OMG! Can't decide which is best here!! These are GREAT, ralps!

LOVE 'EM!!!! Yes, I'm SHOUTING!!!!

It just breaks my heart to see the drubbing President Obama is getting. Breaks my heart!

He doesn't deserve it!!! YES he's done all those great things and is getting NO credit for it. And what's even more disgraceful is those of us supposedly on his side who have abandoned him and deserted him and focused on all the nitpicky little so-called "bad" things. Or they call him some "goddam used-car salesman" as I have been personally horrified to hear here (and have never forgotten, thankyouverymuch). I find myself alone when I run into people who claim they voted for him and how he's disappointed them. I try to point out that he had enemies all around him who tried their best to destroy what he was trying to build, tried their best to chip away at what he'd proposed and turn it into something awful.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph - I know someone who will JUST NOT LET GO of "Obamacare is gonna cost everybody more! Premiums gonna go up! And blah-blah-blah!" And I have to tell her - SHIT, IT'S A START forcryingoutloud! What would you like better? To take it away from everybody? NO affordable health care for ANYBODY BUT THE RICH? And then I put it to HER: they want YOU to die and get out of the way because you're on disability and they think you cost too much and they don't want to pay for you and they don't want to help you and they don't want their taxes raised to help you and cover what you need. AND those same people still LOUDLY call themselves "Christians"!!!!! Last time I did that, all I heard was silence on the phone. I'll call her Juliette - "Juliette, they think you're a drain on the system. You cost too much and they don't want to have to pay. They actually want you dead. They think you're a lazy moocher. They'd rather just let you die." Silence.

Then I asked her whether she saw the last round of republi-CON debates in 2012. I asked her if she saw the debate wherein I think it was John King who was the moderator and at one point in the questioning, he asked rhetorically - "well, what should we do? Just let 'em die?" And the goons in the audience shouted "YEAH!!!!!!!" I asked her about that. No, she hadn't seen those debates. I piled on. So you didn't see the one where they cheered like Romans at the Colisseum watching the Christians get mauled by starving lions when Governor Oops proudly bragged about how many people he'd executed. So you didn't see the debate wherein there was a soldier from a LIVE THEATER OF WAR, IN IRAQ, who'd asked a question via Skype or some such, about gays in the military and also identified himself as being gay, AND HE WAS BOOED!!!!!!! That fucking nogoodnik audience BOOED him! A soldier IN IRAQ, in active wartime, his life in danger, his ass on the line in harm's way, supposedly fighting for "their" freedom back home, and they had the gall to BOO him!!!!! Nope, she hadn't seen that one either. Silence. Really noticeable silence.

Then I piled on further. THAT is what YOU are voting for when YOU vote republi-CON. THOSE people. Who hate you and want you dead because you're a lazy moocher and you're a drain on the system and on their tax bill. And you still side with them??????????????

I piled on even further. And they're the ones who'd take away YOUR right to vote, too. Because A) you're female, and B) you're on disability so you're a lazy moocher and they assume you'd be voting against them, so that's what they do now. They try to head you off at the pass and stop you from voting. THAT'S what your precious republi-CONS are doing now. DO YOU SEE DEMOCRATS BEHIND ANY EFFORT TO SUPPRESS THE VOTE? DO YOU? PLEASE TELL ME. TELL ME WHO THE DEMOCRATS ARE WHO ARE TAKING PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO VOTE AWAY. TELL ME WHO THEY ARE!!!!!!! Silence.

And eventually she got back to pissing and moaning about how Obamacare is terrible et al. Surprisingly, she doesn't have Pox Noise on her cable system anymore - she couldn't pay for an expensive cable subscription so she has minimal choices now. But it also means she can't see any truth-telling on MSNBC or anywhere else, either. Her parents were CONs. So that's what she grew up with. So my fear is, she may not be reachable. She may NOT be redeemable. When presented with facts she can't dispute, she STILL goes back to the default position.

It's amazing to me - when I try to shake them awake, some of these people. When I pile on with facts and witnessing and reality-check after reality-check, they're still so inculcated with poison that they just won't let it in. They won't have comebacks a lot of the time. I point out to my best friend who's gone over to the Dark Side that - FOR GOD'S SAKE, EMILY! (I'll call her Emily) YOU'RE A UNION MEMBER FOR GOD'S SAKE!!!!! WHY DO YOU VOTE republi-CON???????? They're not gonna help YOU!

We've got a true SHITLOAD of work to do.

And frankly, some of US give up too goddamn easily.

Welcome to DU, Riverman100!

Glad you're here! I usually feel that way myself. The point is to rack up the "D's" so their numbers are greater than the "R's". But yeah, there was Blanche Lincoln. There was Ben Nelson. There was Max Baucus. When he, a so-called "D," was replaced by an "R," it was just a shrug. Oh, okay, we went from a closet "R" to a real "R" that actually calls himself an "R". Okay fine. Whatever.

As for people like Mary Landrieu, I've never liked her because, as with people like Blanche Lincoln, she can't be counted on to stand with us. I find myself wondering - why should I send any money to her? She can usually be counted on to side with the bad guys, so why should I help her. And after Tuesday, I just don't know anymore. Are we better off without her?

One BIG mistake I think OUR party has made is going back to the DEBBIE mentality. Beltway Only and Always-and-Ever-More the Beltway. Well, what we're seeing is a shrewd strategy playing out by the bad guys - starting in the grassroots and growing their brand locally and THEN taking over nationally. Our side ignored the locals, the state elections, the little "nothing" races like lands commissioner - hey, that's where ted cruz came from. And mark my words, that kind of little "nothing" position is where the bush machine is beginning again, to rise from the ashes with george P. bush. WATCH OUT! We have to watch him closely, because they're slowly but surely grooming him and positioning him and helping him and nurturing him and bringing him up from the minor leagues with an eye toward the White House. I'd bet on it.

We're not playing smart. THEY are. We need the Howard Dean mentality back in the saddle at the DNC. His "50-State Strategy" focused OUTSIDE the Beltway, and look at the results we had! D's swarming into Washington, taking the House back from the GOP (anybody remember when Nancy Pelosi took the gavel from Sore Loserman dennis hastert, who took his ball and went home in a giant pout - she sure didn't do that when she had to hand the gavel over to boner! SHE stayed and kept fighting!), strengthening the Senate where we already dominated, AND grabbed the White House back. Then Howard Dean left, replaced by another Beltway BONEHEAD who thought that was all wrong, and her idea was to bring it all back inside the Beltway. (Where it "belonged". )

I do the same thing, MineralMan!

I rec what few threads I start here, as well, because I believe in them and stand by them. Happy to recommend this one of yours because I believe in it and stand by it, too!

I only had to see the title of your thread, global1, to think immediately about a woman's right to

choose.

I've written numerous posts here warning the LGTB community here, and elsewhere, NOT to become complacent because the issue appears to be settled. It never is. I hope they learn from us women, especially us right-to-choose activists, because we, too, thought Roe v Wade was settled law. Some of the bad guys even said as much, in the past, to soothe and disarm wary voters in earlier elections - Trojan Horse candidates who'd tell you what they thought you wanted to hear, with no intention WHATSOEVER of standing by their promises if they ever got into office. And the proof remains - as soon as they get in, they don't want to bother about jobs and the economy anymore. They go straight up our vaginas.

AMEN!!!!!

What you said, Pryderi! How do we proceed?

Charles Munger? Oh man...

I once attended a community meeting regarding a proposed mini-mall development on the Westside referred to as the "Munger Project." He was this rich old dude who wanted to leave a "legacy" to the community. Yeah. Great legacy.

What he was pushing was to tear down this beloved legendary old book store where every kid in the area crowded in on Harry Potter nights, and every school kid at all the many schools in the earea filled their reading lists every year, for years. In its place would be developed another large open retail box with boutiques and restaurants and the prerequisite underground parking. Their "environmental impact report" on traffic, which is a HUGE, no - COLOSSAL, no - FUCKING GARGANTUAN problem all over the Westside, assured everyone that the project would generate an estimated four additional car trips per hour. FOUR car trips. Uh-HUH. Pardon the crudeness but - My Ass! So why, then, did they design multiple parking levels and spillways on either side, for arriving or departing cars to wait their turn to drive away or park below? If this was only a mere four car trips per hour? And where were the employees of all said shops and restaurants in the complex to park every day? And how would that affect the adjacent residential neighborhoods who loath the increased local traffic volume as increasing numbers of motorists use their little side streets as short cuts? And if only four car trips of customers per hour were frequenting such a retail complex, wouldn't that classify the place as a failure? That doesn't sound like any kind of draw? Hell, they got more than that every day at the book store.

It was a neat thing to see. The meeting was held in a local library - and the meeting room was jammed! Standing room only! Overflow spilling way out into the hallway and clogging the entryway. Every age group was represented, from local school kids to neighborhood dowagers. EVERYBODY was against it. There were the neighboring residents. There were people with home-made signs saying "Save Our Neighborhood". There was the older woman who sat there and intoned - "there are 42 restaurants in a five-block area around here. WHY do we need more???" There was the pissed-off middle-aged man who lived on the little side street in back of where the planned redevelopment would be, complaining that there'd be so much overflow traffic clogging his little street, parking in every open spot, and the volume of in-and-out cars would overload the side street that his street emptied into, and he'd never be able to get out of his house during business hours. Tons of people. Only a fraction had a chance to speak - there were too many of us.

Eventually, I read in the local paper that Mr. Munger had decided to withdraw the project. Instead, there's a much smaller project going into half as much of the designated property, and the book store, which closed, is now occupied by another local business - and the building the community sought to save is still standing.

But I wouldn't be surprised if ol' Charlie Munger turns up again, with yet another big development project to burnish his "legacy" around here. A legacy of greater congestion, traffic, overcrowding, overdevelopment, rising blood pressure, and overheated tempers. Sounds like a big ol' fabulous "legacy" to me.

Preach it!

I'm just so damn disgusted at the double standard at work here. I'm a mom and an old nag so I guess I qualify for being around long enough to be able to remind everybody about the context, and what happened, and what I'm old enough to have lived through. I think if we are indeed to play the "blame game," then we might as well be 100% accurate about it, so our assertions are true and reliable and provable. If we remember what happened, then we can see trends of behavior appearing. I find that doing this kind of decidedly amateur armchair analysis helps me size things up in ways that make sense. It helps show trends developing. Trends of behavior that prove out what we say. Trends like tracking the convergence of extremist "Christianity" with anti-environmentalism, and you watch it unfold through the decades, or the presidencies, or the movements, where you have people who are predisposed not to believe science because they're the take-it-on-faith crowd. Because God. Because God said so. And science is human and fallible and only God is perfect.

I am MOST distressed to watch this trend of utterly abandoning this president.

I am OUTRAGED at times, especially when I recall the last decade, the decade of bush/cheney, and compare it to now. The "sanctity" of bush/cheney was force-fed to us by CON infrastructures from the political arena to broadcasting and publishing and other machinery that can be used to drive a message. We were lambasted as traitors and Saddam-lovers and al Qaeda lovers and Sore Losermen as well as the usual boring "commies" and "fascists" and "socialists" epithets. If you were critical of bush/cheney you were un-American, a traitor, and an enemy-sympathizer. We were told to "get over it" and move on (which if memory serves is where MoveOn got its name - we hijacked it from the bad guys and turned it into something positive and progressive, nyah-nyah-nyah). How come we don't have a constant drumbeat of support at OUR guy's back all the time? How come we're not jumping all over them anytime even one of them opens his/her yap in the way we don't approve of? Where's our militant and hair-trigger support system for this man? Why? BECAUSE. BECAUSE HE'S THE FRICKIN' PRESIDENT. He STILL has a bigger voter mandate, today, than any of these provincial pipsqueaks yapping at his heels could even dream of having. Support from more people in more places than some of these asshole idiots can even find on a map. And whatever bowing and scraping or reverent'ing they did toward the president and presidency during bush/cheney and also demanded the rest of us fall in line on our knees with them, frankly, President Obama should get that, too.

Because he's the PRESIDENT, dammit. DEAL WITH IT. That's what they sure told us after Selection 2000. Shut Up, Get Over It, Move On, Deal With It. Well, why aren't we jamming the same thing down THEIR throats? He's OUR President. And he's lightyears better than the last mercenary dry-drunk pea-brained doofus. In a few years when the historians are starting to have the floor about the Obama Presidency, the actual record of accomplishment will shame many of his peers. He will be a landmark president. I would bet you that the vast majority of big names throughout the campaign, be they candidates for Senate, the House, Governor, or other stuff, party big shots or media people etc., ALL of them who dissed him, abandoned him, lied about him, insulted him, obstructed him, and/or tried to undermine him (if the situation were reversed, we'd be harangued as traitors) will be fighting for airtime to heap praise upon Barack Obama after his death. I bet they'll be fighting for places in church on the day of the Obama State Funeral. I'm so pissed off about this that I find myself gravitating toward the "serves you right" department when thinking about Alison Lundergan Grimes. Could it be that this pissed off voters on our side and motivated them to stay home? Moved them to say "fuck this! I'll show you!"?

Hey, I don't know. I'm just guessing based upon behavior and behavior trends I see. You look at the result and try to figure out how you got there. But it pisses me off to see all the dumping on President Obama. Every damn day seems to be "Dump on Obama Day"! If the bad guys are doing it, WHY are we aiding and abetting? If the bad guys are doing it, shouldn't that tell us we should do the opposite? Because how many times have the bad guys called it correctly? They say they're the "right" wing and yet they're anything but. They insist they're "right" and they seldom are! I'm tired of it. And the more President Obama's picked on, the more I'm gonna defend him. On his worst day, President Obama stands MILES above any of the opposition on their best days.

EXCELLENT news! Butt and friends kicked Chevron's butt, didn't they!!!

I was offended too.

I'm almost glad they lost. Fucking turncoats!

They didn't even TRY to help voters remember the FACTS as opposed to the Pox Noise spin. You'd think he'd done NOTHING...

Quoting SmittynMo here:
"I never heard anything about how, he as a democratic president, has stood by our democracy, making this a better country. He's been awesome in my opinion. I mean, the ACA, gas prices, Wall Street, recovery from 750k jobs a month, and the list goes on and on. There was NOTHING said. Nothing!! The electorate never knew what the dems stood for. I wouldn't show either, even though I did vote."

There's so damn fucking much "gummnt baaaaaad" and ABSOLUTELY NO ATTEMPT to educate voters into why government is not only NOT bad but necessary and needed for MILLIONS of Americans who don't have a fancy-ass big name or big corporation or big bank account speaking for them. MILLIONS of Americans need government help just to get by. MILLIONS of Americans need government assistance and intervention when they cannot do for themselves or speak for themselves or fight for themselves. It was INFURIATING to see too many quisling Dems responding to "gummnt baaaaaad" by saying "uh, er, um, well, yeah, I guess so..."