Imagine--a newbie vice president made president by the 72 year old having a stroke. Palin calls to work with the Iraqi government--and then says "I have no clue what the Bush Doctrine is and since this war is from God, we'll by God keep on doing the surge!"

Imagine many more terrorists spawning from the horrible conditions of war and our tortures, many more millions of Iraqis dead, many more thousands of Americans dead, many more tens of thousands disabled for life, and many more quadrillions of dollars in debt!

Deena writes: "Imagine many more terrorists spawning from the horrible conditions of war and our tortures, many more millions of Iraqis dead, many more thousands of Americans dead, many more tens of thousands disabled for life, and many more quadrillions of dollars in debt!"

Unfortunately both main stream candidates will continue to be war mongers. Obama has voted continuously for war funding since he became a senator, and stated he will leave at least 50.000 troups in Iraq,to guard our monstrous embassy, in addition to the 200.000 or so contractors, and re-deploy the rest of the soldiers to Afghanistan to fight the " real war" Anyone who is serious about ending the war in Iraq and bring the troops HOME will vote for a 3rd party candidate who has a commitment to do just that: Nader, Mc.Kinney.

Dena,

Read and education/inform yourself and the inform others. From the person who coined the phrase "Bush Doctrine" -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/12/AR2008091202457.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

From Obama:

""It's extraordinary that someone who wants to be our president and our commander in chief doesn't know how to send an e-mail."

From a 5 minute Google search:

Boston Globe March 4, 2000 "McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes"

http://graphics.boston.com/news/politics/campaign2000/news/McCain_character_loyal_to_a_fault+.shtml

Forbes Magazine May 29, 2000 "Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate's savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop."

http://www.forbes.com/asap/2000/0529/053_print.html

Keep attacking Senior Citizens Obama and you'll see the largest voter block the DNC has vote for McCain.

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/still_ad/

With this attack and with his comment on Tim Johnson's - vetting the vetters (no just google them) - I think it's extraordinary that there is a Presidential candidate who can't even Google.

No wonder Intrade has McCain up...

McCain is such a patriot. Ask the workers at Boeing why McCain says they aren't able to build air tankers for their own military. Ask McCain why he and his army of lobbyists are so keen to ship American jobs to foreign countries. Whose country is first??

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/5714/mccain-puts-foreign-countries-first-says-obama

Bizzaro World here...

Since when does the Progressive Left (a) support the Military Industrial Complex, (b) think the Military Industrial Complex is "the country" and (c) whine when the biggest weapons fraud in 20 years was exposed, resulted in convictions within the Air Force and Boeing?

From the Seattle PI:

"McCain's efforts killed the deal and sparked criminal convictions; spurred the resignations of top Air Force and Boeing officials, including Boeing CEO Phil Condit; and brought to light the biggest Pentagon weapons scandal in 20 years.

"Everyone was confident that the fix was in" for the Boeing tanker deal "and that not one senator could block this," McCain said. But one did, singlehandedly."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002130791_mccain26m.html

Looks like Boeing is using the unions and progressive to hide the fact that there are criminals within the Military Industrial Complex.

Again, you progressive really should learn to use Google. You can learn a lot in 5 mins.

I guess Progressive thinks it ok to put Greed First instead of Country now? Come on, not even I think progressive would fault a US Senator for convicting military and corporate executives for fraud.

@ pathetic losing argument here Sidney

McCain is losing this one. Progressives put American families, American workers, and their families first. Why the hell should we be sending our tax payer money to fund European aerospace? America can build its own airplanes, its own aerotankers. So the conservatives want the money to go to foreign government subsidized French aerospace and claim that American workers can't do the job?? Who are the real patriots here?

I'd like to see people pay attention to the four proposed LNG pipelines colonizing Oregon for California's power needs while importing dirty LNG from foriegn nations while folks in Alaska are trying to sell. U.S. natural gas to Japan.

Cannot resist a cranky notice: Paulie's full disclosure = admitting a chic houseparty was more attractive than actually digging trenches. Some of us pull graveyard shift and come home dirty as moles from the Work (my role in my communities), and others flitter in the light, always invited, always seen. Great you had an epiphany about doing the trenchwork along with the visible, fun stuff. That is service work. It's nourishing to the bone. And makes a thing that will stand up.

Touched a nerve for ya there, eh? And: I said you said as much, darling. Facts are, the best work is the less glamorous work. It feels like food to the soul if you are in some kind of service. I'll always be a ditch digger, I guess. A prole, a mole, a lower-caste worthy. In our community, interestingly, those are the ones with the honor, often. I suppose thank goodness it works out that way.

"Imagine you or your family are facing a catastrophic medical emergency that will eventually cost you the shirt off your back. That will happen to many of us, especially if McCain is elected or Gordon Smith returns to the Senate."

This is one of the best democrat propaganda scare lines I've read in awhile! You might want to be careful taking this BS door to door though. Unless of course it's in Multnomah county.

Grinning. Touch the live wire of a BO ego here and the arcing will keep you enlivened for ages. The measure of a leader is that this person does not need to piss on someone who questions them. Nor do the lackeys feel that need either. Rather, they smile, and engage intelligently, veiwing that as an opportunity to communicate. You failed the test. If you engage me, you will find a willing communicant. If you merely react and attack, it's a pitiful waste of blog. Crowing about a telephone call from Howard Dean might have been best done in personal email, eh. It smacked of small man-itis. I'd have liked to be treated to a more-grounded launch. :)... call me a bad woman, Pat. And the fact is, I AM a nobody, always will be. And the only honor I will ever share is that of actually showing up for it when I'd so much rather have stayed in bed. There will never be any sparkle or cache, only more hard work. And grateful to be allowed to do it.

Two casts on two freakin' arms, dear Pat.

ps... rather doubt "paulie" needs your help. He already scathed me for speaking. But if you all need to pile on, heap on up. I had three brothers. Li'l sister was often on the bottom of that infamous Whetstine game of "Dog Pile".

Let me explain something Jennie, Pat. A newcomer might need a FRIENDLY heads up, instead of a bitching-out if they make a misstep. I am not Harry, I'm not any number of the purposively a rebours offenders here! Do you want NEW and MORE citizens up here contributing, or do you want to just blast any newcomer who makes a misstep?

I perceived that as a crowing post. I suppose it's ok for me to have a perception. And it might be reasonable? Ok. Spoze not.

1. Is this a coterie or a fan club? I don't know you-all like you know each other. Might not ever at this rate, I'd think.

2. Have I racked up a record of being resolutely offensive or designed to merely troll-out up here? I do try to humorously salt it down if I've flubbed.

3. Do I occassionally contribute something that might bear disussion? I've watched thunderous lack of interest on the part of BO folks in some areas that are of thriving interest to huge segments of the population. Karol seems to think it is worthwhile looking at WHY nobody gives a shit about anything but the black/white racial divide and polarizations... so I"m trying to dig up materals of SUBSTANCE from the rez and indigenous biways. I'd like equally to address stereotypes of Asians, Hispanics, Hindis that seem to contribute to an absolute lack of concern for any issues from their venues.

SO. I did not personally and knowledgeably offend against one of your most staunch soldiers. You might think about some leavening in the future, folks: if it's clear some newcomer doesn't know who the hell they are (in your opinion) misperceiving, then EDUCATE them in a reasonable way! Jesus.

I'd never have managed ANY of the work I have done in my area of expertise if the best I could do was to unload in this way. Good lord. Does Paulie really need all of this fire power? I've acknowledged her working class chops for christ' sakes!

The key here is to regard EVERY unknown who seems to WANT to engage and become a citizen as someone who WANTS to contribute and know you as well as be known.

Yes, I'm shouting. I am really irritated.

I am not a "politico" like you all seem to be or fancy yourselves to be. However, I have a knowledge base that is valid for THIS campaign and the issues that are going to be ours to deal with going forward no matter who the f*** wins. It will be gender and sex and sexism, it will be race and ethnicity and class. It's all on the front burner now and will not go away unless we LOOK the other way and stay on the surfaces of the core of the soc of it. It's not going to ease up from here. So we are going to need more than mere political assessments going forward. This is a watershed time no matter which way it goes!!

And THIS is why I'd like to be in dialog. America finally put the "stuff" on the table even if the conversation is NOWHERE near any level of honesty. But we can do it! It's now possible.

It's becoming rather clear to me this might not be the place. The mistake may be entirely mine in even looking here -- I misperceived BO as a blog that would enable multidisciplinary assessments of the political matters of the day. What I am finding as I stopped "watching" and started interacting is that it is about cozy polarizations and standardized divides. It also seems to be about set relationships engaged in well-known choreographies.

Newcomer's Pique, indeed. Go ahead. Blast away some more.

And, by the way Paulie: sorry about that. My first reactive (there's the dreaded R word, kids) sense of it was "Wow! Mr. Dean HIMSELF called meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

Who the hell knows, little nobody me? I might have felt really excited too. I know I feel giddy and happy when I have policy-making discourse with my strategic alliants and I see those discussions manifest in product in use statewide and across professions. It makes me joyous to make a difference. Oops...that's two broken arms and busted leg, Pat.

Granted. When do the BO attack dogs stop? Will it be in this round that the defenders take a breath?

Let's wait and see.

Are you going to grant ME any ground to stand on? Or is this circle jerk time on the blog? What just now happened is that circular mirror crap that unsuccessful marriages are made of.

Let's review: I've been dogpiled, I've expressed that this is not the way to inculcate newcomers. I apologized to Paulie for whom you all feel it's needed to use the armies.

You simply picked up the elephant dung and threw it back, defensively. So: where does it stop, the shit flinging, BO? I've had some good interactions with others, particularly where someone could have gone right where you have gone. Instead, they pulled back, and it was a deeply rewarding moment to get pulled along into grownup-land by a good mind. Will it eventually be your turn to do that too?

Again: I've encountered some fine individuals who could have stomped on down the road you are bricking. They didn't! And I had a great opportunity to thank them and laugh myself off the brink.

Not this time, I guess. As to the rest, we shall see. Or not.

At the risk of being accused of polishing myself up (Pat again), here is how I contribute: I engage a large and sprawling gang of adolescents of voting age in deeper-thinking dialogs when they are ventilating along hand-fed party lines; I ask if they are registered, I supply them links and contacts to do it and remind them time is short; I talk to my native relations all across the country who are disenfranchised and do as with the large pool of voting age teens in my life. Talk to them about the political process, what little I understand of it, and encourage them to stand up to the riggings or whatever else by CONTINUING to vote if they do. To not let anyone or anything take that away from them, no matter what. That one act must remain theirs to do if nothing else. I have family all over the place, in the most disenfranchised areas of the population AND in areas where voter intimidation still occurs. I do my best from where I stand to drive for deeper conversation, stronger reasoning and actual voting. I listen to their broken hearts, naive reasoning, angers and beliefs. And the ones who are schismed along conservative lines, I do not disrespect their Beliefs so intensely that we can no longer speak. What matters most to me is that they not let anyone keep them from voting. My children in these families, I talk to them, for they are even less motivated. They firmly believe it will make no difference, it does not matter. And NOT voting is their statement.

Just so you get it that I'm not some troll who does nothing but poke the bear. I'm engaged in a specific area and in a specific way. In a door to door kind of fashion, only longterm and so often at a distance. I'm the one who posted on a different thread IN RESPECTFUL RESPONSE to one of your footsoldiers, as I've some fundagelical and also other-conservative friends who only NOW are finally so betrayed they are Turning. I am not why, but I have been engaged in extremely longterm relationship with them, and dialog within that. Shitflinging and reaction cannot be part of that process. I am from a world they do not understand but have come to accept and trust. And I've learned to listen and value. Even as I cannot leave my world. I've lived too much that makes that impossible. And now these few have lived enough to make them leave "that world".

Anyway, I'm imagining some day I'm going to be in the same room with any one of you and we are going to be laughing our asses off at this.

Think on it that way. So let's not embarrass ourselves and make the future work that much harder, shall we not?

I've said Im' sorry, now drop it. The only person who needs to say any more is Ms. Paulie herself!

Hey J ~ once I get something really substantive that I can believe is worth sharing, I'll try to cobble something up. Thanks for the invitation. I think I blew my li'l gasket at OR37. Circular. Feh. At any rate, sometimes a good blow cleans the jets and brings out what's got to be said that causes one to be, finally, SEEN. And I do not mean in the sense of the ego. I felt anxious writing this, but I wrote my HEART out, and felt that for good or ill, now you know and will or will not care. It takes a lot of energy to really write. I am guilty of a LOT of lazy kb tapping up here. SO if I am ignored, with the comms skills I really do have, it's at least half my fault as much as it is the patterns I feel I do see. Those patterns are all about community, identity, relationship. NOt a negative per se, as they lend cohesion and strength via commonality and understoods. But it can lock out the newcomers, the catalysts too. :)... You are a good egg. You will be mighty healthy from those VERY deep cleansing breaths you must have taken to answer me in such amazing balance. I mean, I DID sound like a screaming diesel, ehh. I'm not a scary person, really. I do find a lack of response or basic curiousity on the part of many here -- as it relates to peeking into different worlds. Do we have a demographic breakdown on this blog? SES, ethnicity, gender? I'd like to see that. Might bust some of MY assumptions, and yet also might show that I am sensing right on.

I know that everyone up here cares. And bet that many are active and walking the walk.

Kari, this is all wonderful, reasonable advice to a newcomer who has just been slapped around in a dustup. I even was able to enjoy the process of muddling through to deeper relating with one poster. THAT is the socially redeeming function of conflict: relations are typically deepened and enriched via working-through. That's great outcomes for the work.

I am most relieved to find that I have indeed somehow instinctually done as you indicate is the correct way to enter a blogosphere. To wit: I've been watching this blog nearly two years, without butting in. I think that will suffice as a respectful scouting of the lay of the land. I've been posting and interacting with the one or two who thought there was something of interest in what I said. I have contributed to threads that just wanted facts. I have introduced myself to your folks, as you put it, although having it characterized as Baboonish chest-thumping can be the outcome of trying to make your background clearly understood so as to increase the chance of oneself being understandable! I've also sent YOU an email or two when there seemed to be a new tech hiccup in the system, etc. I did not expect a response from you, of course - you are a busy guy and I'm not anyone you know. Apparently, what little activity I've had and interactions, have traveled under your particular radar as of yet. Hell, I've had the pleasure of being Harry's Tool a few Googleable times, I was told. If that ain't some form of Arrival to your blog, can't imagine what really is.

SO........ I guess we'll have a few mor rounds of obedience training for me.

ps - and developing a thick skin, good to do. However, before I completely back up on myself, I was prodded out of lazy posting into really saying what I think and feel and stand for as a result of engaging that energy. If that is verboten on blogs, then I'm definitely in the wrong place. I was able to more-clearly crystallize what I am doing as voter activism - and I've looked at it and realized it is absolutely running along cultural lines how it's getting done! I'm not doing a White American voter drive, I'm doing an acculterated, longterm, relationally-driven commitment to voting. Heh. That was valuable to see. And I'm scouring indian country listsrvs now - they/we mainly talk to each other and will never come to the attention of mainstream America, and you cannot easily search them out without really knowing the right keywords. It's a hidden society still.

ONgoing discussion or interaction between one poster and a few others is characterized as "ten comments from one poster"?

Hmm.

You people are going to make me cry.

First rw said, "I am not Harry, I'm not any number of the purposively a rebours offenders here!", and I had to look up "a rebours": a French novel with a primary character who is "...an eccentric, reclusive aesthete and antihero, who loathes 19th century bourgeois society and tries to retreat into an ideal artistic world of his own creation...".

And then RebeccaWhetstine said, "I've had the pleasure of being Harry's Tool a few Googleable times...", which I also do not completely understand.

I do hope it's not that other Harry to whom you're referring.

I'm with Kenau, who was respectful in his/her comment, and you see where that got him/her. When you're a dissident, you've got to bring it, or you'll be ignored.

Harry, it is indeed you. A friend likes to google her friends. And found me online. Following that link, it was you utilizing me as a Tool against some other blogger. Twice. Guffaw. Well now.

As to a rebours, it was not a reference to that novel specifically, which I do know. That would have been a compliment, eh? It was reference to the MEANING of the words: Against the Grain,VERY loosely.

Inveterately against the grain. Yes, Harry, you.

And I do agree with you in terms of being engaged or ignored: it seems that one may too often have to get a little loud? Indeed, once I fully engaged the "energy", that is when it came out of me exactly what I am doing that is activist, but longterm and NOT evangelical in nature, overtly. I am not going to badger my relations about their beliefs. They have a right to think and feel as they do, and it's my job to understand why and encourage them to care that much about me too. In this way I'm getting to be present as several hardcore conservatives and fundagelicals of my acquaint transition from that "state".... but I might agree with you, it's as if I had to get loud to get engagement.

I'm just not sure I'm comfortable with that. Why must one cause a shitstorm to elicit engagement? That just can't be true. I think it can be done with more dignity. But community works this way: until they "know" you or accept into their midst your presence, you will rarely be inculcated into the dialog. It's just how it works.

My mind is not first rate as Tom Civ's, so I don't seem to succeed in engaging discussion in one or two touche sentences. Ah well. But perhaps if a space is made for me and what I bring, I can carve it down to succinct, targeted, as discourse is allowed to evolve with me in the mix too.

Or not.

rw: Thanks for the explanation. Inveterately against the grain I am. (It seems like a compliment to me either way.) And remember, everybody's somebody's Tool.

I'm an outsider here, and I've never expected to be anything else. I'm surprised (and delighted) that I haven't been banned. I believe that my perspective is unrepresented here, and so I continue to try to present a centrist/progressive view, against the grain.

If you feel the same about yourself, I hope you'll continue to post and continue to thicken your skin. I enjoyed the scatalogical references.