Tag Archives: @theologop

Help Me Meet My “Representative,” Michael McCaul

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I keep trying to  contact Michael McCaul, but he does not deign to make himself available to his lowly constituents. For $200, I can buy my way into Mavericks Conference 2018 in Austin on Friday, June 1st. Please donate to my GoFundMe.
[NOTE: This is not my first rodeo.]

 

Originally posted to Facebook on May 24 at 6:43pm:

I went to Michael McCaul‘s office today with members of Indivisible Rosedale Huddle and TX-10 Indivisible – Discussion. There was a full room, and there were new faces. I came with three documents for him. I read the first one aloud in a calm voice, shaking the whole time. Was it nerves? Was it fury? Does it matter? Here is the first document, a letter.

May 24, 2018

To Congressman McCaul, via his Staff at 9009 Mountain Ridge Dr Ste 230, Austin TX 78759

Dear Michael,

I have come here yet again, to speak with the staffers who serve as your impenetrable defense against enduring the presence of constituents like me. I’ve brought old prose and old poetry, printed out for you. I would appreciate a response from you that is specific to what I have written. I do not wish to receive a form-letter response from your staff. Send me something real – from you – or please send nothing at all.

There was a time when I actually believed that if I could craft an elegant enough, eloquent enough, emotional enough communication, I could move you to feel the horror of our uniquely American gun violence blood bath, and respond with action. I no longer believe that I have what it takes to convince bad people to do good things.

I am not a religious person, but I know that there is evil in this world… that villains exist. I have also been told that no one looks in the mirror and sees one. I am here, once again, to pretend that I give you the benefit of the doubt; and to act like I assume that you really don’t know what role you have played and are playing on this earth.

You are a villain.

You most certainly are, but I sincerely believe that people can change, and therefore you can. Shake the scales from your eyes, Sir. Look around you, and listen. Millions of Americans – your fellow men and women, people you are pledged and honor-bound to serve – are suffering greatly and unnecessarily. We are wounded in body and mind. Millions of us have a story to tell you about how we got this way, and how you – year after year – add to our ever-growing number.

We love our country, and by that, I mean we love its people. We don’t believe that Americans are uniquely violent or evil, or the only ones who watch movies or listen to music or play video games or have the internet, or are the only ones who suffer mental illness or take medication to manage it. We don’t believe that American children have improperly designed school buildings, or particularly incompetent or cowardly school resource officers or teachers or staff or parents.

We believe that we can wake from our terrible national nightmare of gun violence by reforming our gun laws. It has happened elsewhere, in other countries, whose people are no better or worse than us, but whose leaders are demonstrably better than you.

A moment of silence is a universal sign of respect for the fallen, whether in battle or in class. I gave that to the Santa Fe slaughtered with a broken heart. I plan to keep using my voice – the one you are willfully deaf to – to explain why I believe we are honor-bound as decent human beings to legislate gun reform.

Sincerely disgusted,
Tammy Sue Talpas
8600 N FM 620 Rd Apt 2924
Austin TX 78726-3586
512-996-9596 | tammy.talpas@gmail.com
tammytalpas.com

 

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About me: Who I am, and what I’m doing

I reside in Austin, but I live online:

I am “Lady TheoloGOP.” (WordPress Blog | Twitter Profile) Beginning in 2014, and picking up steam since the 2016 election, I have been using my nerd superpowers for good (and not just from behind my keyboard anymore) in response to the series of calamitous political events that culminated in the ongoing disastrophe that is our current national state of affairs.

(Don’t get me started, because that would be redundant.)

I have many wonderful twitter followers, and I follow many fantastic tweeters as @TheoloGOP. I am not Lady Godiva, but I do play her twin-sister-with-low-self-esteem on social media. (I love to get up on my high horse, but I keep my clothes on.) I noisily advocate for the issues I believe in, and for Democratic candidates (and electeds who caucus with us), unless and until I find out that one of them is a Russian troll, closet Republican, or Joe Lieberman / Joe Manchin-type.

(PLEASE NOTE: This is a coincidence. Not all Joes incur my wrath.)

I recently re-branded the digital presence of a long-running political podcast that drops every Friday night.

Here is their old site:
http://coup2k.com/proleft/archive.html

Here is the new one I made them, after I bought them their own domain name:
http://proleftpod.com

For their Eighth Anniversary (January 12, 2018), I gifted them with a backup domain name that mirrors their podcast’s twitter handle, @ProLeftPodcast.

When I gave their website a makeover, I did it understanding that they wanted to stay on the platform that they were familiar with, so that they could edit their own site. They did, and they can, but they don’t have to. I’m happy to do it for them.

You can hear the podcasters talk about their new site here, during the first few minutes: https://youtu.be/3xxEUU1KHMQ

Everything new about their digital visual presence (the logo, custom navigation icons, artwork, Patreon page, Zazzle merch store and the designs in it, YouTube Channel, Free App, no-money-changing-hands cross-promotion with Foxwise.biz, etc.) was a joy for me to create.

I also volunteered to polish the digital presence of Tawana Cadien, Democratic Candidate for Texas’ 10th US Congressional District. Like my favorite podcasters, she wanted to stay on the digital platform she was comfortable with, so she did.

Before me: https://tawanacadien4congr.wixsite.com/campaign-site
After me: https://www.tawanacadienforcongress.com/

I am also volunteering with the Sheri Soltes for Texas House District 47 campaign. I am helping her with graphic design for print and social media:
http://www.SheriforTexas.com

I also helped @ErikforCO (CO06), but I just created some images, and let him do with them what he wanted. (I didn’t keep a before shot of his existing digital branding.)
http://erikforcolorado.xyz/

I’m also helping a Democratic lady in PA (where my parents are from) get elected, and another one in AZ, where the awesome black lady who welcomed me officially into the wider African American family now lives with her wife.

I am also trying to get Robin Hayter (TX30) out into the media, to help her raise money and volunteers. She is a young adult who appears to have done the rarest of things – completely changed her political orientation. She has a fascinating story to tell, to any enterprising journalist open to a conversation. Here’s hoping The Majority Report / The Michael Brooks Show snatches her up for an interview. I’m looking at you, @DavidSlavick.

Sometimes I call into The Majority Report:
https://youtu.be/Pv8g9GVbSE8

I was also interviewed by a local Austin podcaster recently:
https://youtu.be/eXwFzMbwADQ

There’s tons more that I’ve done and am doing, but this is too long already!

So, that’s me now. This is me back in the day:

I was born overseas in Germany, raised around Fort Hood, graduated from Copperas Cove High School, and went to Texas A&M University before moving to Austin in 1988. (I moved to California for a while, but I’ve been back in my beloved Weirdlandia for almost ten years.)

I became an at-The-Los-Angeles-Federal-Building protester and online political activist during the 2000 Election Heist. I was a blogger before people called bloggers “bloggers.” At first it was just political primal scream therapy on Geocities (remember them?). Marc Perkel then offered to move me to my own domain at GoreWon2000.net, which migrated to the much shorter URL Coup2K.com, “The Bush Brothers Banana Republic Resistance” (BBBR). The site still lives as a testament to that period.

In those days, my internet persona was “The Diva

Here is an Interview I gave to a radio show about Coup2K.com.

I was also one of the Speakers at Voter March on May 19, 2001 in San Francisco.

My site, “The Bush Brothers Banana Republic,” became the inspiration for Chuck Cirino’s indie film, “BUSHWACKED!”, and I have a writing credit on that movie. It was the first anti-W video; and it was selected to be screened at The 2001 New York International Independent Film & Video Festival in Los Angeles.

“BUSHWACKED!” still lives on on YouTube:
Part One |  Video Part Two |  Video Part Three |  Video Part Four

So, there you have it. You can also google my name and “Jeopardy!” if you’re into that kind of thing.

Thank you for reading this,
Tammy Talpas
Austin TX 78726: TX10, TXHD47, TXSD14
tammytalpas.com
theologop@gmail.com / tammy.talpas@gmail.com / thediva@coup2k.com (still!)