Saturday, January 15, 2005

Democrat-in-name-only California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, shown at top in a photo from her Web site, recently gushed that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, shown above with "President" Monkeyboy in an AFP photo, is "the natural choice to be our country's next secretary of state" and that Rice "has the skill, judgment, and poise to lead in these difficult times." I hate Dianne Feinstein. Time and time again, this bitch sells us out to the Republicans. According to The Associated Press, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein not only supports National Security Adviser Condoleezza "9/11 Happened on My Watch and That Aug. 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing Titled 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.' Was Just a Historical Document" Rice to take over for Colin Powell as U.S. secretary of state, but Feinstein will introduce Rice at Tuesday's confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The AP reports that Feinstein said in a statement yesterday that Rice is "the natural choice to be our country's next secretary of state" and that Rice "has the skill, judgment, and poise to lead in these difficult times." Jesus Fucking Christ, those sound like words lifted from a White House press release. I decided long ago that I will never cast a vote for Benedict Feinstein again. As I've said, with "friends" like her "fighting" for our interests, who needs Republicans? If you are a Californian and you feel the same way, tell the bitch at http://feinstein.senate.gov/contact.html. Kudos to California's real Democratic senator, Barbara Boxer, who, the AP reports, plans to tell Rice during the confirmation hearing, "I personally believe that your loyalty to the mission you were given overwhelmed your respect for the truth." Boxer is seeking signatures on the following petition: Yes, Barbara, I stand with you in demanding the truth from Condoleezza Rice. The American people deserve honesty and candor from their leaders, especially about the decisions they make to put our servicemen and women in harm's way around the world. I join with you, Senator Boxer, in your effort to hold Condoleezza Rice accountable for her misleading statements leading up to the Iraq war and beyond before voting on her appointment as Secretary of State. Sign the petition here. And then thank Boxer for being a real Democrat and for courageously standing up for us here. 2:09:48 PM    Comments []

Reuters photo Robert Matsui's widow, Doris, shown above at her husband's memorial in Washingtion, D.C., on Jan. 5, is running for his seat on the U.S. House of Representatives -- because apparently more than 25 years of a Matsui in the seat just aren't enough. The Matsui Dynasty I'm going to look like a widow-basher but I don't give a fuck. I'm pissed off and I'm not running for office, so I can tell the truth. As I blogged recently, my congressman, Robert Matsui, died on Jan. 1. It came as a shock to us constituents because neither he nor any of his representatives had ever bothered to share with us the fact that he had a terminal illness. (Hey, we're just the constituents! It's OK to keep us in the dark because we're no one! We're just the fools who show up at the voting booth every two years and think that we actually have a voice in an actual democracy!) To my horror, Robert Matsui's widow, Doris, announced that she would run for his seat. Robert Matsui held his seat for more than 25 years, but apparently that wasn't enough. People who are much more qualified than Doris Matsui, including my former state assemblyman, Darrell Steinberg, and my current state senator, Deborah Ortiz -- experienced, competent legislators who have actually represented Matsui's consituency on the state level -- decided not to run against Doris Matsui because, I surmise, they feared political fallout from Running Against The Widow. (The Sacramento Bee recently ran a story on how hard it is to Oppose The Widow. "Ortiz said it would be too difficult on a personal level to challenge...the widow of the Democratic congressman who served the Sacramento-based district for 26 years," the Bee reports today.) Doris Matsui has cleared the field of any serious Democratic opponents. She wins, democracy loses. I normally don't write about Sacramento or California politics, as I try to appeal to a broader audience, but this is just one example of how the Democrats are so fucking clueless. They let sappy, stupid sentimentality -- musn't run against the widow! -- eclipse smart political strategy. (Gee, I wonder why the party is tanking!) Doris Matsui is not the best choice to fill her husband's seat, and I cannot help but wonder whether Robert and Doris Matsui knew before the Nov. 2 election that he was terminally ill and that in the event of his death, she would run for his seat. Are we a democracy or a collection of policial dynasties? This is something that the woefully pathetic Democratic Party needs to decide. "Doris Matsui is the fourth wife since 1998 to run for her late husband's congressional seat in California," notes the Bee. "Experts say political widows have an immediate advantage because of name recognition." This bullshit needs to stop. We the people deserve better. Update (Thursday, Jan. 20, 2005): I'm not the only one who's not intimidated by the widow thing, thank God. Here is an editorial that appears in today's Sacramento News & Review titled "The Widow Conundrum": There's a long and interesting history in American politics regarding the role of the widow. Six of the first 14 women ever elected to Congress were widows of incumbents. (Three more of those were daughters of politicians.) Since the 1920s, more than 35 widows have run -- most of them successfully -- for their deceased husband’s congressional seat. We bring up the subject, of course, because of the recent announcement that Doris Matsui, the widow of Sacramento Congressman Robert Matsui, will run to fill his seat in the House of Representatives. Would Doris Matsui make a good congresswoman? It seems there’s no easy way in polite political circles to even ask this question without sounding cold-hearted toward the widow and disrespectful to her dead husband. We know we can’t underestimate how difficult it must be these days to be Doris Matsui. The depth of her grief must be great. Any of us who lost a spouse so suddenly no doubt would feel the same. Even the fact that she felt the need to announce her candidacy so soon was sad. It underlined the political pressure she felt to make other potential candidates aware of her intentions. State Sen. Deborah Ortiz and former County Supervisor Grantland Johnson were the only ones to say they might run in the March special election for the seat. But Ortiz has already dropped out, saying it would be a “troubling thing” to run against this widow. After all, who wants to be perceived as halting the efforts of a woman trying to further the legacy of her dead husband? But none of that takes away the importance of that one question. So, we’ll repeat it: Would Doris Matsui make a good congresswoman? As with many political widows, there’s basically no way to tell. She’s never run a campaign or been a candidate for public office. She’s never won or lost an election or learned from either or both of these experiences. She’s never represented a constituency of any size. She’s never done the work of politicians -- determined when it’s time to fight and when it’s time to settle. All we know about Doris Matsui -- other than her relationship to the legacy of Robert Matsui -- is that she served as a deputy White House liaison (whatever that means) during the Clinton administration and currently works as a lobbyist for a law firm in Washington, D.C., though she is not a lawyer. As for national attention, she’s received it only once -- for testifying in the “Chinagate” hearings -- when the Clinton/Gore administration was accused of selling seats on trade missions in exchange for campaign contributions. If we put aside the fact of Doris Matsui’s last name, has this woman accomplished anything in her career that should put her at the top of the list of those most worthy to represent Sacramento in the nation’s capital? We honestly don’t think so. But that doesn’t change the fact that she’ll be almost impossible to beat. I won't vote for her, but yes, Doris Matsui most likely will win. I have this crazy belief that one must earn political office -- whether it's George W. Bush (who was only governor of Texas before he became "president" -- under Texas' constitution the governor is weaker than even the lieutenant governor, and the Texas Legislature meets only once every two years) or Doris Matsui, whose main "qualification" is that she was married to Robert Matsui. I didn't know, when I voted for Robert Matsui in November, that I was getting a package deal. When I vote for Matsui's replacement, I'm probably going to vote for the Green Party candidate, Pat Driscoll. 1:02:24 PM    Comments []

What Would Jesus Say? I'm thinking of regularly incorporating the sayings and teachings of Jesus Christ into my weblog. That's risky, I know -- blue-staters recoil at religious talk, which is understandable, as evil people like George W. Bush routinely evoke the names of God and Jesus to lie, steal, cheat and kill innocent people -- but Jesus was, you see, a radical liberal. He indisputably was anti-capitalist*, yet the money-grubbing Republican Party uses him as its mascot. The vast majority of "Christians" in the United States (and elsewhere, I'm sure) have no fucking clue what Jesus actually taught; they know only what they've been socially programmed to parrot by right-wing crackpots. Perhaps the teaching of Jesus that U.S. "Christians" ignore the most is this one: "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25) That's a scathing indictment of rich people by Jesus Christ. "President" Bush is rich. Dick Cheney is rich. All prominent Republicans are rich. Jerry Falwell is rich. Pat Robertson is rich. All prominent televangelicals are rich. Yet "Christians" idolize these men whom Jesus would condemn and whom Jesus said are not going to heaven. This isn't about whether or not one believes that Jesus even existed. This is about whether or not self-proclaimed "Christians" are following their own damned scripture -- and whether or not they're even fucking familiar with it. (Most of them are not familiar with the New Testament [with the exception of the supposed virgin birth and the supposed resurrection and the supposed assorted miracles], much preferring the ignorance-, hate-, and terror-filled Old Testament instead.) It's interesting how we can apply Jesus' teachings to everyday news items. The Prince Harry Nazi-costume scandal, for example, immediately brought to my mind two of Jesus' sayings and teachings: "He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone." (John 8:7) and "You strain out a gnat and swallow a camel." (Matthew 23:24) (Thus the comparison I made between Prince Harry's behavior, which gets him worldwide scorn -- the worldwide straining out of a gnat -- and Bush's behavior, which the world fucking allows -- the worldwide swallowing of a camel.) I couldn't figure out how to seamlessly weave these sayings and teachings of Jesus into the Prince Harry post and so I didn't, but here's a news item from today titled "Moore Gets No Love from Old High School": DAVISON, Mich. -- Oscar on the shelf or not, Michael Moore is not getting much respect at his old high school. Despite his fame and many honors, the filmmaker has been rejected all four times that he has been nominated for Davison High School's Hall of Fame. "Would you want him as a role model? Would you want your son or daughter to be like him?" asked Don Hammond, a member of the Hall of Fame selection committee. "I haven't talked to anybody yet who's for him. The word to describe Michael Moore is embarrassing. He embarrasses everybody." Ryan Eashoo disagrees. The 1997 Davison High graduate has spent 80 hours the last two weeks and $600 of his own money trying to get Moore elected. "We've been blacklisted," Eashoo, 25, told the Detroit Free Press. "I'm a huge Michael Moore fan. He's a great producer, great filmmaker, always sticking up for minorities. He's kind of an underdog." So far, Eashoo has 300 signed nominations of Moore. His goal is 2,000 by Feb. 1. The committee meets Feb. 11 to choose its inductees. Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" attacked President Bush's rationale for the war in Iraq and accused him and his administration of fostering fear for political gain. Moore spent the weeks before the election traveling across the country to urge Americans to vote Bush out of office. His "Bowling for Columbine" won the Oscar for best documentary in 2003. Jesus had a similar problem. When he returned to his hometown with his disciples, the townspeople dismissed him as just "the carpenter's son." "No prophet goes without respect except at home," Jesus remarked to his disciples (Matthew 13:57, Mark 6:4, Luke 4:24, John 4:44). I'm not comparing Moore to Jesus, even though Moore is crucified by fear- and hate-filled ignoramuses all the time. I'm not even saying that Moore is a prophet. What I'm saying is that the dynamic that Jesus described more than 2,000 years ago -- no respect at home -- persists to this day. What the fuck has this Don Hammond prick or anyone else from Davison High School accomplished that comes anywhere near Michael Moore's accomplishments? Yet this Hammond yahoo remarks of Moore, "Would you want him as a role model? Would you want your son or daughter to be like him?" (Moore is a role model of mine and millions of others, and I would be greatly pleased if I had a son or a daughter and he or she turned out like Moore. [Well, I might not want my daughter to look just like Moore, but you know what I mean.]) I don't consider myself a Christian because I find truth in other religions, too, but I do find most of Jesus' sayings and teachings to be right on, and I find it interesting that most "Christians" ignore his teachings -- because his teachings call on us to be radically different people, to do real work on ourselves -- and instead focus on the supposed miracles, because saying that you believe in the miracles of the New Testament does not require you to stretch or to sacrifice or to change anything about yourself or your life one fucking whit. And I find it interesting that the Democratic Party has the perfect weapon against the "values"-lovin' "Christian" Republicans -- the New Testament -- but does not use it.  *"No one can serve two masters.... You can't serve both God and money." (Matthew 6:24, Luke 16:13) 12:02:55 PM    Comments []