On occassion of my 1000th post!!!!!!....i luv you guys!

[LiberalLovinLug]

I assume that is some kind of DU accomplishment, or have I just plateaued? I will share some rambling thoughts after 3 years as a member.

DU: The best left leaning political news and discussion forum board out there.

Not only is DU the place to go to get the latest news and opinion pieces, it is organized so well. It is the most user friendly of all the progressive boards. When i comment, I don't have to wait to see my post and more importantly not too long for any reaction to it. DU encourages discussion, and that is appreciated. It takes not only a dedicated ownership and administration, but hard working volunteer moderators to make it happen that way. I have at times criticized the over-moderation (like not being able to see what the offending remark was), but I applaud them all over all for doing a great job.

The fund raising drives are always unique and fun, the DUzy awards and top ten conservative idiots (please come back) make this a place where I can have a laugh to compensate the more depressing news. It doesn't feel the need to lace the pages with Entertainment Tonight type stories like some other prominent liberal news site, but it is not as dry and static as others. Just the right mix!

Some of you may know I am a Canadian, from some of my posts. I am so glad to find a site where I can find friends who share my belief systems, no matter where they come from. Some may criticize my participation on an American political party discussion site, but if you look on it from a Canadian perspective, the USA is the most influential force on Canada in many departments, economically, and security wise. You are our largest trading partner. But many Americans may be surprised to know that the opposite is also true - Canada is the USA's biggest trading partner as well. Our countries are so intertwined, that whatever happens in your country greatly effects our own, especially that we are 10 times smaller in population. At any rate, I have always felt welcome even though I can never vote in your great country (it is great is so many ways). As long as you acquiesce us one small area of victory, that being the Olympic hockey title, I'm happy.

The admins on this board have done a great job, but they are facing a quandary, which they have tepidly tackled from time to time. That is that this is the Democratic Underground and not the Progressive Underground. But what happens when the Democratic party veers from their core principles and start behaving like Republican lite? Or perhaps even worse, are so afraid, politically, of the Republican tea bagging morans and the media companies that stoke them, that they capitulate sometimes even before being inevitably lambasted by FAUX and friends in the other MSM. That the Democrats in charge seem to have bought into the GOP myth that America is a right wing nation, even though if you asked Americans on an issue by issue basis, you would find most leaning liberal, this is frustrating. "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is one of the most famous phrases in the United States Declaration of Independence. Liberal thinking means to have an open mind, to be open to new ways, and America was always looked on as the place where new ideas and progressive thinking was integral to its personality. As a more reserved Canadian, this is one of the many qualities we quietly admire. Tea bagging self-proclaimed "libertarians" should understand the commonality they have with "liberals". Libertarians, at least on paper, would have no issue with gay marriage, or minorities in places of leadership as long as they earn it on their own, or stopping the war on drugs, and scaling back the tax dollars spent on the military. The one place I as a liberal veer away is that I acknowledge there are deficiencies with an unregulated capitalist only system, in that eventually the rich get richer, and the poor poorer, and all the morale depleting social misery that causes is destructive to a country. That raising the quality of life for the bottom to middle of the population through a fair progressive taxation actually helps the whole country through less crime, and medical costs down the road, not to mention the benefits of generally a more happy populace. Liberal does not necessarily mean socialist. Most liberals I have met are for a mixture of private industry and public programs. Anyways, I'm preaching to the choir. Personally I interpret the word "Democratic" in the banner in the most broad definition possible. And thank gawd, I think the administrators, for the most part, do as well.

I have watched this place unite, understandably, during the horrid G. W. Bush term, and now I watch it degenerate somewhat during Obama's short term, also understandably IMO. Keith Olberman in his recent rant on Gibb's verbal abuse of the progressive base which only stokes the agitation in the Democratic left base, says it far more eloquently than I ever could. The progressive campaigner Obama is not the DLC carefully controlled President Obama unfortunately. There is a sense of betrayal, and more - downright abuse, of anyone with a point of view from the left. But what are the alternatives? There's the rub. Hence the divide in this place. Some use their heads and some their hearts. Sad we have to choose.

It seems to me that the internet is the last bastion of freedom left for expression. That's why I think net neutrality is THE biggest issue ahead in the coming decade for liberals (and should be for libertarians as well). The corporatization of the net has already started. Once the large media conglomerates including News Corp, divide up the internet pie for only themselves, you will find sites like DU suddenly difficult to log onto. Bandwidth given to more pro-corporate sites like FAUX News will be limitless. The average consumer will naturally gravitate to the less aggravating-to-get-onto sites for their news sources. I'm waiting for the Gulf of Tonkin of the net to occur at some point. A false flag terr'ist attack freezing the net or infiltrating a military computer network. Combine that with the corp media's overblown "cyber sexual predator" threat will eventually result in the two corporate owned parties uniting to declare that there must be new controls over the net, but in bipartisan spirit that control will not go to the government, but to a few select corporations.

And I'll be here to fight that to protect sites like Democratic Underground. Because in spite of the tensions that arise naturally within a large tent that includes DLC moderates and die-in-the-wool socialists and every position in between, this is THE best political news and discussion site, full of wonderful writers and people of all backgrounds.

You folks are the best!