But then Henry Cuellar & Richard "KKK" Raymond are stealing South Texas for her, so what did we expect? I think at this point that anyone who still supports Hillary has serious moral issues. I will not vote for her ever. I don't care what is at stake; I have seen the kind of behavior she condones & encourages & I morally cannot & will not support her.

I showed up early at my precinct with my agenda in hand (based on the TDP rules) & some other stuff. Folks were lining up for the caucus. It was way past 7:15, but folks were still voting & the election judge refused to let us in. I stood at the front of the caucus line & some folks started to squawk. I told them I was the precinct chair (have been since 2004, so it should be no surprise to anyone). They got quiet & went off to tell their Hillbot leader, who then accosted me. "Are you really the precinct chair?" "You know I am, & have been since 2004. If you have a question about it, call X (party chair)."

I showed her my agenda, telling her it was based on the TDP rules. She went off to make a phone call & came back unhappy. "Well, we'll start off this way & then we'll see what happens." uh-huh.

So then some lady comes up & announces to me that she is the permanent secretary. Uh, no you're not. I haven't called the convention to order because we're still standing outside & people are still voting. She walked away unhappy.

Then Hillbot leader comes up & asks if I will let some lady sign in for Hillary because she has to leave. Note: we're still fucking outside, I don't have the fucking packet, the convention hasn't been called to order. So, I say no. No packet, folks are still voting, no one can sign in until the convention has been opened & that ain't happening until the last voter votes. They skulk off. I did feel bad for this lady, but take it up with the TDP.

We're finally let in. There are over 100 people there. (Aside: where the fuck were these people in 2004 & 2006?) We separate into Obama & Hillary people. We (Obama) make threshold barely. I announce that I'm the temporary chair, but no one listens to me because I am not their appointed leader, so Hillbot does it. Everyone is ok with that (well tough shit if they weren't, it's in the DAMN RULES). I look around for Mrs. I'm the Permanent Secretary, but she's nowhere to be found, so I ask for someone to be Temporary Secretary. Eventually, we get started signing folks in. It is a complete clusterfuck. I make a motion that the temp chair & secretary be permanent chair & secretary & Hillbot & her little hillbots can't agree fast enough. Who wants to do that paperwork? The Obama folks get their stuff done pretty quickly & they're off. I'm still there as permanent chair (thank god). The Hillaries finally get their crap together & we're out of there. Someone brings me a broken ballot box seal. WHAT THE FUCK? So, I call the party chair, the TDP (which doesn't know what to do) & the Obama hotline. Who knows if anything will come of this. The permanent secretary offers to "finish off the paperwork & turn it in." At this point, I'm all "oh fuck no" on the inside & "no, that's okay, I have to meet (party chair) tonight & I'll give it to him."

I then get a call from the party chair. Could I please come to this other precinct because there is going to be a riot. Cops are there, the media is there, it's a madhouse. I get over there & things have calmed down a bit. I find another Hillary person from another precinct who is so pissed off at how the machine improperly ran her convention that she is calling the Obama hotline. Wonder who gave her that number? Turns out there are several fires that need to be put out: there are 2 precincts having a convention in the same place & the Hillbot leader here tries to steal the convention packet out of the hands of that precinct's chair. (there is only 1 delegate in this precinct for crap's sake). An Obama volunteer grabs it back & says "No, that is illegal" & Hillbot leader stalks off mad. I help the 2 folks who show up run their convention & we get a delegate & alternate for Obama (now do you see why they tried to steal that packet?) The other fire involved the refusal of the convention chair to sign in any Obama people. Eventually they get signed in & get 4 or 5 delegates. Unlike my convention, there was lots of shouting involved at even getting to that point, mostly because the Hillary people are pissed off that the mean Obama people are making them follow the rules.

I hear from others at HQ & at a local bar about the complete & total disaster that the countywide precinct conventions have been. Someone overheard a Hillary person say "The only reason I'm still here is because the boss is paying us $25." The machine did their best to bully & steal their way into getting the most delegates; the problem was that they only taught their folks how to steal the election & cheat at the conventions, not how to control the large crowds.



dg

that he's not a Muslim, why has she not publically denounced and/or rejected State Representative Richard Raymond for his racist remarks in the Spanish language paper, El Manana, which ran this past Friday?

In the direct link, you will see that the story has been changed from the original published both online & in print. http://www.elmanana.com.mx/notas.asp?id=43...

However, here's the cached link (which has been screensaved by many; I hope to scan in the printed article as well.)

Now Hillary did say in the last debate that she would ask anyone who made such remarks to publically leave her campaign. Richard Raymond has not been asked to step down.

http://209.85.207.104/search?q=cache:Ia8Fq...

For those of you who do not understand Spanish, Rep. Raymond stated that Barack Obama is an unexperienced politician who is Muslim. (novato politico de origen musulman)

So, where do we go to see Hillary reject & denounce State Rep. Raymond?

dg

edited to add screencap:

Bookmark this, because I am not explaining it AGAIN.

I'm getting rather tired of explaining the Texas delegate apportion system & it's perceived unfairness. So, here's the link to the Lone Star Project's Calculator so you can have something to play with from now until March 4. Have fun, kids!

http://www.lonestarproject.net/DemPrimary....

Why are the South Texas Senatorial Districts getting less delegates than the metropolitan areas (where most of the African American vote is)?

Because the delegates are apportioned according to turn out in 2004 & 2006. Lest you think this is a nefarious plan cooked up by the Texas Democratic Party to screw one or the other candidates, this system has been in place for years. It favors those areas that get out the vote for the Democrats. You spend election season sitting on your ass? Sorry, we're not giving you any delegates. Carrot, meet stick.

In 2004, my SD in South Texas was able to send 6 to 8 delegates to the National Convention. My own county was able to send oodles & skads of delegates (I can't recall the exact numbers.) Why? Because the South Texas machines went into overdrive to get Tony Sanchez elected governor in 2002. In 2004 & to some extent in 2006, we got the carrot.

In the 2004 & 2006 General Elections, however, the State Party decided to focus its GOTV efforts on the major metropolitan areas & essentially told the South Texas counties to take a hike. So, no real efforts were made to GOTV for the Democrats in these election years. Hence, our turn out went way down; the metro areas went way up. Now it's their turn to get the carrot & our turn to get the stick.


dg

wow, your belief in God must be really weak if you need constant reminders.

Maybe not nice, but I got so many at one time I got sick of playing BS deflector.

dg

Compare & contrast the coverage of the "Liberty 7" and a "prank" that happened at my school when I was a sophomore:

"3 HELD IN TEAR GAS INCIDENT--Three youths, all identified as McAllen High School seniors, were in police custody today following what apparently started out about 12:15 p.m. as a prank on the last day of classes for seniors and ended with 11 students being taken to McAllen General Hospital for treatment of injuries associated with the inhalation of tear gas.

A warrant also has been issued for the arrest of a fourth student in connection with the incident, in which tear gas spread throughout the high school building.

(snip)

According to police, a key was used to unlock the cover of an air-conditioning vent which allowed access to a tunnel underneath the school. The tunnel led to the main fan room.

One tear gas cannister, containing type CS tear gas, was opened there. Because of the central location of the fan unit, the tear gas spread almost instantaneously throughout the school. Lights also were reported to ahve gone off in parts of the building.

Police said the tear gas was of a common type, widely used for crowd control purposes. It was identified as Army issue. Police also recovered four additional tear gas cannisters and three 40-milimeter M-385 practice shells from the home of one of the suspects."

And that was that. Nothing further than this one article was written about this story. The 2 TV stations only covered it because their mobile vans were nearby, downtown covering a fire at a store. It didn't make the national media. Again, nothing sensationalized about the story; the TV coverage was "just the facts, ma'am" for an incident that made about 3,000 kids rush outside, & sent 11 students & 1 staff member to the hospital. It's all forgotten about, except those of us who were there.

It doesn't take much of an imagination to figure out how the MSM would over-hype this story.

dg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committees_of...

This is an idea I have been toying with for a while now. When I attended Democracy Fest last year, I attended a session on using the media & began to think of ways to do so. I remembered from history that to drum up support for the Revolution, our Founding Fathers formed Committees of Correspondence to write letters to be printed or otherwise diseminated in public. (I looked this up on wiki & it seems that my thoughts on what the Committees did is a bit different than what they did in actuality, but I'm still going to use that term.)

Here's my plan: Since many papers have limits on how many LTTEs they will publish from one person in a given time period (plus the fact that they have the right not to publish LTTEs submitted), you need to gather a few like-minded folks together. The more the merrier! Come up with topics you need to talk about (why voters should elect Candidate A, why they should support Initiative B, etc), & have each person write an LTTE on that subject. See who gets published. DON'T USE ASTROTURF! Give folks outlines with talking points & sources. The next week, come up with another topic & flood the papers with letters on that subject. Try to keep this up until November.

Bonus: If there is a foreign language paper in your area, send LTTEs in the particular language to them too!

dg

in response to this article in the SA paper this morning:

http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/stori...


AT&T does not care for or respect its customers' privacy, despite its "assurances" in today's paper. AT&T violated its own privacy policy and the U.S. Constitution when it turned over private information on its customers to the federal government without a warrant. To add insult to injury, AT&T changed its privacy policy to insist, as a requirement to receive its services, that customers "agree" that their personal data no longer belongs to the customer but to AT&T, which can do with that information what it will. That's extortion!

I saw the CEO's "testimony" before the Senate & was struck by his arrogance in refusing to answer direct questions, as if to say "I don't care what the law is, I'm going to do what I want & there's nothing you can do about it."

Our do-nothing corrupt Republican-controlled Congress will once again roll over & play dead, but we consumers, Republicans & Democrats, liberals & conservatives, can vote with our pocketbooks now & vote for candidates who value the Constitution & consumer rights in November. If you value the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, if you value your right to privacy, find another telephone and internet provider that shares your values. Cancel your services with AT&T when you can & tell them why. Drain AT&T dry. Money is the only thing these crooks in three-piece suits understand & is the only weapon we have against their illegal, corrupt actions.

It's too bad that Qwest, the one company that had the guts to stand up to the feds & insist on a warrant, does not offer services in Texas. It would make it much easier for me to tell AT&T to pound sand.

I've been a member of this forum for quite some time now, & have noticed a few things. Occasionally, we get "visited" by those from the outside whose objective is to stir up trouble. This usually happens when Keith is on vacation. The last time this forum was "visited" & disrupted was when someone dropped by to tell us the "bad news" that KO was in a committed relationship. Poster X then proceeded to post personal attacks on our beloved Reverend Cheesehead, which really tipped her(his?) hand. It seemed to me at the time that the only purpose of this particular post was to try to demoralize the KOEB in general (& the personalized attack on Rev was calculated to hurt her in particular). X's reasoning seemed to be that if the "object of our affection" was taken, then we'd be heart-broken & turn into jealous harpies because we'd been "rejected" & less likely to be such die-hard fans. This attempt was SOOOO high school, coming as it did on the heels of her/his revelation that KO supposedly likes 'em young. Again, same motivation & sooooo HIGH SCHOOL. What we do here is kin to the kind of chats about the hotties that we did at slumber parties. Okay, that's high school, too, but at least it's fun & no one gets hurt. That's how I see the KOEB. We like this guy, some of us think he's hot (for various reasons), we post until they tell us to stop & everyone has a laugh & a good time.

After that, this forum hasn't been disrupted, although we did get a visit from someone who wanted us to go cause problems for the knuckledraggers on an anti-KO site, saying that is was part of our "mission statement" & suggested we'd get in trouble with DU Admin for not doing so. Well, not to put words into Skinner's mouth, but I'm sure he appreciates the fact that we don't use DU as a forum to go disrupt another site. To each his own, & as long as the knuckledraggers stay on their side of the pool & don't piss on our side, I'm willing to live & let live.

The same cannot be said about other KO fan sites. One in particular seems to get disrupted on a regular basis, by a person or persons claiming to have personal knowledge of KO, to have dated him, to have dated or slept with him, even to having his Ebay username. The majority of these posts are not complimentary of him, BTW. However, as the posts got more & more personal, I started to smell a rat. Who the hell has the time to figure out someone's Ebay username, for cripe's sake? It was obvious that someone was trying to stir up trouble for KO among the fan base, but why? So we wouldn't feel so strongly about showing our support when the real attacks started.

Then this week happened. All kinds of "shocking" emails, allegedly sent by KO in response to flame-bait emails. (Having read some of the emails supposedly sent to KO, I'm hard-pressed to place the writers of them into the category of "fan." "Fans" don't attack their favored celebrity. They send them messages full of & & such.) If the attacks weren't so blatantly personal & the intent (character assassination) so obvious, I'd laugh at the gossip columnist who apparently thinks people would fall over dead on the street upon learning that KO actually uses the word "fuck." For the record, if I get crap like that in my personal email box, I'd respond in kind too. Baby's got F bombs & she knows how to use 'em. From my work account, I'd be more circumspect, but believe me there's more than one way to tell some knuckle-dragger to go fuck himself without having to use the word "fuck."

Of course, at this time, we don't know if those emails were sent by KO. Many have said they don't "read" like him & I fall into that category. I could be wrong, & if so, I think it's a bad judgment call on KO to use his work email to respond to the knuckledraggers. Why not come over here instead, where he'd be surrounded by all the & he could stand to offset the negative vibes sent by the knuckledraggers? Then there's the theory that someone spoofed his work email account. If that is the case, then evil to him who evil does (paraphrasing here). Karmic paybacks are a bitch, folks.

That's my take, fwiw.

dg

When last I ventured this topic, I had not been able to locate any information. I'm not sure why, but lately, I can't get on the internet without finding yet ANOTHER website about it.

So, I've made up my mind & next year, sometime in May, I will start walking the Camino Frances. My goal is to start in France at St. Jean-Pied-de-Port & walk the almost 800km to Santiago. I have a coworker who has tentatively said he'd come along (not sure if he was drunk at the time, though ), but if anyone else is interested, give me a shout. In order to get the coveted "Compostela," you have to walk the last 100km, so if 800km sounds like too much for you, perhaps you could meet me in Sarria, which is a little over 100km & where most pilgrims start?

Links:
A message board-- http://www.santiago-today.com/board/index....

Site that includes a map of the route I want to take (the orange line): http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=e...

Another site with a map:
http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/santiago/spancm...

Blog of a woman who walked several of the Caminos, including the Camino Frances:
http://www.raunsbjerg.dk / (eventually you get to a page where you can select "English.")

And of course, the main source for information, including guidebooks & DVDs (recommended):
www.csj.org.uk

dg

and to my surprise, I enjoyed the movie more than I enjoyed the book. Quite honestly, I got frustrated with the writing, as it seemed Brown would describe a scene in which the main character(s) are about to be offed & then use that time to natter on for 20+ pages on something obscure, then go back to the action JUST BEFORE the axe fell. Or something. Sure the movie kind of thunks at the end, but then, so does the book (IMO YMMV). It does make me wonder if the movie critics who panned this movie are on the take from someone. IT'S A MOVIE, just like the Jesus Chainsaw Massacre "Passion of the Christ." I had no plans to see the movie at all until people started getting their panties in a twist about it.

The first time I saw it on Saturday (yes you read that right), I went with a friend & her mother & uncle. All of them are Catholic. Let's just say I'm indifferent. We all enjoyed the movie. I had other errands in SA to run, but by evening, I was at another movie theatre because I wanted to see "V for Vendetta." As I drove up to this theatre, though, there were protestors, one of whom was holding a sign that read "Hollywood is throwing Christians to the Lions." FOR.CHRIST'S.SAKE. That's a bit much. So, being in a bit of a pissed off mood, I decided to "strike back" & go see the movie again. I actually liked it even better the second time, since I got time to notice all of the symbols Ron Howard was throwing into the scenery. Think the tiling in the bathroom or the way the books were stacked was a coincidence? Hmm, not. The evening show was sold out & the audience reacted more to the funny parts than the morning audience did. Not sure why.

As I left the theatre, the protestors still weren't bothering anyone & no one was bothering them, so I just walked on by. The people I do have a problem with are those like Tweety, who should know better as he should have actually READ THE DAMN BOOK BEFORE CRITICIZING IT. One of the characters in the movie actually states that the group doing the persecuting is NOT the Catholic Church NOR Opus Dei, but another group called "The Council of Shadows." So if anyone keeps whining about how Hollywood is picking on the poor Catholic Church & Opus Dei, you might want to point this out.

This morning, however, I was killing time in a bookstore & found an illustrated version of "The DaVinci Code," so I started thumbing through it to look at the artwork, minding my own business. Then some woman comes up with a friend & starts making snide remarks about all the books coming out in conjunction with the movie (well, DUH, it's called making money), & then points to me & says "See, people are so stupid. They read something in a book & think it's real." I looked her in the eye & said "So by your logic,if I read the Bible & believe what is in that, then I'm stupid." ::crickets::

Go see the movie. It's a good murder/suspense/action flick. Besides, you'll piss off the religious right.

dg

I didn't get so many crowd shots this time since I was carrying a sign on a pole (thanks to Catch who spotted a discarded cardboard tube ). I've posted some, but in the KOEB forum, so some are repeats:

From our walk to Strawberry Fields on Friday:


ThomCat, swag, SharonRB outside Molly's


Thomcat, swag, & me outside Molly's


I think swag is trying to scare off lurking freepers.

A close up of Catchawave's Spirit Shirt (look for you name!)


A better view of Sharon's (and my) favorite sign:


Randi & me (She remembered me from Crawford!!!)


The KOEB at Nancy Whisky Pub (l to r: Catchawave, me, Bunny Planet, SharonRB, & the one, the only bettyellen!)


Me at MOMA the next day (did I have too much to drink?)


dg

Since this is the 3rd anniversary of "Mission Accomplished" & the dead are still piling up, I thought this photo I took was appropriate for tonight:



dg

and once more, the city lived to tell the tale.



From left to right: Catchawave, me, Bunny Planet, SharonRB, bettyellen

Although, Sharon apparently has a talent no one suspected. Here she is, casing the joint at Cartier with my friend Irma on Friday:



And, here's me at Strawberry Fields, at last!

Here's a pic of my brother's cat, Misty & my cat, Draco (orange & white beastie) playing "King/Queen of the Dell Computer Box."



dg

Hey! It was all Rev's idea (although Sharon supervised).

Enjoy this Countdown-inspired Tahoe "ad."

dg

http://www.chevyapprentice.com/view.php?co...