Please give your Progressive Congressperson a call
and let him or her know you appreciated their courage!

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

The Progressive Caucus is the largest caucus in Congress,
but its work for the people is often derailed by
shifting alliances between the BlueDogs and the NewDems
who work together to scuttle progressive legislation.

If YOUR Congressperson is NOT on this list, please let
them know that you expect REAL REFORM, that will be
available to ALL.

Call Congress RIGHT $#%$#%#% NOW!!1!

The President is actually on our side this time
folks, this is HIS plan....

is QUITE different to "I believe".

What if means..."I don't know."

You can ponder all you want, but
all we KNOW is reality.

You can ponder the event of an
Egyptian god casting his masturbatory
seed onto the earth to "create life",
but it won't really get you anywhere.

I am better served mentally by biting
off provable chunks and accepting that
I am "here"...for the moment, and that
others depend upon me.

Disapprove of the Iraq War and those who voted to authorize it.
(Especially the unrepentant ones)
Approve of Impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney
Approve of National Health Care
Disapprove of the "Bankruptcy Bill" as passed
Approve of a distinct Separation of Church and State
Approve of Unions
Disapprove of UNREGULATED corporate greed

Some Progressives:

Russ Feingold
Dennis Kucinich
Barbara Boxer
Jan Schakowsky
Pete Stark
Paul Wellstone (R.I.P.)
Henry Waxman
Bernie Sanders
Jerrold Nadler
Patrick Leahy
Dick Durbin
Bob Graham
Jim Jeffords (Progressive Independent Republican)
and both Levins

I'd include Ted Kennedy, but he walks the line
between Progressive and Old-School Liberal, really
in a class by himself.

There are more, and before you start citing individual votes
that don't meet the criteria, they don't ALL get it right ALL
the time, but for the most part, THESE are the democrats that
should be rewarded and LISTENED TO.

The bravest and the smartest. The ones with INTEGRITY.

Edited to include Dennis Kucinich.

Instead, we choose the "give them enough rope to hang themselves"
strategy.

We let them RUIN our country. We let them RUIN Iraq.
Bankruptcy all around. Americans thrown out of their homes.
No jobs. The dollar at 81 CENTS to the Canadian dollar.

Great strategy!

We could have won running a HAM SANDWICH this cycle and won.

In fact, the ONLY way we could have LOST this cycle would
have been if we had run Hillary Clinton.

"They did not want to do anything to jeopardize that."

Upper Peninsula. The "resort" was called "Olsen's
Nirvana. We got lost trying to find it.
There were 5 of us kids and my parents, my little
sister was 3 months old. It must have been near the
end of summer or autumn, because most of the leaves
were turning color already, and in the UP, it can
get pretty scrubby and grey looking.

We finally found the area, and the only sign of
habitation was a trailer near the water. We knocked
on the door, and a guy opened it, enveloped in a
cloud of blue pot smoke. He shook my dad's hand and
showed us around "Nirvana". Couldn't swim, because
of the water temp and the LEECHES, couldn't use the
boat, because it had a hole in it. And most perfectly
of all, the cabin itself: one waterbed and a cot.
No stove, just a two burner camp stove. And a stereo.

My mother started to cry. We went into Escanaba for
dinner and the only place open was a bar, The Dew
Drop Inn. Two of my brothers threw-up afterwards.
(I think from the cigar and cigarette smoke.)
My mother started to cry again.

It was a rough night, my 3 brothers in the waterbed,
horsing around, my mom and dad on the floor, and me
on the cot with my baby sister, who kept sliding down
between the cot and the wall.
I could hear my mother crying.

The next morning, Olsen let my Dad use his phone and
we lucked into another cabin, a three bedroom
we could afford on Platte Lake near Lake Michigan,
1-1/2 hours away. My mother stopped crying.

I will never forget the look on my mother's face,
the day had dawned bright and sunny, like it was
a new WORLD. She and my dad stood in front of the
crummy hunter's cabin and one of my brothers took
a picture of them.

I still laugh whenever I see it.

My father was a member of the Chrysler Pipe Band in the 50's.
He used to play in THE BATHROOM so he could hear himself over
the droning sounds.

I used to cover my ears and RUN out of the house if I could.

YEARS later, I still remember all of the melodies and when
I hear bagpipes I cry because it reminds me of him and how
much I miss him.

He HATED playing "Amazing Grace", because it was the only
tune that non-Scots knew and his band was always asked to
play it. He considered it trash.

He always taught us to think for ourselves, and
he told us that we would not be allowed our
basic freedoms in the military, and he would
DISOWN any of us who joined.

I didn't even know that he had been a DI
until I was 17! He didn't want us to
glamorize the military in ANY way.
He encouraged his "men" to find state-side
service.

Once he told me that a particularly "gung-ho"
recruit was anxious to get to Korea, my Dad
told him
"You could get SHOT over there"

He told my Dad
"If there's a bullet with my name on it,
it will find me.."

My Dad told him
"If you stay HERE, that bullet will be
lodged in a TREE in Korea!"

He raised us to question authority, not to
blindly and willingly follow orders.

...put the gas, BUT he always told me that
whenever I saw a Renault Alliance, I should
shake my head slowly and say:

"piece of shit",

and everyone would instantly respect my
knowledge of automobiles.

He also taught me how to look under a hood
while someone else was fixing a car and say:

"Well THERES your problem"

when they suspect something.


My dad knew a lot about humor...

even YEARS after his death. BUT


...when I was a young woman (19) he told me
that he would throw me out of the house if
I dated a black man (an interested swain had
called the house).

The black man who had called was from a
rich, much admired family, but my Dad
didn't know that, all he heard was a
black "accent", and he WENT OFF.

I pushed it with him, and he said
"Don't bring him home!"

Total KNEE JERK reaction from a guy who
was raised in a world where racism was
as natural as BREATHING.

I have no doubt, that had the "relationship"
gone anywhere (it didn't), my father would
have eventually been forced to judge the guy
on his own merits.

If this recollection is "throwing my Dad
under the bus", then he is the one responsible
for gassing it up and laying on the accelerator!

Obama's white grandmother has a LOT of company.
We can speak out against the BIGOTED perceptions
and STILL LOVE the "wrinklies" that don't examine
their own prejudices.

Note: My apologies to the Wrinklies that have
grappled with institutionalized prejudice and WON!

"You can say what you want to about Bill Clinton, but I think he's the best president we've had in my lifetime. (Jimbo's in his 60s.)
I made more damn money and lived better the eight years he was in than ever before or since."

Never mind NAFTA.
Never mind the steady erosion of the middle and lower middle classes.

Well at least it IS a reason.......

I see Hillary as inevitable.
She is the party (read DLC) choice.
She has been since the beginning.
The democratic strategy has been to let the
pukes hang themselves with their own rope.

So be it. We believe that we can win the election
running a HAM SANDWICH against any of their candidates.

We believe that the BASE is unnecessary. Totally.
We believe that the "war" will continue.
That outsourcing is good for the economy.
That insurance company profits are sacrosanct
and health care is a privilege, not a right.

We are the New Democratic Party.

Why I saw this SMART gentleman on FOX this morning, talking SMARTLY on
this very subject! His name was Mr. Kagan and he is COLLEGE EDUCATED.
He even works for an INSTITUTE! (Of American Enterprise!)

Anyway, HE said that there IS no "civil war". That the Shiites (SHEE-ITES)
and the Sunnis (SOO-NIS) are fighting because Al-Queda (AL-KAY-DUH)
bombed some mosque last year, causing those two loving religious groups
to fight each other.

Now IRAN is supplying Al-Queda with guns and money (and probably lawyers)
and causing US Soldiers to DIE, so we MUST fight Iran. It is the only
way to bring peace in Iraq.

Don't you SEE! We must FIGHT THEM IN IRAN, so we don't have to FIGHT THEM
IN IRAQ, so we don't have to FIGHT THEM HERE, in our BACKYARDS.

Have a nice day, AMERICA HATER!



You KNOW I love you, Pat!

My father approached me about buying the crappy yellow Vega
with the smashed in front quarter panel owned by the guy
across the street from us.

He made me a deal -- he'd loan me $300 bucks if I could come
up with the other $300 of the $600 that our neighbor was
asking for the car. "It's a good deal", he told me.

I was 17 and I needed the car to get to the crappy community
college I was planning to go to, so I gave him the $300 bucks
and he arranged the sale. I paid him the other $300 over the summer.

Well, I drove that car for about a year, and one day, as I
parked it across the street, the guy who used to own it happened
to be out mowing his lawn. He turned off his mower and said,
"I can't believe that car is still running! I thought it was a
total loss after ...




















...your father pulled out of the driveway and crashed into it
last year!"

My dad was a practical joker of the FIRST WATER!

and 3000 DEAD AMERICANS that their
vote authorized.

It was a CYNICAL vote.
They thought it was a WIN/WIN
vote for them.

If bush had pulled off "shock and awe",
we'd be ROLLING in stolen oil and we'd
all be drivin' our SUV's into the SUNSET
right now.

The more likely version, which we are
experiencing...could be sloughed off
to "bad intel" or "they were tricked".

But we KNOW too much. The PEOPLE
knew. WE WATCHED as Colin Powell was
FORCED to take his BULLSHIT documents to the UN.
We SAW Scott Ritter rail-roaded. We READ
Joe Wilson's report. We KNEW about the ALUMINUM TUBES
and the WEATHER TRAILERS.
They WENT ALONG WITH IT because they
didn't understand the power of the
"internets".

They have blood on their hands.

The republicans are paying at the hands of the voters.


Our wrong voting dems should be held accountable in some capacity too.

numbers of districts, we won't win.

We NEED 50 state structure. We NEED to make them RUN
in every race. Spend in EVERY race. We need to recruit
sincere people who will actively campaign and stay on
message. LOOK what we can achieve when the structure
is THERE, and the grassroots are willing to WORK.

DLC CANNOT continue to choose our candidates.
The grassroots are WATCHING NOW.

WE HAVE THE INTERNETS.