Tag: manifesto

yes, that is a deliberately provocative title.  And I am afraid I have little of subgstance with which to support that question.  But in this, only my second post on this site, let me offer just a little bit of my current thinking.

I am not presuming the imminence anything catastrophic, like the immediate annihilation of the human race.  Nor do I presume that there will be seismic changes politically,even though one might well argue that such is what is required if democracy as we have known it is going to survive.

Instead let me posit something a wee bit different, and perhaps even arrogant.

The two-party system, mediated by the ‘gatekeepers’ of the main stream media, is now obsolete, dying off.    

Ranting About Manifestos and Blogs

(Incidentally, I offered the “Proctoscope” title to buhdy, but for some strange reason, he turned me down. What was he thinking?)

At any rate, here’s my dumbass take on the Manifesto thing. Why should you care about what I say? You shouldn’t. I’ll be the first person to tell you, unequivocally, to never take my advice on anything because I’m as full of shit as a Christmas turkey and don’t know what in the f*** I’m talking about. I’m not well-educated and have only a few worthless initials after my name.  If that’s not a huge problem for you though, then in my best “Price is Right” voice, I say “C’mon down!”…. Below the fold, that is.

What does should the Democratic Party stand for, as determined by you and me, a wild bunch of liberal/progressive bloggers?

There are issues, and then there are principles.  I’m a principles and process person, so this post is about principles.  (It’s okay, you can put the stem cell research funding on the entry table, it’ll still be there for you on your way out.)  Of course issues are hugely important, since they’re what impact people’s everyday lives.  To have a coherent platform – to have something which the whole party stands for – I believe those positions on issues must flow from our principles.  I want you to question the biiiiiiiiiiig, obvious ones.  I want you to ask “Why?” ad nauseam, like a seven-year-old child questioning a parent.

What principles of government can we all agree upon?  Pointedly, I am not saying, “Why can’t we all get along?”  If you disagree on a point, I want to hear why.  If there’s nothing you disagree with off the bat, I challenge you to find something.  What is missing or miscategorized?  If you think something is of core importance, even if it’s blindingly obvious, I want to hear about that most of all.

Crossposted at Daily Kos

My Unified Theory of Everything

Well not really.  It’s not anything so fancy as a theory.

My manifesto, by the way, can be expressed in one phrase:

THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX

Let us assess where we are now in the grand old blogosphere:

We have performed approximately seven trillion “gotcha” attacks on the media, reversing memes at the speed of light!

We have helped to elect a Democratic majority in the Senate and Congress.

We have spouted bloviations on every imaginable topic that if laid end to end would easily wrap around the circumfrence of the universe 50,000 times.

We have called to the media’s attention stories they would not otherwise have covered.

What we have NOT done is change policy in our government.  Bush and Cheney have more power now than they did before the 2006 election.  The War in Iraq is still raging, and I see no end in sight, no vote that points to our representatives ending this war.  We have seen no real opposition — NONE.

So, athough the blogosphere has accomplishments to its credit, ultimately we are all frustrated … which is why we are clamoring for a manifesto in the first place!

Before another manifesto is created and sprung on an unsuspecting public one should perform the new manifesto experiment. Had Ted Kaczynski performed this exercise before retiring to the North woods and compiling his lengthy diatribe, he could have been a free man, teaching mathematics and the sciences at one of our institutions of higher learning. Instead, he is a resident of an institution of another sort. The test is quite simple. Simply put, face into the wind (preferably of gale force or higher), piss into that wind and measure the degree to which your urine penetrates that force. More than half the piss passing through the wind barrier is a successful test.