Tag: Democrats

It seems that many of those who are regular guests of this space are committed to a worldview based on some degree of reason and rationality.

That’s a handy thing if the “Covert Alarm Locator Apparatus” in your Isaac Daniel® Compass Global 1000 GPS sneakers should happen to fail and you need to find your way back to where the rest of us are; sadly, not all voters are equipped with such a helpful worldview.

Luckily for them, there are lots of conservative “mouth organs” ready to fill the “information gap”.

They send out lots of emails every day, spreading their Word, and as a public service I receive several of them; this to help keep track of just what’s out there, exactly.

If you ever wondered why otherwise normal people believe some of the craziest things about “Obama’s Secret Death Care And National Virgin Sacrifice Program”, have a look at some of the things I get every single day, and it might all make a bit more sense.  

Crossposted at Daily Kos

I give you the irreplaceable Michael Moore, courtesy of Cenk Uygur at theyoungturks.com

huffingtonpost.com

A transcript and more below the fold

     Crossposted at Daily Kos

George W. Bush

Tax Cuts for the rich

Strategery

Invading Iraq

“They will welcome us as liberators”

“The oil will pay for the war”

WMD’s

Mission Accomplished

Torture isn’t a war crime cause my lawyer says so

Hurricane Katrina

“The fundamentals of the economy are strong”

Sarah Fucking Palin

Katie Couric –  But are you ready to become the leader of the free world?

Sarah Palin – Totally. I will totally lead the world. Any world. I will lead Mars or whatever too if those guys need a world president. Or just a Mars president. I took on the ole’ boys club in Alaska and I can take it on in Mars.

Katie Couric –  But I’m not asking about being president of Mars.

Sarah Palin – But I am answering about being president of Mars because a president person needs to be prepared for anything. I like to reform.  

open.salon.com

    Conservatives don’t deserve respect. They deserve shame and to be loudly and openly mocked in public.

   More ranting below the fold

LANGUAGE WARNING: Today’s story is uncharacteristically blunt, and from this moment forward we will be using lots of inappropriate language in making our points.

Gentle Reader, you have been officially…warned.

With that in mind, if you take offense when confronted with language strong enough to knock a fuckin’ buzzard off a shitwagon, please stop reading now.

It is by now fairly well known that Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, had a bit of a blow-up with liberals who were ready to start running ads against “blue dog” Democrats who were working very hard to shut down the health care reform effort.

Now we’re not gonna get in the middle of that argument today; instead, since we’re finally getting a chance to talk, I figured me and Rahm could get a few other things out of the way that have been on everyone’s mind for the past year or so.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

   No public option, no deal.

   I will NOT be forced to buy private insurance from the crooked cartels.

   I will NOT allow my wages to be forced into padding some millionaire CEO’s salary.

   I will NOT be robbed and told how much my robber is helping me.

This is what I think of your freaking mandates, mister Congresscritter.

   Fine me, Tax me, whatever, I don’t give a flying fork, but I ain’t gonna pay, no way, no how.

   If you want my money, you can frigging pry it from my cold, dead, uninsured hands.

More below the fold

Democratic Congressman John Murtha of  Johnstown,Pennsylvania, age 77, has just passed away early this afternoon in Arlington, VA, following complications from gall bladder surgery he had earlier.                    

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

Murtha, a Vietnam era Marine veteran who was recently best known for being one of the first more “establishment type” Democrats to have enough cajones to criticize President George W. Bush on his Iraq war policy.  Murtha was Chairman of the House Appropriations Sub Committee on Defense.  He served in Congress from 1974 to 2010.  In November of 2005, Murtha, who had visited many injured troops at Bethesda’s military hospital, whose suffering made a deep impression on him, submitted a resolution in Congress calling for the redeployment of US troops in Iraq.

“The United States cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq, militarily. It is time to bring them home. ”

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J…     This statement set off a MSM Faux Outrage Conservative Shitstorm, and helped push some of the nation out of its complacent stupor on Bush’s war in the Middle East.

Altho Murtha was pro- life, he came at it from a respectable viewpoint, in that he was politically liberal on many other issues such as labor and civil rights. Considering his district was conservative western Pennsylvania, which can be been rather “redneck” (Murtha himself used that gloriously un P.C. term to describe some of the less than socially progressive attitudes of some of his district’s residents), he was a leader.  

Murtha is survived by his wife, Joyce, and 3 children, John, Patrick, and Donna, and 3 grandchildren.  

May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. And may you find yourself in heaven, 5 minutes before the Devil knows you’re gone.  RIP, John Murtha

Lately there has been a spate of diaries at such web sites as FireDogLake and “Open” Left wherein lay members – typically under attack from site moderators, who act as Democratic Party hacks and gatekeepers – have sought ways to bring back the Progressive Party, or join the Greens, or build up some other institution, that will allow progressives to act together as a cohesive political unit.  (I posted an entry there myself, only to end up being attacked by site moderators, threatened with banishment, and ultimately banned when I refused to back down against their incessant bullying.)

FDL’s iphelgix explains the reason for leaving the Democrats.

Fellow FDLer TalkingStick points out the wisdom of studying the teabaggers for ideas about how we progressives can rebuild our own movement.

Mason calls for progressives to join him in building a Progressive Party from the ground up, apparently not aware that it already exists in states such as Vermont and Washington, and as Green Party affiliates inMissouri and Wisconsin.   He is joined in this effort by MadHemingway, who posted the 1912 platform the Progressive Party ran on.

FDL members are not alone in Left Blogsylvania in expressing their utter disgust with the Democrats; at “Open” Left, such lay members as Arthur Lukas gripe about where progressives are and asks where we should go from here.  Even at the Daily Obama, whereupon I also post, a poll I put up asking if it is time for progressives to break away from the Democratic received a fifty percent yes-vote.

Such discontent is often met by moderators and site owners with derision, insults, threats, and banishments of the “offending” members.  Nevertheless, it has grown more difficult for the access-bloggers to bully progressives into submission, a lesson FDL’s Jason Rosenbaum refused to learned after the beat-down his contemptuous post before the Massachusetts special election received.  In short, no one on the left is buying into the Big Lie that Democrats are any different from Republicans in terms of substantive policies, nor are we responding to threats and insults anymore for “failing” to be bullied into supporting Democrats no matter what.

This discontent and refusal to be bullied has created an opening for progressives seeking to organize the left back into a cohesive and more importantly, effective movement in opposition to the far right.  There are angry voices aplenty, people outraged by the betrayals of the man they though they were electing president in ’08 and the endless capitulations to the GOP made by Democrats.  Here we have an advantage.

The only thing lacking in the new political environment is effective leadership among progressives.  We will not find it among the self-appointed “leaders” of the ‘netroots, the access-bloggers like Chris Bowers, Markos Moulitsas, and the aforementioned Rosenbaum whose only real goal is to gain access for themselves – and only themselves – to the inner circles of “serious” political power and corporate media recognition.  It is therefore up to us to take on leadership roles and organize the left.

If we can take charge, we the progressive base, then we can finally begin the work of taking back America from the fascist elements that have usurped it for their own ends to the detriment of everybody else.  The Full Court Press is one tool for doing that, and it’s a very good start.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

    At a DNC fundraiser last night, President Obama had an interesting exchange with a Democratic organizer about health care reform, wherein he appeared to suggest that Congress could drop the ball and fail to pass a bill–and that voters should judge them harshly if they do.

    “[I]t may be that — you know, if Congress decides — if Congress decides we’re not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not,” Obama said.

tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com

    More below the fold