No exclamation point, because none needed. All the credit and agreement in the world with Canuckistanian for that post, who rightly recognizes the quiet DUers who read and recommend, and are the backbone of DU. This post is NOT to detract from that one in any way. Their recognition is long overdue.

That post reminds me, however, of those of you who have lifted me up, have shared your personal pain, have cheered when we have won, have hurt together when we've lost, and shared losses far more profound than political.

And when you've posted screwy stuff, or great music or movie videos, or historical memories, or cartoons or stories about your friends, family and pets (but then I repeat myself about the latter), I've enjoyed them. And of course, pulling Skinner's tail - well, that's been a decade of fun. Or mentioned sports. (Go Green!)

We've shared our unshakable opposition to an awful war in Iraq, our losses of those who have mattered to us, and our appreciation of those that are still with us, and those we hope to be with for years to come (writing this as the Traverse City Film Festival begins, and I'm here).

And for all the quiet DUers, and those who have made a joyful and righteous noise over the past decade, I can only quote the late Ted, who puts it best. However, before doing so, have an ice cream cone for all of us and yourself as we enter August. Quiet or not, everyone deserves one here at DU.

The People.

The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
"I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
I could read and study
and talk things over
and find out about things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time."

The people is a tragic and comic two-face: hero and hoodlum:
phantom and gorilla twisting to moan with a gargoyle mouth:
"They buy me and sell me...it's a game...sometime I'll
break loose..."

Once having marched
Over the margins of animal necessity,
Over the grim line of sheer subsistence
Then man came
To the deeper rituals of his bones,
To the lights lighter than any bones,
To the time for thinking things over,
To the dance, the song, the story,
Or the hours given over to dreaming,
Once having so marched.

Between the finite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
Yet this reaching is alive yet
for lights and keepsakes.

The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
They are in tune and step
with constellations of universal law.
The people is a polychrome,
a spectrum and a prism
held in a moving monolith,
a console organ of changing themes,
a clavilux of color poems
wherein the sea offers fog
and the fog moves off in rain
and the labrador sunset shortens
to a nocturne of clear stars
serene over the shot spray
of northern lights.

The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
"Where to? what next?"

Thank you, Carl Sandburg. Abe, too. We must win this election.



And visit here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002949146#post28

Source: Washington Post

It has been truly exceptional,” said Chris Vaccaro, a spokesman for the National Weather Service. The high by 3:35 was 105 degrees at Reagan National Airport.

That breaks the previous record for this date, 102 in 2010, and this is only the 5th time on record that the temperature has hit 105 in DC. The all-time record is 106 degrees.

“We continue our record-setting stretch of days at or above 95 degrees,” Vaccaro said. Today is the tenth consecutive day, and tomorrow will likely be the eleventh, he said.

“We made a quick run for the for the triple-digit mark: The temperature hit 100 degrees before noon,” he said. It will be triple digits all afternoon and into the early evening hours. . .

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/regional

---

We're not alone, I know. Ran errands this morning and staying in like everyone else today, in the (thankfully) up and running air conditioning. For now.

Only one man could possibly describe how hot it is today.



It was so hot today that Burger King was singing, "if you want it your way, cook it yourself."

It was so hot today I saw a robin dipping his worm in Nestea.

It was so hot, musicians were snorting ice cubes.

It's so hot, your Odor Eaters have sent up a white flag.

It’s so hot I saw two trees fighting over a dog.

He is the Real Deal.



"It was the first time in my career, in my life, I realized someone could go out -- and I probably shouldn't say this with the press here, but no, but it's more important, you're more important. For the first time in my life, I understood how someone could consciously decide to commit suicide," the vice president said at the TAPS National Military Survivor Seminar and Good Grief Camp in Arlington, Va., according to Politico. "Not because they were deranged, not because they were nuts, because they had been to the top of the mountain, and they just knew in their heart they would never get there again."

Biden then gave a painful account of the day of the incident, which took place just weeks before his swearing in as a first-term U.S. senator.

"I was down in Washington hiring my staff and I got a phone call, saying that my family had been in an accident," he said. “And just like you guys know by the tone of the phone call, you just knew. You knew when they walked up the path. You knew when the call came. You knew. You just felt it in your bones: Something bad happened. And I knew -- I don’t know how I knew, but the caller said my wife is dead. My daughter is dead. And I wasn’t sure how my sons were going to make it. They were Christmas shopping and a tractor trailer broadsided them.

"In one instant, killed two of them and, well..." Biden said, his voice brimming with emotion.

After completing his own chronicle of grief and dealing with tragedy, the vice president ended on a positive note, encouraging listeners to stay strong and understand that the darkness cast by the death of a loved one will lift.

"Folks, it can and will get better," Biden said. "There will come a day -- I promise you, and your parents as well -- when the thought of your son or daughter, or your husband or wife, brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye. It will happen."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57441915-503544/biden-recounts-personal-loss-shares-anguish-with-military-families/

It was so with Vietnam, where Mitt Romney "served" in France, Rush got by with a boil on his butt, W. had connections and Dick Cheney had better things to do. But they sent my peers to the slaughter, happily (caveat: draft #247, second year of the lottery. I was lucky, but then I didn't cheer for that war. Instead, I protested. Had hair then).

Skip forward to now: The drumbeat for attacking Iran is growing, and it's the same privileged class that is front and center to send the children of other folks to die (see, Afghanistan). Mitt Romney's five sons will, of course, continue to live their lives of unimaginable privilege.

These are the same folks who insist on more tax cuts for themselves while cutting Medicaid and ending Medicare and Social Security for the rest of us. The same warmongers who would cut food stamps, end unemployment benefits and double the tax burden on students while cutting taxes for the Kochs. And don't get me started on the environment or the Supreme Court.

They are Killers. "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

I have never seen a more concerted, boiling cauldron of hate in all my years. Thank you, DU, for being an oasis of sanity in this unraveling world. Stop the wars. I have seen enough.

Mom had a high school diploma, but that was it. She was a Rosie the Riveter type in WWII, working at Packard (see below). She married a very bright guy who was an abuser, and my earliest memories are of sheltering my little brother before the police came as he beat her. But that's another story. Since she never received a dime from her abusive ex-husband, she went on welfare (gasp!) for about six months. Then she got a job doing laundry at a high school for 20+ years, and was beloved by all, even if she didn't make hedge fund manager wages. We were never hungry, and lived in our tidy and clean house.

My brother and I went on to be the first in our family to get college degrees, and more. In retirement, she was a nationally recognized doll maker, subject of many articles. I've never met a better person, and the HELL with those like Mitt Romney who spit on women trying to raise their kids alone.

Oh, I forgot to mention: Mom was the first woman in the USA to win the War Production Board award in WWII. You may recognize the other woman congratulating her.