Crossposted from My Left Wing

I'm very disappointed in most of the respondents to yesterday's Question of the Day, which I posted at MLW:

Set aside, for our purposes here today, ALL questions about electability, money, appearance, history, possible Republican opponents and how your candidate might do against said Republican, and think back to the words you heard from each candidate. If you COULD, in some Utopian existence where none of the above issues were allowable in one's decision-making (not only your own but every voter's), choose a candidate to ascend to the nomination based SOLELY on that candidate's spoken and written words...

Who spoke the words that most closely hew to your own opinions and feelings, and, presumably, therefore would be your chosen Democratic candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America come November 2008?

Crossposted in full from Stu Piddy's post at MLW

i don't have time to go into detail on this but an Army Warden at Camp Cropper has been charged with aiding the enemy.

The Army tells NBC News that military police arrested Lt. Col. William H. Steele several weeks ago and that he is being held at a detention facility in Kuwait.

I don't know anything about it... except it reeks.

It sounds like this "warden" was possibly going to be a whistleblower might have been gathering information on mistreatment of prisoners and was not sympathetic to the past or present torture and mistreatment on detainees.

Crossposted from  MY LEFT WING

Orginal title: You Fuck, You Die

[FINAL UPDATE, I hope]

Well... THAT was interesting. I'll be paying for my abominable reaction to the title change for months to come, no doubt -- and oh, the field day my detractors have had with it. My own fault. i stand by my original title and assertion that if Markos wants to ban profanity in titles, he ought to write the rules to reflect that. Nevertheless, everything I said and did after the title change -- utterly abominable and thoroughly embarrassing. I'd plead insanity, but that ship has sailed.

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

"The troops" do not generally believe it when people say they "support the troops" but "hate what the troops are doing." They think that's bullshit. They think if you're going to support the troops, you have to support what they're doing, and since they're pretty sure there's no way in fucking hell you can possibly understand what they're doing -- since they themselves do not understand what they're doing -- they kinda sorta wish you'd just shut the fuck up.

Imagine this, please, people:

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

It seems to me that the old cliché, "Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it" applies much more to ordinary citizens than to politicians.

In fact, politicians COUNT on that truism. How many people actually know how Vietnam started? How many people further know how our involvement in Vietnam accelerated? How about when the draft was implemented?

And how many know the details of the Weimar Republic, the Reichstag, the supposed “election” of Adolf Hitler, the purported attack by Poland on a German radio station that was, in fact, a falsehood from beginning to end?

The fact that we are, collectively, so very uneducated about humanity’s own recent history, is what the right wing counts on when they send out the attack dogs to decry any comparison between Iraq and Vietnam -- and possibly what the Democrats now dragging their feet on the Iraq Quagmire count on as they tell us every day, "Wait, wait, give us more time..."

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

Reading rustydude's reportage on What The Media Is Not Reporting In Colombia, I'm struck by his theory about the two reasons they're protesting Bush's visit so violently over there in Latin America -- Colombia, specifically.

The first reason is fairly self-evident (all emphases are my own):

"... The U.S. has sent nearly $4 billion in mostly military aid to Colombia since Uribe took office in 2002."

Ahh, you mean the US aid is sent to prop up a right wing thug and the trickle down in this case is US manufactured bullets to quell dissension?

But the second reason isn't quite as manifest; at least, it wasn't to me. Might be I'm just slow to catch on (it wouldn't be the first time):

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

I always get a chuckle out of it when I remember it, so it cheered me up immensely this morning to go over to Ted Kennedy's site to see the link to My Left Wing.

There's something terribly thrilling about seeing your home site on TEDDY KENNEDY'S BLOGROLL!!! Even if he does list everybody under the sun. (Ahem... not that there's anything WRONG with that...)

But I'll have you know, there WAS a time when I was one of only SIX sites listed there. And no, the day I saw that, there was NO talking to me. Preening Queen Maryscott, indeed... Not that I actually fancied he read us himself. Dude probably shuns everything but newsprint.

Still, considering his instant classic, fire and brimstone schooling, honest-to-god SMACKDOWN of the Republicans re: their indefensible, immoral, grotesque "filibuster by amendment" of the minimum wage increase a couple weeks ago, being on the blogroll of one of my personal AND political heroes goes a long way toward making up for the big, orange shaped hole left in my back yesterday.

I've given this a lot of thought, and come to this conclusion: this apology is owed. I loathe apologising, especially in public, so rest assured -- I would NOT do it if I didn't believe it were absolutely warranted.

My last diary here was a godawful mess (DON'T try to open it, it has almost a thousand comments and it freezes even my computer. If you really MUST read the text, I suggest reading the near-verbatim version at MLW. I'm not being self-serving, the traffic can't do me any good with this disaster -- it's just ridiculously slow to open in its DKos version).

It was a mess not only in its execution but also in its inadequate "research," for lack of a better word. As is too often the case, I used as examples to support my thesis a situation and person that were hideously inappropriate to the issue at hand. Thinking I knew all there was to know about it, I blundered on into the fray, compounding the problem with my stubborn, willful refusal -- until it was FAR too late to undo much of the damage I'd done -- to listen when people told me I was missing crucial information.

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

Original title:

Free Mumia: Yet Another Embarrassing Topic for Many Liberals

REstored content:

I'm not kidding about the Free Mumia thing: many liberals cite that very phrase as one of those "fringe" topics on the left that make them CRINGE in embarrassment on behalf of similiarly minded liberals.

Every time I've seen someone who is not a troll  <font color="orangered">self-destruct like this</font> (hrh's AM I A Troll?) on DKos, it's generally been born of a keen sense of frustration, disappointment and helplessness. And I TOTALLY relate to that, irrespective of any agreement or lack thereof as concerns the substance of the posts.

MLW Version

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

I'm in with the in crowd;
I go where the in crowd goes
I'm in with the in crowd --
and I know what the in crowd knows
Anytime of the year, don't you hear?
Dressing fine, making time
We breeze up and down the street,
We get respect from the people we meet
They make way day or night...

I know, I've been out of the loop for so fucking long, this is probably OLD news to you all, but I just ran across it on YouTube...

... and the gob of self-pity I've been carrying around for what seems like weeks got yanked out of me like a cute, freshly washed little black puppy from a bin full of mud-soaked little grey ones...

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

Diane W suggested in an Open Thread at MLW that "... most evil is done in the name of self-righteous goodness."

And while I can understand how someone could come to that conclusion, I'm going to stick with Hannah on this one:

"The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil."

The Nazis were able to do what they did not because the vast majority of the "Good Germans" were filled with a self-righteous sense of goodness, a sense that what the Nazis were doing was somehow the RIGHT thing to do...

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

Well, THIS is certainly groundbreaking:

'AMC' Introducing Transgender Character
By DAVID BAUDER, AP Sun Nov 26

NEW YORK -

In a story unusual even for a soap opera and believed to be a television first, ABC's "All My Children" this week will introduce a transgender character who is beginning to make the transition from a man into a woman.

The character, a flamboyant rock star known as Zarf, kisses the lesbian character Bianca and much drama ensues. The storyline begins with Thursday's episode of the daytime drama.

Okay... ZARF?????

But let's just look past that, shall we? Moving on...

I just spent over half an hour responding to an email from the Green candidate I met last weekend, Byron DeLear.

As I wrote, I found myself coming to an inescapable and nauseating realisation: I am a coward.

I had the distinct pleasure of meeting and speaking at length with a candidate for congress last weekend. As it happens, he is challenging the incumbent in my district -- Howard Berman, a Democrat. His name is Byron DeLear, and he's running as a member of the Green Party, while pledging to vote with the Democrats in the House.

After much consideration and study of the issues, however, I have to say that, despite DeLear's charismatic persona and, admittedly, near-perfect stances on the issues about which I care the most, I will still be voting for Howard Berman this year.

Berman regrets voting for the IWR, but believes, while recognising the irony, that we cannot leave now without condemning Iraq to total annihilation.

I disagree STRONGLY with that conclusion, but frankly, despite his serious shortcomings in this and a few other areas, I have to say my earlier opinion of Howard Berman still stands: he votes the right way (MY way) more consistently than almost any other elected Democrat in Congress.

This part of one of yesterday's rebuttals (to my bad judgement in posting what I posted yesterday), written by The Blaz, stood out for me:

And son of a bitch, sometimes that means voting for a distasteful candidate from your party.

Except... and I might have pointed this out, except I didn't have the intestinal fortitude to stick around and fight it out... It's not sometimes. It's ALWAYS.

When is the last time the Democrats nominated a liberal candidate? Wasn't Carter. Hell, I'm not even sure about Mondale and Dukakis -- but if they WERE liberal, they sure as HELL were still distasteful as candidates.

The title caught my eye, so I read this diary, Neo-Progressives, with interest -- especially the preamble:

...What is now apparent is that we have a whole lot of "neo-progressives," people who have no hesitancy in supporting mainstream Democrats in the name of defeating Republicans. Neo-progressives cannot resist the temptation to support the lesser-evil as a pragmatic strategy, justified in the name of saving the country from yet more years of Republican dominance...

What came to mind was a question...
What's so neo -- or, for that matter, progressive -- about that?

And an answer...

Art courtesy of dhonig, of Hypnocrites...

I won't read Bob Woodward anymore, no matter how hard he may hit Bush & Co. (and I'm not entirely convinced his latest, State of Denial, is as "hard-hitting" as some would have me believe. But I digress...)

I won't read Woodward because it's too little too motherfucking late, in my estimation. Bob Woodward is a skanky, pathetic, self-serving, self-obsessed, bizarrely vain attention whore utterly devoid of even a microscopic hint of morals, ethics, standards, principles or values.

But let's move on to the skanky fucksnot's latest literary offering, shall we? Just because I haven't read it and won't doesn't mean there isn't SOMEONE out there willing to sacrifice his peace of mind and undergo nausea and sleeplessness for the good of us all...

Since I refuse to lose all hope in the souls of those legislators who just voted away our right to habeas corpus I must, instead, come to the conclusion I've already reached several times since this Congress first convened: They are stupid motherfuckers.

I come to this conclusion as I have many times before because only a stupid motherfucker would vote for the dissolution of the Bill of Rights when doing so also means -- you know, in addition to adopting a Brand New Fascism -- rendering his own job description null and void.

And make no mistake: whether or not these stupid motherfuckers actually KNOW what they have done, that IS what they have done. To vote away one of the RIGHTS in the BILL of RIGHTS is to take an IRREVOCABLE step toward dissolving the ENTIRE Bill of Rights-- whether explicitly or implicitly. It doesn't really matter whether the Reichstag actually burns in this scenario...