Thanks hrmjustin!

I still think it's time that we see what a woman in charge could do, for a change. It's been wall-to-wall men ever since the days of the first President. I think we need a change.

I DO like Bernie Sanders a LOT, and I've loved Elizabeth Warren since I first saw her interviewed on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show, early-on. But I see Hillary as best positioned to go all the way. My first choice is Hillary Clinton, but I will willingly and enthusiastically vote for Bernie if it turns out that HE's the one to be our standard-bearer in 2016. And I am sad and a little worried to see so little of that same sentiment coming from non-Hillary supporters. Painting it as holding their nose and voting, fomenting all kinds of discord so we're all fighting with each other, threatening to stay home and pout if they don't get their way (I mean, SERIOUSLY, we have the teabaggers already taking care of that position just fine thankyouverymuch), insisting on the perfect as opposed to the good and/or the most practical.

The rigidity here and elsewhere on our side is what troubles me. I don't want to see another Eugene McCarthy vs Hubert Humphrey thing developing here, which is what happened in 1968. That did NOTHING but divide our side and shove richard fucking nixon down our throats. Dear GOD I do NOT want to see that repeating itself again now! It terrifies me that we'll be so divided we'll find ourselves stuck with a president walker or a president cruz or GOD FORBID another president bush.

Welcome to DU, Nasty Jack!

Glad you're here! It's just disgusting. This whole sordid episode is just disgusting. I've only seen clips of the Pox Noise interview - I'm no fan of ANYTHING over there, including their Alpha Female Blonde megyn kelly. She's a complete joke. Newsblondes like her make me start to feel ashamed of that industry in which I worked and of which I was once so proud. She's nothing more than an ongoing cosmetics ad. This whole affair was - and is - pathetic from start to finish. It just makes me shake my head as we see YET AGAIN the efforts by craven demonstrable public nogoodniks to turn themselves into "The Victim." The willful wrong-doers somehow wind up being portrayed as the tragically wronged.

How 'bout the Duck Dynasty guy? Or Honey Boo Boo?

Shouldn't be hard to find a slew of public miscreants. The Boston Bomber? Or, keep it in the family. Throw in jim bob duggar too.

Delighted to K&R this!

This may be his finest (or one of his finest) longterm achievements, whether he goes all the way or the Hillary forces do. He and Elizabeth Warren have changed the framing. They've overtaken the microphones and front pages. They've given strong clear new voices to these policies we've been trying to advance for sooooooooo long! Sometimes I wonder if the advent of the Bernie Sanderses and the Elizabeth Warrens upon the political scene portends a real change in the public discourse - and a widening and awakening of the public mind. And the public conscience maybe? Maybe. Dunno. Almost don't wanna dare hope. But this shit needs to come up and it needs to be looked at and studied and discussed openly, and its objectors or deniers called out. And if it's real truth, it needs to be SPREAD like a viral video or tweet or new fad.

Wouldn't it be great if THIS stuff were front and center? If THESE topics were of primary concern. If THESE issues dominated the big headlines and front pages and magazine covers and the internet and TV/cable and on radio. If THESE issues and/or problems were sucking up all the oxygen in the room and outshouting all others. Well, if you don't hear about 'em, they're as good as not there, they don't exist. Bernie Sanders has taken the baton from Elizabeth Warren, as a very active formal candidate. He's bringing up stuff to which we've been trying to attract attention for YEARS! These ideas are now getting attention. And more people are hearing it and talking about it and seeing it vetted in every direction. So I say let's see how far he goes, but let's be willing to agree on one candidate and push that candidate. Could be him. Could be her. All of us have to get behind whoever it turns out to be! And for those who wanted the other candidate, we cannot afford to pout! I'd tell myself that but I'm already determined to vote D again. I really don't care who's the last man (or woman) standing, just as long as it's a big strong D. I do know that if it's her and not him, she's damn sure going to HAVE TO integrate most if not ALL of his position points into her own. He's hit hard and loudly on too many issues that hit home, powerfully, with people, and very directly so, too. He's reached and connected with too many people for some, or maybe a lot of this not to stick and take root. If it does wind up being Hillary over Bernie, strategically, she lets that ball drop at her peril.

The bottom line of bottom lines for us all, here, and all over the rational world, we CANNOT afford a CON back in the White House. PLEASE don't forget that! Just listening to rick perry's snaky-ass sneak-show should validate and more than underscore this warning!

I'm an Eisenhower baby. I remember vague stuff about the Kennedys, mainly

the intangibles. We went from a Grandpa and Grandpa situation in the White House to a younger family that I could relate to MUCH more closely because the Kennedy kids were just a little younger than I was. First time I was aware of someone in the Presidency who was so much more relatable to me personally. Their mom looked like the moms I saw picking their kids up at school. Their dads looked like many of the dads who went to Father-Daughter night. And I liked how Mrs. Kennedy dressed. How pretty she was. Elegant, stylish, classy. I still remember when the nun disappeared from the classroom for awhile, not saying anything, and then coming back with an ashen look on her face, telling us not to scream, but that "President Kennedy is dead."

Then, the little kids moved out of the White House and an older couple took over, with two daughters who were older than I was (LBJ, Lady Bird, and Lynda Bird and Lucy. I do remember one distinct thing about that family just on a personal, visceral level. I noticed that they ALL had LBJ as their initials. Dad - Lyndon Baines Johnson. Mom - Lady Bird Johnson (she actually had a name in her own right, Claudia Alta Taylor "Lady Bird" Johnson, but she went along with the family theme). Big sis - Lynda Bird Johnson. Little sis - Lucy Baines Johnson. Liked Lady Bird because of her whimsical name, and because her pet cause as First Lady was "The Beautification of America." She was concerned by everything from gardens to the great out doors. Wanted to make every city, every highway, every public area prettier, lovelier, cleaner, more wisely managed. Even back then, I seem to have been drawn to that issue and that idea of wise and responsible custodianship of our planet. I liked that they had daughters - I could relate to them somewhat, like older sisters. Didn't start waking up about him for awhile. He unleashed all kinds of uproar, not only via Vietnam but also civil rights. I love the following historical nugget. I bet it's true. Hell, I've heard taped talk from him, emitting from his seat on the toilet!

&quot According to historian Robert) Caro, it was ultimately Johnson's ability to convince Republican leader Everett Dirksen to support the bill that amassed the necessary Republican votes to overcome the filibuster in March 1964; after 75 hours of debate, the bill passed the senate by a vote of 71–29.[89][90] Johnson signed the fortified Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law on July 2.[90] Legend has it that as he put down his pen Johnson told an aide, "We have lost the South for a generation", anticipating a coming backlash from Southern whites against Johnson's Democratic Party.[91]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson

I find it really interesting, TBF, that so much of this recent American history is being brought back. The whole movement surrounding the Civil Rights Act, the anti-war movement (which dominated the 60s and early 70s). It's all being revisited, or at least glanced off like a stone skipping across the surface of the pond. And it grates on me when I hear (mainly) CONS and GOPers and their many apologists insist that revisiting the past is terrible, waste of time, makes no sense, wrong and wrongheaded, distracting, fill-in-the-blank-here. We HAVE TO know what led up to this. We HAVE TO know what caused or provoked or led to this. Whatever the "this" is. We HAVE to retrace our steps to try to get a handle on where it all started, how it all started, when it all started and what the timbre of the times was then. WE NEED TO KNOW THAT STUFF - if we're EVER to avoid making the same mistakes again. Man, I'm just really grokking what "those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" thing is all about. You've GOT to look back, forage through the past, peel back the layers on the onion, do some digging (something lazy, shallow, and vain-as-hell journalism just doesn't want to bother its collective pretty head about doing anymore) to figure out HOW WE GOT HERE. And WHERE and WHY. Seems to me that's the only way to figure out how to address whatever problem it is.

We all had a common enemy.

The early days spawned from the early days of bush/cheney. Those of us who knew the American people just got rolled, BIG-TIME, were online somewhere, maybe emailing a friend about how we felt, and had no idea there might be a support system out there, just waiting for us. OVER AND OVER I've heard "I thought I was the only one who felt this way" - in all its forms, and sometimes it's been said by ME, too. And we all could unite around our loathing of bush/cheney. Well, now we're squabbling and quibbling, with one from our side comfortably presiding in the White House. Now we're fighting amongst ourselves.

Hey guys - WE NEED TO UNITE (OR AT LEAST START AIMING THAT WAY) AND HERE'S WHY:

Another post here recently recalled the Democratic debacle in 1968, which I'm old enough to remember. We were in the middle of Vietnam, which was Topic A all over the Evening/Nightly News every evening. And the country was a roiling mess - what with the marches and protests, those were all over TV too, and violence at the Dem Convention in Chicago that year. Kent State was two years away. That was the year of two body-blow assassinations that were body-blows to the American heart - of Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy. The - if you will - "progressive alternative" of the day became Senator Eugene McCarthy, who opposed the Vietnam War. With RFK taken away from us, there arose an enthusiastic swell for McCarthy especially among younger voters. I'd be voting in the next Presidential election, but by 1968 I was becoming aware of stuff, however vaguely. The mainstream Dem candidate was Vice President Hubert Humphrey. He was saddled with LBJ's Vietnam and kinda felt like he couldn't actively denounce it, since he WAS LBJ's Vice President. Sticky situation for him, caught between loyalty for the guy whose second-in-command he still was and what approach to take to the war. He showed himself to be a loyal man. But the country was too torn up by the war to go for a guy still so tied to the war it had come to hate. It was as though he had - well, let's call it "LBJ-stench" all over him.

Not overtly making direct comparisons to leading players of today, although you can certainly interpret it that way. And I've already declared myself a Hillary supporter, although extremely impressed with, and loving, everything Bernie Sanders is saying. I've already declared I will be an enthusiastic Bernie Sanders supporter if he's the one who carries the day! I won't pout and go home and refuse to keep playing just because I want very badly to see command turned over to a woman for a change. There's a BOATLOAD of stuff Bernie Sanders is doing that I like. I know how ardently his supporters stand by him and I admire that tremendously. THAT fire in the belly is what propels campaigns to serious success - maybe even to going all the way. I still think Hillary's gonna be the one, though.

I am fearful for what I see of history maybe setting up to repeat itself. And I desperately do NOT WANT THAT!!!! We got set up for such hideous awfulness from this that we are STILL suffocating under it TODAY. In the NEXT CENTURY.

Cuz you know who we got when the Democratic Party was that divided over Presidential candidates, that year, and we divided our vote? NIXON.

We were so damaged as a political side that it took til 1976 to get the White House back, and then we only held it for one term. And who we got after THAT? reagan.

PLEASE NOTE: It's NOT that I'm insisting overtly on all Bernie Sanders people giving it up and coming over to the Hillary camp. I am absolutely not doing that. What I WOULD like to suggest is that both of our camps here address each other about the different candidate support/defense with less acrimony. PLEASE let's try to go a little easier on each other. To keep the White House, WE ALL EVENTUALLY HAVE TO TEAM UP TOGETHER IN A UNITED FRONT!!!!

We still have to be able to get along and team up toward the end. We can't afford to let history repeat itself. We can't afford another 1968.

That is freakin' HILARIOUS, NightWatcher!!!!!

But I could just as accurately say - "that'd be funny if it weren't true."

Take a number.

I thought about doing that.

But it almost seems to me similar to being born a Catholic. You're born with that Original Sin stain, we're taught. You can baptize it off, we're taught. And THAT act, too, leaves an indelible mark on your soul, we're taught. Just going to ted cruz's page and clicking on "like" will leave an indelible mark on my soul, even if I "unlike" him immediately afterwards.

I don't want to get that on me - even for a second or two.

These are terrific! Love the "Triple Clown" one, especially!

The Bleakness!

Thanks n2doc! Love all of these!