Please hold hearings on ACORN

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Sunday September 20, 2009 · 6:20 PM PDT

2009/09/20 · 18:20

Ok, I'm not going to rehash or link to all the craziness about ACORN we've been seeing since the campaign, culminating in the video "investigations" Glen Beck and Fox have made such a uproar about - everybody here know what's going on. Many of you younguns, however, may not have been running into ACORN, already active and organizing on issue after issue, for the last couple of decades. And if Glen Beck is "right" about anything it is that ACORN really has been at the center of organizing to help the poor on issue after issue after issue as long as I can remember. So, hell yes, let's have not an investigation (there really is no need for one) but rather let's have Congressional hearings on the "sins" of ACORN - and let people talk, on a national stage, about just what the damn commie organization has actually accomplished for the neediest among us for thirty plus years.

frodolives

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Friday March 20, 2009 · 10:05 AM PDT

2009/03/20 · 10:05

While I certainly don't support just sending more military forces to Afghanistan, I also differ from many if not most progressives in believing that the United States has a profound responsibility not to abandon the Afghan people yet again. Frankly I would like to see the US at least double it's presense in Afghanistan - but for every dollar spent on the military there I demand that we spend at least one dollar promoting development. Taking it a step further I think that we need to make our efforts in Afghanistan the largest green development project in history. The scale should be on the level of the Marshall plan, but the vision should be 21st century. Please follow me under the fold.

frodolives

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Thursday February 19, 2009 · 11:08 AM PST

2009/02/19 · 11:08

To belabor a point that no one here will dispute: certain investments of public money can serve to both stimulate the economy now, and build a healthier, more sustainable society going forward. Green energy and infrastructure repair are the most cited examples, along with health care and education. I'd like to propose another - books.

frodolives

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Saturday July 05, 2008 · 8:35 AM PDT

2008/07/05 · 08:35

One of the most overlooked foundations of a successful democracy - along with rule of law, a good constitution and a free press - is a vibrant publishing industry and, especially, independent bookstores where the full spectrum of a cultures' thought can be browsed. Sadly, and ironically on the 4th of July, one of the country's best and most liberal bookstores was closed by fire.

For more than 30 years Bunch of Grapes has been at the center of the intellectual life of Martha's Vineyard. Regular customers include David McCullough, Judy Bloom, Alan Dershowitz, Skip Gates, Evan Thomas, Carly Simon and the late, great Art Buchwald, not to mention William Styron. Bill and Hillary were annual visitors during the White House years, and both have done book signings there. Barrack never did a signing, but his presence at an "off site" event co-sponsored with Harvard's DuBois center was a minor moment on his path to where he is today.

frodolives

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Saturday December 22, 2007 · 7:06 PM PST

2007/12/22 · 19:06

For a long time I've been thinking about this as a "negative" diary, as in "why the f--- haven't we stopped this god damned war". But after drinks with friends that turned into dinner, and in the "spirit of the season" - as an atheist, non-practicing buddhist Jew, what season - I want to put the most positive spin on it I can.

So - Hope springs eternal.

In high school I organized a "Marxist study group". It turned out to be four guys and one girl who got together every friday night to bullshit. In two years I think we "studied" two books. But what we did do was talk wild politics for hours every friday, creating a safe, if drunken and drugged, place where we could speak of things that school, family, society deemed unspeakable.

More below.

frodolives

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Thursday November 22, 2007 · 11:29 PM PST

2007/11/22 · 23:29

I've been having trouble all day being thankful. And all day I've had a hankering to write a diary on climate change, which this might morph into, but...

Thank you D'kos, for a place where I'm beginning to let my voice speak free. You see I'm fifty, and for reasons I mostly won't get into here, now, I think, although I will write what I will - but there you see it, my problem - three clauses before I even mention what my point might be. In 1988 I would sit at my window on First Ave in NYC writing, drunk, stoned, by the blue light of an ancient TV writing fifteen page "footnotes" to define my usage of "drunk" in the first line of an essay I never wrote.

frodolives

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Sunday November 04, 2007 · 12:29 PM PST

2007/11/04 · 12:29

I had the metaphor of our society/country/world being somehow "addicted to oil" in my mind long before Bush made it respectable to talk about it. I first remember encountering the idea in the mid 70's and have an almost visual memory of reading it in one of the radical rags (In These Times, The Guardian, an occasional party organ) I read cover to cover in those days. Frankly, good neo-Marxist college student that I was, I found it rather silly, if entertaining to play with.

In the mid 90's, active more in 12 step programs than in politics, I couldn't help but play thought experiments with applying various concepts of recovery with the social metaphor. Mostly I got bogged down in how one might apply the metaphor in the first place. What could we possibly mean when we say that "we" are addicted to oil - if you really know something about how addiction works; and, even harder, what would the process of recovery look like. Being a believer in the steps, and in a frankly fundementalist view of the nature of the steps, I couldn't really get past what it would mean for a society/nation/country to "admit we were powerless" over oil and that "our lives had become unmanagable".

frodolives

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Friday November 02, 2007 · 1:35 PM PDT

2007/11/02 · 13:35

I apologize if this has come up, but I haven't seen it put this way.

It seems to me that we might be entering a new phase in the struggle against the Bush gang, and it's all about finding a new Attorney General.

Beyond that this might be the point at which impeachment can no longer be ignored by those with the means to effect it.

My first point seems almost a logical necessity, the impeachment corollary depends more on Congress-people acting with integrity, so maybe we should forget that, but again simple logic may force some action.

Of course all of this does suppose that at least most Democrats and just a few Republicans will act on principle, and either way we'll find out soon enough.

Follow me below the fold for a very brief diary:

frodolives

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Wednesday October 17, 2007 · 2:00 PM PDT

2007/10/17 · 14:00

Bilbo and I have been spending a lot of time these last few months arguing about whether your Al Gore should run for president. (You remember I'm sure that after the ring was destroyed Bilbo and I sailed off with the elves into the eternal lands, where we have, for the last few thousand years, been watching with varied degrees of astonishment what a strange world you men have been creating.)

frodolives

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Thursday August 30, 2007 · 9:49 PM PDT

2007/08/30 · 21:49

This is my first diary. Please excuse me for not embedding links, etc. , but there is everything you need already on the front page. I would like to share some thoughts I have not yet seen expressed. Besides further highlighting what a disaster an attack on Iran would be, I would like to suggest a possible course of action.

Poll

102 votes Show Results

Would you strike to stop an attack on Iran?

102 votes Vote Now!

Would you strike to stop an attack on Iran?

Absolutely, great idea.

62 votes

Perhaps, I need to think about it.

17 votes

Maybe, if everyone else did.

7 votes

No way, you're an idiot.

16 votes

RSS

Please hold hearings on ACORN

A GREEN DEAL FOR AFGHANS

Invest in books

RIP Bunch of Grapes

Hope springs eternal

Thank you D'Kos

Recovery from oil addiction?

update - don't read this

Is Al Gore like Gandolf or Strider?

First Diary - Iran - Strike for Peace?