Saturday night thoughts about my ending vacation, Monday's return to work and other things.

In the background I'm listening to my satellite dish channel 856 XM "Audio Visions. A place where you can be surrounded by the sounds of nature, poetry and acoustic music."

That's cool music since today I broke the surround-sound DVD player but figured out how to get the TV music channel to distribute to the 7 surround-sound speakers I ain't taking down from the ceiling.

it's crazy-making ...

Often it seems that folks like me are paid by Washington citizens to do what they not only cannot do but refuse to do themselves ... get involved with the needy.

I suppose you could call me a professional getter-involved, do-gooder 

... or perhaps a surrogate who acts for all those who could but won't

... or perhaps welfare workers are like those hired by early "patriots" to fight in the revolution so they didn't have to.

Regarding the homeless ...

the poor ...

and right now particularly, the veterans.

If we can't see them they don't exist in our moral conscience.

They are subject to priorities governed by agency number crunchers governed by legislatures governed by political considerations and misguided perceptions of how the public feels about it's poorest segment of society.

Welfare reform as legislated nationally by the Thuglican Gingrich-America-contractors in the mid 1990's was primarily driven by negative images designed and created by the framing forefathers of the current swift-bloat crowd that can turn Johnny Appleseed into Oil Can Henry.

Images... of a single mother standing in the grocery checkout line with a child sitting in the grocery cart and with food stamps in her hand surrounded by presuming non food-stamp patrons smug in their awareness of being "better-than" and resentful of that young mother who more than likely cheated on her application in order to qualify for food assistance.

Furthermore, I've met smug Daddies who - not knowing what I do for a living - have bragged about their sons machoness; their procreative studhood and ability to seduce girls, dodge responsibility and accountability when that studdiness results in conception;

... jerk baby boomer aged dorks my own age who actually insist that the slut who lured their wunderkind son into bed deserves what she gets and despite birthing his grandchild, deserves nothing from their son but contempt.

What happenes in a society when a father teaches his son irresponsibility and that it's okay to whisper anything necessary in the dark in order to get the clothes off?

And then find the junior-high-level maturity of that lover-boy stud in a tavern bragging pridefully about how they did it while whining morosely if the Division of Child Support comes knocking?

Single pregnant females of course are accountable and responsible for their pregnancy as well as the males. But we as a society tend very much to blame the mothers almost entirely, look the other way regarding a criticism of the father because he's out of sight and therefore out of mind.

That's the same sort of thing that drives public apathy toward the homeless.

If I arrive home from work upset, more often than not I'm angry at the mindlessness of agency bureaucrats or the cowardly indifference of absent relatives of the needy.

And don't get me started about churches who get all straining and diahhretic about what gays are doing but don't pour out of their churches and into the street in moral outrage about how a nation stays bereft of real morale values while worshipping consumption.

On blogging at Washblog.com,  a community or group blog.

11/2006

We all have things that make us sigh heavily, twitch with weariness and tempt us to pretend we're the classroom "niceness" monitors. As one who spent lots of time booted out of classrooms and who was on a first-name basis with the school superintendant because of time in his office, I know shushers when I read them here.

Discussion and arguments about party leadership at this site - which is not a Democratic organ in any sense - will by defintion include criticism of leadership. That's what the "demo" in democractic means.

For those who think Washblog is an organ of the state Demo party, don't expect you can sing party hymns here at this organ without choir cut-ups like me howling along in counter melody.

Regarding our continuing writing about Senator Cantwell, this "I think you all should get over it and move on," is the cancer of cancers in that it leaves areas of vital concern unaddressed.

Why do they do it?

Hell I don't know, but I do smell a tag team thinking that links defenders of the faith on this site. Re-reading both recent Washblog articles on Pelz [State Democratic Party Chairman] and all the comments that precede this one, I'd say it looks like a pretty good theory.

Without falling into pollyana niceness, I'll just declare in my dumbass way that I'll leave my areas of concern alone precisely when I'm ready to and not when some sunday school baby sitter implies that I'm not being nice by continuing.

Defenders of the state democratic faith here only exacerbate and encourge more discussion when they try to suppress critics of their idols who may be neither good strategists nor good mechanics on a blog that gets public media attention.

Interest in this thread and all Washblog threads should end the old fashioned way - when we run out of things to say and look for something else to talk about, not when party loyalists try to keep us censored.

I'm willing to make room or stay .... but,

Correct me if I'm wrong cause when I was invited to write for Washblog I was not under the impression that Washblog is an official organ of the state democratic party.

Brian, if you and the editorial board consider Washblog and the Democratic Party to be linked at the hip then you can vote me off the island, off the editorial board and off the front page no questions asked and no resentment from me.

I'm politically a liberal conservative first and a conservative liberal second and no party's property.

I joined the Democratic Party for the first time after the 2004 election losses - not because of acute party loyalty, but because unlike minority party members who have less important things to talk about than Iraq, I saw Demos as the biggest gun to blow up the Republican Party and fire as many bums as possible.

If I wanted to be a conformist, I would have stayed a Mormon with my own mythic version of reality.

I remain an opinionated independent and will continue to write that way. That's why I came here, to encounter opinionated independent thinkers who'd talk back to me and maybe even straighten me right out!

If State Democratic Party generals - like Mr. Perlz - are dumb enough to insist that Iraq is nothing more than a political abstraction and no greater piece of the pie than other abstractions by which Democrats can maximize politcal power for the sake of power, then I'll start writing to fire Demos right away.

So tell me, do we have an approved thinking and a political orthodoxy here?

I hope not. I hope that resistance to crowd control and conformity waxes white hot at this site.

I also hope that eventually the site will grow a sense of humor and a wider range of things about which to blog.

The writing here with it's predominant focus on party, precinct, past and future elections has become way too "Johnny One-Note," acutely predictable and dull regardless of the importance of the issues being written about.

We're citizen bloggers first and foremost, not academics writing to impress peers. Yet so much of what shows up here is written for a narrow audience and seems to have a fear of disagreement, contradictive criticism or discord that writers attempt to cope by explantory exceptions and footnotes.

If KOS is the model, Washblog appears to be attempting to be a mini-KOS but only around a very narrow range of topics,

... and in such a predictable, narrowly focused and - I'll say it again - humorless fashion the blog will get ever more boring because it has very little if any essence of vigorous and firework personality.

What's the direction Washblog ought to take now that the elections are past? What do we have to talk about in the future based on the abstractions upon which Washblog was apparently founded?

Primarily legislation, initiatives and candidates? Perhaps an occasional call to swarm to save some Demo office-holder who stepped in a cow pie?

Come on!

I seriously doubt that Drinking Liberally sounds like Washblog reads! Are DL sippers limited and underspoken, especially when the imbibing is supposedly liberal?

We should expand our view here beyond mere legislative politics. "Washblog" implies a statewide blog with commentary about all things happening in the state. Why would we not take this site to the next level and stop worrying about becoming somebody els'e mini-version?

On content

I read the draft as a kind of framework within which a general sense of consistency or direction is inlaid at Washblog in as unspoken a manner as possible.

Certainly a document full of what you can write about and what you can't write about is nowhere near as effective as a document full of the spirit of the thing rather than the letter of the thing.

... because content is what we desire

... as much content as possible.

Like casting handfuls of seeds in a field in hopes that enough will grow to sustain the family ... as opposed to only planting those acceptible seeds in the places where acceptible seeds are anticipated to grow best.

More and more content ... within the "spirit" of Washblog, which we will establish far more powerfully than any written credo, we will sift the content and police the place more effectively without squelching or discouraging participation.