Kossack  amsterdam , posting in Russ feingold's diary on the party collapse in regards to the Iraq funding bill has the perfect idea to channel our rage :

Maybe the netroots           (22+ / 0-)

should organize a close down of financial support until they are listening.

A well organized action across the netroots for a day or two may very well attract their attention.

by amsterdam on Tue May 22, 2007 at 10:51:31 AM PDT

I'm down with that. How about you?

It's an open secret- Big Phama is experimenting on our troops in quest of a pill that will convert our soldiers into sleepless zombies who will kill with no feeling and there are numerous products flooding into the combat zone without any public studies as to long range effects. There's unbelievable companies working in Iraq proposing unbelievable things for our bodies through chemistry.

Well, our govinator is getting all kinds of friendly press lately, what with his new sexy green campaign making him friends worldwide. He's tooling around in his Hydrogen powered Hummer. He's lecturing republican groups on the virtues of giving up the "question global warming" tactic, telling them "you'll become political penguins on an ice floe". This sounds really good on paper.

Problem is, that's all it is. Words on paper, like a script. Turn the page with me.

There's no pussyfooting around this issue. It's a demonstration of every media expert's core knowledge base. It's inherent in human conditioning ( Except maybe in England). Social strata and high school cliques owe their heirarchies to it. And of course, Presidential politics at it's most basic depends on it.

As near as I can gather, it's why Dennis Kucinich is considered unelectable.

He's a total DORK.

And that's a shame, because his message and vision is needed now more than ever.

I was sorting through my post-campaign emails and I found in the section 249-301 a letter from a dear friend who I met in the early days of the Howard Dean campaign. She's a brilliant and urbane woman whose demeanor of not panicking under pressure of course put her in the enviable position every time there was an event here in the greater LA area of being the go-to lady who ran the operation behind the scenes. I never see enough of her and now she's in London dammit but that's another story.  But lo and behold, the answer to all this Carville vs Dean kerfluffle:

HOWARD DEAN HAS BEEN HIRED BY THE LABOUR PARTY TO ADVISE ON HOW TO SUCCESSFULLY WIN AN ELECTION.

I know everyone here worked HARD, very hard to get the Democrats back in power. As I dialed number after number for DFA and MoveOn, one of the motivating things for me was this image:

and this one:

and, dare I dream:

And I was LIVID at the prospect of Pelosi's statement about "impeachment-not going to happen."
But after a weekend of serious thought in between several celebratory bacchanalias, it occured to me that she was right.

But not like you're thinking.....

With all he well-deserved outrage over Rumsfeld's ridiculous comparison of those against the Bush Administration's Iraq quagmire (non)policy to the appeasers of Hitler in the runup to World War Two, I was really surprised I saw little mention of the fact that those who sought to appease Hitler, and in many cases ally with him in the fascist cause, were actually RIGHT WING REPUBLICANS.

Seems logical once you realize what was at play then.
more post flippus maximus.

I've read many comments today about the state of things, particularly Zenbowl's excellent and thoughtful diary. In the process of responding to this this diary emereged.

Yeah, you guys, things seem disorganized and unfocused. That's because they ARE.

But you have to look at this very organic process from a step away, then things look a might more hopeful.

Nogales, AZ (PFC)

Ken Lay's bloated and bullet-riddled corpse lay rotting in the Nogales sun today as Federal authorities tried to piece together evidence and disassemble the explosive device Lay had with him when he met his end in a fusillade of bullets in response to Lay's opening fire with a gold-plated assault weapon once given to him by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It may surprise some of you here that you are NOT really leftists; no, we have bought into this well manufactured mythos, we are, from a spectrum standpoint, centrists, and those to the right of us are, respectfully, right wing. Even if you are a registered Democrat, if you espouse certain right wing notions, like War and corporatism, you are right wing.  Those to the left or outside the Democratic Party are referred to, respectfully, as "leftists" for purposes of this polemic.

I saw An Inconvenient Truth on Saturday night. This weekend was awash with various Global Warming news features and specials it seemed.  I thought that maybe after Al Gore's recent appearances on MSM shows together with the obvious impact of the movie's message, the argument was done.

But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Today's Wall Street Journal puts up another in a series of articles written by professional Global Warming skeptic Richard Linzen, who has major creds- he's the "Alfred P Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT"  Oh by the way, in case you don't remember the Name, Alfred P. Sloan was a gazillionaire in 1934 and President and Chief Executive Officer of the General Motors Corporation.

Ok. So I missed the Yearly Kos. I wanted to go. Would have been cool. However, I had a previous engagement in the remote lakes and streams of the Eastern Sierra, stalking the elusive trout. It was a remote location, so remote that we had no TV , radio, or internet. Cell phones were useless. So, six days into this I was kind of jonesing for maybe a tidbit of news. So, in my car on a dusty road heading down to the general store, I turned on the radio and hit "scan", hoping to get some signal, and the radio lands on, of all things, a remote Southern Nevada station broadcasting El Rushbo. This by way of explanation of how I heard Rush say one hell of an amazing thing.

"Out here on the perimeter there are no stars"

In Ventura County,California, people like the hills, wild and tangled with Chapparal and Oaks. Near the land of Reagan's grave and library, it's almost the country, and the place is clean and still a little rural and just far enough away from the grime and heat and gritiness of the LA metro area, so people don't mind an extra 30 mile drive to get there to work. This here is God's country, it's election day, and the registration is about 55-45 Republicans. This is very red country, boy. Today, I have no time for partisan battles. I'm working a poll. I'm an election officer. My name is Hickerson.

Dawn pokes a rosy nose through dull clouds of a humid summer day in Ventura County; it backlights the sky to the color of pink lemonade and the residual ground fog wisps around like a heavy metal video from the 80's. I pull into the parking lot. Day one of the New Dawn of elections: We're using the new Sequoia machines. At least they aren't Diebold.
What would happen next, I could only guess.

Well! What a day! It appears that immigants everywhere have a unified voice. Especially the one I talked to today. he stood on a corner, leading a "counter protest" "They've got no respect fo tha Law-uh" he screamed. That gave him away right there. "Law" is a one syllable word here in my native land. By that, I mean the Republico de CALIFORNIA.

Sure, everybody's all abuzz about the major leak that allowed yesterdays' conventioneers to view the Saturday LA Times Headline at 4:00 pm Friday night. This event set off a scramble amongst the two camps of Governor Primary opponents, The Westly guys finally as smug as the Angelides guys have been all year.

I was witness to Phil Angelide's great job of wowing the crowds at last years convention, and the effect of that has been chipped away slowly in the past several weeks by the slick and stealthy Westly campiagn, who has spent a boatload of cash on TV and radio ads, vs a smaller boatload by Angelides.

I had hoped to attend the State Democratic Party Convention, and work the California for Democracy (DFA) table, but I'm mired by a business deal and can't break away. So apologies, my fellow progressive Dems, and brothers and sisters in arms at California for Democracy. If you live in Cali, and you haven't already, join up with your local group of progressives (listed by zip code) via DFAlink. But I digress. The main point of the Democratic Party Covention is to get everyone on the same page in this vital election year. And I heard something today that had god-damn well better be on the party agenda, on page ONE.

By a departing light
We see acuter quite
Than by a wick that stays.
There's something in the flight
That clarifies the sight
And decks the rays.
---Emily Dickinson

William Sloane Coffin passed away last night, amid the laughter and joy of his family during a gathering. He was a singularly distinctive man, borne of a time when great Satanic evil loosed itself upon our world, not once, but several times in his lifeteme, and he provided a spiritual touchstone for those of us who always asked an anguished "WHY?"

According to their own standard used when pursuing the impeachment of President Clinton, and so eloquently phrased here the other day by CinDan in his diary about the justifications used at the time, the Republican Party finds itself at an unpleaseant crossroads. Either they were serious about the United States being a country of laws, or they must now step up and admit they were craven partisan hacks, that their entire rationale during the Clinton Impeachment was just so much propaganda, and that they stand for nothing except the accumulation of power to serve large corporations at the expense of the people.