Posts tagged ‘Blue Dogs’

The Progressive Nuclear Option

by , posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 6:53 pm

Couple of days ago I got an e-mail from my right-wing-nut sister. Well a lot of people got it; she’d broadcasted it to her entire address book. It was supposed to be a joke about the top ten things we can all expect under Obamacare. It wasn’t funny, so I didn’t laugh.

But I did lose my temper and responded “to all” with what can only be called a rant. The rant included lots of facts and figures and some helpful links, since I assume my sister is not likely to happen upon many of those fact-thingies while watching Faux News and listening to Rush. But it also included a thorough rundown of my own uninsurable and dubious state of health, along with a request that if my sister wished to helped Big Insurance execute me for sake of the conservative cause, she at least display enough shame to leave me off her e-mail list.

uh-oh

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IL-14: The Losing Strategy

by , posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 8:53 pm

Originally posted at Fireside 14, Prairie State Blue, Open Left and MyDD.

What happens in Podunk shouldn’t stay there.  Or at least if it does, the Democratic Party Establishment, the corporate wing of the Democratic Party, the Blue Dogs among us, will have won one more unrecorded battle against those of us who want real change.

What’s happening most immediately in the IL-14 corner of Podunk (a term I use here to describe anything not directly inside the DC Beltway) is a primary and a special primary on Tuesday, between the DC insider “pick” for our district, an attorney who is a relative newcomer to both politics and our area, and John Laesch, the nominee against Denny Hastert last time out, and the only progressive in the race.

At this point, I’d call it a significant bellwether for the upcoming Congressional elections that virtually no one outside of IL-14 is paying much attention to in the glare of the presidential race, as well as a bellwether event in the battle for control of the party.  So while I don’t expect this diary to get much attention, I want to leave a record of what has happened in this primary.  Bellwethers, however unobserved at the time, sometimes have a way of becoming useful history for those who follow.  

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Drinking Liberally in DC with Chris Bowers

by , posted on Sunday, August 26th, 2007 at 11:10 pm

Originally posted at Fireside 14 and Prairie State Blue.

Drinking Liberally is, in it’s own words, “an informal gathering of like-minded left-leaners who want to trade ideas, get more involved, or just share each other’s company… and every week kvetch, vent, ponder, and pontificate on the issues of the day.”  And in DC once a month they have guest speakers.  Last Thursday the guest speaker was Chris Bowers of Open Left, and I stopped in to hear what he had to say.

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