I was also disappointed by the Democrats who voted for the spy bill. Some of them got into office through netroots support!

One has to really wonder what the DLC Democrats were thinking…or were they just letting the “culture of corruption” Republicans do their thinking for them?

The Democratic congressional leadership had reached a deal with McConnell, the DNI head, over some minor revisions to FISA, but the DLC Democrats decided to prostate themelves before White House eleventh-hour demands, and cede much more spying power to the White House and Gonzales than is healthy for our democracy.

So, the real question is who “left behind” whom? The DLC Democrats, in siding with the most corrupt administration in American history, “left behind” their patriotism and all other American citizens.

But, thank you DLC Democrats, for helping all of us understand your real intentions and your true political stance…far, far right.

But how do we get past a spineless congressional group like the blue dogs without going out to replace every one.

I’m from Missouri, and thought I was doing OK voting for Claire McCaskill for Senate, and she just stabbed me int the back by voting for FISA law change. What do we have to do? I will vote for whomever wins the dem ticket, and continue to work for change from within the system, but man, is it sick or what?

But it also has two aspects, social and fiscal. The country moved leftward in the 30’s fiscally, but remained relatively conservative socially until the 60’s. Both pendulum swings ended around 1980. From then until 2006, it made sense for a leftist or left-leaning politician to downplay their tendencies and to act as a brake on the rightward-swinging public mood.

The conservative era is over and the country is swinging leftward. The days of triangulation are over.

Carpe diem.

There’s a few problems we’ve got to address. One is the fact that most of the world is poor and unable to help themselves take care of the basic necessities. I like the idea put out there that we should help these places get on their feet so that their people aren’t starving, need health care, or are uneducated. Seems like I’m wanting to expand the Peace Corps. Yes. Seems like I want to emulate the Cuban practice of sending doctors and health care teams to help troubled places, like earthquake hit central asia. Yes.

The world has a problem with resources and population. There’s too little of the first, and maybe too many of the second. At least, when there’s not enough oil or water or food to go around it seems like it would be better to have some kind of plan to minimize suffering. I don’t want wars caused by either of these issues.

The environment has been abused. Eventually what we’ve done will come back to bite our butts. I mean that we need to do things to protect people from these natural disasters that have caused so much loss of life and property damage. Tidal waves. Earthquakes. Droughts. Flooding. And so forth. We can’t prevent the planet changes. But we can make plans to warn people. We can save for a rainy day?

I want to say there are many issues that we could be engaged in that would cut across many political divides. The effort would not be isolationist. Nor would it need to be partisan, i.e., putting us on one side or another of some political conflict.

I emailed it to lots of folks.