Democracy for New Mexico

Tune In Now: NM Blog Radio

You can listen to today's archived show about EMERGE NM hosted by Heather Brewer and earn 50 cents for the organization if you listen to the podcast during the coming week. Click to read about today's show.

NM Blog Radio Returns Featuring Heather Brewer and EMERGE NM

From NM Blog Radio host Suzanne Prescott: The New Mexico Blog Radio show this Thursday is all about EMERGE New Mexico, a program which brings talented women Democrats into the political arena from across the state. After a rigorous 7-month training program women emerge ready for political campaign action. Heather Brewer debuts as the host of this New Mexico Blog radio show and introduces us to guests Anathea Chino, EMERGE Board President Elect; Michelle Mares, Field Director for Diane Denish and EMERGE Grad; and Mercy Berman, UNM student and current EMERGE participant. They'll explore the roots of the program, the network of EMERGE graduates now spread across New Mexico, and some exciting campaign possibilities that lie ahead.

Help EMERGE Raise Funds Just by Listening
A unique feature of the show will be fundraising for EMERGE. Heather Brewer describes the fundraising effort, "We're excited about the chance to tell people what EMERGE New Mexico is all about and raise money at the same time. We have pledges that will guarantee a dollar for every listener who visits the show online when it airs on Thursday at 11AM Mountain Time and half a dollar for everyone who listens to the show podcast archive during the week following the show. It's a great opportunity for a great program."

Here's how to catch the show.

• When: July 19, 11 AM (podcast available thereafter)
• Where: Go to https://www.blogtalkradio.com/nmblogradio
• Who: Everyone Welcome. Callers welcome at (718) 664-9717

For more information call Heather Brewer at (505) 310-5957 or Suzanne Prescott at (505) 304-3960. Tell your friends to listen to the show. Learn about and support EMERGE NEW MEXICO at the same time.

Editor's Note: You can listen to or download archived versions of previous NM Blog Radio shows at the show's website. Check out a few of our previous posts about New Mexico Blog Radio:

• 05.22.07: New Mexico Blog Radio Premiers May 24
• 05.30.07: Program Archive and Next Up
• 06.06.07: The Third Show: Heath Haussamen & Matt Brix

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/.

Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Dodd Agree to First Ever TV Debate on Gay Issues

A live, one hour presidential debate on August 9th in Los Angeles will focus on issues of importance to GLBT Americans and others who believe equality under the law is a central tenant of any real democracy. Sponsored by the LOGO TV network and the Human Rights Campaign, the first of its kind TV forum will be aired on LOGO at 7:00 PM Mountain Time, as well as streamed live at LOGOonline.com. Panelists will include Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese and singer Melissa Etheridge, who will ask the presidential candidates questions on such issues as relationship recognition, marriage equality, workplace fairness, the military, hate crimes and HIV/AIDS. LOGO is broadcast on Channel 163 on Comcast cable in Albuquerque.

According to this story at 365Gay.com, "Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Chris Dodd have confirmed they will participate. Several other Democratic candidates also may join the debate." No word yet on whether Gov. Bill Richardson will appear.

As a side note, Richardson is currently the focus of a story about his use of a negative Hispanic term for gayness during a joke sequence with Don Imus on one of his shows about a year ago. I certainly don't approve of Richardson using the term, but given his generally strong record of being supportive of the GLBT community, expect this story to fade fast. The Governor has issued an apology for using the word. I hope he makes it to the LOGO debate to demonstrate his continuing respect for the issues of the GLBT community.

Right On, Right On, Right On

Michael Moore riffing on the sins of Sanjay Gupta, CNN and the MSM. Gogogogogogogogo. Admit it -- you, yourself, have often yelled at the TV set with similar passion when Wolfie or another of the mocking bobbleheads is twisting reality to suit the overlords, haven't you? Gupta's review of Sicko that precipitated Moore's rant.

On the ever widening impeachment front, there's this. I hope they don't shoot it out of the sky. Nothing is impossible these days in the Bush-Cheney Land of a Thousand Nightmares.

Say What, Pete? NM Dem Party Chair Challenges Domenici to Clarify Confusing Iraq Stance(s)

Dick Knipfing of Albuquerque's KRQE News 13 interviewed Sen. Pete Domenici yesterday about his election season conversion on Bush's Iraq strategy. Click for video of the interview. In response, Democratic Party of New Mexico (DPNM) Chairman Brian S. Colón says he's disappointed by the senior senator’s confusing statements. According to Colón, Domenici’s main objective appears to be propping the door open for other vulnerable Republicans to distance themselves from previous positions.

“It’s about time Senator Domenici realized the error of his ways concerning Iraq, but his public statements sent so many mixed messages,” said Colón. “The more I think about what Senator Domenici is saying, the more confusing his position becomes.  New Mexicans deserve clarity on matters of conscience.”

When asked during a live interview yesterday on KRQE-TV, “what are you calling for and why?” New Mexico’s senior senator delivers a rambling hodge-podge of statements that never address the original question. Chairman Colón is asking Senator Domenici to clarify:

• What do you mean when you say the President “will never lose the war (in Iraq)”?
• What on earth makes you think that the new Secretary of Defense could become a hero as a result of the Bush Administration’s colossal failures in Iraq?
• What relevance is your feeling that President Bush “is a very close friend”?
• Besides blaming the Iraqis for their country’s misfortune, do you plan to take responsibility for facilitating the mismanaged war, the loss of over 3500 American lives and $440 billion, and the undermining of the nation’s domestic priorities (i.e. expanded health care access, improved education, and a safer and more secure environment)?

Will zealous Bush loyalists Rep. Heather Wilson and Rep. Steve Pearce be the next NM Republicans to try and spin a new, more politically palatable position on the Iraq occuation? Stay tuned. Anything's possible with Bush's approval ratings dipping lower than Nixon's during the Watergate era.

You can see and read other KRQE News coverage of Domenici's sudden awareness of the realities of the Iraq war here.

For our previous posts on Domenici and the 2008 Senate race in New Mexico, visit this archive.

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]

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.

Librul Nation

This month, the Campaign for America's Future released an exhaustive study, The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth, that "offers hard facts and analysis based on decades of data from some of the nation’s most respected and nonpartisan public opinion researchers. This is the evidence that political leaders have a mandate to pursue bold, progressive policies."

As reported on TomPaine.com, the study includes these findings:

[Economics] Polling by the Pew Research Center shows 84 percent support to increase the minimum wage. Gallup shows that more Americans sympathize with unions than with companies in labor disputes (52 to 34 percent). NBC News and the Wall Street Journal polls indicate that nearly twice as many people think the U.S. is more hurt than helped by the global economy (48 to 25 percent). Other polls open the door to increased labor and environmental standards as part of the solution.

... research by the University of Michigan National Election Studies reveals that 69 percent of Americans believe government should care for those who can’t care for themselves. Twice as many people want “government to provide many more services even if it means an increase in spending" (43 percent) as want government to provide fewer services “in order to reduce spending” (20 percent). Majorities say we need a bigger government “because the country’s problems are bigger” (59 percent) and a “strong government to handle complex problems” (67 percent).

These Americans are challenging a central plank of modern conservatism. They don’t always want government to leave them alone. They want government to help hold us together.

[Women's Choice, Sex Education] ... The percentage of Americans who consider abortion the “most important” issue ranks in the single digits in poll after poll. When an election forces them to pay attention to it, Pew research shows a 56 percent majority oppose making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion, a proportion that has hardly changed in the past 20 years. Only 29 percent want to see Roe v. Wade overturned. And 67 percent, according to polls by Kaiser and Harvard, want sex education in schools to include information about contraception, not just abstinence. Yet conservatives continually push these subjects to the fore and stand on the wrong side of them. It’s time for mainstream media to question whether movement conservatives, not coastal liberals, are out of the mainstream.

[Energy] ... Gallup polls in March 2007 reveal that twice as many Americans want to solve energy problems with more conservation instead of more production (64 percent compared to 26 percent). Polls by CBS and the New York Times in April 2007 show 64 percent are willing to pay higher fuel taxes if the money were used for research into renewable energy sources, and 75 percent would be willing to pay more for electricity if it were generated by renewable sources like wind or energy. Only oil companies, conservative politicians and a minority of Americans (41 percent) want to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to drilling.

[Health Care] ... Gallup’s latest poll reveals that 69 percent of Americans think it’s the government responsibility to make sure all Americans have health coverage. Only 28 percent disagreed. Polls by CBS/New York Times in February 2007 reveal that 76 percent of Americans would give up the Bush tax cuts to make sure all Americans have access to health care.

[Iraq] ... The war in Iraq is a disaster. 63 percent of Americans want to set deadlines for withdrawal. Four times as many Americans (48 percent to 12 percent) think the war in Iraq has made the threat of terrorism against the United States worse rather than better.

So how does the conservative propaganda machine get away with their myth creation?

The answers are manifold. Skillful use of wedge issues by conservative politicians. Advantages in fundraising. Political gerrymandering. An establishment media that rarely asks hard questions. A war on terror that trumps pedestrian domestic concerns.

What can we do about it? For starters: Demand that all Dem candidates and officeholders take strong, liberal stands on the issues. Work with organizations like Media Matters and Free Press to hold big media accountable. Work for ethics and campaign finance reform locally and nationally. Keep speaking out and talking to your friends and neighbors. Get active!