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The real reason Hillary Clinton is staying in the race. It's not about Florida. It's not about Michigan. It's not about little girls in Bosnia.
It's about white people.
Apparently us whiteys won't vote for a black man, and Hillary is willing to go to the mat to save us from our impulses which would propel us to do otherwise.
I think I'm going to throw up now.
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Martin Heinrich: New Mexico's next congressperson (photo stolen here)
When President-elect Obama sits down in November, as he's promised, to hammer out the details of his climate change agenda, he'll need to know he can count on a newly-elected Congress to support this groundbreaking legislation.
That means that not only do we need to elect Barack Obama president, we also need to send a lot more green Dems to Congress with him. Right now the Democrats have a majority, but we'll need a bigger one to counter the resistance from Big Oil and Big Business.
Enter Martin Heinrich. He's running for Congress in New Mexico's first congressional district, a district I'm pretty familiar with. This district was barely held by Heather Wilson last go round—she won by 800 votes, one of the closest margins in any house race. Now she's out of the picture completely—she's running for Senate (and will likely get beaten by Tom Udall if she manages to get the nomination).
So it's now an open seat, and we've got a real progressive running.
I met Martin at a New Mexico PIRG event, which was co-sponsored by their sister organization, Environment New Mexico. He struck me then as a sincere guy, and like me, eager to make a difference in his adopted state of New Mexico. At the time he was an energetic City Councilor who already had a reputation in the enviro community. Now he's running for Congress, and has cleared the first hurdle toward getting the nomination by picking up the majority of delegates at the state convention.
He's been endorsed by a whole slew of unions, Blue America, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Sierra Club.
Plus he was voted the Hottest Man in U.S. politics. But don't think he's just a pretty face: he majored in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Missouri (which gets a big thumbs up in my family!). In college he built a solar car which used regenerative braking (how cool is that?!) and raced it across the country. If all that doesn't make your heart go pitter patter, get a load of this: he opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning.
Sound familiar? Could it be that I could pull the lever for not one but two anti-Iraq war candidates in November?
It gets better: During an online interview at Firedoglake recently, he said "We need AmeriCorps volunteers weatherizing the homes of senior citizens on fixed incomes." (Smelling salts! Where are my smelling salts?!) "We need to lead the world in research and development of clean energy at our national labs. This has to be something every American participates in." Science. Remember that? Swoon!
And foodies, he also is concerned about diversifying food production so that we support local producers instead of Big Ag. If I might suggest a slogan: A stalk of locally grown broccoli in every pot!
Okay, I'm sold. I'll be adding some money to his campaign to help fill up that balloon on his website.
Martin's just the kind of smart progressive I want to see in Congress next year, helping President Obama steer this country in a new direction–maybe with the help of his solar car!
You can learn more about Martin at his website. Or if you think candidate websites are biased, check out his Wiki. (No, not the one for the German chemist; that's another smart Martin Heinrich.) And that Firedoglake interview has lots more, straight from Martin himself.If you want to help turn New Mexico's First CD blue again (those sunsets would be so much nicer in a blue congressional district!) donate here.
Barack Obama and Martin Heinrich. It's not too much to ask, is it?
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Not doing much today except seriously hating Bill Clinton:
“Apparently it's okay to say bad things about a girl."
I dunno; I thought it was.
Now, just for fun, why don't you Google "my love affair with bill clinton" and see what you get?
Wait, I'm not finished.
Let's see those tax returns, Mr. President. How well is the ex-president circuit paying these days? Is that why you're so rabid when it comes to defending your legacy from what you see as an attack by Obama? You remind me of a bull in a pasture, raging at perceived slights from the younger males.
It's ugly. Stop it.
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I came across this post I wrote some time ago, on how the Brits elect their party leaders, i.e. their nominees, which is what Americans are in the process of doing now.
I thought I'd refer to that, for those of you who think the American way is really long and drawn out. I was trying to explain it to a British person the other day, who seemed to think all this was to elect a president, not just nominate a candidate to face election.
I think I prefer our way, as painful and expensive as it is. Because, as I've come to learn, it's the primary battle that is for the heart and soul of the party. By the general, it's too late to have any say in who your president is going to be, and who will be your party's standard bearer (an interesting phrase, given the context). Oddly, this means that those who care more about their party (and its soul) than their country may stay home in November.
Or else vote for Ross Perot.
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Yesterday I finally went to the doctor to see why my arm has been hurting for two months. (I'm nothing if not prompt when it comes to pain.) When I described my symptoms—decreased range of motion, throbbing arm pain at night, shooting pain into my wrist interrupting my blogging, he nodded sagely and pulled over the skeleton from the corner. Then he pointed to the vertebrae, and I wanted to say, "no, not my back, my ARM" but fortunately I held off. One major nerve from the spinal cord heads out to the arm, and it's very likely it's being pinched by one of the disks in the spinal column. That would explain why ibuprofen doesn't work, since it only works on inflammation, not nerve pain.
Perfect. A diagnosis that makes sense, and doesn't involve cutting off my arm, or worse, the "it's all in your head" pronouncement we all fear. I get scheduled for another MRI (I knew I should have had them shoot me further into the machine to get a look at my arm while they were peering at my head!) and a consult with a neuro after that.
Fifteen minutes later, I'm walking across the car park, thinking about how rapidly I'm aging as I approach my next birthday, and suddenly I find myself going down, down, down, right into the asphalt. SPLAT! I catch myself with my knees, palms, and face. Ouch! (And talk about giving new meaning to the term "slipped disk".)
Some nice young men picked me up (Thank you, sonny!, she said in a wavery old-lady voice) and somehow I made it home. Now I've got a sore arm, bandaged palms, bloody, swollen and bruised knees, and a tender cheek. Plus, not insignificantly, my favorite pair of jeans now features an unauthorized hole.
And amidst fitful sleep last night, I dreamed I got a C on my paper, which was covered in red ink. (Blood?!)
Slipped disk, slippery feet, and violent dreams. I'm a mess.
(Political junkies should note that I have refrained from inserting any jokes about sniper fire in this post, although the temptation was great. "Hit the tarmac!" I thought I heard. "Sniper fire coming from the Chillterns!" See how easy that would have been?)
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Hillary, despite the Clinton administration's willful ignorance of the situation, wanted to intervene in Rwanda. She also urged intervention in Bosnia, long before her husband's administration decided to send American troops. Her counter-administration East Wing insurgency didn't end with genocidal conflicts, either: She also was against NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the rest of the Clinton administration embraced. Despite the fact no one seemed to listen to her on foreign policy, she was sent to Tuzla, Bosnia during a hail of sniper fire in order to accept flowers and a poem from a Bosnian child. And that went so well they sent her to Northern Ireland to broker peace in that war-torn country.
Uhh, not so fast. Those statements above contain various amounts of truthiness. Some are simply not backed up by facts, such as the cold, hard White House schedules on NAFTA. Others have been contradicted by those involved. One statement, her arrival in Bosnia under sniper fire, is an outright fabrication. (Known otherwise as a lie.)
It's obvious to anyone who's ever raised a teenager that there's some energetic prevarication going on here, an attempt to embellish a pretty thin foreign policy record. Understandable, but not forgivable, because of one tragic truth.
There would be no need to embellish her record, in a race against an opponent who also didn't participate in the Northern Ireland peace talks, and who also didn't arrive in Bosnia under sniper fire, and who currently holds similar views on NAFTA, except for one thing: Hillary Clinton bungled the most important foreign policy decision of her career. No, it wasn't a 3 a.m. phone call—she had plenty of time to think about her vote to authorize the Iraq War. She had plenty of time to study up on the idea, and perhaps read the National Intelligence Estimate which pretty clearly stated that Iraq (like Tuzla) held no threat. What's more, she had plenty of time to speak out against what has turned out to be the biggest foreign policy blunder in our nation's history—a $3 trillion dollar mess that has cost us 4000 lives and untold numbers of injuries, and has squandered our international respect and our Middle East street cred.
Just as she never spoke loudly enough on Rwanda, Bosnia, NAFTA, or any of the other major foreign policy decisions during the time she had the ear of the president and all his advisers, she never used her bully pulpit as the most famous member of the Senate to speak out against the Iraq War. If she had, there's a good chance others would have joined her, perhaps John Kerry or John Edwards (okay, maybe not Edwards—he was one of the sponsors of the resolution, after all). Others, including members of the media, would have examined the proposal more closely had the Senatorial wife of a former president spoken out against it.
But she didn't. That's a fact.
And she didn't arrive in Tuzla under a hail of sniper fire, either.
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Easter morning, and we get snow. The dog saw the Easter Fox out in the pasture, and is keeping her eyes peeled in case he returns.
Meanwhile, the herbs I bought last week and never planted are now frozen. Should have just put them straight into the freezer.
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He's so fine, he's Barack Obama-sistable...
Oh, sorry, you caught me humming my latest earworm. If you haven't watched this brilliant YouTube creation, get over there now. Especially if, like me, you had no clue who any of the singers in the will.i.am thing were. This one is for the MTV generation. The original one, I mean.
He used to look good to me, but now I find him...Barack Obama-sistable!
These guys should immediately be booked for the Inaugural Ball.
(One of them looks just like my daughter's old boyfriend. Paulie, is that you?)
Woh ho.
Update: The Making of Barack Obama-sistable. Elevate the discussion.
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As people who've known me for a while are aware, I've had my ups and downs with Bill Richardson. His campaign for governor was the first campaign I volunteered for on a very regular basis. I enjoyed the experience, got to know some great characters, and learned a lot—not always savory—about New Mexico politics.
And then some other stuff happened.
Anyway, I got to watch part of the speech where he endorsed Barack Obama today. I don't usually get to watch these things, so maybe every endorser is equally effusive, but I was touched by the warmhearted—or rather, big-hearted— way in which he stood up there and endorsed his former rival for the presidency.
I have heard Big Bill endorse a candidate before (see above), and it was nothing like that. I felt kind of embarrassed for Senator Obama, and it was clear he felt a little self-conscious too, hearing all that praise.
One thing that was clear from the remarks: It is time for Hillary Clinton to step aside. There is no upside for her in continuing this race, and only a downside for the American people. We have a great candidate, who's won fair and square. It's time to direct our fire at our Republican opponents—not just for the presidency but for the many contested House and Senate races. This presidential primary has sucked up enough oxygen.
For instance, we've got a great candidate in New Mexico's CD-1, Martin Heinrich. I'd like to throw some of my (almost worthless) American dollars—and some blog love—his way, but with a fierce battle going on for the Democratic nomination, I'm instead keeping my focus there.
And I'm getting kind of bleary-eyed.
Bill Richardson has negotiated with more than his share of bitterly divided opponents. I'm hoping he can bring the Clintons around to recognizing it's time to tell their campaign staff it's over. There's still a place for Hillary Clinton in history, but unless she brings this to a dignified end, her pages in the history book will be divided and torn.
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"We the sheep, in order to form a more perfect pasture."
On our hike Wednesday we saw lots of sheep and their newborn lambs, chocolate lambs and white chocolate lambs. (But remember, they are not for eating!)
I think it's great that they took Barack Obama's speech on race to heart. Living together, in harmony, all in the same pasture.
Black, white, and mixed race sheep:
This is an issue we cannot afford to ignore right now, and I'm glad to see at least one species addressing it.
I like to call this one Ashley:
Is that not the cutest thing you ever saw in your life?
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Saw this Obama sign in a window in Oxford, on Merton Street behind University College (which is not redundant). I guess that's where Chris lives. (You need to paint your door, Chris.)
It's nice to drive down a street in Oxford and see a sign of trans-Atlantic comradeship. We had our last day of class today, discussing post-war London. I didn't realize that the bombed out areas of the City were left bare until the early sixties. Meanwhile, American money rebuilt the bombed German cities straightaway.
I was sort of embarrassed by this.
Obama '08, yes indeed.
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A couple of weeks after Christmas, in 2003, I was packing up the Christmas decorations, wrapping up the long strands of tiny white lights. On the TV in the other room CNN was blaring, announcing the latest news in The Run-up to War, or whatever their marketing slogan was back then. What I had thought earlier in the summer—that rumors of war were just that, rumors—seemed to now be proven wrong. We were heading to war, against all reason, it seemed to me then.
Though I hadn't read the NIE—the National Intelligence Estimate, I knew two things: Saddam Hussein had had nothing to do with 9/11, and there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Hans Blix, remember, had been searching in vain for months, and despite the best of clues from U.S. intelligence, had found nothing.
But a madness had overtaken the country. The media wanted a war, a majority of Americans thought war was the only way to keep us safe, and Democratic lawmakers had been convinced the only way to be re-elected was to vote to authorize the war.
So as I took down my holiday decorations, frustration ate a hole in me. Letters to senators and congresspersons hadn't helped. Donations to MoveOn hadn't moved anybody. Marching in the streets would have been ignored. What could one woman, with a strand of Christmas lights in her hand, do?
Suddenly those Christmas lights, the representation of the light that guided shepherds to the Prince of Peace, took on new meaning. They would become my beacon, my message of peace. I quickly found tape, and a chair, and stretched the strand of lights over my big front window, until I'd fashioned a large peace sign.
When it was done, I plugged in the strand, and left them on, day and night, my own marketing slogan, my own preferred weapon of peace. I left them on through March, as the war started despite my puny attempts to stop it. They were on when my nephew, a Marine reservist, entered Baghdad a few weeks later. They were on when looters broke into museums, when starving animals in the zoo were rescued by Iraqi and Australian vets. They were on when the lights were no longer working in Iraq, the power stations having been disabled by the war.
They were on when word came that no weapons of mass destruction had been found.
They were on when tens of thousands of bodies were taken in the dark to morgues, and millions more prayed in vain for peace.
The cellophane tape eventually dried out in the summer sun, and I pulled the lights down. About that time I started working on a political campaign, for a candidate who opposed the war. My lights went back into the box with the Christmas decorations, while I hit the streets and the phones, looking for votes. I turned off CNN, focusing on the ballot box rather than the squawk box.
It's been five years since the bombs first dropped on Baghdad, and peace still hasn't come to Iraq.
I'm not a hippie protester. I'm a very middle class, middle of the road, middle-aged white woman. Putting a peace sign in my window wasn't a big deal, and didn't, most likely, change anyone's mind. But it reminded me, day after day, night after night, of that gnawing frustration I felt that day, when there was nothing else I could do but put a big peace sign in my window.
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I think I can neatly tie up two big news stories today in one You Tube clip:
Paul McCartney's divorce settlement, and Barack Obama's speech. Watch.
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Neighbor Boy arrives in time for the party.
Will sit for cake. But only for so long.
Yep, it's that time of year again. Birthday Dog turns seven today.
Neighbor Boy came over and took her for a walk. Then we shared some cake and Soyatoo whipped cream and gave her a present, a little doll that came apart with Velcro. Inside is room to stuff treats. She thought that was lots of fun, but mainly wanted more cake.
Neighbor Boy commented, "You love your dog a lot, don't you?" Only on her birthday, I replied, but I lied.
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The BBC reports that tent cities have arisen in the U.S., due to home foreclosures.
Fortunately, residents of one New York street don't have to worry about sleeping in tents:
Far more than at any time before, the Federal Reserve is putting its vast resources and its reputation on the line to rescue Wall Street’s biggest institutions from their far-reaching mistakes.
Thank goodness for the Fed!
On the other hand, Ken Lay's widow may not be so lucky. Anyone got a tent they can lend her?
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I don't know about y'all, but the church I grew up in the Church of Christ—(no, not that one, not even related) had some radical beliefs. Like we believed that everyone who isn't a member of the church—that's around 348 million Americans alone—is going to hell. That's right, all the Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, and especially the Unitarians, all get a one-way ticket to hell.
Mother Teresa? Roasting in hell even as we speak. Gandhi? Crisp as burnt toast. Abraham Lincoln? I don't recall him being baptized (full immersion required) in the name of our lord Jesus, do you? Ken Starr, however, has nothing to worry about, being a member in good standing. And Jeffrey Dahmer is also among the saved, hooting and hollering up in Heaven with all the other deceased members.
I think that pretty much trumps anything Hagee or Parsley or Wright says, don't you?
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I just talked to Daughter Number Two, who is on a train, currently somewhere in Alabama. She's on her way to New Orleans, where she will volunteer with Habitat for Humanity for her spring break.
We have family there, so she will get to see them again, a bonus. I have ordered her to take photos of the week, so that I can post them here. I sent her a box of sweets from England to share with all the other kids she's traveling with—there's about 60, she says, from Smith and UMass.
Maybe she'll get to use that hammer she made in shop class Engineering 101 last fall.
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