Without Daily Kos
I would have never grieved over the loss of exmearden a member of the DK Community whom I never met in person, but whose death in 2010 still echoes in me today, just from writing her name. Do yourself a favor and go read some of her stories.
Sara R wrote a moving tribute after exmearden passed away:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2010/11/29/924118/-
This is something exmearden wrote and Sara R quoted in that story:
How carefully that flag is folded. How carefully, tenderly, quietly proferred to hands that do not want to reach out, do not want to hold this flag, do not want to have to receive this flag, cannot grasp why a flag is offered.
How does one absorb the meaning behind a folded flag that will never fly again, never feel the breeze again, never raise to touch the sky again. How carefully do three flag points hold the heartfelt, heart-hurt meaning of every death and every sacrifice gone before, happening now?
Without Daily Kos
I would have never read the words of Steve Gilliard, here or at his own place The Newsblog.
So I would have missed what, for me, is the most important political messaging I’ve ever read.
It’s been 20 years since Steve wrote these words, and I’ve never forgotten them since the first time I read them sometime circa 2005-2006:
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2003/12/im-fighting-liberal-you-know-ive.html
Wednesday, December 03, 2003
I'm a fighting liberal
You know, I've studied history, I've read about America and you know something, if it weren't for liberals, we'd be living in a dark, evil country, far worse than anything Bush could conjure up. A world where children were told to piss on the side of the road because they weren't fit to pee in a white outhouse, where women had to get back alley abortions and where rape was a joke, unless the alleged criminal was black, whereupon he was hung from a tree and castrated.
What has conservatism given America? A stable social order? A peaceful homelife? Respect for law and order? No. Hell, no. It hasn't given us anything we didn't have and it wants to take away our freedoms.
It's time to regain the sprit of FDR and Truman and the people around them. People who believed in the public good over private gain. It is time to stop apologizing for being a liberal and be proud to fight for your beliefs. No more shying away or being defined by other people. Liberals believe in a strong defense and punishment for crime. But not preemption and pointless jail sentences. We believe no American should be turned away from a hospital because they are too poor or lack a proper legal defense. We believe that people should make enough from one job to live on, to spend time on raising their family. We believe that individuals and not the state should dictate who gets married and why. The best way to defend marriage is to expand, not restrict it.
The rest of that rant will settle into some little corner of your mind, and never leave, I guarantee it.
Without Daily Kos
I’d never have had the good luck to get to know (most of them, from a distance) some of the best people in the world.
ericlewis0 — a truly funny and sharp witted fellow, with a heart the size of Texas
Meteor Blades — To be honest, in the early years, he is the reason I kept coming around here, because his written words spoke to me stronger and louder than any voice I’d ever heard with my own ears, and still do.
Sara R & winglion — my sisters from another mother, really. In every way that counts, I love them as much as my flesh and blood sisters.
Denise Oliver Velez — who made me, for the first time in my life at age 40something, re-examine my place in the world as a white person, and come up lacking quite a bit. I’ve spent years now, figuring out what I didn’t know for most of my life about American History, mostly because of the stories Denise has been writing here for a long, long time now. For which I am eternally grateful.
That’s all, just a reminder that what I get, what YOU all get, from coming here to Daily Kos is more than a bit of news or some deliciously great cartoons. What you get from coming here is to be part of a wonderful Community that just doesn’t exist anywhere else.
Not if you like your politics smart and fierce and diverse.
So, please, do what you keep seeing those colored boxes at the bottom of stories written by Staff say you should do.
Start donating $5 or $10 or more a month, so that kos can keep the lights on, and the doors to the Orange Clubhouse open.
You can choose between $5, $10, $25, $50, $100 or a custom amount to donate monthly at that link.
That’s what many of you spend on coffee every day (if you get yours from a business and not your kitchen coffee pot).
So c’mon, join me.
I set up my monthly recurring $10 donation on the 3rd.
Who is with me?
