I've been a little depressed lately, the Michael Moore movie seems to have intensified the despair. Much has been said to marginalize the so called "left wing" of the Democrat Party. In reality, the left wing is the "right" wing, meaning that it is the segment of the party that is mostly correct in it's philosophies and promotes academic, logical introspection and solutions. Most of all they are somewhat unselfishly devoted to truth, justice and the idea that America is duty-bound to strive for a more perfect union. That liberty and justice for all applies to our law and most certainly to economic equity. I am afraid that conservative/blue dog Democrat thought implies no room for improvement or reflection and a preference for a balance that is in their favor.

The Right Wing of the Democrat Party seems the most "Christian" in its opinions and deeds. However, they are less likely to belong to an organized religion, they carry within them the only law that matters when dealing with most human, animal and earthly interaction. The Golden Rule is at once logical and effortless, what else could qualify as "self-evident" if not the Golden Rule. Where are we as a nation? From the Declaration of Independence comes a profound clue, an indication that we are in fact sheep, the status quo is undemanding of social responsibility or activism:

"accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

The Declaration of Independence
"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed............................."

In the words of Ann Richards in answer to, "What must Democrats do in order to win" she answered, "You (All of us) must find the courage to talk to the people you don't know and tell them things they may not want to hear."

Michael Moore has that kind of courage. I wish I had asked Governor Richards if there was a cure for complacency. MC

CONFORMITY
We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going, and then go with the drove.
- Mark Twain's Autobiography

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).
Mark Twain- Notebook, 1904

Conformity-the natural instinct to passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority.
Mark Twain- "Corn Pone Opinions"

TREACHERY
Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession. You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by.
Mark Twain- Pudd'nhead Wilson

TRADITION
...scrap heap of unverifiable odds and ends which we call tradition.
Mark Twain- Speech, 5/25/1908

JUSTICE
The rain ...falls upon the just and the unjust alike; a thing which would not happen if I were superintending the rain's affairs. No, I would rain softly and sweetly on the just, but if I caught a sample of the unjust outdoors I would drown him.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

TRUTH

Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.
Mark Twain- Notebook, 1898

"We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people"

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sign me up, I'm a "Liberal" If your elected Democrat doesn't talk and think like this, you have a problem and perhaps you should encourage that "Centrist" to switch parties. I certainly wouldn't contribute my money or time to a person just because they use a "D" by their name. People who pretend to be liberal can get elected in Colorado, e.g. Ken Salazar, a liberal Hispanic, Bill Ritter, a liberal, law and order, Catholic kind of guy ("Law and Order" types scare me, they usually consider "prison building" a solution). Ben NightHorse Campbell, a liberal Native American. Liberals can get elected in Colorado, even if they are DINOs. MC

"What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label 'Liberal'? If by 'Liberal' they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer’s dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of 'Liberal'. But if by a 'Liberal' they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a 'Liberal', then I’m proud to say I’m a 'Liberal'." John F. Kennedy

Wikipedia

For deliberate silliness, the behavior of the wing nuts around President Obama’s speech to school kids has no parallel since Gilbert and Sullivan wrote the immortal lines of Dick Deadeye in HMS Pinafore –The crew has been threatening him and objecting to his sensible and realistic observations about the reality of life in the British navy, and he says “From such a face and form as mine, the noblest sentiments ring forth like the mad utterances of a depraved imagination. It’s human nature; I’m resigned.” Once again, nature imitates art.

The whole reaction of the right wing strikes me as such childish and irrational tantrums, like you would see from a toddler in a grocery store, I think back to what I might once have said before child abuse became nothing to joke about – “Where you dropped on your head as a baby?” It now turns out that this may actually have some merit.

In his book Dare to Discipline, James Dobson advocated the spanking of children of up to eight years old when they misbehave and that the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely."[35]

In contrast, Dr. Spock influenced several generations of parents to be more flexible and affectionate with their children, and to treat them as individuals, and that it would not spoil babies by picking them up when they cried. Dobson pushed the “strict father” model, in contrast to Spock’s “nurturing family” model. Researchers have linked authoritarian “strict father” childrearing with children who withdraw, lack spontaneity, and have lesser evidence of conscience (Maccoby & Martin, 1983). Corporal punishment has been found to be consistently related to poor mental health; including depression, unhappiness, anxiety, and feelings of hopelessness in children and youth. Corporal punishment is a risk factor for relationship problems, including impairment of parent-child relationships, increased levels of aggression and anti-social behaviour in children, raised thresholds for defining an act as violent, and perpetration of violence as an adult, including abuse of one's family members. (Hart, Stuart N. et al, Eliminating Corporal Punishment. UNESCO Publishing).[3]

It’s probably true that many of the kids raised by Dobson’s principles probably had their brains rattled a few times, and it sure looks like some fell out. Certainly his views gave an “expert’s” permission for increased levels of physical violence against children.

I don’t know whether any of this would hold empirical water, but it sure explains a lot to me. Pathological deference to authority, refusal to negotiate, equation of tolerance with deviance, condemnation of alternative religious practices or lifestyles, willingness to kill to enforce “morality”, strict party discipline, unthinking acceptance of myths and lies emanating from authority figures, obdurate resistance to reasoned argument…these all seem to fit the model of children raised by the Dobson method.

The criticism of Spock’s approach (which began with Norman Vincent Peal and was taken up by such illuminati as Spiro Agnew), is that it led to generations of children who grew up with self-indulgence, moral relativism, and a lack of respect for the norms and institutions of patriotism, religion and even protection of life. The contrast was captured by George Lakoff, in his book Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know that Liberals Don't," published by the University of Chicago Press., 1996. Remember "Question Authority?" After Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-Contra, child molestation by priests, the Iraq invasion, murders of doctors, that sure seems like good advice to me. Thank you Dr, Spock.

So the next time you see a tea-bagger going into his “Whaaa!” tantrum, give him a hug; that’s what he really wants.

Who doesn't have flaws? Eugene Robinson sums up the triumph and tragedy of THE champion of the less fortunate. MC

A Prince's Fate
Ted Kennedy Played a Role to Near-Perfection
By Eugene Robinson
Friday, August 28, 2009

That the nation is so moved by the passing of Edward Moore Kennedy testifies to his skill, grace and determination at playing a role that must have been infinitely more difficult than it sounds: a prince fated never to be king.

Ted Kennedy was the youngest of nine children in a family whose ruthless patriarch was intent on building an American dynasty. The old man, business titan Joseph Kennedy, was a king. Ted's older brother Jack, the handsome young president, was a king. The other two brothers, Joe and Robert, were slated for the throne but died too soon. Ted made a run for president, but with the air of someone who didn't really believe he was meant to win. He was the baby brother, the eternal prince.

Princes often have lives that are difficult, even within a context of wealth and privilege. They have to find ways to keep from being eaten alive by ambition that can never be requited. Some become sage counselors in the affairs of state; some become wastrels who lose themselves in women and booze; some fade away and become hobbyists who go off and pilot sailboats or collect butterflies or something. It's fair to say that at various points in his life, Ted Kennedy tried all of these identities.

The hardest task for an eternal prince is to construct an original identity of which he can be proud -- an identity that allows him to live a life of purpose, meaning and impact. Ted Kennedy accomplished this feat by becoming the greatest senator of our age and serving as the liberal conscience of the nation.

Every once in a while, the conventional wisdom is basically right. The generally agreed-upon story line is that Kennedy found himself through the experience of defeat. The consensus view is that he ran for president in 1980 largely out of a sense of obligation, that he ran such a disorganized and almost desultory campaign that it almost looked like self-sabotage, and that when he lost the Democratic nomination to incumbent Jimmy Carter he became a free man, able for the first time to find his own voice and chart his own path.   Read More »

"I say again, as I have before, if health insurance is good enough for the President, the Vice President and the Congress of the United States, then it is good enough for you and every family in America."

Senator Edward Kennedy-Democrat National Convention August 12, 1980

Well, things worked out a little different from the way I thought, but let me tell you, I still love New York.

My fellow Democrats and my fellow Americans, I have come here tonight not to argue as a candidate but to affirm a cause. I'm asking you--I am asking you to renew the commitment of the Democratic Party to economic justice.

I am asking you to renew our commitment to a fair and lasting prosperity that can put America back to work.

This is the cause that brought me into the campaign and that sustained me for nine months across 100,000 miles in 40 different states. We had our losses, but the pain of our defeats is far, far less than the pain of the people that I have met.

We have learned that it is important to take issues seriously, but never to take ourselves too seriously.

The serious issue before us tonight is the cause for which the Democratic Party has stood in its finest hours, the cause that keeps our Party young and makes it, in the second century of its age, the largest political party in this republic and the longest lasting political party on this planet.   Read More »

"Liberals are not so quick to invoke morality..........On cable television and in town halls, conservatives rail against health care reform as an unconscionable infringement on liberty--an effort, literally, to snuff out the sick, the elderly, and the veterans of foreign wars

Liberals have countered with numbers, legislative histories--in short, we've made appeals to logic. But appeals to morality? They've been few and far between. We've approached health care reform as a problem to solve--which, surely, it is. We've not approached it as an obligation to fulfill--which, surely, it is as well.
Kennedy rarely made that mistake. When he looked at America, he saw a country full of people made vulnerable--by circumstance of birth, economic misfortune, illness, or injury. Some were middle-class; some were poor.............Like FDR, Kennedy was not afraid to talk about values, to talk about right and wrong."

Liberalism’s Torch Bearer
--Jonathan Cohn

The New Republic


The elder statesman. The dynastic icon. The man of personal excess. The man of a thousand legislative accomplishments. As the tributes and obituaries attest, Ted Kennedy was all of these things, at one time or another--for better and, yes, sometimes for worse. Like he famously said of his slain brother, Robert, Ted Kennedy "need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life."

But Ted Kennedy was something else, too. He was a crusader. He was--again, to quote his fraternal eulogy--somebody "who saw wrong and tried to right it." He possessed not just a clarity of purpose, but a certainty that his purpose had moral grounding. And that made Kennedy somewhat unusual, or at least quaint, in the part of the ideological universe he inhabited.   Read More »

Can you hear me now? Howard Dean threw the gloves off, you should too. Starting with the economic advisors in the WH, I would start finding real liberals to help run the show. If he continues to surround himself with wimps (Democratic Party retreads) his administration is doomed, they wouldn't know an original thought if it bit them in the ass. Lots of really pissed off LIBERAL women like Rep. Jan Schakowsky (IL-9) can help turn it around. This ain't politics, this is WAR against corporate America, the greatest villains in the history of the world. MC

"While the Obama administration offers kind words to unions, reform to ensure workers' rights to organize is not one of its priorities. Too many other liberal interest groups have become Beltway operations, packaged and polite affairs disconnected from the real grass roots."

Rage the Left Should Use

By Robert Kuttner
Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Where are the liberal protesters?

Wall Street and the abuses of corporate America crashed the economy, leaving regular people anxious and financially insecure. Yet the far right, not the reformist left, is getting the political windfall.

Something is severely off when economically stressed Americans confront members of Congress about "death panels" in the Obama health plan. The rumors, fanned by talk radio with a little help from Republicans, are false and even delusional. Yet the anger, if misdirected, is genuine.

People should be plenty angry about their jobs and their mortgages and their health insurance. With health care, however, virtually all of the fears attributed to the Obama health reform efforts more accurately describe the existing private system.

Continued:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/17/AR2009081702363.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Colorado has a House power ratio of .016 (7 members of 435) a Senate power ratio of .04, equal to all the other 49 states. Seemingly insignificant unless you look at Wyoming's House power ratio of .002. Getting rid of the filibuster might be a giant step in the right direction. If majority rule works in the house, surely it should be applied in the senate.

"Add the rise of the filibuster and the fact that small-state senators tend to stick around longer, gaining powerful chairmanships under the seniority system, and you've got today's change-resistant Senate." MC

The Gangs of D.C.
In the Senate, Small States Wield Outsize Power. Is This What the Founders Had in Mind?

By Alec MacGillis
Sunday, August 9, 2009

Wonder why President Obama is having a hard time enacting his agenda after sweeping to victory and with large congressional majorities on his side?

Look to the Senate, the chamber designed to thwart popular will.

There is much grousing on the left about the filibuster, the threat of which has taken such hold that routine bills now need 60 votes. Getting less attention is the undemocratic character of the Senate itself.

Why, for example, have even Democratic senators been resistant on health-care reform? It might be because so many of the key players represent so few of the voters who carried Obama to victory -- and so few of the nation's uninsured. The Senate Finance Committee's "Gang of Six" that is drafting health-care legislation that may shape the final deal -- without a public insurance option -- represents six states that are among the least populous in the country: Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, Maine, New Mexico and Iowa.

Between them, those six states hold 8.4 million people -- less than New Jersey -- and represent 3 percent of the U.S. population. North Dakota and Wyoming each have fewer than 80,000 uninsured people, in a country where about 47 million lack insurance. In the House, those six states have 13 seats out of 435, 3 percent of the whole. In the Senate, those six members are crafting what may well be the blueprint for reform.

More at the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080702045.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Feel Free to post any info and promote yourself and organization. we are already getting 500 unique visits a day!
LeadvilleLifestyle is a 100% interactive website, you can upload videos/pics and blog. free classifieds,free forums and free business pages, also interacts with facebook and twitter!
launching coloradomountainlifestyle.com soon which will hopefully free the media in eagle/summit/lake counties and the central mtns of Colorado!

the user drives the content of the site! any questions just ask.

we encourage folks to get active and post video/pics or blogs!!! Free The Media!!! Stand Up!
http://www.leadvillelifestyle.com
http://www.coloradomountainmedia.com

coming soon coloradomountainlifestyle.com 100% Interactive websites!

I hope ProgressNow will use this to help communicate with citizens of colorado and the co mtns!!!

Ever since President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the right wing has attacked her with racist and sexist remarks--part of a coordinated strategy to tarnish her credibility. And now they've continued their assault by publishing problematic and disrespectful images.

The fact is that Judge Sotomayor is the most qualified nominee to the Supreme Court in at least a generation. She has more trial experience than any sitting member of the Supreme Court had when they were nominated. And she just received a unanimous recommendation fy the American Bar Association-something that can't be said about any of George W. Bush's nominees.

So we partnered with Presente.org to bring Colorado this poster design to celebrate our pride in her historic nomination and to thank you for standing with her. We hope you'll download it, spread it far and wide, and invite your friends and family to do the same:

http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/Sotomayor

The poster was designed by Presente.org co-founder and artist Favianna Rodriguez. When you download the poster you'll have an opportunity to sign the petition, which we'll send to the Senate Judiciary Committee on your behalf. Hearings on Judge Sotomayor's confirmation are scheduled for this coming Monday, July 13th. That means we only have a few days to get this poster distributed and reproduced everywhere-on web sites, in street windows, and on office walls.

Right-wing extremists like Tom Tancredo and Rush Limbaugh will only ramp up their attacks against Judge Sotomayor. We can't let them dominate the conversation. It's up to us to show just how many people stand behind Judge Sotomayor.

Help us by downloading the poster and spreading the word to your family and friends:

http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/Sotomayor

Thanks for all you do!

P.S. - We also have created bumper stickers based on the poster that you can purchase. Also, if you don't have a color printer or if you would like to get a larger, high-quality poster printed, you can do that as well. Just visit our shop on CafePress.

http://www.progressnowcolorado.org/Shop

"The dignity code........It also commanded its followers to be dispassionate — to distrust rashness, zealotry, fury and political enthusiasm."

I'm having trouble finding balance, even though we have been blatantly provoked by charlatans in positions of trust MC

NY Times
July 7, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
In Search of Dignity
By DAVID BROOKS
When George Washington was a young man, he copied out a list of 110 “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” Some of the rules in his list dealt with the niceties of going to a dinner party or meeting somebody on the street.

“Lean not upon anyone,” was one of the rules. “Read no letter, books or papers in company,” was another. “If any one come to speak to you while you are sitting, stand up,” was a third.

But, as the biographer Richard Brookhiser has noted, these rules, which Washington derived from a 16th-century guidebook, were not just etiquette tips. They were designed to improve inner morals by shaping the outward man. Washington took them very seriously. He worked hard to follow them. Throughout his life, he remained acutely conscious of his own rectitude.

Continued:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/opinion/07brooks.html?em

Northern Exposure
Sarah Palin's toxic paradise.

Sheila Kaplan and Marilyn Berlin Snell, The New Republic Published: Wednesday, October 22, 2008


There's no reason to doubt Sarah Palin's sincerity when she talks about her commitment to family and--more specifically--special-needs kids. When she introduced her son, who has Down syndrome, to the audience at the Republican convention, the family tableau drew cheers. And she issued a promise. "To the families of special-needs children all across this country, I have a message for you," she told the crowd. "For years, you've sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters, and I pledge to you that, if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House."

Unfortunately, as governor of a state with a birth-defect rate that's twice the national average, and which has the gloomy status as repository of toxic chemicals from around the world, Palin has pursued environmental policies that seem perfectly crafted to swell the ranks of special-needs kids. It's true that Alaska's top leaders have placed industry wishes over environmental protection for years. But, instead of correcting this problem, she's compounded it. Peer into her environmental record, and Palin ends up looking a lot like George W. Bush.

Continued:
http://www.tnr.com/environmentenergy/story.html?id=96470ac7-2c43-4643-9703-ec3776ba5b10

NY Times
June 24, 2009
Tapes Reveal Nixon’s View of Abortion

"Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.”"

More here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/us/politics/24nixon.html?hp

For all the people who will die for lack of health care, and all the billions we'll waste, if HB 1273, the Colorado Guaranteed Health Care Act, dies by one vote -- HIS vote -- tomorrow?

I can't organize the thing, but I can be there at 9PM.

Anyone have his address?

Somebody take this and run, k? ;

The past few months have provided a dizzying series of messages in the blogosphere praising or persecuting the new President of the United States (POTUS). Thankfully, Salon.com produced an “over the nation” report on the Republican Party today that deserves more attention, and a more in-depth analysis (from yours truly, naturally).

Here’s the Salon.com link - The state (by state) of the GOP

Once again, Dick Wadhams’ penchant for media attention provides the clue for how to defeat him and continue the GOP decline:

"This notion that Colorado has suddenly become a Democratic state is preposterous. I think Democrats who have a grip on reality know that." -- State GOP chairman Dick Wadhams

The lesson from Dick is a hard and true fact of politically strategy from today to 2012, and unfortunately, too many high level Democratic leaders are positively oblivious to the concept. While basking in the glory of Barack Obama’s victory, I am seeing too many messages ignoring recent losses and weaknesses going into future ballots. This kind of complacency and false posturing is a formula for a disaster in the 2010 General Election.

Salon.com is absolutely correct by highlighting the dominance of the GOP at the county and community level. Even in Larimer County, the Democratic Party leadership is mute on the loss of a seat on the Board of County Commissioners. Reveling in the glory of former Democratic Party Chair Betsy Markey defeating Marilyn Musgrave is apparently too intoxicating to take a clear look at the dangers of the political landscape.

   Read More »

Watch the video and then tell Dave Schultheis what for.

Kopel, in his opinion piece today in the Rocky Mountain News
KOPEL: Web, not bias, offing papers seems to put all the blame on CraigsList and all of we who use the world wide web.

Who or what do you think has caused the probable demise of the Rocky and perhaps the Denver Post as well?

Weigh in with your opinion on Kopel's article . Today.

Can you spend a fun hour this Friday or Saturday in Colorado Springs as an extra representing the human race in a public service announcement that could be seen on ABC next year?

See www.Earth2100.tv for more information about this unique opportunity. ABC News is producing a special about the future of our planet, and they are asking citizens to submit videos of proposed solutions to the dire impacts of "the perfect storm of population growth, resource depletion and climate change."   Read More »