Florida Young Democrats Celebrate 75 Years!

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It's Time for Change

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Are you better off now than you were four years ago?

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How Idiotic Arguments Enter the Political Mainstream...

The Overton Window, Illustrated, from Corrente (Boldy shrill...) and other sources.

Or: How extremists play a role in setting public policy.

(click on image for larger view)
As the Overton Window shifts along the spectrum, a specific policy (a notch in the graph) goes through the following phases of public acceptance:

• Unthinkable


• Radical


• Acceptable


• Sensible


• Popular


• Policy

"The Overton Window, in my opinion, is basically the key to the Republicans' success over the past twenty years--and it comes straight from the Republican think tanks. "...the GOP knows that the middle DOES matter. They know that by playing to their base in very well-crafted ways, they can shift the very definition of what the middle is. By introducing radicalism into the public discourse (and taking initial heat for it), whatever used to be radical within this context becomes moderate by comparison." Why the Right-Wing Gets It--and Why Dems Don't by thereisnospoon

This cartoon (© Tom Tomorrow) says it all:

(click on image for larger view)

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Fear and Loathing in Middle America

An article from the July 20, 2007 edition of The American Prospect:

Sasha Abramsky reviews Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War by Joe Bageant (Crown, 288 pages)

Every so often, you pick up a book and two pages in your nose is glued to it. Not necessarily because of the subject matter per se -- though good subject matter certainly helps -- but because the prose is so damned electric.

Usually, I've found, when it comes to reportage like this, the book's author has a single name: Hunter S. Thompson. Recently, though, I've added another name to my stuck-nose lexicon, having been utterly ensnared by Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting With Jesus.

Bageant grew up in a fundamentalist Christian, ultra-working-class family in a claustrophobic little Virginia town named Winchester. Then, in his own terminology, he made his escape. He moved west and made a pretty decent career for himself in the world of journalism. A few years ago, though, he felt a craving for his childhood home and, now deep into middle-age, decided to relocate once more.

So the self-proclaimed socialist, atheist, heavy-drinking, three-times-married Joe returned home ... (Read the entire article)

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The Real Reason The Wingnuts Hate YearlyKos

Posted on OpEdNews.com.

This is an excellent article (here or here) by journalist Marc McDonald, the inspiration behind BeggarsCanBeChoosers.com.

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