I'm curious about the age demographics in this Group - please vote!

This poll is strictly about what age groups are present in this Group, the numbers in the poll choices are years of age. If you're under 25 or older than 66, it would be cool if you posted your actual age in the thread - but only if you want to, of course! Thanks!

In the interest of accuracy, let's be clear that there were only two short periods in 2009-2010

in which Democrats, and the 2 Independents who caucused with them, held 60 seats:

I'll always vividly remember my first earthquake after I had moved to AK from nice, calm MN.

It didn't scare me so much as it just plain fascinated me. It was my first year in Alaska, I was living with my two boys in a rental house on the banks of Willow Creek. This would have been sometime in the fall of 1989, I think. (or else it was in the spring of 1990)

Anyway, it was night and the boys were in bed. I was watching the nightly local news on Channel 2, when all of a sudden the camera that was shooting the news anchors sort of tilted sideways, and the newsreaders stopped speaking and sort of gaped wide-eyed and open-mouthed as they clutched their shaking news desk - and in the same moment the couch I was sitting on started vibrating, and everything in the house started rattling. The weirdest thing of all is that all the walls looked like they had turned into liquid - honest to gawd, they were, like, rippling!

It all happened in the space of probably less than a minute, but it felt much longer than that, of course. I just sat there on my vibrating couch thinking, Wow! Far out! A real earthquake! Damn!

A few minutes later - after the walls had solidified once more and my couch stopped behaving like a rogue sex aid, I had a huge attack of guilt that I hadn't once thought of my precious sleeping children - nor lept into action to save us all from dire destruction and certain death from an earthquake bringing the house down around us. Nope, I had just passively sat there, taking it all in as exotic entertainment. I am a terrible mother, I thought.

But the kids slept through it - although they were both irritated that they had missed the fun when I told them about it the next day.

For the rest of my 6 years in Alaska I only felt a few negligable temblors now and then - and half the time I wasn't sure if they were very small or very distant earthquakes, or if it was just a side effect of some of the Matanuska Thunderfuck I had just smoked.

For my 27th thousand post on DU.

I've been on DU since sometime in 2001 - I don't remember which month I joined. I know I began reading DU in the spring of 2001, and was a registered member by the time of the 9/11 attacks. My registration number is 106679, which means I was the 6,679th person to sign up on DU.

I doubt many people are familiar with my username these days, since I have never been a paricularly profligate poster, and these days I maybe post a comment in the main forums no more than 2 -3 times a week, and post an OP less than 3-4 times a year. But I've been here reading all along, through all these 13+ years. I've seen countless DUers that I knew from the early days drift away or get banned - and there are many of those who got banned whom I dearly miss even today. Not to mention those very precious DUers who shuffled off this mortal coil - to the grievous loss of us all.

Anyway, the last time I marked a milestone in my post count was when I reached 1,000 posts, ages ago. Back then I was in a friendly race with Jackpine Radical for reaching the 1,000 mark - I think I may have won, but I honestly don't remember for sure. What matters to me now is that he is still here and still posting, and is still my good friend. Thank you, Jackpine! And if you won that race, please be sure to correct the record!

I totally missed noticing when I made my 10,000th post, and totally missed noticing when I made my 20,000th post - so I've been sort of half-assed watching for this 27,000 mark - just for the heck of it. I noticed I had reached 26,999 on Monday, so I started thinking about what I might want to write for #27,000, to mark the occasion.

So, this is it. This is how I'm marking my 27,000th post on DU.

I still love this place - even as I despair about many things that go on here, even as I miss how it was in the early days, even as I feel anger, disgust, despair about how people have come to treat each other here - I mean, come on, can't some of you at least TRY to be kind to each other?

DU is my home on the internet - literally, it's my homepage, has been since 2001. After all these years here, I can't imagine my life without DU. And I've "met" so many wonderful, extraordinary people here - some in real life, for which I will always be grateful.

Please be kind to each other. Please don't automatically assume ill intent on the part of those with whom you disagree. When your first instinct is to respond to someone with anger or snark, please take a moment before you click "post" to consider the possibility that you might have misinterpreted their intent. Please take a moment to consider that your reflexively moving into combat mode will only result in defensiveness and combativeness in return.

I think that most of us are here because we care about the state of our country and its governance, and we hope that, through our discussions with each other, we can share and promote ideas for creating a better future. What else is the point?

Really, this is all I have to say for my 27,000th post: please treat each other with kindness.

Thanks,
sw

In aid of memory: Roll Call of the 2002 Senate vote on the IWR.

Poll question: Why hasn't Henry Kissinger died yet?

Inspired by this post in Good Reads: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1016&pid=91011

He will be 91 years old this May.

(Edited to belatedly add "All of the Above" option - you may change your votes at will.)

I came across a quote years ago - it was so succinct and right on, and it pains me greatly that

I can't remember it.

The gist of it is: We can never forgive those who we have harmed the most.

This is the core of white racism, this is the source of the hate. It's the unconscious recognition of the crimes committed against "The Other" that is so painful that it won't be acknowledged consciously. It gets twisted into hatred of the victims, because their very existence holds up a mirror - and in order to block out what the mirror reveals, the Other must be dehumanized and despised.

That is, in order to deny our guilt, and maintain our self-serving fiction that we are "good", we need to make our victims deserving of their oppression.

I'm so sorry that I can't remember the actual quote or where it came from. All I can remember is how it made so much sense.

I found some lovely links:

I vote. I've voted in every election since 1970. Midterms, presidential elections, doesn't matter.

I've never not voted for 44 years, ever since I was old enough to vote. (They lowered the voting age too late for me to able to vote in 1968)

I don't vote based on hoping I'll get what I want. I vote because because I want to be counted. I vote because I want those who end up running things - for good or for ill - to know that I'm one of the people watching and paying attention.

This notion that it's a matter of principle to only vote when there's someone running who meets your personal criteria for a "true liberal" or a "true progressive" is a massive missing of the heart of the matter.

You can't always get what you want. What you CAN do is demonstrate that, in spite of everything, you are insisting that you be counted as an active participant in the exercise of our collective democratic right to vote.

As Emma Goldman said (paraphrasing here), If voting really changed things it would be made illegal. I sadly agree - but I'll still vote because I want TPTB to know that I'm out here watching what they do.

I vote because I want to be counted, nothing more.

sw

I have to do it. Poll question: How many of you own a copy of "The Big Lebowski"?