Good morning, Christy!

F I T Z !!!!!!

NED!!!!

Morning all — I’m on the sleepy side this morning, so if I missed a typo, please let me know. Thanks!

Good morning, and Go Blue!

Now, to answer your question, Christy. In high school I was selected by the student newspaper advisor to cover an off-site story. The national plowing contest had a few guest speakers coming to Casselton ND. Barry Goldwater, Hubert Humphrey, and the travelling press corps. There I was, a green kid, with the same press badge and access to the press tent as the big boy correspondents for network news.

Ever since, my fascination with politics has been colored by that press angle. Which is why you likely see me rail more against the lazy, lapdog or compliant enabling media which regurgitate spin instead of doing fact-based reporting than against the spinners.

Or as Mr. Sunshine who’s always been in marketing puts it: some people are salesmen, some are order takers. The media have been order takers too long. And yes, I’m talkin’ Alex Witt this morning letting the Republican spinner filibuster-shill virtually nonstop on the network I just turned off.

Bobby Kennedy.

Great post, Christy. Rev up the SPOTLIGHT, folks.

Before heading out to canvass in CT, I’ll pass on a Molly Ivins post in a local CT newspaper:

Keeping our Eyes on the Ball

KEEPING OUR EYES ON THE BALL

AUSTIN, Texas — I’m still worried sick. The R’s have seized the news cycle! Which says more about how dim American politics are than anything I can think of.

Apparently, the Michael J. Fox affair didn’t have enough meat to it, and even Rep. Mark Foley is out of the game, so now we have the semi-hemi-demi-gaffe from John Kerry, who is not in fact running for anything.

…

May I remind you what this election is about? Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, unprecedented presidential powers, unmatched incompetence, unparalleled corruption, unwarranted eavesdropping, Katrina, Enron, Halliburton, global warming, Cheney’s secret energy task force, record oil company profits, $3 gasoline, FEMA, the Supreme Court, Diebold, Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004, Terri Schiavo, stem cell research, golden parachutes, shrunken pensions, unavailable and expensive health care, habeas corpus, no weapons of mass destruction, sacrificed soldiers and Iraqi civilians, wasted billions, Taliban resurgence, expiration of the assault weapons ban, North Korea, Iran, intelligent design, swift boat hit squads, and on and on.

This election is about that, but much more — it’s about honor, dignity and comity in this country. It’s about the Constitution, which gives us this great nation. Bush ran on a pledge of “restoring honor and integrity” to the White House. Instead, he brought us Tom DeLay, Roy Blunt, Katherine Harris, John Doolittle, Jerry Lewis, Richard Pombo, Mark Foley, Dennis Hastert, David Safavian, Jack Abramoff, Ralph Reed, Karl Rove and an illegal and immoral war in Iraq. People, it’s up to you.

Eleanor Roosevelt: “Nobody can take advantage of you without your permission.”

First encountered when reading an Ann Landers column in high school!!

It is freezing outside — our poor little dachshund was looking at me this morning with her “you’ve got to be freaking kidding me?!?” look when I made her go outside to the lawn. The grass is crunchy with frost, and all the birdies on my feeders are fluffed out as much as possible to stay warm.

It’s a good day to have warm slippers and a working heater.

No time to visit, wish I could stick around and visit. We start dropping voter guides this morning in less than an hour, covering 900 houses.

Want to encourage you all to do what you can, even if it’s only your own neighborhood — print out door hangers from 100Actions.org, ask your neighbors if they need a ride Tuesday, ask if they know all the Dem candidates.

Wishing you all the energy and fortitude you need for this sprint to the finish.

Hi Christy
What a wonderful way to start this big GOTV weekend.
Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, Martin Luther King and John Kennedy were my inspiration for my core beliefs. But my high school history teacher inspired me to take action and make a difference.
[Fast forward to 2006 . . .] After what seems like a decade of feeling frustrated, depressed and hopeless, I have pushed myself to work every weekend here in CA-11 since August and will leave in a few hours to spend all day today, tomorrow and Tuesday for our GOTV push.
Who is my inspiration in 2006?
FDL, MyDD, dKos, DWT, and all the progressive blogs [front pagers and commenters] who dare us, push us and cheer us to make a difference.
And as I have worked to try to make a difference, it has made a tremendous difference to me personally. From despair and frustration to determination and hope.
Go Blue America Candidates!
Get Out The Vote!

Not sure who put this up the other day but loved this quote:

If by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad; if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.” - John F. Kennedy

I started working on my sermon yesterday for election Sunday, “Fear Not” and was reading through a collection of JFK writings, speeches, press conferences etc. For the first time I read through the WHOLE Definition of a Liberal address he gave to the Liberal Party in NY Sept. 14, 1960. It is, in a word awesome. I’d read snippets before but the whole thing is worth reading. Try doing it without a tear welling up. THAT is what we are about and what we are fighting for.

I’ve been a West Wing fan since day 1 and own the whole series (the last season, 7, is being released on Tuesday!) That was my alternate parallel universe and what got me through the Bush catastrophe. I have my own home made t-shirts and bumper stickers declaring “Josiah Bartlet is MY President” which I wear proudly. (anyone can make their own, .pdf files available on my web site under “fun files) I’ll be wearing them in CT starting tomorrow after I have done my best to motivate my congregation to get involved in the process because of hope not fear.

Thanks Christy for taking my small idea and running with it. I look forward to seeing what people come up with. The more quotes, ideas, books, inspirational figures we have the better!

Hi Christy,

I know what doesn’t inspire:

Dick Cheney: “It may not be popular with the public, it doesn’t matter in the sense that we have to continue the mission and do what we think is right.”

On a positive note, what does inspire, are words from Christian Wiman, Editor of Poetry Magazine

“Let us remember… that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both.”

The poetry of FDL and the gang inspires me…
Thanks for your work…

Jack

I remember as a 5 year old, I was aware of the ‘72 presidential election. I really liked McGovern. My next door neighbor’s dad was a wingnut before it was cool to be a wingnut-conspiracy theories about everything, so he taught me to question everything I heard.

I also grew up in a very progressive and forward thinking Catholic church that emphasized love and compassion.

I have also always been somewhat of a contrarian, going against or resisting the conevential wisdom or beliefs of the place where I lived. So being in Indiana with the army of Zombie Republicans, I became more liberal.

Not really a typo, Christy, but the graph that starts So often, the second often is redundant.

Quotes: I love the Margaret Mead quote. But these days the one that resonates with special poignance for me is “Ask not…” We all know the rest. I remember vividly working in the school library when the p.a. system broke in with the tragic announcement. I remember Walter Cronkite. The little boy saluting his father…

This weekend, on Tuesday, we have the opportunity to honor that call to patriotism and our better selves that has been so perverted and corrupted by this criminal administration who does nothing but ask what this country can do for their crowd, for their power, for their bottom line….

So maybe our rallying cry right now can be what we can do for our country….

Get Out Our Vote… and Vote.

frim a twighlight zone, I couldn’t be too old, I don’t remember the date

a teacher was rue to die for what he had not ccomplished.

Be ashamed to die unless you have won some victory for humanity. Horace Mann
harrace harding

“I have a dream”

from a twighlight zone, I couldn’t be too old, I don’t remember the date

a teacher was rue to die for what he had not ccomplished.

Horace harding

Be ashamed to die unless you have won some victory for humanity. Horace Mann
harrace harding

affected the rest of my life

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

H L Mencken

“No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: “But what would you replace it with?”

When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with”

Thomas Sowell (American Writer and Economist, b.1930)

“I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends… that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.”

Adlai E. Stevenson

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”

Cicero

“The biggest liar in the world is They Say.”

Douglas Malloch

In August of 1963, when I was 11 years old, my father took me with him to the March On Washington. He was a working as a producer at CBS News at the time and was there with a film crew shooting the event. I stood with him on the camera platform and heard MLK give his famous speech. I heard Joan Baez sing “All My Trials”. It was, obviously, an unforgettable experience which helped forge my political consciousness. But if there is one quote which stahds out it woulkd have to be this:

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

Copyright 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider MusicCome gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.

Copyright 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

“And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

CNN - Baghdad airport will close today and remain closed until further notice because of the feared violence after the Saddam verdict. A curfew will also be imposed.

The Cicero quote bears repeating. What a formidable quote. Those who don’t learn the lessons of history *cough* BUSH….

There are already quotes new to me, and RevDeb’s link re Kennedy’s liberal speech. This is fascinating and I’m opening an email to myself in the tool bar to copy and save a few. The speech may have to wait for reading after the election, but thank you Christy, for this moment.

Frosty hereabouts, too, and the cockers are curled together on the sofa ’cause this ol’ house is drafty. On to the local paper now.

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”

Cicero

Only a few minutes before running out to GOTV. The most inspiring thing is the Declaration of Independence. Who can’t read that and get goosbumps?

This describes how I feel about current politics. Where it says “republicans” one can read Democrats; where it says monarchists you can leave monarchists because that’s what we’re fighting this weekend.

“Where the principle of difference [between political parties] is as substantial and as strongly pronounced as between the republicans and the monocrats of our country, I hold it as honorable to take a firm and decided part and as immoral to pursue a middle line, as between the parties of honest men and rogues, into which every country is divided.” Thomas Jefferson to William Branch Giles, 1795

GOTV!!!!!

I really started getting into politics with the election of 2000. For the first time in my life, I realized I was living in history. Then in 2001 I started watching west wing (at least i think it was 2001), and that got me even more interested. I will admit I slept through the 2002 elections. Then a man named Wesley Clark came around, and he single handidly made me an official political junkie!!

Good Mornin’ all.

Twisted Martini @ 16

I also grew up in a very progressive and forward thinking Catholic church that emphasized love and compassion.

Me, too. And I remain astonished that the institution which in my youth concerned itself with the poor and down-trodden is now obsessed with sexual reproduction issues and gay people.

News item from this morning’s times:

A team of lawyers for the Democratic Party has been arguing with postal officials in Columbus, Ohio, trying to persuade them to process thousands of absentee ballots that have arrived with insufficient postage.

This is scandalous and shocking to learn that absentee ballots need postage. They should be postage free. After all, when I step into the polling booth, do I pay a fee? What the hell is our government for except to serve the people. This postage required thing is a part and parcel of the profit-driven mentality of morphing the Postal Service into a corporate-owned business.

As Vote Nears Parties Prepare for Legal Fights

The deal here is that this year’s ballot is thicker and requires $.60 cents postage and a lot of people don’t know that! So they stick one stamp on and think its OK. Even the Republicans are fretting about this. But bottom line, there should be no postage requirement for absentee ballots. We pay taxes to go destroy another country, why not apply some of that money to free absentee ballots? Not with this government.

Too late to get this word out for Tuesday I’m afraid, and many ballots will go uncounted. Scandalous!

Really no politicians living did much in the way of inspiring. I like the policy discussion and possibility, some of the old speeches of the heros’ they assasinated (termination of the will of the people), and the contrast in policies. I still do not understand and seek to discover why some people can be so cruel, and why so many people on both sides can be so utterly fooled.

I was into politics about when Regean came in, and could not believe how many people were fooled. My Dad would try and tell some blue collar Dems that switched to Regean what was going on but they did not believe him…later they would always tell them he was right.

My brother was a bit of inspiration since he was very into politics (in the Peace Corp now), formerly maybe a bit of an Alex P. Keaton. I asked him what was up with Regean… he said if you like Enron, then you like what Regean did. That Eron was Regean. F’in corporations got the rights of the people.

The problem as I see it now is we are missing one of the three critical elements of the Constitution. We do not have governement “For the People”.

Prairie Sunshine @ 25

Those who don’t learn the lessons of history *cough* BUSH….

I’ve seen references to Santayana’s writing a corollary to the quote you reference which goes:

“‘History is always written wrong,
and so always needs to be rewritten.’.”

But I’ve never seen it sourced.

The Do More Than Vote folks have put together a list of 90 campaigns that could use a hand this weekend. In case you have the time, this would be a great way to get involved. It includes contact information for each campaign.

gleex @ 30

I was into politics about when Regean came in, and could not believe how many people were fooled. My Dad would try and tell some blue collar Dems that switched to Regean what was going on but they did not believe him…later they would always tell them he was right.

My dad got stung by Nixon, then stung again by Reagan. As the Iran-Contra scandal disgorged its ugly secrets, I remember him standing in the kitchen, a look of dismay on his face. He said: “Here we thought he was determined and decisive, and it turns out he’s just stupid and stubborn.”

Sound like anyone else we know..?

Good Morning Firedogs and Christy,

What is it that first got you interested in politics or history or civic involvement?

- how is this possible ? they were little girls just like me and they die violently in their own church ?

remember all the grown ups talking angrily about it and it was the first time I’d ever seen my grandmother cry -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1.....ch_bombing

followed soon after by this - and it’s wall to wall (for the time) coverage -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.....rs_Murders

and then Dad the Union Man bringing home his monthly Teamster magazine with this woman’s portrait gracing the cover -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_Liuzzo

When ever I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by the opposition I remember this…

“The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins. In order for somebody to win an important, major fight 100 years hence, a lot of other people have got to be willing - for the sheer fun and joy of it - to go right ahead and fight, knowing you’re going to lose. You mustn’t feel like a martyr. You’ve got to enjoy it.” by I.F. Stone

Jack Kennedy here. He offered the chance for everyone to live alongside him & Jackie in “Camelot” as the press of the day called it. Not only did he offer a chance to a better life for the middle class he was charismatic and convincing also. The only elected official who has come close to offering that same kind of hope has been Bill Clinton since then.
I guess as a nation we might have become more civilized since then because all the repugs did to Clinton was impeach him. Have I mentioned to you today how much I truly cannot stand republicans.

In grade school I remember being really inspired by a biography of Dolly Madison which propelled me to read lots of other books about presidents and their wives. I discovered stories about the underground railroad and read everything I could. The injustice of slavery and the bravery of those who fought it still inspire me. (I’m not black btw).

Here are a couple of quotes that inspire me:

“The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” Plato

“If you lessen your anger at the structures of power, you lower your love for the victims of power.” William Sloane Coffin

That quote really said it all when I was working in Mississippi this spring to help rebuild. So many people spoke about all the good that the faith-based community was doing, and it infuriated me that the government was doing essentially nothing.

Finally, “One person with a belief is equal to a force of 99 who have only interests.” John Stuart Mill

Thanks for all that you do.

Carmen

Good morning.

I became active politically when I realized how broken, unwise and warlike our foreign policy was. I am antiwar.

I have learned and seen much in my lifetime and am inspired by peace and diplomacy. I have seen precious little of it exhibited by our leaders, especially lately. Unless and until we take our place in the world as a brother and sister to others instead of a bully and a user of others, we will be in a constant state of war. I believe in self defense, but I cannot see how we are safer when we are an aggressive, imperial power who grabs what we need in the name of national security and to hell with everyone else.

One of my favorite humans is Jimmy Carter:

A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It’s a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.
Jimmy Carter

An act of terrorism totally outside the bounds of international law and diplomatic tradition. a crisis that calls for firmness and restraint.
Jimmy Carter

Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing… you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn’t affect two-thirds of the people of the world.
Jimmy Carter

We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
Jimmy Carter

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.
Jimmy Carter

1972 McGovern and Nixon were spelled out by pushing fall leaves in the spaces of the metal link fence on opposite sides of the playground with a Luchador battleground in between of partisan ten year olds. As a young kid being called a communist multiple times by very angry shoppers for passing out Ceaser Chavez literature for the UFW at the grocery. Angry teachers in high school for carrying the little red book. Being arrested for hitchhiking to school and the police finding a stack of Socialist Worker newspapers in my guitar case, the cop kept one to read later but never found the four ounces hidden in my jacket, lucky. Oh the memories, my Fathers letter from Martin Luther King, Jr., how I could go on, and look at us now.

jambro @
27

I really started getting into politics with the election of 2000. For the first time in my life, I realized I was living in history. Then in 2001 I started watching west wing (at least i think it was 2001), and that got me even more interested. I will admit I slept through the 2002 elections. Then a man named Wesley Clark came around, and he single handidly made me an official political junkie!!

Good Mornin’ all.

Me too. Clark is the one who did it for me. Hearing him speak in person on a little farm here in ND was inspiring. I’ve been paying attention ever since.

Anybody got a good porkchop marinade recipe? I’m feeling creative today!

My parents were socially active in the 60’s with poverty issues and the civil rights struggle.

Lots of family friends were activists of different sorts.

I remember the Nixon impeachment and began to take an interest in politics.

Living in NH allowed for the retail aspects so I was able to hear and meet Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, Fritz Hollings, Pat Buchanan, Alan Keyes(whew..what a kook), Gore, Kerry, Edwards…and on….as well as B-1 Bob Dornan.

To many folks politics is boring, to me it is like sports that has real life consequences.

Kennedy’s “ask not” speech…Kings “I have a dream”….and of course Santayana’s “Those who do not learn from history”.

-GSD

I was 16 when JFK was elected. We lived a mile from Mount Vernon and I hiked to National Airport on Inauguration Day to catch a bus to DC because it had snowed the night before and the roads weren’t cleared yet. In the photographs of the inauguration I’m in the crowd at the bottom left of the Capitol steps. I had stuffed envelopes for the Kennedy campaign and still believe in the vision that Jack Kennedy had for this country. I haven’t mellowed over the years. Quite the contrary. I become more radical each year the capitalist thugs try to take everything from the working and middle class.

This is, as Churchill said, the end of the beginning. We’ve got a lot of work to do in the next few years. Anybody who thinks things will change overnight is sadly mistaken. It’s going to take a lot of hard work. There is no time to rest on our laurels.

Never give up.

How did I get involved in politics? Easy: Politics was almost a religion in my family. Other people went to church and talked about their religion at home. We had politics. I like to joke that I’m a Legacy Democrat for this reason, although my family has an association with the party dating back to Jefferson, so it’s true in that sense as well. Still, the main topic of conversation in my rather large family centered around politics. Watching the news was a daily ritual, and then everyone sat around the dinner table and hashed out the issues of the day. In the mid 60s (my formative years), most of that revolved around civil rights and Vietnam.

But politics came crashing into my personal reality even more at the tender age of 6, with the assassination of Dr. King. That in itself was terrible of course, but what made it worse was that one of my classmates was a black child and had the name Martin King. When I came home from school and heard everybody all riled up about the death of “Martin King,” I went into hysterics. I thought it was my friend. Showing me the reports that it was another King didn’t calm me.

My first political act was going to a memorial for Dr. King at a black church. In East Texas. In the 60s. My brothers and I were the only white children there. My mother was the only white adult. But she had called Martin’s parents, and asked if we could attend the service with them, and for god’s sake, bring Martin! I was so relieved when I saw my friend alive. I don’t remember much about the service, but I know there was a lot of talk about the great things Mr. King did, and a great deal of stern rebukes of the toll the Vietnam war was taking on blacks.

After that, I didn’t protest watching the news with my grandmother. I obediently sat next to her, and paid attention to what was being said. I take great pride that I was the only person in my 1st grade class who knew who was running for President that fall. I had a primitive understanding of what they stood for, but I knew something. Hell, most of the kids didn’t even know we had a President, and people could vote for him.

I’ve been involved ever since. My grandmother was a yellow-dog Democrat until the day she died, rest her soul, and it was her passionate support of the party that inspired our entire family into political involvement. Four of her sons were bigwigs in their local Dem parties. One of them ran for public office, and won. I worked on my first campaign (McGovern), stuffing envelopes at my uncle’s kitchen table, when I was 10 years old.

Favorite inspirational political quotes…? Hm. I’ll have to think about that one. For now, the only one that comes to mind is from, ironically, a Republican, perhaps because I’m old enough now to understand that wisdom transcends party or ideological lines:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms in not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals.

It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

It embraces most of my ideals, and reminds me of what is really important, what is worth fighting for, and how government can make a difference in making the world a better place. What are our priorities? Who are we as a people? Ike pretty much nails what I believe we can be, and will be, if we try at all.

My grandmother who would have been 92 years old yesterday, but who died when she was only 58 years old provided my inspiration. She had a 5th grade education and had more heart than anybody I knew. Along with the stories of history, ancestors and the open pondering of things not known, she told me history provided the answers to everything. She pointed the way and directed my path as long as she lived. She still influences my life.

Twisted Martini @ 40

Anybody got a good porkchop marinade recipe? I’m feeling creative today!

Ask the Subway Marinade next time.

-GSD

lisadawn82 @ 35

When ever I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by the opposition I remember this…

———————————————-

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”

Both Winston Churchill

The first thing that came to my mind, what I read when I need emotional comfort and strength? Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass.

Margaret Thatcher, and not in a good way. I was a sixteen year old apprentice in trade school in London when the Falklands war kicked off. All the other kids were extremely gung ho, fuelled by Murdoch’s “Sun” tabloid. At seventeen, I was apprenticed to several guys who were all old-school Labour men, Union sheet metal workers. On our breaks we would sit and discuss politics. This was against the backdrop of the Miners strike and sundry other outrages perpetrated by Thatcher against the working class of Britain.

Flash forward twenty-some years, and here I am in Denver married to a life-long Democrat (who can’t mention Ben Nighthorse Campbell without spitting) and I’m as outraged by the actions of the government as I was back then. I guess that’s a good thing.

Quotes? Churchill has hundreds.

“Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”

Or this, which seems apt for this weekend;

“It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time.”

I was inspired by Dr. Albert Schweitzer.

SouthernDragon @ 42

I was 16 when JFK was elected. We lived a mile from Mount Vernon and I hiked to National Airport on Inauguration Day to catch a bus to DC because it had snowed the night before and the roads weren’t cleared yet. In the photographs of the inauguration I’m in the crowd at the bottom left of the Capitol steps. I had stuffed envelopes for the Kennedy campaign and still believe in the vision that Jack Kennedy had for this country. I haven’t mellowed over the years. Quite the contrary. I become more radical each year the capitalist thugs try to take everything from the working and middle class.

This is, as Churchill said, the end of the beginning. We’ve got a lot of work to do in the next few years. Anybody who thinks things will change overnight is sadly mistaken. It’s going to take a lot of hard work. There is no time to rest on our laurels.

Never give up.

I continue to have a picture of President Kennedy hanging in my dining room. We would be living in a much more progressive world if JFK, RFK & MLK were allowed to continue their work.

for Angie,

like the author of this stub, I became curious about the Gov. of Georgia when Hunter S. Thompson was so moved by and wrote of this speech -

http://www.narsil.org/politics/carter/law_day.html

“On November 14 a group of lawyers and other experts will come before the German federal prosecutor and ask him to open a criminal investigation targeting Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and other key Bush Administration figures for war crimes. The recent passage of the Military Commissions Act provides a central argument for the legal action, under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction: It demonstrates the intent of the Bush Administration to immunize itself legally from prosecution in the United States, even for the most serious crimes.”

Twisted at 40 — I use this for pork roasts, should work just as well for chops:

Herb Marinade for Pork Roast
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 c. olive oil
3 Tbsp. cider vinegar
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 tsp. dried oregano leaves
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. dried rosemary, crumbled
1/4 tsp. dried dill
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper

Mix all the marinade ingredients together and pout into large ziploc bag. Add 4-lb. pork roast (or chops). Seal bag and place in bowl in fridge. Can be marinated for several hours or overnight — the longer you marinade, the better the flavor. For roast, preheat oven to 325 F. Remove roast from marinade and place in roasting pan. Roast 2 to 3 hours, until internal temperature reaches 170 F. Let stand 10 to 15 minutes prior to carving.

We went to public school, although we were Catholic, and in that autumn of the Kennedy-Nixon campaigns, my Dad had given me a Kennedy for President pin(I still have it). I was young–maybe in third or fourth grade, and I still remember the jacket I had on–with my JFK pin–and Jack Clark standing behind me in line, saying, “If Kennedy wins, we won’t get to have recess anymore.” A little kid afraid of a Catholic becoming President…and that began my involvement in politics…I remember it so clearly….

These days, at my age, I’m prone to think of something Kurt Vonnegut said: “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”

ReneND @ 39

jambro @
27

I really started getting into politics with the election of 2000. For the first time in my life, I realized I was living in history. Then in 2001 I started watching west wing (at least i think it was 2001), and that got me even more interested. I will admit I slept through the 2002 elections. Then a man named Wesley Clark came around, and he single handidly made me an official political junkie!!

Good Mornin’ all.

Me too. Clark is the one who did it for me. Hearing him speak in person on a little farm here in ND was inspiring. I’ve been paying attention ever since.

Bringing up Clark is a very touchy issue with me. He was my man for 2004. I even met him and have his autograph. I liked him precisely because he was not part of the establishment. Told him I had served in the same branch as he, and he congratulated me by name, which is my best political high. But as a candidate he had yet to learn the ropes, and the Democratic party wanted no part of him, and still does not. Having John Kerry run instead of Clark, on the other hand, was a political low for me.

ReneND
Me too. Clark is the one who did it for me. Hearing him speak in person on a little farm here in ND was inspiring. I’ve been paying attention ever since.

Me, too, also. I was at that same speech. Small world. A good example of harmonic convergence. We are all being drawn together to restore hope and democracy.

Thanks Christy, and thanks for your inspiration!

You and Jane, Steve G, John Aravosis, Josh Marshall and the Young Turks serve as my inspiration, with a supporting cast of thousands fighting to take our country back.

angie @ 38

Good morning.

I became active politically when I realized how broken, unwise and warlike our foreign policy was. I am antiwar.

I have learned and seen much in my lifetime and am inspired by peace and diplomacy. I have seen precious little of it exhibited by our leaders, especially lately. Unless and until we take our place in the world as a brother and sister to others instead of a bully and a user of others, we will be in a constant state of war. I believe in self defense, but I cannot see how we are safer when we are an aggressive, imperial power who grabs what we need in the name of national security and to hell with everyone else.

One of my favorite humans is Jimmy Carter:

A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It’s a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.
Jimmy Carter

An act of terrorism totally outside the bounds of international law and diplomatic tradition. a crisis that calls for firmness and restraint.
Jimmy Carter

Globalization, as defined by rich people like us, is a very nice thing… you are talking about the Internet, you are talking about cell phones, you are talking about computers. This doesn’t affect two-thirds of the people of the world.
Jimmy Carter

We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.
Jimmy Carter

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.
Jimmy Carter

One of my treasures is a personal note sent me in 1976 from Jimmy Carter in response to a note I sent to the former president in Plains, Ga. In his note, President Carter invited me to Plains.

montag @ 55

These days, at my age, I’m prone to think of something Kurt Vonnegut said: “True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”

Reading some of these comments, and from what I know of the personal histories of the most prominent memebers of the government, it appears that they are.

For me, It was, as a young man in 1974. The Nixon resignation stirred my political awareness, followed by a trip to D.C. where I got, for the first time, to see the Charters of Freedom. And though a life of political wonkery and a great deal of education have provided me with a wealth of wonderful quotes, there are no words that, to this day, inspire or motivate me more than those I read that muggy Washington afternoon:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”

My life’s philosophy and direction has since been inspired and guided by those hallowed words.

Breaking News out of the middle east.

Al Jazeera is reporting that an explosion has shut down a Kuwaiti oli refinery. No cause given yet.

-GSD

orangejumpsuit @ 56

ReneND @ 39

jambro @
27

Me too. Clark is the one who did it for me. Hearing him speak in person on a little farm here in ND was inspiring. I’ve been paying attention ever since.

Bringing up Clark is a very touchy issue with me. He was my man for 2004. I even met him and have his autograph. I liked him precisely because he was not part of the establishment. Told him I had served in the same branch as he, and he congratulated me by name, which is my best political high. But as a candidate he had yet to learn the ropes, and the Democratic party wanted no part of him, and still does not. Having John Kerry run instead of Clark, on the other hand, was a political low for me.

“I’ve been in war; I don’t believe in it.”
Wesley Clark

we heard this one so much as kids, we could imitate it perfectly - but it has motivated my sis and I more than anything else, and is still the best bs detector evah!

Granny cbl:

Talkers don’t do, and Doers dont talk

Wes has been a tireless crusader for the Democratic Party too.

He is right up there with Howard Dean.

-GSD

Speaking of those freedoms, via tristero at Digby’s:

The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the “alternative interrogation methods” that their captors used to get them to talk.

The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation’s most sensitive national security secrets and that their release — even to the detainees’ own attorneys — “could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage.” Terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots, according to government documents submitted to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Oct. 26.

Please don’t flame me, but a BIG reason I got involved personally in politics was because I got hooked on ABCnews’ The Note.

I feel a bit like Dobson talking about Haggard when I mention Halperin these days. I have no idea what the man is thinking, or if he was always a clown, and I haven’t read the Note for years, but it was a big push for me to realize that politics minutia can be compelling.

You know he lifted most of it from George Mason?

The person who inspired me to get into both the law and politics was somone who, in her political life, did not go that far in the conventional sense (her highest plitical office was congressperson), but whose eloquence in speech was matched only in her devotion to the document that we, as progressives, have been fighting to preserve these 6 years.

Ladies and Gentlemen, a quote from Barbara Jordan:

My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

Anthrax scare at Senator Chuck Schumer’s office.

-GSD

Boy, the Brownshirts are busy as hell lately.

orangejumpsuit @ 29

News item from this morning’s times:

A team of lawyers for the Democratic Party has been arguing with postal officials in Columbus, Ohio, trying to persuade them to process thousands of absentee ballots that have arrived with insufficient postage.

This is scandalous and shocking to learn that absentee ballots need postage. They should be postage free. After all, when I step into the polling booth, do I pay a fee? What the hell is our government for except to serve the people. This postage required thing is a part and parcel of the profit-driven mentality of morphing the Postal Service into a corporate-owned business.

As Vote Nears Parties Prepare for Legal Fights

The deal here is that this year’s ballot is thicker and requires $.60 cents postage and a lot of people don’t know that! So they stick one stamp on and think its OK. Even the Republicans are fretting about this. But bottom line, there should be no postage requirement for absentee ballots. We pay taxes to go destroy another country, why not apply some of that money to free absentee ballots? Not with this government.

Too late to get this word out for Tuesday I’m afraid, and many ballots will go uncounted. Scandalous!

Agreed about the postage thing, but, technically, the USPS did the right thing (and gave a big “TAKE THE HINT!” to that agency). They delivered the mail, despite its having no postage. That’s SOP for us.

What’s really going on here, from a postal perspective, is that we will usually deliver things without enough postage to the addressee, and they have a choice at that point: Pay the difference in postage. Or send it back.

These people are trying to have it both ways. They don’t want to pay the postage, but they’re too chicken to send it back. They know they’d get an uproar if they tried the latter. But they’re trying to weasel out of paying the postage, too.

I think there’s some case to be made that the mail WAS delivered. It got where it was supposed to go. So they need to shit or get off the pot. And they need to quit dicking around about it, because ballots are in there.

One question: Do the return envelopes have a notice in the postage corner (where you put your stamps) saying “Extra Postage Required”?

Technically, if a mailer knows his mailing won’t go through with only one stamp, they will have the courtesy to put a reminder there that extra postage is required. With something like this, it really needed to be a requirement. If it doesn’t have such a warning, you may have something to hammer the local vote people with.

Most people of my generation cite John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, and, specifically, the “Ask not what your country can do for you…” line as being their most inspirational moment. Mine comes from that same speech but was actually preamble to that line…from memory here:

“The energy we bring to our endeavors will ignite a flame …and the light from that fire will surely enlighten the world.”

Over the years, that particular phrase has inspired me to:

1. Get off my butt and get involved
2. Make sure the life we lead in America is
an example to the rest of the world
3. Encourage, inspire, motivate everyone I know
to get involved and fight for the basic,
founding principles upon which we were
established.

Oh yeah….it inspired me to run for office 5 times and I’ve been successful 3 of those times.

Take no prisoners!

hizzhoner

Great post CHS. My mom was pregnant with me when she watched this and I think I was listening:
http://sonyclassics.com/whywefight/main.html

I was born a few days after the construction on the Berlin Wall had begun:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall

The first report I ever did in school was about John Paul “I have not yet begun to fight!” Jones.
My second was about Paul Revere, but my bloggin’ friends think I’m more like Israel Bissell:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Bissell

Later in school, I always hated history until one teacher had the nerve to teach us about Pearl Harbor, that the US gov’t LIHOP, a position that had her thrown out of her all military family. I had soooooo much respect for her.

As a science/physics major and after years in construction (and destruction), watching the WTC fall, I knew in my gut something wasn’t right. I thought it was just me. My history teacher would be proud. I know how she must have felt…not swallowing the “Official Story”.

Vietnam got me interested in politics- then I went to sleep for some decades- until the goopers impeached Clinton for a blow job- and I started reading about Richard Mellon Scaife and his band of evil minions.

Since then I am inspired by only one thing- seein goopers go into early retirement.

LJ/Aquaria @ 71

orangejumpsuit @ 29

News item from this morning’s times:

This is scandalous and shocking to learn that absentee ballots need postage. They should be postage free. After all, when I step into the polling booth, do I pay a fee? What the hell is our government for except to serve the people. This postage required thing is a part and parcel of the profit-driven mentality of morphing the Postal Service into a corporate-owned business.

As Vote Nears Parties Prepare for Legal Fights

The deal here is that this year’s ballot is thicker and requires $.60 cents postage and a lot of people don’t know that! So they stick one stamp on and think its OK. Even the Republicans are fretting about this. But bottom line, there should be no postage requirement for absentee ballots. We pay taxes to go destroy another country, why not apply some of that money to free absentee ballots? Not with this government.

Too late to get this word out for Tuesday I’m afraid, and many ballots will go uncounted. Scandalous!

Agreed about the postage thing, but, technically, the USPS did the right thing (and gave a big “TAKE THE HINT!” to that agency). They delivered the mail, despite its having no postage. That’s SOP for us.

What’s really going on here, from a postal perspective, is that we will usually deliver things without enough postage to the addressee, and they have a choice at that point: Pay the difference in postage. Or send it back.

These people are trying to have it both ways. They don’t want to pay the postage, but they’re too chicken to send it back. They know they’d get an uproar if they tried the latter. But they’re trying to weasel out of paying the postage, too.

I think there’s some case to be made that the mail WAS delivered. It got where it was supposed to go. So they need to shit or get off the pot. And they need to quit dicking around about it, because ballots are in there.

One question: Do the return envelopes have a notice in the postage corner (where you put your stamps) saying “Extra Postage Required”?

Technically, if a mailer knows his mailing won’t go through with only one stamp, they will have the courtesy to put a reminder there that extra postage is required. With something like this, it really needed to be a requirement. If it doesn’t have such a warning, you may have something to hammer the local vote people with.

why doesn’t the “team of lawyers for the Democratic Party” just write a check for the postage due and move on?

Why does something like this have to be litigated?

I had great teachers in high school who taught us civics and political science. Class of 1978. Two years later those classes weren’t being taught anymore. We were taught to be particpants in our country,not observers.

My grandma used to tell me this story of when she was a girl,growing up in a poor farming family. She went to work after school cleaning rich people’s houses to help her family,all the kids did odd jobs after school. One day she was cleaning up and the lady of the house left money inside of a folded up dish towel,to see if my grandma would steal it. Grandma went home and told Great Grandma,who immediately got pissed. Great Grandma waited til that Sunday,dressed in the only good dress she had,and called the woman out(along with certain other hypocrites.Small towns don’t have many secrets) in front of her own church before storming out the door.

Grandma’s words inspired me later,as a teenager and in my early 20’s just trying to survive and then raise a baby was my only real concern.

I got re-interested in politics again in my late 30’s. All the nonsense over the Clenis made me wonder wtf was happening to our country’s priorities.

I grew up in an Amway Fundie family which was dysfunctional long before Amway or Fundie-ism,but those two factors preyed on our family’s weaknesses and led to me being expelled from the family at 17. I worked really hard over the years to repair my family relationships,but since I was the only one doing that work,of course it didn’t work. It’s been a couple of years now since my parents stopped speaking to me,along with my sister. Over politics and religion.

I think the combination of growing up Amway,my grandma’s influence,and the final write off from my family all came together and inspired me to do whatever I can do to storm the castle and take back what belongs to all of us,not just a self selected few. My son is high functioning autistic,I worry alot about the world he’ll be in when he’s grown and I’m not here to protect him anymore. I look at his beautiful face every day and know that even when I’m tired and fed up,I have to keep going.