Cheap Trick!

[MannyGoldstein]

Live at Buddokan Lansdowne.

[Scootaloo]

1. I waaaaant youuuuu to liiiink me!

[MannyGoldstein]

2. If you want the link

You got it!

https://m.facebook.com/events/286079151597112?acontext=%7B%22ref%22%3A5%7D&aref=5&refid=17&__tn__=H

[frylock]

3. first concert i ever saw..

they opened for KISS on the Love Gun tour.

[merrily]

4. I rec'd your OP because I am happy to see you.

I was wondering where you'd gone!

[MannyGoldstein]

5. Hey Merrily, how you been!

I've not been posting much. It's summer, I just got back from vacation, and things have gotten a bit rancid around here lately.

I haven't seen you vivisect any fools lately - I probably just missed them. Any recent episodes you can recommend?

[merrily]

6. Hope your vacation was great.

Good grief. I don't vivisect. I sometimes challenge fact free discussions.

[MannyGoldstein]

8. You don't *intend* to vivisect...

But facts have a way of performing that terrible act. But it must be done!

Vacation was great, visited my sister in Seattle. I love that place.

[merrily]

10. I loves me some Massachusetts, but the West Coast does beckon from time to time.

[merrily]

7. I have recently challenged the meme that traditional Democrats, which some

DUers insist upon mischaracterizing as liberals, can't win elections. Inasmuch as I am a traditional Democrat, that is, of course, one of my favorite memes to challenge.

Did it twice on this thread: Cui bono started a discussion about the Hillary for President push, here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5450752

Further down on the same thread, jonjensen, a relatively new DUer, claimed Hillary had to be the candidate, here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5449010

Then, brooklynite, who has ties to the DNC, claimed the votes are with centrists, here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025451761#post75

More meme busting than vivisection.


I posted in each of those discussions and was pleased to see that I am not alone. I don't know that liberals, or even traditional Democrats, are in the majority at DU, or if it only seems that way to center right posters. But I do know that they and professional New Democrats try hard to sell us the meme that only a tiny minority of the left is traditional Democrat, liberal or anything left of center right. I'm not buying and I don't think anyone should.

In fact, I wonder if they themselves would not move left if the Party moved left. I think their current stance could well be more loyalty than ideology.

[MannyGoldstein]

9. I love this:

"If you drop labels and don't try to change minds, USians poll liberal by something like 70%"

So true. So ignored by our political parties. But someone will fill that vacuum. To paraphrase Richard Trumka, people have "had a snootful of that #%^*".

I think there are two types of Democrats (and Republicans) - ideological, and tribal. Very different animals from one-another. We need the ideologicals to force the discussion to the left, which is happening but we need much more! Once that happens, the party will move to the left, and take the tribals with them.

[merrily]

11. Thanks. "Tribal" may be a good word for it.

I use terms like "unconditional loyalists," and "apologists," but "tribal" is a good term as well.

Seems as though people will make excuses, rationalize and outright, knowingly lie. In fact, I just made a post giving an example of the outright lie. http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5473940

I have no idea what a Democrat hoped to gain by knowing lying on a Democratic board that Reagan did something that Carter and a Democratic Congress actually did more than two years before Reagan's inauguration. I do know that she was a paid "columnist" on that board. (It was no secret that the board paid certain people to post. I think she had a weekly column.)

Whether getting paid by that board had anything to do it, I don't know. I just thought it was bizarre that she lied and also bizarre that, when challenged on the facts, she readily admitted she knew better. She could have replied, "Oh, I was not aware of that. Thanks for the correction."

Anyway, I don't understand a Democrat knowingly lying to other Democrats on a Democratic message board. I mean, she could have cited the pro-corporate "reform" of the Bankruptcy Act of 1934 without attributing it to either of the major parties. Had she done that, she would not have been caught in a lie.

But, LOTE voters, Republican or Democratic, are unhappy voters. They don't volunteer and they don't donate. They may not even vote at all (something I simply cannot condone). Maybe sooner or later, that unhappiness will have to be acknowledged somehow. i don't know.

"If you drop labels and don't try to change minds, USians poll liberal by something like 70%"

So true. So ignored by our political parties

Well, ignored by centrist Democrat and everyone to their right, anyway. It is more profitable for them to repeat again and again the false meme that this is a center right nation (or, for those to the right of Repubicans, a rightist nation). They know that they convince some that it is true, simply because they say it so much.

A lot of those they can't convince are or will be LOTE voters anyway, whether they think the lesser of two evils is the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. (As to latter, another meme is that "the left has nowhere else to go," which may or may not be true.) The rest will vote so-called third party, and will be guaranteed that the candidate for whom they vote will lose. Such is the reality of our current so-called two party system.

But someone will fill that vacuum. To paraphrase Richard Trumka, people have "had a snootful of that #%^*".

From your keyboard and Trumka's foul mouth to God's ears. Or the ears of whoever can bring about change.

Trumka has made noises but unions still back mostly Democrats with endorsements and $$, even if someone more left is running. So unions, too, are LOTE voters. They may back the Dem on the Working Families ticket. Worse, sometimes, they'll even back a Republican which utterly bewilders me.

Fact is, winning in this country takes gobs of money, influence and an organization even to be mayor of a sizeable city.And, currently those things are sitting with Republicans and centrist Democrats. I am not sure what anyone without at least 50 million bucks to throw at a candidate for a sizeable office and gobs of time to spend recruiting people to run in primaries can do to change that.

[MannyGoldstein]

12. That is weird

That poster was so specific - and so wrong. And true to form, you flayed 'em with a few direct facts.
Boom.

Your mentioning that Obama stocked the Executive with Clintonites resonates with me. A sorta friend of ours, a Harvard Law School prof, was slated to get a high position in the Obama administration. He lost weight so he'd look good on TV, and was preparing to move to DC. Then, suddenly, in an instant, all posts were filled by the Clinton posse which he's not a member of (although he philosophically is). He was pretty unhappy. I enjoy mentioning Elizabeth Warren when we see him - her good fortune and political philosophy drive him nuts.

Now that the mainstream media is being eclipsed by the Internet, I wonder if we'll start seeing more successful low-budget guerrilla political campaigns. I might be totally wrong, but I think it can be done.

[merrily]

13. I hope you're right, Manny to the G. Right now, though, I think TV ads and mass media still control

[merrily]

14. On the Republican side, I forgot re-appointing Bernanke--and that is before we even get to

to the Commissions, like the Postal Commission and the FCC. (Say bye to the USPS and net netrality.)

With the economy in the crapper, thanks in great measure to repeal of Glass Steagall during the Clinton administration and Bush's wars, and the US involved in two of those unpopular Bush wars, we got a Republican Secretary of Treasury (who had changed his registration from Republican to Indie when Clinton hired him), re-appointment of a Republican Secretary of Defense re-appointment of Bernanke, And the "return" of Larry Summers Rahm Emanuel and scores of other Clintonites.

Before anyone points out that some commissioners have to be something other than Democratic by law, true but they don't to be Republican, just not the same party as the President. Neither do political appointees in the D of J or the FCC. And, as to the FCC they don't have to be former minions of the telecommunications industry. And, as to the Postal Commission, Obama nominated more non-Democrats than law requires, including appointing the guy who is credited with having written the 2006 Act, the purpose of which was to kill the US Post Office.

But, I am non-violent. Vivisection, even of humans would be especially abhorrent to me. Facts, however, are not.

[merrily]

15. I should add that the poster and I had a very nice total conversation.

At least, I enjoyed it.