Fwd: MAY 30, 2013

     This column is mostly about mainstream politicians who hold or are running for offices you've heard of.  This one isn't.

     It's about E.W. Jackson, the Virginia GOP's candidate for lieutenant governor.   I learned about him in NPR's Political Junkie;  all the information here comes from it. 

 

     Jackson is an African-American, a minister, an ex-Marine and a Harvard Law School graduate "with no money to speak of" but he was nominated the Republucan Party's candidate on the fourth ballot.  He "ran for the Senate last year and finished last in the field of four with 5% of the vote."

      He has in the past said gays are "very sick people psycologically, mentally and emotionally" and compared homosexuality to pedophilia. He has said Planned Parenthood has been "far more lethal" to blacks than the KKK."  President Obama, Jackson says, sees the world "from a Muslim perspective." **

     There's probably more, but those are all the Political Junkie gives.  They are enough.  The Democrats will certainly have someone at every stop asking the gubernatorial candidate—by comparison a normal Republican named Ken Cuccinelli,   "Hey what do you think of your running mate?"

     Virginia may be a state worth watching this fall.

 

 

 

**from NPR's Political Junkie – May 29, 2013 -  "Virginia Lt. Gov. Nominee Excites The Right, And Democrats Couldn't be Happier" by Ken Rudin

    

 

MAY 29, 2013

     It may be time to whine again about Washington and the second-class citizenship for those who live here.  There are a couple of stories in the paper lately about the D.C. government's failures, but they don't always explain how handicapped it is.  Our last mayor was, I thought, competent, but he didn't get reelected. The current one--well, never mind.

     The lasting problem is that Congress governs the country and the D. of C. and while the country has a role in Congress, in fact is Congress, Washington doesn't and isn't.  No Congressmen, no Senators.  The Constitution makes it clear:  "The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States...."  Same for the Senate.  The District isn't a state.

     This is not the pattern elsewhere.  Londoners vote in Britain and have Members in Parliament.  Parisians vote in Paris and elect Deputies.  Not here.  A mayor yes, but no Congressmen because we are not a state.

      Every now and again, there's a movement to change that--Statehood for DC, or some such thing.  They all fail.  Congress allows us to vote for president, but not Congress.  We elect one non-voting member of the House--but if you can't vote, well, you can imagine how powerful you are.

      So, back to my being a second-class citizen.  I don't like it, but I certainly don't expect it to change.
            

 

 

MAY 25, 2013

      They've always been "the four little girls" even though three of them were fourteen which, as parents know, is not so little.  We first came to know of them on September 15th, 1963--yes, the fiftieth anniversary is approaching--when Ku Klux Klansmen set dynamite which exploded in their church--the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and killed them all--Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley.  All dead, "little girls" forever, then and now.  Twenty-two others were injured.  But it is the dead girls we remember.

     President Obama honored them this week, signing a bill awarding them the Congressional Gold Medal. They won't know it, of course, and they won't know about something more important that they did;  they helped change America, helped us struggle against racism and the hate it breeds.

     You never got to vote, never got to sit where you wanted on the bus.  But you helped make us a country where other African-Americans can do those things.

     Dead?  Little girls, your memory lives.

 

 

MAY 25, 2013

      They've always been "the four little girls" even though three of them were fourteen which, as parents know, is not so little.  We first came to know of them on September 15th, 1963--yes, the fiftieth anniversary is approaching--when Ku Klux Klansmen set dynamite which exploded in their church--the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and killed them all--Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley.  All dead, "little girls" forever, then and now.  Twenty-two others were injured.  But it is the dead girls we remember.

     President Obama honored them this week, signing a bill awarding them the Congressional Gold Medal. They won't know it, of course, and they won't know about something more important that they did;  they helped change America, helped us struggle against racism and the hate it breeds.

     You never got to vote, never got to sit where you wanted on the bus.  But you helped make us a country where other African-Americans can do those things.

     Dead?  Little girls, your memory lives.

 

 

MAY 22, 2013

     I'm a retired reporter now, which makes it hard to know how seriously to take the charges that the Obama administration is turning into something like Richard Nixon's.   Dana Milbank in a Washington Post column called "Criminalizing Journalism" says that's more or less what's going on.

       Milbank says, "The (James) Rosen affair is as flagrant an assault on the civi lliberties as anything done by George W. Bush's administration, and it uses technology to silence critics in a way Richard Nixon could only have dreamed of."   Again, I'm not covering this, but Milbank is a serious reporter.  So--wow.

       The Justice Department seized Rosen's e-mails and phone records, tracked his movements – scrutinizing the newgathering trail of a journalist.   Milbank says, treating "a reporter as a criminal for doing his job…deprives Americans of the First Amendment freedom on which all other constitutional rights are based."  Again,  wow.

      I remember from a campaign more recent than Nixon's a one-word Obama slogan:  Change.  Please, Mr. President, stay there.  Don't change back.  That's something we just don't need – something I hope we would not stand for.

Fwd: MAY 20, 2013

      Washington is subject to little fits of scandal, or maybe scandal wannabee.  We seem to be having one now.

      Today's list includes a scandal over the Internal Revenue Service's scrutiny of conservative groups, another over the Justice Department's scrutiny of journalists, a third over Benghazi.  I've seen headlines wondering if we are headed back to something like the bad old days of Richard Nixon.  I was alive then and working then and, trust me, the answer is no.  Or better, hell no.

     We don't have an enemies list in this White House that I know of.  No pro-Nixon group has broken into Democratic headquarters.  And we have not, thank heavens, had the kind of anger amongst the pols and the people we had then.

     Pols?  We've not seen the president sweating under the lights saying things like, "I am not a crook."  The House has not debated resolutions of impeachent against Obama as it did against Nixon.  Back during Watergate Nixon supporters yelled at reporters covering the story, "We'll get you!"  None of that now…so far.

     The situation today really isn't so hysteria-fraught.  Let's all take a deep breath and resolve not to go crazy.  It's just Washinton;  it'll pass.

 

 

MAY 18, 2013

    It must prove I used to cover politics.  I find myself already wondering about 2016--another round--the Iowa caucuses, all that good stuff.  I don't know who the candidates will be, of course, but on the Democratic side, at least, age will be a factor.

     Vice President Biden has hinted he'll run.  Only a fool would rule out Hillary Clinton.  If either run and win, they'd be seventy, the oldest new president we've ever had.  Ronald Reagan, my computer says, turned seventy during his first year in office.  Still, people live longer than they used to;  it could certainly happen.

      There are too many Republican possibilities to worry about age. Their struggle is more likely to be ideological--between the moderates, who would trim some government programs, and the radicals, who would take an axe to entitlement programs--limit social security, maybe; limit or repeal medicare, and so on.

     That will be an interesting and important battle with serious consequences for us all.  No predictions--I'm not nearly smart enough to be calling winners that far down the road. 

 

MAY 13, 2013

     When I was kid--long, long ago, I rooted for the Chicago Cubs baseball team.  My excuse?  I lived there and my dad was for them.  They had an announcer who, when they won, would boom over the radio (no TV then), "Cubs win!"   He never got a sore throat or any thing because they didn't--win, that is--very often.  Never have they in all the years since.  He'd have loved yesterday.  They won--but hey, it wasn't their fault.

     The Washington Nationals scored a run early.  Just one, but their pitcher was throwing a no-hitter early.  But the Cubs got a couple of singles and the Nats took him out.  In the eighth a Cub singled, a pinch runner came in, went to second, then third, and then another Cub singled.  Tie game;  1--1.

     In the ninth, what turned out to be the winning run scored when a runner advanced after a foul ball was caught--yes, that's how it happened.  Then the Nats came up--bottom of the ninth--and failed.  I didn't hear anyone shout "Cubs win!"

     I think they've forgotten the words.