Molly Ivins says it better than I ever could...

...so I'm going to quote her in full.


I will not support Hillary Clinton for president
January 20, 2006

AUSTIN, Texas --- I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone. This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, "Look, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Bobby Kennedy -- rough, tough Bobby Kennedy -- didn't do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines who liked to quote poetry.

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway ("First, you have to win elections"). Can't you even read the damn polls?

Here's a prize example by someone named Barry Casselman, who writes, "There is an invisible civil war in the Democratic Party, and it is between those who are attempting to satisfy the defeatist and pacifist left base of the party and those who are attempting to prepare the party for successful elections in 2006 and 2008."

This supposedly pits Howard Dean, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, emboldened by "a string of bad news from the Middle East ... into calling for premature retreat from Iraq," versus those pragmatic folk like Steny Hoyer, Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman.

Oh come on, people -- get a grip on the concept of leadership. Look at this war -- from the lies that led us into it, to the lies they continue to dump on us daily.

You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine you have no idea what people are thinking. I'm telling you right now, Tom DeLay is going to lose in his district. If Democrats in Washington haven't got enough sense to OWN the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.

Do it all, go long, go for public campaign financing for Congress. I'm serious as a stroke about this -- that is the only reform that will work, and you know it, as well as everyone else who's ever studied this. Do all the goo-goo stuff everybody has made fun of all these years: embrace redistricting reform, electoral reform, House rules changes, the whole package. Put up, or shut up. Own this issue, or let Jack Abramoff politics continue to run your town.

Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. I've said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were "German dogs." They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The MINUTE someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. That, or you could just piss on them elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines). Or point out the latest in the endless "string of bad news."

Do not sit there cowering and pretending the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can.

To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2006 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

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An observation by Greg

Our pal, Greg Girkin, observes:

There’s an article on insurance companies canceling coastal property coverage in the latest Newsweek. The article contains little new, except the mention that ***54%*** of the American public lives within 50 miles of the coast. It’s a good thing global warming is a lie. Otherwise, we’d be completely fucked.

Oh, yeah. And where do politicians get off saying the “heartland” is the center of America. With 54% of the population, I think the coasts are clearly the center of America. And look who they vote for…

Another in a series of things I didn't know

Did ya'll know that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was invented for Montgomery Ward? Neither did I.

New climate report

Apparently it's going to be worse than earlier predications had indicated.

It has recently become a conservative position that "Yes, everbody knows that it's getting warmer but we don't know what's causing it so we need to go slow and do more research." Y'know, there's something to that second part: we really don't know the cause. It *could* be that the sun is brighter or hotter. It *could* be that something other than man-made greenhouse gasses are causing the warm-up.

But what if that's so? Aren't we still in a helluva lot of trouble and don't we need to fix the part that we can control? Don't we need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of what's *causing* the heat? We *know* that reducing the CO2 will lower the temperatures. Why wait? Sure, continue to study the phenomenon but get a handle on our emissions now. While there's still a human race to save.

There *are* Democrats who understand the Constitution

At least one. What I like best about this is how McConnell's hypocracy gets pointed out.

Which brings to mind the fact that McConnell's going to be getting a lot of air time for the next couple of years and he's waaaaay more charming the Harry Reid ever thought about being.

I'm embarrassed to share the planet with some people -- Idaho wolves

I can't even come up with something to say about this other than it's just sad that people like this get handed positions of power, authority, and responsibility.

I know that the customs of my tribe are not the laws of nature

But, by the same token, not all cultures have equal value. I know that this sort of thing is in no way a threat to the United States but whyowhyo don't we tell these people to stop shit like this?

Like I didn't have enough to like away at night thinking about

Plastics are screwing up our kids. Who is truly surprised by this? We've created a world that we can't live in. I don't have an inkling of what a solution to all the pollutants we fling into the environment would look like.

I'm almost tempted to have one of those analyses done where they take all kind of samples from your body and then report back to you what horrible and deadly chemicals you're filled with. But I really don't want to know.

We conspiracy nuts just *love* being vindicated

It seems that ol' GHW Bush's lies about his early connections to the CIA have been exposed.

Bush Sr's involvement with the Bay of Pigs has long been bandied about among conspiracy folks on the basis of an FBI memo indicating that Director Hoover had briefed "George Bush of the CIA" on the JFK assassination the next morning and the naming of the troop transport ships involved in the actual Bay of Pigs landing: the _Zapata_, the _Barbara_, and the _Houston_. Lovely coicidences all, don't you think?

Victory in Iraq is at hand

I can see now why the Dear and Glorious Leader thinks that a "troop surge" (never ever ever to be called an "escalation") will bring victory. Because it will! All we have to do is keep the central government from collapsing long enough to enact "their" new hydrocarbon laws. And then victory is ours! Well, victory is Exxon's and the rest of those guys.


ITMFA