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

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.

“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:

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.

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.

Did the USPS deliver the ballots to the Dem party, or to someone else? Is the Dem Party refusing to pay the postage? Did they send out the mailer, or did the local voting agency?

They can and could and maybe even should offer to pay. But, unless they are the ones the USPS wants to bill, they’re not responsible for paying the postage.

lisadawn82 @ 34

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

lisadawn – love it, love it, love it – first heard it in the car on the way to hear a speech by Shirley Chisholm

lina at 75 — because you cannot have someone else pay the postage on that from the outside without some challenge being issued that they are, in effect, buying votes, since the other side of things would certainly challenge the paying of the postage.

They SHOULD have put an “extra postage required” notice in the stamp area like every other mailer does when that is the case. One wonders if they were hoping there would be a problem, since this was not done. But then, that would be some sort of means of trying to cheat folks out of their vote, wouldn’t it? Ahem.

On the supper menu here today:

Chicken (home raised, free range) and dumplin’s, black-eye peas (from the garden) with salt pork, fried okra, pan fries and lamb’s quarters (has nothing to do with sheep). And fried corn bread. Sliced tomatoes. And sliced cukes in white vinegar. Iced tea and or vino.

CHS brings up the best point of all, that I hadn’t considered. The Dems can’t pay that bill. The local voting agency must do so. It’s their bill, and it would be vote-buying if a local party did it.

If you need to get your motor runnin, before heading out on the GOTV highway, check this out:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr5tx0IcyQc

Oklahoma kiddo @ 80

On the supper menu here today:

Chicken (home raised, free range) and dumplin’s, black-eye peas (from the garden) with salt pork, fried okra, pan fries and lamb’s quarters (has nothing to do with sheep). And fried corn bread. Sliced tomatoes. And sliced cukes in white vinegar. Iced tea and or vino.

I’m on my way over. Give me directions!

Oklahoma kiddo @ 80

On the supper menu here today:

Chicken (home raised, free range) and dumplin’s, black-eye peas (from the garden) with salt pork, fried okra, pan fries and lamb’s quarters (has nothing to do with sheep). And fried corn bread. Sliced tomatoes. And sliced cukes in white vinegar. Iced tea and or vino.

You’re Mean!

LJ at 81 — what I would do, were I the local Dem group, is contact voters and let them know that their ballot might not be counted if they didn’t have adequate postage — and have them immediately contact the voting agency/office. People who requested an absentee ballot were motivated enough to send it back — they are going to be livid if their vote doesn’t count because they weren’t aware that it needed additional postage. (Although, honestly, they ought to have checked — even without the courtesy of the notice in the stamp area.) Anyway, if the voting folks get a bunch of calls and people start bitching about it, I’d bet it would be cleared up pretty quickly.

Lovely here on the coast. High pressure ridge building over us and the temp will climb into the 70’s today.

My intro into politics and history came through the civil rights movement, though I was still very young and didn’t get it all. From about ‘67 on, in high school, the combination of further civil rights efforts, black power movement, the Vietnam war and the draft, along with the associated social causes and changes, ignited a liberal awareness and a study of history and social consciousness. It was fascinating and vital in my mind.

The first campaign I worked on was in ‘72, still active-duty in the military, working for McGovern and catching shit for it on the Navy base. Ever been inspected and held for an hour by the Marines because you drove a Triumph Spitfire with a McGovern sticker on base? Fun. Well, the Triumph was fun. The base, not so much. They finally gave me a lecture on “not doing it again”, whatever it was I did, and as they sent me away I heard “fucking Coast Guard!”

Be the change that you want to see in the world.
Mohandas Gandhi

Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.
Margaret Mead

My Dad was a Democratic activist, all though he scaled back once we moved from Philly to NJ. My mom was always volunteering, and between the both of them I got a great sense of civic duty. Along those lines I always found social studies and civics an intersting topic in school.

My Dad worked for the goverment, and he was involved with supplying the troops during the Viernam war. Every night he would come home and make us watch the news so we could learn how wrong the war was. He would also tell us the stories of how bad the supply chain was, and how badly the goverment was screwing up.

As a WWII vet it pained him deeply to watch as he couldn’t supply the soldiers knowing what these citizens were going to face.

He had a family to support and pension not to risk, so by educating his children about what was wrong, and how to address similiar wrongs as we became adults, he felt this was his way to be an activist during the war.

Christy Hardin Smith @ 79

lina at 75 — because you cannot have someone else pay the postage on that from the outside without some challenge being issued that they are, in effect, buying votes, since the other side of things would certainly challenge the paying of the postage.

They SHOULD have put an “extra postage required” notice in the stamp area like every other mailer does when that is the case. One wonders if they were hoping there would be a problem, since this was not done. But then, that would be some sort of means of trying to cheat folks out of their vote, wouldn’t it? Ahem.

The Federal Election Commission should have a fund available for this contingency — in the interests of having everyone’s vote counted.

Oh, I agree that the voters needed to make sure they had the proper postage affixed, but these things happen. Trust me, we have people that think if you put a regular letter in the Express Mail box, it will go Express, and that if they move, we’ll send their mail to them without a Change of Address notification. When you’re dealing with that level of stupid, combined with cheap, you have to expect that needing to pay extra postage will slip their notice unless you hammer them over the head with the message.

Oklahoma kiddo @ 80

On the supper menu here today:

Chicken (home raised, free range) and dumplin’s, black-eye peas (from the garden) with salt pork, fried okra, pan fries and lamb’s quarters (has nothing to do with sheep). And fried corn bread. Sliced tomatoes. And sliced cukes in white vinegar. Iced tea and or vino.

how do you make fried corn bread?

Thanks to my grandfather, activism is the family business. Election day is the closest thing we have to a religious holiday. I worked the polls for Harry Truman at age 6.

Neither victory or defeat is ever final: it’s a never-ending struggle.

LA Times front page, above the fold:

Democratic win may prod Bush on Iraq

Man, you can’t buy a better message. Vote Democratic and you will push Bush toward a resolution to the war you hate. Dig this:

A Democratic capture of the House or Senate on Tuesday would generate powerful pressure on President Bush — from Republicans as well as Democrats — for a fundamental change of direction in the increasingly unpopular Iraq war.

With polls casting the midterm election as a referendum on Iraq, a Democratic victory in either chamber would give party lawmakers a national platform with which to prod the president, through public hearings and investigations into how the war has been conducted.
For Republicans, a significant Democratic advance would be proof that voters are fed up with the current course of the war and expect changes from the nation’s leaders.

While Bush still will hold the lead role in foreign policy, a Democratic win would be a sign of an overpowering public sentiment “that Republicans here won’t overlook,” a senior GOP congressional staffer said. “The White House will have to adjust to that reality too,” said the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing party strategy.

Then there’s a front page California section article on how Pombo is in the race for his life in CA-11. Yeah!

But charges of political corruption and environmental mismanagement against Pombo, the powerful chairman of the House Resources Committee, would not go away. Hundreds of political volunteers and environmental activists poured into the district from the Bay Area to work for McNerney, 55, a soft-spoken mathematics PhD and expert on alternative energy.

As Tuesday’s election approaches, California’s 11th Congressional District is highly competitive, the most likely of the state’s 53 congressional seats to change hands Tuesday.

“This is a race that clearly has defied conventional wisdom and expectation,” said Amy Walter, senior editor of the independent Cook Political Report, which now classifies the race as a toss-up. “We knew what Pombo’s weaknesses were, but we also knew that the Democrats had not been able to get their top candidate to run. But with less than a week to go, it’s clear that Pombo has not put this one away.”

My grandparents were socialist organizers in the early part of the century, and my grandfather wrote for HL Mencken’s Baltimore Sun and was a member of Eugene O’Neill’s Provincetown Players.

I joined the Current Affairs Club at my Jr/Sr Hgh school in 1967-68 because the cool smart kids did drama and current affairs.

In Feb 1968, we had a 2 day action against the war. We wore black armbands to school. I was in grade 7 and a grade 10 or 11 boy attacked me and punched me out.

I went home to bed and sobbed. At the end of the day, my father came home from work and went upstairs to my room. He sat on the end of my bed and asked me about what had happened. I told him. Then he asked me what I was going to do about the next day. I told him I would either stay home or not wear the armband. He asked what that would tell my attackers.

I realized then that if you don’t back down and you don’t let them scare you, you win. Think of Sung San Suu Kyi or Mandela or anyone else. Just don’t back down.

And here’s the Canadian and feminist quote for the day:

Never retreat, never explain, never apologize; just get the thing done and let them howl.

Nellie McClung, suffragist and social gospeller, one of the first 5 women deemed persons in Canada in 1929

Dear Tom,

NICE handwriting!! Especially on a rough draft! I’m glad to see you took some of the class’s suggestions to heart, but disappointed that you still insist on “inalienable,” in spite of the time we spent working through the thesaurus to find you a better choice there. Still, I look forward to seeing the finished product here. Ben and William tell me that if they approve of it, they’ll even sign it!

I guess I’ve always been political. Politics became personal for me when I wrote a letter to J Edgar Hoover telling him I’d like to be an FBI agent when I grew up. I was twelve then, and had wanted posters all over my bedroom that I’d gotten from the Postmaster.

J Edgar wrote me back to explain that they didn’t have girl agents, but maybe when I grew up I could be a secretary there. This was the early 70’s.

Fury? A girl scorned from her first choice career as spy? You bet.

Then I saw a film in high school about Ceasar Chavez and the plight of migrant farm workers. I went around to local grocery stores and chewed out the managers for carrying non union lettuce and grapes.

In college I was a member of the clamshell alliance, and used to hitchhike to anti-nuke demonstrations at Seabrook and VT Yankee.

I grew politically complacent in the late 80’s and 90’s , like so many of us, government seemed to be taking care of itself.

My wake up call was the 2000 “election”.

I credit Firedoglake for being the catalyst which has focused my anger and my action. Between the inspirational kick ass posts of you Christy, Jane, TRex and all the rest, and the boots to the ground group we have here, it is impossible not to pitch in.

lina @ 88

Christy Hardin Smith @ 79

lina at 75 — because you cannot have someone else pay the postage on that from the outside without some challenge being issued that they are, in effect, buying votes, since the other side of things would certainly challenge the paying of the postage.

They SHOULD have put an “extra postage required” notice in the stamp area like every other mailer does when that is the case. One wonders if they were hoping there would be a problem, since this was not done. But then, that would be some sort of means of trying to cheat folks out of their vote, wouldn’t it? Ahem.

The Federal Election Commission should have a fund available for this contingency — in the interests of having everyone’s vote counted.

Is there currently a law on the books and commiserate funding in place that does this? I highly doubt it. Unless there is, then the voting agency has to pay the postage and count the ballots, or send the ballots back uncounted. It’s really that simple.

For whatever reason, the local agency is dithering and doing something that definitely brings them close to violating a lot of laws: Not counting ballots in their possession. If they keep them and don’t count them, they’re still gonna have to pay the postage. We’re kinda strict about that. So if they’re going to pay anyway, which means keeping the ballots, they might as well count them. This is where the legal arguments will focus, most likely.

Rise like lions after slumber
in unvanquishable number-
Shake the chains to earth like dew
which in sleep had covered you-
Ye are many, they are few.

-Shelley

CHS…BTW, the West Wing kinda did it for me too!

“Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things – every one. So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, ‘Liberal,’ as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won’t work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.” — Matt Santos, The West Wing

There isn’t really “one” quote for me or one great action by an elected official. I have a general distrust of them all. Being a spry 29, most of my interactions with politicians have been similar to those with used car salesmen. Politics seems to thrive on the “douche bag factor” while I find the most sincere and earnest people working for non-profits or even starting their own non-profits.

A president that inspires me is Teddy Roosevelt for his conservation efforts and work with the NPS. A true steward to the land, not just a schmuck who signed a piece of paper to grant public access to land. Other than that, he was pretty damn looney.

I prefer to assume that all politicians are ass holes- that way I can avoid clouding my judgement in dealing with em. They are simply black boxes- campaign donations come in- votes go out. Look at the votes and then pick the one who will likely vote your way most often and who can get elected.

There is no point in a politician who can’t get elected- teats on a boar- and all that.

when asked why she chose a Peace Corps stint as part of her graduate work, my daughter tells friends -

“my mom dragged us all kicking and screaming to a speech by then VP Al Gore – she made us go waaay early so as to be upfront and everytime he talked about the future, he looked down and spoke directly to us”

she met him in LA this past year and recounted the story – he proceeded to sign his book with

“the world would be a far better place if we all listened to our mothers !“

And speaking of boots to the ground, I am planning to drive down to CT tomorrow. Any CT firepups on line? I’ve emailed Ned’s campaign, but haven’t heard back from them yet. I’d really like to join up with some of you rabid Hamsher’s. Where’s everyone going to be? Anyone who reads this can email me at urban at stowe dot nu. (It’s short for Nuii, a pacific atoll. I have no idea how I have that address.)

These is by far the most inspiring words I have EVER read. They are like a permission slip for dissent in all its forms everywhere:

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. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

A big thanks to our first representatives for signing that into history.

The Vietnam War got me interested in politics. No words from a politician ever moved me much as I think I was cynical about that stuff when I was in the womb.

From the time of the JFK assassinationl I have hated republicans. All of them. For many years now, I have believed The JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations were Republican hits and I have never seen, heard nor read anything to change that belief. I believe Paul Wellstone was a Republican hit. I bellieve Jack Ruby killed Oswald to silence him, and thqat Ruby was operating on orders from Texas republicans.

I believe republicans are nothing but organized crime, and every single registered republican is a criminal, and should be stopped by any means necessary. I’ve never seen anything of value to the human condition done by a republican.I hate them ALL.

Wow! Josh at TPM points us to this homemade music video set to George Michael’s Freedom that is incredible. Hint: There’s Joe Kissing Bush in it, and NED, plus lots of other great goodies.

At the moment getting goopers out of office has to be the first order of business- even if they are replaced with dem assholes.

Goopers are a plague of rats- who breed with abandon and their offspring will always be a Clusterfuck –ALWAYS.

Get rid of as many as you can- like rattlesnakes in yer backyard.

I’ve been interested in politics since… well, Vietnam era. But apart from that era, not too vocal publically. Plus, I lived in the UK for a long time, and lost track of US politics in some ways. Discovering internet discussions around the time of the Kerry 2004 debacle got me back into it. BUT, discovering FDL with two fine women writers, Christy and Jane really fired me up. Something about encountering strong informed female voices was confidence giving for me to speak my mind, C and J, and the huge number of informed and passionate women who comment at FDL.

From ‘Boston Legal’, Alan’s closing argument in episode ‘Stick It’:

Alan Shore: When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out to be not true, I expected the American people to rise up. Ha! They didn’t.

Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.

Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorists suspects, locked them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.

And now, it’s been discovered the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens. You and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough. Evidentially, we haven’t.

In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is we’re okay with it all. Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal wiretappings, prison without a fair trial – or any trial, war on false pretenses. We, as a citizenry, are apparently not offended.

There are no demonstrations on college campuses. In fact, there’s no clear indication that young people seem to notice.

Well, Melissa Hughes noticed. Now, you might think, instead of withholding her taxes, she could have protested the old fashioned way. Made a placard and demonstrated at a Presidential or Vice-Presidential appearance, but we’ve lost the right to that as well. The Secret Service can now declare free speech zones to contain, control and, in effect, criminalize protest.

Stop for a second and try to fathom that.

At a presidential rally, parade or appearance, if you have on a supportive t-shirt, you can be there. If you are wearing or carrying something in protest, you can be removed.

This, in the United States of America. This in the United States of America. Is Melissa Hughes the only one embarrassed?

Oklahoma kiddo @ 81

On the supper menu here today:

Chicken (home raised, free range) and dumplin’s, black-eye peas (from the garden) with salt pork, fried okra, pan fries and lamb’s quarters (has nothing to do with sheep). And fried corn bread. Sliced tomatoes. And sliced cukes in white vinegar. Iced tea and or vino.

Airline schedule for IAD-KOKC, call Hertz, buy gift for host, am I forgetting anything?

It wasn’t a quote – it was the Watergate hearings and their aftermath. Barbara Jordan and Liz Holtzman, in particular, were wonderful.(I always resented Jacob Javits for running as a liberal in 1980 after losing the Republican nomination tio D’Amato and denying Holtzman the New York Senate seat Holtzman otherwise would have won. Instead, eccch.)

When it all worked – when Nixon resigned because Barry Goldwater, of all people, told him he wasn’t going to survive a trial in the Senate – it was such a great day for the country, and our system of government. To have real representatives – of both parties – of the patriotism and caliber we had back then would be a real treat.

Doonesbury captured it perfectly after Nixon resigned, when he had workers tear down the stone wall in front of the White House that Garry Trudeau had put up to symbolize Nixon’s stonewalling. It was a moment of such great hope.

It is time for that hope to return. Tuesday is the beginning.

LJ -

as we Texans like to say

Dead Solid PERFECT !!!!

solai @ 108 – I like that one too: http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gm…..otest.html

I was six when Kennedy was shot, and the trauma it caused my Irish-American mother was well absorbed. Then living through Johnson & Nixon? Permanent political trauma. And to think I’d live to see worse!

That’s motivation.

lina @ 91

Oklahoma kiddo @ 80

On the supper menu here today:

Chicken (home raised, free range) and dumplin’s, black-eye peas (from the garden) with salt pork, fried okra, pan fries and lamb’s quarters (has nothing to do with sheep). And fried corn bread. Sliced tomatoes. And sliced cukes in white vinegar. Iced tea and or vino.

how do you make fried corn bread?

Easy, lina…

Corn meal, flour, baking powder, salt, milk, egg, and a dab of cooking oil. NO sugar!

Make batter on the thick side. And fry in iron pan, with small amout of cooking oil. Don’t over cook! So watch it.

So basic corn bread recipe and instead of oven, just fry it. Kinda like pancakes. Just don’t make the batter too thin, OR too thick. (I don’t use measuring devices)

cbl @ 112

LJ -

as we Texans like to say

Dead Solid PERFECT !!!!

Aint that the truth.

That YouTube video pretty much said it all. Link for those who don’t wanna scroll up.

Another inspiration for “what we can do for our country” this weekend…

just remember, as soon as this election’s over, Bush and the Rubbers plan to do for Social Security what they’ve done for Iraq.

Get Out Our Vote….

egregious @ 110

Oklahoma kiddo @ 81

On the supper menu here today:

Chicken (home raised, free range) and dumplin’s, black-eye peas (from the garden) with salt pork, fried okra, pan fries and lamb’s quarters (has nothing to do with sheep). And fried corn bread. Sliced tomatoes. And sliced cukes in white vinegar. Iced tea and or vino.

Airline schedule for IAD-KOKC, call Hertz, buy gift for host, am I forgetting anything?

Ya’ll come.

“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” saw it on TV when I was 5. When the movie ended my parents talked to me about the importance of constitution and bill of rights. They gave me some kids books on the Founding Fathers and soon I started reading school text books, and stories about how others had fought for freedom around the world.

Then came the civil rights movement, living in the south, I got real lesson in hate.

So I learned it was true that “the only real causes worth fighting for are lost causes.”

cbl– thank you for your # 51. Amazing.

OK kiddo at 80– anything I can bring? *g*

You are a lucky person to have a momento of a great President and humanist.

Oklahoma kiddo @ 115

Easy, lina…

Corn meal, flour, baking powder, salt, milk, egg, and a dab of cooking oil. NO sugar!

Make batter on the thick side. And fry in iron pan, with small amout of cooking oil. Don’t over cook! So watch it.

So basic corn bread recipe and instead of oven, just fry it. Kinda like pancakes. Just don’t make the batter too thin, OR too thick. (I don’t use measuring devices)

Never understood people who put sugar in cornbread. It’s bread, not cake. So do you use yellow or white corn meal?

Two quotes:

From Gettysburg:

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

From the Second Inaugural:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

Politicians, at their best, call us all to a common vision of life together. No one did it better than Abe Lincoln.

Nothing is as motivational as fear and hatred- and america needs to fear and hate goopers–the sight of a gooper should make a real american wretch– the sound of a gooper should bring the true american into a fit of screamin anger- the thought of a gooper should inspire deep revulsion.

This is how america will grow.

Blog pimp for my friend scout. She’s made my favorite campaign ad

http://www.first-draft.com/~dr…..0156a#home

Oklahoma kiddo @ 114

lina @ 91

Oklahoma kiddo @ 80

On the supper menu here today:

Chicken (home raised, free range) and dumplin’s, black-eye peas (from the garden) with salt pork, fried okra, pan fries and lamb’s quarters (has nothing to do with sheep). And fried corn bread. Sliced tomatoes. And sliced cukes in white vinegar. Iced tea and or vino.

how do you make fried corn bread?

Easy, lina…

Corn meal, flour, baking powder, salt, milk, egg, and a dab of cooking oil. NO sugar!

Make batter on the thick side. And fry in iron pan, with small amout of cooking oil. Don’t over cook! So watch it.

So basic corn bread recipe and instead of oven, just fry it. Kinda like pancakes. Just don’t make the batter too thin, OR too thick. (I don’t use measuring devices)

interesting. so you just flip it over like one big pancake? sounds yummy. and yes, i know about no sugar in cornbread. my mother is from tennessee.

rwcole @
123

Nothing is as motivational as fear and hatred- and america needs to fear and hate goopers–the sight of a gooper should make a real american wretch– the sound of a gooper should bring the true american into a fit of screamin anger- the thought of a gooper should inspire deep revulsion.

This is how america will grow.

This is the correct motorcycle.

I was six when Kennedy was shot, and the trauma it caused my Irish-American mother was well absorbed.

Petro, I was small too, four, and the shock of my mother weeping over the phone, Walter Cronkite crying on TV, and then for me, the grim image of the black boots backwards in the stirrup and the black horses, and John Jr. saluting his father’s grave – all had a profound impact. I cannot see any footage of that day in Dallas now without an emotional sock in the gut.

SouthernDragon @ 42
flatford39 @50
You both brought back beautiful memories for me. I was a Sr. in high school when we had a political campaign in the hallways, Kennedy and Nixon posters everywhere.
I was still living at home when I bought a picture of JFK with the “Ask not… emblazoned on it. That picture still hangs in my 85 yr. old Mom’s living room.
I skipped school on the day he was inaugurated and he gave us so much hope.
Perhaps that is why I have been teaching history in high school for the past 37 years.

When ya see a small child on the street putting a quarter in their mouth- stop and say-”Don’t ever do that- you have no idea who had that quarter last- it might have been a republican”!

lina @ 125

Oklahoma kiddo @ 114

lina @ 91

Oklahoma kiddo @ 80

On the supper menu here today:

Chicken (home raised, free range) and dumplin’s, black-eye peas (from the garden) with salt pork, fried okra, pan fries and lamb’s quarters (has nothing to do with sheep). And fried corn bread. Sliced tomatoes. And sliced cukes in white vinegar. Iced tea and or vino.

how do you make fried corn bread?

Easy, lina…

Corn meal, flour, baking powder, salt, milk, egg, and a dab of cooking oil. NO sugar!

Make batter on the thick side. And fry in iron pan, with small amout of cooking oil. Don’t over cook! So watch it.

So basic corn bread recipe and instead of oven, just fry it. Kinda like pancakes. Just don’t make the batter too thin, OR too thick. (I don’t use measuring devices)

interesting. so you just flip it over like one big pancake? sounds yummy. and yes, i know about no sugar in cornbread. my mother is from tennessee.

I don’t know how OK Kiddo does it, but we used to make them biscuit-size. Sort of like crabcakes. Makes it easier to flip them over.

Stopping this is what keeps me going: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1gNzqyCFC4

only one new poll out this morning- tie in Montana.. SHIT!

I became interested in politics for a selfish reason, my Dad was in the military. I recall the Suez Crisis when I was 5, as my parents prepared for us to evacuate the our base in Southern California. I alos recall the Cuban Missile Crisis, when we lived in Kansas. Then of course the whole run up with Vietnam with Dads assignment to Thailand in 1969-70. Politics remained something to watch during my own military career. My tour in Thailand in 72-73, the Iranian Hostage crisis and a chance to go on the 2nd rescue attempt that was canceled after it was leaked to the press. The 1st Gulf War.

I think the words that inspire me the most are those of our own Preamble to the Consitution because it defines the social contract we have with each other. Protecting these words were he sole reason of my military service. What this administration has done to that document tears at my soul a bit each day.

mark
Carlisle, Iowa

proudtobeaburdenonsocity

I know that Mark’s site is hard for some to read, but please go here and read his latest post as it certainly continues to motivate me to work for justice and peace– both for our troops and for the invaded folks who suffer.

http://gorillasguides.blogspot.com/

Peace out.

Morning everyone!

Christy. Wonderful topic. I’m kind of a wreck coming down to Tues., and all this absentee vote nonsense in OH doesn’t help!

I’m pretty sure the whole current OH snaffu traces to one of many tricks pulled by scummy SecyState Ken Blackwell, that Diebold-hero now known far & wide as successor to FL’s Katherine Harris in our sorry history of voting fraud.

Not too long ago, Blackwell was tying folks in knots over his insistance that even the applications for absentee ballots had to be on just the right weight of paper(! no joke !) in order to be accepted, even though right on the application form itself, it states no particular form at all is required, just the proper information.

Blackwell helped steal Ohio’s vote in ‘04, and he’s trying to do it again. The man should be in JAIL!

People all over Ohio ought to flood their Board of Election offices with complaints if there’s any hint of not accepting ballots! The Summit County (Akron OH area) Board of Elections tried to pull that caper this fall, and that Board finally caved in when citizens raised an absolute uproar – yahoo! Faced with such an overwhelming irate response, that Board made a public announcement that they would accept ALL absentee ballots, with or without postage.

It’s idiotic that this movement should have to move across the whole state, county by county. The Ohio Secy of State should make an announcement immediately that ALL votes will count! BUT, that SecyState is, of course, crooked Ken Blackwell, running for Gov. and down in the polls by double digits. Vote fraud is the only way he could possiibly win.

What a cruel joke this all is! We MUST fight all these goons, and throw them out of office while we still have a shred of democracy left!

Thankyou, Christy, Jane, Pach, all you brave souls working for Ned in CT, and all you other FDLers working so hard to save this country.
You all make me very proud! You give me hope!

I’m too upset right now to think of an inspiring, spoken quote. I always spoke most fluently through music, & music always touches me more directly than words.

Last month, we heard the Cleveland Orchestra play Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony, written in response to the composer being severely chastized by Stalin for not being patriotic enough. Notes published much later made it clear that Shostakovich, in response to Stalin’s edict, “spoke” volumes – through his music – about tyranny, oppression, and ultimate triumph of common citizens. This music always puts me in tears, trying to imagine what the composer risked in publishing his protest right under Stalin’s iron but clueless gaze. It’s all there: the the chaos, the depression, the renewed spirit and ultimate triumph.

Deep thanks to all the GOTV’ers out there!
And yes, we’re doing our part here too…

apologies for the rant….whew – where’d I put that paper bag… *puff puff* ;->

Ironically enough, for me it was Watergate. Not the nasty acts of Nixon, but watching the hearings as a kid and feeling like the journalists and the politicians were fixing things and cleaning them up. It was like watching a big mystery movie where the good guys won at the end and the bad guys went off to jail (or resigned ). I even kept a scrapbook and knew bios and details of all the players in the drama.

I’d love to see some of that clean-up fervor hit the Congress this time if we take over the House and Senate.

“Democracy is the don’t in Don’t Shove. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth.”

From a list by E.B. White, in a 1944 essay in “The New Yorker”. Can be found in THE WILD FLAG, published 1946.

When you look up “gooper” in your mental dictionary- you’ll find Blackwell and Kathy Harris, and Clusterfuck and the Shooter.

Study the pictures well. That’s the enemy- that is who you fear and loathe.

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!

Here in OK, if you vote by absentee ballot, you must get the outside envelope notarized. I took mine to the local tag agency, which has a notary, and pulled out the $2 the service usually costs, only to be told that there is no charge for notarizing ballots. Something good that a very “red” state!

EB White- the guy could write!

rwcole 7:58a

HAH! Thanks! I needed that! ;->

Earlier youtube links didn’t work
maybe this is it?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..mp;search=

Great song, great video
watched it a dozen times in a row

LJ/Aquaria @ 121

Oklahoma kiddo @ 115

Easy, lina…

Corn meal, flour, baking powder, salt, milk, egg, and a dab of cooking oil. NO sugar!

Make batter on the thick side. And fry in iron pan, with small amout of cooking oil. Don’t over cook! So watch it.

So basic corn bread recipe and instead of oven, just fry it. Kinda like pancakes. Just don’t make the batter too thin, OR too thick. (I don’t use measuring devices)

Never understood people who put sugar in cornbread. It’s bread, not cake. So do you use yellow or white corn meal?

I always use yellow. Sugar in cornbread? Yuk.

In the 70s, my political hero was (still is) Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

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

In the 80s it was battling the Sparatistes and Mulroney.

In the 90s it was fult-tilt Liberalism (still is).

Today its fighting for Peace and against war and it’s mongerors.

Goopers put sugar in cornbread– they do it to rot america’s spirit.

CNN HN – Denver police will be contacting Haggard (and other parties involved) to figure out if there were crimes committed.

As an adherent of reality-based ideas, I must add:

“That no testimony is sufficient to establish a
miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind
that its falsehood would be more miraculous
than the fact which it endeavours to establish….”
–David Hume

RW- yer on a roll! LOL

survival package:

activism – check
music – check
FDL recipes – YUM!
FDL support-crew – PRICELESS!

New Newsweek poll

Bush JAR 35%

Ha ha!

Goopers take young children off to indoctrination centers where there sexuality is damaged beyond repair and they learn that the universe was produced in seven days by a big guy in the clouds who loves the free enterprise system…

Never ever trust a gooper.

And we all thought Christy was just a national treasure.

Tis not true! Christy and FDL are international in their appeal!

So says the final arbiter in all things of importance, the BBC:

Firedoglake uses a video of a John F Kennedy speech to argue Americans can demand better from their government by voting for Democrats. Link

My oh my, we have done arrived. *g*

Cozumel @ 149

New Newsweek poll

Bush JAR 35%

Ha ha!

Isn’t that up two points from the last Newsweek poll?

rolindonut @ 141

Earlier youtube links didn’t work
maybe this is it?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..mp;search=

Great song, great video
watched it a dozen times in a row

EXCELLENT – THANK YOU. George Michael would be proud.

Katerina @ 136

Ironically enough, for me it was Watergate. Not the nasty acts of Nixon, but watching the hearings as a kid and feeling like the journalists and the politicians were fixing things and cleaning them up. It was like watching a big mystery movie where the good guys won at the end and the bad guys went off to jail (or resigned ). I even kept a scrapbook and knew bios and details of all the players in the drama.

I’d love to see some of that clean-up fervor hit the Congress this time if we take over the House and Senate.

True. I remember coming home from school and my Mom (who really never took any time out from working nonstop to watch tv ’cause she is the best mother in the world and has 6 kids and a husband ) watching tv and saying “shhh, this is history”.

Love to see that history repeat itself! Thought it would happen in 2004 for sure, now praying and working for:

Wednesday.

Mad Dogs @ 151

And we all thought Christy was just a national treasure.

Tis not true! Christy and FDL are international in their appeal!

So says the final arbiter in all things of importance, the BBC:

Firedoglake uses a video of a John F Kennedy speech to argue Americans can demand better from their government by voting for Democrats. Link

My oh my, we have done arrived. *g*

Very good. Someone’s watching besides the cretins at Little Green Snotballs.

Lou Costello @
154

rolindonut @ 141

Earlier youtube links didn’t work
maybe this is it?:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..38;search=

Great song, great video
watched it a dozen times in a row

EXCELLENT – THANK YOU. George Michael would be proud.

Thanks for that link. It brought tears to my still sleepy eyes.

montag @ 153

Cozumel @ 149

New Newsweek poll

Bush JAR 35%

Ha ha!

Isn’t that up two points from the last Newsweek poll?

It looks like 37% last week and 33% the week before!?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15…../newsweek/

abgdinstr @
133

I think the words that inspire me the most are those of our own Preamble to the Consitution because it defines the social contract we have with each other. Protecting these words were he sole reason of my military service. What this administration has done to that document tears at my soul a bit each day.

For the same reasons, I am inspired by the commissioning oath:

“I, (state name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter, so help me God.”

In this country, we don’t pledge allegiance to a man or a flag. In government, we pledge ourselves to the protection of the Constitution, that most wonderfully sacred secular document.

OT, is today the Keith Olberman edition of FDL Book Club?!?

Cozumel @ 150

New Newsweek poll

Bush JAR 35%

Ha ha!

But who’s gonna tell him?

The silly f***er thinks everybody loooves him!!

KO here tomorrow!

Enough.

Time to Take It Back:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76O126ayT9M

Cozumel @ 157

montag @ 153

Cozumel @ 149

New Newsweek poll

Bush JAR 35%

Ha ha!

It looks like 37% last week and 33% the week before!?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15…../newsweek/

Isn’t that up two points from the last Newsweek poll?

Umm, I didn’t know about the poll last week, was thinking about the poll the week before. So, Bush gets a little temp bump and is headed back down once people realize that not staying the course is still the same as staying the course.

With a little luck on Tuesday and a helluva lot more perseverance after the first of the year by all those new Democratic House members, I am hoping he hits single digits by next summer….

We need to educate young americans.

“See that video- notice the hunched over posture- the awkward gait- the inarticulate vocalizations- the inappropriate smirk- the obvious lack of intelligence and insight- the spritual and intellectual shallowness- and the pure evil….

That’s a gooper- that’s what you could become if you watch too much teevee and never do yer homework.”

Up early in NZ; full moon and firecrackers in the night….Guy Fawkes eve, I guess. Last night, it was a beautiful spring evening with the scent of roses and rhododendrens on the spring air, the moon rising in the east, a creamy turquoise sky in the west after the sun was down and sprays of fireworks in the sky. Such beauty has always been an inspiration.

My father’s stories of growing up in a war zone (southern Russian during the Revolution, where the Reds and the Whites fought) were part of the awareness of the world.

But the book that shook me was Black Like Me, by John Howard Griffin. I read it in the 7th grade, was stunned by what I read, and then saw, via the news, that it was true. I couldn’t buy the myths of America after that.

angie @ 161

KO here tomorrow!

ARGH! I’ll be traveling!

I’m sure everyone will do a fine job telling him he’s one of two or three bright spots in the corporate media (and the other two are on Comedy Central!), and that he rocks. THAT’S the way the “liberal media” should look!

Thanks for the info.

a little braggin’

as Shift Leader at our restaurant, you just about need a cattle prod to get the younger staffers to do their opening and closing ’sidework’ (some will spend 15 minutes explaining why they can’t do 10 minutes worth of work)

so on Wednesday I offered to come in early today and do all opening/re stocking work by myself if they would agree to come over after the shift for a spaghetti and phonebank party (”yes, you can bring your girlfriend”)

there will be 5 plus me tonight

. . . silly kids, it takes an old schooler like me about 15 minutes to do setup*g*

Also a Clark fan, this is an excerpt from one of my first blog posts ever (I was blogsitting at Nitpicker while Terry was stationed in Afghanistan) on November 11, 2003; it was titled Speaking of Soul.

This is an excerpt from the transcript of General Wesley Clark on the Washington Post’s Live Online Conversations with the Candidates:

Los Angeles, Calif.: Most Politicians either ignore or attack funding for the arts. If elected president, would you use the weight of your office to increase the budget for the National Endowment for the Arts to $250 million and direct that more funds be given to individuals, rather than just institutions?

Wesley K. Clark: I believe that the arts are very important to the future of our America,. A country has a soul and we have to continually find and examine our own. Arts help us do this. .So, I believe in restoring funding for the NEA. I haven’t fixed any given level, except that I want to raise the prominence of the arts in our daily lives, and I want to reopen the idea of giving grants to individuals. We just have to create the right mechanism to find merit and promise.
note: transcript excerpt was copied without correction(s)

Imagine having a commander-in-chief who cares about the soul of our country.

Gotta go GOTV but I have to say one more thing … Having come from a blue state (MN) I took politics for granted. Oh sure, I always voted and worked for the occasional candidate (Wellstone for one) but didn’t really get involved until I found myself surrounded by red (ID) and discovered what a huge difference that makes.

We have to do it this time. For science, for peace, for poverty and the environment … for our nation’s soul.

for rwcole

just in case you hadn’t seen it

http://rawstory.com/showarticl…..dino_.html

Idaho

Famous potatoes

From Dick Cheney today:

“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. And that’s exactly what we’re doing,” Cheney said. “We’re not running for office. We’re doing what we think is right.”

“We’ve got the basic strategy right,” Cheney told George Stephanopoulos in an interview to be broadcast Sunday on “This Week.”

cbl

Funny as hell!

Who keeps makin people like this?

Alison @ 94

My grandparents were socialist organizers in the early part of the century, and my grandfather wrote for HL Mencken’s Baltimore Sun and was a member of Eugene O’Neill’s Provincetown Players.

I joined the Current Affairs Club at my Jr/Sr Hgh school in 1967-68 because the cool smart kids did drama and current affairs.

In Feb 1968, we had a 2 day action against the war. We wore black armbands to school. I was in grade 7 and a grade 10 or 11 boy attacked me and punched me out.

I went home to bed and sobbed. At the end of the day, my father came home from work and went upstairs to my room. He sat on the end of my bed and asked me about what had happened. I told him. Then he asked me what I was going to do about the next day. I told him I would either stay home or not wear the armband. He asked what that would tell my attackers.

I realized then that if you don’t back down and you don’t let them scare you, you win. Think of Sung San Suu Kyi or Mandela or anyone else. Just don’t back down.

And here’s the Canadian and feminist quote for the day:

Never retreat, never explain, never apologize; just get the thing done and let them howl.

Nellie McClung, suffragist and social gospeller, one of the first 5 women deemed persons in Canada in 1929

You had a wise father.

Love that Nellie McClung quote. I worked with her grandson back in the 80s. When we met I asked him if he was related. He was thrilled to admit he was and said no one had ever asked him that before. Pity.

Ideeho

Utah light

Grew up in a state adjacent to Idaho- but tried to avoid the place- it was famous for signs that said “free sagebrush- fill yer trunk”.

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.
I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.
For a time, I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry

Howard Dean was the one who inspired me to get heavily involved in politics, but I was never entirely uninvolved from the time I was old enough to understand. I grew up just across the river from Washington, so national news was always local news for us. I went to elementary school with a congressman’s son; a friend’s mom was the president of the local League of Women Voters; my mom got to know county board members at my preschool. Local candidates didn’t run as Democrats in those days because the Hatch Act prohibiting federal employees from political activity was much stricter then — we had “Arlingtonians for a Better County” (ABC), which wasn’t a national political party but which everyone knew was the Democrats.

Huge Vietnam War protests happened in my back yard (I remember coming across some hippies camped out in the woods we played in.) Though I didn’t know it at the time, my parents were in DC the night riots broke out after the MLK assassination, and had a brick thrown through their car window. Watergate broke when I was just old enough to start reading newspapers and understanding stuff; I remember hours of hearings on TV. (My friend with the LWV mom, who was more politically aware than I was, led us in a brief re-enactment of the Saturday Night Massacre — I still remember: “Fire Cox!” “I won’t.” “Then you’re fired!” :-)

I was also inspired by the Apollo Program, the Bicentennial, and Jimmy Carter.

So I guess it’s long been in the blood.

Inspiring quotes:

“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” — John Kenneth Galbraith

“In a nation where hypocrisy is rewarded, expect more lies.” — Robert Steinback

“This is a revolution, dammit! We’re going to have to offend somebody!” — John Adams, 1776

From the haloscan days of FDL:

Don’t forget that we have these two things going for us-
1. We’ve been demonized so long that we don’t give a fuck what anybody says about us.
2. We live in the real world.
Dave Latchaw | 01.27.06 – 11:53 pm | firedoglake

and finally:

“A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.” — Edward R. Murrow

HA!
LA Times page A-13 (behind registration firewall)

‘Coach’ Hastert benches himself from national races

Money quotes:

“You don’t want to bring controversy into a member’s district, someone who has a tough race,” Hastert said. “Quite frankly, [Democrats] have been pretty good at nailing us down.”

Before the controversy broke, Hastert planned to make more than 30 trips in October to hotly contested races around the country. The campaign stops for the month totaled fewer than 10 — a stark contrast for a campaigner who in the last three election cycles has been one of the national Republican Party’s most popular headliners.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), the House Democrats’ chief election strategist, thinks Hastert is focusing on the safest haven he can find — his home district.

“Like President Bush, Speaker Hastert is confined to a safe Republican district,” Emanuel said. “That district just happens to be his.”

Hastert/Cheney

Get the fat goopers first- they’re the biggest targets.

RFK:

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?

Almost 40 years later, that still sounds like a plan.

I look at things that are and ask “How the fuck did that happen? Must’ve been goopers in charge”

Whew! Off to vote, and pick up my precinct supplies for Election Day, and phonebank for MoveOn, and…

Oh, and if you know anyone is in Northern VA and has a couple of hours free on Election Day, get in touch (razorsharpwit AT gmail DOT com). I could still use a few more people to hand out sample ballots and stuff.

Later!

Morning email from my all-grown-up-with-family daughter living in the MO Ozarks:

Gotta love this crank pipe smoking Rev. Haggart buying 8balls from his paid boyfriend while pushing the christian right agenda in Washington ha ha
the hypocrisy of these people blows my mind….

If there’s one thing they know in the hills of southern MO, it’s meth…

moeman @
144

In the 70s, my political hero was (still is) Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

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

In the 80s it was battling the S�paratistes and Mulroney.

In the 90s it was fult-tilt Liberalism (still is).

Today its fighting for Peace and against war and it’s mongerors.

I’m an American in Canada and I have also been inspired by Pierre Trudeau

from CBC Archives audio and video clips

“There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” Those unforgettable words made famous by Pierre Trudeau in 1967 caused a tidal wave of controversy that rippled across the entire nation. Trudeau’s Omnibus Bill brought issues like abortion, homosexuality and divorce law to the forefront for the first time, changing the political and social landscape in Canada forever.

And lest you think I dwell in the slough of despond 24/7, there is this:

I was a Republican until they lost their minds.
~ Charles Barkley

Oklahoma kiddo @
143

LJ/Aquaria @ 121

Never understood people who put sugar in cornbread. It’s bread, not cake. So do you use yellow or white corn meal?

I always use yellow. Sugar in cornbread? Yuk.

It’s not that long a drive up I-35. What time is dinner. :)

Maybe they think announcing Saddam will hang tomorrow will cause a dramatic increase in violence thereby scaring their bedwetter base into a big turnout Tuesday.

new thread

Goopers have a big hangin party planned- souveneir nooses- framed pictures of Clusterfuck hangin Saddam high and all. It’s a way of firing up the base- and their base LOVES a good hangin…

“Iron the sheets Martha- we’re havin us another REPUBLICAN rally!”

note to self:

Get out favorite cornbread recipe. Cross off sugar.

Back in the 60’s I was, I recall, a Junior at Boston College, and a friend of mine (a member of the religious-geeky Sodality) suggested I join him and a bunch of colleagues in the drive down to Selma, Alabama to march with MLK. I demurred for whatever reason, and have been kicking myself ever since. I could have marched in the first Earth Day thing in NYC, and didn’t. I am a pretty sorry SOB, and I am truly sorry. In 1994, I was poised to be a republican (owner of two businesses, a couple houses, money in the bank), and the Contract on America and the republican victory in the House slapped me in the face.

VJB @ 190

Back in the 60’s I was, I recall, a Junior at Boston College, and a friend of mine (a member of the religious-geeky Sodality) suggested I join him and a bunch of colleagues in the drive down to Selma, Alabama to march with MLK. I demurred for whatever reason, and have been kicking myself ever since. I could have marched in the first Earth Day thing in NYC, and didn’t. I am a pretty sorry SOB, and I am truly sorry. In 1994, I was poised to be a republican (owner of two businesses, a couple houses, money in the bank), and the Contract on America and the republican victory in the House slapped me in the face.

VJB– lots of us here in America were just too complacent; you were not alone then; nor are you now.

It’s time to take it back!

Here are just a few quotes (I collect them), before I’m totally EPU’d out of this post:

Sacagawea…”They have vowed to take a hard way from where the Sun is born to where it enters,” she explains. ”Some of the baskets are filled with heavy things to make the way harder.”…when a tribe member asks her what the weird white guys (Lewis and Clark) are up to and why they’re taking the hardest path (from Meriwether’s Excellent Adventure by Brian Hall)

Paul Wellstone…”I’m not 38, I’m 58. And at this point in my life, I’m not making any decision that I don’t believe in.”

Ecologist and conservationist Aldo Leopold from the 1948 book Sand County Almanac…”In terms of conventional physics, the grouse represents only a millionth of either the mass or the energy of an acre. Yet, subtract the grouse and the whole thing is dead.”

In Oslo, Former President Jimmy Carter accepting the Nobel Peace Prize…”War may sometimes be a necessary evil, but no matter how necessary, it is always evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”

Martin Luther King Jr….”Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”

Martin Luther King Jr….”History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people”

Boy, number 44, your post really resonated with me. In my family politics was our religion, and I loved your comment about being a legacy Democrat. But we don’t go back to Jefferson. My father snuck into the country on a banana boat in 1924 and my mother was brought over legally in 1917 as a 1 year old baby. I am an FDR Legacy Democrat. My parents were cigar makers who taught me that the Democrats were the party of the people and that we were lucky to be here.

My 2 sisters and I all majored in political science because my mother was such a nutcase on the subject that she transfered her insanity to us. To her politics was better than gossip. When my mother died my sister called me up one night and said “I’m really missing mom tonight”. I said “I’m sorry honey” and she said “I have the best gossip”. I said “Whaddaya mean?” She said “The police chief just told me the county commissioner found her husband in bed with the mayor and chased him down the street with a butcher knife”.

I roared. That was soooo mama. She never discussed sex (can’t they leave anything to the imagination???), except when it came to politics. Lordy she would have gotten such a kick out of the republicans scandals.

Unfortunately these last few years I have lost faith in my country. That I should live to be 60 before I realized we were not that shining city on a hill is a testament to the faith of my fathers. But our democracy is in deadly peril and I despair (when I am not laughing about it all.

A child of the 70’s, I remember clearly my mother calling all kids out of the pool because the Watergate hearings were coming on and she couldn’t supervise us. No mobile phones in those days, nor VCRs to watch them later :)
So we’d all sit there, with our dripping bathing suits and towels watching a bunch of senators trying to find the “truth”.
And I knew this was something so much bigger than a “third-rate burglary”, it was our very existence as a democracy.

And we survived it. A sitting president resigned, there was no coup nor riots in the street, he got on a helicopter and flew into California exile. And the country healed itself, a close call but we survived it. It gave me hope that the American people would pay attention when they really needed to.

God, I can’t wait until Tuesday. I’m hoping for that same feeling of stepping back from the brink of disaster.

Quotes:

“We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield,” – George Orwell, 1946.

“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”-James Madison

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power. Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” -Thomas Jefferson

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Plato

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. (George Orwell)

“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding,” – Justice Brandeis, 1928.

OK Kiddo: That fried corn bread sound like what we call “Indian Fry Bread.” IIRC you are originally from California, so it is probably familiar to you. Used to go to local indian shindigs where they served indian fry bread, smoked salmon, smoked eel (looked like radiator hoses) and salad. Umm, good stuff.

Winston Churchill has been an inspiration for me. Here are a few quotes some of which have been posted above.

It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required.

Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb.

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

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

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.

One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once ‘The Unnecessary War’.

angie @ 155

I remember coming home from school and my Mom (who really never took any time out from working nonstop to watch tv ’cause she is the best mother in the world and has 6 kids and a husband ) watching tv and saying “shhh, this is history”.

It was Watergate for me too. My mother said almost the same words. During Nixon’s resignation speech I was playing around like a kid does when my mother told me to quiet down. She said, “listen, this is important”. I’ve been listening ever since.

My favorite quote is from Angela Davis. “We must lift as we climb.”

RFK quoted it, GBS wrote it – “Some men see things as they are and say why – I dream things that never were and say why not.”

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. – Calvin Coolidge

Being born in Nicaragua, in the Anastasio era, I learned that politics were discussed in hushed up voices.

When I came to the US in 1964, I could not escape being political, but I was happy to help my ex-husband work for progressive candidates and measures, like Proposition 17 in CA. I did not become a US citizen until Reagan became president. I was happy to vote for Mondale in 1984, and have voted for Democrat candidates ever since. I’ve never regreted my vote.

My quote found at the Holocaust Museum:

“Thou Shalt Not Be A Victim. Thou Shalt Not Be A Perpetrator. But Above All, Thou Shalt Not Be A Bystander.”

Personally, I like “apathy is everywhere, but who cares?”
That’s why I’m last!

I’m a 48 year-old white male, but the “I Have a Dream” speach makes me blubber like a little child EVERY time… I listen to it every year on ‘Imus’ in January.

Also, anything by either John or Robert Kennedy. Jefferson’s and Franklin’s writings, too… Pushkin and Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn…

Oh, so many…

When I was a small child, my parents bought a tv so they could watch the McCarthy hearings. They knew and told me how very important the hearings were and how people had been and were being hurt by the smears of this senator from Wisconsin. poitics and current events were discussed at the dinner table from the time I can remember. My first involvement in politics was when I was 16. My parents recruited me to help in a family friend’s local campaign. I stuffed envelopes and mailboxes (that was before stuffing mailboxes was illegal). I have been involved ever since.
God bless my parents.

Two fragments from the draft of the Declaration of Independence give me faith that our cause is just and America’s standing can be restored:

“a decent respect to the opinion of mankind”

and

“let facts be submitted to a candid world for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood”

Hey, that’s my signature line over at DailyKos. Although, the actual quote is worded slightly differently:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

As for what first got me interested in politics, it was 1972 and I was 8 and in the 3rd grade, and my school put on a mock debate between students playing the roles of each candidate. One of my friends (whose father was a well-known local politician) played the McGovern role, and did it so passionately and convincingly (no doubt coached by his dad) and made such a strong case againt the kid who played Tricky Dick that I was hooked for life–as a Democrat, of course.

And as Watergate became a huge story and I became increasingly aware of the Vietnam war in its waning years, I became even more pro-Democratic and anti-Republican. Nothing that I’ve seen since has given me any reason to change my mind about this one iota. And much of what I’ve seen has only further reinforced this view.

I like this quote because I happen to believe that it’s true, and very, very powerful and inspiring. It’s what 1776 and the Abolitionist, Suffragette and civil Rights movements were all about. And, of course, what we’re all about.

By the way, here’s a link to this quote on a Mead bio page:

About: Women’s History – Margaret Mead Quotes

When I make my political decisions it’s always because I ask myself, “..how would you feel…”

My neighbors, family and some friends don’t understand what is at stake, and they won’t care until their son or daughter gets busted for a joint here in super rich suburban CT.

I’m a progressive because I don’t ever want to tell these people I know that they should have fucking listened to reason instead of the television. I’m talking to as many people as I can (and they’re all surprised at what’s really happening to the constitution) because it’s the fucking right thing to do..

Besides that – I became officially politically active by marching in Washington DC in April ‘04 – The March for Women’s Lives – and when I (literally) bumped into several co-workers – well, it was a beautiful thing

AldeaMB @ 209

When I make my political decisions it’s always because I ask myself, “..how would you feel…”

My neighbors, family and some friends don’t understand what is at stake, and they won’t care until their son or daughter gets busted for a joint here in super rich suburban CT.

I’m a progressive because I don’t ever want to tell these people I know that they should have fucking listened to reason instead of the television. I’m talking to as many people as I can (and they’re all surprised at what’s really happening to the constitution) because it’s the fucking right thing to do..

Besides that – I became officially politically active by marching in Washington DC in April ‘04 – The March for Women’s Lives – and when I (literally) bumped into several co-workers – well, it was a beautiful thing

good for you, AldeaMB!

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against any form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Thomas Jefferson, words carved on the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D.C.

For me, it was a roadsign-inspired flashback. I was driving up Cold Soil Road from Lawrenceville to Princeton when I passed a Ducks Crossing sign. You know, the one with the mama duck being followed by baby ducks.

Brought me back to a time in college. I was driving on a side road next to a stream at the foot of the hill, and I saw a couple baby ducks squashed dead on the road. Having driven this road in both directions numerous times, I knew that there was no way anyone could have not seen these baby ducks crossing the street. I have no doubt that whoever killed those baby ducks purposefully sped up to run them over.

That got me thinking. People are in charge. God is a reflexive Stone Age construct of primitive humans trying to come to grips with a complex and dangerous world. Seems unlikely given the evidence. So now the only option is to try and awaken others to the fact that their destiny is their own and that their unique contribution to the welfare of the universe will not be forgotten if it is made.