365 Words Beginning with P

All good local Democrats should go to the annual event named in most areas of the country “Jefferson Jackson” dinner (or BBQ or party or picnic). We try to gather all committed Democrats in one big space to eat, drink, schmooze, raise money and of course listen to politicians speak.

Last night we had to turn folks away after we hit 700.

I co-chaired the auction procurement committee in 2006 and 2007 which nearly killed me. This year I did NOTHING but attend. What a relief. We are auctioned out here in Clark County and I would just as soon never attend another one.

We never know for sure till the last minute who the national level speakers will be because stuff comes up for a vote back in DC or there’s some disaster that must be dealt with. But last night we had Congressman Brian Baird, who introduced our extremely capable Governor, Christine Gregoire.

Baird was heckled by a couple of screaming women as soon as he stood up. He’s a bright man who usually votes with progressives, but he’s voted for some pretty stupid things in recent years - the bankruptcy bill, last week for the FISA bill, and last fall to support sending more troops to Iraq. This last one created a HUGE stir from his Democratic constituents locally. We still haven’t forgotten - and he may find himself with competition in the next cycle.

Gregoire comes down to SW Washington significantly more often during election season… But she’s been good for the state. Education, veterans benefits, transportation, health care for kids. Still, she talked too long, too many platitudes.

Party is over - now we have to knuckle down and start pounding the pavements for candidates again.

Public speaking: the art or process of making speeches before an audience.

Progressive: one that is interested in new ideas, findings, or opportunities, one believing in moderate political change and improvement in the common good thru governmental action

Parable: a simple story illustrating a moral or religious lesson.

Toastmasters: a non-profit educational organization that has been teaching public speaking and leadership skills since 1924, with 11,500 clubs in 92 countries. Toast is not involved. Nor is toasting, though I could get into that!

Once upon a time there were a few people in my community who were so upset about the election, and re-election (inconceivable!) of the Current Occupant of the Oval Office that we decided something had to be done. We believed that our own people had had their asses handed to them on a platter because the Republicans had figured out how to talk to voters much more effectively than we did.

(We strongly suspected it was all a pack of lies concocted by Orwellian geniuses like Karl Rove and Frank Luntz, but still, the voters fell for it.).

We had read a book by linguist George Lakoff, Don’t Think of an Elephant, which for the first time explained what had happened, and what progressives like us had to do to get back in the game (and it did NOT involve lying or Orwellian machinations).

We got together about 50 like-minded souls and explored these new ideas in a series of workshops. But we still didn’t feel confident at speaking out.

So 25 of us created a new Toastmasters club where we could practice public speaking about such touchy subjects as politics and moral values (from a progressive perspective) on a weekly basis.

Our club just celebrated its 3^rd anniversary, and we’ve learned how to speak effectively about difficult topics. We’ve graduated many competent communicators, gotten members elected to public office, made deep friendships. Now we’re floundering a bit – a victim of our success, even.

Suddenly the worm has turned. Republicans are on the run everywhere! It’s not just that progressives all across the country are better at communicating what we stand for; it’s that the conservative agenda imploded because it was ill-conceived to begin with and Americans are finally realizing it.

The fight to restore our democracy and save the planet has just begun, though. We need fresh foot soldiers to carry the message, share action plans, and make sure the good guys get elected.

If you’d like to be able to communicate your values more effectively in this crucial election season, consider joining a Toastmasters club near you.

Persist: to be obstinately repetitious, insistent, or tenacious in some activity, and
Persistent: refusing to give up, enduring

from Latin persistere to take a stand, stand firm

Persistence, by definition, is quite similar to perseverance. However, perseverance has a noble quality. Joe, who rescued me from a weed jungle a couple of days ago - he’s now my role model for perseverance.

Persistence is more like something that won’t go away, even when you everything in your power to eradicate it. Poison ivy. AIDs. Hunger. Bronchitis. A pesky toddler who wants you buy candy, wants you to buy candy, wants you to buy candy, and throws a hissy fit if you leave the store without caving.

At first I admired Hillary Clinton for persevering. But in the last couple of months she moved over into the persistence category. Even in exiting she persists! She could have conceded graciously Tuesday night, but no. And now that she says she will, she says she’ll do it on SATURDAY.

She is her own worst enemy!

Not class as in social or economic. Class as in classy, class act.

Barack Obama - a class act. Gracious at all times. You go, guy!!!

Hillary Clinton - “it’s all about me”. Defiant and begrudging.
Once upon a time I would have been thrilled to have voted for her.
I was her supporter to lose, and she lost me.

Meanwhile Obama’s act of brilliance was in giving his speech in the place where the RNC will hold their nominating convention for McCain this summer. Inspiring this brilliant image:

Provincial: from the provinces; having local or restricted interests or outlook

Parochial: confined or restricted as if within the borders of a parish; limited in range or scope

I live in Vancouver, Washington – a city of 170,000 just across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon. (No, we are not in British Columbia.).

Many people in Clark County work in Portland, and vice versa. Many of us also like the cultural and shopping opportunities in Portland.

Our two communities are linked by two interstate highways that cross the river . I-5 is the main west coast interstate thoroughfare – running from the Canadian border to the Mexican one. I-205 is a 40ish-mile by-pass a few miles east of I-5. Both highways cross the big river on bridges.

The I-5 bridge is old, narrow, and not earthquake safe. And with the rapid growth in the region, traffic on the bridge at peak hours slows to a crawl, and the crawl times get longer every year. It is also a draw bridge: because of its low profile any tall boat traveling up or down river means the bridge is raised and traffic stops completely for about ten minutes.

For all these reasons a bi-state task force has been studying solutions to this problem for years. They call themselves the Columbia River Crossing. At this point they’re about to release their recommendation and are taking public testimony.

Last night there was a hearing in Vancouver and all the anti-Portland, anti-tax, anti-light railers were out in force. They fear that our taxes will sky-rocket, that all the Portland riff-raff will ride the rails to Vancouver in order to rape our girls and steal our cars, and they think that light rail is a socialist plot. “We don’t need no stinkin’ Portland…”

The challenge is getting the pro-light railers out. So tonight I went to the second hearing to testify – this one in Portland. Not surprisingly most of the speakers were in favor of the project and of light rail.

I love my town, but sometimes I just want to shake my neighbors. With gas prices going through the roof, oil only getting scarcer, air getting more foul, and federal money available for this project now it seems like a no-brainer to me.

Having lived in the Bay Area before and after BART was built, I know how fabulous light rail is. But these folks haven’t left the provinces to experience it for themselves.

Sigh.

I am thrilled that Obama did so well in yesterday’s primaries. What was especially interesting to follow was the pollsters’ predictions. They were all over the map, of course. My favorite pollster (and political writer) is Markos Moulitsas, the guy behind DailyKos. He always says he pulls his numbers from a very special place, which I’ll let him describe for you below:

Prediction performance by kos

Wed May 07, 2008 at 08:57:48 AM PDT

According to SurveyUSA’s pollster scorecards, which track 8 different measures of scoring polling results:

North Carolina: PPP was the most accurate by five measures, Zogby by three.

Indiana: PPP was the most accurate by five measures, InsiderAdvantage by three.

Overall, Research 2000, who does polling for Daily Kos, was second best in North Carolina (out of 13) and fourth best in Indiana (out of 10).

Meanwhile, here are the results of my last three predictions:

My prediction —-Actual —-Margin of error
PA C:54.0 O:46.0 —-C:54.6 O:45.6 —-1.0 point
NC C:43.9 O:56.1 —-C:41.5 O:56.2 —-2.5 points
IN C:51.1 O:48.9 —-C:50.7 O:49.3 —-0.8 points

Damn NC burns me up, since I was one tenth of a percent off on Obama, but forgot to account for “no preference” and Mike Gravel on the ballot. Combined, they got 2.4 percent. I would’ve guessed 1 percent, so that would’ve brought my margin of error to under 2 points. But that’s just me being greedy.

Given that I pull these out of you-know-where, it seems my ass is more accurate than the pollsters! I jest, I jest. The polling composites were a big part of my prediction system.

Pander: to cater to or exploit somebody’s weaknesses or questionable wishes; to pimp.

If he were the last candidate on earth I would never vote for John McCain, but Hillary took a plunge down to his level when she joined him this week in suggesting that Congress give us a summer moratorium on the 18.4 cents a gallon gas tax.

Talk about pandering to the electorate!

This is wrong in so many ways I don’t know where to start. In no particular order:

• It is an insult to our intelligence that they would offer such an irresponsible idea and hope that the voters would buy it and vote for them.
• At a time when we absolutely must cut carbon emissions, they’re saying “Drive on, maties; we totally support your gasoline addiction.”
• At a time when we’re hemorrhaging money in the Middle East and our national debt is in the stratosphere, they’re saying, “No problem, we’ll just borrow more money from China.”
• At a time when the public is crying for a leader with big ideas to help pull us out of a recession and find new ways to develop clean energy, they’re throwing out a liver treat.
• At a time that could be a teachable moment for all of us, only Barack Obama has said, “Houston, we’ve got a problem. It’s time for us to tell the truth about conserving energy.”

Thomas Friedman wrote today:

This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit.

No, no, no, we’ll just get the money by taxing Big Oil, says Mrs. Clinton. Even if you could do that, what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars — burning it up on the way to the beach rather than on innovation?

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”

Good for Barack Obama for resisting this shameful pandering.

Pernicious, adj: causing insidious harm or ruin; ruinous; injurious; hurtful.

Pervasive, adj: having the tendency to spread throughout or permeate

Rupert Murdoch, the ambitious and avaricious Aussie is at it again, and I’m scared. If one filthy rich conservative can buy whatever media he wants, pretty soon it will be even more challenging to get the truth out than it already is.

This is where he started, from a NYTimes quickie bio:

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and controlling shareholder of the News Corp., is perhaps the preeminent global media magnate in an era of global media empires. After building a chain of newspaper and magazine properties in Australia in the 1950s and ’60s, Mr. Murdoch expanded first to the United Kingdom and then the United States, where The New York Post has been the embodiment of his hard-charging tabloid style and his conservative views.

Worldwide, News Corps. is worth $60 BILLION. Here are just SOME of his U.S. holdings (Australia, UK, et al, NOT included):

• The New York Post
• The Wall Street Journal
• The Weekly Standard
• Fox cable stations (about a dozen)
• Fox movie companies (about a dozen)
• The National Geographic Channel
• HarperCollins Books
• MySpace

With the Post and the WSJ he already owns two conservative newspapers in the New York market. Now, he’s got a preliminary deal going to buy Newsday, which would be his third NY paper. Ultimately his aim is to take on (take down?) the New York Times.

Will the FCC allow this takeover of so many papers in one market??? One would hope not, but George Bush’s FCC has done worse.

Oh – and he’s also hot on the tail of Yahoo…

In honor of the 38^th annual Earth Day.

In the glorious Northwest, Trees R Us. But with the insane rate of home-building and logging, trees are going fast.

Developers raze the land, build a bunch of over-big houses, and then consider it landscaped it when they put in three rhododendrons, a Japanese maple, and some grass.

I have two big deciduous trees, one that keeps the house cool in the morning and one that keeps it cool in the afternoon. No air conditioner.

The New York Times Sunday magazine was all about living green this past weekend. Here’s what they said about planting trees:

Every schoolchild knows there is no poem so lovely as a tree. But does everyone know just how green they can be? According to Deborah Gangloff, the executive director of American Forests, a nonprofit conservation group, “Three trees will sequester one ton of CO2 over a lifetime of 55 years.”

She notes that a carbon calculator on her group’s Web site tells you how many trees you can have American Forests plant (for a $1 donation each) to make up for the miles you drive or the fuel you use to heat your home. “This is a feel-good thing,” Gangloff admits, “but we are really planting those trees.”

American Forests programs have planted 25 million trees since 1990. Some trees do more good than others. When it comes to helping the environment, urban trees “can be 15 times more effective than a tree merely standing in the forest,” Gangloff says.

Dan Burden, who founded Walkable Communities in 1996 in part to promote planting and maintaining trees in urban settings, claims in his booklet, “Urban Street Trees,” that “a single street tree returns over $90,000 of direct benefits (not including aesthetic, social and natural) in the lifetime of the tree.”

Shade trees near residential and commercial buildings can reduce demand for air-conditioning; deciduous trees lose their leaves in winter, allowing the sun’s heat through. Researchers have developed models to guide property owners on how to preserve and plant trees strategically to realize the greatest energy savings.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, for example, determined the impact of planting shade trees and found that costs of cooling dropped 8 to 18 percent and the costs of heating declined 2 to 8 percent when a residential building was provided with a tree canopy roughly equal to two strategically placed trees.

Pope Benedict made his first visit to America last week (New York and Washington, anyway). He’s been viewed as a very conservative pontiff, who would roll back the clock on a lot of recent papal edicts if he had his way. He even wears a tall two-pointed hat (miter) that is a throwback to earlier papal garb which supposedly sends a signal to his more fundamentalist Catholic followers that he’s one of them.

I’m not a Catholic, and don’t give a poop for the pope, but this visit offered a convincing example of the power of being with one’s accusers face-to-face, listening and apologizing. American Catholics have been pretty steamed up (to put it mildly!) about the pedophile priests who were allowed to continue in their parishes while their higher-ups pretended it wasn’t happening. It has cost the church dearly both in dollars and membership.

Benedict’s advisors had told him to steer clear of the topic, but instead he waded right in, saying repeatedly how ashamed he was, and he met with a group of men who had been molested to hear their stories. To hear the men tell it, it meant everything to them to be able to go to the top guy and really be heard. And in hearing, the pope said he felt moved to do something about it… of course, we’ll see.

When will America learn that the way to defuse volatile situations is to come together as real people and listen to each other? Works better than bombs. Hello… Mr. Bush???

On a much lighter note, Garrison Keillor did a funny skit on his show yesterday about taking the pope (disguised as a schlumpy New York baseball fan) for a sightseeing stroll around a neighborhood in New York. [Link to follow, once it's up on the Prairie Home Companion website.] The “pope” got into a whole alliterative P-word riff about going up to Boston for a gig with the Boston Pops, “Pope at the Pops with Puppets and Popcorn….”

Believe it - I’m onto something with P-words. You saw it here first!