As I suspected going into this primary season, I recently re-registered as a democrat in order to support progressive challenges to DC's entrenched dysfunction in the only way possible.  DC republicans are as crazy as the national party and the only republican running that I could even stomach voting for is running for school board in another ward of the city than the one I live in, so there is no sense in voting republican in the primary this year.

The nation's capital is a great example of why all political change must come by way of the primary election system as well as by shedding of party identity as our primary motive for voting.

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For those of you who don't know me yet, nice to meet you and namaste.  For those of you who already do, mea culpa and ditto.  I have been around these parts for a little over two years now, transforming myself through the exposure to different messages delivered by a wide variety of messengers.  That means I have bumped heads with a number of folks, sometimes harder than originally intended.

It is safe to say that my interaction with the TPM community helped forge my voice as well as open my horizons.

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This op-ed by Bob Herbert in the New York Times left me stunned. Here is how the piece opened: 

Driving through some of this city's neighborhoods is like driving through an alternate, horrifying universe, a place where no one thinks it's safe to be a child.  

You follow a map in which the coordinates are laid out in blood. Over there, in front of that convenience store, is where Fred Couch, 16, was shot to death last December. The Couch boy went to the same school, Christian Fenger Academy, as Derrion Albert, an honor student who was beaten with wooden planks and kicked to death three months earlier in a broad daylight attack that was recorded on a cellphone by an onlooker.

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Tonight we took the first step on what is sure to be a long road toward achieving our rather lofty vision for a new social network aimed at fostering sustainable and systemic global change. 

Of course, there have been thousands of steps before this one.  Many of them missteps.  Some of them two steps forward and one step back.  All of those steps led to this inevitable moment in time when my best friend and I would bring something new into this world designed to make a difference.

Now all IM4 needs to succeed is you.

Pitch forks are popping up around TPM.  The torches are sure to follow.  Seems a revolution is in the offing.  I am sure it has something to do with phone-calling fanatics in California or a governor about to reinstate slavery in Virginia.  Perhaps it is over a president who couldn't transform a nation in 18 months or maybe the fascochristian zombie militias getting ready to overthrow the Republic. 

Whatever it is, you can count me out.  Evolution will get us there quicker when it comes to politics and government.

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As many around these parts may know by now, I have a thing about the primary elections in this country and the opportunities that an average 20% turnout presents to motivated, grassroots insurgencies.  I believe with an audience of 80% of the voting public there is more than enough room to seriously ruin an incumbent's day. 

Ohio's 8th District is the home of House minority leader John Boehner, who currently faces a challenge by just such an effort. 

Businessman and German immigrant Manfred Schreyer brings a pragmatic, common sense critique to the race.  With more than 20 years in Congress, Boehner has a lackluster record and the gall to put on blubbering displays of outrage that are not worthy of the seat or the party, so I suspect this challenge could lead to something depending on Manfred's ground-game.

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I've seen it coming for quite some time.  The day the music died.  Ironic given how short the road to change has been so far.  The democratic party and its independent allies in all their varied and frantic splendor are quickly becoming that which they so love to hate - extreme and intolerant and petulant.  Not to mention just plain rude and ignorant of some pretty basic facts of American history.

It it shown in the exponentially increasing disregard for simple manners or the Golden Rule.  Many TPM bloggers approach each conversation as if it were a fight to the death, using single-sourced material to prove some obscure partisan point that is never fully explained but is central to the end of life and everything we know.  Potty mouths going off on petty rants and all manner of idiocy in between. 

That's not to say that authentic voices don't remain at TPM, but they are drowned out in waves of back-slapping fandom, "Let's Kill The Bastards!" fanaticism and Chicken Little prognostications of impending doom.

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Seventeen years ago, in response to President Bill Clinton's efforts to reform the American medical system, the newly resurgent GOP caucus offered this plan for health insurance reform, universal coverage and an emphasis on medical best practices as a way to lower long-term costs. 

Anyone even passingly conversant with the legislation passed by the US Senate without a single republican vote should be amazed at the hypocrisy of a "conservative" caucus that advocated virtually identical solutions less than a generation ago now being so venomously against such  measures.

A caucus staffed by many of the same people who wrote the conservative health care solutions that so closely echo today's democratic proposals.

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It still amazes me how little the democratic party faithful understand the opportunity presented by President Obama's election in 2008 with the first governing majority in a generation. 

Democrats, republicans and independents lined up for hours to hear the man speak during the primaries, rewarding his common sense appraisal of our nation's challenges and potential solutions to those problems with a chance to face John McCain in the fall.  That same multifaceted coalition elected Barack Obama with nearly 53% of the vote come November.

The president recently spoke to the Business Roundtable in Washington DC, a brilliant speech that was lost in the political circus at Blair House the following day.

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America remains in turmoil, our civic identities wrapped up in the dysfunctional activities of a largely unaccountable plutocracy who rarely voice opinions reflective of our own.

Words used interchangeably provide an oversimplification of the average American's political beliefs.  Liberal equals Progressive.  Neoconservative equals Conservative.  With our entire political spectrum in a state of flux, we still allow ourselves to be tagged, labeled and crammed into ill-fitting boxes that lack any real meaning or definition.

As is usual in American politics, the mob rules and we all suffer fools as a result.

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In our first installment, Ensign Jensen Keller of the United Earth Corporation's Space Corps introduces us to the moon base and then celebrates his new promotion in Chapter Two with Danny Rogers, the System's most famous fighter jock.  Underway to his new duty station on Pluto's moon Charon, Jensen examines the files on a captured enemy ship and humanity's need to break free from the speed of light.

Chapter Four

The UECS Admiral Mike Boorda pulled into Charon space on May 12, just three days short of Keller's and Rogers' reporting date.  Danny Rogers spent the past week assuring Jensen that the carrier would in fact make it on time and would he just show a little more optimism when dealing with the fleet.  Checking in proved to be somewhat anticlimactic to the star-struck young officer. 

Here he was on the edge of human controlled space, at a top‑secret research installation and all they did was pop his data wafer into the computer terminal at the personnel department and assure him that his personnel, pay, medical and dental records would be downloaded on the next data up-link with the main Space Corps database at the lunar orbital.

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We all have very high ideals and are desperate to see this country live up to its potential.  That feeling is felt to the left and right of the spectrum.  We want a sense of safety and security and sanity back, yesterday.  Problem is that safety and security and sanity are completely subjective views depending on so many variables that in a diverse country such as ours we need to pretty much agree to disagree at the outset. 

Though our sense of desperation is shared, we each offer slightly different views on interpreting President Obama's motives so far in his presidency.  

Are his mistakes to be expected or do they represent some deeper motives at work?  The complaints are ironically similar from left and right alike.  I prefer to use the totality of what I know from months of research to judge Obama on any issue I disagree with him on.  I never believed Barack to be a classically liberal democrat, so I have not felt "betrayed" by anything he has done to date, however misguided. 

I considered him an electable and pragmatic second choice to Dennis Kucinich, whom I supported initially in the interest of authenticity.

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From there they would hook up with the fighter carrier UECS Admiral Mike Boorda to begin the long, five‑month voyage to Charon. 

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The following article was written by veteran reporter Charley Reese and originally printed in the Orlando Sentinel. 

There is no date of publication, but Reese references an American population of 235 million, Ronald Reagan's deficits, Tip O 'Neill leading a Democratic majority and US Marines in Lebanon, which puts its creation in the mid eighties.

We The People are nothing if not predictably incapable of holding our "leaders" accountable for their actions, no matter how little those actions change over the years.

The 545 People Responsible For All Of Our Woes

By Charley Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered why, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, we have deficits? Have you ever wondered why, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, we have inflation and high taxes?

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I was laid off early last year from what had originally promised to be a rewarding, long-term opportunity with a Washington-area cable network. 

I blogged at the time about America's systemic dysfunction and lack of strategic focus indirectly leading to my dismissal, suggesting our new president go around Congress's pathological lethargy in his first year by way of articulating a new vision for We The People to get behind and challenging us to ensure our representatives actually made it happen.

President Obama didn't go that route, though I still get regular fund-raising emails from Organizing for America in support of vague tactical goals.  Barack doubled down on the United States legislature as a means to deliver his winning strategy of change, despite the historic inability of that body to deliver anything of note without massive and sustained public protest.

I am in a better gig this year with more visibility and greater responsibility at a landmark Washington DC institution but little else in this city has changed for the better as far as I can tell.

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