Richardson Stumbles

Wonder how critiques like these will look when the primaries begin early next year. How many faux pas can a candidate make and still be considered viable? Here's Markos himself writing on Richardson's remarks yesterday.

More on Richardson

by kos

Tue Sep 04, 2007 at 10:02:41 AM PDT

In short, an RNN reporter asked Richardson if he would vote for the Iraq Supplemental that was about to come to a vote and had been dominating the news for days (if not weeks). His answer:

I'm just not familiar with the supplemental. Which one is that?

It was particularly unfortunate given that his overall answer to the question focused on a complete pullout from Iraq. Yet with that quote above he betrayed a shocking ignorance of the war debate and how it was playing out in DC, and the sort of weak political instincts that are mocked in this video. It's this ignorance of the current political climate that could explain why he's still using obsolete 90's-era, DLC-style, Democratic Party-bashing language when just about everyone else outside of the Bush Dogs has moved on. Perhaps that political tone deafness explains why his campaign's top aide has no problem going on Fox News to yuk it up with Ann Coulter.

Richardson is clearly a man of great accomplishment, the "CV candidate" of this election. But it's amazing how skills that have served him well at the congressional and state level, as well as on diplomatic missions, have served him so poorly on a national presidential stage.

Update: The campaign responds to Richardson's dreadful remarks about the Iowa caucuses (they're Constitutionally and Scripturally mandated), claiming it was a "bad joke".

Democratic Candidate: Who Shall I Choose?

I'm still working on making up my mind on who to support among the Democratic presidential candidates. As a woman I would like to see a woman in the White House before I shuffle off this mortal coil, but that's not my whole consideration. I don't think the blogger jct on Daily Kos will mind my passing along his/her post today --not if it can assist voters as they study all the reasons why they should support one Democratic candidate over another. Some of these reasons are fluffy, and 3 and 10 are practically the same, but nevertheless a call to consider Edwards seriously is worth thinking about.

Top ten reasons I support Edwards

by jct

Sun Sep 02, 2007 at 05:57:21 AM PDT

For me it always comes back to Edwards, none of the other candidates come close. Here are my top 10 reasons for supporting him (in no particular order):

1. He is out front and strongly pro-labor. He mentions the need to strengthen unions in every speech at every stop. Bonior, a great friend of labor, is his campaign manager. Who a candidate surrounds him or herself with shows who they are.

2. He is out front and strongly against corporate power. He doesn't tiptoe around the issue by talking about how we have to tweak the rules, he calls it like it is.

[The system is] controlled by big corporations, the lobbyists they hire to protect their bottom line and the politicians who curry their favor and carry their water. And it's perpetuated by a media that too often fawns over the establishment, but fails to seriously cover the challenges we face or the solutions being proposed. This is the game of American politics and in this game, the interests of regular Americans don't stand a chance.

• jct's diary :: ::
• 
  

3. His personal history shows he has always held these values. Coming out of law school he must have had his choice of jobs. In law school students are heavily steered towards corporate law. Instead, he chose to challenge the corporations on behalf of the average person.

4. He is personally very appealing and this counts big time. In the studies cited in "The Political Brain" by Drew Westen it is one of the top reasons voters choose a candidate.

5. He speaks to my heart when he talks about how America can be a leader in the world to help people. It answers a longing for the end of this nightmare of horrors being done in our name.

6. He is working harder than anyone to get the nomination, as shown by his much more frequent appearances in the early primary states than the other candidates. http://www.openleft.com/...

7. His health care plan offers a government program that gives people the option to have health care run for people not profit. Sure, I'd prefer single payer, but, this is the best being offered by anyone but Kucinich (who has a truckload of other problems).

8. He comes from a working class background.

9. Elizabeth Edwards. It tells you a lot about a man who he chooses as his wife.

10. Hey, if we have to look at someone's face for the next 4 (let's hope 8) years, let's have it be a handsome one.

So why do you all support Edwards?

Tags: John Edwards, 2008 elections, president, primaries, labor, unions, Recommended (all tags)

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The Royal Ballet's Cinderella

My goodness, August over and only one entry! How fast the month flew. Will September be better? Last night we watched Cinderella from Netflix, made in 1957 during the Royal Ballet's cross-country tour. . This was the late, great Frederick Ashton's version. Music distinctly Prokofiev. Ashton did the choreography and danced one of the ugly sisters--the short, shy one. Kenneth MacMillen did the tall skinny skapstick one. Both were glorious pantomime dames. NBC commissioned this special TV version to show off color, but it was preserved only in black and white, and grainy at that. But its quite the artifact now, accompanied by quaint commercials of the time period and a narrator's ghostly fifties voice. Margot Fonteyn looked so young and beautiful, but Michael Somes as Prince Charming showed how dull male dancers were pre-Nureyev.

Liked it so much I returned to the Netflix index for more Ashton and found his Tales of Beatrix Potter, which I've put at the top of my queue. In addition, there are loads of ballet films at Netflix.

Netflix description of The Tales of Beatrix Potter:

With Frederick Ashton's choreography, John Lanchbery's music and Reginald Mills' direction, the Royal Ballet Company brings the fascinating Beatrix Potter characters and stories to life. Jemima Puddle-Duck (Ann Howard), Hunca Munca (Lesley Collier), Squirrel Nutkin (Wayne Sleep), Jeremy Fisher (Michael Coleman), Peter Rabbit (Alexander Grant) and others grace the stage in this engaging collection of children's tales.

Dyed Hair Not Always a Picnic

Dear Diary:

I dropped into the hairdresser's this morning to give Lori my stylist the photo of the wedding dress crocheted by Alex. in 1971. As I walked though the door with yesterday's brassy orange-red-gold hair gleaming in the sun, Lori gaped in horror from across the room "Give me five minutes and we'll do something," she said as she finished up a man in the chair. I sent Paul over to McDonald's to have a coffee and Lori got to work. She applied a toner--blue and violet she said--and after it cooked for a while she shampooed it away and behold, my head was almost back to normal--not quite--but so much better it seemed a miracle. I asked her to cut it shorter and that helped by ,removing some of it. Then she told me that the entire staff had gone on a picnic yesterday to a local private park. They had won first prize in their Presidential (Bet Cuts) contest for best salon of the year. A substitute staff was working in their place, culled from other Best Cuts locations, . No wonder I didn't recognize any of them including the woman who tinted my hair--and she did try to her best to rectify the problem. Trouble was it didn't make much difference. The effect looked as if a bright reddish-brown feather duster had landed on my head. Lori, however, knew what to do. Moral of the story is, don't jump impulsively into a situation that could easily backfire on you.

Minneapolis Bridge Disaster

Dear Diary:

Such a horrifying disaster in Minneapolis. When I heard about it I thought, oh no, not another bridge disaster. They seem to happen once in a generation. It's the realization of bad dreams experienced by many of us who never feel comfortable crossing large spans.

I've been impressed by the city's very competent officials as they discuss the latest details on television, and we're also hearing about how much help they're getting from volunteers. They all exhibit the right Minnesota stuff as exemplified in the writings of Garrison Keillor.

There's a bridge in Canada that gives me the willies every time we cross it. It's the Burlington Bridge and goes way high over water near Hamilton. Here it is and it is a beauty, but to cross it you have to drive up a very high and long ramp--like climbing up into the sky.

I found a good picture of the Burlington but I don't yet know how to insert photos here. Must learn.

Bridge disasters have taken on a mythology of their own. One of the most famous is the Tay Bridge Disaster near Dundee in Scotland in 1879. The bridge fell during a violent hurricane and an entire train fell into the river Tay estuary taking 90 victims to their deaths still in their railway cars. This was a new bridge, over two miles long, and was opened with lots of hoopla as one of the great structures of the Victorian age. It lasted about a year

Oddles of websites. The attached shows how the media told the story in 1880. Surprisingly similar in spite of having to use drawings instead of photography/. Here's the link:

http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/disaster/main.htm.

A bad poet wrote an epic poem. Here are the first lines:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away,
On the last Sabbath day of 1879
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

Then there's The Bridge at St. Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder. But that's fiction.
Alas! I am very sorry to say

A Poem I Liked Today

HANDS

She peels cod fillets off the slab,
dips them in batter, drops them
one by one into the storm of hot fat.
I watch her scrubbed hands,
elegant at the work,

and think of the hands of the midwife,
stroking wet hair from my face as I sobbed and cursed,
calling me sweetheart and wheelling in more gas,
hauling out at last my slippery fish of a son.
He was all silence and milky blue. She took him away
and brought him back breathing,
wrapped in a white sheet. By then
I loved her like my own mother.

I stand here speechless in the steam and batter,
as she makes hospital corners of my hot paper parcel..

Jean Sprackland
The New Yorker, July 9 & 16, 2007

I turned to Poetry Archive.com. for information about Sprackland and and learned this:
Born 1962, she is the author of two books of poems and a collection of short stories, and has been shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Whitbread Prize and the T. S. Eliot prize. She was chosen as a Next Generation Poet in 2004.

There is an attention through Sprackland's work to the spark of mystery left in what we have allowed to seem domestic or ordinary.

She is a native of Burton on Trent, England.

Horrible Bush/Brown Press Conference

Horrors. I just watched a YouTube playback of yesterday's Bush /Brown press conference. Downright embarrassing--Brown answering questions directly and crisply and that fool Bush looking for all the world like an unprepared high school student trying to answer an oral exam question with reams of B.S. and ending by charmingly asking, "What was the question?" Everyone, including Brown and the press ignored once again the lack of the Emperor's new clothes. Bush in his rambling answers once again made up his own words (eg. suiciders), lectured us that his job is "hard work," managed to insult the Scottish people with stupid Scots jokes, and picked on one newsman for having a bald head. Ha. Ha. Very funny.
You can see this travesty on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKEwkdBVErg&NR=1
But have a barf bowl at the ready.