“I welcome their hatred.”

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

all i’ve ever asked is that people treat me like i’m my own mind/person/nym in the blogosphere. i try so hard to be fair, and i guess it’s a waste of time. i’m sure somewhere i’ve said, “i lean to HRC over BHO” but i weep to think that no one remembers all that edwards posting i did. i guess that’s my curse, to always pick the beautiful looser candidates that no one remembers in six weeks.

truly, what disturbs me about this most, and i’ll “trash” you and lb for this, is that so many of the points of comparison for the two are based on ether, kaka, hot air. i think we progressive really lose, when we allow the village to pick our issues. tell me why we’re rebroadcasting those fabrications, again? seems to me we’re wasting space and helping the enemy. i’ve posted such here before, but i know you guys really disagree. so i guess that means we’re all One/of the Body, or something.

…still, not feeding trolls is always a good rule, why can’t we be the same with the SCLM bobblers?

a “Clintonista dead-ender” and an “honest to goodness Clinton supporter?”

“I don’t belong to any organized political party.
I’m a Democrat.” - Will Rogers

Because, obviously, we think there is something substantive going on.

Some infights are worth having.

The Randi Rhodes video was an object lesson about the real problems we’re seeing: truthiness, groupthink, unearned disrespect, race-baiting, and outright misogyny — issues you’re no stranger to.

We didn’t start the fire, but I’m not going to turn a blind eye to arson, perhaps especially when it’s done under the euphemism of “unity.”

what you’re talking about. unless i stay steeped in the mire of the day to day “controversies” i don’t even know what you mean. the people in my neighborhood are literally too harrassed economically to care about such things, working two jobs prevents most of them from reading or watching teevee about them anyway.

whatever it is that you’re fighting, it’s with instruments made of smoke, upon plains that will fade away like a bad dream. the econ meltdown will still be going on, and neither of the candidates is expressing much of substance to address it. that’s just one thing that really is on “most people’s minds.” this always happens when i take long stretches off the blogosphere and i realize why it’s good for me. i think that it’s important to understand what the “low information” majority is truly concerned with enough to speak of them.

you know what i see a lot of? old women working. and how do i hate that i can’t even mention this without worrying about ’what it will mean i think’ about HRC it should terrify everyone to see so many old women working. as an economic class they have the greatest ’saftey net’ of social and institutional protections to prevent them from needing to work when they are old. but there they are. if it’s that bad for them, think of how much worse it’s going to be for you.

I’ve been pretty consistent in my views:

1. To me, Iraq is a wash.

2. Hillary and her base are better on UHC (could save lives of people I know).

3. Hillary and her base are better on SS (could give a little dignity to people I know).

4. I will not die in the last ditch before I reward vile misogyny as a matter of simple justice.

Marginal differences between centrists, I agree. But marginal does not mean insignificant.

And yes, I know exactly, and with great precision, “how much worse” it’s going to be for me, which is why I take the political position I do, and, perhaps foolishly, do what I can to protect myself and the people I care about.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

And now we have to do the cleanup.

Health Care Scare, Faith Faith Faith, Unity Unity Unity, Clinton Sucks, Party of Ideas. Sound familiar?

One and all, Village tenets which they hold dearly, and he decided it would be good if he did too.

He went into this with both eyes open, full steam ahead. He wasn’t out to try and transform anything, but merely to game the system to within an inch of its life and ride it to victory, leaving it all in the same dirty place.

I have no faith in his loyalty AT ALL, to either marginal constituencies or any of his principles at the first sign of difficulty. If he wanted to transform, he wouldn’t have squirmed for 2 weeks about Wright. Don’t tell US that X or Y is a non-issue. Tell HIM.

Ben Smith of Politico picks up on (borrows) Lambert’s “Obama 527” posts.
Check it out:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0…

Yes, all politics is local, and “regular” folks don’t follow all the twists and turns of the Beltway media or the blogosphere. (Though the former sure does seem to shape a lot of opinion, don’t it?)

Obama’s fond of pointing that out. Apparently it’s his justification for acting like words don’t matter. They’re just pretty things that can pacify us about “hope” and “change,” not words that challenge us to be the country that doesn’t — and wouldn’t — tilt the playing field toward the already powerful.

On a daily basis, he provides rhetorical air cover to the Reaganist frames that have been sapping the life out of those old women’s opportunities.

On the backs of those women, and of the abandoned people of NOLA and the bombed people of Iraq, America was finally starting to wake up from “values” like voodoo economics, classism-is-good, endless military expansion, and nascent theocracy.

In what shoulda been a change year, time for a New Fucking Deal, Obama decides to be Bill Clinton at best. If we’re lucky.

So, I’m pretty goddamn disappointed and want him to listen up and accept the mandate to lead as a progressive (something that Clinton never had, since the Bush he replaced wasn’t quite the four-alarm fuckup his son is). Because the mandate is/was there… but for him pissing it away.

My preference for Hillary is primarily because throughout this campaign, she’s arc-ed leftward. Last I heard, you thought progressive politics meant hope for women like you describe, and that one of Corrente’s goals was to hold Dems’ feet to the fire until/unless they stood and delivered for them.

Of the fellows, and yes I’m the least senior of all, I’m the most reliably rah-rah must-vote-Dem voice we have here… even when Hillary was officially my least-favorite option, before she showed me some stuff on the campaign trail and her remaining opponent kept badmouthing my values (the bickering lefties of the 60s, secularism, socialized medicine, etc., etc.).

I’m not going to knock you if you want to stop and smell the roses, but please don’t knock me and Lambert without substantively challenging our points.

From the same Politico post:

Nice to see DK turning their attention to the real fight against McCain. Oh, wait! Hillary’s tax returns!

Which is why my attitude on the whole “the real enemy is McCain, post on that” meme is pretty much “You first!” and “We all have jobs to do, mine is important too!” — though I’ve been doing my duty in that regard.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

… and say that DailyKos’s shoving of half the party onto an ice floe is so obvious and dissonant that even Politico notices.

I agree, cd, that a lot of the infighting is over what are ultimately bullshit issues, but the reason some of those issues are important is that they prevent any discussion of the real issues. Indeed, that seems to be by design. Referring to Clinton supporters as “Archie Bunker” types and dismissing their voting preference for Clinton dehumanizes some of the very people you’re talking about and reduces their voting choice to bigotry as opposed to say one last gasp of hope by people who are economically desperate. Which, again, is the point. The Village isn’t interested in regular, working people. The Big Boy Bloggers aren’t interested in hearing why some people might genuinely prefer Clinton - for policy and political reasons - over their chosen one. Why Maxine Waters is right when she says her people don’t need hope, they need help.

The entire media narrative is designed to treat politics like a game and instead of fighting that narrative, which I thought all liberals were supposed to do because it’s ultimately bad for all of us no matter who we support, but many have decided to cheer on the Village and its idiotic ways because they think it will help their candidate. It won’t, of course. Oh, it’ll help him win the nomination, but then the Village will return to its true love, John McCain, warmonger, hypocrite, and campaign finance law breaker.

I’d love to spend my time debating UHC or how to re-vitalize our industry in the midwest or how to lift up the poor. But that’s a little difficult when you have so much of the lefty blogosphere repeating the last fifteen years of smears against Clinton.

The anger at the Orange Frat House is happening for a reason and the party ignores it at its peril. If something isn’t done the women will walk.

If something isn’t done, thousands of more troops will die in Iraq. (oops)
If something isn’t done, our economy will turn a really ugly corner. (oops)
If something isn’t done people’s retirement accounts will vanish into the ether (oops)

If something isn’t done Bush / McCain are going to bomb bomb bomb Iran.

THESE ARE THE FUCKING THINGS THAT MATTER, NOT WHETHER OBAMA IS MORE OF A DOUCHEBAG THAN CLINTON. NOT WHO IS THE BIGGER DIVA HRC/BHO. NOT WHO SHALL I PLEDGE THE UNQUESTIONING UNDYING LOYALTY OF A ZOMBIE.

they vote on personality—egged on by the media’s Presidential Idol “reality” show.

Until and unless we change people’s minds about what’s acceptable for our government to do, we’ll be vulnerable to the same kinds of horrors.

These debates are not about “who’s a bigger scumbag,” or other “trivialities” (though, frankly, picking a president whose less of a scumbag than another candidate doesn’t sound that trivial, when you think about it).

If we believe in the power of ideas — for good and bad — we should worry about who’s propelling what ideas to what short-and-long-term effect.

It’s about who will restore constitutional government and a culture that won’t stand for it to be trashed more and more.

Sorry if that’s too bickery/trivial/mellow-harshing for some of y’all.

I’ll be glad when the convention is over.

Republicans have fucked this country over for the best part of 50 years. Time to put an end to it.

Or maybe move to Canada.

Depending.

UPON THE GODDAMN GENERAL ELECTION. Not this twisting in the wind primary contest.

it wasn’t our choice—they decided they wanted the story to be that evil Hillary woman vs. that good new Obama black guy.

they certainly weren’t the strongest ones by any means.

Voters picked these two candidates. I’m sure you aren’t willing to concede that you support Sen. Clinton because the media told you to. Why then do you ascribe such weakmindedness to everyone else?

The media lack the power to choose a Pres, or Clinton would never have made it, never mind survive; but the media can veto a candidate. They can demonize him the way the did to Gore and Dean, or they can shut off his air supply like Edwards.

But in the end the voters choose. The voters choose these two, mebbe they shouldn’t have, but they did.

sigh

and all the others were asphyxiated or derided. It was Hillary and Obama was chosen as the not-Hillary.

… I picked Hillary as the best of the two the media allowed me to choose from.

I’m going to take a slightly different tack: I’ll set aside the snark. As a Gore(2000), Dean(2004), Gore(2008…sigh), Obama(2008, by default) supporter, I understand and share your disappointment with the choices we’re presented with today. Climate change really trumps everything else for me, and I don’t see any serious standard bearers for this issue besides Gore, so I am deeply disappointed that he chose not to run. That said, I think it is imperative to the democratic process to believe other voters have the same faculty for discernment that I have. Otherwise, what good is having a democracy? That is, if I, and those I agree with, really do know what’s best for our country, then why give those who disagree with me a say?

Clinton’s policy papers on her “Green Collar jobs” proposals. Not only will they revitalize a slumping construction sector(the sector my fiance works in, so near and dear to me), they include heavy investment in clean technology, with the goal of energy independence, and they are more detailed than anything I have heard from Obama.

Bill Clinton for First Dude!!!

It’s quite clear. They threw Edwards off on the left (he was doing well in the polls for a long time, but they didn’t cover him). And they threw Paul off on the right. It’s not a coincidence that Edwards was raising the issue of corporate power, and Paul of executive power (and warmaking). In the candidates that remain, we have the right, and the center right, with Hillary, on the issues I care about (UHC and SS) being slightly to the left of Obama.

And there we are. Meanwhile, the people who really run the country have managed to get all their risk socialized, to the tune of billions upon billions of dollars, by getting investment banks the same protections, without regulation, that normal banks, our banks, get, with regulation. First successful application of shock doctrine! There will be more, no doubt…

NOTE I still maintain the fantasy picture of the 13th ballot in Denver, still tied, “… and Al Gore is nominated from the floor! The crowd goes wild! Excited Obama and Hillary supporters join together to set up a video link to TN. And now, Gore is on the line….”
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.