Drinking Liberally

Drinking Liberally Shot of Truth
by Seth Pearce

Every Fourth of July, we liberals are tasked by the need to prove that you can be both liberal and patriotic. We argue that our dissent, our protest, our standing up for what is right when the government is wrong, makes us patriotic. They argue that if we don't subscribe to the ruling party's platform 100%, we're not patriotic.

So what's a liberal to do? March in the parade? Watch fireworks? Stay home?
Turns out that our own Idaho Falls DL chapter has the answer to this progressive puzzle.

On July 4th, a dozen Idaho Falls liberal drinkers and some of their families entered a float in the local July 4th "Spirit of Freedom" parade. Of course a Drinking Liberally would call a float in such a parade "Free Spirits of Freedom." But they add, "It's about thinking, not drinking."

Standing in front of a portable bar, the crew tossed about 40 pounds of root beer flavored candy to the crowd and mounted a "Stop War" sign to the front of their patriotic vessel.

In this way, the Idaho Falls DL expressed their liberal views loud and proud and managed to join in and celebrate with the rest of their community, some liberal, some conservative but all American.

Sounds like a great to celebrate July 4th. One that's liberal, patriotic, and most importantly: awesome!

1. Naomi Woolf on how Gitmo and Abu Ghraib became institutionalized sex crime rings.

2. Check out Open Left's piece about why Obama shouldn't be afraid of being called a flip-flopper. No, wait! Actually, don't!

3. Slate wonders if Al Franken's history of "racy" jokes will harm his Senate campaign; meanwhile, Sasha Baron Cohen inspires hope for the future, dread of his inevitable new catchphrase (Niiice!)

4. It seems that some Iraq vets have been drinking a little too...liberally? Sorry, we know that's kind of offensive but we just can't stop punning off of our own name...liberally!

5. Former President Bush is the best high school civics teacher ever! Except he's not functionally literate and is always trying to waterboard you during detention.

6. We Made This linked to this Flickr set of the new series of Penguin Great Ideas book covers.

Street Prophets is an awesome blog. It's great to see so many religious progressives getting together to talk about issues of religion and politics, organize around them and most importantly, build community.

This community building is at the heart of what Living Liberally does. We believe that our political identity should be part of our regular lives. Too often politics is restricted to one day every four years, or to long, uninviting meetings in fluorescent-lit, linoleum-floored rooms.

Through our social networks and events, we promote this kind of social/political engagement.. These networks include over 260 Drinking Liberally, Laughing Liberally, Screening Liberally, Reading Liberally, and Eating Liberally chapters in all 50 states.

Through these happy hours, comedy shows, film screenings, book clubs and meals, we fulfill our key mission of bringing politics into places where we gather, socialize, learn, love and live. One of these places to which we have yet to reach out is the liberal religious community, one that, unfortunately, has found few spaces to gather and organize in person, in public, loud and proud.

For this reason we are developing a brand new Living Liberally network: Praying Liberally!

Like our other chapters, Praying Liberally chapters will have weekly, semi-monthly or monthly meetings of local liberals from a wide range of faiths including, as pastordan so excellently phrases it, "those whose deepest faith is in the conviction that there is no God." At these meetings, faithfully-minded liberals could talk politics, say a collective prayer for "the least of these" in our community, our country and our world, and build community to organize around our common causes.

Also like our other chapters, Praying Liberally chapters will receive a web site, chapter blog, listserv and other online organizing tools and support features from the Living Liberally national network.

Hosting a chapter is fun and EASY! All you have to do is decide on a time and location, anywhere from a local religious space to the neighborhood cafe, and send out a quick e-mail reminder before you meet - that's it. Overall, it's no more difficult than meeting with your spiritually progressive friends to hang out and talk politics.

If you're interested in being one of the first to start a Praying Liberally chapter or know someone who might be interested, email info@livingliberally.org.

It's time to find out what it means to Pray Liberally!

As we said in our last Saving People Liberally post, our two Lincoln, NE DL chapter leaders, Paul and Troy, just left the chapter for a month to help fight the California wild fires as volunteer Helicopter Flight Engineers. Paul sent me an update a couple days ago:

We made it here to CA fine. And are readying the aircraft to start dropping water today on the Northern Area fires.

Just so you know there are National Guard Aircrews from many other states here helping also, ND , NV, OR, WA, UT.

We are currently in Sacramento and working from here, but go where ever they need us, so our location may change as the fires are fought in different areas.

To say that this is the worst set of fires ever in CA would be a big understatement, the fire fighters here (CALFIRE) here readily say they have never seen this many fires or this many big fires ever.

This is why crews from all over are here helping, (including us), in addition to all the CA National Guard aircraft, and Navy, Marine and Air Force Helicopters helping out as well.

I don't know if we will get a chance to, but we will try and hook up with the local chapter of DL / LL where ever we are later these coming weeks.

Great to hear from you guys. We wish you the best of luck. Keep living liberally!

1. Matt Yglesias shows what John McCain's economic proposals can do for you... if you are a big oil company. He also liked Hancock. We did too, more on that later.

2. Salon covers Sebelius's VP prospects. A female Mike Bloomberg?

3. The bible belt really eats liberally.

4. Conservatives "Ready to Battle" McCain thus proving that the enemy of your enemy is not always your friend.

5. Obama will accept the nomination in a 75,000 seat football stadium on the 45th anniversary of Dr. King's "I Have a Dream Speech". Chills. 'Twill be awesome.

6. Need another reason not to attack Iran?

7. Amy Goodman tackles Obama's centrism.

8. It seems that the Iraqi government may set a timetable for withdrawal.

9. Ever wondered why my.barackobama is so much like Facebook?

10. California and New York (in 2010) are requiring new cars to display a "Global Warming Score", showing how "green" the vehicle really is. Apparently this is so people can throw things at cars with low scores.

Talking Liberally Progressive Parley
by Seth Pearce, Living Liberally Blog

Part of Living Liberally's mission has been to promote engagement and collaboration among progressive organizations. To fulfill this goal we at Living Liberally have decided to feature interviews with people involved in different parts of the progressive movement. Hopefully, through these interviews, we can learn about what progressives are working on today, and get a little more in depth about what its like to be a part of the progressive movement.

Our first interviewee, Daniel Mintz, is in Research and Development at progressive powerhouse MoveOn.org Political Action. He currently lives in Brooklyn and every once in a while shows up at the Original Drinking Liberally. Enjoy!

Seth Pearce: So, what did your parents say when your organization was condemned by the US congress?
Daniel Mintz: I think, they, like a lot of people, were just blown away that with so many huge problems to tackle, the US Congress decided to spend so much time talking about a newspaper ad. Just like, whether you agreed or disagreed with the ad, what a manufactured controversy.

SP: What exactly do you do at MoveOn?
DM: Officially, I'm in charge of Research and Development, which is to say that I'm the R&D dept. (we're a pretty tiny shop). What that means in practice is that I get to have my hands in lots of cool stuff that we're trying out.

SP: Stuff John McCain would know how to use?
DM: Not so much.

SP: People think of MoveOn as this big shadowy progressive organization, running some kind of secret progressive world order- what are some specific things that MoveOn is working on right now?
DM: Ha. What are we working on right now?...Let's see...We're getting ready to run a massive get out the vote operation in the fall, hundreds of paid organizers working with tens of thousands of volunteers. We'll be essentially combining our 2004 program, Leave No Voter Behind, where people in swing states canvassed their neighbors, with our 2006 program, Call for Change, where MoveOn members across the country made more than 7 million calls to voters in key House and Senate races.

We're also working on FISA: Right now, we're asking thousands of MoveOn members to call their senators every day to tell them not to cave on the FISA "compromise".

And we're running a National Day of Action for an Oil-Free President at gas stations across the country in a few weeks. McCain is pretty darn tight with Big Oil. Many of the more than 100 lobbyists associated with his campaign are lobbyists for Big Oil. We wanted to highlight those ties and push for our next president to free himself and us of our dependence on foreign oil. So we're holding hundreds of gas station rallies where thousands of MoveOn members will show up at local gas stations to rally and call for a real, progressive solutions to the energy crisis.

Follow across the jump for more fresh Mintz.

Conventional wisdom says that Obama
caved on FISA & talked up faith-based programs
because he's appealing to "Independents."

Who knew independents oppose the Constitution?

Obama HAD to disavow Wes Clark's comments --
though Clark only questioned his experience as leader
& specifically honored his courage and will --
since "dishonoring" McCain would turn off independents.

Who knew independents are so ill-informed?

And McCain keeps saying he's a "maverick"
as he continues his "Straight Talk Express"
because these words appeal to independents.

Who knew independents liked slogans so much?!

If "independent" voters read only the spin,
& don't read the Constitution or the news,
maybe we shouldn't ask them to decide elections.

Or maybe "independent" really means something else.

And maybe "independent" candidates
who shy away from principled stands
aren't what we're looking for either.

It's time we take strong positions,
stop listening to the media's darling tales,
and Declare our Independence...from "Independents."

Celebrate the holiday in the most American way:
sharing an evening of spirited discussion
as you share a few pitchers of liberal libations
at your local progressive social club.

DRINKING LIBERALLY
Find - or start - a chapter near you.

Happy 4th of July!

Drinking Liberally Shot of Truth
by Seth Pearce

Today, we here at Living Liberally are both extremely proud and slightly saddened. We're saddened because we are losing our two Lincoln, NE chapter leaders for the next month.

However, our sadness is quickly overcome by how proud we are of what Paul McFarland and Troy Johnson are doing for the next couple weeks.

Early this morning, Troy and Paul left for California, to serve as Helicopter Flight Engineers fighting the California wild fires. As Paul related us in an email last night, they're going as part of a group of trained Nebraskan aircrews eager to assist the Californian firefighters who are unfortunately running out of resources, dealing with all the fires out there.

As liberals, we know it is a proud day when we see our friends, who've talked about politics and the issues that face our country at their local Drinking Liberally chapter, turn their words into action. They put their daily lives aside and went all the way to California to help out their fellow Americans in need.

Sacrificing to help those who are suffering is key part of being a liberal, whether it means fighting wild fires like Troy and Paul, helping out good people like Darcy Burner when tragedy strikes, or voting for progressive candidates who will work for better healthcare for poor families, getting our troops out of Iraq and fighting global warming, (or else Troy an Paul will have to go out and do natural disaster rescue work every month).

Troy and Paul, you guys are true patriots and are most definitely Living Liberally.

The Charlotte, NC chapter of Living Liberally city leaders to the National Conference September 5-7.

(Dick Cheney will not be wearing his hunting vest to Charlotte in September, so the proverbial ducks should be safe.)

We booked a hotel that the telecoms haven't 'bugged' yet. We've reserved a meeting space that will double as the holding cell for Rove and his buddies from the White House come January. We found an airport shuttle that runs on a clean-burning 75/25 mix of organic beer and wine. And finally, we promise to count every single Living Liberally libation drunk, er, vote cast here in Charlotte!

It's about that time, City Leaders. Register for our National Conference today!

Which Drinking Liberally chapter has been "Kayaking Liberally" with The Swamp Girls?

I don't know.