Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now.

I've been looking attempting to look through various diaries on our two remaining candidates (sorry Mike) to help me reach a decision.  The decision isn't which one to vote for -- I've already done that -- but which one to support for the rest of the primaries.  I don't mean monetary support.  I mean support in the sense of helping friends and family in yet-to-vote states reach an informed decision.  Ideally, I'd like to to be able to point them to diaries here which illuminate our candidates positions, history, strengths, weaknesses ...

AP is reporting that an unsteerable, twenty thousand pound, school bus-sized former spy satellite is due to drop somewhere on the earth as early as the end of February.  In classic bushspeak, a former Laura B press secretary now working for the National Insecurity Council had these reassuring words:

Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation ...

Calbraith Rodger's the name, and I first joined this bloggin' game
'cause corporate news was so lame.  The pundits seemed insane.
In the Fall of 2004, with the country just mired in war
I was so sure the two Johns would win, but Ken Blackwell’s Ohio results came in.

The night they cut John Edwards' hair, and the blogs were posting,
The night they cut John Edwards' hair, and all the pundits were boasting.
They went blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

More years of crap from Bush/Cheney,
More Paris and more Britney.
Two Dems on tv
But no sign of JRE.
Now I don’t mind Barack or Hill.
Yes, they’re worthy, so everybody just chill.
We bleed blue.  We’re on the same team,
So STFU with the Edwards can’t win it meme.

I've only ever considered 3 choices when it comes to what I wear under my pants.  Yes, yes, I know there are other options besides the big three of boxers, briefs and commando-style, but I have never really take them seriously.  Some, I know, extol the look of the thong, but comfort is a big thing with me, and the ‘physics’ of a thong just plain seems uncomfortable.  The semi-brief or bicycle shorts style may have its adherents, but semi-brief wearers are only fooling themselves, IMO.  Those drawers are merely briefs with a tiny little leg tacked on.  If you like briefs, then be honest about it and wear briefs.  

Before long john wearers chime in here, let me just say that insulated underwear have a strictly regional appeal, and I don't happen to live in a region were long john wearing is needed.  Nor do most of the population, I might add.  I’m sorry that your undergarment of choice will never amount to more than a curiosity and that many stores will not even bother to stock long underwear.  It’s just the way things are in reality.  So it really comes down to three choices for me, and I hope you will follow me down below (pun intended) to explain my thought process in this diary and why I'm sticking with boxers.

Full of flames again I fear
As upon my mouse I clicked
"Bill and Hil are corporate hacks."
"That Edwards is a dick."
"Obama’s worse," some users curse
"Oh, why did Al Gore bow?"
My uid was larger then,
It’s smaller than that now.

Kucinich voters then shout out
"What’s wrong with Dennis K?
Progressive views are all that counts.
His ears just are that way."
We’ve had our shills for Joe and Bill
Even Dodd’s could start a row
My uid was larger then,
It’s smaller than that now.

I know that this site exists specifically to promote Democrats.

I know that for the last 7 years we have witnessed the natural consequences of America's first MBA president.

I know that the Republican outrages of those years, incubated by putting greed before country, provide the lifesblood of this site.

I know that Democratic voters come in many different flavors, and that one of the ingredients that determine these diverse flavors is outlook on economic principles.

Seasons greeting to all of the users of dailykos, actually.  I mention Bob right there in the title because his writing represents (for me) the best example of why I like to read and sometimes participate here.  His diaries may be funny or analytical by turn, but you can always count on thoughtful and witty writing.  It is the holiday season and all, so thanks, Bob, for the gift of your participation.

There are many, many good writers here and I want to thank them all for the gift of their participation.  No, I won't attempt to list them all -- for I don't have the time to compile a list of all of the writers who have touched me or educated me or compelled me to further action or made me smile.  Bob is meant to be a stand-in for you all.  I also don't want to leave out people who I might exclude through forgetfulness or never having been exposed to their wonderful gifts to us all.  I assure you that I join many other kossacks in adoring your comments and diaries and I we thank you all.

The news that Holy Joe has come out for a republican motivated me to dust off an old song parody from the last election.  Originally, I was hoping the song could help sway a few more Connecticut dems to wake up to the lie in Lieberman and vote for Alan Schlesinger.  This time I'm motivated by the urge to rub their foolish decision to stick with Holy Joe in their faces.

And once again, Apologies to Mick Jagger:

AOL has posted an AP story that is unbelievable.  But then, in this republiganda bizzaro country we now inhabit, where truth is despised and lies are proclaimed, I must believe the story is true.  Here is the start, but you should follow the link and read the whole thing if you want to feel your blood boil:

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (Dec. 11) - Hundreds of thousands of holiday cards and letters thanking wounded American troops for their sacrifice and wishing them well never reach their destination. They are returned to sender or thrown away unopened.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks and the anthrax scare, the Pentagon and the Postal Service have refused to deliver mail addressed simply to "Any Wounded Soldier" for fear terrorists or opponents of the war might send toxic substances or demoralizing messages.

You know how people will say about someone who has a high opinion of himself that "his shit don't stink?"  Well I'm here to tell you that democratic presidential candidate ______ _________'s shit definitely stinks.  I mean the real thing really does stink.  I know this for a fact because ______ _________ came out of the bathroom of the Busy Bee Lunchbox just before I went in there yesterday during a campaign stop in my town.

... are we witnessing the decline and fall of American culture?  

I grew up in the upper midwest in the 60's in a Catholic family and have since become athiest (me -- not the family) so in my 40-some years I've been around, culturally speaking.  I spent a significant number of years devoted heart and soul to theater and, believe me when I tell you, naked bodies and the overt sexual acting-out of persons of whatever sexual identity would not cause me to bat an eye in the normal course of things.

I am bone-tired of poll after poll that shows that Bush (and by extension modern conservative policy) is still viewed favorably by roughly 28% of the respondents who are willing to take polls.  I know as sure as I'm hunting and pecking this miserable excuse for a diary, that the true Bush popularity figure (if derived from a poll question that didn't bend over backwards to be neutral, and has the effect of giving Bush "worst president ever" a ginormous benefit of the doubt -- a benefit of the doubt, in fact, that is so huge that it would lead to significant positive approval ratings from post WWII Germans for Adolph Hitler) would show that 1/2 of 1% of the American public would be just about the number who would rate Bush and the Republicans favorably.

We will never see poll results like that.  This is not because Bush and modern Republicanism have some mysterious group of very stupid and dedicated secret supporters, but because the right poll questions are never going to be asked by our corporate media.  In an attempt to remedy this situation, I offer these poll questions for the bitter-enders:

In well-loved English writer Charles Dickens' A Chistmas Carol In Verse (I think that's the original name) is a scene in which a charwoman,  an undertaker and another member of the desperate class of  victorian London argue over the possesions of a recently living corpse.  The scene was written to horrify us and point up the fact that poverty can lead to the sort of brutish selfishness that disrespects the death of a fellow human.  

Flashing forward to the latter half of the next century, after two World Wars in which technology made mass slaughter trivial, Irish writer Samuel Beckett's character Pozzo, in Waiting For Godot proclaims "They give birth astride of a grave."  This utterly hopeless attitude about death (separated by less than a century from Dickens' scene of macabre self-interest) has at least the merit of being to the point.

I was just grabbing the receipt from the gas pump at Cosco.  The young woman behind me in a smallish 90s economy car was already done and waiting for the middle lane so she could be about her business.  

If you've ever been in a car purchasing gas at Costco, you know the lanes are clearly marked out with white parking stripe paint for pulling up to each side of the pump island.  There is a far and a near pump, so each island can maximize our depletion of fossil fuels by servicing four vehicles at a time.  Between each pair of islands there is a third or middle lane.  This allows a customer waiting in one of the lines (and there are many) to pull forward to the far pump position if the far pump in their line frees up before the near pump.  It's highly efficient and I guess is how Costco is able to sell gas cheaper than anyone else. Back to my experience:

We are at 3,111 dead in Iraq.

The AOL website is currently featuring a picture of polar bears perched on an iceberg that looks like a fuching jungle gym: you have to click ">" five times to get to the 5/5 picture that shows what I'm talking about and deserves to have a fuching Time magazine cover, a Nobel prize for the photographer, the Superbowl Fuching Halftime Show devoted to it and a full color depiction tatooed on the foreheads of Cheney, Rice, Bush and everyone who knowingly invests in oil company stock.

We are GAJILLIONS of dollars in debt.

and ...

and ...

and ...

Fill out the president's AOL report card for 2006 and predict what his 2007 report card will look like.  The only downside?  People are dying because of his poor performance.

Diarist caveat:  Um, I seem to have missed the Ajax upgrade and all the 100s of diaries and comments that discussed it at great length.  In case this upgrade really, truly includes the necessity to write a three paragrapgh introduction, I continue my caveat in the next paragraph.

Upon re-reading the Posting a Diary Entry text, I have come to the conclusion that the three paragraph stipulation is simply a variation on what has always been the case regarding the first section of the diary.

Is it still cool to write:

More below?

Probably not.

He just needed to breathe.  He just needed to breathe.  They always had him locked up.  He just needed to breathe.

You may or may not hear about this boy in the regional or national news.  He was sixteen.  The facts (no solace) are as follows:

He was ten years old when he went on probation for the first time for bringing a knife to school.  Six years ago the zero tolerance policy was already in place in schools here.  Maybe this had something to do with what was to follow.