What we call progressive today was taken for granted not so long ago.

[county worker]

I use to have a defined benefit retirement plan. I was in several different unions. I could afford to buy a house on my salary. I had decent health insurance. I paid for college by working and going to school.

Not everything we want today was available in the past but many of the things we want from Obama and Congress we use to have. But today we are "Professional Leftists" to want them back.


We have gone so far to the right that normal is now called progressive! People younger than me who want the same things I use to have are called brash and impatient! Come on folks we can do better than that.

On edit:

It seems to me that the right has even convinced some of us that we can't have a progressive era now or ever.

It is those on the extremes that create the space for us to move from were we are to either further right or further left. They make the space and we chose to move or not and in which direction.

[TheKentuckian]

1. Right on time

[Lucky 13]

2. Why, with impatient, ungrateful talk like that, you're going to get Palin elected!!

Don't you realize how good you have it?!

:sarcasm:

[vi5]

3. Apparently we can't do better than that....

From what we're told on here our choices are either this, or republican governance. Those are our only choices and if you ask for anything more or complain about it then you are an idealogue and a radical.

[RufusTFirefly]

4. Context and perspective are forbidden in the United States of Amnesia n/t

[county worker]

7. Context can be altered and perspective is a matter of joice.

[RufusTFirefly]

22. You realize I completely agree with you, right?

Except on the spelling of "joice," of course. ;-)

My point was that people are unwilling to acknowledge or are honestly unaware of just how much we've lost and just how far to the right the country has shifted.

For some people, as long as it's still to the left of the other guys, everything's fine.

(I hasten to add that I am not one of those people.)

[county worker]

23. I thought so but I wasn't sure.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

5. What we call "progressive" today = Reagan acolyte.

:cry:

[ProSense]

6. "I had decent health insurance."

Ah, the good old days.

Here's a really good piece: What Progressives Did Right to Win Healthcare

[zipplewrath]

14. A piece that ignores that we didn't get it

We got mandatory health insurance when the government was willing to help pay for it.

Health CARE is still optional.

That list left out the most important feature. Capitulate on anything to declare a win regardless of what passes.

[ProSense]

15. Didn't get what:

health insurance of the good old days that led to the health insurance of today?

[zipplewrath]

16. No health CARE

That has gotten progressively more expensive since health care became a corporate, for profit, industry. It isn't nearly expensive in the "unworkable" countries where it is some variation of single payer.

[liberal N proud]

8. I had a pony but now I don't

I was promised I would get it back but have not yet.

I guess, I will take my bag of oats and go to the other barn and feed it to the animals over there. I am sure they will like me a little.




Maybe even just a bit at first?

[county worker]

9. fatalism is fun huh?

[EFerrari]

11. Whooooooooooooooooooosh

[blueworld]

18. Count yer blessings if you still have oats

You may need them to trap someone else's pony for din-din.

[liberal N proud]

19. But once those oats are gone, I will be kicked out of the other barn

For sure.

[whathehell]

10. Bravo!!!...You are correct...I'm glad there are still some left old enough to remember!

I've had looks of disbelief when I tell younger people that, until the 1980s:

There was a time that Health care was non-profit, lacked "co-pays" and virtually every working American had it.

Virtually all white collar workers had one hour lunches.

Americans, by and large, made "living wages" and wages rose automatically with the cost of living.

We had no "homeless" problem..Those who remember its onset found it shocking and were sure it would only be temporary because "the government will do something about it"

That American wars were not generally only fought by "the lower class".

My Dad, a hardcore FDR union Democrat saw the DLC version of the Democratic party during the Nineties and bitterly commented that there "IS no 'democratic party' anymore".

[PA Democrat]

12. Well Newt Gingrich and his buddies thinks those lazy bums collecting unemployment should

take a much lower paying job and shut up already.

The race to the bottom. It's picking up speed.

[EFerrari]

13. The right and their conserva-dem enablers sure have convinced people

to act against their best interests. One of the strongest examples is how easily seniors' benefits are being eroded and with such a sense of purpose. That's the kind of country we are now. We think retired senior citizens "have it too good".

[damntexdem]

17. But that's history and history isn't reality.

;-)

[county worker]

21. History was reality at one time. Those things can be again if there was a will to bring them back.

The reason everyone of those things are gone is because of a change in political will.

[Hannah Bell]

20. +100.

[Zorra]

24. K&R

[felix_numinous]

25. People who remember

what labor laws used to be are whining babies? Wow what a way to shut down the discourse, by shaming the messenger in the most juvenile way. It's amazing how progressives are being redefined entirely...everything is being redefined:

It is the 'shock doctrine' all over again, the country falls apart, and in the midst of shock and awe, confusion ensues, and instead of the original structure being rebuilt, a new structure is put into place. A slight of hand occurs, and anyone who calls attention to it is ridiculed as being absolutely nuts!!