But one more thing - just because ALEC is now CLAIMING its task forces on

screwing voters and other such shitty ideas - does NOT mean those efforts have stopped.

They'll just transfer them to other task forces (won't call 'em that, though), or other divisions, or to friends in other groups similar to ALEC to pick up the slack or take over the campaign.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!!!! - just like Mad-Eye Moody warned Harry Potter. It's a warning to us as well. When the bad guys say they've stopped something or had to drop some campaign (that you KNOW in your heart they just love and want to push to the max), ALWAYS go looking for where that "dropped" campaign got moved, or renamed, or divided up and its various parts slipped under the door at other organizations.

NEVER accept what these people say at face value!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YES!!!

Watch the dominos fall!!!!

Doesn't it seem like, as Dems or liberals or progressives, we are beset on all sides with these assholes chipping away at everything, everywhere, attacking us from every direction and in every possible way large and small, attacking us in little obscure corners where we don't even realize we're being attacked - until it's too late and the damage is done and the law is passed and taking effect and we didn't even know it was happening - either because we weren't paying attention or we didn't have operatives in that area or that state or that city or we didn't have the resources or the man-power to spread ourselves out that far. (Sorry for the run-on sentence... shows ya how my brain thinks)?

Well, we should be turning the tables and doing it BACK AT THEM. Such as - in cases like this!

EXCELLENT!!!! Keep 'em busy! Keep 'em tied up.

See, there's one thing I just don't understand about these "free market" apostles.

They ALL talk about "Free Market!" "Free Market!"

They all talk about how wonderful competition is - to keep the "Free Market" vital and of most effective service to all.

"Better for consumers!" "Competition just makes everything better!" "New ideas!" "Better products!" "More choices!" "Free Market! Free Market!"

And then behind the scenes they're doing EVERYTHING they can to kill the competition and build a big fat monopoly that quashes all competitors and possible opponents. Yeah, competition. Like when things narrow down to three major record labels? One or two giant radio conglomerates that own stations that number close to 1000 - or more? A handful of mega-big oil companies? One prevailing big-box store chain? Companies merging and buying each other up so there's just this one giant faceless one-size-fits-all omnibus entity.

Assholes. Maybe some of them should be nationalized.

Where is Teddy Roosevelt when we need him?

American Legislative Exchange Cancer.

ABSOLUTELY!!!! Damn that frustrates me so much!!!

Yes it's superficial. Yes the American people shouldn't have to be force-fed truth. Yes as so many naive Dems keep saying - "...but, but, but... the people will KNOW! The American People will see what's going on and they'll understand!" And DAMMIT, they're just WRONG!!! The American people WON'T see what's going on. And they WON'T understand. They're too lazy to look, particularly when they've heard some fat-ass windbag bully on the radio telling them for multiple years that they don't even have to think - he'll do the thinking for them! Hell, that asshole grover norquist just recently said it's just fine if they have that in a president, because all he ever really has to worry his pretty little head about is taking the pen they hand him and using it to sign the bills that they put in front of him.

What - is it considered beneath the Democrats to do messaging and Madison Avenue salesmanship and media shtick and gimmicks? Well, they better damn well get over that attitude, but fast. Otherwise we're just gonna keep getting rolled by these slick sickies.

Just frustrates me to no end - how THIS particular message never seems to get through. And without it we won't succeed. It's not enough to have good ideas, or the wisest solutions. All the great ideas and noble proposals in the world don't mean dick if you don't know how to sell them to people. ESPECIALLY when your opponents are so good at blocking those ideas.

Amazing. Just freakin' amazing.

We are going through such a time of regression! It's astounding!!! I can't figure it out - unless this is some sort of extreme backlash to the 60s and 70s that's cresting like some tidal wave now, or if it's something cyclical in the overall progress and, yes, evolution of humankind. What the hell is going on? The hard-won few steps forward we struggled to realize a few decades back have been met with multiple steps BACKWARD in reaction. And really hostile, thuggish, and outlandishly extremist reaction, too. I'm just stumped. I'm aghast at the trends I see playing out in politics. For example - I NEVER in a million years thought I'd see the day when state-sanctioned - indeed even state-mandated rape even came up for discussion, much less being full-on in-yer-face enacted into law!!!

Good heavens!!! At the moment I find myself in an email argument with some San Fernando Valley woman about this Bishop Jenky fellow's extremist knuckle-dragging politicking from the pulpit last weekend - saying Obama is a liar and how dare he force tyranny on religions and the rights of Catholic hospitals and blah-blah-blah. The woman with whom I'm debating is making it clear to me that we can never reach a meeting of the minds on issues like this. She's quite the absolutist. Her Facebook info reveals she's a rick-santorum-for-president fan. And unfortunately, she's arguing with someone who believes a woman's right to have the last word on matters involving her own body is a non-negotiable. She sees everything as some war on religion. I recognize it as a continuing assault on women. We will never reach agreement here.

Interesting comments with this article. A few seem to be bothered by the relentless, strident insistence on keeping women in second-class-citizen status. There are some who say - okay then, you might as well leave if you won't toe the line on this. So go be a Protestant then. Then on the other hand the same people will moan about the shortage of priests (and nuns too) and why money's tighter and the churches aren't packed every Sunday anymore.

Honest-to-Pete, women are under siege EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Our rights - our bodies - our very being.

Let's all remember (in Christ-centered terms anyway) that even God the Father Almighty needed a woman to realize His ultimate Gift to humanity. After all, none of the Scriptures I ever studied in Catholic school told of a Messiah who arrived on some flaming coach with fiery horses and warrior angels and stuff, nor one who sprung fully-formed and adult from His Father's forehead or arose from the sea foam or some other such thing. Women count for something extremely and foundationally significant. We cannot be denied or discounted or sent to the back of the bus. I don't know, or know of, any woman who would see herself as not equal to a man. Although I'm not sure about that one woman with whom I'm arguing.

Even if this guy beats the rap, he will never know another day of peace.

He'll be doomed to be nervous and vulnerable in public, fearing the simplest of encounters, fearing crowds, and looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. Seems as though he was already fearful and paranoid enough that someday his actions might lead to something like this. And even if there's a verdict in his favor, it won't be over for him - ever.

If george zimmerman thought he was somehow in danger before - man! What he faces if he somehow beats this! My husband and I were speculating just yesterday whether he might ultimately have to leave the country. Go hide out in Peru for a few years where I understand he has some family. He'll be shunned and given grief and the stink-eye everywhere he goes - kinda like OJ was.

Well, okay.

He sure did a lot of damage in his day - more than he even anticipated if you extrapolate out the young "College republi-CONS" who hung on his every word and idea, and have lived on to apply a lot of those lessons to the great sadness and disgrace of this country.

I have so many mixed feelings about the whole "he went to prison and found God" thing. I DO believe that souls can be saved. I DO believe in deathbed conversions. And I'm glad he found some sort of - I dunno - SOMETHING. But hey, he found it awfully doggone late, and only AFTER he'd done all this shitty stuff to people and ruined careers and sabotaged campaigns and just really icky things, not to mention sow the seeds for lee atwater and in turn his evil spawn who learned this kind of shit at HIS knee: kkkarl rove. colson left a long swath of wreckage behind in his lust for power and influence and positioning in the pecking order next to the alpha male of this dreadful criminal pack. And in some cases, I'm afraid, it strikes me as being a cop-out. Oh you're in prison so NOW you've found God, 'eh, and all of a sudden that just washes all your crime and guilt away and makes it all better. Oh how cute. That doesn't change who you were, and maybe still are, and it doesn't change what you did or turn time back and reverse the damage you did and the hurt and ruination and betrayal you caused - the effects of which people still have to live with. Better late than never, I guess, 'eh?

It's awfully hard for me to go there, though. No you don't get off that easy with me, you conniving weasely schmuck! And yeah, I know I'm supposed to be forgiving too. But this one's among the more difficult ones.

Agreed, and agreed, and agreed, and agreed, and ...

This is a GREAT idea. What a cool way to fire up the national imagination again. A national project, like back in the 60's when we were all on fire about going to the moon. The BIG PROJECT was exploration and scientific expansion, NOT war-making. It's still paying dividends! It would get us out of our little narrow headspace and into thinking about something MUCH bigger, and at least large segments of us banding together to work on something for America. Big Project America. Extend America Outward!!!

I love ALL these points you make, Katashi_itto.

Oh dear. Well, thank you for the info, in any case!

Damn! I wish he'd have stayed put!

And I know what you mean about KFI. Useless. Hopeless! Probably gonna have to wait til that whole miserable era is over. The PD's well-entrenched and rendered pretty invulnerable by the cushion of her success. But nothing lasts forever.

I was once told I should go talk to her myself, since I used to be in radio. It would have been a waste of time. She wouldn't be interested in adding someone like me on the air there. They don't do liberal - except maybe for target practice.