Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Archive for September 2011

Report From Out in The Field

NH Field

OK as of the first of September my Summer Organizing stint was over with OFA. I have been asked and accepted staying on as a Community Organizer for Western Hillsborough Country here in NH. This means I will do pretty much what I did all summer, but with a bit more authority and some added duties. This also means a raise to three more atta boys and five more thank yous a week. This is a great relief since things were kinda tight at the lower scale of atta boys and thank yous 🙂

So what did I learn this summer? Well first off what people think they know about President Obama’s base and what is actually true may not be one in the same, at least here in NH.

Insomniacs Venthole with Craig Ferguson

Please read and follow instructions before opening.  Or consult your physician.

SPOILER WARNING: A latenight gathering for non-serious palaver that does not speak of that night’s show. Posting a spoiler will get you brollywhacked. You don’t want that to happen to you.

craigferguson

This vent-hole (hereinafter known as IVH), if lost or stolen will not be replaced or purchase price refunded. Violation of IVH rules will result in expulsion without refund. A copy of IVH rules can be obtained from one or more members wearing tie-dyed oxford shirts after written requests.

Admission to certain functions within the IVH may require additional innuendo, enter at your own risk. Frivolity and silliness are highly recommended for all riders. Flamewars are expressly forbidden and political ranting is strongly discouraged.

Please consult your counselor, magistrate or religious functionary before usage. Comment below if you agree with said terms.

Open Thread: Welcome Visitors (Part 4)

Moose are tearin’ through the Open Threads! Here is another one to play in. For at least the near future, we will try to keep a fresh one up every 200 comments or so.

A hearty welcome to all newcomers. Whether you are visiting just for a week, or have landed here in search of new digs, make yourself at home. Threads are filling up fast, and I’m having trouble keeping up with everyone. Sorry I’m not doing a good job of greeting everyone individually, but there seem to be quite a few of you – which is altogether rather delightful! I think I can speak for everyone here, moose new and old, when I say that we are thrilled to see each and every one of you.  

Introducing myself.

Well, hello there. I believe we’ve met, though one can never be too sure when people just blur into one another; such are the travails of the big City.

I’ve been blogging on Daily Kos since January 2006, overall since early 2005 here in New York on the state blogs. So you might deduce that this is Daily Kos’ MBNYC; and you’d be correct in that assumption. One of the biggest regrets of my blogging life has always been that, contrary to my usual practice, for some reason, at the Great Orange Satan, I preferred the relative anonymity of the simple initial. I think I have enough influence to get that changed without having to give up my prized five-figure UID, but we shall see; among life’s many instances of irksome, that particular subject doesn’t rank all that high.

But enough about me.

The Coolest Thing About the Jobs Plan

It’s definitely full of all kinds of goodness, but above all else:

The President’s plan calls for legislation that would make it unlawful to refuse to hire applicants solely because they are unemployed or to include in a job posting a provision that unemployed persons will not be considered.

It also gives tax breaks for hiring the long-term unemployed.  That is all discussed in section three, “Pathways back to work.”

Thinking of London and Remembering When My City Burned

Hiya Moose, This was cross posted from somewhere else, but I just saw in an open thread you people don’t mind such a thing, so here’s a little reading from LA about London.

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Sweetie gets angry with me at the times I’d decide to still go into work.   We just had an earthquake the bridges are down, and I’m going in.  The hills are on fire and the sound isn’t music and I’m going in, but that’s how I rocked it at the time.  I was what I called a Mark I Corporate Issue Sales Rep.  I was a few years in and a rising star at the payroll processor Paychex.  Locked and loaded with a territory to protect and clients who valued both our names.

The strands of serendipity are numerous in this world Rodney King and I are from the same town in Southern California, Pasadena heck he and I even went to the same high school and although we were there at the same time I don’t remember him.  Good ole John Muir for every Sirhan Sirhan we turned loose on the world we had a Jackie Robinson, but poor Rodney.

I watched like the rest of America when the video came out.  From my perspective it was an orgy of violence feedback loop, an ass kicking that that brother was going to take.  Lay down Rodney don’t move man, but he was definitely knocked unthinking if he was thinking at all from the beginning.  They beat him like a sack of potatoes, but this time it’s on tape.  No way can the police get out of this one.

Simi Valley?  That’s copland.  Remember the movie with Stallone about the community where the police escaped the city to live, That’s where they decide to hold the trial?  Ok then.  All white jury?  No, the pool was drawn from the Valley; there will be at least one Black person there, oops no Black people one Asian person, and one Latino.  Oh boy here we go.  You guys know the Stevie song Living for the City?  “You have been found GUILTY BY A JURY OF YOUR PEERS.  TEN YEARS! Huh what I didn’t know?”  Reverse that emotion in your mind instead of an innocent going to jail being the American archetype it’s the guilty that go routinely free, live and on Memorex.

We Have Been Warned.

(Crossposted from http://www.firefly-dreaming.com)

A little known fact:  I was once a Congressional intern, doing research on issues affecting the federal workforce.  It was the fall of 2007.  The season I spent on the Hill was one of the most intense of my adult life, even more stressful than going through a divorce while in a PhD program.  The nightmares I had every night that season were simply terrifying.  [Edit:  those of you who have been WYFP regulars might remember my diary “WYFP: The Nightmare Edition” that I posted in the fall of 2007.  It was written during this internship.  If you want to refresh your memory, please wait until after the boycott this week.]  Publicly, I put it down to massive stress induced by a hellish commute and the daily barrage of horror stories about outsourcing, of entire workforces being “sold down the river” to corporations and turned into contract labor.  But in the back of my mind, I knew there was far more wrong than merely ideology.  Something in the back of my head kept thinking that the entire mess was deliberate policy, that it served a purpose, and that the commonweal of the nation was not on the Republicans’ agenda.  That our very sovereignty — the ability of an informed citizenry to be heeded and respected by its chosen government, the needs of the many protected by that government — was being undermined.

Truthout published an article on September 3rd that confirms much of what troubled me so greatly that season, http://www.truth-out.org/goodb…  “Goodbye to All That:  Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult”, by Mike Lofgren, a former high-ranking GOP staffer on Capitol Hill, that rips the mask off the real agenda of the GOP.  None of this should be a surprise to any of us.    

Open Thread: Welcome Visitors (Part 3)

Approaching 200 in the other thread too, and some of our computers don’t handle loads of comments on Moose so well.

Be you visitor or resident — young or old — new or seasoned moose…

Carry on. 😉

Origins of the Moose

Partly as a welcome to new members, and partly because the article is now behind a paywall and I’ve never posted it here, I’ll post below a piece I wrote about the collective origins of the Moose during the 2008 primaries.

It was written for a non-blogging UK audience, so most of it will be quite obvious to a lot of Meese. But worth a bit of reflection three years on.

Flaming for Obama

This year’s Democratic primaries weren’t just fought on the hustings and in the television studios. Some of the fiercest battles took place in the blogosphere