I was feeling down in the dumps the other day. My husband was too. But you know what? We went home with a heavy car and $20 less in our pockets and smiles on our faces.

No, no... don’t call mental health services on us. We went to our local –dump- landfill drop-off point and made off like bandits. For a "donation" of a 20-spot, we got a brand new fireplace screen, still shrink-wrapped in the box; a foam head and sturdy card table for doing my summer craft show circuit; a 30-slot electrical panel still in its original box (missing the door latch, big deal); about 15 capstones for cinderblocks (also make good paving stones) and a cool old funky galvanized bucket for my basketry or to put a plant in.

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Well, it's a new old house. 8-)

A couple of months ago, a repo guy drove up to our place and was looking for an address close to ours, but that we had never heard of. The more we thought about it, the more we realized it must be next door.

It seems the owner of the modular house on the parcel next to ours was defaulting, with just $8000 left owed. We used to know the owner, she has some issues (including drug use) and we figure she flat out didn't have it to save her own house, especially considerig she had stupidly deeded the land under the house to her then-boyfriend.

Just as sad and aggrivating for us was the fact that we couldn't scrape together the $5000 needed to buy it from the repo company and move it the 1 mile up to our land so we would have a new house.

But then I posted my frustration and despair to Daily Kos. And that changed.

Hey, just got a look at the new ads for TJ Cox, running against Darth Radanovich in my rural district of CA-19. Pretty nice! What do you think?

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I was replying to a diary last night and typed something that reminded me of something else. I began to hum a tune that was very familiar, but that I hadn't sung in a long time.

I looked up the complete lyrics of this song... then another... then I began to cry.

I'm not just saying it to be dramatic. I really did begin to weep after reading these words, so bright with hope, optimism, pride and beauty.

In writing this diary, I find myself again with tears in my eyes for the land of freedom that used to be.

I love to sing. I do it well. But I cannot sing these songs any more. They're too ironic and sad. They make me cry, and it's too hard to sing when you're crying.

I'm sure most of us remember Bush having to apologize for calling the war in the Middle East a "crusade." Well, now it seems that he thinks he's in the middle of a "Third Awakening of religious devotion," and that the War On Terra (tm) is a "confrontation between good and evil."

Am I having deja vu, or what?

The juicy details below the flip:

HELP! I just got this bit of news from the head of our local Dem Club:

Well, I saw a scroll on the news tonight:

Schwarzenegger plans to veto SB 840.

(follow me... (stupid diary rules...) --->  

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being on a parade float in Mariposa, California, for the opening of the annual Mariposa County Fair. The Democratic Club always has a great float, the largest in the parade, but this year was really special.

This is a brief diary, but I wanted to get the ball rolling. I've been wanting to post this for a few days, but Pontificator's YKos 2007 diary jogged my memory and/or lit a fire under my butt.

There was a little bit of movement in the direction of forming a Rural Caucus just after YKos 2006, but it didn't seem to go anywhere.

I am hereby doing a shout out to all Kossacks who are interested in forming a Rural Caucus with me so that we can get this going.

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Yeah, I'm coming into this late (been working, sick, etc.), and yeah, it's been diaried before I'm sure, but I just now watched the video of Boxer defending Lieberman.

It makes me physically ill to see this woman, who I have trusted all these years, say these words... to watch her covering for LIEberman and appearing at an event FOR his benefit... it proves that "absolute power corrupts absolutely."

To see her avoiding the press like an Abramoff criminal... wearing her fancy suits that cost more than two months of my electricity bill while my family goes without health insurance and has bread for dinner...

So here's what I just emailed her via her website. I know it'll just be shitcanned (she can't be bothered with the icky little people apparently), but it made me feel better --

In recent threads about poverty and rural living, there's been some heart-rending stories, some cries for help, some offers of help, and lots of great ideas. One of my own recent posts had a bunch of links that I've been collecting in my "Survival" bookmark folder. I'll get to those after the flip.

Some say it's an over-used word. Sustainability. It's just for tree hugging eco-freaks, right? It's for people out in the woods with solar hookups tending their gardens in Birkenstocks, right? What does it even mean anyway?

I, like many here, did not get to go to Yearly Kos. The main reason was lack of money. I've been seeing this, every now and again, tucked away in various threads related to YKos. Comments like:

Barely broke even this month, paid rent late... Having to ask my friends in the food industries to "hook me up".....
YearlyKos was a distant dream for me:(
Maybe next year.
-- astronautagogo

And sure, I've been banging this drum loudly myself for the past few days. But apparently to a mostly empty room.

Hey all, I've got a proposal. I see this site as not only a political gathering spot, but a place where Kossacks can get together informally and support each other in a lot of ways.

I saw some great photos from YKos and there was a whole area of booths, and I thought "DUH, why didn't I realize there would be booths of stuff there?" My next thought was "Why don't we do this as a person-to-person e-commerce marketplace offshoot of DKos?" ('Cause that's just how I think, yo.)

So what do you think?

In all honestly, I don't have a lot of time to type this up right now and will come back to comment later after I get the potatoes planted this evening. But I wanted to get this up in the diaries because it's important to both the "alternative energy" crowd and to rural folks.

Ethanol is a scam.

Not only that, it's a big business, big ag, Republican scam.

This will come as a shock to some of you, especially judging from some of the sterling comments I've seen in the past here on DKos, but not all rural people are dumbshits. I know, it's a radical idea, but hear me out.

In several past diaries, but especially this one by VirginiaBell, certain comments have made it clear to me that there is a basic misunderstanding as to who and what those living in rural areas are. Some of this manifests in the form of condescending comments from city dwellers who are convinced that rural people are stupid for living where they do.  

I should point out at this point that most rural counties are "red" and most cities are "blue".

Now then... this particular diary stems from the great "shut up and listen" diary by VetGrl. It made the excellent and sorely needed point that if people did more listening and less talking AT other people, more could be learned on both sides. Someone within that diary further said something to the effect of "there is a difference between listening and waiting to speak."

I keep trying to tell people, including my husband, that Diebold owns our elections. Someone recently posted a diary with loads of examples of Diebold machines "malfunctioning" by voting Bush when Kerry is pressed. It has also been documented that in some precincts there were more votes cast, and even more votes cast FOR BUSH, than there are voters in the precinct.

Today, courtesy of The Smirking Chimp, I read this article about an intentional security hole in Diebold machines you can drive a truck through.

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Just making sure I've covered the bases... for those who did not hear the news the other day, we are NOT doing the sunflowers for Russ after all.

His ethics folks in both his Senate office and at the Progressive Patriots Fund (PPF) will not accept gifts of ANY kind whatsoever, as it could be seen as a conflict with Russ' uber-strict no gifts policy.

Since so many wanted to donate to the PPF instead anyway, I am asking you to please do so today as a show of our support for Russ in lieu of sunflowers

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I got a phone call from a staffer in Sen. Russ Feingold's office, who gave me some bad news. It seems that because of Russ' strong zero-gifts policy, which also extends to the Progressive Patriots Fund, we are unable to do the Sunflowers for Russ campaign.

I have already contacted Art at Coast to Coast Flowers to cancel the campaign, and those that sent me PayPal donations will receive full refunds as soon as I'm done typing this out. If you ordered through Coast to Coast, they only took your information as a pledge for when the order went through, so your credit card was not charged.

BUT........ There's sort of a Plan B........