<HTML><BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffff" STYLE="font:10pt verdana; border:none;color:#000000; background-color:#ffffff; "><DIV>Dave asks, quite rightly, why (oh why) am I a Democrat? It's certainly not because I love the current incarnation of my party, AKA Republican Lite. (No taste; unfulfilling.) In short, my party affiliation is like my appendix -- largely vestigial. Still, I remain a Democrat, for the time being, because . . . </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>1. I believe in organized labor. And, yes, I am well aware of how corrupt the Teamsters have been/are; so, too, the AFL-CIO, the UAW, the Garment Workers Union, and so on, and so on, and so on. Nevertheless, I have lived in union states and I have lived in so-called right-to-work states, and I know that there is power in a union. There is no power in a state employees' association.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>2. I believe in the ongoing need for affirmative action. I laugh in people's faces when they speculate that Colin Powell could win the GOP Presidential nomination in the South. As a native Southerner, I know what people tell pollsters, and I know what they say when they're with an all-white crowd; never the twain shall meet. Not long ago, a small delegation of white women in my mother's office (a state office) took it upon themselves to call a meeting with her supervisor regarding an upcoming job opening. "Let's hire someone white this time," they said. "We've already got enough of them." As much as I wish there were such a thing as color-blind hiring, or gender-blind hiring, there isn't. A quick flick through the Fortune 500 CEOs tells me all I need to know on that score.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>3. I believe in a basic, fundamental, social safety net. I believe in universal access to healthcare, and that that access is a right and not a privilege. I do support means-testing for Social Security; the program was created to provide a basic standard of living for those who had spent their lives working like Georgia mules; it was not to supplement the retirement incomes of (sorry) stockbrokers. I do not support raising the retirement age or cutting basic benefits. Why? Because, once again, minority workers lose out. Black and Latino people in this country have an average life expectancy nearly a decade lower than their white counterparts; they also experience higher infant mortality rates.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>4. I'm a New Deal, Great Society, social, racial, and economic justice and broad support for public education type. The Democratic Party of my long ago youth used to support these things without apology. Education used to be more important than educational testing. We didn't succeed in eradicating poverty, but once upon a time we proclaimed that as one of our fundamental goals.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I am, by and large, a Howard Dean Democrat. I'm a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. I identify with the term "progressive" though I recognize that I don't fit the classic definition of that word. That, in short, is my answer. But let me just throw out a few other positions I hold: I don't think the Pentagon needs a 4.8% increase this year, independent of the costs of the Iraq War (which Mr. Bush has conveniently segregated into a separate spending bill). I don't tend to support unfunded federal mandates, which Republicans and Democrats alike have sadly embraced. I think that unchecked, enormous inherited wealth is a danger to a healthy democracy; it creates a defacto ruling class, an American aristocracy, as worthless and self-absorbed as the European aristocracies our political ancestors abandoned and rejected I like target shooting and deer and elk hunting, but I don't like the NRA. I'm a fan of wild wolves but I'm friends with many ranchers. I don't support large farm subsidies, but I like small farmers.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I freely admit to many logical inconsistencies in my thinking, to taking large leaps of faith on very little evidence, and to preferring to select my friends from the variety mix. Gay, straight, Republican, Democrat, Jewish, Christian, Evangelical, Hindu, Jain, Muslim, atheist, agnostic . . . and stockbroker. I enjoy nothing more than a good, well-reasoned argument, clever wordplay, and a fair fight.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Now, about your Yiddish -- I'm Jewish by choice and by patriarchal descent. My father's family is Ukrainian/Jewish; my mother is a lapsed Southern Baptist WASP. So, I shall give this translation my best shot -- sticking with your cruel anti-Googling rules -- and we shall see what we shall see. </DIV> <DIV><BR>"Bubby kvetched that the moyle was shikker while the mishpucha noodged to get at the nasherie." </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Grandma bitched that the man who performs the circumcisions was drunk while the folks jostled one another to get at the buffet.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>How's that? Perhaps I should confess that I have a Jewish literary agent. Who lives in New York. In Lower Manhattan.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Oy,</DIV> <DIV>Joan Opyr/Auntie Establishment</DIV></BODY></HTML><br clear=all><hr>Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : <a href='http://explorer.msn.com'>http://explorer.msn.com</a><br></p>