Daily Archives: June 13, 2006

Booing Hillary

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I mentioned this morning that Sen. Hillary Clinton was booed for saying she did not support setting a firm date on withdrawal from Iraq. I was sitting on the opposite side of the ballroom as the boo-ers and didn’t see anything amiss, although I heard at lunch that some of the boo-ers were escorted from the hall by security.

Now there’s an article up at Common Dreams that says the boo-ers were from Code Pink.

Fearing that CODEPINK would openly confront Clinton on her pro-war policy, the organizers of Take Back America entered into negotiations with CODEPINK a few days before the conference. “We had lengthy discussions where they pleaded with us not to protest during her keynote breakfast address,” explained Gael Murphy, one of the cofounders of CODEPINK. “Instead, we were told that we could distribute flyers explaining Hillary’s pro-war position to the crowd inside and outside the hotel, and we would be called on to ask her the first question after the speech. We agreed.”

However, when CODEPINK showed up on Tuesday morning in advance of Clinton’s speech, the security guards refused to allow them to pass out flyers, even outside the hotel. “Take Back America violated the agreement from the moment we arrived,” said Ms. Murphy. “Even though we had a table inside the conference, burly security guards blocked us and informed us that it was a private event, that we were not welcome, and they escorted us out of the building. We telephoned the conference staff who then told us that we couldn’t enter the hotel, couldn’t leaflet the event, the hallways—anywhere. They went back on their word and tried to quash even peaceful, respectful dissent.”

A few CODEPINK women did manage to get inside the breakfast, however, as they were legitimate ticket holders. Once inside, the CODEPINK women soon realized that they had been deceived about the second part of the agreement: They would not be allowed to ask the first question, or any question, because Hillary Clinton would not be fielding questions from the audience. “We were really upset that we had been lied to by Take Back America, and that there would be no space at this ‘progressive conference’ to have a dialogue with Hillary Clinton about the most critical issue of our time—the war in Iraq,” said Katie Heald, DC coordinator for CODEPINK. “We got up on our chairs holding up our hands with the peace sign, and were pulled down from the chairs. We tried to take out our banner that said “Listen Hillary: Stop Supporting the War” and it was grabbed from us. And when Hillary started talking about her Iraq strategy, criticizing Bush but not posing a solution, we shouted ‘What are YOU going to do to get us out of Iraq,’ but she ignored us.”

The only banner I saw said “impeach Bush,” but as I said I was on the other side of the ballroom. The “impeach Bush” banner was a product of Veterans for Peace.

Ann Wright, the army colonel and diplomat who resigned over the war, was appalled by the actions of the conference organizers. “They took away leaflets supporting Jonathan Tasini, the anti-war Democrat who is running against Clinton in New York. They searched people’s bags for banners; they even took away an ‘Impeach Bush’ banner from Veterans for Peace. Free speech needs to be upheld by progressives and trying to curtail dissent undercuts the whole purpose of this conference,” said Wright.

Many of the attendees agreed with the position of the protesters, and as Hillary Clinton left the podium, they joined in chanting “Bring the troops home; Stop the war now.” The next speakers, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and Senator John Kerry, got thunderous applause when they called for the troops to come home.

Schmoozing in the hall with other attendees, one senses a lack of interest in a Hillary Clinton candidacy. The MSM has been telling us for years that Hillary is a “rock star” with party activists, but I’m not seeing that here. “She can’t win” seems to be conventional wisdom. Yes, she got an enthusiastic standing ovation at the beginning and ending of her speech, but so did Pelosi and Kerry. And, as I said, the crowd got a lot more fired up by Kerry’s speech than by Clinton’s.

Back to Code Pink’s gripes with the convention — I’d like to hear TBA’s side of this before I get too riled up. It’s very possible the Hilton people, not TBA, were the ones who didn’t want Code Pink handing out leaflets outside the hotel. On the other hand, I don’t see why Code Pink wasn’t allowed to hand out leaflets in the convention area. And I can’t see tossing ticket-holding attendees out of the room for holding up a banner.

Update: See also Hit and Run.

Oh, those silly kids

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One of the comments to my post about the HPV vaccine mentioned that it was nice to see a “younger” voice on this blog, so that’s what I want to post about now, while the maha-in-chief is still in Washington.

A few links. Sadly, some of these are behind subscription walls.

My mother has said to me that the feminist movement is effectively dead, but, although I think the movement has lost some of its oomph for sure, I like to think it’s still flailing and kicking somewhere. Perhaps on college campuses: Salon’s Broadsheet reports that an organization of anti-feminists is opening up chapters on campuses all over the country:

These young women read Danielle Crittenden and Christina Hoff Sommers, attend conferences key-noted by Ann Coulter and Elaine Chao, spread jittery but false gossip that Lynne Cheney is a donor, and host 80’s dances in honor of Ronald Reagan’s birthday.

Kinda sends shivers down your spin, dudn’t it?

Broadsheet crows that this is a sign that women’s movements are enjoying a “a vibrant, exciting renaissance” among college-aged women. I hope that’s true; certainly when groups emerge to oppose you, it’s a sign that you’re doing something right.

But, so, young people. There’s a vicious cycle at work wherein young people don’t participate politically and therefore their interests aren’t represented or talked about and therefore they don’t want to participate. It means us 20-somethings get slandered a lot for being lazy or entitled.

Young women in particular are left out of the conversation. A friend of mine recently pointed to MoveOn‘s most recent campaign as an example. Ten issues were voted on and narrowed down to three big ideas: “Health care for all, energy independence, and restored democracy.” Worthy goals, certainly, but of the ten issues originally presented to us, not one of them dealt with the eroding rights of women — access to abortion and birth control, which you may think is a pet issue, but which I think is key to women’s autonomy and equality, and that’s a hell of a big deal to me. Or equal pay, for that matter. Or better family policies, like access to childcare and better maternity/paternity leave… and these are “women’s issues” in the public discourse, I guess because “family” still falls in the women’s sphere — that’s some progress, eh? All that is right up there with health care for everyone and whatever “restored democracy” means, for me. (Energy, too, insofar as I’d like for us to find sustainable and renewable alternatives before we all bake, but I don’t own a car, so “gas prices are too high” is not really a motivation for me to advocate anything.)

Ah, but how do you get those pesky kids to vote?

One last link, while we’re talking about gender issues: Everyone’s favorite cabbage argues that girly books make boys not want to read. And we’re back on the whole “male and female brains are wired differently and so boys and girls excel in different subjects” nonsense debate. Last I checked, Brooks was not a scientist, so I don’t see how not liking Jane Eyre gives him the authority to make suppositions like that. And the whole debate ignores how kids and their teachers are socialized. But why am I so angry? I should not expect so much from the produce aisle.

Tired

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Maybe it’s me, but I’m not feeling the energy here in Washington that I felt at Las Vagas. Yearly Kos was a revival; this is more like an auto show.

Thanks to the news coverage of Yearly Kos, bloggers have arrived. Nobody knows what to do with us, however. Somebody gave today’s blogger panel the provocative title “Blogs: The Insurgent Voice.” To which the panel responded, not really.

The question at hand is, how do we liberal bloggers interface with the Democratic Party? How do we interface with the establishment media? Most of us support Democratic candidates, sometimes actively. On the other hand, we bloggers do not want the leftie blogosphere to become the Internet auxiliary of the Democratic Party. Individual bloggers may wish to break into “mainstream” media, but we want our blogs to be free of the influence of corporate ownership.

The value of bloggers lies in our independence from parties and in the way we enable political discourse outside mass media. Yet, as Peter Daou argues, participation of the party and media establishment are necessary if the netroots are to change conventional wisdom.

And I’ve been asking myself where The Mahablog fits into this equation. Many bloggers are into election strategy, and others are very good at building coalitions and initiating useful projects. My thing is looking beneath surfaces to see why things are the way they are, and then explaining it. I’m a bit envious of those who are builders and initiators, but my brain doesn’t seem to be wired that way.

Well, at least I make a pretty good exhibit.

Kerry Wants a Date

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Is the Senate ready to set a “hard and fast deadline” for U.S. troops withdrawal from Iraq? This morning Sen. John Kerry said that this week he will submit a resolution to the Senate asking for an up or down vote on such a resolution.

Senator Kerry spoke in the ballroom of the Washington Hilton as part of the Take Back America conference, at which I am an exhibit. Right now I am back on display in the Exhibit Hall, sitting next to sister exhibit Liza Sabater.

The morning speakers were Sen. Hillary Clinton, who was 15 minutes late; Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and Sen. Kerry. All of the speeches were good and enthusiastically received, but Kerry’s speech clearly beat the competition on the fired-up voltage meter.

I’m not going to hazard a guess on audience size. The Washington Hilton ballroom is a huge room in serious need of redecorating. The ceiling reflects a retro-Jetsons-space age look, the walls are mauve (aka “baby shit pink”), and the carpeting is a style I call faux baroque — ornate, but disconnected from any known historical period. Or any known color palette, for that matter. If you can visualize that, add some styrofoam coffee cups scattered on the floor and rows of conference attendees in gilt, scrollworked chairs. Now you’re as good as there.

Senator Clinton spoke first, and she launched her speech on the topic of voter rights. She called for a returning integrity to voting systems and taking voting away from Harris, Blackwell, and their ilk. She also touched on the topic of “fiscal sovereignty,” which is something I want to blog about at some length in the future.

Not to give short shrift to the Congresswoman, but I am about to run out of blogging time — Senator Kerry’s speech focused Iraq and was the speech he should have given during the 2004 campaign for the Democratic nomination. He argued that if indeed the President means it when he says “as Iraqis stand up, we’ll stand down,” then the Iraqis need a firm deadline for standing up. The White House gave the Iraqis firm deadlines for elections and adopting their constitution, so why not a deadline for taking responsibility for their own security?

Earlier, Senator Clinton had also spoken on the subject of Iraq. She is opposed to an open-ended commitment of troops, she said, but does not support setting “a date certain.” This inspired some boos, as well as applause.

I Think We Need to Turn a Few More Corners

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In the “Is Zarqawi still dead?” department —

A wave of bombings hit the oil city of Kirkuk on Tuesday, killing 14 people in what was seen as an attempt by al Qaeda to show that the death of its leader in Iraq would not stop it.

The bombings came a day after al Qaeda in Iraq named a successor to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. air strike last week, and vowed the new leader would press on with a campaign of suicide bombings and beheadings.

“The terrorists want to send a message that they are staying active despite the fact that Zarqawi was killed,” said Rizgar Ali, the head of Kirkuk’s governing council.

President Bush can rest assured that his lobotomized base will be distracted by the new villain, and will not notice that most of the violence in Iraq is not coming from al Qaeda or any facsimile thereof. Evil is so much easier to understand when the good guys and bad guys sort themselves into two opposing teams.

See also comments at TomDispatch.

Fitzmas Cancelled?

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Well, folks, if you’ve been living in the “When will Karl be indicted” camp, it appears you can strike the tents. According to David Johnston at the New York Times, Fitz won’t indict.

The prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case on Monday advised Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, that he would not be charged with any wrongdoing, effectively ending the nearly three-year criminal investigation that had at times focused intensely on Mr. Rove.

The decision by the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, announced in a letter to Mr. Rove’s lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, lifted a pall that had hung over Mr. Rove who testified on five occasions to a federal grand jury about his involvement in the disclosure of an intelligence officer’s identity.

In a statement, Mr. Luskin said, “On June 12, 2006, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove.”

Mr. Fitzgerald’s spokesman, Randall Samborn, said he would not comment on Mr. Rove’s status.

Many hopes will be hung on that last sentence.

A series of meetings between Mr. Luskin and Mr. Fitzgerald and his team proved pivotal in dissuading the prosecutor from bringing charges. On one occasion Mr. Luskin himself became a witness in the case, giving sworn testimony that was beneficial to Mr. Rove.

Make of that what you will.