Democracy for New Mexico

YearlyKos

I'm headed to YearlyKos at the McCormick Place Convention Center in Chicago, so things may be a bit slow around here for awhile. I set up some auto-posts and I'll try to check in when I can, but no guarantees. There's so much going on at the convention that I think down time and web time will be hard to muster. Very exciting.

Lots of sources will be covering the gathering so you can follow things right from your couch or computer. A YearlyKos follow it at home page will have frequently updated links to all the coverage they know about. Both CSPAN and CNN plan TV and web video coverage -- no details yet. Talking Points Memo will have something called TPMtv with interviews and live coverage. So will PoliticsTV and UstreamTV online. No doubt participants will be uploading stuff to YouTube and flickr. And I'm sure just about every progressive blog will be on the story to some extent.

There are a multitude of panel discussions, workshops, roundtables and film screenings, which you can browse in the convention schedule. Major events, official and unofficial, include (all times Central Daylight Time):

Wednesday, August 1

• Evening: Various receptions and parties
• 8-9:30 PM: DFA Health Care Forum with Jim Dean, health care advocates and experts

Thursday, August 2

• All day: Interest group and blogger caucuses, panels, workshops, roundtables, films
• 7-9 PM: Kickoff keynote speech by DNC Chair Howard Dean, with welcomes from Markos and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL)
• 9-10 PM: DFA Grassroots Victory Caucus

Friday, August 3

• All day: roundtables, panel discussions, workshops, films
• 8-9 AM: Keynote speech by Wesley Clark
• Luncheon speech by Andy Stern of SEIU
• 5:30-7:30 PM: Netroots Candidate Celebration (one of the cosponsors is Don Wiviott, Dem candidate for NM Senate)

Saturday, August 4

• All day: roundtables, panel discussions, workshops, films
• 8-9AM: Ask the Leaders Forum with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Harry Reid, Sen. Chuck Schumer, Rep. Rahm Emanuel
• 1-2:45 PM: Presidential Candidate Forum with Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel
• 3-3:45 PM: Individual breakout sessions with presidential candidates
• 4:30-6:30 PM: Teamsters' Rally and BBQ
• 7-10 PM: Closing Keynote by Markos plus surprises

Sunday, August 5

• 11AM-1PM: Bloggers' Brunch

Other Info:

• An unbelievable list of Speakers, Panel & Workshop Leaders
• Exhibitors

Guest Blog: Join Santa Fe ENOUGH Protest or Create Your Own

This is a guest blog by Kaye Hancock of Santa Fe, NM:
Have you had ENOUGH? If you aren't sure, watch this video: How To Create An Angry American. Then join an ENOUGH PROTEST! Happening every Sunday in Santa Fe and all around this country!

Here are the ground rules, from chief instigator Wes Clark Jr. in Los Angeles: see diary at Daily Kos.  There have been updates by Wes Clark Jr. on Kos and at Young Turks with photos of people standing as ONE or in groups. We are in the process of recruiting more people every Sunday. Everyone add two friends or family members, then hopefully they add two or more to say "ENOUGH," ... and watch it grow!

So, JOIN ME and others around the U.S.A. who are giving up ONE HOUR A WEEK to celebrate democracy and breathe life back into it ---is it worth it to you?  If it is worth it to you, then stand with me this Sunday and all other Sundays, from Noon to 1:00 PM at the corner of Paseo de Peralta and Old Pecos Trail at the Capitol Roundhouse in Santa Fe, and wear a t-shirt or hold a sign that simply says ENOUGH!

Note: "Enough" Tees can be purchased cheaply .

Our signs and shirts are limited to one word: ENOUGH. It doesn't matter what color the shirt or sign is. We're not going to yell anything or subject people to bad music, long-winded preaching to the choir, or shouting matches with pedestrians or carloads of people who may disagree with us. We're just going to stand there wearing our shirts. Signs saying "ENOUGH" are welcome, too. If people respond that they have had ENOUGH, we will ask them to come back the following Sunday to join us. That's it. It's really simple.

You will also note from the photo below that I have a homemade sign that I carry, and I am in the process of making a couple more signs appropriate to the theme "ENOUGH." I found the second Sunday I was out that the sign incited more attention, thumbs-up, hoots, hollers, and honks, especially since I was alone. Signs are welcome!

We hope to geometrically build a leaderless movement of people to put pressure on the politicians to stop shredding the Constitution whenever it is politically expedient for them to do so. By coming back week after week with no draw other than standing with our fellow citizens around this country, we're letting them know we are the kind of dedicated voters willing to put in the time and effort to throw them out if they can't respect the foundation of our Republic. 

I'd like to stay home on Sundays for the next eighteen months, but I don't think this can wait until the next election. By then damage will be done and the guilty will walk away, only to re-enter politics with the next swing in the election cycle.

COME JOIN ME! It started with one here in Santa Fe: ME! 

HAVE YOU HAD ENOUGH?

Let me know if you are interested by emailing me with "ENOUGH" in the subject line. I'll be on the corner waiting for more of you to join me! And if you have a contact list of people in Santa Fe who have had ENOUGH, forward my message to them as well!  ~ Thanks! ~

This is a guest blog by Kaye Hancock of Santa Fe, NM who can be reached at KayCeSF@aol.com. Guest blogs provide our readers with an opportunity to express their views on pertinent issues. The views expressed may or may not match ours. If you'd like to submit a post for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand side of the page.

What's Goin' On While Congress and The Commander Do the Politico Shuffle

We'll never see this on anything to do with the American mainstream media. Good thing, since so many of our dishonorable, dishonest, cold-blooded politicos think it's just fine to wait until September to get out of Iraq, or maybe next year, or perhaps 2009, or even decades down the road. Or is it widening and eternal war that's on our horizon? We wouldn't want the media to show the American people what's really happening on the ground in Iraq. They'd be even madder than they are today. Not that it matters much to those in power and those who allow them to stay in power.

What we've got is one political party full of pseudo-power and oil addicts and another political party too full of enablers and go-alongs. I mean, they don't even make adjustments in response to poll results anymore, except maybe in terms of their half-hearted rhetoric. Most of our political "leaders" and "representatives" seem to be residing in a bubble, apart from the passions of the people and the suffering they are prolonging. Lip service is the order of the day.

But then, you all know that. What needs to be found is some way to stop them on their unrelenting descent into unconstitutional and unconscionable madness in almost every area of endeavor, from foreign policy to health care to the environement to the economy and beyond. So much is broken, but widespread denial brings only paralysis and business as usual attitudes. Out here, we're sensing and often experiencing real emergencies and a profound sense of foreboding. But inside the privileged status quo it's still the same as it ever was -- sloganeering and posturing seems enough. When will the bubble break? And what will happen then? So much depends on us, yet many of us have rarely felt so helpless. And time is running out. What can we do?

Today's Must Read: Lady Bird the Liberal

Lest we forget how we got here from there. A Southern, and Liberal, Lady by Sidney Blumenthal.

(above, left to right) Bella Abzug, Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford, Lady Bird Johnson, Linda Johnson Robb, Maya Angelou, and Coretta Scott King recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the 1977 Houston Women’s Conference. Photo by Jo Freeman.

Monday's 'Espejos de Aztlan' to Feature Eric Griego

Tune in to KUNM 89.9FM on Monday night, July 16th, at 8:00 PM for a half-hour live interview on "Espejos de Aztlan" with Eric Griego, recently appointed Executive Director of New Mexico Voices for Children. Host Javier Benavidez will be interviewing Griego about New Mexico Voices for Children and its work as a progressive, non-partisan organization that advocates to improve the health and well-being of children, families and communities in New Mexico.

This year, the organization is celebrating its 20th year of working to eliminate child poverty in our state with a focus on four core values: economic justice, healthy communities, citizen participation and human rights. For more information, visit: https://www.nmvoices.org/.

Espejos de Aztlan has been on-air since 1979 and is part of the Raices Collective which conducts programming on news, culture and music from a Latino perspective on KUNM 89.9. For more information or to submit input about our shows, please visit the "Raices" link at https://kunm.org/culture/.

Lady Bird Johnson: December 22, 1912 - July 11, 2007

Left, in 1926, with friend. Right, with Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1959.

Left, with Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall (father of Rep. Tom Udall of NM), at Grand Teton National Park, 1964. Right, with some of her beloved wildflowers, 1990. (Photos courtesy LBJ Library. Click on images for larger versions.)

Lady Bird Johnson passed away this afternoon at 94 years of age. She died at her Austin home of natural causes and she was surrounded by family and friends.

“The environment is where we all meet; where all have a mutual interest; it is the one thing all of us share. It is not only a mirror of ourselves, but a focusing lens on what we can become.” -- Lady Bird

The Austin Statesman has a special section on Lady Bird and her life. Tribute at LBJ Library site. New York Times obituary. PBS documentary with many resources.

When In the Course of Human Events ...

Olbermann Special Comment: Bush, Cheney Should Resign
Keith Olbermann, MSNBC Countdown
Tuesday 03 July 2007

Text version:

"I didn't vote for him," an American once said, "But he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."

That - on this eve of the 4th of July - is the essence of this democracy, in 17 words. And that is what President Bush threw away yesterday in commuting the sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The man who said those 17 words - improbably enough - was the actor John Wayne. And Wayne, an ultra-conservative, said them, when he learned of the hair's-breadth election of John F. Kennedy instead of his personal favorite, Richard Nixon in 1960.

"I didn't vote for him but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."

The sentiment was doubtlessly expressed earlier, but there is something especially appropriate about hearing it, now, in Wayne's voice: The crisp matter-of-fact acknowledgement that we have survived, even though for nearly two centuries now, our Commander-in-Chief has also served, simultaneously, as the head of one political party and often the scourge of all others.

We as citizens must, at some point, ignore a president's partisanship. Not that we may prosper as a nation, not that we may achieve, not that we may lead the world - but merely that we may function.

But just as essential to the seventeen words of John Wayne, is an implicit trust - a sacred trust: That the president for whom so many did not vote, can in turn suspend his political self long enough, and for matters imperative enough, to conduct himself solely for the benefit of the entire Republic.

Our generation's willingness to state "we didn't vote for him, but he's our president, and we hope he does a good job," was tested in the crucible of history, and earlier than most.

And in circumstances more tragic and threatening. And we did that with which history tasked us.

We enveloped our President in 2001. And those who did not believe he should have been elected - indeed those who did not believe he had been elected - willingly lowered their voices and assented to the sacred oath of non-partisanship.

And George W. Bush took our assent, and re-configured it, and honed it, and shaped it to a razor-sharp point and stabbed this nation in the back with it.

Were there any remaining lingering doubt otherwise, or any remaining lingering hope, it ended yesterday when Mr. Bush commuted the prison sentence of one of his own staffers.

Did so even before the appeals process was complete; did so without as much as a courtesy consultation with the Department of Justice; did so despite what James Madison - at the Constitutional Convention - said about impeaching any president who pardoned or sheltered those who had committed crimes "advised by" that president; did so without the slightest concern that even the most detached of citizens must look at the chain of events and wonder: To what degree was Mr. Libby told: break the law however you wish - the President will keep you out of prison?

In that moment, Mr. Bush, you broke that fundamental compact between yourself and the majority of this nation's citizens - the ones who did not cast votes for you. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you ceased to be the President of the United States. In that moment, Mr. Bush, you became merely the President of a rabid and irresponsible corner of the Republican Party. And this is too important a time, Sir, to have a commander-in-chief who puts party over nation.

This has been, of course, the gathering legacy of this Administration. Few of its decisions have escaped the stain of politics. The extraordinary Karl Rove has spoken of "a permanent Republican majority," as if such a thing - or a permanent Democratic majority - is not antithetical to that upon which rests: our country, our history, our revolution, our freedoms.

Yet our Democracy has survived shrewder men than Karl Rove. And it has survived the frequent stain of politics upon the fabric of government. But this administration, with ever-increasing insistence and almost theocratic zealotry, has turned that stain into a massive oil spill.

The protection of the environment is turned over to those of one political party, who will financially benefit from the rape of the environment. The protections of the Constitution are turned over to those of one political party, who believe those protections unnecessary and extravagant and quaint.

The enforcement of the laws is turned over to those of one political party, who will swear beforehand that they will not enforce those laws. The choice between war and peace is turned over to those of one political party, who stand to gain vast wealth by ensuring that there is never peace, but only war.

And now, when just one cooked book gets corrected by an honest auditor, when just one trampling of the inherent and inviolable fairness of government is rejected by an impartial judge, when just one wild-eyed partisan is stopped by the figure of blind justice, this President decides that he, and not the law, must prevail.

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous "Saturday Night Massacre" on October 20th, 1973, Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously.

"Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people."

President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people.

It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party's headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that break-in and the related crimes.

And in one night, Nixon transformed it.

Watergate - instantaneously - became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law of insisting - in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood - that he was the law.

Not the Constitution. Not the Congress. Not the Courts. Just him.

Just - Mr. Bush - as you did, yesterday.

The twists and turns of Plame-Gate, of your precise and intricate lies that sent us into this bottomless pit of Iraq; your lies upon the lies to discredit Joe Wilson; your lies upon the lies upon the lies to throw the sand at the "referee" of Prosecutor Fitzgerald's analogy. These are complex and often painful to follow, and too much, perhaps, for the average citizen.

But when other citizens render a verdict against your man, Mr. Bush - and then you spit in the faces of those jurors and that judge and the judges who were yet to hear the appeal - the average citizen understands that, Sir.

It's the fixed ballgame and the rigged casino and the pre-arranged lottery all rolled into one - and it stinks. And they know it.

Nixon's mistake, the last and most fatal of them, the firing of Archibald Cox, was enough to cost him the presidency. And in the end, even Richard Nixon could say he could not put this nation through an impeachment.

It was far too late for it to matter then, but as the decades unfold, that single final gesture of non-partisanship, of acknowledged responsibility not to self, not to party, not to "base," but to country, echoes loudly into history. Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign

Would that you could say that, Mr. Bush. And that you could say it for Mr. Cheney. You both crossed the Rubicon yesterday. Which one of you chose the route, no longer matters. Which is the ventriloquist, and which the dummy, is irrelevant.

But that you have twisted the machinery of government into nothing more than a tawdry machine of politics, is the only fact that remains relevant.

It is nearly July 4th, Mr. Bush, the commemoration of the moment we Americans decided that rather than live under a King who made up the laws, or erased them, or ignored them - or commuted the sentences of those rightly convicted under them - we would force our independence, and regain our sacred freedoms.

We of this time - and our leaders in Congress, of both parties - must now live up to those standards which echo through our history: Pressure, negotiate, impeach - get you, Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney, two men who are now perilous to our Democracy, away from its helm.

For you, Mr. Bush, and for Mr. Cheney, there is a lesser task. You need merely achieve a very low threshold indeed. Display just that iota of patriotism which Richard Nixon showed, on August 9th, 1974.

Resign.

And give us someone - anyone - about whom all of us might yet be able to quote John Wayne, and say, "I didn't vote for him, but he's my president, and I hope he does a good job."

[emphasis mine]

A Long Train of Abuses and Usurpations ...

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford provides our Independence Day rant:

So there you have it. Bush shrugs and smirks and then commutes the easy soft-focus sit-on-your-ass-all-day-and-knit white-collar prison sentence of a hollow political lackey who, in turn, took a bullet for his sneering mafia thug of a boss, Dick Cheney, who in turn was complicit (along with lead flying monkey Karl Rove) in the appallingly illegal outing of a CIA operative, which itself was a tiny but particularly nasty link in the giant chain of lies and deceptions undertaken to lead our wary and tattered nation into an unwinnable impossible costly brutally violent war that will now last, if current estimates are correct, until the goddamn sun explodes.

You have to laugh. You have to laugh because if you do not laugh you will likely be overcome with a mad desire to stab yourself in the eye with a sharp feral cat and/or shoot yourself in the toe with a high-powered staple gun, over and over again, all while tearing out pages of the United States Constitution and crumpling them into tiny little balls and hurling them into the smoldering firepit of who-the-hell-cares as you shiver in the corner and swig from a bottle of Knob Creek and wail at the moon. Or maybe that's just me

... Bush actually ambled forth and said that, while he "respects the jury" in the Libby case, the 2.5 year sentence was simply "too harsh." Baby, if 30 months in a comfy well-stocked rape-free Martha Stewart-decorated facility for compromising national security is too harsh, I've got a draconian little thing called the Patriot Act to sell you, cheap.

Here's a swell side note: You know who gets harsher sentences than 30 months in white-collar prison, George? Pot dealers. That's right. The average sentence for a convicted marijuana dealer in California is 3.3 years. In real prison, George, not that namby-pamby Club Fed where Scooter would've played badminton and sipped tea for two years. Hell, in places like Oklahoma and Alabama, you can get a life sentence for possessing a single marijuana bud, which is ironic indeed, given how if you live in Oklahoma or Alabama, there is nothing that would serve your miserable id better than to be deeply and thoroughly stoned every single day and twice on Sunday. But that's another column.

Be sure to read the rest of Mark Morford's column, "Scooter Libby In Hell: What do Dick Cheney, Paris Hilton, "The Sopranos" and colon spasms have in common? Find out here."

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness ...

Full text

National Archives Declaration of Independence website

Wikipedia Declaration of Independence page

Noted Author and PBS Essayist Richard Rodriguez to Lecture at UNM

From UNM Today:
Richard Rodriguez, a contributing editor at New American Media in San Francisco, will present “The Browning of America: Race, Religion and Ethnicity in an Erotic Age” at 7 PM on Saturday, July 7, at Rodey Theater in the Center for the Arts at the University of New Mexico as part of the Sunset Lecture Series sponsored by University Libraries. The event is free and the public is welcome.

Rodriguez is a noted contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine and appears as an essayist on “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on PBS. The sometimes controversial Rodriguez writes regularly for newspapers in both the United States and England, and he has written an autobiographical trilogy on class, ethnicity and race that includes “Hunger of Memory” (1982), “Days of Obligation: An Argument with my Mexican Father,” (1992) and “Brown: The Last Discovery of America” (2002). Currently he is working on a book concerned with the ecology of the desert and monotheism.

Editor's Note: To get a taste of Rodriguez's famously iconoclastic and complex views, check out this video of a News Hour discussion between Rodriguez and Margaret Carlson, or this print interview by Scott London. Other materials on or by Rodriguez can be found here.