If you're at A and you want to reach B, you will occupy every position in between for some instant of time. There is no magical way to get to B.

Second, don't think of Obama/Biden, or a Democratic Congress or Senate as a solution to problems. They are not and never will be. Think of it as opening up some opportunities for your agenda that would not be open otherwise. Do not approach it as "Since neither Republicans nor Democrats will solve our problems, to hell with them". Think rather, how do I advance my agenda?

Say you were running a small weak country surrounded by large powerful countries. You could shrug your shoulders and give up. Or you could recognize it is a far from perfect world, and figure out how to advance your small country's interests; most of the time you will be holding your nose. The progressives are one such small country.

Why should I keep beating my head against a wall? It does no good what so ever. We arent going to change anything, we are only going to make sure that others reap all the benefits of this corrupt society, while we maintain our headache, and continue to be marginalized.

OK. But you care enough to come here and tell us not to waste our efforts :)

Seems paradoxical to me.

they were being waterboarded in there.

:)

http://fafblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/breaking-veep-update.html

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GG, were the arrivals at the party photographable with a decent telephoto lens? Maybe the strategy has to be to inobstrusively get photographs of everyone who arrives; publish them on the web in order to get identifications; and then set out to interview them.

I am now feeling intensely curious how effective netroots would be at finding the identities of a number of people based on photographs of them.

Corporations have improved our quality of life far more than any government program.

But corporations are a creation of government. Places in a state of anarchy, e.g., like Somalia, don't create corporations. Unlike the Adam Smithian street vendor/entrepreneur who will arise anywhere, even in war-torn Taliban-dominated Afghanistan, corporations don't arise without governments to back them.

And probably about half of humanity remembers with a significant lack of fondness the various early corporations - such as the British East India Company. The quality of life of their ancestors and subsequently their own was tremendously diminished by corporations.

American voters may not be exceptionally stupid, but the consequences of political predilections are exceptionally expensive.

That while the neocons are happily expanding our war zone into Georgia, the Russians are quite happy to cooperate with the neocons.

1. The Russian military-industrial complex too must be thrilled at the thought of diverting all those petroleum rubles away from building highways and universities and hospitals.

2. Fact is Abkhazians, Ossetians hate Georgians, and it would take a generation or more of quiet (most other peoples have longer memories and are less willing to forget than Americans) for them to be reconciled to living within one political arrangement. Under such circumstances arming/militarizing anyone of the factions is the wrong thing to do.

3. If the US is interested in the wellbeing of the peoples of the nations around Russia, then the bargain has to be something like - we won't include them in NATO as long as you, Russia, keep your hands off of them. Let the states around you be non-aligned (remember non-alignment - I know the American establishment hates it, but it is a way for weak states to avoid being ground to a pulp between the powerful ones). In the meantime, we want you to join the WTO and build strong economic and political ties.

4. Instead of Pakistan, Russia ought to be the US's most significant non-NATO ally.

5. Western Europe too used to have all this ethnic squabbling. Traces are still there, e.g., the Basques in Spain, but hopefully it is gone forever. Eastern Europe needs to take a similar route and hopefully without a couple of more world wars and a cold war to force that lesson into their thick heads.

Every midnight (or morning, or maybe better, New Post), all the regular commenters have to wipe their collective psyches of the previous posts disagreements (and slurs, innuendo and insults, good-natured or otherwise) and open a new discussion without harboring residual animosity.

I try to lead life that way, not just on the salon letter pages. It is not always easy, and second, other people tend not to believe it (that bygones are **really** bygones).

But it would be wonderful if we tried.