Sunday Morning Group Therapy :)

Hi guys,

So the last couple of weeks were probably only a sample of the craziness we’re looking at over the next 17 months. I doubt any of us can even get close to PBO’s level of calmness and ability to ignore all the white noise – But we should probably try or we’ll go crazy. Since I’m the least qualified person to give advice on steadiness, I’m opening this thread to you. Do discuss. I even brought two hot men to join the conversation. 🙂

Have a great Sunday.

Now to something beautiful

Posting this comment from Liberal Librarian. I have nothing to add to this brilliance.

This is a diary of faith.

I can’t say that I’ve ever been much of a person of faith. Sure, as a child I went to church and mouthed the usual Catholic professions, but deep down I never really believed them. By the time I was 14 and in high school, it was left up to me whether or not I’d go to church, and I quickly decided that sleeping in was a much more preferable way to spend my Sunday mornings than going to a church that had no meaning for me. While in part that was a decision borne out of pure teenage laziness, in part it was also an acknowledgment that I no longer believed.

Once I no longer believed in God, it was much easier to not believe in many things — but mostly in the capacity for goodness of my fellow human beings. If it was difficult to believe in an invisible God who seemed to have no impact on the world’s daily turning, it was even harder to believe in my fellow humans, when their failings were there, glaring, staring me in the face every day — the pettiness, the smallness, the greed, the general selfishness. Through most of my twenties I was rather jaundiced and nihilistic; I was cynical because cynicism seemed to be the only valid response to a world in which it appeared that one prospered only by doing what was expedient, not what was right. I was definitely a child of Reagan, but rather than adulating him he made me despise the world that he brought forth.

This isn’t to say I had faith in nothing; I had faith in my family, which was always borne out by results; and I had faith, mostly, in friends, although in my life most of my friendships have been for a season, not forever. But faith in some grand overarching ideal? No, none of that.

Then I started to change my life, bit by bit, deciding that continuing in the unhappy groove I was in would lead only to ruin. I came across a doctor who was conducting experimental drug therapy for stuttering, and contacted him, and I’ve been on the drugs and fluent ever since then. I went to grad school, got my library degree, and wound up in a job that I love, more than any job I’ve ever had — which isn’t hard, since before I became a librarian I pretty much hated all my previous jobs. I had, at last, found faith in myself, however haltingly it came about.

And then there came Barack Obama. I have to admit, I was an early Edwards supporter. I liked his rhetoric, and his championing of the poor. He was telegenic and had a good backstory and I thought he would make the best candidate to move us away from the Bush regime. I knew nothing about Obama, and thought the country would vote in a white woman as President before it would a black man.

But Edwards never went anywhere, and Hilary carried the taint of too many disappointments for me. And then this man, Obama, came out of nowhere, and started winning. And I started listening to his message. It was a message of faith — not in him, never in him, but in ourselves, in what we can do when we band together and say “This is what we want”. That’s what his opponents fail to realize: we follow him and support him because in doing so we’re following and supporting ourselves. We see that we’re innately decent, that we want what’s best for ourselves and our fellow human beings, that we want to make a world that’s more fair and just for us and for those that come after us. He makes us see that we are basically good — not, as I thought in my younger years, basically selfish and small, but large, encompassing endless possibilities. He’s not the Messiah; but he allows us to see that the universe is within us. And he gives us that word, “faith”, that we can, through our actions, make the world better, more fair, more just, and that we’re in the majority, not those who say “we can’t”, or “we shouldn’t”, or “we won’t”.

So, in the beginning of my middle age, I have faith again. I still don’t have faith in God — but as I told one of my patrons yesterday with whom I discuss religion, I’m a “hopeful agnostic”. But, even after the events of the past two days, I have faith in many — perhaps the majority — of my fellow citizens. And I believe the faith is not misplaced.

 

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The Floor Is Yours

Here’s something that I really hope to make into a habit – Posting stuff that you guys writes. As s debut, this is a letter sent by Big Daddy Rich to Stephanie Miller yesterday, who actually read parts of it during her show. This is the full version.

Big Daddy Rich, the floor is yours:

Mama and the Mooks:

I haven’t listened to the show in a couple of days, because I figured I’d hear a lot of moaning and groaning from the Mooks over Eric Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Muhammad in a military tribunal at Gitmo,  that it was yet ANOTHER way Obama has disappointed them and every Democrat living, dead or unborn. 

I hope they didn’t…I really, REALLY hope they didn’t — but you know what?  If they did, SO WHAT?  Don’t get me wrong, I love those guys….I really, REALLY love those guys….but as far as the usual complaints that Obama hasn’t done this, Obama hasn’t done that — well they’re just part of the WATBs (Whiny Ass Titty Babies) who make up this new generation of progressives.

Think about it:  Obama gets a historic health care law passed, the WATBs are mad because it didn’t include public option, never mind that the bill damn near DIDN’T GET PASSED.  Obama gets a massive economic stimulus bill passed, the WATBs say it was too small, forgetting it was CONSERVATIVE DEMOCRATS who scaled it back.  Obama gets a historic financial regulation system passed, the WATBs says it’s inadequate, even though congressional supporters say the bill was IMPROVED as it came closer to passage.  Obama ends combat operations in Iraq, the WATBs complain about the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, which he said he was going to do in the campaign.  Obama signs an executive order for hopsitals who accept Medicare and Medicaid to grant visitation and decision making rights to same sex couples, but the WATBs ignore it and focus all of their attention the fact that he didn’t overturn DADT wtih the stroke of a pen.  Obama gets a payroll tax cut and an extension of unemployment benefits after negotiations with Republicans last December, and the WATBs complain about extending the Bush tax cuts for two years, without getting mad at CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS who chickened out and didn’t vote for a plan to end the tax cuts.  And now with Sheikh Muhammad and Gitmo, I’m sure the WATBs got into a thumb sucking fit about that, without, again, getting made at CONGRESSIONAL LAWMAKERS who chickened out and didn’t give him the money to close the joint down.

It’s simple, the WATBs don’t care about what he’s actually GOTTEN done — health care reform, financial regulatory reform, bailing out the auto industry, revamping TARP so the government will make a PROFIT on the handouts, passing the repeal of DADT, ending the government’s court defense of DOMA, slowly but surely winding down the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and overseeing a fragile but substantial economic recovery — they’re just mad they didn’t get everything THEY wanted, without understanding that politics is the art of the POSSIBLE..

Seriously, this new generation of progressives has simply GOT TO GROW THE HELL UP.  They’ve got the instant gratification mindset prevalant in our society now.  Compare it to the founding of the NAACP in 1909 — it was a long 40 years later before the military was desegregated, and nearly 50 years before the first civil rights legislation was passed.  And think of all the other progressive innovations in the 20th century:  Social Security, Medicare, women’s suffrage, child labor laws, civil rights, environmental protection, food and water safety, veterans’ benefits, the list goes on and on.  You think all this came during the presidency of ONE man in his first term?  OF COURSE NOT…it still took advocates decades of toil, sweat, and literally blood to make these things a reality.  Did they stop and whine and throw a childish fit when they didn’t get EVERYTHING they wanted at one time?

I’ll tell you this, Mama:  I can imagine the ghosts of progressive heroes like Martin Luther King, Jr, Thurgood Marshall, Alice Paul, the Roosevelts, the Kennedy brothers, Lyndon Johnson and others gathered together, looking at this generation of progressives, and saying in one clear voice:  WIMPS.

P.S.  One more thing, Steph, ask the WATBs what they would’ve preferred over the last two years: the calm, steady, professorial yet flexible pragmatist accompanied by an equally steadfast and wise second-in-command, OR the erratic septaugenerian with anger management issues who goes back on EVERY SINGLE he once embraced, joined by an empty-headed, inexperienced walking Barbie doll who would make Dan Quayle look like Mr. Science??    

If it was choice number two, then you could bet we’d be facing economic armegeddon, a new ground war in Iran, no real health care reform, and a steady dose of Baby Mama drama!