I know that 5,000 of you aren't going to drop by Vichy Dems every day just to watch a game plan for unseating Vichys unfold slowly over the next couple of months. However, I figure some of you might want to at least receive periodic notices about what topics are being discussed here. If you'd like to be added to a mailing list for Vichy Dems -- which will never be sold, never spammed, never abused, never used for any purpose other than occasionally sending you a list of links -- then please send an email to vichydems@safe-mail.net, with "sign up" in the subject line.
Thanks!
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I will be adding your link to my new blog. If that is acceptable. I was just beginning a rant against the dems when I checked Rachel Maddow's blog and linked into yours.
I will be organizing against the resmuglicans and vichydems here in Minnesota. My blog is over on wordpress. All welcome to oppose Rs and weak dems at every level!
That would be great, silly monkey! I'll check your site tomorrow. Bed, tonight (I started on East Coast time this morning!)
Thanks for your support.
I've got a great idea. Let's get a constitutional amendment that requires public service/pro-bono work for all SCOTUS nominees!
That way, candidates like Ruth Bader Ginsberg would be the new minimum. No Bushitler candidates would qualify!
We've got to stop the Chimpy McHalliburton pols from infiltrating the Democtratic Party!
Write your senators and representative and demand they increase the minimum wage.
http://www.usalone.com/cgi-bin/petition.cgi?pnum=148
Next time you fax, email or call a senator or representative, include this in with your demand:
Until the legislation or action I demand gets done I will boycott products from Republican contributors Walmart, Wendy’s, Outback Steak House, Dominos Pizza, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Eckerd, CVS and Walgreens, Curves for women health clubs, GE and Exxon/Mobil.
Join the revolution for progressive legislation
http://www.boycott-republicans.com
All I can say is GOOD JOB, GOOD JOB, GOOD JOB, GOOD JOB, EXTREMELY GOOD JOB x 8000. Thanks for your efforts and I will keep it alive at AAR.
Thanks to anonymous, I signed the boycott also:
"This congress has embarrassed the US across the world one more time. WE ARE DISGUSTED AND WE VOTE! WE VOTE AT THE POLLS....... AND NOW WE WILL VOTE WITH OUR DOLLARS EVERYDAY! CORRUPT PARASITES, START PACKING!!!!!!!!!!"
I may owe you an apology. Working out of my home over the last two weeks, round the clock emailing, writing, calling -- lots of sleep deprivation. Initially intrigued by your pitch on Young Turks, came here. Found the graphic layout of your list more user friendly than the one at democrats.com so started using this.
Then in "comments" section asked why no email contact. Never saw my question posted or an answer. Then posted updated info and didn't see it integrated in the data. Pointed that out to you. You said you Would. Then in checking back I noticed you didn't
(i.e. ad Obama and Schumer to list of "yes" on fili). This may sound Petty to you. But consider if you will: we don't Know you (and we are unknown to you too) and you are offering a service in the midst of a PITCHED battle and inserting yourself as a leader-- and you are Anonymous -- so a simple stupid indicator like assessing someone by "are they doing what they said they would? and if Not--what's up with that." seems like a reasonable way to go. And at a time when So many dems were Not budging but Obama committed, I was very judgemental about you Urging people to keep calling him to Firm him Up (when he had already announced on Nat'l tv that he was With the fili -- albeit in a fucked up way)--so I posted what probably got perceived by you as a "troll-like" post because the WAY I questioned you was Over the Top. (I have a lot to learn vis a vis honey-vs-vinegar). I guess when I saw you write: Come back here between 8 and 9 am all caffeined up for your marching orders (or something close to that)--I asked so Who is This General? (Don't you think you might ask a similar question?) Since we are living in Dangerous Times -- how easy would it be for a sophisticated repub operative to move in and Hijack some flank of a spontaneous, energized, passionate activated Reform Democrats (at least) army?
So long explanation for prior posts, but curious as to what your response is to certain points I raise here.
How about an RSS feed, so we can subscribe there and get new entries in our aggregator.
Samuel A. Alito Jr. is confirmed as Associate Justice, Supreme Court of the United States.
Denmadrid: Thanks for the support!! It really makes me feel good. You also said something that intrigued me: Thanks for your efforts and I will keep it alive at AAR. Are you involved with AAR or its site, or just a frequent commenter there, or ? I'm always curious what's really going on over there and would be ecstatic to know someone who knows!
Anyway, thanks. I'm just a guy who stopped everything else to start this, and is astounded by how it caught on, and all the feedback I'm getting makes me feel humble and stupidly happy.
Abby:
THANK YOU for writing again after things calmed down some! It's true, I had a hard time telling whether you were a sincere person with sincere concerns, or a concern troll -- and in the heat of battle, I decided you were the latter, for which I apologize.
My main excuse for not updating fast enough is that I had my hands full. I didn't have time to add a bio (and frankly didn't see myself as a "general" or the center of things anyway, just someone willing to step up and make sure everyone was informed and somewhat pointed in the same direction).
I didn't put up an email link for at least four reasons:
1) time -- I had my hands full just keeping up with the changing head counts, checking the other sites for into, calling Senators' offices, etc.;
2) I'm clumsy at html, especially when it comes to adding code in the sidebars and things,
3) I knew if I put up an email the trolls would hammer it (which proved true once I added one to a post), and
4) I really wanted comments to be public, since on my other blog some people who aren't comfortable on the Internets keep emailing me good stuff that I then have to cut and paste into the blog.
As to why I had Obama on the "to call" list even though he had committed to the filibuster: until the very end, I tried not to have a purely "binary" game plan of "call" or "don't call." Rather, I wanted people to have the info they needed to make their own decisions. Obama, in particular, had committed to vote one way but was lobbying within the caucus, and then on the Sunday news shows, AGAINST it. For a prominent politician to say "I'm voting against cloture but I think it's a stupid idea and it's gonna fail" was hurting our cause more than helping it, and I wanted people to keep letting him know how they felt in hopes he'd tone down his anti-filibuster activism. Most importantly, I made those facts clear in his entry, so people could decide for themselves whether they wanted to call him or move on to someone else.
Finally, about me: I'm a 44 year old father of two who spent 15 years as a civil litigation lawyer representing large corporations (including a commercial jet manufacturer, a large defense contractor, insurance companies, contractors, and retailers) as well as small businesses and individuals (small contractors, homeowner associations suing contractors for construction defects, employees suing for discrimination and harassment, etc.). For the past few years, I've worked as an arbitrator and mediator, and as a homemaker, because my schedule is flexible and my wife, at 51, is back in school full time. We live on the West Coast, and for fun I volunteer with local search and rescue units. And, needless to say, I'm an amateur policy wonk -- but hopefully a fairly knowledgeable one, due to my law degree, my minor in Poli Sci, and my fairly extensive involvement in a couple of political campaigns.
That's about as much as I want to say about who I am, because I don't feel like I'm really that important to this thing. Yesterday alone, this site received over 5,500 hits by the time of the cloture vote; if that averaged even one phone call per hit, that's enough calls to have clogged every Senator's mailboxes from here alone. I'm proud of that, but not that full of myself. I didn't make thousands of calls. I just had an idea, I had the time to do a lot of typing of contact info, I'm enough of a blogwhore to spread word about that resource in a few key places, and then I just sat back and watched in amazement as all these amazing people ran with the ball. The fact that I did it is an accident. The fact that all of you did it isn't.
I guess going forward, my credentials matter a little more, because I'm going to be putting my ideas front-and-center on this website and am asking people to keep participating. At the same time, I'm working to make a website with several bloggers, as close to open-source as I can without losing control, giving trolls too much of a forum, or losing the Vichy focus and having it turn into just another "politics" site.
Enough free-association. I'm rambling. But you took the time to post some serious concerns a couple days ago, and then to come back and raise them again, and I thought you deserved a serious and thoughtful response. I hope the above helps.
Thanks for responding. Many things to be learned in this whole process - an ongoing story. Have a lot of personal stuff to tend to over the next day or so, so will come back when time frees up.
I particularly liked reading the line about encouraging folks to be doing In-vivo political work out in their local communities, since in this day and age limiting oneself to On-line activity --while certainly Something -- is not The ticket that'll change the tide.
lis riba: a friend of the blog is working on a new site even as we speak -- and it WILL have an rss feed!
Also, if you use Firefox 1.5 or later, a little orange thingy shows up in the address bar of this site. Click it and it'll get added to your "live bookmarks" -- basically the same thing as rss.
Thanks for the input!!
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