So, um, yay cheeseheads! (And apologies to any of my readers who are Clinton supporters – I’m just annoyed to see the Clinton campaign starting to play really obviously dirty. And that’s my opinion, btw, not a talking point. People who post talking points in the comments get deleted…)

If you’re in Colorado, remember that your caucus doors open up at 6:30 pm – doors close at 7, although rules apparently state that if you show up late, you can vote in any business from the time you arrive forward. Since the presidential preference vote comes first, though, it’s best to be there when the doors open to make sure you get to caucus for your candidate.

Ok, so there’s the public service portion of this post.

Now here’s the biased bit.

I’m caucusing for Obama, and I feel pretty strongly about it. I was torn between Edwards and Obama, frankly, but Edwards stepping out of the race solved that.

Why am I endorsing Obama? (Oh, yeah, and I’m sure my endorsement is reaaaal important )

There are two parts to it. The first is that I think Sen. Obama is an incredibly capable, straightforward and inspirational guy. I didn’t decide I liked Obama after a speech or some TV commercial – I used to listen to his weekly podcasts to his Illinois constituents on the way to work on the train and I thought they were considered, rational, and, most of all, right. Whether it was about foreign policy or domestic issues, this was a guy I could agree with.

And then the campaign started, and I am so impressed – and pleased – with how all sorts of people are getting involved, and how after these eight years of horror he has really presented a message of hope that people respond to. One can argue that it’s an abstract thing, but let me put it this way – people without hope become apathetic. And when people become apathetic, we get 8 years of George W. Bush, a ruined educational system, negative foreign credibility, war, no privacy, no accountability, etc. Without an engaged and hopeful populace, none of the rest of it matters.

But I also think it’s a ridiculous criticism to accuse Obama of being nothing but an inspirational speaker, which the Clinton campaign has strongly implied more than once. For a woman who is, quite frankly, running on her husband’s record and who furthermore voted for the Iraq war, the criticism rings a little hollow.

And I just want to say that his willingness to talk to our adversaries instead of this stupid policy of ignorance we’ve been following is a huge deal to me.

The second reason is, quite frankly, that I can’t under any circumstances vote for Hillary Clinton. Let me state something upfront – I was a huge Bill Clinton supporter in the 90′s. After 12 years of Reagan-Bush, it was hard to be otherwise, and he had charisma and energy that the country needed. And for the record, the 90′s under Clinton were the first years my family was able to prosper in my memory. I was ridiculously angry with Bill Clinton for the Lewinsky scandal – not so much for the blow job, but for walking right into the hands of right-wing folks who were just waiting for him to slip up and then, worst of all, lying about it. I figured the actual act was between him and Hillary, but that he was willing to do idiotic things after the fact that locked up the government and media for a year… that was really damned stupid. But I remained nonetheless a Bill Clinton supporter, politically speaking.

I am not part of the vast right-wing conspiracy.

But this isn’t about Bill, right? Well… the problem is this. Whenever it’s about the years of prosperity, Sen. Clinton talks about “we”. She includes her husband’s years in the White House in her “35 years of experience”. Fine. I don’t have a real problem with that, though it doesn’t really count in my book. Her experience arguement is pretty weak… But what it says is this – if you take credit for those 8 years, then you also take the liability that comes with them. And that makes you a huge liability for the Democrats in November.

Until recently, it was really only the electability thing that got to me. But then President Clinton decided he was going to get into the scrabble of politics again because he just couldn’t resist, and after South Carolina, I was truly disgusted. It was a reminder to me that we run a real risk of repeating that inability to move forward in politics due to real or imagined Clinton scandals if they become the first family again.

We simply can’t afford that, first woman candidate or not.

But my real objection to Sen. Clinton isn’t that – it just makes me think she’d be a bad candidate. My real objection to her are the votes on the Iraq War authorization and the Levin amendment.

“If I knew then what I know now”, my ass.

She has 35 years of leadership experience? I only have 35 years of breathing experience and I knew exactly what that vote meant, and was sickened to see Democrats support it at the time.

And the refusal to apologize is, I’m sorry, weakness. We’ve had 8 years of inability to say, “I made a mistake,” and this posturing has gotten us nowhere.

The word “change” has been so overused, but we have to have it.

And without hope and unity, there is no change.

End of my political blather. As a postscript, check this video I got sent today:

Click here to view the embedded video.

VOTE. Even if you disagree with me.

N.B.: As with all my posts, photos are scaled inside the post proper to fit into the blog template – click on any photo to see the larger, better-quality version. Although I should admit that my camera IS dying, so some photos just suck

You know that Obama rally yesterday with the massive overflow crowds which stretched around the block in Denver they keep talking about on the national news?

Yeah. I’ve heard everything from 10,000 to 18,000 people, and all I can say is that it was a crapload of very, very excited people.

I should warn you that because I spend more time with my baby than I do online these days, this may sound like some sort of fangirl post, which it certainly isn’t – I hadn’t decided whether I was going to caucus for Edwards or Obama at the time I went to the rally, though I found out while in line that Edwards had stepped out of the race. And this is not a “why I support Obama post” due to time constraints. I’ll leave it to the policy wonks and political bloggers to dissect what he said – his speech can be found here (part 1 – part 2), and Caroline Kennedy’s here – but I can just say from the crowd level that people were incredibly excited to see him. I got there with my “priority E-ticket” about 7:30 am – an hour before the doors were supposed to open – only to hear from someone who is apparently on the University of Denver Obama listserv that they’d issued a lot more E-tickets than they had space (I have no idea whether or not this is true), and this at an event which was completely open to the public with or without E-tickets. It was pretty cold out, and the folks I was standing with were wondering whether or not we’d get in at all – as it turns out, it was good we got there when we did, because I’m pretty sure that the folks that got into line 15 minutes behind us were forced to go into the overflow areas.

There were a lot of people – this is a photo from the door back toward the line, and it in no way shows the rest of the line stretching down the street and around the block, nor the similar line on the other line which stretched back up onto campus.

People were psyched.

We were in line so long that we started to get to know each other – and all I can say is that my new Obama buddies (Jesse, Jessica and Vivian) and I made it into the arena and onto the floor.

There were a LOT of freaking people in the arena.

If we’d known how long it would take for Obama to get onto the floor, we might have chosen to sit in the seats – there were some decent ones still available – but we ended up standing pretty close, and when the tall (and sometimes very rude) people in front of us moved in the right way, we had a pretty good view of the stage. People were really excited, but after standing so long outside and then standing a long time inside waiting on Obama (I don’t think he spoke until shortly before 11 or so), the audience I think did start to tire of cheers (especially on the floor, where our feet hurt). I personally was getting a little tired of hearing from local organizers, but I understand that Obama was outside addressing the crowds that didn’t get into the arena, so I can’t really blame them for killing time.

Considering that I don’t even have time to blog about my own life right now, I’m not going to go into detail about the whole thing, but I have to admit, I was impressed by a lot. Federico Peña – if you don’t remember him, he was the highly esteemed transportation secretary under Clinton – started to get the crowd prepped for Obama, and introduced the other local dignitaries there who’d endorsed Obama (including Gary Hart – remember Gary Hart? Yikes..), highlighting the fact that while he was a former Clinton official, he was supporting Obama instead of Hillary. He’s a good speaker, and I think his views on Obama reflected those of the audience, so he was a good guy to get people revved up.

Denver Bronco Rod Smith gave a short speech endorsing Obama which we could barely hear due to crappy acoustics (we couldn’t hear a word when the local organizers spoke either, so it wasn’t just him).

We were starting to get kind of irritated when some other Colorado speaker came out (I don’t remember who anymore – the head of the Colorado campaign, probably) – we’d already had a bunch of local organizers killing time and some kids trying to organize chanting on stage, etc, and by then, many of us had been standing and/or waiting for about 3 hours. People were so interested in just getting on with the main event that we almost didn’t hear the organizer start to introduce the next speaker – when I heard and told our little newly formed posse that I thought she’d just said Caroline Kennedy was about to speak, we were all a little disbelieving.

We were wrong

What she said wasn’t substantially different from what she’s been saying in the Obama commercials, but I do know that it made a real impression on some of the people there (there was still a lot of buzz about the Kennedy endorsement in general and the surprise of her getting involved in politics to endorse in particular).

And then, finally, the man of the hour came out.

As I said before, I won’t get into the details of the speech, but I will say that being at one of his speeches is even more impressive than hearing him talk on television. He spoke with passion, reason and conviction, and his authenticity really reasonated with the crowd.

I guess what I personally liked most is that the same person whose reflective, analytical podcasts to his constituents I used to listen to on the Blue Line to work in Los Angeles came through in his speech, even when punctuated by passionate rhetoric.

He did take a few knocks in the Clinton direction, not so much at Hillary personally as at what she and her husband stand for. They weren’t, however, playground swipes designed to be nasty – I think they very much reflected the opinions of many in the crowd, and I think many of us felt vindicated by the recognition of the weaknesses in her position that keep us opposed to voting for her. There was not a whole lot of love for her among the crowd, in any event, but again, it was none of this nasty personal attack crap that went on last week.

My mommy brain can’t remember most of the speech, to be honest – it went on for about 45 minutes and was really inspiring, but since I get no sleep, my brain cells don’t retain anything. Also, there were a lot of freaking tall people in front of me even though we were close to the stage, so I spent a lot of time straining to look.

So since I can’t really say anything substantive about the rally because my brain is all fuzzed from lack of sleep, here are the last two pictures I took, the last part of the speech, and a fuzzy shot of he and Caroline Kennedy leaving. Apologies to anyone who came here looking for some sort of meaty analysis (or any analysis at all), but I am just too tired to do that right now.

Apparently, we don’t even have the secret FISA courts to protect us now.

And let us not forget that the FISA court itself was considered a draconian breach of civil liberties. Even if they did decide that some of Bush’s wiretapping program was illegal.

So the Bush administration’s tack continues – when they get caught explicitly violating the law, they change it.

How, with this supposed Democratic majority, did a law which allows Fredo and company oversight on eavesdropping get passed??? Sure, it’s only supposed to apply to foreign calls “routed through the U.S.” (um… gee, define “routed”… and what do you want to bet that big telecom starts “routing” a whole lot more through the U.S.?), but with no one to check up on them, do you really think these guys are going to play by the rules?

Hell, I’m married to a foreign national. Does that mean that any call he makes is a “foreign call routed through the U.S.”?

Yes, I know, there’s always the “if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about” argument, but folks, these are people who keep changing the definition of what is wrong.

We’re at high speed, ³/₄ of the way down the slippery slope, friends, and the speed bumps we elected to slow us down decided to grease themselves instead this weekend. Probably because Mr. Bush told them they wouldn’t be going on vacation if they didn’t give him the bill.

The rest of America is used to being forced to sacrifice vacations for their bosses, unfortunately – so why the Hell did these guys decide they didn’t owe us the same thing?

Check here for the roll call vote on the bill in the House. Then call your representative and tear him or her a new one, if he or she deserves it.

Don’t worry… they won’t be listening in because you’re not a foreign national, right?

Wonder what damage you can do in 150 minutes or so?

Heckuva job, Bushie.

Let’s not even pretend not to be hypocritical and corrupt.

The CNN pundits are saying that Clinton won the debate – granted, one of the ones saying Clinton won was James Carville, who, as a former strategist for the Clintons, may be a little biased toward his old friends, and the other one saying she won was J. C. Watts, who, as a conservative and former Congressman, may simply be gleefully hoping she’s the one that runs. Bill Schneider, whose political commentary has always seemed relatively sane to me, thinks that Edwards and Obama won, having “had the best moments”. I tend to agree with Schneider here – I think Clinton came off as pontificating and throwing out too many marketing-slogan sound bites, whereas Edwards and Obama were clear, organized, respectful in disagreement, and looked less packaged. I do wonder if their “respectful disagreement” was a way of paving the way for a joint ticket, but either way, I felt that both of them were being more genuine in what they had to say.

I’m not a Clinton-hater – I just don’t think Hillary is electable as president, and that’s not because she’s a woman. I think the way she was painted during her husband’s administration by the right-wing smear squad has unfortunately colored her national image for some time to come, but even over here on the left, I can pretty safely say that most moderate liberals, and anyone left of those, are not really interested in her attempts to subtly evade having made a mistake when she voted for the war in Iraq (actually, what most of us would really like to hear is “we knew better, but we were wusses and willingly drank the Kool-Aid”, but that probably won’t happen – face it, a good number of us, in the lead-up to the war, without the benefit of National Intelligence Estimates, knew what was going on with the Bush administration. And so did they, no matter what they say. This is where Obama gets big mileage for simply admitting to having common sense). I found her answers to the war on terror, where she tried to present that “tough in the presence of enemies” attitude, offensive, and rather Liebermanesque. Senator Clinton better be careful here – I think she’s repeating the mistakes of the past 6 years by trying to display this “I’m tougher than all y’alls on national security” stance while at the same time trying to sound anti-war; the liberals aren’t the only ones who are sick of the lip service, and I think Americans – not just liberals, but almost all of us – are about fed up with the dishonesty and ass-covering. You can’t have it both ways, Senator – if you choose both, you get none.

Edwards was really impressive in this regard, and I think his comments about honesty played very well. I do wish they’d let Gravel talk more, though – I have to admit that I’d rather see he and Kucinich as running-mates (if they were electable) than the others, simply because they’re right; since they won’t be chosen, though, I wish they were allowed to push the candidates into uncomfortable situations more. In some sense, this forces candidates to answer to the liberal left (or simply to the common sense folk) and play off the script some. But anyway, I thought Edwards was really impressive this evening, and Obama was good at keeping his message clear as well. If I had to pick who’d won between the two of them, I’d say Edwards, but it was a close thing.

That said, the pundits’ comments make me wonder about one thing… In the past couple of primaries, I’ve been unpleasantly surprised by the “inevitability” of the front-runner, even when my sense of who was winning – and my sense of who other liberals I knew wanted – was very different from what the media said was conventional wisdom. I knew almost no one in 2000 who wanted Gore as the democratic nominee – now, I think Vice-President Gore is pretty damned awesome, and this time, I really hope he does in the end run; but in 2000, he made the mistake of listening to too many slick advisors, and presented this guy who just didn’t seem genuine. And John Kerry? I’m sorry, but I’ve talked to a lot of people, and we all agree that most grass-roots folks were not interested in John Kerry as the front-runner. Howard Dean was really who grabbed most people’s attention, and I think that whole non-news with the “Dean Scream” was completely baffling – it didn’t seem any different to me that any other excited politician, and I never understood where his fall from grace came from. This does lead me to wonder if I’m either completely out of touch with the moderate liberals in this country (my approval of Kucinich excepted ), or if, in the end, the primaries are decided before they happen. And if Clinton wins this time, I’m really going to wonder, because I have to tell you, within my personal acquaintance, I know of approximately zero people who are excited about the idea of Senator Clinton as the Democratic candidate. The folks I see who are most excited about it are either former Clinton administration officials, or oh, I don’t know, Bill O’Reilly.

So if she’s the candidate, I’m either really wrong about this country, or I’m wrong in thinking that anyone’s vote counts. We shall see. I didn’t think she won – or did particularly well tonight – at all. But again, maybe it’s just because she reminds me of this particular family member.

As a side comment about Al Gore, since I mentioned him above – I think Al Gore is a bright guy with a Hell of a lot of integrity, and he has a knack for presenting tough issues to the general public in an understandable way. I also, from recent interviews, think he really gets what’s wrong with the media, and what happened when they all turned into massive wussbags and started presenting only what the administration wanted them to present. Those are useful skills. If he ran, if he could win, it would be one small step toward renewing hope. (And maybe, if we’re lucky, he’d help reinstate the Fairness Doctrine – then again, I’d elect almost anyone who’d give the Fourth Estate back its collective gonads…)

But one last comment about the debate, and this is what I really wanted to write about to begin with.

The following (paraphrased) question was posed to the candidates, and you hear it again and again in various guises, and I don’t understand why candidates don’t see the logical fallacy inherent in the question:

Given the recent discovery of a plot to blow up JFK airport, and the fact that we’ve had no terror attacks on U.S. soil since September 11th, don’t you think maybe the Bush administration is doing something right?

Ok, candidates, since I just know you’re reading this post, here’s how to answer that question… it’s the first thing you learned in statistics:

Correlation does not imply causality.

Say it with me again, folks… Correlation does not imply causality.

For the JFK plot, and the Fort Dix plot, and what not, let us remember that the administration has spent a lot of time advertising these plots by supposedly dangerous terrorists, when many of them were “only in the planning stages”, and a lot of them were being planned by folks who didn’t have the brains to carry out their plans (of dubious quality). I have no idea how serious the actual plot was, and frankly, I don’t think we can trust either the media or the government to tell the truth (which is sad, because if they are being straight, no one will ever know. I suspect they never read that story about the boy crying wolf, but anyhow…).

And, by the way, let’s give the intelligence services some credit. They’ve helped keep us out of this kind of trouble before, and one of the main reasons the Bush administration wasn’t on the ball for 9/11 is because they weren’t listening to the intelligence services. So I think it’s fair to just credit these guys for doing their job if these new threats are credible in the first place.

So anyway, let’s leave the JFK thing out of this and go back to addressing the main question, which is if we should give the Bush administration credit for the fact that we haven’t had any terrorist attacks since 2001. To this, you should probably respond that, with the exception of the first WTC bombing in 1993, we didn’t have any before that either. Why should we assume the Bush administration has anything to do with the fact that we’ve had none since?

Correlation does not imply causality.

The real problem is this: Many things have not happened since the Bush administration came into office – dinosaurs have not roamed the Earth, we have not been obliterated by an enormous meteor, and somehow, those evil secular humanists have not removed freedom of religion from the constitution. Now, the degree to which the Bush administration has attempted to ensure that these things have not happened probably varies (I personally think they’re working really hard on the dinosaur issue), but just because something has not happened does not mean the administration’s policies prevented it.

Say it with me: Correlation does not imply causality.

Candidates, seriously, next time one of you gets this question, let the public know what a stupid question it is… Kucinich was dead on with his Ben Franklin quote, and it’s time the rest of you stopped accepting the propaganda Kool-Aid when the press feeds it to you! USE THOSE BRAINS!

But this, my friends, is really stupid.

This post at Language Log discusses a NYT has an article which presents Iran’s reaction to the “evidence” of Iranian involvement in bringing weapons to Iraq.

You see, some of the material allegedly of Iranian origin apparently has dates in MM/DD/YYYY order on it. And the Iranians (quite rightly, it should be supposed) think that’s a little weird.

Now, for those of you who’ve never paid any attention to anything outside of the U.S., you should note that the U.S. is one of the few places in the world where such a format is used. Iran, however, is, in fact, not one of those places. You know, because the rest of the world isn’t like us just because we think we’re the best place ever.

Most of the rest of the world – this includes Iran – uses DD/MM/YYYY format. And some larger Asian countries use YYYY/MM/DD format. But most places, outside of the U.S., do not use the MM/DD/YYYY format. This is probably one of the first things you learn if you, you know, leave the country.

So basically, um… unless the Iranians are just being really clever in labelling their munitions or documents or whatever this was about, we are, yet again, being assholes. Well, I take that back. We the people are not. Our not-so-democratically-elected government, on the other hand, wins the Golden Rectum Award for this one. C’mon guys… if you’re going to manufacture evidence, at least get the freaking dates right.

And if the rest of our government outside of the administration doesn’t jump all over this to stop involvement in Iran we simply cannot afford, cannot do, cannot live with, we are one seriously damned broken country.

I’m seriously ashamed by this.

Oh, these will be interesting times. And not so much in the sense they’ve been in the last 6 years (and maybe not even in the cursed sense of “interesting times”), I hope.

The first tends to make people laugh – they like it a lot.

The second people tend to ignore, mainly because it’s fairly small and inconspicuous. Indiana, however, is the only place I’ve had people growl at it. Two asshole businessmen were sitting across from me that morning 4 weeks ago, badmouthing one of their female colleagues. I wasn’t really paying attention, and certainly not obviously so, but all of a sudden, they looked at me significantly and lowered their voices, continuing their bashing sotto voce. A few minutes later, I saw the older one elbow the younger one, and looked up when they both stared at my laptop as one pointed toward the bottom part of the cover (where said ACLU sticker is located). One of them sneered, and the other shook his head with an expression just short of spitting. I hadn’t slept all night, so I didn’t have any smart remarks handy, but the facial expressions when I looked at them just screamed “stupid, ignorant bitch.”

Which leads me to wonder, yet again… since when are civil liberties disgusting? Since when are they traitorous? Since when are they, as a cause, worth sneering at strangers in airports over?

So now I’m back in the Indy airport, sitting in a hallway where there are outlets and lots of deplaning passengers. And I’ve gotten more than my share of slightly annoyed faces when people look down at my computer.

I wouldn’t have the sticker on there if I weren’t making a statement – but it amazes me what a different planet this place is. Then again, Indiana is the birthplace of the KKK. I shouldn’t be surprised.

Hate this place.