Tag: Netroots

We All Shine On

John Lennon . . .

I’m sick and tired of hearing things from uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites. All I want is the truth.  Just gimme some truth.

Politicians don’t tell us the truth, the conventions are meaningless, the political system is rigged, the government, the economy, and the media are controlled by uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites.  They have immense power and material wealth, they all have a very high opinion of themselves, but one artist with a conscience and the truth is worth more to humanity than every politician, banker, and businessman who ever lived.

John Lennon had a conscience, he told the truth, about himself, about society, about politics, about what matters and what doesn’t.

Why in the world are we here?

Surely not to live in pain and fear.

We have to shine on, no matter what. We have to shine on because the night has come and the land is dark.  We have to stand by each other, we have to pick each other up when we fall.  That’s not socialism, it’s not Marxism, it’s not entitlement fever, it’s why we’re here.  Making money isn’t what life’s about, seeking power over others isn’t what life’s about, helping each other is what life’s about.    

They’re Fired Up, They’re Ready To Go

Fear not, wanderers in this WTF Wilderness.  Be not dismayed, let not your hearts be troubled.  Lift up your eyes like you never have before, and behold the shiny objects flashing around the White House and the DNC.  Look upon them in wonder and sing hallelujah, for salvation is at hand.   Again.  

Fired up!    

Ready To Go!

I hope Obama and the clap louder crowd at Kos Communications will forgive me, but I’m not fired up.  I’m not ready to go.  The idiocy on full display every hour of every day on the campaign trail exposes how far gone this country’s political system is.  We don’t see any real political debate, we don’t hear any real political commentary, there’s no dialogue about the fundamental problems we’re facing, no real solutions are offered. It’s not a campaign.  It’s a beer commercial.  

Tastes Great!   Less Filling!

U.S. In Distress Corporate capitalism tastes great.  No, it’s less filling.  Gosh, I just can’t decide who’s right, it has so many appealing features.  It’s not perfect yet, but perfection is so close the Beltway binge-drinkers can almost taste it.    

Their friends at the five-hundred billion dollar Beltway Brewery are really cranking out the suds, the bipartisan beer trucks are rumbling down the highways of America, driven by austerity alcoholics with places to go and people to see.  

It’s Happy Hour, it’s always Happy Hour here at the Trickle Down Tavern, so drink up everyone, order another round, put another trillion dollars in the jukebox.  Yeah, I know, Too Big To Fail is the only song on it, but what the hell, get over it, quit pouting and grow up, be a patriotic patriot and praise the plutocrats, they created this paradise of prosperity and are disappointed because we haven’t been grateful enough, so grab a beer-soaked flag and wave it on high.

   

New Netroots Founded: ‘RootsAction’ Independent of Democratic Party

Jeff Cohen, media critic and lecturer, according the bio posted on his site jeffcohen.org, “is founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, where he is an associate professor of journalism.  His latest book is Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.  He has been a TV commentator at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, and was senior producer of MSNBC’s Phil Donahue primetime show until it was terminated three weeks before the Iraq invasion.  Cohen founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986.”

Cohen’s columns on media issues have been widely published online at sites including HuffingtonPost, CommonDreams and Alternet, as well as in many media dailies, including USA Today, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Atlanta Constitution, and Miami Herald”.

Here Cohen talks with The Real News Network’s Paul Jay about founding a new netroots organization called RootsAction to be a separate independent force in US politics, saying that most current net based organizing groups are too connected to a corporatized Democratic Party that ties their hands – and that:

RootsAction was launched to be a totally independent force online for action, the idea being that the independent media have boomed–Democracy Now! Real News, Common Dreams, Truthout, Laura Flanders and GRITtv – yet people – there’s millions of people now getting their news every day, and they understand that the problem in this country isn’t just the fanatical, anti-science, anti-intellectual right wing, but another aspect of the problem is the corporatization of the Democratic Party.

So for those millions of people that get their news that’s pretty complete, there’s not an action group online that is mobilizing those millions of people, because the existing liberal netroots, many of the groups are just too close to the Democratic Party and Democratic Party leadership. So the idea behind RootsAction was to mobilize millions of people online who get the news every day from independent media and would like an independent politics to match their independent media.



New Netroots Organization Founded Independent of Dems

…transcript follows…

Fracking A! New York

This has got to be the best political news I’ve read in a long time. A little before 1:00 a.m. last night, by a vote of 94-44, the New York State Assembly passed the moratorium on hydraulic fracture drilling.

Well it may only be state legislature and the governor still need to sign but apparently this moratorium to protect our drinking water is a first. It’s not top down and the Working Families Party humbly takes some of the credit for more than 52,000 New Yorkers signing the petition urging the Assembly to act.

Go ahead: get up from your chair. Do a little dance, pump your fist, or do whatever you do to celebrate a victory of grassroots action over corporate power.

I just received a letter form the WFP and I was doing just that.  

Kerry, Reid, & Browner Kill Climate Bill During Netroots

Time for the “Couldn’t make this up if I tried” part of the daily dosage of dodder.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010


Climate Bill Would Cut Deficit

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

WASHINGTON –   Congressional budget experts say a climate and energy bill now stalled in the Senate would reduce the federal deficit by about $19 billion over the next decade.

The report by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was the second positive analysis of the bill by a government agency in a month, but is likely to carry more weight than a similar report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. The CBO is the entity responsible for providing Congress with nonpartisan analyses of economic and budget issues, and lawmakers rely on it for guidance.

An analysis by the EPA last month concluded that the Senate bill, dubbed the American Power Act, would cost households an average of $79 to $146 per year. Kerry and Lieberman said they believe Americans are willing to pay less than a dollar a day to curb global warming, reduce oil imports and create energy-related jobs.

Two weeks later.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010


let’s have a climate meetup to bitch about the bill. RT@ {xxxxxx} Heading to Las Vegas for #nn10, who’s going to be there ?

See you there ! heading out to {xx} for a short flight to LV for #nn10, hope to see lots of impacterinos

Jul 21st via TweetDeck

well known enviroblogger, name redacted  

Livefeed: Chris Hayes, Sum of Change, and Grow the Hope

Today at 2:00pm we are holding our first house party fundraiser for our efforts to cover Netroots Nation 2010. We have lined up a great set of speakers, opening with Chris Hayes, DC Editor of The Nation. We’ll also hear from Nolan Treadway, the Logistics and Political Director of Netroots Nation, Julie Blust, the Communications Director at the Virginia Organizing Project, Jeremy Koulish, the Executive Director of the Carrots and Sticks Project, Yvette Lewis from Grow the Hope‘s Rapid Response Team, and our host, David Hart, the founder of Grow the Hope.

You can join us at the house party online today! We will be running a live camera feed of the event, so please hang around with us!

Quit Drinking the Poison

From a distant vantage point on a blog far, far away, an epic traveler through cyberspace who likes to mock and ridicule “purists” posted a story about a land where cynicism and hypocrisy are completely unknown, a land where for some bizarre reason, idealism is honored and respected . . .  

Every year in Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land all of the sprites and elves and woodland creatures gather together to pick the Rainbow Sunshine Queen. Everyone is there: the Lollipop Guild, the Star-Twinkle Toddlers, the Sparkly Unicorns, the Cookie Baking Apple-cheeked Grandmothers, the Fluffy Bunny Bund, the Rumbly-Tumbly Pupperoos, the Snowflake Princesses, the Baby Duckies All-In-A-Row, the Laughing Babies, and the Dykes on Bikes. They have a big picnic with cupcakes and gumdrops and pudding pops, stopping only to cast their votes by throwing Magic Wishing Rocks into the Well of Laughter, Comity, and Good Intentions. Afterward they spend the rest of the night dancing and singing and waving glow sticks until dawn when they tumble sleepy-eyed into beds made of the purest and whitest goose down where they dream of angels and clouds of spun sugar.

With immense satisfaction, that blogger informed “purists” that they don’t live in Happy Gumdrop Fairy-Tale Land, he told them they need to grow the fuck up.    

I have news for Tbogg.  We grew up long ago.  We know where we live.  

This is where we live  . . .

In 2009, one out of five U.S. households didn’t have enough money to buy food.  In households with children, this number rose to 24 percent, as the hunger rate among U.S. citizens has now reached an all-time high.  Over 50 million people need to use food stamps to eat, and a stunning 50 percent of U.S. children will use food stamps to eat at some point in their childhoods.  Approximately 20,000 people are added to this total every day.  

1.4 million Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2009, a 32 percent increase from 2008. Americans have lost $5 trillion from their pensions and savings since the economic crisis began and $13 trillion in the value of their homes.  Personal debt has risen from 65 percent of income in 1980 to 125 percent today.  Over five million U.S. families have already lost their homes, in total 13 million U.S. families are expected to lose their home by 2014.

And what are these Americans being told?   Keep drinking that Two-Party-System Kool Aid, that’s what they’re being told.   By the politicians.  By the corporate media.  By the “progressive” leaders of the Netroots.   That’s their solution.  Keep drinking that Two-Party-System Kool Aid.  

The Path We Must Take

If Dr. King hadn’t been assassinated for speaking truth to power, if he was here today, if he was at the Lincoln Memorial again, looking out at that corporate capital of deceit and corruption, what would he say, what would he ask us to do?

He’d ask us to overcome our fear, he’d call for mass protests and civil disobedience, he’d explain why it’s necessary, just as he did in 1968 . . .  

If you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you would die for it, then you are not fit to live.  You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day some great crisis arises and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause, but you refuse to take a stand because you are afraid.

You refuse to do it because you want to live longer.  Or you’re afraid that you will lose your job, or that you will be criticized, or that you will lose your popularity.  So you refuse to take a stand.  Well you may go on and live until you’re 90, but you are just as dead at 38 as you will be at 90.   And when you take your last breath, it will only be the belated announcement of the earlier death of your spirit.

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice.

Can you understand that, “leaders” of the Netroots?  Can you understand that, Markos Moulitsas?  Can you understand that, Obamacrats?  Tap your TR trigger fingers on the lid of that coffin you call a blog if you do.  Can you understand that, MoveOn.org?  Can you understand that, Josh Marshall?  John Amato? Digby?  Jane Hamsher?  If you do, explain it to TBogg, that Mighty Slayer of “Purists.”  How about you, Madame Proprietor of the Huff and Puff Post?  Can you understand that?  Can any of you understand that???

None of you have called for mass protests or civil disobedience.  In the streets of Washington D.C. or anywhere else.  You refuse to because you’re afraid.  Well go ahead, keep on blogging until you’re 90, it won’t matter, you’re just as dead right now as you will be then.  

You died when you refused to stand up for right.

You died when you refused to stand up for truth.

You died when you refused to stand up for justice.

Welcome to Netroots Nation  . . .

Graves Pictures, Images and Photos

Enjoy your stay.

I have some news for those nonstop typers.  Typing isn’t standing up for right, truth, justice, or anything else.  It’s just typing.  

True Reform is Found Beyond the Beltway

Eleven months after President Obama took office, many Progressives are feeling understandably shortchanged.  We were led to believe that finally a candidate with authentic liberal credentials had a legitimate shot at the White House, and so we embraced pragmatism when the most liberal candidates dropped out of the race.  To be sure, there were several voices screaming out that Obama, if elected, would be far more indebted to the center then he ever would be to the left.  These were loudest in the blogosphere, by far, and a few of them have recently exercised the cathartic, but ultimately hollow right to say I-told-you-so.  This song and dance has historical antecedents that stretch back decades, but it would be best if there were no need to repeat the process once more.  

I think we may have put the cart before the horse.  I think we might have assumed that reform could be accomplished purely by political means, instead of reform being reached by grassroots mobilization that forced government’s hand.  Recently we have become aware, once more, that the American political system is not designed for sweeping change.  The rules of the Senate were instituted to ensure that those with sober contemplation, not rash passion, ultimately won in the end.  We can lament this fact and rightly decry it as anti-democratic and elitist, but the truth of the matter is that this is how the system works.  I don’t think that the President failed us nearly as much as the system did.  In mentioning this, I’d much rather focus on going forward than licking our wounds.  

I understand why we placed our trust in Barack Obama.  We recognized the destruction wrought by eight years of neoconservative rule and with it the disconcerting notion that government predicated on evil can level its opponents and eviscerate easily.  That it is much more difficult to build up rather than ruin is perhaps the toughest lesson of all.  But with it comes the realization that established precedent is nearly impossible to reverse when passed.  We may be unhappy with the scope of the bill, but we would be wise to celebrate that if someday Republican rule returns, it will be difficult for them to dismantle that which will be signed into law shortly.  We should not accept this as any final word on the matter, but neither should we refuse to note how an eighteen-round fisticuff with the American mentality ultimately turned out in the end.  This country was forced to confront some of the most massive fault lines that lie deceptively harmless most of the time, until seismic tremors threaten to shake us apart.            

Any worthy social movement promising transformative change begins among an oft-quoted small group of thoughtful, committed citizens.  The Civil Rights Movement, Women’s Rights, and our latest struggle for LGBT marriage equality fomented and were codified from well outside the Beltway.  Though ultimately legislation was proposed and passed by means of the Legislative branch, the energy and forward momentum swept up a million unsung heroes whose names may be lost to history or relegated to obscure footnotes, but whose bravery and achievements cannot be understated.  

While it is touching that during the Presidential Election we temporarily shelved our skepticism as a result of being star-struck, we should not have failed to recognize that leadership comes from everywhere and every corner, not just the occupant of the White House.  We focused our entire attention and hung our hopes upon the success or failure of one person, and while it is true that one person can change the world, his or her leadership ability must be augmented by other leaders.  These inspirational individuals are frequently not pulled from the ranks of public service.  Their occupations vary, just as those who desire change pull from all walks of life and all vocations.  It is more leaders and more passion that we need.

Dr. King may have been the towering giant of the Civil Rights Movement, but Ralph Abernathy, Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker, Fred Shuttlesworth, and many others less well-known filled out the inner circle that produced progress on a scale that is still difficult to fully comprehend.  Along with the notable names are a million others who are the pride of their city or town, but little more than strangers in other places.  I hardly need note that none of the public figures I have outlined were members of the House or the Senate.  Reformers are rarely beholden to the political game because it requires a kind of willingness to bend to the prevailing will and howling winds of popular sentiment, else one find oneself out of power.  So long as this is the case, real reform measures will be stymied or watered down during the process of deliberation.  

I almost need not mention that Congress is meant to work for us, but that it only pays attention to our concerns when we articulate them with force, clarity, and with united purpose.  When we are united behind a cause, not a personality, and especially not a party, then the sky is the limit.  Making our dreams a reality requires more than one election cycle and we ought to really contemplate why it took a once-in-a-generation candidate to patch up the variety of competing interests and disconnected factions of the Democratic party to achieve a sweeping victory.

Instead of cursing our fate and gnashing our teeth out of betrayal, we should re-organize, but this time around the issues that our elected representatives either will not touch, or will whittle away to ineffectual mush.  We have before us a fantastic opportunity to change our priorities and establish successful strategies.  Legend has it that right before they put the rope around his neck, the labor leader Joe Hill stated, “Don’t Mourn!  Organize!”  Liberalism is alive and well and if we learn from this experiment we will not have failed.  The new birth of freedom long promised is ours for the taking, provided we grasp hold of it.  We will live to fight another day.    

Tweety: Netroots aren’t real Democrats

Tweety hates DFHs on the blogs.  They aren’t real Democrats!   So without further ado…… Chris Lieberman Mathews on the Netroots.  

This is short, but the video speaks for itself.  

Does the Netroots need a platform?

So I’m ask of all of you, would it benefit the liberal blogosphere to have some kind of a platform to unite around?  I’ll keep it brief, since this should be more of a discussion than a lecture.

Let the navel staring begin!

The Faintest First Starlight

Took a look down that Netroots Road,

Right away I made my choice.

Headed out to my big two-wheeler,

I was tired of my own voice.

Took a bead on a brighter future,

And just rolled that power on . . .

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