mjh's blog

The Company She Keeps

Currently, at Page One, Merri Rudd’s book, Life Planning in New Mexico, is just below Obama’s latest book but well ahead of his older book. (Hers is older still, though just revised substantially this year.) peace, mjh

Welcome to Page One – Your Independent Internet Bookstore

PS: Four years ago, Rudd’s book beat Hillary Clinton’s Living History.

Someone Skipped the Kool-aid

Follow the link below to read marjorie’s critique of The Speech. I’ll wait….

marjorie says…

m-pyre: An Obama Critique

All over the Web, people are gushing over Obama’s speech. I’m often drawn to the contrarian and outsider, so I appreciate marjorie’s critique. I would point out that starting with the European invasion of this hemisphere might have been over-reaching — leave something for the first Native American presidential candidate to address. Further, going that far back risks alienating Spain’s descendants, a group Obama may have trouble reaching. (And, let’s not forget this continent was, in fact, once devoid of all human life, until the ancestors of today’s First Americans invaded and conquered the land. Did the buffalo welcome them as liberators? Besides, we’re all brothers and sisters and share each other’s sins and goodness.) My easy retort should not outweigh my appreciation for marjorie’s thoughts. Indeed, I have more praise and fewer objections to that than she has to Obama.

I’m stunned by such a thoughtful speech that breaks so many conventions, including being so long. When was the last presidential speech anyone applied the phrase “teachable moment” to? Seriously, even for all the wonkiness both Clintons get and deserve credit for, when was either so insightful or inspiring? (Obviously, I had to skip 7+ years of BushCo.) We are watching a brilliant mind at work. (Granted, this is a topic he has been thinking about his whole life.)

As an aside, make note that even some conservatives are genuinely drawn to Obama. Left and Right often make the mistake of thinking only of themselves as smart and the opposition as idiots. As repulsed as I am by conservatives congratulating themselves as “deep thinkers” (snort, choke, gasp), some of them really aren’t idiots. Certainly, even coma victims are tired of listening to Commander Dimwit and are counting the days until something better comes along. (Is McCain really the best we can do?) peace, mjh

PS: Over at newmexiken.com, some deep thinker comments, “You people sure are easy to fool.” No conservative should get away with saying such a thing without having his ears boxed and being forced to watch endless loops of a smirking Duhbya swaggering across the deck of the aircraft carrier. Fool.

pps: Obama’s speech: The reviews – First Read – msnbc.com

“That was the most awful speech I have ever heard
and furthermore how can he remain friends with this
Pastor that said all of these awful things about America!no my message will probably not be posted
Obama is full of crap and I think its very scarey
to see how is glazed eyes follwers think he is
Jesus come to earth…… no sweethearts not Jesus
he seems more like the Anti-Christ to me .God Please
protect America.” – R.Williams Texas (Sent Wednesday, March 19, 2008 10:41 AM)

What a load of horse apples! I cannot support Barry Obama because of his socialist views, that big government is the answer to all the problems, and his cowardly foreign policy. He has “embraced” either side of his racial heritage when it was advantagous to him. He is a polictial opprotunist of the first degree or he would not be running for President on such thin credentials. His “fans” folk to his “star power” because the media has made him their “cleb du jour”, like they did JFK. All show and no “go”. Open your eyes, ears and minds people! He said NOTHING of substance! But for Obama-ites, nothing is enough. – Saltwater Cracker, Fla. (Sent Wednesday, March 19, 2008 10:41 AM)

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/03/19/782888.aspx

Let’s Elect the Rich, Old, White Guy!

Clinton, McCain delay on making tax returns public
By William Douglas, MCT

Both McCain and Clinton are wealthy. McCain was listed as the ninth-richest member of Congress last year by Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper. It pegged McCain’s net worth at more than $44 million, with most of the money coming from his wife, Cindy Hensley McCain, who is chairwoman of the nation’s third-largest Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship. The family also has extensive real estate holdings.

Clinton was listed as the 21st richest lawmaker, with a net worth estimated at $12 million, but she could be worth up to $50 million based on her 2006 financial disclosure form for Congress. It’s much less detailed than tax records.

Obama didn’t crack the Congress Top 50, listing a net worth of $456,000 to $1.14 million.

Clinton, McCain delay on making tax returns public | ajc.com

GOP now CSA

Listen to the two Republicans angrily call each other crazy. The GOP is now the CSA: Crazy, Scared and Angry. (If you see an older yet appropriate meaning in CSA, good eye.) peace, mjh

Entry Fee May Be Cause of GOP Flap
By Jeff Jones
Copyright © 2008 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Politics Writer

State Republican Party executive director Adam Feldman said the county convention was run fairly and blasted Cargo.
    “If wouldn’t surprise me if Dave Cargo said that aliens flew in from Roswell to vote in the Bernalillo County convention, but that doesn’t make it true,” Feldman said.
    Feldman maintained that Cargo in the past has had his own convention entry fee paid for him. But Cargo said that’s untrue.
    “He’s crazier than hell,” Cargo said.

ABQjournal NM: Entry Fee May Be Cause of GOP Flap

PS: It’s fitting, isn’t it, that Republicans pay to vote.

a generational distinction

Transcript of Obama’s Interview on “NewsHour”

SEN. OBAMA: You know, I’m not sure if it was inevitable. I think that there’s no doubt that race and gender are powerful forces in our society. They always have been. And I think it would have been naïve for me to think that I could run and end up with quasi-frontrunner status in a presidential election as potentially the first African-American president that issues, race wouldn’t come up any more than Senator Clinton could expect that gender issues might not come up.

But, ultimately, I don’t think it’s useful. I think we’ve got to talk about it. I think we’ve got to process it. But we’ve got to remind ourselves that what we have in common is far more important than what’s different and that if we’re going to solve any of these problems, we’ve got to come together and bridge our differences in ways that we just have not bridged them before.

MS. IFILL: Is that the speech you’ll be giving tomorrow in Philadelphia?

SEN. OBAMA: That will be a major focus of it.

MS. IFILL: You have also cast this as a generational distinction of the sort of things that Reverend Wright said being the baggage of a fiercely intelligent African-American man of his generation and Geraldine Ferraro’s as well. When does one person’s baggage become another person’s memory/history?

SEN. OBAMA: Well, you know, look, there’s a continuum. But I think that, you know, when you look at somebody like a Reverend Wright who grew up in the ’50s or ’60s, his experience of race in this country is very different than mine in the same way that Geraldine’s experience being an intelligent, ambitious woman, you know, is very different than a young woman who’s coming up today and potentially has a different set of opportunities.

Now, we benefit from that past. We benefit from the difficult battles that were taken place. But I’m not sure that we benefit from continuing to perpetuate the anger and the bitterness that I think, at this point, serves to divide rather than bring us together. And that’s part of what this campaign has been about, is to say, let’s acknowledge a difficult history, but let’s move forward in a practical way to get things done.

MS. IFILL: Has this been damaging to your campaign?

SEN. OBAMA: You know, the – I would say that it has been a distraction from the core message of our campaign. I think part of what has always been the essence of my politics, not just this campaign, but my life is the idea that we’ve got to bring people together. Now, part of that is biographical as somebody who comes from a diverse background with a white mother and an African-American father growing up in Hawaii and Asia. You know, it’s in my DNA to believe that all of us have something fundamental in common.

The Page – by Mark Halperin – TIME

Trust the Government? Trust Scientsts?

 Damn Interesting » The Sheep Incident

VX was a triumph among the biological warfare community. Odorless and tasteless, it’s three times as toxic as Sarin. In initial trials, this over-achieving compound was also found to be highly stable, enabling long shelf life and environmental persistence. VX works by blocking chemicals in the victim’s body from functioning. It prevents the enzyme acetylcholinesterase from allowing muscles to relax, resulting in the contraction of every muscle in the body. Exposure to a minute or diluted dose of VX will cause muscle twitching, drooling, excessive sweating, and involuntary defecation, among other unpleasantries. Exposure to a lethal dose — about ten milligrams — will cause convulsions, paralysis, and eventually asphyxiation due to sustained contraction of the diaphragm muscle. Unless the affected skin is cleaned and an antidote is administered immediately, a single drop of liquid VX will kill a person in around ten minutes.

On March 13th [1968], Dugway ran a series of three tests using VX. The tests were routine, like any of the thousands of weapons tests that were conducted there over the previous twenty years. In the first test, an artillery shell packed with VX was fired onto the range; and in the second, 160 gallons of the compound were burned in an open pit. Both tests were completed without incident. The third test involved delivery via airplane, with over a ton of a special VX mixture sprayed over the desert. Unbeknownst to the pilot, the spray nozzle that controlled the flow of the chemical had broken. As he climbed to a higher altitude, the chemical continued to seep from the plane. Winds that day were blowing between 5-20 mph, with gusts reaching 35 mph. These strong easterly winds carried the VX straight to Skull Valley. The next day, the sheep grazing in the area began to die, and within days thousands of them had perished. The government and local numbers differ, but anywhere between 3,483 and 6,400 sheep died in the aftermath of the test.

Skull Valley resident Ray Peck was working in his yard the evening after the tests, but retired early after developing an earache. The next morning the ground outside his home was littered with dead birds, and he watched as a dying rabbit struggled in the distance. A helicopter touched down soon after and unleashed its cargo of equipment and scientists upon the confused family. They quickly collected wildlife carcasses, performed blood tests on the Pecks, and departed … [read it all]

Damn Interesting » The Sheep Incident

Vanguard I satellite marks 50 years in orbit – Engadget

It may not have been the first, but Vanguard I does have the distinction of being the oldest satellite still in orbit, and it’s now set to mark its 50th anniversary on March 17th. It can lay claim to being the the very first solar-powered satellite, however, and it has no shortage of accomplishments under its belt

Vanguard I satellite marks 50 years in orbit – Engadget

Angry Men Rule

Listen to this interview with Republican Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona. Listen to him blithely brush off the biggest, most expensive, dumbest foreign policy error in the last 30+ years (you don’t need me to spell-out IRAQ, do you?) as “water over the dam.” Hey, that’s behind us. Oh, but the jack-asses who put us there and keep us there are, ahem, still in front of us.

Above all, listen to the obvious anger in Kyl’s voice. How much longer are we going to let angry men rule/ruin everything? peace, mjh

NPR: Sen. Kyl: Focus on Stabilizing Iraq

PS: Then, listen to someone more rational:

NPR: Sen. James Webb (D, VA): Iraq Weakens U.S. Strategically

“Moving into this country that was not directly threatening us, decapitating a government, and then having to occupy this country has dramatically affected the strategic ability of the United States to do a lot of other things that would have been far more useful,” Webb says.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88276484&ft=1&f=7

Calm and Measured

Obama laughs at [Clinton's] contention.

“We were told that these contests would not count,” he tells Steve Inskeep. “Sen. Clinton agreed. Our name was taken off the ballot in Michigan, and in Florida we did no campaigning. Now, if people think that that is a normal democratic way of running an election, then that’s not the America that I know.” …

“Look, we’re going to abide by whatever the Democratic National Committee determines is fair,” he says. “But the important point is … that we agreed not to participate in this process. Not just me, but Sen. Clinton did as well. If you ask my 6-year-old, should that election count, she would probably be able to figure out that that’s not fair.”

NPR: Obama: Michigan, Florida Do-Overs ‘Not Realistic’

Schemer

Hillary Clinton says the results of Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary should count, even if Barack Obama’s name did not appear on the ballot.

“That was his choice,” she says in an interview with Steve Inskeep. “There was no rule or requirement that he take his name off the ballot. His supporters ran a very aggressive campaign to try to get people to vote uncommitted.” [mjh: It's very important to remember that Obama supporters pushed for 'uncommitted' specifically in response to Clinton's campaign in Michigan, against the terms all had mutually agreed to.]

The states of Florida and Michigan were stripped of their delegates when they defied the rules of the national Democratic Party and moved up the date of their primaries. Clinton remained on the ballot in both states, while Obama stayed on only the Florida ballot.

Neither candidate was supposed to campaign, in accordance with the Democratic National Party’s wishes.

NPR: Clinton Says Michigan and Florida Should Count

Another Duhbya

Senator John McCain loves to present himself as a fighter against waste and pork-barrel spending. … But his jabs at a study of grizzly bears in Montana are way off the mark.

To hear Mr. McCain tell it in his presidential stump speech and campaign ads, the government has squandered $3 million (actually more like $5 million) to study the DNA of bears in Montana. “I don’t know if it was a paternity issue or criminal,” he jokes, “but it was a waste of money.”

A report by Joel Achenbach in The Washington Post makes clear, however, that this was not really a study of bear DNA but a study that used bear DNA to determine whether the grizzly bear was still a threatened species or had rebounded. Mr. McCain and his staff either failed to realize that or chose to distort the facts for political effect. Either choice is not encouraging.

The intent of the study, whose results have not yet been published, is to estimate the size and makeup of the grizzly bear population in a vast region, encompassing Glacier National Park, five wilderness areas, parts of five national forests and other public and private lands in a largely roadless, mountainous terrain. Scientists collected hairs snagged by strategically placed barbed wire to extract DNA that could identify how many bears had passed by, their gender and unique identity. Statistical models could then predict the total population.

That is hardly frivolous. It is a prerequisite for sensible administration of the Endangered Species Act.

The presumed Republican presidential nominee also fails to mention that the project was sponsored by Conrad Burns, a former Republican senator from Montana who chairs the McCain campaign in that state. Mr. McCain never explains why, if it was such a waste, he didn’t try to curtail it on the Senate floor.

It is a longstanding practice on Capitol Hill for legislators to lampoon research projects that can be made to sound foolish. Some may well be. If Mr. McCain wants to make serious critiques of research spending — and keep his reputation as a credible opponent of government waste — he and his staff need to be more careful and a lot more science-literate.

McCain Misfires at Grizzlies – New York Times

Red-light Cameras Increase Crashes, Florida Researchers Find

I’ve been waiting for some data — too bad we don’t have our own. Interesting. peace, mjh 

“The rigorous studies clearly show red-light cameras don’t work,” said lead author Barbara Langland-Orban, professor and chair of health policy and management at the USF College of Public Health.

“Instead, they increase crashes and injuries as drivers attempt to abruptly stop at camera intersections…”

Red-light Cameras Increase Crashes, Florida Researchers Find

"I am running for president of the United States of America."

I think Clinton is trying to draw undecideds with the Dream Ticket idea. No Sale. peace, mjh

“I don’t know how somebody who is in second place is offering the vice presidency to the person who is first place,” Obama said, drawing cheers and a long standing ovation from about 1,700 people.
Saying he wanted to be “absolutely clear,” he added: “I don’t want anybody here thinking that somehow, ‘Well, you know, maybe I can get both.’ Don’t think that way. You have to make a choice in this election.”

“I am not running for vice president,” Obama said. “I am running for president of the United States of America.”

Obama aides said Clinton’s recent hints that she might welcome him as her vice presidential candidate appeared meant to diminish him and to attract undecided voters in the remaining primary states by suggesting they can have a “dream ticket.”

Obama had never suggested he might accept a second spot on the ticket. But until Monday he had not ridiculed the notion so directly, even if he did not completely rule it out in Shermanesque terms.
He told the audience that it made no sense for Clinton to suggest he is not ready to be president and then hint that she might hand him the job that could make him president at a moment’s notice.

“If I’m not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?” he said, as the crowd laughed and cheered loudly.

AP: Obama denies ‘dream ticket’ – News

Look Over There — No, There

Eliot Spitzer should resign as soon as possible — assuming he really is guilty of soliciting prostitution (as buyer, not seller — at least, in this case). Hypocrisy is no crime — thank gawd — but this elevates it to near-criminal levels. Moreover, Dems and liberals have nothing to prove to conservative scolds, but we all have a right to expect public servants to refrain from gross crime.

This is the perfect story to distract a gape-mouthed public seeking titillation. (“Haw, he said ‘TITillation!’”) What are we being distracted from? peace, mjh