"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it" -- Winston Churchill
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5 comments:
Good morning, DG and BG.
Only 15 minutes in to the cast, and already I'm nodding in frustrated agreement. No - hear me out.
Daily Kos is the liberal blog on which I'm most active (I read quite a few beyond that). One would think - hope? - that given its tenure and reach, posters there would have some general level of enlightenment regarding how important it is to hold a Democratic majority and make compromises to avoid losing ground (the Jon Tester example is very relevant).
But nooooooooooooo. "Democrats are weak. Democrats are pussies. We shouldn't vote for them because that will teach them a lesson! Let's just get rid of Joe Manchin, he's a Republican anyway*!"
* = this actually isn't true; he's conservative as hell, but he votes with Democrats more than literally any Republican would
There is so much (self-)righteous fury and willingness to shoot Democrats in the foot out of pique and spite. It is enormously frustrating. I understand the frustration; in many ways I share it. What I feel like gets lost is that taking incremental progress, or two steps up/one step back progress, in inevitable in the current climate.
There's a lot of what feels like crotchety unrealism in the liberal blogosphere, a belief that if Democrats would just be MORE DEMOCRATIC, more progressive, that voter engagement would rise and Republicans would get voted out of every office within a cycle or two. It's incredibly annoying, and I don't know how to speak to it without starting an argument.
Thanks for all you do, including sharing the information about how this is a long, hard, grueling, multi-generational battle. Stay safe.
I think independents are people who want to hold on to the racism, fascism, and naked authoritarianism of the Republican party, but not be called out by actually be called a "Republican." Like my grand daughter holding her hands over her eyes and delightedly saying, "Grampa, you can't see me now!". Come to think of it, it's exactly the same thing.
Hey again, folks,
This is enormously petty of me, and I'm surely guilty of oversimplification but - well, here's a Reuters article on Never-Trumpers despairing at the current state of polling (showing Trump ramping towards nomination in 2024):
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/desantis-stumbles-anti-trump-republicans-fear-rerun-2024-campaign-2023-04-21/
Now, pray tell - if these TLP guys, these Never-Trumpers who have thoroughly colonized mass media... if these people are SO DAMNED GOOD at effectively messaging to "Heartland Americans," i.e. the GOP base, then why in THE FUCK is Trump apparently on a glidepath to the nomination? Doesn't TLP have the magic formula? Aren't they the "Republican base whisperers?"
Aren't they?
I mentioned frustration earlier; another frustration for me is how many DKos posters ardently defend TLP as useful allies (ditto Liz Cheney).
I hope more liberal Americans come to see TLP in a less favorable light, and (more importantly) stop giving them money.
Thanks for all you do.
Who do I sue to get the right to equal corruption and bribing SCOTUS justices like Billionaires as Harlen Crow.
They out bid us lower financed gadders to bribe the justices for what I want them to make law.
We need a law that clearly provides for equal corrupting bribers to the high court.
Our Founding Fathers did not exclude those with less to be ignored in their corrupting bribes to the court justices on the basis of the bribes being of less money.
Equal corruption for all is what our founders intended.
I read the the Federalist papers and the Chesapeake bay scrolls and it shows they intended that if corruption infects our government that all men shall have equal rights to indulge in that corruption no matter their wealth.
"Why can't we just get rid of them?"
"For the same reason that we can't make this fishing sinker into a gold ingot."
Leaving aside what that would do to the price of gold that was the original reason for wanting to turn lead into it, there are actual good reasons for the slow movement of the justice system. Ask any wrongly incarcerated prisoner about that one some time.
Today is Earth Day 2023, meaning that it is fifteen years to the day since I woke up in the stroke ward at Summit Hospital in Oakland. Talk about a personal reset... I remember sitting in my wheelchair at the rehab hospital wondering if I would ever walk again. This week I walked up to the old mill pond and back four times, so the answer to that was yes, I will walk again, just not the way I had previously thought of walking.
I flunked the quiz. I had heard of each of the quotes, but couldn't pair them correctly with their origin. I thought one of them was surely David Leonhardt of the New York Times, I guess because he says so many irritating things that I lose track of them.
Thank you again for the podcast. The snow is melting quickly, and the bank outside our door is only five feet tall now. It seems like the very last part to melt away, probably because the direct sunlight never gets to it.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
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