As I said at the outset, when I put Kamala Harris's pic in my sig line and before Joe formally entered the race: I will have Joe's back.

Political campaigns in this country are bad enough with the GOP attacking and twisting everything decent. This board, though, can get really ugly as the cannibals wake up and incite as many as possible to eat our own. Most of us don't come here to reenact Lord of the Flies, so for them I repeat: Have Joe's Back.

Translation: "I gave you everything in writing. Congress, do your job." Also...

"I am not running it through a baby-food mill for you. Learn to chew."

Finally: "Americans and American media, I am not your circus monkey. This is not a circus, this is Real Life. You have everything. Learn to read. Learn to think."

Works for me.

Looking back on the ebb and flow of US culture since then, I realize a lot of the message's general acceptance came from revulsion toward Nazi Germany. We were not going to end up like them.

And then with the passing of time and the birth of new generations, "we" forgot. We went into not just one but a whole series of failed wars and were no longer unquestioned heroes. The forces of backlash to advances in civil rights for all gathered themselves... And here we are, taking a gigantic step backward into what? The 1930s? The 1860s?

While MAGATs seem to be pointing to the 1950s as their Golden Age, when everybody knew their place and a white guy with a high school education could always find a job capable of supporting his family, what I think of is the persistent message of our ideals -- like this Superman poster, and all those "foxhole" comic strips and movies that always included the guy from the Bronx (Jewish), and the guy called Reb from the Deep South, and the generic white farm boy, and the guy from Chicago (black). We Americans were never going to be the Nazis.

Once my family got a tv, I watched the kids' shows. I can still recite the opening dialog of Superman, which ends in "Truth, Justice, and the American Way." Not a bad thing, Tlaloc. Not a bad thing at all.

...with kids and a pussy-grabber with women. This is just not right.

Find a candidate you like and build them up. My advice is to stop ripping apart our Democratic candidates, any one of whom (even the ones I never heard of) would be lightyears better than Trump.

...not the original thinker and planner. Personally I don't think she's ever had an original thought in her life, but she is deeply religious and comes from more money that all of DU put together. She never even set foot in a public school until she got this job, and apparently the experience rattled her.

Right Wing Watch will be a good place to start some research.
Google Christian Right + home schooling + textbooks + lesson plans.
Google for DeVos activities in that regard.

The extreme Christian Right has been opposed to secular public education a very long time. I can't recall the name of the fundamentalist billionaire who kickstarted homeschooling as a movement, but when I first heard about it it had been going on at least 30 years, so add another 20 to that.... Yep, they've had 50 years of actively trying to destroy even the concept of public education as a good idea and part of the commons.

And of course they've had lots of help from people who have no idea who's behind it. Due to our pioneer past, homeschooling is still a legal thing in this country. Due to the anti-tax movement, public schools have suffered. Due to the charter-school movement, more tax money was removed from needy schools. Whoopsie, public education is broken, let's get rid of it.

Well, enjoy your researches. Cheerio.

When a social policy regarding chldren's education or medical care is made in the Norwegian capital, it is not that difficult to persuade citizens in one part of the country that children in another part of the country are "their" children too, and should have the same benefits and tax dollars spent.

Just try that in Washington DC. You think the people in "the heartland" really relate to the children in inner cities as though they are their own?

We have our own strengths, and need to build on them. We have quite a way to go. But imagining a Nordic Socialist Paradise replicating itself in the US any time soon is folly.

Here is my story, not of 1950 when I was only three years old, but later, when I was 11 or 12, of a young woman who came to stay with the family across the street for awhile. She was probably 20, and as the pungent saying was at the time, "she had gotten herself pregnant."

Her boyfriend was a Marine who dropped her like a shot when she got pregnant, so she went to the base and found his commanding officer, hoping he would make the young man "do the right thing." She was told she was not the first young woman to come to the CO with that tale of woe -- but the fifth. Let that sink in.

So, there being no alternative either safe or legal, she continued with the pregnancy and stayed with older friends, our neighbors. She had a plan: she would return to the Mainland with her baby and pass herself off to her parents as a widow.

Could the story get uglier? Yes it could. Baby came, birth certificate came, and on it was stamped for all the world to see: ILLEGITIMATE. Let that sink in.

My mother, in her flaming outrage at this injustice, told me the whole story at this point. She told me that damned birth certificate was going to have to be presented every step of the way, including school enrollment. There was no possibility of the fiction of widowhood and respectability -- just lifelong shame for both mother and child. The woman who transgressed and the product of that transgression.

Someone here recently came up with the phrase: "behavior modification for women," regarding abortion bans. I thought that was a good way of putting it -- and it comes wrapped in a whole lot of other behavior mods, like making sure that babies carry shame for having been born at all.

...I remember that particular bitter battle here at DU for 8 long years, as he was accused of spelunking and bus-ejection daily.

All the while he was actually laying the groundwork for one accomplishment after another, like gays in the military and gay marriage around the country.

All the while the GOP was fulfilling the oath they made on Inauguration Day: to oppose every freaking thing Obama said and did, from "My what a nice day" onward.

Frankly, I think the lens with which I will look at Barack Obama's current and future efforts is the same one I used for his presidency.

How about you?

...exemptions for medical care for women. If it offends the "conscience" of a pharmacist to dispense birth control pills, he doesn't have to. If it offends the conscience of a pharmacist to fill a Plan B prescription, he doesn't have to. All up the chain -- from the doctors who prescribe (they don't have to), to the pharmacists who dispense (likewise). Hospitals do not have to perform abortions, nor do they have to refer.

And by the way, as community hospitals around the country closed and consolidated during the Bush years, guess who was left continuing their traditional mission of mercy? Yes, the Catholics. I would have absolutely no problem with that if there were alternatives in the community, but have you checked lately?

I was outraged by the BushCheney administration in so many ways, and the policies regarding contraception and abortion laid groundwork for what's happening now.

"Conscience" my rosy Irish ass.

ETA: look up the Global Gag Order if you really want to choke on your morning coffee

This rally is not taking place in a vacuum, and I would wager that zero of our Democratic presidential candidates would increase our problems.

This is 2019 and we are in a fight for the life and soul of our nation as well as the planet.

No one who spends their time tearing down Democrats who have signed on to our party platform on key issues is going to get my respect or support. I expect it of GOPers -- I will not tolerate it from Democrats/Greens/Socialists/Progressives/Liberals and others who claim to be on the left and are asking for my vote.