I remember that June morning, piled into the back of a huge Mercury, getting a late start on our vacation, the radio comes on, the words from the announcer changing the mood of the day. I was new to politics, just starting to understand, somehow becoming aware in the few months between their deaths. But this would stick with me. Actually all of them stick with me. JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X. Any discussion of them automatically triggers a response in me, visualizing the sequence of events that led ultimately to their deaths. It's like reading the last chapter of books and then proceeding to the first. I remember the magazine covers earlier in the primaries, but this would seal the image, California, the primaries, the day before my birthday, the vacation, Rosie Greer, that kitchen.

Late last year Benazir Bhutto, a woman, returned to Pakistan, defying a ban on her participation and numerous death threats and attempts. Her last moments are strange - lifting herself out of the car to make a better target. Why? No one will ever know. Our friend, the PM, announced shortly after that it was her own damn fault. It always is, I suppose. We all bring on our own deaths in one way or another, even if it's for a good cause.

When the crazies come out, no one is safe. Dozens of men, women and children are killed every day in Iraq. Most of them innocent of anything but wanting to survive, to protect their families. That's not enough. Crazies don't distinguish. They kill people of their own tribes, their own religious factions. Hillary knows this damn well. She's been attacked by crazies for a good 20 years. They're worse than Billy's grackles. There are crazy neocons who screwed our budget and foreign affairs for the next generation, and they simply don't care. They had an idea and they pushed it through, and they took down their party, fellow "conservatives", their own families, and whatever else happened to be in the way. Some of them are waiting for history to judge them better. Most simply don't care - they're comfortable in their overconfidence and incompetence. Anyone invoking the crazies as if they'll be a faithful partner is delusional. Crazies support their own weird agendas, the radio voices in their heads. Fortunately in this country, at least in our politics, they've been relatively quiet for over 20 years. But if they do come out, we know very well they can come out for anyone - against everyone. Hillary knows this. Obama knows this. They share the same danger. Crazies may seem to be racist or religious nuts or homocidically misogynist or some other problem. But their main distinguishing characteristic is that they're crazy. They work for no one. And if there's one thing that people seem to agree on, Hillary is quite the opposite of suicidal.

The following is a reference to 1992, as there seems to be some confusion about when Clinton was assured the nomination.
========================================
Clinton swept nearly all of the Super Tuesday primaries, making him the solid front runner [similar to Obama - Des]. Jerry Brown, however, began to run a surprising insurgent campaign, particularly through use of a 1-800 number to receive grassroots funding. Brown scored surprising wins in Connecticut and Colorado and seemed poised to overtake Clinton.

On March 17, Brown forced Tsongas from the race when he received a strong third-place showing in the Illinois primary and then defeated the senator for second place in the Michigan primary by a wide margin. Exactly one week later, he cemented his position as a major threat to Clinton when he eked out a narrow win in the bitterly-fought Connecticut primary. As the press now focused on the primaries in New York and Wisconsin, which were both to be held on the same day, Brown, who had taken the lead in polls in both states, made a serious gaffe: he announced to an audience of various leaders of New York City's Jewish community that, if nominated, he would consider the Reverend Jesse Jackson as a vice-presidential candidate. Jackson, who had made a pair of anti-Semitic comments about Jews in general and New York City's Jews in particular while running for president in 1984, was still a widely hated figure in that community and Brown's polling numbers suffered. On April 7, he lost narrowly to Bill Clinton in Wisconsin (37-34), and dramatically in New York (41-26).

Although Brown continued to campaign in a number of states, he won no further primaries. Despite this, he still had a sizable number of delegates, and a big win in his home state of California would deprive Clinton of sufficient support to win the nomination, which Brown apparently thought would revert to him by default. After nearly a month of intense campaigning and multiple debates between the two candidates, Clinton managed to defeat Brown in this final primary by a margin of 48% to 41%

Another edition of "This is what Digby is pointing to":

THE NOTE: Clinton Plays Gender Card
Gender Card: Hillary Clinton auditions for victim role
By RICK KLEIN with MIKE CHESNEY

Nov. 2, 2007 —

A moment of silence, please, for Invincible Hillary. She left us at 11 am ET yesterday, in Wellesley, Mass., a victim of her own hand. She was 10 months old. She is survived by Victim Hillary.

"In so many ways this all women's college prepared me to compete in the all-boys club of presidential politics," Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said yesterday at her alma mater, Wellesley College.

This from the frontrunner, the wire-to-wire leader, the choice of the Democratic establishment, the candidate of strength, determination, experience. In the context of her poor debate performance, with all her (male) rivals sensing an opportunity to chip away at her 30-point lead, this is called playing the gender card.
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Okay, so Barack Obama writes a whole book on tracing his African father and coming to grips with who he is, finding his blackness in the community in Chicago, and this is applauded as fresh honesty.

Hillary takes a moment in a speech at Wellesley to note how her education there helped prepare her for a man's world, and this is slammed as playing the gender card.

Hillary makes a crack about "if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen - and I've spent a lot of time in the kitchen". And this is slammed as playing the gender card.

Hillary brings her spouse on the campaign trail and this is slammed as unfair - two against one. Obama brings spouse on the campaign trail and it's a love-fest about how bright a lawyer/health care advocate she is and how she'll be the next Jackie O. Hillary brings her daughter on the campaign trail and she's "pimping her", while it's unfair Chelsea won't talk to the press. Obama declares his wife off-limits to the press now that the stories aren't so friendly - will we hear outrage from Obama's supporters?

Fill in your observations here: ____________________
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"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax
Of cabbages and kings
And why the sea is boiling hot
And whether pigs have wings."

So much talk about Dynasty the last 2 years, you would think America had grown to like them. Here's an example of what a dynasty can do for you though, if you happen to be born into the right one:

"In 1960, John Kennedy was elected President of the United States and vacated his Massachusetts Senate seat. Ted would not be eligible to fill his brother's vacant Senate seat until February 22, 1962, when he would turn thirty. Therefore the President-elect asked Massachusetts Governor Foster Furcolo to name a Kennedy family friend Benjamin A. Smith II to fill out John's term (pursuant to the 17th Amendment), keeping the seat available for Ted.[10] In 1962, Kennedy was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts in a special election. He was elected to a full six-year term in 1964 and was reelected in 1970, 1976, 1982, 1988, 1994, 2000 and 2006."

How quaint. In 1962, the three smiling sons of a bootlegger/ former Ambassador were President, US Attorney General and Senator, not in a small part due to the small fortune he spread around to do the convincing. Later the AG would also be Senator and dashed short from what would almost certainly have been a second Kennedy Presidency 6 months later. The following generation would be a bit poorer, producing only 2 congressman, a Lt. Governor, and a couple of First Ladies. Still, the ease with which the family could move titles between Massachusetts and Rhode Island and New York and Maryland made it look like one state.

Skip forward a few years to find the next Dynasty. The founder of this dynasty was the son of a traveling salesman who died just before his birth. His mother, who left him for a few years to become a nurse, cleverly married up, finding an eligible alcoholic and gambler who abused her, and this was the opulent existence that would propel him to a scholarship to Georgetown and later Yale, where he would meet the other member of the Dynasty, a fancy pants lawyer from Chicago. They moved back to the political center of Fayetteville, Arkansas, carefully planning each step of their meteoric career, both teaching law, Bill craftily using his connections to lose out for a House seat, and then a quick succession of Attorney General and Governor. Just over a decade later, Clinton would become the youngest President, and as part of his Dynastic planning, he massaged the rules to install his wife in as First Lady. Completing 2 terms in 2000 and unable to run for a 3rd, Bill used his vast personal fortune of  minus $1.4 million to help move his wife into a conveniently vacated Senate seat in his until then unknown hotbed of support, New York state, for her first public office, forcing her to campaign in upstate New York to give her the appearance of a serious candidate. Cleverly running her career and Presidential campaign from Harlem, he pulled out all the stops to make sure she lost in South Carolina and numerous states on Super Tuesday, practically guaranteeing her a contested spot at the summer convention, another sign of the vast pull of his Dynastic tradition. Clinton again pulled his Dynastic financial connections together to make sure his wife's campaign was flush with minus $10 million by February. It is now believed that this long-term Dynasty may even be elected in 2012 if it loses in 2008. It is also believed that their single child, now 28 and single, will take up politics and continue the living Dynasty of the Clintons some time in the future, making it possibly the most ruthless, insidious Dynasties ever to appear on the American scene.

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

Enjoy election day.

So Barack gave his "Carter Speech" as someone suggested, telling us to eat less, drive less, keep our thermostats at 72.

How 70's. If only he'd read a bit of Buckminster Fuller, who understood economic incentives even if his predictions were sometimes a bit off. People move through greed. While Fuller lamented that our actions were often 90 degrees off of our self-interest, he worked with that reality, only hoping that maybe we might line up to it. His point? Real solutions must engage people's greed, not just their best wishes. An environmental solution must combine ethics with cost effectiveness. Fuller's main role was to develop breakthrough technologies to be available and implementable when a crisis hit making it attractive. Lightweight structures, efficient materials, and so on.

Someone blogged, "If we are to survive, we the developed world will need to learn to live more simply." Fat chance.

You can tell people not to waste, but you can't tell them not to consume. Unfortunately, a lot of people want to return to not-too-distant Marxism/Sovietism/Maoism, when one type of soda or corn flakes was sufficient, marketing/advertising was only parasitic, and the great masses could be united to tromp through the streets performing patriotic duties of flower planting. If that's how you plan on running in November, let me know - I'll get my Intrade bets in now while the odds are widest.

If you actually want a strategy that encourages conservation, find ways that save people money while keeping their comfort level near the same, give people attractive substitutes that are more efficient. Find ways that encourage companies to develop more efficient solutions. And improve marketing, don't stifle it - more effective communication of information creates better choices.

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