The Obamas and Blair House

It's traditional for the incoming First Family to be put up prior to the inauguration in the government-owned and government-run Blair House, the official guesthouse for the President of the United States.

Except of course when it comes to incoming president Barack Obama. Nope, it seems that there's no more room at the inn when it comes to those uppity Chicago Negroes coming to town. "So sorry," they were told. "We're all booked up."

As if the White House staff didn't know in advance that the new president would be coming to town prior to the inauguration: "Nope, came as a complete surprise to us. Never saw that comin'. Nope nope nope. Oh, look! Is that Haley's Comet???"

My good friend Debby, a strong Democratic Party activist and an Obama delegate to the national convention in Denver, built up a strong head of outrage-steam when she heard of this on the always-valuable Crooks and Liars website, so she called the White House switchboard.

I'll let Debby take over now. Here's her report, which she also posted on the story:

I read through many of the comments and found one by Pericles on 12/13 that lists the dates that other president elects have moved into Blair House. I then posted a comment after calling the White House comment line.
Here is my comment: After reading Pericles' post (12/13) on dates other presidents have occupied the White House, I called the White House comment line 202-456-1111 and waited (forever) to talk to an operator. I told her that as a teacher and a mother that I was outraged that Bush wouldn't allow the Obama family to use the Blair House so the girls could start school Jan. 5th. The operator told me that NO PRESIDENT ELECT had EVER used the Blair House prior to the inauguration. I informed her of the Jan. 1st occupancy date of Reagan, Carter and Clinton and she told me that wasn't true. I said I thought she was incorrect but regardless, it would be the decent thing for a president, who is supposed to be so concerned with education, to not 'leave a kid behind' on the first day of school. The operator then had the audacity to tell me that 'there are plenty of Senators who live in the DC area who could let the Obama family stay with them.' She's suggesting that the Obama family camp out in the guest room of a US Senator for 15 days. I then told her that I had looked at a history of the White House and learned that it has 11 bedrooms, and suggested that the 'guests' who are currently booked into Blair House for Jan. 5 - 20 instead stay with Bush instead.
She said that wasn't an option. I asked her who the guests were: Saudi princes? bin Laden cousins? She started saying 'No', 'No' and talking over me but when I got to 'members of the Bush crime family', she hung up on me.
I guess the truth hurts.

Debby Girl, that's just CRAZY TALK! And don't forget that Baby Doc and the Bush Crime Family still have a little less than a month to ship you off to the tropics for a clandestine filming of Debby Does Gitmo.

Neverthess, kudos to Debby for standing up to the BFEE. You go, girlfriend!

Home from the Sea

We're finally back from the Air America Cruise, and what a terrific week we had! It was an honor and a privilege and a pleasure to meet so many of the brightest stars in the talk radio firmament, including my own personal favorties, Thom Hartmann, Rachel Maddow and especially Randi Rhodes, with whom we were seated for dinner one night. She is as sardonically super-funny in person as she is on the radio, and she's pretty much the same in person as she is on her show. Because the conversation was so intense and interesting and entertaining, our table was the very last one to leave the dining area that night.

It was also great to meet all of my blog readers who contacted me prior to the cruise: Becky, Gary and Linda from Colorado, Bonnie and Mark from New Jersey, Sharon and her family from Virginia, Alex from California, and especially Marilyn and Steve from New York -- thank you all for making it a memorable and exciting week. In addition, several other fellow cruisers saw my Farnsworth badge and told me in passing how much they like reading this blog. Thanks to all of you.

And a big thank you as well to all of the other people whom we met on the cruise, too numerous to list, but who also made the week a memorable and exciting one.

I especially want to thank our good friends from home, Bob and Debby, who made the trip with us. At dinner, Randi Rhodes asked Debby to give an impromptu speech on political organizing at one of the final sessions. Her presentation went over so well that I was able to bask in her reflected glory ("You're friends with Debby? Wow!") for the rest of the voyage.

There were some 400 Air America listeners from all over the country who were on the cruise and I wasn't able to connect with everyone, however much I wanted to, and for that I apologize. But the good news is that this is only the first of what we hope will be many Air America cruises, so maybe we'll meet up on a subsequent one.

In the meantime, I think everyone came away overflowing with a lot of renewed political energy (personal energy is another story -- that we are still trying to recover, and after a week of gentle pitching and rolling on the high seas, I find myself still experiencing some "phantom motion" even as I sit here in front of my computer) and we are all fired up for this year's election campaign.

As Thom Hartmann's signature signoff phrase has it, "Democracy begins with you -- tag, you're it!"

You Go, Zach!

My good friend Debby, who has made several appearances on this blog, has a son named Zach.

Zach was a student in Denver studying Labor History with the idea of becoming a college professor in the field. He is also a "white card" (i.e., "on call") longshoreman, and the son of a longtime longshoreman, so labor issues are in his blood. As is political activism. Here's a definite case of DNA not falling far from the tree, as it were.

He decided to come home to Washington state and get involved in the longshore dispute in my "home town", Longview. He figured, rightly so, that in the long run it would be better to be involved in history rather than just studying it.

Day before yesterday he managed to get himself arrested at the Occupy Seattle demonstration. Debby was a little apprehensive about it (after all, he's her "baby"), but I assured her that at worst he would be locked in a bare holding cell with his other demonstrators and wouldn't go into "general population" and the most they could charge him with would be a misdemeanor. Plus it will greatly enhance his "street cred" when he carries this arrest with him as a badge of honor.

Sure enough, they held him and three others in that holding cell for two hours with their hands cuffed behind their backs and then cut them loose.

At last notice, he was back in the tents at Westlake Center, doing his part to bring attention to the crimes of the banksters.

It's so refreshing -- so liberating -- to see young people willing to put themselves on the line for something that they so deeply believe in.

You go, Zach! Don't let the bastards grind you down.

And Speaking of Big Eddie...

Also yesterday on the Ed Schultz show, Big Eddie read a letter on the air from Debby Pattin, activist mother, HS teacher, Democratic PCO, alumna of my university, and wife of one of my fellow Vietnam veterans:

I want to comment on Monday's call re: Cindy Sheehan being a "security risk." I tried to call all yesterday and again today, but can't get through.
It is outrageous that they are calling Sheehan a security risk. Look who is with her: Veterans for Peace and Iraq Veterans Against the War. All these folks served in harm's way for our country. How come all of a sudden they are a security risk?
That's a smokescreen thrown up by a flock of chickenhawks!

You go, Debby!

Lost Generation? Brilliant!

This is kind of a "reverse palindrome"... Stay with it to the end.

[HT to my very good friend Debby Pattin for this...]

Opera Flash Mob Alert!

I have been, contrary to "conventional wisdom" and obvious stereotypes, an opera fan for many years.

So it didn't come as a surprise that today my good friend Debby Pattin sent me this:

This is just fucking brilliant! I'd love to be somewhere when this kind of thing happens.

March Mayhem and the Bracket of Evil

A very good friend of mine just sent me this. It's an interactive voting scheme to narrow down the finalists in the world's worst evils. There's a media branch and a corporate branch and there were some HARD choices.

Such as between Dick Cheney and Fox News (okay, no-brainer, Dick Cheney) or, in the Bat-Shit Crazy division, Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann.

Drop by and cast your vote. Let's all see who is going to be the ultimate winner.

BTW, this whole thing is sponsored by Credo Mobile. I've entertained the idea of switching to them for a while now, but can anyone give us a personal testimonial? My friend Debby (who sent this to me) also wants to switch but she has the same questions that I have, e.g., how's the coverage, how's the customer service, etc etc.

Speaking of Town Halls and the Pricks Who Attend Them...

Okay, maybe I was a little premature in saying that the steam was running out for the (dis)loyal opposition. My friend Debby reminded me of something that had happened two days earlier at our local town hall, and then sent me a video of a portion of Brian Baird's town hall in Vancouver...

It's not the whole thing, obviously, just a snippet of some jerkwad dickhead asshole ex-Marine "standing up" to Baird. So it turns out that the same prick jumped up at the Olympia town hall and pulled the "It's Not in the Constitution" card on Baird last Monday.

Check it out. The guy has his own YouTube site where he posts not only this crap but also apparently is an enabler of the whole Obama-Hitler-Health-Care-Equals-Nazis blah-blah--blah crowd, and -- surprise, surprise -- it turns out that he is also running against Baird for his seat in Congress.

Naturally I posted my own comment on this video:

I am also a disabled veteran (Vietnam) and I am proud to say, Mister Hedrick, that YOU DO NOT SPEAK FOR ME!
I am for a single payer health care system. I get the best health care in the world in the VA system. Why can't my fellow Americans avail themselves of the same thing?
I am also a resident of Washington's Third Congressional District, and I will do my god damnedest to see that YOU are not elected as my congressman. No way, no where, no how!
Semper Fi, dude.

I really thought it would be shitcanned, never to see the light of day, but there it is, on his YouTube site.

Now, as much as I disagree with Brian Baird on SO many issues, I feel that am forced to join -- or start, if there isn't one already -- a Veterans for Brian Baird group, just to see this turdbrained asshole get his lunch handed to him on a silver platter.

I am fucking sick, as a matter of fact, of assholes like this pretending to speak for me as a disabled veteran. I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to confront this prick when he disrupted Brian's town hall here in Olympia.

But, I get the feeling, that I'll still get my opportunity. It's a long time to the elections of 2010.

Stay tuned...

Grabbing the Youth Vote, Where Instant Gratification Takes Too Long

My good friend Debby, who has made an appearance in this blog before, sent me an email she got from a "Youth Voter" after she sent him a link to a valuable website, whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com:

Yes I have seen that. There are a lot of good things I didn't know or had forgotten about.
Doesn't mention the fact that the 26 year old extension deal doesn't apply to most everybody, that those who don't qualify for Obamacare are forced to buy private insurance, or that he campaigned as anti-war, yet sent 60,000 troops to Afghanistan. Doesn't mention him extending portions of the Patriot Act or his dedication to the War on Terror and support for Zionism and Palestinian ghettos in Israel. Hasn't done fuckall regarding NAFTA or the WTO, which from what I remember, he said he opposed. In fact, he's supported NAFTA much to the dismay of Mexican labor who had hoped he would remove the US from the organization. And for all this talk of oh, look he has appointed a record number of gays to office, there is little talk of him appointing Monsanto's puppet Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture.
I am tired of compromising. I am tired of corporate backed political parties. I am tired of vague and false promises of change.
I am really starting to understand why reformists and revolutionaries, historically speaking, do not get along even when they have the same or similar goals.

Naturally she sent it to me for informational purposes, but got back some comments:

Jeez, Mister Picky. I supposed if I gave him $100,000 in $100 bills, he'd whine, "You got any smaller denominations? Hundreds are kind of hard to break..."
Actually, I knew two years ago that we'd probably have a problem with "young voters" this time around, since their expectations were raised kind of high -- hell, too high -- by the Obama campaign. And we as Dems didn't seem to realize that, nor did the administration. It's a question of "message" and the failure to get it out. I'd never even heard of What The Fuck Has Obama Done So Far before, and it's a little late now to get that message out. The Dems needed to come out shooting and play smashmouth football ( I know I'm mixing my metaphors but still...) instead of pussyfooting around and still acting like the victim. We needed to expose the Rethugs for what they are and kick them to the side of the road and into the dustbin of history.
One of my granddaughters (age 18) told me that her friends "hate" Obama because he said he was going make marijuana legal and didn't do it(!).
Naturally I wised her up on that score and told her to wise up her friends as well, but the misinformation is out there and some of it we don't even know about since it flies under the radar much of the time.
But when you are young, you know all the answers and you think you just can't wait for incremental change to occur, let alone try to help it along. It's that odd mindset that is emblematic of youth: On the one hand you think you will live forever, while at the same time you think that instant gratification takes too long...
BTW I think that most of his criticisms are spot on. I know that I wanted an FDR and instead got a Bill Clinton, which will now be much more obvious after the election because Obama will think he'll have to move even more to the "center" -- where he already was, so in effect his move will be more to the right.
I've said for a long time that the Dems ought to mirror what the Rethugs do, which was to run from the center and govern from the Right. Dems should switch that, run from the center and govern from the Left. Obama I think wanted to do that, but he made some major errors in choosing his advisors, e.g., Rahm Emmanuel. Rahm Emmanuel? Really? Come on, Barack...

Well, there you have it. It's time for the Democrats to be real Democrats. I note that the vast majority of so-called "Blue Dog" Democrats lost their seats. And why not? If I'm going to vote for Republican "principles" and actions, I'll vote for a Republican, not for Republican-Lite, which is what the Blue Dogs in essence were.

Sometimes You Have to Step Aside...

...and let someone else ring in.

This is the start of a letter to Bush from Debby Pattin, activist mother, HS teacher, Democratic PCO and wife of a Vietnam veteran, written after the now-infamous "it's all worth it" speech the other night.

Dear President Bush:

This war in Iraq is NOT worth the sacrifice. If you would take the time to attend the funerals of the fallen Americans killed in Iraq, you would soon learn this lesson first hand.

Ask the family of Regina Clark, the 42 yr. old female Navy reservist killed last week in Iraq. She was a single mom and leaves behind an orphaned son. Why don't you fly out here in Air Force One and attend her funeral this week in Centralia, WA?

I know that you have flown all over the USA on Air Force One promoting Social Security, and before that, flew all over campaigning for election. But you have not flown or driven to any funerals. Even if you only attended the local ones, there would be plenty of opportunity right there at Arlington...

You can see the rest of the letter here, on the Washington State Veterans and Military Families for Progress website.