It’s all about you because you’re acting too angry to be of use and have no questions for me nor do you sing the blues for me. You only have your lectures about the long unhappy years of someone else’s misery.
You tell me about the war on the poor that has gone on forever. I know it is a real war because I have tended to the wounded and I have seen the dead and dying. Then you say, that you are fighting a brainy, metaphorical, political war for them against a real war. Huh?
Hats off to Badabing for the recent diary The Facade Is Crumbling: The Fraud and Looting Continue and the comments it generated.
Otherwise, from most of your comments and diaries, I just have to assume that you have some fresh wounds and you take for granted that your wounds entitle you to command my full attention and acquiescence. Your anger is like low back pain; usually way out of proportion to the injury. Conversely, your fawning over your favorite political porn star is so beside the point.
What do you mean by fight? Are you fighting for something by tenaciously supporting it, or fighting a bunch of assholes whose only agenda is dominance, so that even if you win, you will lose by wasting you’re strength and energy.
There have been many times in the last few years that I have I been near death and survived. Invariably, the next day, some cheery, over-enthusiastic, over educated, interloper like you would say, “You’re a fighter.”
Bullshit, there is never any evidence of a fight, only my faithful wife, sitting by my side, looking like she has been mugged. That is what goes on here, thanks for never asking a sincere question.
I believe with all of my heart that I am in a non-violent struggle for human rights and social justice. This is the metaphorical war; all of humanity, even ugly Republicans, are on my side. Here is how politics fits into the struggle as opposed to letting politics dominate the struggle:
The three branches of government, 2010 Edition
1.The elected politicians. POTUS, The House and The Senate.
Does your vote really count since Bush v Gore? Democracy is a nominal entity in the United States now that capitalism has been allowed to take its place. Freedom to fight your metaphorical political war with rhetorical rockets in a non-functioning democracy is a wasteful head game.
Extending unemployment benefits is a Democratic obligation; the paucity of voices here that emphasize and support local community groups dealing with this crisis is a failure of the Democratic polity.
2. The unelected power establishment.
The Cabinet, SCOTUS, the staffers, the staffers of the staffers, the rules writers, the policy makers, and the players waiting in the corridors for regime change. The theory is that most of them, and there are a lot of them, work for the elected branch. No, they emanate chaos because of the elected branch.
The latest scandal highlighted by WaPo on Mon. July 19, about the huge homeland security bureaucracy is only the latest example.
3. The unelected money interests.
Comprised of industry groups, corporate spokespersons, lobbyists, opinion makers, legal teams and marketers. Our elected officials accommodate this huge branch of government by characterizing the work that thy do to orderly restructure these industries as ‘reforms’. That is why there is a grain of truth, hypocritical as it may be, in the opposition party’s’ arguments. That is the self perpetuating, self serving nature of the phony political war. The finance and banking committees of the house and senate bear inspection.
The political party professionals and operatives are a strong segment of the power establishment and mostly the money interests; they are a self-interested culture that encourage divisiveness. They conduct the phony war; it is a distraction from the real war, the one sided massacre where people really get hurt and more get hurt by picking a side in the fighting.
In 1995, the Democratic party became, along with the Republicans, part of the entertainment industry, competing with media, news, sports, music and movies. Thank you Bill Clinton.
Any district up for grabs and highlighted in detail on the front page, will serve as an example. Our Democratic candidates waste our time and money on pundits, pollsters, strategists, campaign staffers and media consultants; they do not spend it on progressive change, rather on soliciting progressive votes.
Politicians vote according to what their handlers’ think they can get away with, not what their constituents want. It is convenient for the GOP that they can get away with so much. Not even a ‘progressive’ president changed that.
That is why these ‘progressive' campaigns are laughable examples of political marketing. Does Bill Halter ring a bell? That is a campaign that Arkansans did not agree with and it did not bring progressive change or unity to Arkansas or the nation. All of Halter’s supporters enlarged the unelected power establishment. Was that the plan?
Compromise is dead within the two demented party establishments. Accommodating the three branches takes up all of the legislators’ attention. These three branches are the political right of America, on my right, on your right, and on the right of every individual.
The result: confusion, anger and panic reigns at DKos, all self generated because there is no accurate map and there is no compass. That is why “I can’t believe...” is the most commented preface here. You are not going to get your democracy back by vocally resenting that it was taken away. The playbook of the angry past only works in a functional democracy.
Democratic candidates would all do well to be known for working tirelessly for all of their constituents instead of tirelessly raising money.
When I hear a candidate's name, I want to know that that something for my community is coming my way. I do not want to hear that the candidate is on some community board and that the candidate shows up for fund raisers which, benefit the candidate more than the community, or that the candidate carved out some pork that was not needed.
Progressive, apolitical community work is the best response to the divisive rhetorical war and the best antidote to the poison of conservative ideology. Make politicians accommodate us; force them to compromise with their discredited opponents. There is no 19th century social gospel,
The theory that I keep hearing is if we get enough ‘progressive’ Democrats, we will achieve justice, democracy, a fair economy and peace. That was supposed to occur when and how many years ago now? What is always left out of the equation is that candidates all have their own personal agendas. They are all fighting for themselves; you are waiting for your interests to intersect. We should try to achieve that better world without them, make them follow.
Kalamazoo promise home page is a project that we can and should take on as a community.
This is one of 1.5 million initiatives that need your support without an election at stake.
There are 2500 non-profits in my area alone. Our politicians have to help us solve our problems locally by working with them not by milking them for votes. These senseless, divisive, partisan battles will not result in the government helping society.
HIR is a perfect example. You can count the victories in HIR or you can measure the pile of crumbs we got, the balance is the same. Aren’t you a little self conscious arguing with each other about this?
Compared to what we need to achieve, the “we have achieved a lot’ affirmation mantra to relieve anxiety means that the structure as I outlined it, is the norm.
250,000 Kossacks kvetching, arguing, engaged in digital hyperventilation and affirmative mantra is not a pretty sight. If you want to elect Democrats,
2.2 "What is the purpose of this site? href="(http://www.dkosopedia.com/wiki/DailyKos_FAQ#)
This is a Democratic blog, a partisan blog. One that recognizes that Democrats run from left to right on the ideological spectrum, and yet we're all still in this fight together. We happily embrace centrists like NDN's Simon Rosenberg and Howard Dean, conservatives like Martin Frost and Brad Carson, and liberals like John Kerry and Barack Obama. Liberal? Yeah, we're around here and we're proud. But it's not a liberal blog. It's a Democratic blog with one goal in mind: electoral victory. And since we haven't gotten any of that from the current crew, we're one more thing: a reform blog. The battle for the party is not an ideological battle. It's one between establishment and anti-establishment factions. And as I've said a million times, the status quo is untenable.
The site has grown in the years since that diary. In a comment made in kos's town hall diary in early 2010, he noted: Daily Kos will be what Daily Kos is, and that oftentimes evolves. I know everyone wants their clearly defined rules, but nothing is that simple. This site is CERTAINLY NOT for all Democrats. Joe Lieberman learned that. Blanche Lincoln is about to learn it. This site is about more and better Democrats, not necessarily in that order.
then you have to be Democrats worth electing.