CA - DOMA PROP. 22 REJECTED!!!

A great day for Californians! The CA Supremes ruled Prop 22 the controversial Defense of Marriage aka homophobe's marriage law unconstitutional.

This is a tremendous advancement and coming right before the 41st anniversary of Loving v. Virginia is a beautiful thing.

Now, this will likely be appealed (and that would take it to Federal Court), so there will many ups and downs on this to come. Still, a victory dance is in order.

And Brad?

"Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who
wants to be married is legally able".

Clocks ticking...

Stockholm Syndrome aka HRC's Race for the White House '08

I'm glad that some progressive outlets are finally just doing the basic math and concluding what most people with a calculator have. Hillary can't win. Even her own advisers think she's got a 10% chance of getting the nomination.

Politico put up a story today saying this, and now it's a matter of time before everyone stops sniffing the Clinton snuff and following suit. Hopefully it will be at least 3 weeks before PA, so we can get the holdouts to come out of their caves and realize the truth.

The 5th Horseman

I think the fifth horseman just rounded the bend -- I actually found myself cheering on Tucker Carlson and his little bow-tie. He just interviewed the journalist who quoted Samantha Powers on the" monster" comment. He nailed her. Dude, she tried the smarmy, US press is acquiescent, then he came back with the not wanting to get lectured by someone from a system with such low standards like those in the UK press, he scolded her for burning her source and she came back saying that in the UK off-the-record is negotiated up front and that someone shouldn't be given a pass on a comment because they didn't mean to say it, taking that ball, Tucker asked her why he didn't ask Ms. Powers what she meant by "monster". And stumped. Dang. If I could type faster I would transcribe the thing. Crazy stuff this campaign season.

HAFTA SHAFT YA ON NAFTA

Sorry for the terrible pun, but I came across a link to this article in a comment on HuffPo, and thought I'd like to it here.

Apparently some paper in Winnipeg is reporting that the Chief of Staff for Canada's PM, Ian Brodie, was the first drop in the leaking of the NAFTA memo -- and it claims he was referring to a conversation he'd had with someone from HILLARY'S campaign. We'll see what turns this takes, but, as with anything involving election year politics, I'm sure there's more here than meets the eye.

The World is Watching, Hillary

I'm listening to Barack Obama's speech on MSNBC from Austin, Texas. Once again, he has found the nugget and put it out there.

The world is watching what we do here.

I think that is a shot across the bow to Hillary to let her and her advisers know that her dirty tricks and tactics are not going to make her popular around the world.

"Experience"

The irony that Hillary Clinton criticizes Barack Obama's Iraq war speech as "talk when he didn't have responsibility" is clearly pinpointed here:

When asked to point to a national security test that Senator Clinton had faced, the campaign responded that it was a "moment of test" when she stood up in China and said "women's rights are human rights."

This is from the MoJo Blog, admittedly a heavily biased site, so take the framing with a grain of salt, but the quote is from a conference call with Mark Penn, Clinton's campaign strategist. I hope those Clinton-backers are really paying attention to their candidate's words. I don't plan to vote for her in the fall if she gets the nomination and I'd really like to back a Democrat. I've done a lot of soul-searching on this, but the thought of four to eight more years of socially conservative policies that encourage soft bigotry makes me ill.

Do Spouse's Share Copyright?

I guess you can't plagiarize your own spouse.... A funny youtube posted in the comments section on about the new '3 AM' spot Hillary rolled out in Texas.



Thank you Sarge1.

** UPDATED** Game Changing

**UPDATED**
I am no computer whiz. I screwed up the html at the bottom of the post and cut myself off.
**UPDATED**

Clinton's campaign is threatening to challenge the Texas Democratic Party on the way they run their dual primary-caucus this March 4th. This, despite the fact that Bill Clinton helped to develop those rules, those rules have been in place since at least the early 90s, and Texas is very happy with them.

From the AP via Yahoo:

Aides to Clinton said earlier this week they were alarmed at the lack of clarity about many of the caucus rules and expressed their concerns on a conference call with Obama's staff and state party officials. Texas has a two-step voting process, with a
primary and then caucuses shortly after the polls close.

Specifically, Clinton aides questioned a provision allowing caucus attendees to vote to move the location if they choose to do so, and whether people who had cast so-called "provisional ballots" in the primary would have their votes counted in the caucus.

They also expressed concern about the automated phone system precinct chairs would use to call in the results of each caucus, saying the party hadn't yet trained anyone to use the system properly.

Clinton political director Guy Cecil said he asked party officials to spell out the rules in memo form and to send them to both campaigns.

"We want to see the results in writing, and we reserve the right to challenge something if we don't believe it reflects something that was discussed on the call," he said, insisting that if there were clear problems with how the caucuses were being run, "you are allowed to say something about it."

I get frustrated by all the yammering from this campaign. Instead of strategizing, they run against obstacles and not only want to change the rules of the game, they want to change the game itself -- in this case, it's no longer about who can build the better campaign apparatus, who has the stronger message, the best track record, is the most inspiring, or looks better on paper, now it's about who is best at wrecking havoc on the alliance of the various Democratic state parties and intimidating them into falling in line.

I hope voters of Texas and Ohio walk away from this campaign and all its rhetoric of fear. Hillary Clinton has never made me feel safer and tactics like this buttress the argument that she doesn't know what the hell she's doing and is copying someone else's homework (Karl Rove, anyone?). Come up with your own campaign slogans, stop market-testing your policies, and PLAY BY THE RULES. Might do something to convince folks you recognize what the RULE OF LAW means and have REJECTED your husband's own fast-and-loose truth-telling that ushered in GWB and the "compassionate conservates" all over the country.

Karl Rove

A blogger I'm not familiar with named Larisa Alexandrovna has a post up on Huffington about a mysteriously timed black out of 60 Minutes on stations in Alabama. Having toiled under the vagaries of the satellite feed system, I know how very possible it is to lean against the wrong switch, go to the bathroom at the wrong time or just plain turn the channel from the station you are working at to check the Oscar-cast. It is a might strange that the segment that WASN'T broadcast involved a former AL Governor who is currently imprisoned on bribery charges that are looking more and more bogus.

I'm not such a conspiracy theorist that I believe Karl Rove's fat little fingers had a hand in this, however, it wouldn't surprise me either.

Money Talks

Everyone is reporting the same thing -- Hillary Clinton lent her campaign $5 million last month, senior staffers and campaign managers are going without pay this month and she's tapped out her major donors. Aside from the fact that this story in no way impacts the nomination, afterall, it's all free press and a non-story story way for her to stay on the news without having to run campaign ads, can we talk about the fact that Bill Clinton, just last month, criticized the way the campaign finance system favors wealthy individuals who are capable of self-financing?

From Politico:

And he implied that he would not use his own funds to support his wife's candidacy. “For example, they say you couldn’t stop me from spending all the money I’ve saved over the last five years on Hillary’s campaign if I wanted to, even though it would clearly violate the spirit of campaign finance reform,” he said.

Two of his top aides (Carville and the other guy whose name I can't remember right now) went so far as to propose a hard ceiling on the amount of money that could be spent campaigning and proposed a campaign finance "tax" from which candidates could run. Clearly this was in preparation for a Bloomberg run which ended up not materializing (or, at least, it hasn't yet).

So, what's the story? Apparently money talks. I don't see how the DNC can ignore the fact that there is a groundswell of support for the Senator from Illinois. The types of donations he's received over the last few weeks, the fact that a substantial number of them are coming from atypical donors, and that he's attracted entirely new voters to the polls, should tell senior leadership they have lightening in a bottle and they shouldn't let it be squandered with a messy race for delegates, and under no circumstances should this race be decided by Super Delegates.

At this point, I don't think it's clear if Hillary's supporters are loyal and will stay the course with her, or if Obama's momentum is real and will continue to grow, but I do know that for the sake of the party, whoever is at the helm better look out for Icebergs. We can't afford another dispirited fall with people confused about who to support and why and either not voting or voting for the other guy.

Newt Gringrich is a Tool

Not that anybody needed any further proof that this guy is an idiot, but reading this transcript it's clear that there will be shenanigans on the high-seas in '08. Fox News just keeps bringing the hits.

IMPEACH THEM!!!

I've long supported impeaching this entire administration. Please look deep into your hearts (or that dark pit of anger you're still calling a heart if you are anything like me) and sign up.

The embed code is screwed up on the IMPEACH CHENEY site I found this on, but here's a direct link.

Adieu, Mssr Gonzalez!

Let's start here and see where we end up.