Hillary’s Voice

Radio Left

If you care about democracy: Help Resurrect Radioleft Before the Democratic Convention (by Linda Starr)
Do you feel that corporate businesses have bought and paid for the presidential presumptive nominees on both sides of the aisle? Do you feel mainstream media has done it’s job in properly covering the primaries or vetting the candidates we ended up with thus far?  Are you disgusted by the Democratic Party manipulating the rules to force Obama on us?  Do you feel robbed of your votes for Senator Clinton?… Geoff Staples and I have been talking about resurrecting Radioleft.com.
But Linda and Geoff need your help.  Click through for details.

But also, please don’t forget to help Hillary retire her debt.  They may be limiting the amount of time they’ll allow her to campaign for that.  As Riverdaughter says, “Remember, it only takes 500,000 of us at $20.08 a head to retire Hillary’s outstanding campaign debt to her vendors.”  Be sure to use this link, so that the money will go to retire the debt.

Some Clinton supporters still not embracing Obama, poll says (Political Ticker, CNN)
According to a new survey from CNN and the Opinion Research Corp., the number of Clinton supporters who say they plan to vote for Obama has dropped from 60 percent to 54 percent, while the number who of them say they would stay home has risen from 22 percent to 32 percent.

Paid Pundits Pervert Puma Polls (by John: south of Melrose at Liberal Rapture)
The ongoing dip in Obama’s PUMA numbers is not about Hillary. It’s about Obama… The closer we look at Obama the less palatable he is. Conversely, and speaking for myself only, the closer I look at McCain the less he seems to be the big GOP Monster that ninnies … make him out to be. The only thing I know for sure about my vote is who is NOT getting it. The past month has shown us that Obama is not a healer. (All he had to do was acknowledge and apologize for the blatant and obvious sexism. Imagine the difference that would have made in early June.) He is less trustworthy now than he was even 2 weeks ago. He doesn’t not even agree with himself half the time. Why would anyone trust him more now - after no less than 6 major flip flops: Jerusalem, FISA, campaign finance, Iraq, gun control, abortion rights for the mentally ill.

PUMA’s Have Awakened (a very powerful video by PrincesseJen)

Caucus Stories?
I feel strongly that the superdelegates and the American public should know about the rampant and flagrant cheating that was perpetrated by the Obama camp throughout the caucus process. Since he only won by 130 delegates, mostly won in caucuses I think this is an important area to investigate. We have to finish it way before the convention, hopefully as soon as possible. With your permission, we will be providing some of the information we collect to a Congressional investigator and will also use it to make a video. Anything you can email to me would be helpful! Thank you , Larry  larry.music-at-att.net.

A Call to Delegates (by Alegre)
Still in the “we get mail” category… I got an email from Will Bower at the Puma / Just Say No Deal coalition, and I thought part of it was worth sharing for discussion-sake here.  They’re looking for a few good delegates with a conscience - 175 to be exact - who would be willing to jump ship and back Hillary.

Just Say No Deal!, PUMAs08!

Real Democrats (by Alegre)
I got an email from Paul[ie] Abeles today, announcing a new group focusing on organizing grassroots efforts in all 50 states. If you have any ideas or contacts for Paula post them here [click through to post a comment] and I’ll send her a link.  If you’d like me to pass names etc on to her confidentially please feel free to email them to me at hillarysbloggers-at-yahoo.com.

Thought for (Independence) Day (by ronkseattle at The Confluence)
America was built by folks who were told “you have no place else to go” … but went somewhere else anyway.

Fifty-six Honorary PUMAS (by myiq2xu at The Confluence)
Two-hundred and thirty-two years ago, fifty-six men committed high treason.  In doing so, they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor…  They declared our independence… They had tried to work within the system, to no avail.  They wrote letters, they went to meetings, they begged and pleaded.  But their pleas were ignored, and they were threatened with punishment for not being obedient and loyal subjects.  They had been loyal all their lives, but now, finally, they said “Unity-Schmoonity!”… [T]hese fifty-six men believed in what they were doing enough to put their lives on the line.

Declaration of Objections (by Anna Belle at Alegre’s Corner)
[P]olitical parties are not governments, [but] when a long train of abuses and usurpations evinces a design to reduce them under authoritarianism, it is their duty to throw off such a political party, and to provide different representation for their future security…

Objections
 - The members of the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and By-Laws Committee violated The DNC charter on May 31, 2008 by meeting in private, in direct violation of the Sunshine Rules Provision of said Charter.
 - On that same day, the Democratic Party grossly violated ethical standards when it awarded four delegates to candidate Barack Obama based on actual votes for candidate Hillary Clinton, and in addition, awarded him delegates based on votes for “Uncommitted.”
 - Earlier in the campaign season, the Democratic Party violated its own Delegate Selection Rules by applying penalties to only two states who broke Section 11 calendar rules, even though five states broke those rules. In addition, Florida and Michigan were originally stripped of 100% of their delegates, even though the rules stipulated a 50% penalty.
 - The decisions of the RBC meeting mentioned above are evidence of sexism and authoritarianism within the ranks of the Democratic Party.
 - Caucuses are a violation of the one-person, one-vote and secret ballot principles that have been cornerstone Democratic values for more than a century. They produced a skewed and unfair result this primary season. Caucus states are also over-represented in the pledged delegate count, in violation of the one-person, one-vote principle.
 - Sexism was allowed to flourish as never before not only because of the behavior of the mainstream media, but also by the actions of many in the progressive online community, the stark silence of the Democratic Leadership and because ordinary Americans, male and female, engaged in it as long as it advanced their favored candidate.
 - Barack Obama and his campaign exploited racial issues in the primary campaign, which risks setting back the Civil Rights movement, and cynical Democratic leaders, as well as some ordinary Democrats, approved of this campaign tactic.
 - The voices of 18 million voters who supporter Hillary Clinton have been illegitimately silenced, ridiculed, and subjected to outright fabrications on the part of the mainstream press and the Internet press.
 - The evidence is present, for anyone who wants to see it, that authoritarian tendencies fueled by greed are on the rise in the Democratic Party.
Click through to read the remedies demanded.  They’re very much like what the Denver Group is demanding.

The Denver Group: Keeping the Democratic Party democratic (by GeekLove at No Quarter)
The Denver Group was formed to insure that the Democratic National Committee respect and carry out the democratic process at the convention in Denver this August by meeting certain specific goals. They will be advocating, and if neccessary pressuring, through purchased mass media as well other accepted avenues, the Democratic National Committee to see to it that these goals and the interests of tens of millions of Democratic voters are met. Their goals are:
* An open convention.
* Senator Clinton’s name on the ballot
* Speeches allowed by supporters of Senator Clinton on behalf of her candidacy.
* A roll call vote.
* No coronation

Democratic Telemarketers (by Truth Partisan at Corrente)
Just got off the phone with ANOTHER Democratic fundraiser and volunteer co-ordinator. Those people do keep callin’—and they seem terribly SHOCKED when I tell them, politely (can’t do it real calmly yet), that I am not going to be working or helping out or contributing to the Democratic Party this year because of the vote stealing. This last guy—I’m going to out him, it was “Mike”—actually had the gall to ask me WHAT I MEANT ABOUT THE DEMOCRATIC VOTE STEALING. And WHO exactly stole the vote? I politely explained the whole thing in detail, on the off chance that he was an Obama newbie who really didn’t know… Later on in the conversation, Mike admitted that MANY people had been complaining to him about this. So, the asking part was just an attempt to DOWNPLAY the vote stealing, no?

Anyway, Mike said he was just helping to organize volunteers for a Senator (who has been shockingly disloyal to Hillary and Bill Clinton because of their very recent fundraising, political and longterm personal connections)BUT I didn’t even go there. I said our Senator had not stood up and said the vote stealing was wrong. I said, he doesn’t run the committee and he’s not on the RBC, I know. But he could have said it was wrong and stood up for Democracy. What is there before the vote? Nothing, because if we don’t have ANY vote—even in this our great REPUBLIC, yeah I get that—if we don’t have any vote, we don’t have a Democracy.
I understand one of the organizations preparing to protest at the convention is also working toward unseating every elected superdelegate who votes for Obama.  Not just the ones whose districts voted for Clinton, ALL OF THEM.

Grandmother Proud To Have Lived Long Enough To See First Viable Female Candidate Torn Apart (The Onion)
Seventy-six-year-old grandmother Anita Graney told reporters Monday that she was “overwhelmed with pride” for having lived to see the first viable female presidential candidate in the nation’s history so successfully run into the ground by vicious media attacks and hubristic, arrogant miscalculations. … Graney expressed hope that one of her granddaughters might someday be the first woman to get utterly eviscerated in a nationwide general election.
A satire, yes, but so close to the truth that it hurts.

Destroying Hillary Clinton (by Melissa McEwan and Maureen McCluskey, The Guardian, U.K.)
How a bitter primary campaign saw the right’s discredited smears gleefully revived and reused by the left

Part one - In a complete 180-degree turn, the same members of the left who had once defended Clinton against the attacks of the right wing - the trumped-up scandals and dug-up dirt that led to endless hours and millions upon millions of dollars wasted in fruitless investigations of the Clintons, their business dealings, their friends, not to mention the peculiar features of Bill’s twig and berries - adopted the frames of those attacks as their own. Everything old was new again. Call it political retro chic.

Part Two – [S]ources of the attacks of the 1990s found fresh credibility, as long as they were smearing the Clintons. Many of the Clintons’ foes on the Left uncritically accepted rumors and claims pushed by Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh because they reflected poorly on the Clintons… Perhaps the left had never defended the Clintons on the merits, instead merely playing a game of partisanship that once required rejecting rightwing frames, even while they internalised them. Perhaps the “vast right-wing conspiracy” had reached further than we once imagined.

Old guy vs change: McCain, Obama images take shape 
WASHINGTON (AP) - Now more than ever, it’s the old guy against the agent of change. Ask people to blurt out their first words about the two presidential candidates and one in five say “change” or “outsider” for Barack Obama and “old” for John McCain, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Monday. Those are not only the top responses for each man but the ones used most often since January, when fewer than one in 10 volunteered those descriptions.
It obviously takes time for meme changes to make their way into the general populace.  Obama is no agent of change.

Obama Might “Refine” Iraq Timeline (The Caucus, New York Times)
FARGO, N.D. – Senator Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot sustain a long-term military presence in Iraq, but added that he would be open to “refine my policies” about a timeline for withdrawing troops after meeting with American military commanders during a trip to Iraq later this month. Mr. Obama, whose popularity in the Democratic primary was built upon a sharp opposition to the war and an often-touted 16-month gradual timetable for removing combat troops, dismissed suggestions that he was changing positions in the wake of reductions in violence in Iraq and a general election fight with Senator John McCain.

Obama’s Iraq Backtrack (by iam0nly1 at Alegre’s Corner, cross posted at DONEdems.com)
In the much discussed ABC Pennsylvania Democratic debate Senators Clinton and Obama were asked if they would be steadfast in removing troops from Iraq even if commanders and generals disagreed. Senator Obama was adamant: “GIBSON: …So you’d give the same rock-hard pledge, that no matter what the military commanders said, you would give the order to bring them home? OBAMA: Because the commander-in-chief sets the mission, Charlie. That’s not the role of the generals.”… Well, that was the primary, and this is the general, and in classic Obama form, he’s backtracking. Looks like Obama’s planning on passing the buck: don’t like our new timeline, don’t like that we can’t get the troops out?…Blame the commanders… In short, Obama’s consistent stance on Iraq and plan to remove the troops is what Bill Clinton always said it was; a fairy tale.

Obama: Response to Iraq remarks overblown
ST. LOUIS - Barack Obama celebrated “active faith” as an obligation of religious Americans and a chief agent of societal change while speaking Saturday to a nearly all-black roomful of churchgoers, but hoping to reach far beyond them.
HIS flip-flop is OUR fault.  You GOT THAT, rube?

Is There a Sucker Born Every Minute? (y SusanUnPC AT No Quarter)
It’s unfortunate that Barack Obama won instant supporters based on the “buzz” about a single speech against the war in 2002 — a speech so little noted by Chicago media that it had to be recreated in a studio for Obama’s campaign ads… A single speech never followed by further actions or even more words. Ambassador Joseph Wilson says that he looked everywhere for help before the Iraq War, and never once heard about Obama, let alone heard from him. Yet, legions of supporters flocked to Obama based on that one speech. Now Obama has adopted a revisionist Iraq policy. “Never give a sucker an even break.” Is W.C. Fields now an Obama consultant?

Contradictions (by Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft)
Matt Yglesias [wrote Thursday]: “I don’t think anyone can seriously dispute that the current President of the United States violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act . . . . I wasn’t alive in 1973-74 [when Nixon was forced to resign]. I have a vague sense that at that time America’s elites operated with some sense of conscience and dignity, and it was taken for granted even among Republican leaders that one couldn’t just break the law. . . . I don’t really know what changed, or why David Broder and other gatekeepers of elite consensus can’t see that something’s gone wrong here, but I’m not happy about it.” Nicely put. But then he writes in his VERY NEXT POST: “[W]hatever disappointments one has with Obama (and there are sure to be more to come) — he unquestionably represents a leftward shift relative to the sort of national candidates the Democratic Party has been putting forward in recent cycles.”

I’m not sure what went wrong between Yglesias’ writing of those two posts, but his lament about Broder sounds empty when he excuses Obama for ignoring the very same FISA law breaking and supporting the FISA capitulation. Because that is what Yglesias was doing there - rationalizing for Obama’s FISA flip flop and capitulation. Let’s not deal with the fact that Obama is doing precisely what he is lamenting about Broder in his previous post.

And Another Thing! (by Paul the Spud at Shakesville)
From Obama’s site, where the speech in which he outlines his plan for FBOs [Faith based organizations] is posted… Obama recognizes the fact that many FBOs, as opposed to social services organizations, secular or otherwise, that are trained and experienced in providing services that have had their budgets gutted by the Bush administration, may not be equipped to provide best services. Instead of returning that money to the organizations that were already doing good work, he’s going to give more money to the organizations that may or may not know what they’re doing.

Then, his big plan for training these FBO’s is to take already overworked organizations that are struggling to provide services for their clients with minuscule budgets and staff, and have them train these FBO’s to do their jobs. Isn’t that just a brilliant bit of outsourcing? In addition, is “training the trainers” optional? If so, then there will be some FBO’s that will be paid to provide services they’re not trained to provide, or if not, they will be told by the government how to provide their services. How does that work with the separation of church and state? And how is that fair to FBO’s?

I’m living in a cuckoo clock.

New and Not Improved (New York Times)
Senator Barack Obama stirred his legions of supporters, and raised our hopes, promising to change the old order of things. He spoke with passion about breaking out of the partisan mold of bickering and catering to special pleaders, promised to end President Bush’s abuses of power and subverting of the Constitution and disowned the big-money power brokers who have corrupted Washington politics. Now there seems to be a new Barack Obama on the hustings. First, he broke his promise to try to keep both major parties within public-financing limits for the general election… The new Barack Obama has abandoned his vow to filibuster an electronic wiretapping bill if it includes an immunity clause for telecommunications companies that amounts to a sanctioned cover-up of Mr. Bush’s unlawful eavesdropping after 9/11…

The Barack Obama of the primary season used to brag that he would stand before interest groups and tell them tough truths. The new Mr. Obama tells evangelical Christians that he wants to expand President Bush’s policy of funneling public money for social spending to religious-based organizations — a policy that violates the separation of church and state and turns a government function into a charitable donation… On top of these perplexing shifts in position, we find ourselves disagreeing powerfully with Mr. Obama on two other issues: the death penalty and gun control.
Oh, but there’s much more than that, New York Times.

Obama: Mental distress can’t justify late abortion
In an interview this week with “Relevant,” a Christian magazine, Obama said prohibitions on late-term abortions must contain “a strict, well defined exception for the health of the mother.[sic]” Obama then added: “Now, I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term.””

From Present to NO! on Our Reproductive Rights (by Alegre)
I swear, he’s tossing folks under the bus so fast it’s hard to keep up without a program.  Apparently, he’s moved from voting “present” to stating that “mental distress” is no excuse for wanting a late-term abortion…So he’s ginning up a phony issue to kiss up to the evangelicals while simultaneously throwing millions of women (and the men who support our rights) under that ravenous bus of his… How dare he?  The guy’s making it sound like women suddenly suffer from the vapors or find themselves in a tizzy at the thought of actually giving birth in the lead-up to delivery… For the record - women don’t just up and decide they don’t want to have the baby at the drop of a hat.  It happens rarely but when it does, the vast majority of cases involve a medical problem - threat to life and limb of the woman carrying the fetus… This latest stunt of BHO’s is pandering - pure and the most base form of pandering.

Obama: Mental Distress Can’t Justify Late Term Abortion (by Jeralyn at TalkLeft)
Obama made no such distinction last year: “Last year, after the Supreme Court upheld a federal ban on late-term abortions, Obama said he ‘strongly disagreed’ with the ruling because it ‘dramatically departs form previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women.’” NARAL leaders ought to feel like idiots. The official position of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group that endorsed Obama in May, states: “A health exception must also account for the mental health problems that may occur in pregnancy. Severe fetal anomalies, for example, can exact a tremendous emotional toll on a pregnant woman and her family.”

We Told You So (by Lynne in Lakeland at Liberal Rapture)
Buying a pig in a poke.
That’s what you crazy kids did.
You assumed you knew your dream date.
You assumed someone who’s resume is thinner than he is would stand by his word.
You assumed you knew him.
You fell in love.
Turns out your lover is a liar.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you…
So when you tell me I have to vote for your loverman because of the Supreme Court I have to ask - HOW DO YOU KNOW HE’LL NOMINATE YOUR KIND OF JUDGES?
How do you know?

Mostly cheers, but some boos too, when Obama addresses teachers
The crowd was mostly supportive and at times very enthusiastic today when Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama addressed the National Education Association. But USA TODAY’s Greg Toppo reports that Obama also got some boos, as he did when he spoke to NEA last year, by calling again for teachers’ pay to rise if their students do well on tests or if they take on added responsibilities.
Is he trying to alienate EVERYBODY?  If so, he’s doing a damn good job.

Obama Expands Party Demolition Down Into State Organizations (by campskunk at Alegre’s Corner)
It IS all about him… [W]e knew the national party has been parasitized by the Obama phenomena, and Howard Dean is just a hood ornament on the Obama Special. But now look at what’s going on in Iowa, according to the Iowa Independent. “At least 20 employees of the Iowa Democratic Party have been demoted or fired and a coordinated state-wide campaign was essentially disbanded, replaced by a focus on the presidential bid of Sen. Barack Obama..” Lovely. Despite the blogger boyz’ bragging about all the down-ticket benefits an Obama candidacy will have, the ugly truth is that all resources are being stripped from local races and diverted to the Obama campaign… Look for the Obama Blob™ to absorb a local party structure near you soon.

Bill Clinton rips Mugabe in Aspen (Denver Post)
ASPEN — Former President Bill Clinton called for Zimbabwe leader Robert Mugabe to step down immediately or form a power-sharing arrangement with his chief opponent… While Clinton spoke at length about the contest in Zimbabwe, only once did he bring up his own country’s pending presidential election. Without mentioning either one of them by name, he pointed out that both Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain advocate pro-environmental platforms. [Emphasis added.] “Both of our candidates have positions that guarantee that there will be a price set for carbon and we’ll start to do something about climate change,” he said.
I told you all this supposed lovey-doveyness was just a lie.  Obama has a LOT of fence mending to do if he wants wholehearted support.

Behind Barack’s “Suspicious” Mortgage (by Justin Peters, Columbia Journalism Review)
[Reporter Joe] Stephens, to his credit, seems to realize that there isn’t much here; he takes a level, sober tone in his story, and basically refrains from unsupported inferences and allegations. Of course, the “gotcha” here comes from the decision to print the story at all. The fact that Stephens’ story ran in the Washington Post—even discounting the fact that it ran on A3—would lead most readers to initially infer impropriety.
If the Post had been reading the blogs, they’d have had a much better story about Obama’s mansion purchase.

Media Tenor: Economic Pessimism Batters Candidates
• Will the economy be decisive? Both candidates suffer under economic pessimism
• McCain scores on leadership, but campaign skills are questioned
• Fox News favors Obama

Ingrid Betancourt could swing the US Presidential Election (by sm77 at The Confluence)
[O]n July 2nd 2008, during John McCain’s Colombian stop on his US presidential campaign tour of Latin America, Columbian covert special ops teams disguised as FARC rebels rescued Ingrid Betancourt and 14 other hostages, including 3 American aeronautical defense contractors kidnapped in 2003 – all in the SAME DAY… CNN/Univision/Telemundo’s reporting the story as: John McCain = Ingrid Betancourt hostage rescue… [Emphasis added.] The symbolism of John McCain, a former POW himself/current presidential candidate and Ingrid Betancourt, a now former hostage who also was a presidential candidate is outstandingly monumental, especially to Latino voters back in the US.
However, a Swiss radio station reports that the rescue was bloodless because a huge ransom was paid.  Remember, I warned that the Bush administration would use every tool at its disposal to make sure McCain wins in November.  I didn’t realize that could extend to cooperation from foreign governments.  And what would be a great story to go with this story?  See below.

Bush to Close Guantanamo? (by Jan Crawford Greenburg at Legalities, ABC News)
President Bush will soon decide whether to close Guantanamo Bay as a prison for al-Qaeda suspects, sources tell ABC News. High-level discussions among top advisers have escalated in the past week, with the most senior administration officials in continuous talks about the future of the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay–and how it will be dramatically changed and/or closed in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that gave detainees there access to federal courts.

U.S. Secretly Takes Yellowcake From Iraq
A huge stockpile of natural uranium, the last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program, arrived in a Canadian port after a secret U.S. transport operation.
More propaganda to help McCain?

A Case Study in Conservative Mendacity (by Daniel De Groot at Open Left)
[A] supply of uranium from Iraq had been successfully moved to Montreal in secrecy.  If you check into this, you’ll quickly find that the uranium a) was not weapons grade and b) was well known to the UN and IAEA and was being stored legally by Saddam’s government.  It was legally in Iraq according to international law. I wondered if the right wing echo chamber would use this as “proof” that the WMD claims were true after all.  I got even better than I hoped, as not only do they use it that way, but they reveal how dishonest they are by the way they have done this. Top recommended post at Redstate: “Yellowcake uranium found in Iraq, Saddam’s legacy, Bush was right!”

Post-9/11 Dragnet Turns Up Links
Increased use of fingerprinting to identify foreign detainees reveals many have U.S. arrest records.
And even more propaganda to help McCain?

VP speculation mounts as Florida’s Crist takes new stands
TALLAHASSEE — In just the past two weeks, Gov. Charlie Crist has reversed on offshore oil drilling, made national news with a historic Everglades land deal to buy U.S. Sugar, and announced his engagement to his glam girlfriend of nine months for a fall wedding.

McCain Uses Loopholes in McCain-Feingold Law
The Wall Street Journal reports that allies of Sen. John McCain “have found new loopholes in the campaign-finance law he helped write — and they’re using them to reel in huge contributions to help him compete with Sen. Barack Obama.”

Cashing In on Obama and McCain
JOHN McCAIN and Barack Obama are not the only winners to emerge from the long presidential primary season. The two presumptive nominees, along with the many candidates who bowed out along the way, spent more than $900 million through the end of May, about $470 million more than was spent on primaries in 2000, when both major parties last had competitive primary battles. Nearly half of the current spending has been paid to just a few dozen companies.

And now for some fun Illinois gossip: Duckworth fans may have something to cheer (by Michael Sneed, Chicago Sun-Times)
Tipsville . . . Pssst! Sneed hears rumbles that U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, who is this/close to Sen. Barack Obama, and U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel are talking up Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs Director Tammy Duckworth as Obama’s replacement — if Obama is elected president.
• • Top tip: Sneed previously reported that Gov. Blago, who will choose Obama’s replacement, had also quietly been pushing Duckworth…
• • Backshot: Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran, was serving as a major in the Illinois Army National Guard in 2004 when a rocket-propelled grenade hit the helicopter she was co-piloting. The attack shattered her right arm and forced the ampuation of both her legs. Duckworth lost a closely contested 2006 congressional race to Peter Roskam.

Duckworth was the candidate chosen by Dick Durbin and Rahm Emanuel to run in 2006 for the seat Henry Hyde was vacating.  Never mind that the grassroots supported Christine Cegelis, the candidate who, with practically no money and no party support, had garnered 44% of the vote in 2004 against long-time congressman Hyde.  Even with millions of dollars and other priceless support given to her by the party poohbahs, Duckworth barely squeaked by Cegelis in the primary, and managed to lose to a not terribly popular Republican.  Gov. Blagojevich gave Duckworth a position in state government (HEAD of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, even though her only previous administrative experience had been as a staff supervisor for a nonprofit and as an officer in the Army—see her Wikipedia entry).

The fun part here is that a few weeks ago, Bob Novak reported Nancy Pelosi wanted RAHM EMANUEL to replace Obama, should Obama manage to barge his way into the White House. Doesn’t Emanuel want to be a U.S. Senator?  Doesn’t he want to rise in the ranks?  Or does Emanuel have other ambitions?  Is he angling for PELOSI’s job, and was Pelosi trying an end run around those ambitions by announcing him as her candidate for Obama’s Senate seat?  Just wait until they start using the tactics that brought down Hillary against Nancy.  How dismissive will she be of sexism in the media then?  My friend Linda Starr says that someone close to and trusted by Pelosi is helping to do her in.

Becoming “Somebody”: Systems Beyond Repair (by Arthur Silber at The Power of Narrative)
Ed Burns is one of the writers and co-creators of “The Wire,” the widely praised HBO series… In a NYT story about Burns[:] “‘The irony is that you have to be somebody before anybody listens to you,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t an expert when I was an expert, and now that I’m not an expert, I’m an expert. It’s kind of curious.’” And there, in brief, you have one of the major keys to the corrupt establishments that run every area of life in America. No one will listen to you, even (more often, especially) if you are genuinely informed and perceptive about the area in which you work, until and unless the system has determined you are “somebody.” And that determination will never be granted by the system you so passionately wish to improve, for systems resist nothing so much as change. The more fundamental the change, the greater the resistance. But once those mysterious Important People in some other system have placed the crown of Somebodiness on your head, then those in charge of the system in which you previously worked will listen to what you have to say.
I am doomed.  I am constitutionally incapable of sucking up, even to Somebodies.  I guess that means I’ll never be a Somebody myself.

Lots more really good stuff at MakeThemAccountable.com.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com