Glad you're here! Certainly they're NOT bad things! And yes, more brilliance from Jon Stewart. Glad he's on OUR side!

Financially we head into the black, our health exchanges are working just fine, unemployment dropping, bond rating rising, minimum wage gets an increase! We have a brilliant and compassionate governor and a state legislature dominated by Dems. Not enough republi-CONS in there to start causing trouble.

I feel like that asshole justin dart did - multi-millionaire industrialist who was part of asshole reagan's so-called "Kitchen Cabinet," the off-the-books group of wealthy corporate pals of ronnie's who advised him in the shadows, out of public view. justin dart once was quoted as saying (paraphrasing slightly) that we should only be concerned about saving about 100 acres of redwoods - "for the kids."

So I think it'd be a good idea to save about 100 republi-CONS. For the kids.

Good to have you with us! We have to respond with some back-smack against the "limousine liberals" - how 'bout Rapist-Loving republi-CONS? Or maybe Great 13th-Century Minds of Our Time? Anti-Christians? Modern-Day Pharisees? CON-Jobbers?

Glad you're here! Yeah, there are enlightened, informed, and educated people everywhere. I just hope they vote. The dumb-shits certainly do. We HAVE TO reverse this nauseating, destructive, utterly Neanderthal trend.

Glad you're here! I am in severe and extreme hard-ass mode tonight. 'Fraid I kinda get that way when I spend even a few moments reading a thread about a woman's right to choose (on which I am 100-thousand-percent UNCOMPROMISING!). Glad you're here. Sometimes I get a little overbearing when it comes to teabaggers, too. I think they and the rest of the radical wrong should be packed up and sent off to Somalia, where they should be much happier because they can have all the freakin' anarchy they want!

But sometimes, however, I eat up the threads and stories and anecdotal evidence of some patient soul's attempts to reach - and enlighten - a hopefully soon-to-be-EX-republi-CON. It does happen. I believe souls CAN be saved! And if anybody's gonna be well-equipped to do that, it'll be a DUer for sure, who's had a chance to read in here and study and become more enlightened and well-informed, too. That's important. A lot of 'em think the way they do because they're low-information voters, or all they watch is Pox Noise, or all they listen to is limbaugh. So they're not going to be able to make sense of the real world. DU can help us help them!

And so is YOURS - it's YOURS ALONE. And so are the decisions that affect YOUR body. This is an ABSOLUTE. Case CLOSED. This is NOT open for discussion. This is NOT negotiable. This is an ABSOLUTE! Don't even bother bringing it up! I don't demand control over my husband's body, his ears, his balls, his knees, whatever. I don't demand control over my kids' bodies especially now that they're over 21. I don't demand control over the priest's body in church, or Henry Waxman's body - my Congressman. I don't demand control over Barbara Boxer's body or Dianne Feinstein's, or Jerry Brown's, or Eric Garcetti's or his wife's, or ANYBODY in the Obama family. WHY should ANY of them have the last word over MY body? Heck, even the Pope is backing off of it. Actually said the church should no longer be so obsesses with issues like abortion or homosexuality either, for that matter.

But... perhaps we should change that. I think some of the women in Congress and the Senate, EVERY TIME there's some abortion bill put forward, EVERY DAMN TIME, should tack on amendments dictating, regulating, and restricting what can be done to the scrotum and penis as well. Tit for tat, as it were. That should be automatic. ANY bill that comes up to screw with a woman's right to choose should have amendments PILED ONTO IT that legislate the scrotum. Like - NO you can't get your damn Viagra pills so easily anymore! We're gonna be putting all kinds of religious shit on there to complicate YOU life and mess with YOUR privacy and get in YOUR way, too! And we're gonna be in YOUR proctologists' and urologists' offices too with all our bedroom-busybody legislative agendas, too. As long you're doing this, SO ARE WE!!!!!!!

And if you santorums and cucinellis and perrys and the rest of you keep at it, then maybe we're just going to have to go find Lorena Bobbitt and ask her what we should do next. I think we have to start getting MEAN and NASTY and damn MILITANT. IN THEIR FACES with it.

Taste of their own medicine. See how they like it.

And here's something else that makes it pretty damn simple: If you don't believe in abortion - then don't HAVE ONE! Nobody's forcing you!

Just GREAT! But I had to stop and find some Kleenex before I could get all the way through it.

I hope someday that I'm some place where one of these starts up. LOVE LOVE LOVE these symphonic flash "mobs"! I'd actually be tempted to run up there and take the conductor's spot, but usually that's already claimed. I've seen several of these with this particular conductor presiding. Just totally love this!!!

most appropriately.

This is a website. A chat room. So, okay then. I think I have personally met exactly TWO of the multitudes of people who posted here. But there are soooooooooooooooo many others here with whom I've had various exchanges and conversations. But I was so incredibly touched by the reaching-out that was done that night. And so much of it! How many DUers appeared on that thread, with such kindness, comforting words, caring and loving messages, honest compassion and sincerity, such supportive thoughts - and they don't know me and I don't know them. But in another sense, they do and I do. We have this strange and wonderful and sustaining connection here on DU. It shows itself really powerfully at times like this. Like a big box of loose pearls. But you look closer, and maybe you reach in to pick one up, and suddenly you notice they're not loose pearls at all. They're strung together and as you lift one, the others come along with it. Loosely and with some of that almost invisible fishing line that's not immediately apparent until you look closely.

I still cherish the memory of that whole intimate little DU experience. It was late that night. My husband and kids had gone to bed. I was awake. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't shut my mind off. The whole funeral thing (and more) lay ahead, and I wasn't looking forward to any of it even with all the time we'd had to prepare emotionally, 'cause as I said earlier, we all knew it was coming, and soon. And there was no one to talk to. Felt kind of alone there. So as usual, I went online and came here - just sort of an automatic thing I always do anyway. I posted a brief one and then figured that was that.

But it wasn't. Within seconds, there was a reply. SECONDS! Then another one. Then some recs. Then more replies. Suddenly there were dozens of each. And it just grew from there. By the next morning, WHOA! I had to scroll and scroll and scroll to follow them all. I had no idea. No idea. I CANNOT describe, adequately, what that meant.

When I say I love DU, it comes from WAY DOWN DEEP in the heart. And it's clearly here for you now, Oilwellian - and I LOVE-LOVE-LOVE to see that. Just reinforces how I feel about DU, yet again, and it comforts me a little bit, too, all over again.