It comes up now and again, doesn't it?
"All you guys do on here is pie fights and meta"
"Nothing on here makes an impact in the real world"
"Why aren't you out doing something productive"
Well, here's an example of how completely useless these stupid liberal dreamers at Daily Kos are (please, be patient): I attended a town hall meeting with my irrational teabagger representative yesterday.
It is part of the broader MoveOn/RootsAction/Rebuild the American Dream Lefty summer of love for our fellow Americans, so it's not surprising that my husband and I attended. I'd say most of those there had signs, donated by the fine people at Northern Illinois Jobs With Justice, asking that Wall Street millionaires be taxed and urging support of John Conyers' new infrastructure jobs plan.
The mayor of the small town hosting our Teapresentative spoke first, thanking people for coming and urging us to use our signs, but not to block anyone's view or anything. Then the Teapublican spoke for about fifteen minutes, blaming almost everything on Democrats (though he gave about thirty seconds to "the 2000-08 Republicans" and then completely contradicted himself later). He also included a quote from, IIRC, the CEO of Home Depot that called everyone who disagrees with right-wing idiocy "brain-dead." But it's all about civility, folks...
Many people asked good, solid questions about why he wouldn't raise taxes, especially given Warren Buffet's support for the idea. His main explanation sounded very Fitzwalkerstanian, that "he campaigned" against raising taxes, so his constituents' only recourse is to remove him from office if they want someone to raise taxes now or changed their minds. I didn't fact-check to see if that was really a campaign promise or not, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that like his policy cousin, Scott Walker, he wasn't telling the truth.
There were a couple Tea plants in the audience, of course. But the liberal dreamer part is this: Some left-wing person who clearly knows and does nothing in the real world wrote something about military pensions and cuts to Tricare/Medicare providers on here yesterday. http://www.dailykos.com/...
And I read it yesterday, did some research thanks to you spotlighting this issue, looked specifically at the provider cuts and got very angry and worried, because my father-in-law is a Naval veteran, and my husband and I love him very much. We want him to stay with us for years to come, and we don't want him to have no access to health care.
Of course, we were also concerned about jobs, but the rest of our fantastic friends on the Left had that covered, and the Teapresentative didn't even mention Tricare in his presentation. So my husband and I talked about my father-in-law and his service to the nation, which among other things has diminished his hearing significantly, and asked if the Teapresentative would work on fixing the provider payments, so he and others like him don't have to worry about their health care at least.
And miracle of miracles...he said he would.
You know, I really didn't expect much out of yesterday's meeting with my Teapresentative. And to be fair, I didn't get much more than a promise from him, yet.
But if this works out, if this helps my father-in-law and other veterans like him, well, then, my friends, I have you to thank.
I made sure to thank my Teapresentative as well. Good behavior, even in a small way, should be rewarded. And until we can replace him in 2012, I'm willing to use his services to help the man who gave me such a good husband. Thank you for telling me about it.