I voted for Barack Obama in the primary.  I had decided to vote for Hillary, but at the moment of truth, I thought of Terry McAuliffe and Mark Penn and I couldn't do it.  I filled in the Obama bubble.

And as I left my polling place, I was surprisingly depressed.

I wanted my John Edwards back.

{Note:  I was just informed of the "call-out" diary no-no.  My ignorance!  I apologize, and I've changed the title.]

I am sure you are still a Kid for Edwards, even if you are going to vote for Obama.

Because we are never really for the person -- that would be a cult of personality, and that way lies fascism.  Instead, we are for the principles a person calls out in us.

I want so much to like Hillary.  It's pure sexism on my part; I want a woman to be president.  It's an emotional thing -- when Nancy Pelosi took the gavel in the House, I cried.  I am a babyboomer.    In my working life, it has been acceptable to expect the "girl" to get the coffee, to "type up" the minutes of the meeting, to give the man all your best ideas and labor and hope he'll take you with him as he rises in the company.

So the thought of a woman being the biggest cheese of all makes me happy.

But when I really look at Hillary, not as a woman but as a candidate, I don't see a new hope.  I see the aristocracy.  I see Rupert Murdoch and Terry McAuliffe and Mark Penn.  I remember that Hillary was on the WalMart board as that corporation drove down wages, wiped out small businesses in towns all over the country and practically destroyed the grocer's unions.  

I realize:  Hillary Clinton is no Anakin Skywalker.  She has become Darth Vader.  And the others in the Star Wars metaphor of this campaign season?

My outrage expands in sympathy with the moderates and secularists in Pakistan today who make up the majority of the Pakistani people.  

Political assassination is as old as politics, of course, and we Americans have suffered our share.  In just my lifetime, JFK, Bobby, Martin Luther King -- there have been too many.  But those losses came when I was young.  I didn't process them in an adult way.

With Al Gore in 2000, it was different.  I was old enough then to understand that the assault on Gore was an assault on me, too.

I apologize upfront for the brevity of this diary.  My purpose is to keep the link easily accessible to Congressman Wexler's impeachment hearings page.

Here is Wexler's statement at Huffington Post which explains what he wants to do.

Or you can directly click and vote in favor of hearings.  

"But the wealthiest families are still paying a greater share of the overall tax bill." -- Kyra Phillips, CNN journalist mouthpiece.

This today in response to the factoid that the top 1 percent income earners pay more than one third of all federal income taxes.

Tax rate on average 1.25 million dollars:

2004.  19.6 percent

2000.  24.2 percent

O, Mark Twain!  Are you howling about damn statistical lies in heaven?

I just wrote this letter to the editor at Salon.  I like it so much, here it is (ha)!

The problem with giving the Republicans "minority rights" is that they will abuse them. Right after the elections, the Republican leadership started talking about how they were going to sabotage the Democrats' first 100 hours platform.

Even in the opening minutes of the 110th Congress, when Boehner was supposedly making nice, he called it the Democrat Party instead of the Democratic Party -- a nastyism the Republicans have adopted on purpose to deride Democrats. The Republicans are like the scorpion in the famous story:

There are as many as 100,000 contractors in Iraq.  Here's a clip from Robert Greenwald that shows how some of our troops feel about that.

The siphoning of the national treasure from the commons to the corporate aristocracy is a reverse Robin Hood scandal that will wreak havoc for years to come.  In a death by a thousand cuts, our military is being broken -- not by its mission, not because our troops are substandard, but because our military's resources are being, frankly, legally stolen from the troops and given to war profiteers.

If we need more troops to stop the slide into chaos, then riddle me this, Batman:  Why not draft the contractors?

I've lived in this district for forty years.  I cannot remember ever having a contested congressional election here, so it's not surprising that the less creative among us (cough Rahm Emanuel cough) could not see what a brilliant and timely candidate is Charlie Brown.  Charlie Brown is the kind of decent, straight-arrow, I'm-here-to-serve guy that must drive a sleaze like Doolittle crazy.  As evidenced by that over-the-top insane mailer in the Sargent story.

It was so much fun!

That's why I get so frustrated with the rumor that DOJ is holding back indictments on John Doolittle, who Charlie Brown is running to replace, till after the election.  What the blazes is that all about?

Yet another classic John Doolittle moment. He attacks his opponent for supporting the ACLU, which has defended child sex predators. Meanwhile, Doolittle himself was a character witness for a dentist on trial for sexually assaulting his patients while they were anesthetized.

And Kos posted about John Doolittle's support and enabling of a sexual predator -- not in far-away Northern Marianas, but right here in CA-04.

Doolittle's response to the charges he enabled sex slavery and forced abortions?   That's outrageous!

When I think of Congressman John Doolittle, the Dishonest John character from the old Beany and Cecil cartoons always comes to mind.  ("DJ, you dirty guy!")  In our last episode, DJ's required FEC filings were nowhere to be seen.  That was Saturday.  Now some filings are available, though not under the link everyone else seems to use.

What they show is, John Doolittle seems to be lawyering up.

For your listening pleasure, open this instant classic YouTube in another window while reading this diary!

After watching the Brown vs Doolittle debate the other night, willy mugobeer started wondering about Doolittle's Iraq policy and went looking.  As you can see from willy mugobeer's diary, Doolittle's policy is missing.

What else about John Doolittle is missing in action?  Join me below --

As I type this, Charlie Brown and John Doolittle are finally having a debate.  You can stream it here.

Oh gosh -- Doolittle just called the Sierra Club extremists!

Yesterday, George W. Bush came to town to stump for Pombo and Doolittle-- two Republicans who not long ago thought they held safe, safe, safe seats.  (When Charlie Brown, the retired Air Force Lt. Colonel running to take the CA-04 seat, released a poll recently that shows the race is a dead heat, Doolittle did not release any polls that tell a different story. It's been noted before, Doolittle is nervous, if not scared.)

At the Bush/Doolittle event, Republicans still willing to drink the kool-aid were charged $2,000 per head for the privilege.  So Charlie Brown gave the people of the district an alternative:  He invited the citizens of CA-04 to a franks and beans feed at The Blue Goose and asked for donations of $20 per head.  But no one would be turned away for the lack of funds.

One of the local newscasts reported that "dozens of people" were there.  They must have been referring to the staff and volunteers, not the citizens who showed up.  I went (and as an added treat, I met espresso and glaciermom!) -- let me tell you about it below the fold:

The person who answered started telling me about how Hastert didn't know about what was going on with Foley.  I said, "So that means Congressman Doolittle does support Hastert?"  

So why did I hate it, and am I a big baby?   UPDATE: Here is a YouTube link to the ad thanks to Nate at Firedoglake.

 
The district is notoriously Republican -- so safe, that John Doolittle has found it unnecessary to even fake any shame over his dealings with the Tom DeLays and Jack Abramoffs of the world. So safely red that Doolittle's wife Julie seemed to believe she could take 15 percent off the top of donations to her husband's campaign as a fee -- and not face any criticism.

But apparently, some Republicans -- maybe even a lot of them, and certainly enough of them -- don't approve of congressmen who enable sexual slavery and forced abortion.