Not exactly on topic, except in a broad sense, but I thought this Bill Moyers Journal segment provided excellent insight into the current political culture in the US, in the way that a good reading of history can do. It's an interview with Steve Fraser talking about a second gilded age in America. -- sinjan

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06132008/watch3.html

Thank you for linking to that video. I am going to email it to everyone I know.

[...] but do you mind if we stay on the gross material plane and beat up the Democrats some more?

_____________________________________________________

Hey! Don't get me started on those bastards!

Make that Jebbie. Which brings up another useful tidbit about simulacra. Be careful never to talk to one, even inadvertently. People will suspect the worst of you.

Gulp!

Is that with a Big S, or a little s?

I once was married to a woman with a Big S. Does that count?

Streaming live on C-SPAN2, Chris Dodd has just begun (8:20 p.m. EDT) his comments on a subject about which he "cares passionately":

http://c-span.org/watch/cs_cspan2_rm.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS2

'Way back when, Steny Hoyer represented my dad's second wife in their divorce and, according to my dad, took him to the cleaners. Where's that Steny Hoyer when you need him?

He's still doing the same thing. Taking people to the cleaners.

Why bother telling all of us how all-knowing you are and how stupid any one is who thinks it might be worth our time to carry on rather than lay down and die?

-- Kitt

Who said anything about lying down and dying? I working toward moving myself and my family overseas. Hopefully it will all work out for us.

What are you planning to do? How are you going to prevent this "holocaust" as you put it? What do you mean by "carry on?"

Watching it. Unfortunately, it appears the senate chamber is empty. This is solely for the cameras, I fear.

Nobody's home.

This was forwarded to me by a courageous, talented, and lovely neighbor.

We want to bring you up to date on the results of Shirley Golub's primary challenge against Nancy Pelosi last week in San Francisco.

..............

Thanks to your valiant donations, Shirley Golub was able to make a substantial dent in support for Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco. This is despite the fact that Golub was given virtually NO press coverage, and that mostly dismissive and defeatist. Here is the thank you message that Shirley wants to share with you.

"By now many of you have probably learned that my goal of unseating of Nancy Pelosi did not happen. But we did ruffle a few feathers, to say the least! My getting 10.83% of the vote was a victory in a sense because this was based solely on advertising purchased with your many generous contributions and by individual voters contacted by me and some very wonderful & dedicated volunteers.

The media, and especially the progressive media, were noticeably absent. That tells us where some of our efforts should be directed, now doesn't it? But more than that, I was particularly humbled, and touched, by your sharing your wishes and thoughts for the campaign and the situation in the world today. I feel I now have friends all over the country, united in this great cause of saving, not only our country, but the world from destruction by a few greedy and powerful individuals, and for my part I promise I am going to remain very active on all the issues we founded this candidacy on.

Remember, there are more of us than there are of them! So I truly hope you will continue to remain engaged and connected with others to work towards peace, justice & equality for all. My love to you all.

Shirley G."

***

And now we'd like to add a couple choice words of our own.

We threw everything we had behind this primary challenge, even though we only had a couple of months to pull it together. For we clearly saw that unless Pelosi was defeated Congress would proceed to cave in again on another year of occupation funding for the usual gang of war profiteers. And even now you see them straining to cut unemployment benefits and everything else to keep feeding this monstrous ongoing war crime.

At the end of the day, people will remember the valor of our

resistance much longer than the results of a particular election. And for those of you who donated even a small amount from your limited resources in this urgently needed initiative, we want you to know that those funds were well spent and will reap further benefits in the near future as you will shortly see.

We expected the right wing media to do us no favors. But what frankly shocked us was the fact that we could not get any of our major so-called progressive radio personalties to even cover fact that Shirley was running, let alone book her for an appearance to talk about what she was doing. This in spite of the fact that we had at LEAST four, count them four, stories worthy of national media attention.

1. This was the first congressional primary challenger to Pelosi in 20 years. That's not a national story? Regardless of the odds, when members of Congress won't do their job, they MUST be challenged, and never let them think that they won't be.

2. Shirley produced a "Rubber Chicken" TV spot that was so

controversial it was featured in the local San Francisco TV news AND that story was picked up by thousands of web sites, INCLUDING The Hill in Washington, DC. That's not a national story?

3. When Comcast tried to censor the ad from their cable system, Shirley Golub generated over 6,000 personal messages of protest to the Comcast CEO and they completely backed down and were forced to run the ad. That's not a national story?

remainder deleted

Today, I took a rather dramatic step. I requested a partial refund of my donations so far to the Obama campaign because of this FISA issue.

My congratulations to you for doing this. Are they refunding your money?