calimary
calimary's JournalThat's my comeback as well.
People like to forget, or ignore, that California's population being the largest in the nation means more people are DIRECTLY AFFECTED by whatever it is that's decided in Washington. So it's more than fair - and accurate to ask - "so we don't count?"
And they sure like our tax money - more of which leaves California and goes out to the red states.
EXCELLENT. This is a great post for so many reasons!
Including links that bring these uncomfortable, inconvenient, funky little things called FACTS into the mix. Posts like this PROVE that we are right. That OUR side is right. That OUR side reflects the will of the people more than the bad guys ever could.
Have you noticed over the past 20 years or so - the incessant, almost desperate drumbeat that "America is a center-right country!" Repeat, repeat, repeat. Well, it's NOT true, and those Gallup polls prove it. It's NOT true. It's NEVER BEEN true. If anything, America is a center-LEFT country. We lean LIBERAL. We lean that way on a woman's right to choose. We lean that way on gun safety regulations. We lean that way on marriage equality. We lean that way on racial equality. We lean that way on climate change. We lean that way on unions. We lean that way on keeping church and state separate. We lean that way on voting rights. And we lean that way on not trusting Russia or Vladimir Putin. Yet we keep hearing how republi-CONS are really starting to warm up to Putin these days, 'eh? So that must be the way things are now, 'eh? If republi-CONS think that, it means EVERYBODY thinks that, 'eh?
I'm keeping a copy of this post, Mortos. It's verbal ammo. It's urgently necessary as a rebuttal tool. It's WUNNNderful!
I actually turned to my husband recently and asked him if he thought, as I myself wondered, that
trump just might be the Antichrist.
trump certainly has made a mockery of the 10 Commandments, and of Christ's own "two greatest commandments" - to love God and love thy neighbor as thyself. That whole "what you do to the least of these, you do to Me" thing.
We are in for some dark and dreadful times, I fear.
Welcome to DU, to you, too, coco22!
I'm glad you wrote to the DNC during the campaign, although it would have been more effective if thousands of us had done that same thing.
I tried several tweet storms (or whatever-the-hell they're called) to every media/news/reporter/pundit person I could think of, on the air and in print. About their absolutely shitty coverage. Might have been more effective if I hadn't been pretty much alone doing it.
I remember back in 2005 when the DNC was looking for a new chairperson. They already had somebody picked out. They seemed to like Tim Roemer an awful lot. But he was a moderate Dem and not pro-choice, moderate - be nice! Be laid back! Don't make waves! Don't get nasty and in-yer-face! So the party powers conducted a "listening tour" across the country. Went to quite a few cities from coast-to-coast, holding public hearings.
I heard about the one here in L.A. and went to it. Patriotic Hall WAAAAY downtown, with its own little parking lot that filled up fast. I had to park blocks away. Arrived, no room in the big meeting room that probably held at least 200-300. Standing room only. People along the aisles and spilling out into the lobby. WAY too many people wanting to speak for two minutes each. There was a panel of DNCers onstage, filling a dais that stretched from one end of the stage to the other.
People took turns giving their public comments. EVERYBODY wanted Howard Dean. It was clear that he wasn't on anybody's short list up there on stage. They kept asking about Tim Roemer, and a few other forgettables. We were having NONE of it. Howard Dean's name kept coming up again and again and again, speaker after speaker after speaker. They passed out colored index cards, if you wanted Howard Dean you held up the green one. If you wanted Tim Roemer you held up the red one. If you wanted somebody else, you held up a blue card. They extended public comment on this two-hour event for an additional hour because there were so many of us. I was one of many leftovers throughout the building during this meeting who didn't get a chance to speak. I think there were maybe as many as FIVE people, TOTAL, who did have a chance to speak, who recommended Roemer or some other name. EVERYBODY ELSE THERE wanted Howard Dean. Adamantly and enthusiastically. Time came for the vote - hold up your card when your preferred candidate's name was called - and a SEA of green cards went up. There were names called where NO cards went up, at all. I think Tim Roemer got two or three votes. Howard Dean got HUNDREDS.
We later learned that this same thing happened at EVERY stop along this DNC listening tour. You could see the expressions on the faces of the party officials seated onstage. This was NOT the result they wanted or planned on, and you could tell by their flustered reactions. But by Jove we got Howard Dean as DNC chair. And what happened? We went from completely out in the wilderness in Washington to owning it ALL - House, Senate, AND White House by 2008.
I wish The Good Doctor would run again, but he's taken his name out of consideration by now. His 50-state strategy WORKED. It forced the Dems to look, and think, outside the damn Beltway, and beyond just the presumed "battleground states." Democrats were activated and encouraged - EVERYWHERE. And it would have worked this time, too, I'm convinced. There wouldn't be ANY voices raised now, complaining that Hillary's campaign never went to Wisconsin, for example. There would be none of this "meh, we're not gonna win in Louisiana anyway, so why try?" shit that almost literally handed a valuable open Senate seat back to the CONS without so much as even a single burp of objection. They left NO stone unturned on Howard Dean's watch and took nothing for granted. And it WORKED.
I don't know if Keith Ellison fully gets that or not. I don't know if Perez gets that, or any of the others do, either. You can bet your house that the flaccid milquetoast Donna Brazile doesn't get it, and Thank God she's just an interim chair (no wonder we didn't have anybody aggressively fighting for it in Louisiana for that last Senate campaign of this election cycle. The disgraceful wishy-washy DONNA BRAZILE was in charge. A banana slug would show more backbone than she does)! And I don't know if any of them is the scrappy fighter that Howard Dean was, and exactly what we need NOW.
And the masses of us need to speak up, and get out there and fight. In numbers too big to ignore, like the song says. Years ago I remember seeing some republi-CON party woman interviewed who pointed out her party's fundamental appeal: "we fight." At the time I thought - "yeah, whatever. Fight, fight, fight. All you guys do is fight." But by now I've realized - yeah! They FIGHT! And people LIKE that. We don't fight. I don't know why! And sadly, that's the attitude that prevails.
Welcome to DU, AlexSFCA!
Man, is that ever true!
They have very little sense of effective sloganeering or perception management. They still tend to give up too easily. They take too many feather dusters to gunfights. And they don't fight hard, ruthless, and dirty. Sad to say, that seems to be the only way to win, anymore. When the other guy cheats...
Welcome to DU, TurnTNBlue!
The hard-wired part - could be. After the massacre of those nine people at Mother Emanuel Church, there grew an outcry to take down the "Stars 'n' Bars," long on formal display at the Capitol. There was a lot of coverage of the history and tradition of the Civil War, slavery, Emancipation, and what was repeatedly referred to as "our heritage." Many in the South spoke of pride in their heritage, and many others confessed to embarrassment over their heritage. That came up a lot. You saw the young shooter in an earlier photo, at home, with that flag shown hanging on the wall behind him, for example. I'm in California and for the life of me I can't figure out why anybody'd be proud of that flag. It's a no-brainer to me. But then again, I've never lived in or grown up in that environment - where a flag like that is such a powerful, and in many cases personally evocative symbol. I've never walked in their shoes. So of course I won't be able to "get" how people there feel about it.
Welcome to DU, nycbos!
Two more for my quotes file!
On second thought, I think I might have the Churchill quote already. But it's a worthy repeat for sure. Thanks!
Perhaps it could be because of Donna Brazile?
She's a place-holder since Debbie Wasserman Shultz resigned as head of the DNC. She's an interim. And THANK GOD ALMIGHTY, too!!!
Donna Brasile is the most uninspiring, unexciting, lackluster, unmotivating and poorest excuse for ANY party leader of the type we Democrats desperately need. The. Worst. Period. By. Far. She failed Al Gore in 2000 as his campaign manager. No wonder nobody thought to show ANY guts at all and send some big name Dems to Louisiana to put up SOME fight, even if a lost cause, to try to grab that Senate seat! Donna Brazile would rather lie down than fight. She routinely takes butter knives to gun fights. She won't fire up ANYBODY. I can't wait til we finally have somebody at the DNC who might - might- make a difference.
Another movie that will likely stun you is "Network."
From 1976. Written by Paddy Chayevsky, starring Peter Finch as a network anchorman who flips out on camera and becomes a ratings sensation, Faye Dunaway as a scheming network programming chief who dreams up what we'd now call Reality TV, and William Holden as the head of the network news division when a corporate takeover brings different thinking into the executive suites: that news should no longer be a loss-leader, but rather a profit center, thus shifting its bottom line mission literally to the bottom line.
I went to see it when it first came out. I was amazed and enthralled. I'd graduated college a year earlier and was new in the news business. I thought it was a wild story, very entertaining, but also just a little bit worrisome. ("Gee, you don't think that could really happen, do you?"
I saw it again recently, and my jaw dropped. Gobsmacked over how prescient/relevant that movie was/is.
This whole era has my head spinning.
Welcome to U, Nwgirl503.
This shit is just beyond discouraging! I've noticed more appeals lately that Dems start fighting like the GOP does. Ruthlessly, deviously, dirty.
Hey, if that's the way the game is played, I say we go all in. I say we BETTER go all in! FUCK this shit about taking a nice feather duster to a gunfight.
Many of us have been complaining about this FOR YEARS. TIRED of being nice. SICK of "taking the high road." I have observed, over the years, that taking the high road leads you straight over a cliff.
If we always take the high road, and the enemy takes the low road, we WILL lose. And we'll have that "lovely" satisfaction of being all moral and nice and high-minded - while we're shut out of power and the bad guys with the worst ideas and the shittiest motivations and the most crass and most sinister ulterior motives get to govern and lock their power in and cheat and lie and scheme and stack the deck and then get away with it.
I sincerely love Michelle Obama's invocation of our better angels: "when they go low, we go high." I love the sound of it and I love the meaning behind it. I believe that's how it should be. And I wish that was how it could be. But this is real life. Greed and lust for power are real. They're big-time motivators and the ultimate intoxicants. They actually won this time, needing to cheat to do so, but it helped them steal a win. And if we don't fight on those terms, we are simply kidding ourselves. And they will win again. As long as we face adversaries with this agenda, we simply cannot continue "being nice." Or "playing by the rules." When the other side basically says "Screw the rules!" then we're the ones who'll get screwed.
I wish it weren't this way! I wish both sides played fair. Because our side certainly seems to prefer it that way. But it takes two. And the other side would rather win. By any means necessary. At some point, Democrats really do have to stop playing nice.
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