a friend shot me an email today with a link to nate’s comment that he featured me in his and lowell’s new book, netroots rising.

first off, a public thanks to nate for doing that. i had no idea, probably because my political inbox is clogged with untold amounts of spam. it’s hard to sift the wheat/chaffe at the moment, but nate, if you shot me an email about it, really sorry i missed it.

anyway, i’m guessing that folks might pop in here thanks to the book, and since i’m not really actively blogging here anymore i felt it would be fair to post a quick “why”. put simply, life interfered. i had a real hard year in 07 and it got me down bigtime. i also went back to college. silly me for waiting this long, but i’d love to be degreed before i’m 40. i worked on obama’s campaign when it was here in texas, then dipped back out after the primary. i had to get back to my life.

back when i started this blog on 9-11-01 i needed an outlet to vent my frustration. i still hadn’t recovered from the stolen election of 2000, and i felt helpless to change our government. i’d been a semi-involved volunteer back in the 90s. i spent a cycle registering voters in austin back in 92, but frankly, i didn’t stay as committed in the 90s as i should have. i was demoralised by the ridiculous impeachment… i think i spent a full two years being outraged over it. then came the stolen election. and 9-11. and the rise of the chimperor and his cadre of liars and crooks. the lies, oh the lies they told to drag us into a war with a country that never attacked us and had no WMDs… motherfuckers.

so i started writing publicly on 9-11. i found other bloggers like markos and steve and duncan and jeralyn and digby and jerome and billmon and i realised i was not alone anymore. there were others who felt like me, who were outraged, who were “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore”. they became my friends and compatriots (and i still miss the fuck out of steve, who was a great mentor and friend to me, RIP brother). we became a community. and then jerome and aziz allowed me to join the great group blog, dean nation. i like to think we blazed a few trails. first meetups, first “add a penny for the internet”, first comment on a blog by a candidate and a campaign manager, etc etc. it was… surreal.

but i’m never one to claim credit. this blog here is largely unsuccessful mainly because i am a horrible self promoter. i am not one to beg for hits, link-whore, or shout “hey i did that first” etc etc… i just suck at that. it doesn’t feel right when i try to toot my own horn. i am just humble like that (no, really). so i would like to thank nate for whatever he has written about me in the book (go buy it!). if it leads people here, great, i’m glad… go read the archives, people. lots of good stuff in there.

and maybe when life starts to slow down again, when i’m done with school, or when we move out of texas (6 months and counting, thank GODDESS), i’ll be back to write here. and if not, no matter. there are others who are now carrying the torch, and i couldn’t be more proud of them than i am right now.

i have nothing to add:

I have to vent, Clinton supporters Hotlist
by altruista [Subscribe]
Sun Jun 01, 2008 at 07:19:50 PM CDT

I’m a 55-year-old white woman. Our greatest matter of urgency in America is to be sure a Democrat becomes President in November, and to get as many Democrats as possible elected to both houses of Congress. We need to do the same thing at state and local levels.

* altruista’s diary :: ::
*

I’ve never supported any political candidate enough to campaign or canvass for them. I’ve never felt that any candidate would be able to keep their campaign promises once they got into power and went up against the machinery that’s occupying this country today. I’ve never felt strongly enough about a candidate to feel moved to be an activist for them. No candidate can ever be all things to everyone. And until now I’ve been able to keep a respectful silence while others with very strong feelings for either of the Democratic candidates for President have public melt-downs when their candidate has a political setback.

I can’t keep quiet now. I’ve just been watching a white woman in my age group on CNN going radioactive to the cameras about how she’s going to vote for McCain if Hillary Rodham Clinton doesn’t get the Democratic nomination. She gave as her rationale for this chop-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face tactic that the Democratic party has turned on its women supporters.

To this woman, if you and others like you are reading this: and you’d like the proven record of Republican conservatives for their all-out war on women’s rights? We’re now paying the price for three decades of conservative domination in America—what it’s done to the American character; the fact of American commerce now as morally bankrupt as it is; the abuses of Wall Street; the abuse of the environment; the poisonous cynicism and corruption of this administration—I could go on for pages.

Back to the issue of women’s rights. You, woman screaming into the cameras: you are old enough to remember the pre-Roe v. Wade days in America. Remeber coat hangers, Drano, women hurling themselves down steps, women dying and left unable to bear children from illegal botched abortions? Remember birth control outlawed? Remember the early 1970s, when a woman could not get a credit card or bank loan in her own name—when a woman needed an adult male co-signer’s permission for them because we were deemed incompetent to manage our own financial affairs? Remember when sexual harassment and open sex discrimination were legal? Remember when we didn’t have rape shield laws, when marital rape wasn’t illegal? Remember when a woman being used as a punching bag by her husband had no recourse—had no earning power, no options, when the police she turned to often were abusers themselves and sympathized with the husband, when domestic violence shelters weren’t even a twinkle in anyone’s eye?

If I remember all of that—and I do—then you do, too, Screaming Woman. Republicans fought the changes that spare today’s women those infringements of basic human rights. Give the Republican Party platform a close reading. They want to return us to those days. And because the Democratic Party enacts a decision you (and maybe I) don’t agree with, you’re really going to show them, and vote for McCain? The same McCain who, in front of a group of people and in a mouth-frothing rage, called his wife a cunt? The same McCain who mocked Chelsea Clinton, a child at the time, as ugly? The same McCain who vows to appoint Supreme Court justices who will vote to overturn Roe v. Wade? The same McCain who simply laughed when a Republican woman asked him, on camera, “How do we beat the bitch?”—referring to Clinton, your candidate of choice? The Democratic Party’s decision was worse than this?

Please. Get things in perspective. I do not consent to watching Republicans—the American Taliban—imposing their misogynistic policies on my nieces. Grow up. I seldom use language this strong, and I understand your anger. But remember who our adversaries are. Rememeber what they’re made of, remember the damage they’ve done already and the worse damage they surely will do if we vote them back into power. Truly, Screaming Woman, I cannot wrap my brain around any woman willing to hand all America’s women over to these American Taliban if Clinton doesn’t get the nomination.

You implied in your meltdown that the Democratic Party is making a calculated effort to prevent a woman from winning the nomination because she’s a woman. News flash: it’s possible to support Obama and not be a misogynistic goon.

I had to get that out of my system. Now please, calm down, get your emotions in check, and do this. Think critically, interpret what the candidates say and do, reach informed decisions based on their judgment, character, track record, and positions on the issues, and don’t abuse the vote that women fought so courageously for so long to win.

one of the great storytellers and rabble rousers has left this mortal coil. i was exposed to utah via his collaborations with FOA ani difranco. i wish i’d known of his work earlier so that i had the opportunity to see him spin a yarn live. but it wasn’t meant to be. in the last few years utah had been plagued by health issues. but at least we have some great videos and recordings of him… his legacy was great, and he’ll be missed.

what an amazing, interesting life he led:

Folk singer, anarchist, social reformer and man of the people Bruce “Utah” Phillips died in his Nevada City home Friday night of congestive heart failure.

Phillips, 73, was beloved on two continents for his big heart, along with his wit, wisdom, wild, white beard and willingness to stand tall for his beliefs.

He ran for president but never voted. Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings, Joan Baez, Tom Waits and his friend Arlo Guthrie all sing Utah Phillips songs, but he refused to let Johnny Cash make an album of his standards, his eldest son said, because he didn’t trust the record industry.

Phillips, a onetime hobo and railroad tramp, reached out to the homeless in Nevada County in 2005, when he and his wife, Joanna Robinson, created a rotating homeless shelter at area churches.

“They’re housing 25 to 30 people every night,” said longtime friend Jordan Fisher Smith. “Instead of asking the government to do it, they solicited the help of their friends and neighbors and local churches and just created services for these people that weren’t there.

“Bruce at his core was an anarchist,” said Smith, who befriended him 20 years ago when he moved to Nevada City. “The name ‘Utah’ stuck because he’d lived in Utah, riding freights in the West.”

In “All Used Up,” Phillips sings of a boss who “used up my labor, he used up my time, he plundered my body and squandered my mind. Then he gave me a pension, some handouts and wine,

And told me I’m all used up…

“They use up the oil, they use up the trees

They use up the air and they use up the seas

But as long as I’m breathing they won’t use up me

Don’t tell me I’m all used up.”

The son of labor organizers, Phillips was a lifelong member of the Industrial Workers of the World, known as the Wobblies, Smith said.

He served in the Korean War, then came home devastated by the misery he’d seen and began drinking and drifting.

In the late ’50s, broke and broken-hearted, Phillips rolled into Salt Lake City on a freight train and ended up at the Joe Hill House, a homeless shelter run by anarchist Ammon Hennacy.

He helped out at Joe Hill House and became a pacifist and a performer influenced by folk legends Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, country stars Hank Williams, T. Texas Tyler, comic Myron Cohen and novelist Thomas Wolfe, Smith said.

Phillips ran for U.S. Senate on the Peace and Freedom Ticket in 1968 and lost, then left Utah for Saratoga Springs and became a fixture at the Caffe Lena.

“our bodies are our votes”

“non violence is a practical neccessity”

“bridges” <—- with music by ani.

“there is power in the union”

here is an interview with utah from february 11 of this year. there are quite a few wonderful tributes popping up across the web, including here, here, and here, among many others. Utah also had a blog run by his son here. There’s a very long entry posted which seems to be Utah’s last missive to friends and family.

if you would like to honor utah’s memory:

Remembrances: Services have not been set. The family requests memorial donations to the homeless shelter Phillips helped create, Hospitality House, P.O. Box 3223, Grass Valley, CA 95945, (530) 271-7144.

and read this, because it makes a lot of sense. snippet:

Clinton involves us in a national insanity
by mishte
Wed May 21, 2008 at 03:19:42 PM PDT

Strategy Of The Day: Imaginary Sexism

Clinton is now voicing complaints of gender bias – landing charges of sexism and inequality, putting her at a disadvantage because she is female.

I’m not exactly clear on the specifics other than her surrogate Geraldine Ferarro states that Obama’s “shoulder-brushing” gesture is a clear sign of male superiority. She is blaming male chauvinism for her current predicament of losing and the media’s apparent acknowledgment this is also somehow due to a gender bias.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of my highly unauthorized analysis…

* mishte’s diary :: ::
*

.
Equality Is Opportunity, Reward Depends On How We Use It

What is absolutely astonishing is who these claims are coming from: arguably one of if not the most powerful woman in the U.S., who, for the last six months has been one of only three individuals competing for the most powerful office in the nation. Up until about two months ago was considered the most formidable of the lot, and while it is clear that it is impossible for her to win the nomination, she has the power to forge ahead without being deterred, even at the very possible expense of the Democratic nomination itself.

How is it possible that this woman is being victimized by some male dismissal? No one has dismissed Hillary Clinton – even for the most valid of reasons, and the entire nation has been harmed by it. She would certainly have a legitimate argument if she had run a stellar campaign only to be passed over by a male opponent who had run a shoddy campaign, managing to get ahead of her and take first place with no more than a wink-wink, nod-nod, boy’s club maneuver rather than earning it. But she doesn’t have this argument and is in fact guilty of that same sort of expectation and entitlement herself, just with different details.

and no, if you luuuurve hillary you won’t like it.

Today marks the 47th and 48th primaries or caucuses for the Democratic presidential nomination. More than 90 percent of the delegates will have been chosen by tonight. By now, we all ought to know the drill.

The day begins with the Clinton campaign “leaking” something to the Drudge Report to set expectations for the day. That then gets repeated on political blogs and cable news, where Clinton surrogate Terry McAuliffe elaborates. Today’s “expectation”: That the Clinton campaign expects a “15 point” defeat in North Carolina. Clinton’s yapping puppies in the news media repeat the manufactured expectation all day long, in which the bar is supposedly now that if Clinton comes within 15 points in that state that she has somehow “won” with a 14 point (or 6 point) defeat.

go read the whole thing.

even the media seems to “get it” this time:

i dare you to watch this and not end up tapping your toes.

lovely:

I’ve been waiting forty years Hotlist
by Audio Guy [Subscribe]
Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 12:19:44 AM CDT

It’s hard for anyone who wasn’t there to understand what 1968 was like. Even harder, perhaps, to understand what it was like to come of age in the late 60’s. It was a time of enormous hope, unbelievable possibility, and crushing loss. I was seventeen the night Martin Luther King was assassinated, and I can still remember the pain of hearing that news. (And I was a white kid in the north, so my pain was as nothing compared to that of the folk who were really invested in him.) I remember where I was the morning I heard that Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. I remember the insanity of the 1968 democratic convention when Eugene McCarthy, the first politician to whom I gave my heart, was shoved aside so the machine could continue with Hubert Humphrey, a once great man who had been compromised by his loyalty to Lyndon Johnson, a once great man made insane by the trap of the Vietnam War.

I remember the hope, and I remember the loss. I remember the way dreams died at Kent State.

And my heart has been broken for forty years, mourning for the country that I love, and the dreams that I grew up with.

Let me make it clear. I’m a left wing radical who is wildly patriotic, in love with this country because of what I learned in church, the boy scouts, and my public school civics classes. (I know how to fold and care for a flag, which is more than I can say for the right wing assholes who claim to honor the flag but leave it hanging outside, faded and tattered, in all sorts of weather.) All I have ever wanted is for us to be be what I was taught we are: the home of hope and freedom.

Hell, it was believing what I was taught that made me a radical to begin with. I just wanted us to mean what we said.

As a result, I’ve spent forty years with a broken heart. And now – like the guy who has been dumped a dozen times, but is ready to give love one last chance – I’m filled with hope again. And it scares me. Because I don’t know if I can take having my heart broken one more time.

But this time it feels different. It really does.

This time it starts to feel like, after forty years (forty-five, if you mark the start of our long national nightmare with the assassination of John Kennedy) that we may be ready to come home to our own best selves.

I have wept buckets of tears over this campaign, but they are the best tears, the tears of joy, the tears of hope, the tears of “Yes we can.”

In Barack Obama,in the gathering that he has inspired of young and old; the gathering of black, white, Latino, Asian, and every other ethnic group imaginable; the gathering of straight and gay; the gathering of old line democrats and republicans ready for something new, I feel a kind of hope that was crushed forty years ago in the streets of Chicago, in the election of Richard Nixon, in the continuation of a crazed, immoral, and illegal war.

I fucking love this country, and I have been waiting forty years for it to come to its senses.

I’m willing to fall in love one more time.

It’s the scariest thing I’ve done in several decades.

someone needs to give this woman her own show on tv. she positively PWNED joe scarborough this morning: