I would post something original about Sarah Palin

if I didn't feel like everything I have to say is summed up in this article:

The Sarah Palin pity party

"She boldly tries to pass off incuriosity and lassitude as regular-people qualities, thereby doing a disservice to all those Americans who also work two jobs and do not come from families that hand out passports and backpacking trips, yet still manage to pick up a paper and read about their government and seek out experience and knowledge. When you stage a train wreck of this magnitude -- trying to pass one underqualified chick off as another highly qualified chick with the lame hope that no one will notice -- well, then, I don't feel bad for you." Aaaaa-freakin-men.

Obama does Columbia

So, the 24,900 of us who weren't awarded tickets to Thursday's sit-down with Obama and McCain scrambled for a piece of concrete outside.

Never thought I'd say it but ...

I'm pretty impressed with Mike Huckabee right now.

On Morning Joe today:

HUCKABEE: [Obama] made the point, and I think it's a valid one, that you can't hold the candidate responsible for everything that people around him may say or do. You just can't. Whether it's me, whether it's Obama...anybody else. But he did distance himself from the very vitriolic statements.

Now, the second story. It's interesting to me that there are some people on the left who are having to be very uncomfortable with what Louis Wright said, when they all were all over a Jerry Falwell, or anyone on the right who said things that they found very awkward and uncomfortable years ago. Many times those were statements lifted out of the context of a larger sermon. Sermons, after all, are rarely written word for word by pastors like Reverend Wright, who are delivering them extemporaneously, and caught up in the emotion of the moment. There are things that sometimes get said, that if you put them on paper and looked at them in print, you'd say "Well, I didn't mean to say it quite like that."

JOE SCARBOROUGH: But, but, you never came close to saying five days after September 11th, that America deserved what it got. Or that the American government invented AIDS...

HUCKABEE: Not defending his statements.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Oh, I know you're not. I know you're not. I'm just wondering though, for a lot of people...Would you not guess that there are a lot of Independent voters in Arkansas that vote for Democrats sometimes, and vote for Republicans sometimes, that are sitting here wondering how Barack Obama's spiritual mentor would call the United States the USKKK?

HUCKABEE: I mean, those were outrageous statements, and nobody can defend the content of them.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: But what's the impact on voters in Arkansas? Swing voters.

HUCKABEE: I don't think we know. If this were October, I think it would have a dramatic impact. But it's not October. It's March. And I don't believe that by the time we get to October, this is gonna be the defining issue of the campaign, and the reason that people vote.

And one other thing I think we've gotta remember. As easy as it is for those of us who are white, to look back and say "That's a terrible statement!"...I grew up in a very segregated south. And I think that you have to cut some slack -- and I'm gonna be probably the only Conservative in America who's gonna say something like this, but I'm just tellin' you -- we've gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told "you have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus..." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me."

You know, Mike, you're probably never going to convince me on the "replacing the Constitution with the 10 Commandments" thing, but I certainly appreciate the fact that you've made a point to resist the knee-jerk and engage in a thoughtful discussion about this; I wish some of your compadres would do the same. This kind of vitriol isn't cool, whether it's coming from Wright or Falwell. But we've gotta talk about why it's being said, or we're just going to keep ignoring the elephant in the room. So kudos, sir. Big kudos. I'll stop referring to you as Miracle McCrazypants now, I promise.

Breaking News: Caucus Goers, African-Americans, Hillary Says 'Eh, No Big Deal'

So you know, I spent the majority of the last week working my ass off to get people to the caucus on Saturday. I spent all day Saturday working my ass off at the caucus, getting people to their precinct locations, registering new voters, doing anything I could to help out.

I'm planning to write about how incredible an experience it was, how inspiring it was, how good things come out of the chaos of sticking hundreds of neighbors into the same room and talking about politics, but first I just need to point out ...

Hillary doesn't think it matters much! Because apparently I fall into one of two categories: "activist" or "African-American" and God knows neither of those actually represent the American electorate.

Tell that to the 1,000 people who showed up at my caucus location on Saturday. And the hundreds and of thousands who showed up to theirs around the state and elsewhere in the country.

You know why they showed up, Hills? Because for once in our lifetime someone (not you) has actually inspired us to quit complaining and do something about our state of affairs. Someone made us feel like our vote actually mattered, beyond this "Red State/Blue State" 51-49-is-good-enough-for-me bullshit.

It's a good thing 70% of us Washingtonians didn't cast our useless vote for her anyway. Turns out she didn't want them!

Cry it out, bitch, and Stay Classy, Mrs. Clinton!

Washington Friends of Obama! CAUCUS THIS WEEKEND!!

Friends friends!

If you love Barack like I do, you will get off your duff and caucus this Saturday, February 9th! Ignore your Voters Pamphlet: YOUR VOTE IN THE PRIMARY ELECTION DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING. In the state of Washington, Democratic candidates are determined by the CAUCUS. No, I can't explain why we have both; we just do.

The WA Caucus is happening this Saturday at 1:00 p.m. Find out where your caucus location is here: http://www.wa-democrats.org/ It is NOT necessarily the same place you go to vote so don't be smarmy and skip this step and screw it up, smartypants. This site should also tell you which precinct you're in, but it's also printed on your voter registration card.

So what's the deal with a caucus? 1) You actually have to SHOW UP 2) The candidate with the most people physically IN THE ROOM at each location will win the biggest percentage of delegates. Kinda old timey, eh? Yes! Fun!

How it works:

1) You show up at your precinct's caucus location. Technically the first vote does not happen until 1:30 p.m. (If someone tries to convene that shit early, you have every right to raise a fuss and call foul!). SHOW UP EARLY. Showing up early = less chaos = a big huge obvious Obama presence. Fact: I'm going at noon.

2) Most locations will have a precinct captain who will run the show. They'll have the sign in sheets, tally forms etc. MAKE SURE YOU'RE IN THE RIGHT LOCATION FOR YOUR PRECINCT!! Once there, just hang out and wait for directions. Cowlitz County peeps, I don't know if CoCo is as organized as King Co, but if you need help/don't now what the F to do, feel free to call your friends at the Seattle Office at (206) 529-3859. Or call me at (206) 409-5054 because my caucus location is downtown Seattle and we will have knowledgeable people up the wazoo.

3) At 1:30, you'll vote for the first time. Once this vote is taken, they'll announce the number of delegates each candidate would win at this point. If there are undecided voters, this is your opportunity to win them over! Be nice! Don't fight! Now is also the time for a designated person from each candidate's group will give a 1 minute declaration on why they're voting for their candidate.

4) After these speeches, anyone who wishes to change his/her vote will have the opportunity to do so. Then the second and final vote will be counted.

5) Don't leave yet! Once all of the votes are counted, and all of the delegates divvied, people actually need to be appointed delegates. So, say your precinct gives out 7 delegates, and Barack gets 5 of them. Well, five people need to actually BE THERE to stand as delegates. If there are only, say, four people left, the delegates go to Hill! DONT DO THIS!

6) If you're want to fight your way all the way to the National Convention in Denver, be a delegate! Being a delegate means being counted at a few different caucuses before then, but, FUN!

Good things to know:

1) Percentage of people = percentage of delegates. If the Barack/Hill ratio is 70/30, Barack will get 70% of the delegates.

2) There are great resources online for info on caucusing:

- This guy taught me to caucus, and knows everything: http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/nathanwilliams/CGBFC

- WA Democrats: http://www.wa-democrats.org/ has a ton of info on caucusing

3) You don't have to be a registered Democrat to caucus for Barack! Independents! Republicans! If you're into Barack, caucus!

4) In fact, you don't even have to be registered to vote to caucus for Barack! Just show up and you can register there!

Also, I know just a little more than a little about this, so if you need any additional info, lemme know! I'm happy to figure out the answers for you if I don't know them! Seattleites, the Obama Headquarters downtown is open from 9-9 everyday and staffed with awesome volunteers who can answer a million more questions than I can, as well. 614 1st Ave (phone number above).

Yay for 2008!

Oh yeah, Republicans and Hillary fans can caucus too, but I'm not going to encourage either, so you're on your own with those deets :)

The only time you'll ever hear me say anything nice about Florida

 ... in celebration of Rudy's crushing defeat in Florida.  Hallelujah.  The crazies are finally dropping off.  Thanks Floridians.    

generation obama

i wake up to find an invite to a party with barack at the showbox sodo in my email. yes! there! let's gather together, "Generation Obama!" but wait, $100 a head? really? you're going to reach out to my generation (two weeks before christmas, no less) by charging them $100 to attend? really? honey, i don't know many people my age with an extra $100 to throw around whenevs. bummed.

good food

I just enrolled in my first CSA this morning! I'm so excited! So from here on out I will be receiving bi-weekly boxes of fresh, organic, locally-grown fruits and veggies from Full Circle Farm. Food is becoming a bit of an obsession for me; I'm cooking real food for the first time ever and loving exploring with veggies and healthy alternatives. I've gone gluten, white potato, corn and sugar free (the last one gradually ... I crave) as an experiment. Am falling in love with the likes of spelt crackers and curried sweet potatoes and fresh beets. There is a whole world of activists who promote local, community-supported and sustainable agriculture, that I'd never tapped into before. The benefits for farmers and eaters alike are immense. You could argue that agriculture in any form is destructive to the earth, but when it's sustainable and allowed to follow natural patterns and cycles, it's a whole lot less severe. And we are what we eat. I've read "The Omnivore's Dilemma," yes, and you should too. If you're interested in joining a CSA here locally, King County has a great site!

oh memories

you know what i love about our current state of affairs? that it's worn me down to the point where i now look upon this fondly, as part of the "good old days" long gone are the days when our AG and the DOJ were just weird and slightly offensive; this is terrifying. does it feel like everyone in this administration has been giving us the finger for the past 7 years?

when bad things happen to bad people

you know, i'm not really into dancing on people's graves, but i can't help but comment on this. sorry jerry. this was obviously some sort of coordinated attack by the jews, gays, feminists, Teletubbies, pagans and ACLU. but what really gets me, is that there is now some sort of unspoken (or loudly spoken) decree that all republican presidential candidates need to issues statements on this. this guy was a radical, on-the-fringe hatemonger. these guys really need to pander to his fans? really? REALLY? there's something wrong there. this is about the time i need mike gravel to show up and call a bigot a bigot. old man has balls. (i'm pretty in love with mike gravel.)

the oprah effect

she can get millions of americans to read tolstoy and faulkner and now she's trying to get millions of americans to vote for my political boyfriend barack. aka barry hussein (i stole that from wonkette. i'm not that amazing.) this freaks me out a bit. i like to picture barack in two scenarios: 1) smoking a cigarette in some poorly lit library reading lincoln biographies. or 2) wearing next to nothing on the beach. holding hands with oprah and talking about souls and shit in front of a bunch of swooning cardigan-clad desperate housewives enthusiasts does not really fit into either of those. baby, you said you weren't going to do the hollywood thing, right? it's me and my $25 contributions you love, right? i need to ignore politics for a year. if i come back in may of 2008 and his campaign hasn't destroyed itself, i will be able to breathe freely again. no more showing up to debates about health care without a health care plan honeybunch. i'll see you next year.

a good man is hard to find

i had a wonderful weekend, beginning and ending with good friends, with some gourmet frito pie thrown in for good measure. kate is well. olive is well. no complaints can be heard from apartment 48. when i started this blog again, i was hoping it would force me to write about, synthesize, contemplate what the hell is going on in this world. i failed to factor in how truly depressing the state of the world is at this moment. staying informed has turned out to be a masochistic effort. i need some inspiration this monday morning. i immediately thought of sarah vowell, one because i missed her for the bazillionth time this weekend, and two because when i think of people with the most impassioned love/hate relationships with this country, i think of her. at one point, the full text of my favorite sarah essay "the nerd voice" was online, and i'm failing to find it right now. i found an excerpt i quoted in a blog years ago and it goes something like this: "I wish that in order to secure his party's nomination, a presidential candidate would be re­quired to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the peri­odic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism in seventeenth­-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year­-old; recite Emily Dickinson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael's "Two Sleepy People," Johnny Cash's "Five Feet High and Rising," and "You Got the Silver" by the Rolling Stones. After all, the United States is the greatest country on earth dealing with the most complicated problems in the his­tory of the world-poverty, pollution, justice, Jerusalem. What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Se­cret Service code name Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes." in my search for that, however, i ran across this again. and thought i'd share. it's lengthy and slightly dated, but if you strip off the time-specific bits, the meat of it will make your heart hurt. you can hardly believe it came from the mouth of a politician. for the lazies of you, this: "'We the people are--collectively--still the key to the survival of America's democracy. We--as Lincoln put it, "[e]ven we here"--must examine our own role as citizens in allowing and not preventing the shocking decay and degradation of our democracy. Thomas Jefferson said: "An informed citizenry is the only true repository of the public will." The revolutionary departure on which the idea of America was based was the audacious belief that people can govern themselves and responsibly exercise the ultimate authority in self-government. This insight proceeded inevitably from the bedrock principle articulated by the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke: "All just power is derived from the consent of the governed." The intricate and carefully balanced constitutional system that is now in such danger was created with the full and widespread participation of the population as a whole. The Federalist Papers were, back in the day, widely-read newspaper essays, and they represented only one of twenty-four series of essays that crowded the vibrant marketplace of ideas in which farmers and shopkeepers recapitulated the debates that played out so fruitfully in Philadelphia. Indeed, when the Convention had done its best, it was the people - in their various States - that refused to confirm the result until, at their insistence, the Bill of Rights was made integral to the document sent forward for ratification. And it is "We the people" who must now find once again the ability we once had to play an integral role in saving our Constitution. And here there is cause for both concern and great hope. The age of printed pamphlets and political essays has long since been replaced by television - a distracting and absorbing medium which sees determined to entertain and sell more than it informs and educates. Lincoln's memorable call during the Civil War is applicable in a new way to our dilemma today: "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.'" i didn't link those two pieces by accident. say what you will about celebrity al and his oscar, but don't ever tell me the man doesn't have a great mind.

round 1

It's going to be a long two years.... Preamble: The amount of money spent on political campaigns in this country anymore is appalling. I remember a recent local campaign in which a candidate had to go into some gross amount of personal debt just to get a spot on the televised debate. The fact that presidential candidates have to pander to Hollywood bigwigs so they can pay their campaign bills makes my blood boil. Lowdown: Barack attended some Hollywood egofest fundraiser hosted by David Geffen and Spielberg and others at which Mr. Geffen took potshots at Bill and Hillary and then handed $1.3 million to Obama's campaign. (''Obama is inspirational, and he's not from the Bush royal family or the Clinton royal family. Americans are dying every day in Iraq. And I'm tired of hearing James Carville on television.'') This happened just a day after Obama spoke to a crowd in Las Vegas about getting away from "slash and burn politics" in Washington. Hill got hot and bothered about all of the above and called for a denunciation of Geffen's comments by the Obama camp: "While Democrats should engage in a vigorous debate on the issues, there is no place in our party or our politics for the kind of personal insults made by Senator Obama's principal fundraiser." (principal fundraiser??) Obama's camp responded: "We aren’t going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters. It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when he was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom. It is also ironic that Senator Clinton lavished praise on Monday and is fully willing to accept today the support of South Carolina State Sen. Robert Ford, who said if Barack Obama were to win the nomination, he would drag down the rest of the Democratic Party because ’he's black.’" SNAP! I've subscribed to Hillary and Barack's email lists more for entertainment value than anything. After receiving Howard Dean's rabblerousing emails for the past year from the DNC, I figured there would be some gold coming out of the Hillary camp. This morning I open up my gmail to find a heartfelt letter from Bill (picture of him lovingly embracing is wife included). "Thank you so much for your support. Hillary and I couldn't do it without you." One rough weekend and she's already pulled out the Bill card? I'm not going to even get into how insulted I am that less than a month after she's announced her candidacy, she's already whoring out her husband's popularity. Pull up your big girl pants, Hill. I'm against this time-wasting slander as much as the next person. Get on the television and give me your plan to save my country from its current course toward complete ethical, intellectual and physical annihilation; don't waste our time putting out press releases urging your competitor to apologize for some loudmouth in California who doesn't want to have sleepovers at your house anymore. And don't even pretend like if that same loudmouth handed you $1.3 million you wouldn't take it.