Hillary Clinton: "Who do Americans want to have a beer with? Look--I've got photographic evidence right here!"

"What's that? Do shots with you?"

I can totally imagine her TerminatorVision activating at this point, rapidly displaying the probabilities of various outcomes depending on whether she says yes or no. After all of her efforts to convince the regular folks that Barack Obama is the one who is elitist while she "gets" small-town  America (having been raised on "pinochle and the American dream"), can she afford to say no?

"Well...(shrug). Down the hatch!"

Via Oliver Willis, I found this post on Salon.com. I recommend going to Oliver's site for the commentary, but you don't want to miss the title of the pro-Hillary piece in Salon. It's classic Hillary-think:

Why Hillary Clinton should be winning

You see, while Hillary is not actually winning, she really should be. But reality is well-known for having a pro-Obama bias.

As the article says, of course this scene could have gone horribly wrong, but happily it didn't. And I just couldn't pass up sharing this picture and story. Especially after reading about Glenn Beck's anti-polar bear rant.

Excerpt below the fold...

Originally posted at Howard-Empowered People

The latest from Hillary Clinton...

"You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."

(Shakes head)

Oh, Hillary, what are we going to do with you? You have been saying for months that you're "ready on day one". But, you remember that saying about how "everything I needed to know, I learned in kindergarten"? I think maybe you were absent for a pretty important lesson...

Here is the church, and here is the steeple

Open the door and see all the people.

All the people, Hillary. Not just the pastor. Setting aside for a moment the concepts of forgiveness and redemption, and, oh, I don't know, choosing to stay with someone who's made a mistake of some sort, disagreeing with one's pastor is not necessarily reason enough to leave one's church home.

I've seen some discussion about how much of white America just doesn't "get" the African American church experience. But beyond the Damn You Rich diary by Devilstower on Sunday, I haven't seen much mention of how Jesus himself could have easily become the subject of a Fox News-style hit job. Consider, just for starters, his encounter with the Syrophoenician woman:

Also posted at the Independent Bloggers' Alliance

I had a bit of an "Aha!" moment this morning, while reading yet another commentary about whether or not Geraldine Ferraro's remarks were racist. My thought, by the way, has been that, racist or not, what she said was certainly demeaning and condescending. In other words, pretty much Standard Operating Procedure for Hillary Clinton and her surrogates. Case in point, Hillary's absurd reduction of Barack Obama's accomplishments to one speech he gave in 2002.

Anyway, I don't know why this didn't occur to me sooner, given that I'm actually teaching the social psychology section of my intro psych class right now. But this is a classic example of the self-serving bias.

This is our tendency to take credit for success (self-enhancing bias) and deny any responsibility for failure (self-protective bias).

I just received an e-mail saying that church services for tomorrow are cancelled. I don't remember that ever happening before. No clue how many inches of snow we have, as it has been drifting, but the forecast called for 6 to 12 inches. The dogs didn't want to go out in it--hard to get good footing. Also, it's probably weird to have all the smells covered up.

The snow is up to Winnie's tummy.

Doesn't come up quite as high on Brady, but he'd just as soon be indoors as well.

All in all, it's a good day to be a cat.

Hillary Goes Orwellian on Iraq

"We have given them the gift of freedom, the greatest gift you can give someone. Now it is really up to them to determine whether they will take that gift."

Can we please get some party "elder statesmen" to have a word with this woman. I'm not even saying to push her out of the race, but if she stays in, she's got to stop this "by any means necessary" crap, which includes providing John McCain with quotes he can use against Obama, should he become the nominee. Or running ads that sound for all the world like "breaking news reports" until the very end where listeners are informed that the news they just heard was actually a Clinton ad.

This is just wrong. To use Hillary's own words, shame on you, Hillary Clinton.

"So many women around Texas and America are saying, `Wish Ann was here, for us and for Hillary,'" a female voiceover says on the video.

"Today Ann would be asking all of us to make a statement. She would be traveling to every small town and big city in Texas, urging us all to take a stand, be counted, to make a difference, to make history," it says while a picture of Richards and Clinton appears on the screen. "This one's for Texas. This one's for our country. This one's for Ann."

Click here for more. Richards' two sons, Dan and Clark Richards, have asked the Clinton campaign not to use the video.

There's a live stream here.

I was looking for a stream on and off for the past couple hours. Eventually had to take a break and have some breakfast. I finally found the stream linked above, which supposedly started at 10:30. So I don't know how long it's been going. Will add more links once it's over as I find them.

Here's a post from the Ohio State University Lantern:

Obama rally to inspire voters, cause parking problems

I need to to get ready for a class now, but will check back in a bit. If anyone has any links to coverage of today's rally at OSU, please pass them along in the comments.

Update: Any Ohioan can vote early by going to your local Board of Elections. This page lists all of the BoE locations.

Governor Strickland, I supported you in your run for governor. Participated in a blogger conference call and transcribed it, and also did a bit of transcribing of your debates against Ken Blackwell. A Strickland bumper sticker still graces the back of my car. Admittedly, that's partly because we haven't bothered to scrape it off, but also because we haven't felt any pressing need to remove it. After all, we're kind of proud that our state has moved beyond Taft/Blackwell style corruption.

Check it out...

For each word you get right, we donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.

So, who at Daily Kos can donate the most rice? Or do you want to challenge another site? Maybe there really is such a thing as healthy competition. Or maybe this will still devolve into a fight--but at least this time we could do some good along the way.

Also posted at the Independent Bloggers' Alliance

I was thinking recently of something I remember Bishop Gene Robinson discussing at a talk he gave on working for the "common good". He was explaining the distinction between debate and dialog, saying that in our society at this point in time, we seem much more likely to engage in debate than in true dialog...

When I listen to you, all I'm listening for are your weak points--so that I can come back at your weak points and win this discussion we're having. I'm not listening for your strongest points. I'm not trying to understand where you are, what your experience has been, what makes you think the way you do. I'm just looking for the place that I can pick you apart. So I'm listening for the worst in what you have to say. Wheras in dialog, it seems to me that I'm listening for the best that you have to say, and looking for some kind of common ground that would permit us to move forward together.

Over the past several days I've been transcribing Howard Dean's Yearly Kos keynote address. Given the level of frustration a lot of us have toward Democrats caving to Bush yet again, I thought it might be useful to post the speech's conclusion as a diary. It speaks to the reality that change can take a long time, and requires an ongoing struggle...

When I was a freshman in college in 1968, Martin Luther King was killed, and Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. And I remember very much exactly where I was that day, and exactly what that was like. Now, these young folks under 30, they learn about Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy and John Lewis and folks like that--they learn about that in history books, but they didn't live it the way people in my generation lived it. They see it as a moment in history--it's history to them.

I was fortunate yesterday to catch this before it scrolled off the front page at An Inch at a Time. Bishop Gene Robinson preached at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena this past Sunday. I thought the sermon was quite good, and transcribe most of it. Here's just a sample of what +Gene had to say, in his sermon centering around the parable of the Good Samaritan...

You know, more and more, I am convinced that the Christian life is not about life after death--it's about life before death. What God does for us after death, God will take care of. But what we do with life before death is up to you and me. That's the real reward of Christianity, isn't it? Not so much life after death, but life before death. It's not an accident that in our confession now, and in the absolution which follows, we don't say "and may God bring you to everlasting life", but keep you in everlasting life. It gets to start now...if we are awake. If we understand that in the doing of God's will, we already participate in everlasting life.

Much more, plus a link to the video of the sermon, here.

It was a week ago today that I received the shocking, sad news that Judy Cadoret, aka jc/jaysea had died. One of these days, I hope to actually put something into writing myself--about how I got to know jc, the ways she touched my life, and what it's like to mourn someone I have known for four years, yet would not recognize her if I saw her on the street. It hasn't happened yet, but when the time is right, the post will most likely write itself.

This morning, my friend Denise (another person I met through the Howard Dean campaign's Blog for America, but who I have had the pleasure of meeting in person) passed along the obituary that just appeared in jc's hometown paper. In it, I learned a lot that I never knew about Judy, and I wanted to share it with people here who remember jaysea.

Many progressive people of faith cite Micah 6:8 as one of their favorite verses of scripture: And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. This is the part where we do justice...

Last Tuesday's Columbus Dispatch had an article about the B.R.E.A.D. Assembly I attended on Monday, May 7. It's a pretty decent overview of the meeting, attended by 2000 central Ohioans. My quibble is that the people representing the payday lending industry get the "last word" in the article, but I can counterbalance that by sharing the transcript of the part of the meeting where a B.R.E.A.D. representative answered those claims.

Originally posted at the Independent Bloggers' Alliance

Demetrius told me about this story a few weeks ago, but I never got around to reading the whole thing for myself. On break yesterday, I saw a story in the Business section of the Columbus Dispatch:

Scotts' turf war

Miracle-Gro brand sues tiny startup over packaging, eco assertions

And after actually reading the story for myself, I really wanted to see it get wider attention.