It may not be a US Federal law, but it was a LAW in our family. She was pretty adamant about it and it did make sense to us to show respect for the flag in a parade, as the symbol of military personnel and all those others who made this a great nation.

We saved our pennies (literally) and managed tickets for a bus ride and grandstand seats at the Rose Parade one year. When the first color guard went by, we stood up. Two old ladies behind us grumbled and complained and voiced hope that we didn't intend to do it each time "somebody with a stupid flag goes by".

When the color guard passed, we sat down. Mom did NOT. She drew up to her tallest height, spun around and proceeded to express her opinion that THAT COLOR GUARD, and all others, carried the same flag that thousands of US servicemen had fought and died under. That rising in salute to a color guard was not some empty gesture, done by rote, but rather a remembrance and salute to all those who have sacrificed for this great nation.

She also inquired if those biddies also liked to put down the youth of America for being lazy and not interested in their country. She asked if they belittled the 'kids who are just now taking to the street to protest the war in Vietnam, kids who were at least paying attention and getting involved in their democracy'. She did get a round of applause from everyone else within ear shot.

Go Mom.

She was of a generation that had many missing from any high school reunion. She learned and played drums in a swing band because the men were few and far between when she was young, but the USO needed bands in towns of any size and the ladies mustered to take on that small request for helping provide the chance to dance and forget war for just a little while for so many people who served.

Tribute and remembrance. Salute. So long as it is genuine and not something done by rote, I will have a double helping, thank you. But I also respect those who do not participate, so long as they don't whine that they are missing the parade.

I am also of a generation that has many missing from any high school reunion. If I wear a hat, it comes off during the anthem. If a color guard passes, I stop and stand erect, in silent tribute and remembrance, a salute to the multitudes I never had the honor to meet, but owe my nation to.

When Ford pardoned Nixon, I found myself choking on the last phrase of the Pledge of Allegiance. Mom and I attended a meeting where it was normally said and I feared what would happen when I was unable to get the words out. She noticed, but said nothing. On the way home, I told her I just couldn't say it because I had seen justice WAS NOT for all. She smiled. She was happy. I was not doing such things by rote or cultural conditioning. I THOUGHT about it each time. She told me it was good I could not lie and say the pledge if that was how it affected me now.

Next time we were together at a parade, she nudged me after the color guard had passed. 'Glad you can separate the bad men do from those who really served America.' I think I understood my mother's whole mission in life at that moment.

And I will stand when the flag goes by or the anthem is played. It is MY flag, not the property of bad men and women who use it for cover. While I do wish we, as a people, would change the national anthem from a poem about a war, sung to the tune of an old English drinking song, I will stand when it is played. Stand and go into my own private world of wishing peace to many who fell and many who face such peril still. Then, my mind reminds me to redouble my efforts to participate in democracy, that such people will not be misused and abused by bad leaders. So, yeah, I am thankful to take a stand. It reminds me what my mission is.

Happy Father's Day, Mom. I miss buying you something from the hardware store again this year.

Lots of people will be screaming for the DEMS to be out of office. Obama will be blamed for not fixing, in very short order, what took decades to damage the US to this point.

Think Carter after Nixon was a bad deal for the DEMs? Nixon was bad, but the nation was not in nearly this awful shape. The damage will take GENERATIONS to repair, but Obama & the DEMS will be hissed at for not restoring the good ol US of A in the blink of an eye.

Most Americans really do work with magical thinking. Even here at DU, we do it. So many still think all it would take is the Magic Gore to step up and our collective asses would be magically saved.

The DEMS will end up with the brunt of the collective angst as the shit hits the fan from the damage the GOP has set in motion. Took them decades, but they have pretty well assured we will be broke, have lots of enemies, have no real resources nor friends for generations.

DEMS will end up trying to answer for what their traitor predecessors have wrought.

Not borders, like existed between countries before the huge corporations took over and erased them, but BOUNDARIES. Those personal and societal lines civilized, mentally healthy people do no cross. Those commonly held limits that prevent the worst assaults on communally held standards and civility.

Boundaries are what make it possible for us all to coexist. They are the spoken (laws) and unspoken (customs, traditions) rules by which most members of a society tacitly agree to engage. They are the acceptable limits of behavior.

Cross my personal boundaries and you may be forgiven, but will likely have it explained to you also. That's how I work after spending lots of time studying boundaries and working on not being a doormat by people who claim to care about me. My personal boundaries also prevent me from doing things that will damage me, others, society.

My personal boundaries include provisions about respect, both others and self. Helps maintain the balance between giving or taking too much. Helps maintain health, be it physical, mental, spiritual. One HAS to know when to stop certain activities, lest one overextend themselves in ways that damage one's core body, mind, soul. They prevent me from accepting too much abuse from others; they limit the levels of damage I am willing to accept, to aid in preventing damage from reaching a level I cannot recover from.

My personal boundaries are set to where I do not expect everyone around me to agree with me on all things. Sadly, some people do not have theirs set similarly and are often offended, enraged by things that are commonly accepted by the society as a whole. Those people generally have a lot of frustration and bitterness, feeling they are constantly being assaulted and threatened.

I do not think my personal boundaries are much different from those of most others in my society. Some are better honed, some more rigid, some more flexible because that which they govern is of less import. But most are pretty much in step with the society I grew up in and inhabit. And boundaries evolve as our experiences expand our understanding and perspective.

We do not hold youngsters to the same standards as we maintain for adults. That is a boundary. We help kids to learn and grow. We teach and we try to lead by example. As a child grows, we expect more civilized behavior. We expect boundaries to be coming into place and behavior to be modified to fit within the parameters of commonly understood communal social boundaries.

We do not hold our infirm and diminished to the same standards. We know they are not as able for whatever reason and we allow for more violations or commonly understood communal social boundaries. We show some empathy and make some allowances. Until serious breech of the norm occurs and a person's behavior may constitute a threat to self or community, we tend to just deal with oddities or just avoid those who are constantly odd beyond what is acceptable to OUR personal boundaries.

Where boundaries do not exist, or do not function in ways that allow for reasonable interaction with others in society, problems arise and continue unresolved. Some times the professionals will give such malfunctioning boundaries labels such as 'personality disorder'. If the lack of boundaries is serious enough, it may get labeled as a mental illness. Sometimes these unproductive or unacceptable variances form the societal norms can be addressed (treated) and modified to more productive personal habits which allow for better interaction with society. Sometimes, sadly, they cannot.

We live in our own community. Community has layers. I have my family, my extended family, my friends, acquaintances, neighbors, town and political groups as communities. We all have pretty much the same, and jointly we expand community to include larger groups, perhaps church, state, nation, professional and so on. Each level has different sets of boundaries, of what will and won't be acceptable behavior. It takes some effort to learn the unwritten rules and know what rules (behavior) is allowable by what level of community one may be interacting at a given time.

Some of us are fortunate enough to personally belong to communities that are international. Involvement in such communities can be tremendously enriching and broadening. It can make us more than we were before, more aware of more possibilities, of conditions, of life in all its amazing variety.

Then there are the people, who through birth or endeavor, go on to be citizens of the grand community that is our entire planet. They can do great good or great harm, depending on where the boundaries are set. Hitler’s were set to allow him to do great harm. The Mahatma Ghandi’s were set to make him a highly responsible citizen and teacher. Generals have boundaries that allow for some killing, but stop at others. Officers have boundaries that are supposed to work to keep their subordinates alive and working within parameters that should prevent unnecessary problems.

Leaders need boundaries that allow them to work productively with other leaders, to understand other peoples, have empathy for other people’s needs, desires, and conditions. Leaders have to have solid boundaries in order to protect us from others with poor or no boundaries. Leaders need to be AWARE and to have high personal standards. Those standards have to include knowing when to give and when to hold a line. Boundaries are the soil from which judgment sprouts and grows.

We do not flourish under leadership that has low standards, under leaders who do not have healthy functioning personal boundaries. The past several years have been a sad and glaring example of that truth. As a nation we are not as respected. As a nation, we are hated by many, and sadly, some have damned good reasons now. As a people, we lack inspiring examples of healthy boundaries. That makes it easy for those whose boundaries are not well set to justify their poor behaviors. And it makes it more likely that more and more of us will abandon the standards we used to maintain for our personal behaviors. It makes it easier to lie and cheat, when we see the leadership do it daily.

Our nation needs to work at restoring our place within the international community. To accomplish this, we need to demonstrate that we have healthy, functioning boundaries, that we RESPECT other nations and we ADHERE TO RULE OF LAW our selves. We need to prove we intend to operate with honor, within boundaries they can rely on and trust to be stable enough for healthy relations.

Our nation does not need leaders whose questionable boundaries allow them to sing about bombing a people who have done us no harm.

Our nation does not need leaders whose questionable boundaries allow them to hide their personal dealings if they figure they can gain from hiding them from our scrutiny.

Our nation does not need leaders whose questionable boundaries allow them to hope to profit personally or financially from tragedy.

Our nation does not need leaders whose questionable boundaries let others justify their own destructive behaviors.

Our nation does not need leaders whose questionable boundaries allow them to break laws for their own gain, or the gain of their patrons; to harm society for gain or profit.

Our nations does not need leaders who lessen us rather than inspire and lift us to make ourselves better people, better citizens of our communities and the world.

We need leaders with boundaries and standards. This crap of any means to an end HAS to stop. There has to be law and there has to be standards. Leadership should LEAD, not abuse for lack of healthy boundaries.

Look at the choices we have for our General Election. Look for where the healthy boundaries are. Look at who is defending those boundaries and who is abusing them.

Look for what is healthy and reject what is not healthy. Look beyond self and to the greater good, and pick leaders who share that view. Look for leaders who have vision and real values, boundaries. Do not follow those who do not have such qualities, for they are not leaders, but con artists and narcissists. Do not follow someone who may have a title but who fails to truly inspire others to fulfill potential.

Leaders lead, within boundaries and standards of what is best for the greater community. And We the People can be the leaders. We can set the boundaries. For our democracy to survive, we must take up this mantle and reject any applicants for leadership positions who do not share our boundaries.

The standards for what is acceptable have sunk to such low levels that applicants for the positions of leadership seem to feel we have no standards, no boundaries.

They are wrong. We have boundaries and we need to re-establish, reaffirm standards.

We need leaders who have boundaries, and who respect ours.

I didn't get my way but I am supporting the nominee and not behaving like a spoiled two year old throwing a tantrum.

Obama fans did not do the damage. The inability of some to get past ego and on to greater good is the problem. When such people behave poorly and FINALLY get slapped down for it, they throw more tantrums trying to put the blame on those they provoked instead of facing the facts of what they have done to provoke rebuff

Hold your breath. Turn blue. You faint before you die and when you faint, you start breathing again. A bit of practical knowledge from my ol momma.

Now, if ego is really more important that things like the Supreme Court and honestly facing Iraq, sit this one out. Meanwhile, those of us who put party over ego, and country over party will continue to work to bring new people into the fold and involve them in the process. THAT makes America stronger where as tantrums and threats make for silly melodrama.

Go ahead and blame me. I'm an Edwards voter. But if HRC's 21%ers aren't adult enough to take responsibility for the stands they take, go ahead and blame me. You don't define me and I know it. Further, I am Legion.

The McAuliffe/DLC wing's methods being proved a failure... yet again. They have tin ears and are not hearing what Americans are saying.

There are 50 states and all are important. Listening to ALL is how you build winning coalitions. Just addressing those who already agree with you is NOT progress, nor is it Progressive.

The Doctor is good for the Party & good for America.

They 'give' working people money (which is really a payday loan against your POSSIBLE refund on 08 taxes with your 09 tax return) knowing the working class needs to buy things NOW. Where does that money go? TO THE CORPORATIONS

And next April, workers get to pay for what they bought AGAIN!

Since the big tax cuts to the economic top tier DID NOT trickle down and give the economy a shot in the arm, it seems logical to get rid of those top tier tax cuts, increase the wages workers get (and pay payroll taxes on) and people will be able to spend on food, fuel and house payments instead of having to choose between the three. People might even be able to save a little again!

Workers with money all year keep it circulating. The ultra rich with more money just sit on it and piss on us. THAT is a basic truth of trickle down economics.

We all do better when we ALL do better.

This payday loan marketed as a rebate is just more corporate welfare paid for by workers shouldering even more of the national debt.

Personally, I favor Obama a bit over HRC, though I am saddened not to see more difference in the policies of the two.

What I fear most is the real fight is for a continuation of the 50 State strategy (which Obama does seem to have adopted with success) or the return to the McAuliffe tactics and methods (seen more in HRC approach to campaign) which brought so much distance between big machine DEMS and the people who have traditionally been the very soul of the Democratic Party.

My big fear with HRC as nominee is the Party's return to the style and smugness that lost us so much ground back in the mid-90s. I DO NOT want to see the top DEMS treat the heartland like so much cultural rubble that is best ignored. Our culture is more homogenized than the simplistic views of that type of leadership.

There are more urban refugees out in the heartland than the McAuliffes of the party seem to notice. There are more rural people forced to leave the lands and head for urban centers for jobs to support them as family farming/ranching is less able to sustain the generations coming of age. We are NOT Blue (to be attended to) and Red (to be pretty much ignored). We are America and I want Party Leadership that addresses that reality.

I lean toward Obama. He has shown an understanding of and respect for the idea that America is not just the coasts. I hope he will follow through with a shape chop to any McAuliffe shoots that try to sprout and crowd out the grassroots.

NOT

That phrase speaks volumes about the problems the (soon to be obsolete) McAuliffe wing of the Democratic party has, and possibly one of the reasons the GOP kept winning and gaining.

There are a lot of California ex-patriots in 'red states' now. The old demagraphics just don't hold up. Dean gets it.

But what do I know? I'm just a numb nut democrats in a red state <---that has a DEM governor, two DEM senators and a medical marijuana law that passed not long ago. Oh, and our Gov did a D.C. road trip a while back, going on every talk show and news program he could to point out how bush's abuse of the National Guard has made Americans at home less safe when disasters strike. HE got our Guard's helicopters back from Iraq. How have 'blue state' govs done with facing down bush/cheney?

numb nut democrats in red states! That attitude is a BIG part of the problem and it needs to stop. It IS bigotry.

Let's be honest about THAT.

IWR matters still because it lends insight into methods of decision making and values.

There was ample evidence that bush/cheney were less than honest. That should have been considered more fully. Voting for IWR was a bad call done for suspect reasons and not apologized for even in light ot the evidence being overwhelming and commonly known the whole pretext for war was bogus.

Hmmm Iowa wasn't so important. Then SC wasn't so important.

Sorry, it's ALL important

Yes, we do have to go on from where we are, but we can't really correct something if we don't admit it was wrong.

Sorry, IWR will always be relevant.

to get people to take the government back and rebuild America. We need it to be innovative in putting Gore's ideas that saving the environment will create new jobs into wide spread actions. And we need it to create/elect leaders who will stand up to the powers that want the status quo because they make the bucks from the way things are and don't want to share bucks with people promoting the way things could be. We need education so people will see through the lies that saving the environment will cost jobs. We need education so we can do the NEW jobs we have to make to save the environment and the future of the species.

But to many people, the myth is education, or lack there of, is what separates the employed from the unemployed. I try to dispel that myth. It is just more blaming the poor for their own problems. It is a way to distract people from really looking at the system and how it favors some while making improvement impossible for others.

Believe me, seeing locally celebrated high school valedictorians and salutatorians have to take bone-head college courses, and then come home failed from even those worries me greatly. We play at education now. We pretend it is a priority but our actions as a society prove the lie.

We do need educations. But we need to add the addendum that education of the individual has to be more than the ticket to personal salvation. The culture needs education about the need for community betterment, not the current emphasis on personal betterment and society be damned. Too many MBAs from the 80s are part of the problems we face today. They did what the corporations told them so they would advance and now they find they were tools in their own demise too.

Along with education, we need wisdom and better moral judgment, as individuals and as a society.

I never discourage education. Just don't want it used a the peg to hang excuses on the way cheney does.

IF someone with low post count is abusive and/or breaks rules, make a comment if you can be fair and constructive then alert on it.

We do not help point out the error of the talking point that DEMs are elitists if we tear into any new person who dares have an opinion. Sometime they REALLY do want to learn and grow. Forgive them if they aren't up to the speed of DUers with a brazillion posts, help enlighten. IF they really are trolls, alert and let the mods do their thankless, but essential jobs.

Make friends and allies where you can.

Teach gently and guide people to information that will help them to understand.

Drop the official hammer on the real disrupters.

ESPECIALLY in an election year.

My daughter has a low post count. She really gets fed up with people who ASSume that means they are more progressive than she is. Happens a lot and it is fucking stupid for us. We need to make a bigger dent in the news blackout the general population has been victimized by (and, perhaps, willingly participated in for their own comfort). We do that by welcoming and helping to educate. We do it by helping people catch up to speed on recent history and events. We do it by offering help and not going into auto-pilot attack mode at the first sign of obtuse misconceptions.

Yeah, lots of trolls AND agents of the right around here. HELL YES, fight them with sound logic an facts. But don't think being snide and nasty to fools and tools will ultimately do us any good in our fight to take back the country.

Try friendship first. Try facts and truth next. IF a poster proves they are here to harm, ALERT.

Yeah, it's fun to watch 'em twist. Guilty of that myself. But it doesn't really help and it tends to feed the notion that Liberals are nasty and elitist.

Be a Populist. We will get further with that tactic

Wish they had been right and I had been wrong.

And they are too busy kicking around the diversion that is Hillary/Obama and who said what. Several people have posted about this in several forums. Sinks like a rock.

Really sad.

Deregulation has brought about more hazards to workers and consumers while sucking the wealth upward to the top .5% even faster than before.

Outsourcing makes us jobless, and insurance-less. Plus, less payroll taxes to support the infrastructure we all use.

To save pennies per item on production, we have poisons in foods and toys.

Wages keep spiraling down while real cost of living goes up up up. To make the numbers look better, they keep adjusting the items indexed.

Ditto cooking the books on real unemployment figures. Just don't count the unfortunate workers whose benefits run out. See! Lower numbers!

Lie about jobs created. Decent job with living wage and benefits lost is NOT made up for by a not-quite full time slave wage job with no benefits. But, they count them the same. See! Higher numbers.

Lower the standards for clean air and water. Oh, and let mega corps buy aquifers up all over the globe.

Pass laws abroad that prohibit subsistence farmers from saving seed. Make them BUY seed for multi-national corporations.

Pass laws that it's OK for Monsanto GM crops to be grown near other crops, then let Monsanto sue farmers out of existence for having their genetic materials in fields without paying.

They have been at war with us for DECADES. Hell, yes, it is bloody well time we hire some leaders who will fight for us.

Pull a poll
Push a poll
Poll a troll
Stroll with pole
Push a troll in a hole with a pole
Troll a fish on a line with a pole
Ice fish in a hole with a pole poll
Droll toll poll

More wine for planet havocmom.....

or any number of other stocks that went bust due to the criminal behavior of top corporate management chose to be victims?

And all the 50-somethings who worked hard all their adult years, loyal to auto manufacturers, railroads and such, suddenly finding that corporations thank them by shutting jobs down just before employees are able to retire... yeah, they all chose to be victims?

Workers in all sorts of industries have found jobs closed down. They didn't choose that. They didn't do anything wrong.

I know a relatively young man who had the good fortune to be born into a family with money. He spent a LOT of time drugged out of his mind, but he got to run a company, several, actually. He had no skills, hell, all he could do was play solitaire on the company computer in his big office until my worker bee daughter taught him how to do anything beyond that... He had no people skills. He just had money and friends of family who also had money.

He played big shot, and it worked... for a while. Then reality hit. One of the companies (the cash cow actually, so a lot of other companies he had fingers in will fall, like dominoes soon) failed, DUE TO VERY BAD DECISIONS FROM THE EXECUTIVE SUITE. Now, 10,000 workers are shit outta luck. They didn't do anything wrong. They were loyal, responsible people. They lived within their means, unlike the bosses. They were honest. They came to work one morning to find there was no place to work anymore, and they didn't have a clue for weeks whether they would even be paid for the month that they had just worked.

The press asked this coke snorting party boy who had what he had due to birth and networking within the top One Percenters what would happen to all those workers. His answer? 'Their job was to make me wealthy, and now that's done'

Sad thing is, this punk shit is not uncommon among the One Percenters. Hell, look to the White House and you can see he is a rather common scion of his class. A very pointless, valueless excuse for a human being.

Some people make bad personal decisions and do make themselves victims. The whole working class of this nation DOES NOT fall into that category. FACT: The One Percenters use, abuse, victimize for fun and profit.

The workers? Some were boomers, some much younger. FACT: It was not any sort of generational hit. It was NOT something 10,000 workers in that one company alone all did to simultaneously CHOOSE to be victims. Multiply that by all the companies with CEOs and top officers who just don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves, using people to make themselves wealthy then throwing them out, often without the pay checks, retirement checks THEY FUCKING EARNED.

It was class warfare.

My god, how happy we are for you, that you worked hard and got an education, worked your way up to a good paying position. LOTS of people have done the same, and they have been thrown out like yesterday's coffee grounds.

Hope your $$ and your luck holds. You will land hard if you are one of the many who suddenly finds that unless you are a One Percenter, there is no economic security, and damned little justice.

edit - typo