Blog for Democracy

New Years Open Thread

Happy New Years…

Few things for your blog reading pleasure.

Matt Taibbi is a journalism Rock Star, which considering he works for Rolling Stone-is really quite cool. Last night a friend on FB ( a “real friend) tipped me to this great discussion. It’s an hour long-but well worth your time.

If watching more meteor showers is on your New Years resolutions list, Boing Boing has a complete list for 2011 for you!

Gov. Bill Richardson has decided to not pardon Billy the Kid. Thankfully someone told him that pulling a Charlie Crist wasn’t in his best interests.

I for one am pretty much ready to close out 2010 and look forward. Can’t say all that much was great about 2010. Feel free to disagree in the comments.

Hope it’s a good one. Be Safe.

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Juliana

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50 responses to “New Years Open Thread”

  1. theodore herrera Avatar
    theodore herrera

    To my progressive friends happy new year.As a right winger I have a lot more respect for you guys than the rinos that infest the gop…….again happy new year

  2. JMPrince Avatar
    JMPrince

    Again, pretty much a bald faced lie. There’s only one hot link there, as with the original. You did not like the original because it pointed out your ignorance of the point you’re supposedly trying to make. Then you’ll try to cover for this by claiming I’m not ‘following the rules’. That might be puerile, as you admit, but it’s still not really adult either. Never let the facts get in the way of a decent argument. Your preferred style of ‘debate’ since?
    JMP

  3. Steve Golden Avatar
    Steve Golden

    Fair point. I idolize fornicators, so I guess you’re right on this one. Wow, I feel like less of a person now. Now it’s time to go get some Chinese food. I’m craving me a dumpling.

  4. Ed Avatar
    Ed

    No. Selective approval. Try following the rules rather than trying to find loopholes.

    also i’ve never tried to pretend that I’m anything other than puerile.

  5. Ed Avatar
    Ed

    Nah you good. Was just reminding a more repeat offender.

  6. JMPrince Avatar
    JMPrince

    Again with the wholesale censoring DF/ED? Lovely. Adult. Conducive to adult political debates too. Again the HCR Bill & the ACA we got? Was an updated version of MA’s Romney-care, which itself was a slight update of Sen. John Chafee’s GOP offering from 1993. Details are here, as if they matter to anyone:
    http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Graphics/2010/022310-Bill-comparison.aspx

    There’s more real facts & info to be had, but never let the fact get in the way of a debate, right? JMP

  7. GAPolitico Avatar
    GAPolitico

    SRY about that, it wasn’t intended to be spam.

  8. Ed Avatar
    Ed

    Just a reminder…

    If you put more than one link in a comment it is spam. If you need to post several things in succession to make your point, learn a little about succinctness .

  9. Delicate Flower Avatar
    Delicate Flower

    So you’re full of cant? Great.

  10. Daniel F. Avatar
    Daniel F.

    well, you got me there.

  11. festivus Avatar
    festivus

    Fornicators? I plead entirely guilty.

    As for restructuring the 10th amendment, Why do you hate the constitution? You’re saying it’s not a perfect document? I’m shocked

  12. Harry Avatar
    Harry

    We who identify with the Tea Party movement are working on a perfected interpretation of the Tenth Amendment, a bottom-up governance instead of the top-down model.

  13. Delicate Flower Avatar
    Delicate Flower

    That’s just it, it’s not. We’ve now got a wonderful concoction of the worst of what we have now combined with higher taxes for mandated health care. Really not a good mix.

    And you know what’s best about this? It’ll be law for maybe 10 years, repealed, and any chance at true national healthcare in this country will be toast.

  14. Harry Avatar
    Harry

    You guys are a hoot. Progressing? You shitting me?

    Fornicators and idolators, all of you.

  15. GAPolitico Avatar
    GAPolitico

    @DF…

    It’s not the best bill in the world, but it is mounds better than what we had.

  16. Delicate Flower Avatar
    Delicate Flower

    Dude, this health care bill is just awful. It combines the worst elements of both sides’ desires without meaningfully achieving an increase in healthy living. Score!

  17. Zaid Avatar
    Zaid

    also wanna point out the blogosphere was basically created by cranky progressives wanting to shout at how dumb “liberals” on tv and the Democratic Party were until they became much smarter

  18. Zaid Avatar
    Zaid

    Are Brown’s comments progressive? What has he done for progressives lately? It’s not about being hard on progressives, it’s about being hard on stupid. It’s hard to build a movement when some of its so-called leaders are clowns.

  19. GAPolitico Avatar
    GAPolitico

    Which one, the NDA or Health Care Reform?

  20. Julianal Avatar
    Julianal

    it wasn’t semi progressive it was crap and a sell out..

  21. GAPolitico Avatar
    GAPolitico

    Maybe the HRC, Barney Frank, and the “old white guys” lost some credibility, but the activists lost the bill.

    The bill itself would have covered gays and lesbians (both male and female) and I don’t think it limited it to one’s color, so it would have covered all races. Seems the HRC, BF, and OWG were looking out for more than just themselves.

    My point is, activists have a place in the political discourse, but if we turn down every piece of semi-progressive legislation because it wasn’t progressive enough, it gets us no where.

    Another example – progressive who said we should not vote for the Health Care Bill because it didn’t have a public option. Sure, we all wanted a Public Option… should we have killed the whole health care bill over it… I think not.

    But back to Sen. Brown, which is where this all started, he should apologize for his asinine and insensitive remarks. It doesn’t move the party or the activists anywhere. It is shameful for a “leader” of the party to be saying such things. It is a bad representation of Democrats in the state.

    Silence is complicit approval. I would be money if Bobby Franklin Speaker Ralston had dropped the N-word, and conservative bloggers did not speak out against it, you would be upset and asking them to condemn such remarks.

  22. JMPrince Avatar
    JMPrince

    Well as the times may seem mean & small, we can celebrate what we’ve got. We & the Fed were magnanimous enough to save the world by keeping the entire world’s banking system afloat. And we’d never know that w/o Sen. Bernie Sanders asking too. Nearly 55% of the TARP/TAF ’emergency funding’ went to foreign entities, principally banks.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/02/us-federal-reserve-bailouts-multinationals

    Which means despite it all, we’re all slowly ‘progressing’. Meanly & meagerly as possible though:
    understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2010/12/standard-of-living-across-time-and.html

    Happy New Year! JMP

  23. Delicate Flower Avatar
    Delicate Flower

    “Thank you DF, you are correct”

    Even a blind pig finds a truffle.

  24. Julianal Avatar
    Julianal

    @Daniel… we are grateful to have you in 2011 along with us!

  25. Julianal Avatar
    Julianal

    Rilly, rilly?? In 2006 George Fucking Bush would have signed such a thing? The Senate? Dear Lord… no.

    It was a test, a serious test of coalitions, and we passed.

    The only org that lost was HRC, and Barney Frank and old white guys.

    Their credibility never recovered. At best they regrouped and moved in a new direction.. oh yes kids.. let’s “Repeal DADT”.

    Not like they didn’t mangle that to.

    Lt. Dan Choi showed lots of folks what real integrity looked like.

    Obama pish posh that poor man wasn’t a glimmer in anyone’s eye at the time. Please don’t confuse this political discussion with a Glee mashup.

  26. Trevor Southerland Avatar
    Trevor Southerland

    Tax cuts and civil rights are not comparable.

  27. GAPolitico Avatar
    GAPolitico

    While a fully inclusive ENDA would be nice, it was not what we would have been able to get at the time. Again, it is the difference between practical policy and partisan politics.

    And ultimately, that is why activists frequently are unhappy, they rarely get everything they want. Many times, they are unwilling to compromise. Then, a voice of reason, comes and brings the fringes of the right and left to the table and say “look, we are all not going to get what we want.” Such as what Obama did with the tax cuts.

  28. Julianal Avatar
    Julianal

    Thank you DF, you are correct, this year was brutal on the “gay” blogs. I didn’t see it as bad anywhere else, and I’m including Firedog Lake.

  29. Delicate Flower Avatar
    Delicate Flower

    “The LGBT community is a reflection of the overall community of activists.”

    No. It’s not.

    Also, I’m sure you’re counting Log Cabin Republicans as part of the LGBT community.

  30. JMPrince Avatar
    JMPrince

    Thanks. Not being a regular denizen, I looked diligently, but missed it. And more of this is the same crap as in EE says something stupidly suggestive, and we all twitter about it. Vastly silly. And another useful reminder of resolutions we all need to make. BTW, there’s only one real BTP:
    http://www.cepr.net/index.php/beat-the-press/
    JMP

  31. Daniel F. Avatar
    Daniel F.

    I, for another, am glad to see 2010 go. It roared in with a bang, for me (or so I am told), and I’d just as soon leave it behind and begin again with new experiences in 2011.

    Hope no one else throws any knives into our backs in the new year, either.

    Here’s to a new year and new life for all of us. I’m grateful for this blog, and the people behind it, as well as most of y’all who participate. 🙂

    -Daniel

  32. festivus Avatar
    festivus

    @jmp: It is still on the Drudge Report. “Beat the press” on the far left column

  33. JMPrince Avatar
    JMPrince

    And for the record? Evidently not on Drudge either, presently. And if they truly want to start in on that line? There’s not enough sheets to cover all of them either! Not hardly. And the historic arguments of ‘when’ and ‘how’ are interesting enough. But there is some value to both arguments. JMP

  34. Julianal Avatar
    Julianal

    No the point is not moot.

    In every state/city/county that passed so called employment protections without covering transpeople…oh guess what- they never came back for them.

    I’ve lobbied for a fully inclusive ENDA since 2005.

    Really, this isn’t a place I think you want to go.

  35. GAPolitico Avatar
    GAPolitico

    Well, the NDA did not pass that year, so the point is kinda moot. I was speaking specifically on the national one, I do not know the details of other states.

  36. Julianal Avatar
    Julianal

    Plus there is always Sen. Scott Brown-he’s always in the hot seat these days…

  37. Julianal Avatar
    Julianal

    Ok, I’ll bite GA Politico- please name one state with NDA that “came back” for Transpeople?

    I’ll wait right here…

  38. BEZERKO Avatar
    BEZERKO

    I thought you were talking about Sherrod Brown. I had to google it to find out what you were talking about. It was an exageration with a grain of truth.

  39. GAPolitico Avatar
    GAPolitico

    The LGBT community is a reflection of the overall community of activists. But, for the LGBT example, we can use the Non-Discrim act (NDA).

    Some LGBT, the “far left,” did not want to pass a NDA that did not include Transgender protections.

    More moderate LGBT individuals wanted to pass it and come back for the rest later.

    Both have their place in political discourse. However, one can understand why the groups argue. One wants idealogical purism, the other wants practical policy. Its not to say that one is better than the other, but it is to say that one is more practical in our political system.

    It is the same reason the Tea Party does not get along with the mainstream republican party.

  40. GAPolitico Avatar
    GAPolitico

    We did three stories on the situation yesterday, first on his remarks, second on Erickson’s inappropriate sexual remarks, and third on the press conference.

    http://gapolitico.com/?p=16600
    http://gapolitico.com/?p=16594
    http://gapolitico.com/?p=16585

    I’m not trying to be critical of you guys, I think 99% of the time y’all do a great job. But, I fear, we shoot ourselves in the foot if we do not call out individuals who are doing stupid things. If we want to win in the future, we need to not alienate the middle of the political spectrum. We need to call out both the radical right and the left when they say radical things.

  41. JMPrince Avatar
    JMPrince

    SSDD. On another lost thought & discussion from way back with Catherine & Jerry, we present ‘Economics: A Visual Approach’ via Angry Bear Blog & Lee Arnold. It’s a really good start on that fabled HS level Economics course all too many have never had. Or imagined. Part of a continuing series, evidently. And yes, sure, don’t watch them all at once! But perhaps useful to some. JMP
    http://www.angrybearblog.com/2010/12/economics-visual-approach.html

  42. festivus Avatar
    festivus

    Happy New Year’s to you too… Maybe we can lay to rest the circular firing squad in the new year.

    The robert brown story is on the Drudge Report now. I hope it isn’t there because Democrats pushed the story, but you never know. Sometimes we eat our own.

  43. Julianal Avatar
    Julianal

    @Festivus.. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had my so called progressive “card” pulled. Seriously, once, I swear it was for wearing Shalimar perfume. I can usually get it back from someone less bunchy.

    This does remind me that I’ve been working on a post, about how activists treat other activists. I’ve backed off from my original rant about it… But still, it seriously frustrates me to see the amount of judgement and scorn people use with in our communities. The worst of this behavior, imo, has been in the political LBGT community. I’ve deleted it and rewritten it twice as events unfolded during the “L-duck” session. Seems I may need to dust off and try again.

    I think it’s funny that while I’m getting called out on a “Open Fucking Thread” the person so inclined to say something about Brown, chooses to be silent.. Um last I looked there isn’t a word count limit in comments.

    Whatever.. Happy New Years.

  44. festivus Avatar
    festivus

    Part of the problem might be that every time a Democrat gets thrown under the bus we want to be the one who’s driving.

  45. festivus Avatar
    festivus

    So we have one progressive blogger criticizing another progressive blogger for not being hard enough on progressives?

  46. Tim Cairl Avatar
    Tim Cairl

    feel free to point it out, i’m not a senator brown fan,

  47. John Avatar
    John

    Please stop being so goddamned pretentious and vastly overstating your influence/whatever we have left in the state.

  48. GAPolitico Avatar
    GAPolitico

    But, if we don’t stand up and point these things out and say they are bad, we lose legitimacy as advocates.

  49. Julianal Avatar
    Julianal

    Cause I don’t care

  50. GAPolitico Avatar
    GAPolitico

    Y’all like completely ignored the Sen Brown stuff from yesterday, why?

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