session of Congress confident that her party will be back in the majority, she also has a fresh target on her back.
“I didn’t have the faintest interest in running for office ever,” Pelosi swears about her girlhood as the daughter of Tommy D’Alesandro, a former congressman and mayor of Baltimore.
Her mother, who had six children and volunteered and organized, was her bellwether, she says. “In my family, it was clear my oldest brother, Tommy, was being groomed.” Tommy indeed followed in their father’s footsteps, becoming mayor of Baltimore in the late 1960s. “He was the most beautiful, lovely, unselfish person in politics I ever met,” his sister says. “Never criticized anybody. Always said, ‘They have to say what they have to say. Don’t take it personally.’ ”
But if Tommy III learned some of his political equanimity from Big Tommy, his sister was also listening. One of her remarkable moves as Democratic leader — a tactic only someone extremely comfortable in her own power could pull off — has been to maintain that she doesn’t mind a bit when Democratic candidates slag her on the campaign trail.
In September, Time reported that nearly 60 House hopefuls had vowed not to back Pelosi if elected, and many interpreted the victory of Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania — who’d aggressively distanced himself from Pelosi — as a sign of true revolt.
But Pelosi, as ever, remains sanguine. “Just win, baby” is her Al Davis approach.
Her parents encouraged her, she says, only to be herself — they didn’t push her to marry, even. But she did, young, to San Franciscan Paul Pelosi, a real-estate investor and venture capitalist; the couple had five children in six years, putting to rest her thoughts of going to law school.
Although she tells me that she “read insatiably about leadership” in college — and jokes now, with not a little satisfaction, that “I always wanted to go to law school, and now I make laws” —
Pelosi says she didn’t suffer even a touch of the problem that has no name during two decades of mothering. In fact, she says, she has a fantasy business called Forever Infant; she’d help new parents get through the first year:
“This was my forte. I’m a mom.”
A mom, that is, who was savvy about politicking even before it paid.
Prior to moving to San Francisco, the Pelosis lived in New York, where she was part of what she calls “a stroller brigade.” “You couldn’t do politics in apartment buildings,” Pelosi says, “but if you went trick-or-treating with your babies, you could slip a pamphlet under the door.”
In San Francisco, she opened her family’s home to political fund-raisers and landed a spot on the library commission. It was unpaid but gave her “a vote,” she says, and “when you have a vote, people treat you differently.” This was her first official role, and she went on to game out the 1976 Maryland presidential primary for Jerry Brown, who, after he won the state, credited Pelosi as the “architect” of his victory. I ask if she liked the recognition. “No, I liked that we won.”
When friends urged her to run for the seat of an ailing San Francisco congresswoman, she asked her daughter Alexandra, then a high-school senior, if she’d mind. “Get a life,” Alexandra responded. And so she did.
Arriving in the House of Representatives in the summer of 1987, Nancy Pelosi was one of only 24 women. Fast-forward 20 years, and she’d become the most powerful female politician in the country.
“Sad to say,” she says immediately when I describe her this way. “I thought we’d have a president and I could go home. That was the plan.”
She doesn’t have a president, but she does have that crop of new women, some of whom confess to her that they’re not sure they can handle a fraction of the ugliness she’s had to absorb.
She doesn’t offer false reassurance: “It’s like you’re a tree, and they’re peeling the bark right off you. You have to be prepared for it.”
Pelosi is, without exaggeration, one of the toughest people I’ve ever met. As I listen to her, it occurs to me that perhaps she’s sticking with the job of party boss not just because she’s good at it but because she’s waiting for the person who’s good enough to take her.
“It isn’t for me to say, ‘This is who I’d like next,’ ” Pelosi says slyly as I push her about the rising generation’s challenge to her power.
“It’s up to them to decide.”
In 2016, then–Maryland representative Chris Van Hollen considered trying to bump her off. “He would’ve been a great Speaker,” Pelosi gushes now.
“But I wasn’t standing in his way. Other people senior to him came down on him.”
Yes, I say, but that’s presumably because you applied pressure.
She’s tired of pussyfooting around this: “None of us is indispensable.
I feel I’m the best person for the job.
I have a big following in the country. It’s what I tell other people: Show your following.
You have to have intellectual, political, and financial resources to win elections if you’re gonna be the leader.”
So she concludes, “See, I like the fray. And that’s really unfortunate for people who come after me, because I really like the fray.” She smiles. “Make my day.”"
Excerpted from: Powerful Women Talk About Power
(And Powerlessness)
Introduction by Hanna Rosin" (published before the election)
You can find the full article here
And you can read Pelosi's Letter to Members and Members-Elect Announcing her Candidacy for Speaker here
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"U.S. Supreme Court ends fight over Obama-era net neutrality rules
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused a request by the Trump administration and the telecommunications industry to wipe away a lower court decision that had upheld Obama-era net neutrality rules aimed at ensuring a free and open internet, though the justices' action does not undo the 2017 repeal of the policy.
The high court decision not to throw out the 2016 U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruling
leaves a legal precedent in place that could help net neutrality supporters in any future legal battle if that policy is ever re-introduced.
The rules championed by Democratic former President Barack Obama, intended to safeguard equal access to content on the internet, were opposed by President Donald Trump, a Republican.
The Trump administration and the telecom industry had wanted to erase the 2016 ruling even though the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission in December voted to repeal the net neutrality rules. The policy reversal went into effect in June.
The Supreme Court's brief order noted that three of the court's conservative justices - Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch - would have thrown out the appeals court decision.
Neither Chief Justice John Roberts nor new Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh participated in the decision.
Industry trade group USTelecom, one of the groups that challenged the 2015 net neutrality rules, said the high court's action was "not surprising." USTelecom said it would "continue to support" the repeal "from challenges in Washington, D.C. and state capitals."
FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat who backed the net neutrality order in 2015, said on Twitter that the commission had "actually petitioned the Supreme Court to erase history and wipe out an earlier court decision upholding open internet policies. But today the Supreme Court refused to do so."
The Justice Department also has filed suit to block California's state net neutrality law from taking effect in January. The state agreed in October to delay enforcement of the law pending appeals of the net neutrality reversal.
The FCC voted 3-2 in December along party lines to reverse the rules adopted under Obama that had barred internet service providers from blocking or throttling traffic, or offering paid fast lanes, also known as paid prioritization.
The new rules, which gave internet service providers greater power to regulate the content that customers access, are now the subject of a separate legal fight after being challenged by many of the groups that backed net neutrality.
The net neutrality repeal was a win for providers like Comcast Corp, AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc.
It was opposed by internet companies like Facebook Inc, Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc, which have said the repeal could lead to higher costs.
Focused Monthly Inspiration
( #itsNovember2018now )
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What's in the book:
→ Direct sources & resources for Democrats:
* ( Personal favored and most informative follows are also shared here with the understanding that readers will always apply their own critical thinking to any information provided anywhere by anyone. #StrongerTogether does not share sources of information lightly but -- no one is perfect! -- so always #DistrustAndVerify -- even if it's me. I am using a star rating that is strictly based on my situational experience with the work of the media personality specifically in relation to issues of interest to me. )
The Democratic Party Website
Also, NOT exactly a Democratic Party specific source under a GOP majority but a good place for to hear and to watch speeches & hearings directly C-SPAN
Democratic National Committee's Team Blue!
"The Blue Wave 
🌊 won't happen unless we all pitch in to help elect Democrats across the country. We've partnered with a number of organizations to make sure we're covering ground in every single community 👣. Join Team Blue to volunteer to get out the vote 
🗳️ in your community..."
🌊 won't happen unless we all pitch in to help elect Democrats across the country. We've partnered with a number of organizations to make sure we're covering ground in every single community 👣. Join Team Blue to volunteer to get out the vote 🗳️ in your community..."
You can email your two Senators and your Representative in Congress in one email here
"Postcards to Voters are friendly, handwritten reminders from volunteers to targeted voters giving Democrats a winning edge in close, key races coast to coast.
What started on March 11, 2017 with sharing 5 addresses apiece to 5 volunteers on Facebook...
Now, we consist of over 20,000+ volunteers in every state (including Alaska and Hawaii) who have written close to 3 million postcards to voters in over 100+ key, close elections."
You can find Postcards to Voters here
→ Some of my favorite, most active organizations -- some existing & some developing to elect Democrats:
Born from conversations between Governor Howard Dean and Secretary Hillary Clinton in the aftermath of the 2016 election, Onward Together was established to lend support to leaders — particularly young leaders — kicking off projects and founding new organizations to fight for our shared progressive values. here
Since #StandOnEveryCorner has grown, it’s become a stand by all of us to protect our democracy from corruption and treason...A stand not at your State Capitol, but in your own backyard. Not once every few months, but as often as you can here
→ Fact checking organizations courtesy of the Society of Professional Journalists
in alphabetical order...
→ Some of my favorite, most informative
follows on Twitter include:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ US Intelligence | Author | Navy Senior Chief | NBC/MSNBC
⭐⭐⭐ Federal Government Operations | Vanity Fair | Newsweek | MSNBC Contributor | Author
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Voting Rights/Voter Suppression | Author | Mother Jones
→ Some of my favorite, highly credible media -- at the moment:
📰📰📰 Mother Jones
📰📰📰📰 The Washington Post
→ Some of my favorite Talking Heads -- at the moment -- and their Twitter handles:
→ Some of my favorite media/panelists -- at the moment -- and their Twitter handles:
✅✅✅✅ Joan Walsh national affairs correspondent for The Nation; CNN political contributor
✅✅✅ Heidi Przybyla USA TODAY Senior Political Reporter
✅✅✅✅ Jennifer Rubin Conservative blogger at @ WashingtonPost's Right Turn,MSNBC contributor
✅✅✅ Natasha Bertrand Staff writer @ The Atlantic covering national security & the
intel community. @ NBCNews/@ MSNBC contributor
→ Some of my favorite Democrat Party Leaders to follow on Twitter, not in elected office but proving knowledge & experience are positives & not negatives are:
Former First Lady Michelle Obama
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
Former Labor Secretary/Today's DNC Chair Tom Perez
Note: I rarely get involved in primary races -- outside of those in my own area and unless there is a glaring reason that can not be ignored, I support Democratic Party nominees in general elections. I don't support bashing Democrats.
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(Linked) "...is our 2016 platform...a declaration of how we plan to move America forward. Democrats believe that cooperation is better than conflict, unity is better than division, empowerment is better than resentment, and bridges are better than walls.
It’s a simple but powerful idea: We are stronger together."
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Owned, Created and Curated by Gail Mountain, this blog is often gently edited and/or excerpted for quick reading, with occasional personal commentary in the form of the written word and/or in the form of emphasis noted. Network For #StrongerTogether ! is not affiliated with The Democratic Party in any capacity. This is an independent blog and the hope is you will, at a glance, learn more about the Party and you will, with a click or two, also take action on its behalf as it is provided!
( You can find me on Twitter
( You can also find me on Facebook
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See the League of Women Voters website:
Vote411 here
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...for Networking for Democrats today!
g. (Unapologetic Democrat)
✊ Resisting "Fake News"
g. (Unapologetic Democrat)
✊ Resisting "Fake News"
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