I have a friend. She is not a dem or a rep, but

[MoseyWalker]

she cares about what happens to her family, and how much harder it is today compared to 6 years ago. She could care less about the infighting regarding who is going to be on the Dem ticket. She could care less about most of the infighting and crossfighting and just plain fighting.

Arguments don't sway her opinion. Anger and frustration that others express about their representatives and white house wannabees don't matter to her.

What matters to her is that her mom is old and very, very sick, and she is having a difficult time finding ways to help her. What matter to her is that everytime she goes to the store to buy food for her family, it costs more and she gets less. What matters to her is that her nieces and nephews are not learning what they should be learning, in her eyes, and are not being adequately educated. What matters to her is that her sister is being tried on drug use charges, and may have to be sent to one of the private prisons in the state rather than getting help in a treatment program.

She could care less than dog shit whether or not a politician has a big house. She could care less than dog shit whether or not a politician is a closet lesbian. She could care less about the "games" that people play.

She cares about her life, and her family. That is what will cause her to vote.

This is a real person in my life, and I don't think she is alone in her thoughts or reactions.

She doesn't care about games that people play, and she doesn't care what people say.

She cares about the future.

So do I. What is truly important? Before you answer, please think about your family for a moment.

The nitpicking, shitkicking destruction of our candidates before they even get started is insane; if one loves their family and the future of the country.

That is all I had to say.

[lostnotforgotten]

1. But Which Candidate Does Matter - We Read Stories Here Regularly About

Republicans that wish they could retract their Bush vote.

He is a son of privilege, born with a silver spoon.

I think its time we need a Mother Teresa not another Nouveau Rich person.

[China_cat]

4. Mother Teresa is a bad choice.

We need someone better than a person who had $10,000,000.00 in just ONE bank account and refused to buy even aspirin to relieve the pain of people dying of cancer; someone who would take a million dollars of money she knew was stolen and then write a letter to the judge asking him to be easy on the person who stole it.

[MoseyWalker]

5. I'm lost on this reply

What is the story, in more detail? I really don't know.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

7. You haven't read the expose on Mother Theresa, have you?

Christopher Hitchens (yeah, I know he's a drunk and can't win an argument with George Galloway) wrote an expose on Mother Theresa by talking to a woman who was a nun and her former bookkeeper. She had millions of dollars and refused to spend it on medical care to relieve suffering of all the people in her so called hospitals, that didn't treat a damn thing, just gave the sick a place to lay their head down. It was a complete farce, apparently.

[Rosemary2205]

6. Yeah, what ARE you talking about?

Links?

[China_cat]

14. Mother Teresa was not the saint she'd like you to think she was.

I you want an example of someone good, MT is NOT it.

http://www.meteorbooks.com/ (The Final Verdict...from an Indian writer)
http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/featpostel_56_p.htm (Hitchens interview)
http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/dmar1.htm
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/religion/mother-teresa/

[John Q. Citizen]

2. She sounds ripe for fascism. They make the trains run on time, I've heard.

[MoseyWalker]

3. Someone whose thoughts and feelings

are with their family and what they are going through, and trying to decide how to make the changes necessary to assist in creating a more positive world for them is leaning towards fascism?

Did you forget you sarcasm thingy, or what?

[John Q. Citizen]

13. From your description of your friend, it sounds like she's ready to vote for

whoever tells her what she wants to hear.

If she isn't interested in finding out if they are sincere, if they can be trusted, if they have good judgment, what their history is, then she sounds ripe for the plucking so to speak.

For instance, is she concerned that the hundreds of billions of dollars spent on the war could have instead have been spent on health care or senior care? Or will she vote for someone who has voted hundreds of billions for war in Iraq but who then tells her that health care or senior care is foremost on their agenda, and without checking out their record against their words?

Because if she doesn't, she may end up with someone who tells her health care is very important, but who then spends the money on war in Iraq, or war in Iraq and Iran. Which won't help her or her family much on that score.

I can't guess what drug her sister may go to jail for, but is she aware that the meth epidemic could be stopped completely? So why hasn't it? Because the big pharma companies make so much money on the basic necessary ingredient to produce meth, which is psuedoephedrine, that many politicians are reluctant to interfere with those huge profits being derived by the big corporations.

So if a candidate is more concerned with corporate profits than with your friends sisters problems, she shouldn't expect that any real progress is going to be made on meth. All candidates will say they are opposed to meth, but which candidates are willing to take on big pharma to actually do something about it? If she isn't interested in finding that out, (which your post implies) then I guess she might be a little naive about who to vote for.

And I could make similar arguments about other addictive drugs. Opium production has sky rocketed since we occupied Afghanistan. The crack cocaine epidemic is tied to our foreign policy and our domestic policy, as is the treatment facilities available for people addicted.

So yes, a candidates record, their judgment, and their personal appetites and ambitions are important factors to consider when choosing whom to vote for.

Even if your friend really doesn't care about all that.

[Warpy]

8. So far, only Edwards, Kucinich and Webb are talking about

the beating 80% of us have taken over the last 38 years, and Webb isn't running.

Until we can get this rhetoric front and center, nothing is going to change. People will waste their precious vote on a candidate's looks, family, speaking voice, anything but issues because without this attention to what is happening to most of us in fascist America, their positions don't matter.

The working class is a sleeping dragon. It's going to take hope to awaken it and throw the fascists where they belong: in prison.

[MoseyWalker]

9. Great reply

and I thank you for that. Truth doesn't always hurt, because they can't see it. The working people of this country had better wake up soon. Remember when your father had a good paying union job while you were growing up? Well, look at yourself working in a retail store selling shit and making next to nothing with no future and no job security.

The people used to understand, and I fear it will take much more to wake them up from their hypnotic slumbers.

[Warpy]

15. My pop was a sales manager whose territory was everything

east of the Mississippi. After paying some pretty stiff dues for 20 years, I went into nursing and stayed there until my body gave out, after which I went back to paying those dues until my pop died.

I still consider myself to be incredibly lucky every time I look around my small house in a very bad neighborhood and think about how marginal workers live in this town: campers on blocks, tarpaper shacks or tents in the woods near the river, freak show cheap motels that rent by the week, derelict trailers with no plumbing or electricity out on the west mesa, and homeless shelters.

The first time I crossed into Mexico, it was the late 70s, and the Juarez streets were thick with beggars. The next time was the late 80s, and all the beggars were on the US side.

This isn't my country any more. I don't recognize it.

It's obvious to me that Marx was absolutely right about one thing: the direct cause of poverty is the amassing of wealth by the few.

[blm]

10. Fascists in prison is my goal.

It's the fascisst who've been PREVENTING this country from compassionately and effectively dealing with its real life problems.

[Cleita]

11. This happened during the Reagan-Bush years and then the

voters turned out, who usually stayed home, to elect Clinton. But it only took them those eight years to forget what had gone before and they stayed home instead of turning out in numbers to defeat Bush, which could have happened in spite of a rigged election in a key electoral state, Florida. If those people who could care less had voted like they did this time, we could have skipped over this part of our history.

I hope in the future we fix our election system so that it becomes almost impossible to cheat on elections like embezzling from a bank is almost impossible because of checks and double checks in the system. Then maybe the could care lesses can stay home, not vote, and let the rest of us make sure we get the government we want not only for us but for them too.

[MadMaddie]

12. MoseyWalker..you know what's important to me?

That my partner of 14 years doesn't have to fight for our property, or the right to visit me in the hospital were something ever to happen to me. That she have access to our money that we have saved together.

What's important to me is that we both have health insurance. I am purchasing two individual policies because she is not considered a spouse by the insurance company so we are paying more money.

What is important to me is that my parents have health care and not making a choice between health care and groceries.

Anyhoo...that's what's important to me.

[Postman]

16. Sounds like she doesn't know it yet that she is a liberal....

like most people.

We all want the same things, basically. We're all liberals.

That's why the republican propaganda machine has to work soo hard to change people's attitudes. To get them to NOT think in those terms.