Not too long of a diary tonight, just some quotations that seem apropos…crossposted to dailyKos

(to kossacks and dharmaniacs – I’d like your help with this)

To whom it may concern:

You recently asked me for money.  You do that a lot.  This time, I gave you some. Very little.  Some of my friends on blogs like dailyKos and docudharma will be wondering why I gave you anything at all.  You, on the other hand, may be wondering why I gave so little.

The reason I gave so little is the same reason I might leave a tiny tip in a restaurant with really horrible service: I intend it as an insult.  Why?  

Who’s Sam Bennett?

Where’s PA-15?  

Why am I supporting her?

Why should you?

all this and more, below the fold

(cross posted to dailyKos and swing state project)

OK, my last diary was pretty much pro-Democratic party.  Just to show that I am a real progressive, here’s another diary.

I had a conversation on the phone with a staffer from the DCCC.  Nice guy, who described his own politics as “red and green” (he did not mean Republican Red).  We talked for about 10 minutes.  I eventually agreed to give a minimal gift – a gift so small it’s almost an insult, like leaving a nickel tip.  But he gave me a phone number to call, to tell them what I think.  He assured me, they are eager to listen.  Maybe he’s just blowing smoke.  But I’m gonna call

202 863 1500

Here’s what I intend to say.  I propose a 7 point plan:

1) Begin impeachment proceedings

2) Repeal the Patriot Stolen Freedom Act

3) Reverse the Bush tax idiocy

4) Eliminate the Department of Homeland Security Privacy Invasion

5) Back an inclusive ENDA

6) Repeal NCLB

and, oh yeah

7) De-fund the War

A lot of people here read polls.  I’m a polling addict, myself.  

But a lot of what people think about polls is, well…. uninformed.  I’m a statistician.  

Before we jump below the fold, this is not going to be about any particular poll, or any particular race, or any particular anything.  It’s general

crossposted to swingstateproject and dailyKos

The idea that there is one Democratic Party, and that it is to blame (or, for that matter, to praise) for anything, is wrong-headed.  There is no such organization  

There is a Democratic party, of course. But it’s made up of individuals.

And, while there are some bad congressmen in the Democratic party, all the good congressmen are in that party.  Who?

Senators like Barbara Boxer, Richard Durbin, and Ted Kennedy.

Can you imagine one of them in the Republican party?

Representatives like Diane Watson, Barbara Lee, George Miller and Lynn Wolsey from CA; Raul Grijalva from AZ; Ed Markey and John Olver from MA; or my own rep., Jerrold Nadler.

Can you imagine any of them in the Democratic party?

Even some Democrats in contested district are doing the right thing on a lot of issues.  Some of them are listed here

Candidates like Sam Bennett, running in PA-15; her website says

The Bush Administration seems to have things exactly backwards. Where government should be robust – protecting and caring for its citizens – they have made it weak. Where government should tread lightly, they have made it overbearing

got any Republicans who say that?

And, at the Presidential level, can you really say that there are no differences between, oh, just for instance, John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani?  Have you read the articles each wrote in Foreign Affairs?  Giuliani wants to terrorize the world by building an ever-larger military, an ever-larger spying apparatus, increasing the use of torture, and acting, in general, like the rogue nation we have become under Bush.  Edwards has a rather different vision – where we use our great wealth and power to build, rather than destroy; to gain the trust and respect of the world, as we once had it (and not so long ago).

Is the Democratic party perfect? Let’s not be silly.  

Is it the same as the Republicans? Let’s not be silly.

OK.  Edwards and Clinton both voted for the Iraq war.  Does that make them the same as Republicans?  That’s a fallacious argument.  By that reasoning, since I have two legs, and you have two legs, we must be the same.

And even the vastly imperfect individual Democrats are universally better than the Republicans they replace, or who might replace them.  Is Bob Casey my ideal Senator? No, he is not.  Is he better than Santorum? Damn straight.  Do I like everything Jim Webb says? I do not.  Do I like more of what he says than what George Allen says? You  bet.

When you find a Republican senator who declines to shake the president’s hand, let me know.

(this will go in the Grieving Room on Monday on dailyKos….. not sure if it belongs here, but what the heck)

I am not afraid of flying, but, especially since 9/11, I increasingly dread the pre-boarding ritual.

Similarly, after my mom died on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I was dreading sitting shiva.  We sat two nights, and after the first, I was less worried about the second.  But the second night was bad.

Every culture has its own grief rituals.  I will not assume that everyone here is familiar with those of the Jews – I am not that familiar with them, myself, and I am Jewish, more or less.  At least, I was raised Jewish, although I have long been an atheist.  The essential idea of shiva (which is derived from the Hebrew word for seven, and the same root as Sabbath) is to have a weeklong period of intense grieving.  If you are Orthodox, there are a great many rituals associated with it, but if you are reform, as we are, it’s basically a night or two of people gathering to talk about the bereaved, share condolences and so on.

(A Jewish friend explained it to her Catholic brother-in-law as “just like a wake, but with eating instead of drinking”)

Why was I dreading this?

My mother.

My mother and I had a complex relationship, defined by both powerful bonds and powerful antipathies.  Sad to say, if she were not my mother, I do not think she is the sort of person I would like.  Yet, there are also powerful bonds.  Everyone who knew her knew she was proud of me and her other children, and knew she loved us.  We didn’t know, ourselves.  

This is a woman who never told any of her three children “I love you”.

And yet…..

When I was five, a psychologist told my parents I would never go to college.  I graduated when I was 20.  In large part, this is because, rather than accept this verdict on my future, my mother did things.  She found the best educator in the then-infant field of learning disabilities, and, together, they started a school. My mother did everything that wasn’t education.

And yet….

She reminded me, in public, of how much trouble I was, and how much she gave up for me.

And yet…..

She followed my interests well enough that, right to the end, she would clip newspaper articles and send them to me.

And yet….

Now, she is gone.  The end was expected, and, at the end, a good thing.  She had had five different cancers over the last fifteen years, and had decided to no longer seek any of the invasive or repulsive therapies – neither radiation nor surgery, and so, she knew she would die.  She was 83, survived by a husband, three kids, six grandchildren, and one two-week old great-grandchild.

She had, my brother said “a good run”….too bad some of us got run over.

And so, I dreaded shiva.  The barely-remembered people coming up to me to say how wonderful she was.  The closer friends sharing more intimate, but even-less true-seeming remarks.  “She made everyone feel taller” – no, not everyone, not me.  “I am sure she told you often how proud she was” – no, not often.  Not ever.  

I remember, at age 10, lying in bed, thinking, and deciding that I didn’t have to compete with my father or agree with what my mother said.

And, just before she died, I was talking with my brother and we were both somewhat startled by how un-sad we were.  Not happy, surely.  But not sad.  Not torn up with grief, not crying, not unable to concentrate.  Not sad.

It is, to me, both disturbing and sad that I am not much more sad that I am.  In a way, this continues to feed my anger at her, that she was not able to relate to me in such a way that her loss meant more to me; and that she raised me in an atmosphere that encouraged this lack of closeness.  Nature or nurture, she was half of one and more than half of the other….It is hard not to blame my failings on her, especially when those failings relate to her.

But we must not think ill of the dead.

And we must love our mothers.

Mustn’t we?

Thanks for reading

OK, this is a separate essay.  It arose from comments on several of the recent diaries, on some misunderstanding of some things I was trying to say (and since at least two intelligent people misunderstood, I guess I wasn’t clear) but it’s separate.  I’m not going to link to anything else, I’d like to start fresh.  I’m not GBCWing, so I am here for the long haul and want to make this site as good as it can be.  But I do not intend, here, to be ‘calling out’ anyone.  I’m not trying to pick a fight, I’m trying to clear something up, and make my position known.  

There’s an old saying

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me

.  I think it’s one of the dumbest sayings ever.  Of course words can hurt.  Or inspire.  They can lead people to war, or to peace.  Different people are differently vulnerable to words, just as different people are differently vulnerable to a punch in the nose (try punching a karate master in the nose, see what happens).  Some of us are strong, some of us are weak, some of us are damaged.  But no one is invulnerable.

Who knows this? We all do.  But a master of this is the thoroughly despicable Fred Phelps.  Do his words hurt?  Damn straight.  They’re designed to hurt, and they’re designed well. Phelps is a horrible man who thoroughly repels me, but he’s not an idiot.

Everyone against ‘hate speech’ knows this. Why do some words for ethnic groups sound different than others?  They all refer to the same groups, don’t they?  But words have power.

Words can inspire, as well.  here is a comment from a dailyKos diary that moved me to tears.

or this one:

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

Power.  More power, perhaps, than any particular action King could have taken