Well…the process for picking a dem candidate is going to get a big jolt today with the super Tuesday primaries across the country that will award over a thousand delegates toward the 1600 or so that are needed for the nom….and we had three candidates drop out over the past couple of days after the the results of the SC primary saw Joe Biden win by a large margin….look, you know my choice is Liz just because she has the policy chops and the steel to get things done for our progressive agenda…okay, what is called progressive these days was mainstream stuff just a generation ago…I mean, not locking kids up in cages? Up until the idiot trump that was something everyone was in agreement with…and respecting the constitution? The only party that still does that is ours and who thought the flag wavers on the other side would abandon that? Okay, I did…they are all craven liars who do nothing but hate…one thing I have to stress and I can’t stress it enough to the Bernie bros and the Warrenites is that if your candidate doesn’t win the nom, remember what’s at stake and stop the damn whining about sitting this one out if your person doesn’t win…any one of our candidates is light years better than idiot boy…and you know that the winner is going to welcome ideas and policy from those who didn’t win…we are all in this together and the overaching goal has to be to beat trump…cripes, learn how to compromise people…the country is at stake and you’re going to throw a hissy fit? That’s the best way to ensure that none of our ideas to make this country better get enacted…so, suck it up and pull together to remove the stain of trump and his cronies….
Tag Archives: progressives
Going left…
Well…one of the things I’ve noticed with the latest batch of dems elected last fall is that most of them were elected by running on true progressive ideas like healthcare for all and everyone paying their fair share in taxes along with protecting the dignity and rights of all Americans, and that means everyone, not just the chosen ones that the repubs think deserve representation. I am hoping this drives the final stake in the notion that you can’t win elections other than by moving to the center…but the center is where ideas go to die and you just get repub lite that can’t really move this country forward…but, I hesitate to label these ideas as left since they are only labeled that by the repubs trying to smear them and make them the “other” that they are so good at demonizing. What this new wave of progressivism is is just a returning to the values that made this country great…it is a rejection of the hate and division that the repubs have used to motivate their nativist, racist base and an embrace of the diversity that has always made this country better…and that goes for immigrants, the LGBT community, the poor and the marginalized…that is who this new group is fighting for…and for honesty and governing for the protection of all Americans and the clean air and water they need to thrive. My only advice to this new generation of dems is go left…and be proud to be a progressive dem since those ideas are American ideas that most of the country supports…go get ‘em….
One vote….
Well….not sure if you have been following the special elections that have been going on across the country that the dems have been overperforming in, but that is not what this is about…it is a good thing that we have been crushing it…especially in Virginia where we have flipped the legislature there from a 65-35 repub majority to a 50-50 tied one…but, the stunning thing I wanted to highlight here is that every frickin vote counts…that when we vote, we win…and that was shown yesterday when a dem won her recount by one vote! That’s right…one vote took the majority away from the repubs and split the legislature down the middle….and this, along with the pickup in Wisconsin from another progressive woman, shows how important it is for all of us to make sure we vote every time…and vote for our great progressive candidates who will put the people first…not the rich or corporations…it will be a long slog but we CAN make the repubs pay for this abomination of a tax fraud that throws 13 million people off their health insurance in the next year…people are going to die to give the country to the rich and we can fight back…but, we all need to vote…get out there and do it….
Just get on with it…
Well…with the dribs and drabs coming out of the Mueller investigation, I really want to scream “get on with it” and light a fire under them to get to the big fish…I know, the wheels of justice turn slowly but the damage to the country done by the idiot trump needs to be contained and right now….and the factional war on the left continues with the big “controversy” of who favored who from the DNC…something that is in the past and needs to be kept there while we focus on the future and how we can defeat the liars and thieves on the right….isn’t that the most important thing? Here’s the thing…we on the left need to get past the purity tests and and make sure anyone who wants to help us advance the progressive ideas that have made this country great is welcomed…yeah, it may mean some arguing but that’s how ideas are formed and how everyone’s ideas are heard…so, let’s stop shooting ourselves in the foot with the idiotic protest votes that put trump in office…and let’s get the hell out and vote…after all, when we vote, we win….
If we vote, we win….
Well…have been feeling like crap all day today and I know it’s from a bug this time and not something I’ve done to myself…and, I wanted to get to a short one here to try to not get too far behind this month so I won’t be tempted to do placeholders and other nonsense to get the number for the month…one of the things that I find so simple to understand about modern elections is something that Markos has said over at Kos and it is something that needs to be repeated often….”if we vote, we win…”…with the fact that we progressives far outnumber the righties almost everywhere across this country, and the changing demographics that show that the fastest growing groups will vote progressive (or dem) if you want to say it that way, the only thing we need to to to take this country back from the rich and the idiots on the right is to vote….and to vote every time, in every election from dogcatcher to president…from school boards, to municipalities…we just need to vote to restore sanity to our country…to restore equality and opportunity to our economy and to keep the rich from buying the government…just vote, it’s that simple…geez…
What’s going on at Kos?
Well….you’ve heard me criticize the right here many, many times over the past few years and they have deserved it…but, I have tried to make it on the facts, not name calling, or lies like you normally hear out of the right and I think that is what separates the right from the left. But now, when I’m over at one of my favorite progressive sites, I see that many of the commenters there are starting to devolve into the same type of inflammatory name calling nonsense that greets us every day from the right…and I sure don’t like it at all…we have been proud over the years to make our arguments based on the facts and sound policy that we feel is best for the country, not the talking point sound bites that passed for good policy on the right. We are better than that…let me repeat, we on the left are supposed to be better than that and when any one of us goes so low as to match what the right does, it just feeds into the idea that the right pushes every day that “everyone does it” that has given them a pass to discriminate and use the government to hurt people, not help them. So, stop this crap Kossacks…we are better than that and we need to show that the quality of our ideas is all we need to win the day…geez…
Just wandering around….
Well…have been thinking about a political one to do today and really haven’t come up with anything…so I’m going to wander around a bit and just see what happens…it is a little heartening to see the progressives start to find their feet lately with getting the filibuster eliminated for judicial appointees which will give us the ability to appoint judges that will follow the law and not ideology…and that is one of the ironies that I see in the judiciary…the righties howl and howl about activist judges, but which ones are the most activist? It’s always the conservatives who don’t believe in the law or precedent…and to prove this, you only have to look as far as Citizens United where the conservatives on the court threw out a hundred years of precedent and made corporations equal to people….and they are poised to further extend this terrible precedent with a new case that will allow Scalia and the rest of the conservative thugs on the supreme court to say that corporations have religious rights, too…and that one will have to be pulled out of their asses since nothing like that appears anywhere in precedent or the constitution….and it will mean a huge increase in the power of the corporations since they will then be able to argue that they can do whatever they want to their employees…basically nullifying the last 100 years of labor law…so, progressives, we need to keep fighting to take back the court and our government from these folks, to make this country what it can and should be…where people count more than corporations and the law is the law…geez…okay…I didn’t wander as much as I expected…it’s funny sometimes how a topic will just write itself…
Here’s the difference…
Well…I don’t know if I had an epiphany this morning or not…and I may have talked about this in earlier posts but I think it’s an important distinction that we have to keep coming back to…oh, I guess I just “buried the lead” like they say in newspaper business. What I’m trying to say is that we need to recognize the differences between the dems and repubs, and I think it can be boiled down to a few points…the number one being that the repubs are all about restricting peoples rights while the progressives and dems are all about enlarging them. It is odd that the repubs keep harping on limited government and individual rights on one hand, and then they always turn around and use the power of government to limit or even take away rights. We’ve seen this so many times in the past decade or so that I really don’t know why I have to keep bringing attention to these charlatans and their mendacity. Okay, I just love the word mendacity….look it up. While the rights of corporations have been on an arc of unlimited expansion with deregulation and the Citizens United decision, across the country the repubs are limiting the right of women to control their own bodies, limiting the right of association by making sure that unions have no power to represent people in negotiations, limiting the human right of loving and marrying whomever they choose…and the list goes on and on, and on.
The founders of this country envisioned that the rights of the people would continue to expand over time, and constructed a form of government that they thought would guarantee it….they always thought the greatest threat to the freedom of the people would come from within, when ignorant politicians and an uninformed populace would conspire by their action or inaction to bring us down…geez…
George Will is wrong again…
Well…read ole Georges op-ed in the newspaper this morning and I just had to laugh at his rantings against the political power that he feels is too concentrated in the executive branch….I can trump this by just one question…where the hell were you, George, when your buddy GW was growing the executive branches power more than any president in modern history. And, George, you decry this growing power now, but where were you when ole GW was using “signing statements” to reserve to the executive branch the power to ignore congress and the laws it has passed? It is just another instance of “it’s okay if it’s our guy”, but if the opposition is in control, they are going to take over the country by executive fiat. Such a disingenuous take that I think you should be ashamed, George.
The second part of this one is his assertion that “American exceptionalism is obnoxious to progressives”, no, George, I have never met or heard a progressive say that America is not exceptional…but what progressives do is live that exceptionalism…who try to make this a better country for those who don’t have money or power; to use the power inherent in this country to truly become exceptional..not last in the industrialized world in access to affordable healthcare…or in the access and affordability of higher education. What the right does, aided by shills like George, is to thump their chests just like the fratboy jocks they are and dance around shouting “we’re number one!” when it’s not true…geez…
Still a swamp out there…
Well…I think I may be coming to my saturation point for reading the news for a few days….one thing that has moved me to this realization might be what I see out there in the comments to articles that I read…and I know, I shouldn’t expect a change in the discourse this soon after the calls for civility…but the swamp has not been drained one bit…well…the lefties seem to have realized the error of their ways and have toned it down somewhat…but, why can’t we have the progressives be adults all the time? Why is there no thoughtful contemplation of an issue before everyone starts to weigh in? It used to be okay or even preferred when public figures didn’t comment on every story in the nanoseconds after it occurred but thought about it for a while… to make sure they had time to form an opinion that took in all the facts…but not any longer. Do they get paid more if they comment first? I think one factor that has spurred this kind of behavior is the fact that no one is held accountable for being wrong anymore. People can just spout whatever comes into their heads and then come back later to clean up the mess with their well-oiled spin machines.
Now that I have excoriated the left and it’s behavior, can I just ask one favor of the progressives out there? Can we stop talking about Sarah Palin? She just doesn’t deserve any more of our energy….and the right is never going to change so let’s just try to change ourselves; let’s be the adults here….