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them accountable, and at Kucinich being mocked, as disillusionment or disaffection, a lament that the Democratic Party has its priorities seriously out of alignment. And I read the stuff about 2008 as a kind of apathy, along the lines of "how are we supposed to get excited about any of this when we can't even hold these people accountable.
If that's not how it was meant, I apologize. But that's how the tone came off to me.
I want to win. You want to beat him, and that's a problem for me, because I want to win. -The West Wing
by AnnArborBlue on Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 06:23:32 PM PDT
[ Parent ]
Nightprowlkitty is saying that if you fail to hold these criminals accountable, then no Knight in Shining Armor can ever undo the damage to our democracy. The destruction is being done now. "Never mind, have a cup of tea dear" is all the candidates are offering.
And btw, Npk, in 2006 I was looking forward in anger at this mess. You're right to be fed up.
"Our programs are as lawful as they are valuable." -Michael Hayden
by smintheus on Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 06:39:46 PM PDT
... is a great diary. Should have received far more attention.
by Nightprowlkitty on Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 06:47:24 PM PDT
so that posterity can look back and see that not everybody was asleep during the collapse. Ok, I recognize that the internets will be sanitized after the fact...that's why I'm carefully archiving copies of all my blog posts on 5 1/4 inch floppy disks.
by smintheus on Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 06:59:14 PM PDT
longevity of floppy media really sucks, assuming that floppy drives are even available a decade from now.
DVD +R will probably prove to be more reliable than DVD -R, and that's why I make my archival backups on +R.
Looking for intelligent energy policy alternatives? Try here.
by alizard on Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 08:26:25 PM PDT
grandbaby, because no one will remember the truth when he grows up, if in fact they ever knew it.
ROAD2DC ... IGTNT
by snackdoodle on Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 09:44:06 PM PDT
the point, if any, is that today's technologies will probably be virtually unusable in 20 years anyway.
by smintheus on Tue Nov 27, 2007 at 09:27:07 AM PDT
on whatever generation of optical storage is available in a generation in backward compatibility mode. Terabyte 5.25" optical media is in the lab stage at this point. So you may be playing 4G DVD media on a drive that usually takes 100T disks 20 years from now... but that can be lived with.
I wish that stuff was out now at consumer prices, it takes 15 DVDs to back up my computer.
by alizard on Tue Nov 27, 2007 at 12:10:44 PM PDT
thanks for the link. It embarrasses me to have missed it last year. Eerily prescient.
NPK,
I'm not optimistic, as there are no quick fixes, and few around with the long vision it will take, either in the political arena or the environmental one.
Or, if you really want to bore people to tears, you could talk about limiting population on our own initiative, instead of waiting for it to happen to us.
IIRC, didn't the Chinese "government" pass some "laws" forbidding citizens of China (Comrades all, I'm sure) to have more than one child per couple? Wouldn't you love just love to have the popcorn concession for the show of trying to do that here?
Being a young oldster, I can remember first grasping, as a child, the concept of "world population", sometime early in the 50s, and the figure I remember is 1.4 billion, as if anyone, much less a child, can actually understand the concept of a billion. So, as an adult, I realize the number is over 6 now, four times the amount nearly 60 years ago, and I see directly the manifestation of this, which is more people, and all their accoutrements.
How much imagination does it take to see that we have a problem simply with how many of us there are, not to mention how some of us think?
don't always believe what you think...
by claude on Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 07:48:55 PM PDT
much appreciated. Sad to say, this year's congressional implosion was writ long before last year's election.
by smintheus on Tue Nov 27, 2007 at 09:29:36 AM PDT
Yes indeed, this is all that is offered.
What all those high-minded people forget is that FDR wasn't just a progressive.
FDR was a progressive, no argument.
But first of all, FDR was one vindictive, relentless nasty son of a bitch.
Just check out how he treated his predecessor Herbert Hoover, worst than dirt. FDR was meaner than a weasel.
And that why he was successful and why his successes endured for so long. He never forgot that winning is also about destroying the other side so it cannot come back.
And this is exactly what the Democrats and progressives need in the White House, a nasty son of a bitch hell bent on inflicting as much pain as possible to the current administration and its supporters.
Otherwise, they'll keep coming back and everything that will be painfully gained will be lost again.
by Farugia on Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 08:08:11 PM PDT
He actually tried his best. He used the best recommendations of the best economists he could find to deal with the Depression. He was actually concerned about it. He was just wrong on the issues.
And FDR was mean as hell to him, and it was the right thing to do.
Meanwhile, Bush and Cheney are sociopathic fascists and theocrats, and the Democrats in Congress are trying to be NICE to them. What the hell?
-5.63, -8.10 | Impeach, Convict, Remove & Bar from Office, Arrest, Indict, Convict, Imprison!
by neroden on Tue Nov 27, 2007 at 03:54:56 AM PDT
And that's why I picked Hoover among the casualties of FDR's wrath. It wasn't just brutal. If the next President decided to unleash the FBI on the whole Bush clan, from Barb' to Neal through all the retainers and prosecute every thing down jaywalking as an act of treason, it would be brutal but it'd perfectly justified. This is how you bring down Mafia clans.
But there, with Hoover, it was petty, gratuitous, base and perfectly mean. There was a very nasty side to FDR that explains a lot of his success, the opposite of, say, Jimmy Carter.
Nice guys never win. High principles are one thing but there's a moment when you gotta get results. And lasting results always come with dirty hands.
by Farugia on Tue Nov 27, 2007 at 07:14:45 PM PDT
The Dems won, and there are more troops in Iraq. There have been no meaningful investigations, as the WH stonewalls at every turn, and the Dems respond by sending nasty letters.
I never expected impeachment to get anywhere, but I didn't expect the WH to thumb its nose at the rule of law and get away w/ it. If Joe Citizen blows off a subpoena, there will be consequences, but, when the former WH counsel blows off a subpoena, nothing happens. Barry Bonds may do hard time for perjury, but no one will ever consider bringing perjury charges against AGAG.
Now that AGAG rode off into the (well compensated) sunset, we have a new AG who won't say whether waterboarding is torture even though an internal DOJ opinion already said it was. 2 Judiciary Dems voted to confirm him, and there was no attempt to filibuster on the floor. When the Dems were in the minority, the filibuster was a dead letter, but the GOP is now turning it into an art form.
The list of WH transgressions and Dem cowardice is endless. If you don't know why people are disillusioned, you're not paying attention.
Some men see things as they are and ask why. I see things that never were and ask why not?
by RFK Lives on Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 07:07:25 PM PDT
The letters are not even nasty.
More like mildy perturbed. Congressional politeness and tradition...yeah I know.
At least if the letters were nasty, I could take a small shred of comfort from that, but no.
Kucinich did NOT bankrupt Cleveland. Feingold didn't vote to impeach Clinton, either.
by zett on Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 07:28:32 PM PDT
phone calls, hoping to get a representative of the Democratic Party, if only a mere paid fundraiser, on the line so I can give them (politely) a message to pass on to whoever it is who writes their script for the day as to why they are getting no contribution from me anymore until I see some actions that represent me.
by claude on Mon Nov 26, 2007 at 07:54:13 PM PDT
wide narrow
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