STOP!  Suppress the urge to run screaming from the area!  This may initially appear to be another “…John Edwards is great…” diary, but I’m hoping to make a few broader points that will make it worth reading.  If I fail and this diary ends up on the virtual floor of dKOS, another “spent cartridge” in the candidate wars, then I apologize for it at the outset.

Until the George W. Bush started to show his "true colors" following 9/11 and, later, Howard Dean ran for office, I basically thought that being a good citizen meant simply reading the voter’s pamphlet and always voting.  Think of me at that point in my life as your typical "John Q Public", perhaps a bit more of a hard-core news junkie than most, but very much a product of my upbringing.

As both a 30 year member and recipient of health care through Kaiser Permanente and as a child of a front-line worker at Kaiser Permanente in So. Cal., it made me feel a little quesy seeing the "beating" that Kaiser takes in Mr. Moore's movie.  I'll be the first to admit that Kaiser is NOT perfect.  In the past, a Kaiser neurologist managed to mis-diagnose one of my relative's neurological symptoms (which included partial facial paralysis and turned out to be due to brain cancer) as being caused by "stress".   I recently sustained a joint injury and was told I had to wait nearly 2 months to see my favorite ortho doctor.  I complained directly to her administrator and got in right away.  Bottom line is that some parts of the network are far better than others and you really need to be an advocate for your own health care; however, Kaiser is a honest-to-goodness, non-profit, labor-friendly organization that at least TRIES to provide quality health care to ALL its members.  I'm not the only one that feels this way.  Believe it or not, the United Health Care Workers (part of SEIU) also agree with me.  Follow me below the fold...

...at least according to a particular well known "senior news analyst" for NPR.

On Tuesday, June 11th, on NPR's "All Things Considered", Ted Koppel offered up another  commentary in which he suggested that after listening to Senator (and Presidential Candidate) Hillary Clinton during the last Democratic Primary Debate, it was clear to him that she was very carefully avoiding making any statements that indicated  that she would bring ALL the troops home assuming she is elected, and in actuality, she believes that U.S. troops will be in Iraq for years to come.  

More Koppel comments below the fold.  

On Tuesday, May 1st, on NPR's "All Things Considered", Ted Koppel (who I generally like because I became a news junkie while watching Nightline as a teenager.  Yes, I’m that much of a nerd.) provided a commentary in which he suggested:

The Democrats might be celebrating in the midst of the showdown with the White House over funding the war in Iraq. But they should look beyond politics, because the problem could soon be theirs to solve.

He also stated that, realistically, a complete and immediate withdrawal was out of the question, as it would likely lead to wider regional conflict, a humanitarian disaster, and disruptions in global oil supplies (and its associated economic fall out), all of which the Democrats would then "own".  

O.K.  I confess that Howard Dean personally did not interrupt my family's dinner this evening; however, two of his local minions did indeed knock at our door.  Just as I was strapping my 8-month-old son into his highchair, the doorbell rang.  Our front entrance is downstairs and we weren't expecting any visitors, so I opened our front window and called downstairs.  Two fresh-faced young men appeared after stepping back from the front door.  Both young men were carrying clipboards and both were wearing buttons bearing the Democratic National Committee "DNC" logo.  Follow me below the fold for what I think is a discussion that MUST BE HAD about what happened next and its implications for the 50 state strategy.  

I am great fan of this site; however, i don't consider myself talented enough to write a comment-worthy diary.  Still, I would greatly appreciate some follow-up discussion to Markos' and Jerome's wonderful book.  Perhaps I'll get lucky and stir up some discussion.  

In "Crashing the Gates", the authors level valid criticism at an ineffectual Democratic party, single-issue groups, consultants, etc.  After finishing their book, my wife and I find ourselves trying to figure out how best to take their advice to heart on a personal level.  Specifically, what to do we do with our hard earned cash?   Clearly, specific candidates are often recommended on dKos (and by Kos himself) and people have also pushed Democracy Bonds.   But that is the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  We get so many solicitations: individual Senators (e.g., Kerry, Edwards, Boxer), various PACs (MoveOn, Terri's PAC, etc.), DFA, local DFA, state DFA, state Democratic party, DCCC, the Democratic Party as a whole, Code Pink, Clean Money, etc., etc.

I recently received a chain letter e-mail filled with what I suspect to be misleading conservative talking points that attempt to argue that historically the Democrats have been a greater threat to Social Security than Republicans.  The disturbing thing is that  I received it FROM MY OWN MOTHER!  She is being sent this crap by countless friends in her town (it seems to making the rounds on the Internet in her Red-leaning exurb in So. Calif..), and I'm tired of just letting this stuff slide.  I'm going to try to educate my Mom and her friends.  Does anyone care to help me craft a response to these points or know where I can find one?  I really could use some help with resources/counter-arguments, etc.  I couldn't find any previous diaries addressing this circulating e-mail, so if this has been posted before, please forgive me.  

Propaganda follows below the fold...

"Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes!"
Maggie Kuhn

Saw this on a bumper sticker over the holiday, and it got me thinking.  A long-time friend of my family and close friend to my mother sent a Christmas letter praising Bush's re-election.  Frankly, it pissed me off.  The woman has always been kind to my family, but the way she phrased the letter--her joy at his re-election and her desire that we all pray for the safe return of our troops--sent me into a rage.  I asked for help here at dailykos for what I might say if I ran into her over the holiday and got many a great suggestion.  I did not meet her.  I did, however, receive a gift from her for my 1.5 year old son.  I normally send a thank you card whenever I receive a gift from her, and I plan to do so this time.  But after seeing the aforementioned sticker (and calming down a bit), I was thinking I should still say SOMETHING...  But what?  

I was reading Frank's "What's the Matter with Kansas" on my flight home from Seattle to San Francisco.  The flight attendant stopped at my seat as she collected trash and leaned in to look at my book.  I told her, "...interesting read, but rather scary..."  She proudly announced to me that it probably wouldn't scare her because she was a conservative.   She then asked how I knew any of what was in the book was true.  I pointed out the extensive footnotes, some of which I've checked on my own and found to be correct.  
After that, my memory of the conversation is a bit blurry, as I was pretty nervous.  I tried to explain that the book was about people voting  for legislators based on social wedge issues who in turn end up acting against the best interests of those who put them in office and how the author was using Kansas as an example of this phenomenon.

It went downhill from there...

As Kos has suggested, we all need time to recover, reflect, and figure out what happened before taking major action again; however, as the shock wears off, I think that it will become very important to somehow sustain the collective energy that existed during the past election.  It would be unrealistic to try to maintain the same level of commitment and awareness that was seen leading up to the '04 election, but I think that it's important to keep it around in some form, at least at a low boil or simmer.  Given how efficiently ideas now circulate on the Internet (Internets?), I was wondering whether we could harness this efficiency by circulating the following idea.  I was thinking that if everyone who was unhappy and saddened by the outcome of the election quietly donned a small black ribbon, it could become a symbol of our collective grief over the current state of the nation and our solidarity in resisting the forces that brought us to this point.