crossing the divide for s***s and giggles
i love this idea.
know anybody in michigan? spread the word.
help make another loser—just one of the pack—winner for a day.
big microscope
live music and liberal rantsthe light at the end of the nightmare
sometimes i forget just how great mark morford’s columns can be. and then he reminds me with a paragraph like this one:
It is now less than one calendar year until the next presidential election. It is less than one year until the country finally takes a deep breath and flexes its atrophied muscles and opens its bloody, Cheney-punched mouth and lets it be known to the world, to the universe, to its own numb and dejected soul just exactly how unwell it has felt, how much pain has raked its heart, lo, these past seven (eight, by then) years, by ushering in an entirely new political era, as we all exhale a massive sigh of long overdue relief that — praise Jesus, Allah, Buddha and the devil all at once — the long national nightmare of George W. Bush is finally over.
read the whole column. it’s just wonderful. what a great way to start the weekend.
elvis has left the building
but before he did, man did he put on an amazing show.
i’m talking about the once-in-a-lifetime (okay, twice. there was an early and a late show) event that happened last thursday night here in san francisco. elvis costello played live with the now-defunct band, clover, for the first time ever. why is that significant? because clover was his backing band on what is arguably one of the finest debut albums ever made, “my aim is true.” i won’t clutter this post with the details of how that all came to be; it’s documented many places, including here.
for those of us lucky enough to have been in attendance (luck plus $100), the show was nothing short of revelatory. you didn’t even have to be an elvis fan (i am) to have appreciated what was going down that night. elvis was so clearly moved by both the opportunity to rekindle a magical musical relationship after 30 years (30 years!) and to help out a dear friend’s charitable organization (the richard delone special housing project), that he gave what must have been one of the most heartfelt performances of his long and illustrious career. Read the rest of this entry »
letters, we get letters. and we write them, too.
i got an email from rose kapolczynski, barbara boxer’s campaign manager, today. well, probably not really from rose; i’m sure an intern wrote it and somebody else approved it. to be honest, i didn’t even read the whole thing before i dashed off a response. i got to this part and my trigger finger hit the ‘reply’ button:
I just got off the phone with Barbara, and she’s absolutely thrilled by the tremendous response the BarbaraBoxer.com online community provided to her email from Thursday—raising more than $20,000 for her re-election campaign in just the past 2 days!That’s terrific, but I know we can do even more in these last 24 hours before the September 30th fundraising deadline.
and this was my reply:
hi rose (or more likely, the convio mailbox set up to receive responses that never get read, much less answered);
let me put it simply and plainly. i love barbara boxer. but i’m not going to give another dime to barbara or ANY democrat until i see one—just one—stand up and do something REAL and MEANINGFUL for once.
if barbara wants my money, here’s what she can do:
- she can write and sponsor a bill that denies any further funding for the war and presents a responsible plan for bringing our troops home beginning immediately. then she can stand up on the senate floor and demand that the republicans actually filibuster that bill and explain why the will of 70% of the american people is being denied. the “threat” of the filibuster is a GOP shield behind which not only republican cowards are hiding, but democrats as well. and while i have great respect for senator boxer in many areas, she is a coward on the issue of the iraq war. even my hero, russ feingold, isn’t doing enough.
- she can immediately denounce all of her fellow democrats who voted to condemn moveon.org for the petraeus ad, loudly and often. perhaps she hasn’t yet seen the cover of the American Conservative magazine naming petraeus as the “sycophant savior.” at least they and moveon have gotten it right. she should embarrass the hell out of her fellow democrats who gave life to the bait-and-switch load of crap “condemnation.” the fact that democrats even showed up to vote on that is pathetic.
- she can demand that we immediately begin impeachment proceedings against bush and cheney. you think i’m a left-wing loony who’s unrealistic and vengeful? if she has any doubts about the basis for impeachment, please have her consult REPUBLICAN bruce fein. he can educate her about something she so clearly either hasn’t researched or doesn’t have the moral courage and political will to pursue.so let me be clear again: i, and everyone within my sphere of influence, will no longer give a penny—you see, i’ve even gotten stingier over the course of writing this email—to barbara or any democrat until i see some signs of moral courage and respect for the will of the american people.
to be honest, i don’t have even a glimmer of hope that barbara will do any of the above. and that, perhaps even more than what’s happened to this country over the past 7 years, is so incredibly disappointing and depressing that further words fail me.
respectfully yours,
gathering of eagles? more like eagle shit
here’s a prime example of what happens when a country loses its moral compass. ignorant cowards like the members of this group ought to be called out for what they are by every major media outlet and on the floor of both the house and the senate. it won’t happen, because we don’t have any courageous leaders left on either side of the aisle.
and if you think all the talk about the new american fascism is just ‘fascionable lefty speak’, think again. you’d have to be an idiot not to see the parallels. which brings me back to the gathering of eagles. hit their site, often. use up their bandwidth. register for the forums and post copies of all those viagra ads you have in your junk folder. call them out for the chickenhawks they are.
and then do something productive like speaking openly, loudly, and often about the need to end this war, expose the bush administration for the criminals they are, and restore some sense of dignity and honor to this country. it may take another revolution. help start it.
